A Spy Arrested
Flicka von Hannover
I guess I knew then
which side he was really on.
Flicka was walking through the greeting rooms of the Prince’s Palace, overseeing the final preparations for the Prince’s Winter Ball that evening.
Each anteroom was grander than the last, and they’d been designed specifically that way. As one walked into the palace and through thesehalls and chambers toward the throne room, each room’s ceiling was loftier, and each color scheme became richer. The decor became more ornate with more gilding and more sumptuous fabrics. The grandeur was intended to reduce visitors and make them feel smaller, more insignificant, until they were at last admitted to the throne room where the Prince reigned from his throne upon a raised dais, the laborsof Hercules on the ceiling to inspire him and an enormous crown suspended above his head.
Thusly, emissaries from foreign lands were reduced to scraping supplicants before they even met the Prince of Monaco.
And who says fashion and decorating aren’t important?
Flicka wanted to laugh because she had understood the psychology of the architecture and design the moment she’d seen it.Schloss Marienburg,the seat of the House of Hannover in Germany where she had toddled around as a baby, had a similar set of connecting chambers, and she’d stayed with her cousins at Buckingham Palace in England, where each of the State Rooms and drawing rooms is more regal than the previous one. Even the enormous furniture and larger-than-life portraits appeared tiny in those high-ceilinged spaces.
Flicka strolledthrough the rooms, checking the preparations and discussing the agenda with the staff. She’d planned the Prince’s Winter Ball six months before, when she’d still been the chatelaine of the Prince’s Palace, directly after her own spectacle of a wedding and while she was planning Wulfram and Rae’s wedding in Montreux. Her palace staff had continued in her absence, working from her sketches, notes,and specifications.
The conversation groups of couches and cocktail tables that usually occupied these drawing rooms had been replaced with a staggered pattern of round supper tables on the inlaid marble floors. Thickets of gigantic Christmas trees filled the corners of the rooms, drenched in gold and silver decorations. White tulle draped the walls like the snow that only dusted Monaco oncea decade or so.
She noted that all this preparation had been accomplished in her absence when she had been entirely incommunicado, and everything was fine.
On the infinitesimal chance that she did not escape from Monaco and Pierre, she was going to rest far more event planning responsibility on her staff. They did not need Flicka running interference for them every thirty damned seconds.
Inthe throne room, where the most important guests would dine that evening, Pierre stood among the white-covered tables with Quentin Sault and several other of his Secret Service officers. Flicka knew most of them: Claude Brousseau, Mathys Vitale, and Jordan Defrancesco. They’d bustled around her for a year or longer, ever since her engagement to Pierre.
Jordan Defrancesco caught her eye when shestrode into the throne room, her high heels clicking on the tile as the afternoon sunlight shone in the windows.
One of the burly men didn’t look up at her but continued to work on a tablet. His auburn hair was cropped close to his head. If he had looked up, Flicka knew his eyes would be wintry blue. His voice would be a deep growl, but she didn’t know if he would speak English with a strongScottish burr or Monegasque with a native accent.
Aiden Grier was his name, and she wasn’t sure which side he was on. It seemed oddly possible that he was one of Pierre’s Secret Service men who had infiltrated Rogue Security by faking a Scottish accent and a past.
Quentin Sault announced to the group of them, “The roster is final. None of you bastards can get out of working tonight now.”
Pierrestood with his arms crossed, vaguely surveying the discussion. He liked to know who was on duty for large events, though he didn’t interest himself in the granular details of his security like Wulf always had. Pierre asked, “How many men do we have for the Princess’s personal detail?”
“Six,” Quentin said.
“I’m sure I don’t need that many,” Flicka told Quentin. “Six men hovering around me wouldlook conspicuous.”
“It might be necessary,” Pierre said. He didn’t look at her.
“It’s overkill,” she argued. “People would talk.”
“It’s for your protection. We do it all the time.” Quentin said, trying to sound like six men in a phalanx around her at a social event was routine.
“Inside the palace, I’m sure that I won’t need more than two agents,” Flicka said. “I probably don’t need any atall.”
Pierre glanced up at her. His dark eyes were tight around the corners with anger. “We’ve received some information about an operation planned for tonight.”
Quentin Sault looked up from his tablet and frowned at Pierre. “Your Highness, divulging information endangers the source.”
Pierre shrugged and turned to Flicka. “Tell your brother to stop his financial pyramid scheme, and then tellRaphael Mirabaud not to plan an assault like this one that is designed to kidnap you late tonight after the ball. They’ve got a damned yacht in thePort de Fontvieilleat the base ofLe Rocher,and they’re going to climb the cliff face like it’s El Capitan. We added searchlights and machine guns to the battlements of the castle. It’ll be a massacre. We’ll gun them down like rats. If they comein with helicopters, and I’ve heard about those, too, we’ve got anti-aircraft weapons up there now. We’re better armed than we have been in a century, thanks to Raphael Mirabaud’s stupid plan to kidnap the Princess of Monaco.”
Damn it, Pierre knew somehow that Raphael had moved up the timetable to that night, but she didn’t think he was talking about a frontal assault with helicopters or climbingthe cliff face. If anything, surely Raphael would stage a covert attack.
She didn’t tell Pierre that, though. “Well, it sounds as if you’ve thought of everything.”
