Page 77 of At Midnight

An Armani Kidnapping

Raphael Mirabaud

It was just like being held hostage for ransom.

Just

like

that.

The operation reminded Raphael more of a covert kidnapping operation than a shopping excursion.

Four Russian guards flanked Raphael and his father closely as they walked from the parking garage to the Armani store. Raphael watched them out of the corner of hiseye as their group of six strode along the sidewalk, crowded with weekday pedestrians hurrying to work.

As soon as they entered the Armani shop, a spacious boutique near the Geneva Trust building, shop attendants swarmed them.

Grappling ensued.

They frog-marched him to the rear of the store, where he was shoved into a small cell with a door that locked. They interrogated him as to his preferredcolor—navy blue, midnight blue, charcoal gray, dove gray, or soft black. Harsh light from above glared in his eyes.

Once they had the information they wanted, they demanded he strip.

When he was naked enough to satisfy the store manager and anyone who might be looking for hidden microphones or weapons, someone shoved garments at him and told him to put them on.

As is best practice when kidnapped,he complied with their demands.

A platoon of tailors bearing sharp instruments descended upon him, yanking him around to their satisfaction while they laced him into what might have been a straitjacket or a midnight blue suit suitable for an impromptu afternoon wedding.

During all this, his father did not even try to help him escape from the mercenary fashionistas, but he sat on a small couchoverseeing the torture, drinking coffee laced with what looked like whiskey from a silver flask he produced from his overcoat’s inside breast pocket.

As is usual in a hostage situation, after the initial frisking, interrogation, torture, and imprisonment, his captors attempted to ingratiate themselves to induce Stockholm syndrome. They plied him with small food items, coffee, and innocuous conversationas they attempted to explain their fashion manifesto and convert him to their cult.

Raphael thought he might die of boredom, but he had learned tact from Wulfram and Flicka. He was polite and asked questions about suit fabric and cut.

After what seemed like an eternity, though only forty-five minutes had elapsed according to the austere grandfather clock in the corner of the fitting room, Raphael’sfather handed over a credit card to pay a sum so large that it must have been a kidnapping ransom, and his captors spontaneously released them, ejecting them onto the bright, cold sidewalk outside.

The only bright spot of the morning was that while he had been naked in the changing room, Raphael had used the few minutes of comparative privacy to use the phone his mother had handed him. Thoughhe didn’t have Flicka’s head for numbers, Magnus Jensen’s phone number was one of the few he had committed to memory.

Raphael texted,I’ve been compromised. They have taken Flicka and Alina hostage. The Ilyin Bratva is threatening their lives and mine. You are now in control of Rogue Security. Save them. I’m going to burn down the entire operation. I won’t make it out. Do not reply.