“I think you’re being modest.”
“I have nothing to be modest about,” Stone said, then thought about that for a moment. “I hope that came out right.”
“So do I,” Tessa said.
The duck, from the very old restaurant’s own farm, was succulent and everything it was supposed to be.
Stone was talking to Tessa when she looked toward the elevator and stared. “My, look at that,” she said.
“I don’t think my head will turn that far,” Stone said, his back to the elevator. “Who is it?”
“It’s Peter Grant,” she said, “with a lot of men. And he’s behaving like the host. Now that’s unusual.”
“The men or him hosting?”
“Both. It’s entirely out of character in a restaurant this expensive.”
Stone watched the men as they passed by his table. They were slightly rough-looking, he thought, but expensively tailored and wearing, almost uniformly, loud neckties, except for Peter, who was his impeccable Charvet self.
“I heard a scrap of a foreign language as they passed us,” said Dino, who was seated on the aisle.
“What language?”
“How would I know?” Dino asked. “Maybe Russian. It sounds like the way people talk in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, which is pretty thickly Russian.”
“I hope they’re not coming to dinner tomorrow night,” Stone said. He had had more than enough problems with Russians in his time.
“Too many,” Tessa said. “Dinner tomorrow is for twelve, and there are that many at Peter’s table now.”
Like many large tables, they became loud as strong drink was taken. There were iced bottles of vodka on the table.
“Tessa, what do you make of Peter entertaining a crowd of Russians?”
“It can’t be social,” she replied. “Peter would not deign. It’s got to be business.”
“Do you know what business Peter is in?”
“No, he always says he invests. I pressed him on what he invests in once, and he said something about agricultural products.”
“Poppies are agricultural products, of a kind,” Dino said.
“My God,” Stone murmured, as the sommelier approached Grant’s table with a half dozen bottles on a wheeled tray and began decanting them. “He’s ordered the Romanée-Conti burgundies. There’s at least a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of wine on that table.”
“Pearls before swine,” Tessa said.
19
Stone waited until after breakfast before phoning Lance Cabot and scrambling.
“Give me news,” Lance said. “Please.”
“All right, last night Peter Grant entertained a dozen Russian gentlemen, if I can apply that term to them, at Tour d’Argent, no less. I think the name translates as ‘a walk around money,’ or something like that.”
“That sort of extravagance does not match up with reports of his parsimony,” Lance said.
“I’m not finished. Grant ordered six—count ’em, six—bottles of the Romanée-Conti ’78. I asked for the wine list later, and I reckon his bill was something like one hundred twenty thousand euros, just for the juice of the grape.”
Lance was, apparently, stunned into silence.
“Not only that,” Stone continued, “but also tonight he’s hosting a dinner party for twelve at his home, to which we are invited.”
Lance found his voice. “It would appear,” he said, “that our Mr. Grant has experienced a windfall.”
“Almost certainly,” Stone replied. “But a windfall from what?”
“How do you know the men were Russians?” Lance asked.
“Dino caught a snatch of their conversation on the way to their table, and he said it sounded the way everybody in Brighton Beach speaks.”
“How were they dressed?”
“Very good suits, but their neckties all looked as if they had been purchased at the same hot new Moscow men’s shop.”
“Twelve guests at Tour d’Argent at five hundred euros or so a head, plus wine, would be a lot to spend on Poles or Czechs,” Lance observed. “I think Dino was right.”
“Dino has a good ear.”
“I need to ponder this for a while,” Lance said. “Anything else?”
“Did you have any luck on the name-change search?”
“We searched Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles,” Lance said, “but came up with nothing.”
“Then the next search should be of deceased men who would now be of Grant’s age.”
“Ah, yes, birth certificates. If we can find a Peter Grant matched up with a tombstone applying for a passport, that would be very helpful.”
“I leave you with that, then,” Stone said.
“Stone, I want a guest list for that dinner party tonight.”
“It will be forthcoming tomorrow,” Stone replied, and they both hung up.
* * *
—
Dino looked at him from across the breakfast table. “One hundred twenty thousand euros for wine?”
“In round numbers; I didn’t want to whip out my iPhone calculator, which I normally use for simple arithmetic.”
* * *
—
Back at Langley, Lance buzzed his secretary.
“Yes, sir?”
“Kindly google the wine list at Tour d’Argent, in Paris, and get a price per bottle for Romanée-Conti ’78.”
“Yes, sir.” Shortly, she buzzed back.
“Do you have it?”
“Something around twenty-three thousand dollars,” she replied. “I don’t know what the euro is today. How many bottles would you like?”
“That will be all for the moment,” Lance replied, then hung up. He wished desperately to know how Peter Grant could afford that, or if he couldn’t, why he had ordered it. He called an assistant and ordered a Dun & Bradstreet report on Grant and credit checks from all three services.
An hour later, the assistant phoned back. “We drew a blank on everything,” he said. “I checked the European services, too. The man doesn’t seem to have so much as a credit card.”