The Vintage Caper

content with simply telling the world how much tax he had paid, he translated the figure into its equivalent in fonctionnaires’ salaries. This provided an appropriate starting point for his annual rant against the idleness, incompetence, and waste of the bureaucracy, which always went down extremely well with the popular press. But that was it—a single blot on the otherwise perfect French landscape.
    Reboul was an oddity among billionaires. Most of them preferred to spend their lives ducking in and out of the havens of Nassau or Geneva or Monaco, on constant alert in case the tax laws should change. Sam couldn’t help but like a man who was prepared to pay the price to live in the country he so obviously loved. With a nod of approval, he closed the file and went down to meet Sophie in the lobby.
    • • •
    Florian Vial was waiting for them in front of the main entrance to the Palais du Pharo. Had they not known that he was in charge of Reboul’s cellar, they would have taken him for a professor, or perhaps a poet fallen on good times. Despite the mild spring temperature, he was dressed for the chill of the cellar in a suit of thick, bottle-green corduroy. Wrapped several times around his neck, in the complicated French fashion, was a long black scarf. A hint of plum-colored shirt showed beneath his jacket. His hair, worn long and brushed straight back, was the same mixture of salt and pepper as his beard, which had been clipped into a neat triangle. Pale-blue eyes peered out through round, rimless spectacles. There was a definite air of the nineteenth century about him. All he needed was an oversized fedora and a cloak, and he could have been a subject for Toulouse-Lautrec, a boulevardier on his way to pay a call on his mistress.
    He bent over to kiss Sophie’s hand, brushing her fingers with his whiskers. “Enchanté, madame. Enchanté.” Turning to Sam, he shook hands with a vigorous pumping motion. “Très heureux, monsieur,” he said, and then stepped back, raising both hands in the air. “ Mais pardonnez-moi . I forget. Monsieur Reboul tells me that you prefer English. This is no problem for me. My English is fluid.” His eyes twinkling, he beamed at Sophie and Sam. “Shall we commence?”
    With Vial leading the way, they went through a series of ornate rooms—Vial described them as salons —until they came to a vast kitchen. Unlike the salons , which had been allowed to retain their rather pompous period décor of chandeliers and gilt and swags and tassels, the kitchen was a study in modernity: stainless steel, polished granite, and recessed lighting. The only hint of bygone culinary tradition was an overhead cast-iron rack that held thirty or forty polished copper pans. Vial waved at the massive stove—a Le Cornu, with enough burners, hot plates, and ovens to service a banquet—and said, with considerable satisfaction, “The chef at Passédat, who is a friend of the patron , comes here often. He would kill to have such a kitchen.”
    They passed through to a second, less glamorous kitchen, a large room lined with storage closets, deep freezes, and dishwashers. In the corner were two doors. Vial opened the larger of the two and looked back over his shoulder. “The stairs are very narrow. Attention! As you say—slowly does it.”
    The stairs were not only narrow, but steep, and wound around in a tight spiral before coming to an end in front of a door of painted steel. Vial pressed some numbers on the electronic keypad that was set into the wall and opened the door. Turning on the lights, he stood aside to watch the reaction of his guests, a smile on his face. This was obviously a moment he relished.
    Sophie and Sam stayed rooted to the threshold, stunned into silence. Stretching away in front of them for a good two hundred yards was a broad, flagstone passageway with a barely perceptible downward slope. The ceiling was a series of lofty, graceful vaults constructed of old brickwork that the effects of time had softened to a pale, dusty pink. Leading off on either side were smaller passages, their entrances marked by square, head-high brick columns. To the left of the door, propped against a barrel, was Vial’s bicycle, an elderly Solex. The air smelled as the air in a cellar should smell: faintly humid, faintly musty.
    Vial was the first to break the silence. “Alors? What do you think? Will it fit into your book?” He was smiling as he stroked his moustache with the back of an index