Covert Operation #1
Raphael Mirabaud
Sneaking into a palace
isn’t as easy as it looks,
unless the Monegasque Secret Service is providing security for it.
When darkness fell, Raphael dressed in a different dark suit, one of his old, boxy-cut ones he’d retrieved from his house in the Southwest, and left the little hotel room to board a train to theGare de Monaco,thetrain station in the center of Monaco and a short walk to any other point in the tiny country. Twinkling, golden lights filled the subway station, as subtly beautiful as the rest of Monaco.
The Prince’s Palace itself was a seventeen-minute walk away from the station, mostly uphill.
Maybe he should take a damn helicopter next time because the helipad was a little closer than the train station,but riding the train was more incognito.
Raphael pushed through the crowded sidewalks toward the Saint Nicholas Cathedral, where he’d seen on the television that Prince Rainier IV had had his funeral mass that noon. It was odd that Monaco was without a monarch, but Pierre Grimaldi would remedy that soon. His coronation was scheduled for a few days later.
The indirect route to the cathedral andthen to the palace allowed Raphael to survey the old city of Monaco Ville, weaving among the jostling pedestrians and breathing in the fresh sea air from the water just over the cliff. The somber mood of the funeral lingered in the people strolling on the sidewalks, though the lights were back on at the Monte Carlo casino down in the center of the country below the headlands.
Once at the Prince’sPalace, Aiden Grier—who was already back on duty as one of Pierre’s Secret Service agents—waved Raphael inside and escorted him through the halls that only staff used. There was no chance of accidentally meeting Flicka or Pierre in these back corridors.
That was later.
Raphael had kind of expected stone walls and metal sconces for pitch torches, as the Prince’s Palace was a medieval fortress,but the plaster and electrical wiring must have been upgraded sometime in the last few centuries. Recessed lighting illuminated white walls. Security personnel wearing black suits and household staff wearing dark dresses or suits ambled through the hallways, though they, too, were still downcast after the Prince’s funeral just that afternoon.
Aiden left Raphael in a small room off the main routesto wait for a few hours, lest they be seen together too much. A brown couch ran along one wall. Raphael was content. He munched one of his favorite protein bars he’d brought from his kitchen in the States.
He waited for the changing of the Secret Service and military guards at two o’clock in the morning, passing the time by using his phone to take readings of the various WiFi signals for Blaise.
When he emerged, the lights in the palace’s corridors glowed softly in the ceiling, and many fewer people strolled the shadowy hallway.
One man, dressed in a dark suit with bulges under the arms like Raphael himself had, nodded as he passed. Raphael nodded back sharply, a confident motion.
Those Monegasque Secret Service agents didn’t know who was playing on their team. Their turnover rate mustbe enormous.
Raphael followed the directions that Aiden had recited to the Princess Grace suite and let himself in with the keys that Aiden had also provided.
He pressed the door closed behind him, locking it. The tumblers turned and clicked, and he glanced around where Flicka had set herself up.
The suite was spacious for a set of rooms in such a small palace. It was smaller than their placein Kensington Palace those few years ago, in those halcyon days.
Memories of their time at Kensington panged him.
Of course, their apartment at Kensington hadn’t overlooked a swimming pool, but the lighted blue waters were visible outside the tall, arrow-slit windows of Flicka’s current suite. Those windows wouldn’t be good for an assault to gain access to the suite. That was the whole pointof arrow-slit windows: good for medieval defense, but hard to enter.
He padded over the thick rug toward the first bedroom door and turned the knob on the door to lean inside.
A tiny lump on the bed tangled in the sheets and flopped over, flinging her chubby arm in the air as she rolled.
Alina.
Raphael crouched by the bed, looking at his baby. He didn’t dare wake her because she would shrilland bring the guards, but he needed to look at her heart-shaped little face and rosebud lips for a moment. She was beautiful and healthy, and he thanked whoever had listened to his silent, fervent prayers and thanks that Flicka had entered their lives and saved his child.
He stole quietly from Alina’s bedside to the other bedroom door and let himself in.
In this room, a king-sized, canopiedbed blocked more than half the room. The curtains that enclosed the bed looked like thick, stiff fabric, not gauzy stuff that floated around. In the dark, he couldn’t see colors, but the carpet and drapes seemed pale in the moonlight from the windows, maybe gold or cream. Roses scented the air.
He approached the bed, walking quietly on the thick carpet.
His goal was to talk to her, to tell herthat they were planning how to most effectively take her and Alina out of Monaco. It would just take a few more days or a week at the most, so she should stay strong, hold on, and not reach for a gun as she’d so desperately threatened on that train in Switzerland.
He leaned on the bed with one hand and touched her shoulder. “Flicka?”
