The Predator

by Denis Pitts

  *

  He had watched the huge computer screen register a series of acknowledgments from four European countries. The initial signal had been passed immediately along the laser-microwave communications system that was owned and controlled and used exclusively by the Becker Group.

  There had been four recipients; and now there were four answers from them.

  Becker was not given to dramatic gestures. He disliked code words, for instance, especially those of an emotive nature. But the men who were about to carry out the most extraordinary military operation in history were mainly military men who had lived much of their lives in a world of code words.

  The word Becker chose was Symphony.

  The reply came from each country in turn: Beethoven.

  The computer had been instructed to double-check each answer. It was only when this had been done that Becker left Centra and changed for his walk.

  The walk had taken him for a couple of miles through the wooded countryside. The sun was below the mountain now; it was cooler and he quickened his pace. At a point at which the mountain track reached the main road there was a small bar frequented mainly by summer tourists.

  It was run by a lively young couple whose enterprise he admired. The wife was an attractive girl with big breasts and a toothy smile. She came in from the kitchen and saw Becker sitting alone by a newly lit log fire. She was a little flustered by his presence and wiped her hands on her apron before reaching out to shake his in greeting.

  She smelled of flour and herbs and newly crushed garlic. It was warm and friendly in the bar and the log fire added another pleasing odor. He decided on coffee rather than a drink, and the girl busied herself at an espresso machine. He listened to an excited football commentary from a transistor radio on the bar. Rome was beating Naples and the crowd was roaring.

  He drank the sweet strong coffee and talked to the girl for a few minutes about the weather, the wine crop, her husband’s health and the cost of meat. He looked at his watch. It was four o’clock precisely.

  He left a substantial tip on the table and walked out. As he did so, an Alfa Romeo Giulia came around the bend in the road and pulled up. The driver got out and opened the door for him. Becker sat next to the driver, who took him at a good speed back up the hill to the house.

  A four-seater helicopter waited at the end of the terrace. Its rotors were already turning as Becker strapped himself into the co-pilot’s seat.

  6

  “What do we do?”

  “We get jobs.”

  “To get a job you need an identity card.”

  “Not with the Arabs, you don’t. They don’t bother.”

  “But what do we do?”

  “Take messages, run errands.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “You know the fat man in the Cours Belsunce?”

  “He doesn’t speak French.”

  “I speak Arabic. He wants runners who don’t look like Arabs.”

  “Running what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “I don’t care — I’m hungry.”

  *

  The Préfecture de Police in Marseilles is a large and imposing building considered by many to be the most beautiful architectural work in France. The entrance hall is imposing, lined by marble sculptures with a wide and elegantly curving staircase that leads to a long corridor which is also lined, here with paintings of previous police chiefs.

  In the criminal-investigation department, the fifth door on the right leads to the juvenile division. The interrogation rooms are cheerless and heavily barred. The bars are partly a precaution, but they also give first offenders an idea of what a future in crime could mean for them.

  Jean-Paul and Leon Blum were first offenders.

  They sat in adjacent interrogation rooms. A single detective questioned them, moving from one room to the next.

  He was a tired man with watery eyes and pronounced veins on his nose. He clearly did not like the job. He certainly did not like the blond boy who sat opposite him. The youngster’s expression was too bright and inquisitive; there would be no easy confession here to take to the examining magistrate.

  “You were consorting with known criminals. That’s crime number one. Name?”

  “Jean-Paul.”

  “Jean-Paul what?”

  The boy remained silent.

  The detective yawned and opened a file on the table between them.

  “Jean-Paul Bardot, age about twelve, parents unknown, absconded from 1’Orphelinat de St. Pierre, January 12, exactly a year ago. Correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now then, Jean-Paul Bardot, what have you been doing since then?”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “I’ll decide that. Like all the other kids who are strays in this city, you’ve been making the streets untidy, and that’s a crime for a start. I like a nice tidy city, see? Address?”

  “Fifteen Rue Lucien, off the Boulevard des Dames.”

  “Mustapha’s flophouse? Not much of a place for a twelve-year-old.”

  The boy looked at him without expression.

  The detective took off his coat and hung it on the back of his seat.

  “Now then, Jean-Paul, I’m going to make a little deal with you.”

  He opened another file and took out several sheets of paper.

  “These are unsolved crimes involving kids in this city. Seven hundred and thirty-six of them. Every crime in the book — theft and common assault, murder and rape. I’ve got to solve them.

  “I’ll be truthful and tell you we don’t have any descriptions of blond, blue-eyed twelve-year-old murderers or rapists. As for all the others, I’m tired and I’m in no mood to sit up all night with you. So what I’m going to do is this. You’ve been running messages for the fat Arab. Packets, all manner of things. We know that. It’s enough to get you ten years. But you are very young and I’m going to be fair.

  “Give me the names of those people you delivered packets to and I’ll send you back to the orphanage with a clean sheet. Okay?”

  The detective took a notebook from his pocket and put it on the table.

  Jean-Paul said nothing.

  “I’ll buy ten names for a start.”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  “I can’t remember, sir.”

  The detective leaned down and picked up a small cardboard shoebox from the floor.

  “Think hard, it’s getting late. Last chance.”

  “I can’t remember.”

  The policeman rummaged in the box.

  “Your personal effects,” he said. “Not much. Fifteen francs, a penknife, string of filthy handkerchief and a crucifix with a broken chain. And this little packet.”

  The cellophane packet was minute. It contained a white powder. The policeman opened the blade of the penknife.

  “Sonny, once I’ve opened this there is no going back. The deal is off. Come on. Some addresses.”

  “That was not in my pocket.”

  “Too bad.” The detective sliced the packet open, wetted his index finger and dipped it in the powder. He tasted it.

  “That was not in my pocket!” The boy was angry now.

  “Jean-Paul, it is just too bad that a boy of your age should be carrying cocaine. Come on, I’ve had a long day and the magistrate will be going home soon.”

  *

  Blum, virtually a man himself now, found it hard to recognize his friend as Jean-Paul walked through the gates of the reformatory school. He had grown considerably taller, and his face had thinned. But now it reflected sullen resentment, bitterness. His mouth had somehow tightened, and his eyes smoldered from sockets grown dark. His hair had been cut very short.

  “Eight hours parole after eighteen months,” he said. “Bastards.”

  “Come on, starved rabbit, I’ll feed you up. Don’t they give you food in there?”

 
“Shit.”

  “Christ, you’ve changed.”

  “How much money have you got?”

  “Five hundred francs. I’ve been doing some car-thieving. Nice business.”

  “How long can we live on that?”

  “You’re not going back to the orphanage?”

  “Not to that fucking place. They won’t have me anyway, after the reformatory — that’s what the magistrate wanted, but now that I’m a criminal they figure I can look after myself. And I can.”

  “So where then?”

  “I’ve been thinking a lot, Blum. They tell me that I’m a hardened criminal. So fuck them all.”

  “I don’t know why you didn’t give them the names they wanted,” Blum said.

  “Because I’m not a stool pigeon. They must have tricked you into talking.”

  The reformatory was built, on a hill with wide sweeping views over the Corniche to the Riviera. In the distance, the sun sparkled on the windows of the high-rise buildings of Cannes and Nice.

  “It’s summer and there’s a lot of loot down there,” said the younger boy. “Are you coming?”

  *

  Blum did not like Jean-Paul’s new personality. He appeared wholly concerned with survival and with keeping out of confinement. Before the year and a half of reform school, Jean-Paul had been fleet and cunning, certainly. They had stolen when they were hungry and had felt no guilt or remorse; but, on the other hand, there had been no vice or hostility in their minor plunderings.

  But now the boy seemed vicious — predatory. He talked much more than he had before, spilling out all the hatreds that had built up in him: loathing of authority and the police in particular. To all their conversations now, he brought talk of killing.

  Three nights after leaving the reformatory, Jean-Paul brought a twelve-gauge shotgun into their small room in Marseilles.

  “Oh, no,” said Blum. “The mood you are in you’d be shooting every cop in this city.”

  “I’d like to, but I won’t,” said the boy.

  He took a newspaper from his pocket and opened it to the society page.

  “The only thing they taught me in that place was to think big,” he said. “There was a kid in there whose old man once made two million francs in one bank holdup. We’re going for jewels.”

  He spread the paper out on the table.

  “See that?” he said. “All the richest families of Europe in one place at one time. Opening of the Casino. Special suite at the Grand Hotel for the Rainiers so that Princess Grace can put on the Monaco crown jewels. That’s what I’m going for, Blum.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “I’m thinking big.”

  *

  Jean-Paul was sleeping when the light-green Citroen pulled up silently outside the barn; but it was the hair-trigger sleep of the hunted, and even before the car door had closed he was wide awake, slipping forward the safety catch of the shotgun and peering down through the open trapdoor.

  “Okay, it’s only me,” said Blum, “Come and eat.”

  Jean-Paul lowered the ladder and climbed painfully down.

  “Food,” said Blum. “I’ve brought enough to stop your damn complaining.” The big man carried a supermarket bag, a loaf of bread protruding from one side. “Goat’s cheese, garlic sausage, almond cake and wine.”

  He spread the morning newspaper on a bale of straw and laid out the food. “You wouldn’t get better service in the Georges Cinq,” he said. “And you can read all about yourself.”

  Jean-Paul had already torn six inches from the loaf and was ripping at it with his teeth.

  “Show me,” he said. With his pocket knife he smeared a great blob of the white cheese over the bread and gulped at the liter bottle of vin ordinaire.

  “Little monkey foiled in jewel robbery,” he read. “Believed hurt when drainpipe collapses at millionaire’s mansion.”

  “Stuff them,” he said through a mouthful of food. “‘Little monkey’ — shit.”

  “How’s the leg? You were very lucky.”

  “Lucky? You calling losing twelve million francs in diamonds and sapphires lucky? I call it a goddam disaster. Where the hell are we, anyway?”

  “About forty kilometers out of Cannes. St. Auban. Looks like a deserted farm.”

  “Oh, Jesus, no.”

  The boy’s lean face was contorted with fury.

  “What the hell are we doing here?”

  He took a great swig from the bottle.

  “What was wrong with the Autoroute? We could have been safely home in Marseilles by now.”

  “You were unconscious, remember? I thought you were dead. The whole of Cannes was stiff with flics and roadblocks. We wouldn’t have stood a chance, especially with you lying there on that back seat. I had to drive like a fucking maniac. We’d better shake down here until the heat’s off.”

  The boy cut off a large slice of the heavily spiced sausage and handed it to Blum.

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “Get that leg better first. I’ll hide the car. They’ll have choppers all over the place before long.”

  Jean-Paul watched the giant lumber across the dirt floor. Blum, he thought, good faithful friend. What a hell of a risk he had taken last night, with all the law of Cannes converging on the house. Anyone else he knew would have left him there and run. Not Blum.

  But Christ, it should have worked. They should have been in the first-class compartment of the Phocien by now, on their way to Paris. Not sitting here in a shitty cowbarn with nothing to show for all their planning but a sore ass.

  “I want that money,” he said aloud. “I want to be rich. I want to be rich like those bastards in that house. I want more than anything else in this world to be rich, rich, rich.”

  *

  “How far is Grasse?”

  “Fifteen, maybe twenty kilometers,” said Blum.

  They had been in the barn for three days. Blum had slept for much of the time. Becker had lain resting his leg, listening for much of the time to pop music on a small transistor radio. They both listened to the news programs. There had been no mention of them or the jewel robbery for twenty-four hours now.

  “We will go there,” Jean-Paul said.

  “To Grasse — back towards Cannes?” said Blum. “Are you sure your head wasn’t damaged in that fall?”

  “Le Chateau Tranquille. Jacques d’Isigny. Banker, philanthropist, tenth-richest man in France. Estates in Normandy, Picardy, Haute Maritimes. A string of fifty-six thoroughbred racehorses. A son called Marcel, who drives for Ferrari. A daughter, Claudine, aged twelve. A collection of paintings valued at fifteen million francs and a summer house at Grasse.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Jean-Paul held up the radio.

  “Here,” he said. “This house is open to the public each Saturday of the summer. We are the public, aren’t we?”

  Blum stood up and walked around the barn banging his forehead with the palm of his great hand.

  “What are you after? The art collection?”

  “To decorate this goddam barn? Don’t be silly — the insurance companies don’t play the ransom game any more.”

  “What, then?”

  “The girl, Claudine,” he said.

  “Kidnap?”

  “He’s the tenth-richest man in France.”

  “You are mad.”

  “Ambitious, Blum,” said Jean-Paul.

  Blum was troubled. “Listen, are you sure you know what we’re doing?”

  “I know all right — I am thinking very clearly. I am thinking of five million francs. Those bastards can well afford it.”

  “Kidnapping a banker’s daughter. It’ll be the guillotine as sure as hell. We can find easier ways of making a living — robbing banks, holding up cash in transit, all manner of things. I mean, what’s wrong with starting a nice little extortion business somewhere in Paris?”

  “Five million francs,” Jean-Paul said firmly.

  Blum cursed, turned
over, cursed again, closed his eyes and slept.

  *

  On the way to Grasse they took every side road they could find and parked the car on a discreet suburban thoroughfare. They spent the rest of the day walking the lanes and going along the sides of the vineyards near the house.

  Jean-Paul carried a sketch pad on which he carefully charted every field, every piece of rock and hedgerow, every hut near the chateau. He and Blum climbed high on the mountainside over the building, and he spent a long time making another sketch, this time of the house itself and the gardens, which were laid out in that classically simple way that distinguishes the rich of Provence from their poorer neighbors.

  When he had finished, he and Blum lay on a rock ledge at the very top of the mountain in the lazy heat of afternoon. Bees and flies scarcely troubled them. Cicadas created a constant rasp of life. The clean, sea-smelling air wafted in hot and moist from the south.

  The Chateau Tranquille was a large yet modest white house built in the simple style of Provence with a slightly curved roof of red tiles. It was tucked into a fold of the mountains behind the French Riviera, overlooking the perfumery town of Grasse.

  It had, at the turn of the century, been a castellated chateau, but the liberal-minded d’Isigny family had insisted that all towers and superfluous military adornment be ripped away so that the house should never be thought to dominate the town and villages below.

  It was this gesture, along with frequent acts of charity and demonstrations of public spirit, that had made this family liked and respected in the district.

  At the age of fifty-five, Jacques d’Isigny ran a private family banking business that ranked with Rothschild, Morgenthau, Warburg and Hambro in international stature and probity.

  The Banque D’Isigny was an institution with enormous influence in the world money markets. Like most private banks in France, it was so conservative it exasperated its more ambitious and aggressive rivals, as well as customers seeking to expand their businesses. And yet its advice was sought always, by governments and by the bigger corporations. D’Isigny, like Rothschild, was a bank used by nations. Most of the new emergent states insisted that D’Isigny be their bankers, auditing their budgets and even deciding on the amounts of currency to be printed.