29
Bar Américain
September 26, 10:00 p.m. CET
The concierge greeted me in the lobby.
“Good evening, Ms. Brenner,” he said with a gracious smile. “Mr. McGrath with NeXt Level Security phoned for you. He’s hoping to arrange a meeting while you are both in Monaco.”
The concierge held out a sheet of hotel stationery on which was written a number I didn’t recognize. I thanked him and accepted the paper.
The game was on.
“Do you know this man?” Lukas asked as we rode the elevator to our rooms.
“Connor McGrath manages yacht security for Red Dragon .” My mind worked furiously. Would Connor accept my help? What would I do if he did?
I wanted to cheer and to hide, both.
Lukas met my eyes in the mirrored wall. “What do you need from me?”
I smiled at him, grateful for his presence. “Walk with me once I learn where I’m meeting Mr. McGrath?”
“My pleasure.”
As soon as Lukas had cleared my room and retreated to his, I dialed the number. When Connor’s familiar voice came on the line, he instructed me to say nothing and to call him back from somewhere outside. I walked out to the second-floor infinity pool on its perch overlooking Port Hercule, and this time when Connor picked up, he said, “Bar Américain in twenty,” and hung up.
Lukas and I took a cab to the Bar Américain, a legendary watering hole in the H?tel de Paris Monte-Carlo. A doorman greeted us and ushered us into the hotel’s marble-and-tile opulence, where the only thing missing was a debonair James Bond from GoldenEye . I heard a blues quartet as soon as I drew near the bar’s doors and a woman’s voice husky with emotion as she sang.
“I’ll be nearby,” Lukas said, and slipped away.
“I’m meeting Mr. McGrath,” I told the hostess.
She led me through the Gatsby-era room, past polished wood paneling and burnished leather armchairs to the outside balcony, where palms stirred in the light breeze, their branches spreading against the lilac sky. She gestured toward a table near the balustrade where Connor sat alone.
I thanked the hostess, then stood in the shadows of the doorway and assessed him.
Still attractive. Still emitting the aura of a wealthy businessman. He wore a gray linen suit and a white button-down that glowed against his tanned skin. What I could see of the suit was unwrinkled, as if freshly donned, but he’d loosened his yellow tie.
Unquestionably Connor McGrath, but he looked different from the man I’d first met at a restaurant in Singapore. Thinner, with shadows under his eyes and a few days’ growth of beard. His posture was relaxed, his chair pushed back from the table and his right leg bent, the ankle resting on the thigh of his left leg. He’d parked his right elbow on the chair arm, revealing the leather-and-silver bracelet he’d worn every time we met. He didn’t move, and yet it seemed even from where I stood as if he hummed with an invisible current.
I approached him, drawing my cashmere wrap tight around my shoulders.
He stood when he saw me and held out a hand. “Ms. Brenner. Thank you so much for meeting me.”
We shook hands and seated ourselves. On the table, two brandy snifters filled with amber liquid glowed in the soft light.
“Cognac,” he said. “I thought you might want something heavier than wine.”
“You thought correctly.”
“I appreciate you making the time,” he said. “Yacht security is such an important business.”
I fell into the game. “You’re doing a great job with our latest build. We just need to nail down a few details so the owner feels reassured.”
The patio was quieter tonight than it might ordinarily have been. Anyone in Monaco who wanted to be seen and heard was at the party. A few couples sat in quiet conversation, their faces soft in the shaded pink-bulb table lamps. One man stood alone on the far side of the balcony, a row of shots lined up next to him on the table. He was clearly ready for serious business.
No one was near us, but Connor took his phone from a pocket and set it on the table. He turned on the phone’s background noise so that our words were nearly lost in the murmur of ocean waves.
“Your call came as a surprise,” he said.
“I hope not an unwelcome one.” I lowered my voice to match his. Two businesspeople seemingly having the kind of conversation that happened all the time in Monaco: a conversation about wealth and how to protect it.
“So.” Connor’s gaze was open, friendly. “What would you like to know?”
I looked him in the eye. “I want to help.”
Wariness rose in his eyes; the faint squint would have been impossible to detect had we not been sitting so close. He clasped his hands and leaned in, his elbows on his thighs.
“Why the change of heart?”
I cupped my hands in my lap and stared down at the calluses on my palms, built from a lifetime of cleaning hulls, hauling ropes, and handling boats in a storm. I had been thinking a great deal about my decision, probing my determination, questioning my motives. I shared with Connor the truth I’d realized—that I couldn’t be the kind of person who stood by while others suffered.
I cleared my throat. “Several reasons. Most significantly, I went to Austria to learn about my great-grandparents. And what I learned is that there is no virtue in being a bystander while the world burns. It isn’t enough to simply abstain from doing evil. You must fight it.”
He must have thought I sounded like a starry-eyed teenager who had just fallen in love with activism and believed she could change the world. I supposed he was only partially wrong.
“What I believe in,” I continued in a soft voice, “is our friend’s family. His wife and children and their right to live a life of their choosing. Cass gave her own life so they could have a chance. I hope I don’t have to dedicate quite as much. I hope I don’t hurt my family the way she did. But I’ll risk it.”
Connor studied me so long that I had to force myself not to squirm under his gaze. I lifted my chin and didn’t look away.
From inside the bar, the singer’s voice reached high and then higher to hold a single sweet note.
“It’s not my call anymore,” he said.
I blinked.
The singer fell silent. There came a smattering of applause from the thin crowd.
Around us, the couples continued their conversations. The man at the balustrade had taken a seat and was working steadily through the contents of the shot glasses. A young man bused a table.
“It’s George’s call,” Connor said. “I can’t bring you in without his approval.”
“Let me talk to him.”
“I’ll handle it.”
I pressed my hands together. “Did you know that in Nazi Germany, most of the population refused to acknowledge what was happening to the Jews? A smaller subset was actively complicit. By some accounts, those who were complicit included members of the Church.” I sipped the cognac; its sweetness burned. “All it takes is for people to look the other way.”
In the silence that followed, sounds filtered in. The quartet was on a break, and the murmur of voices rose to fill the emptiness. There came the clink of glasses and cutlery. A door slammed, and when I lifted my head, the man on the far side of the patio had left. The busboy was collecting his shot glasses.
The artificiality of it all struck me. How easy it was to take for granted a safe home, a warm bed, a fair and reasonable government. Food without rations or breadlines. The ability to worship as one wished.
Connor laid his hand on mine. “That’s beautifully said, Nadia. And clearly heartfelt. I applaud you.”
I waited.
“Give me some time to pass your thoughts on to George.” He removed his hand and stood. “I’ll be in touch.”