“Are you saying I’m a thief?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Moore. “But he didn’t…notice, I mean.”
“No.”
“Then none’s the wiser. What’s he going to do? Report it missing? By God, I’ve got friends at Scotland Yard who wish he would.” Moore rose from his desk and poured two drinks from his sideboard. He handed a glass to Simon. “Health.”
“Health.” Simon swallowed the scotch in a single gulp.
“You Yanks,” said Moore. “Think everything needs to be consumed at once. This isn’t some cheap Tennessee sour mash. Sip it, lad.”
“Laphroaig. Single malt.”
“I’m impressed.”
“You’ve told me a dozen times. And I’ll take Jack any day.”
“Cretin.”
“And proud of it. How ’bout another?”
Moore brought the decanter to the desk and poured Simon another drink. “Talk. You’re as nervous as a bull in a slaughterhouse.”
“Just unsettled.”
“Shop not doing well?”
“Pays for itself.”
“And then some. We write insurance on automobiles, too, you know. The price of those Italian contraptions has gone through the roof of late.”
“I restore them. I don’t own them. There’s overhead. Salaries. Parts are a fortune. I need to order a new dynamometer to test my engines. Thing costs fifty thousand pounds.”
“Go back to private banking. I know a dozen shops would love to have you.”
Simon looked around the office. He’d spent years toiling inside a plush coffin no different from this. In all, they were good years. Challenging, enriching, stimulating. He’d taken the job with an express purpose. He’d been tasked to find something. When he’d succeeded, he left.
He’d begun his career at twenty-seven, old for someone without an MBA. If anyone had been curious about the gap in his résumé between the ages of nineteen and twenty-three, they never said. They were too dazzled by his First from the London School of Economics and his medal for excellence in mathematics from the Sciences Po. And, anyway, by then they’d met him and that was enough.
Twelve-hour days had been common. Weekends, the norm. No one was more driven. But if Simon wore his ambition on his sleeve, he was the rare type whose motives were not in question. The bank’s interests came first. His own, afterward.
His chosen field was private banking, catering to the investment needs of wealthy clients. His interest lay in helping people, building relationships, and instilling trust. It wasn’t long before he was guiding clients in all aspects of their financial lives. He advised on art purchases, arranged for appraisals of jewelry, offered the bank’s opinion on how much gold to keep in their vault and how much to keep at home.
And it was in these personal dealings that his special skills first became apparent. When a client suspected his son was falsifying his school’s tuition bills and using the funds to purchase illicit drugs, Simon silently volunteered his help and within a week had the young man enrolled in a rehabilitation facility in Arizona and his dealer locked up in an interrogation room at Scotland Yard.
When another client suspected an employee was selling his company’s proprietary technology to a rival, Simon asked (this time aloud) if he might look into the matter. A month later, the employee was arrested for industrial espionage while the business rival ponied up a generous settlement to avoid a lawsuit.
And when another let slip that his girlfriend had absconded with two million pounds sterling from his office vault and run away to Ibiza with a lover half his age, Simon took it upon himself to rectify the situation. In a short time, the money—or most of it—was back in his client’s vault. Sadly, the girlfriend chose not to return.
Word of his uncanny ability to solve even the thorniest of problems spread rapidly. His mastery of language served him well. Besides his native English, he spoke French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and a bit of Arabic. His clients often wondered if he’d spent time as a policeman or maybe a soldier or, pray tell, a spy—whatever that meant in this day and age. To which Simon had only laughed and said that their problems had not been as difficult to solve as they’d appeared and, really, anyone could have done it.
He had tendered his resignation without warning. Nothing the bank had offered could entice him to remain. He’d left them his private number and an offer to do what he could should a client have a special problem. That had been five years ago.
“Go back to the bank?” Simon downed the scotch and banged the glass onto Moore’s desk. “Pass.”
“Well, then, you have your investments,” said D’Artagnan Moore. “Market’s been doing nicely. You’ve always been a wiz.”
“No complaints.”
