by Andy McNab
The midmorning temperature had climbed into the low sixties. The thinnest clothes I’d brought with me from Boston were what I was wearing now, jeans and a blue Timberland sweatshirt, but judging by one or two of the passersby, I wouldn’t have been out of place in winter furs.
Le Natale was a café-tabac where you could buy a lotto ticket and win a fortune, put all the winnings on a horse, watch the race while eating lunch or just downing coffee, then buy your parking tokens and a book of stamps on the way out.
I had picked the laundromat for cover. The sheets had been bought yesterday after I’d recced this area. You always have to have a reason for being somewhere.
George had told me three days ago that the source would be supplying me with details of a pleasure boat that was parking sometime soon, somewhere along the coast. On board would be the al-Qaeda team, an as yet unknown number of people, who would be collecting the money from three different hawalladas before taking it back to Algeria. We were to follow the collectors, see who they picked up the money from, then do our job the same day. There was no time to waste. George wanted them in that warship ASAP.
I was the only one in the laverie, apart from the old woman who did the service laundry. Every few minutes she hitched up her shabby brown overcoat and dragged her slippered feet across the worn linoleum tiles to test the dampness of the clothes in the tumble dryers. She kept dabbing the clothes against her cheeks and seemed to be complaining to herself about the lack of drying power every time. She’d then close the door and mumble some more to me while I smiled back at her and nodded, my eyes already returning to the target on the other side of the plate glass window, or as much of it as I could see through the posters for Playboy and how “super économique” the machines were.
I’d been in the South of France four days now, having left Boston on the first flight to Amsterdam, then on to Paris, before finally arriving here on the eighteenth. I got myself a bed in a hotel in the old quarter of Cannes, behind the synagogue and the fruit and cheap clothes market.
Today was the day the covert three-man team I commanded was about to take the war to al-Qaeda.
My washing machine was spinning like mad as a stream of people moved in and out of the brasserie doors, buying their Camel Lights or Winstons along with their paper as the world screamed past in both directions.
The money we were after from the hawalladas had been made here in Europe. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban between them controlled nearly seventy percent of the world’s heroin trade. The hawalla system had been used very successfully to move that cash to the U.S. to finance the ASUs.
The old woman pulled her weary body up once more, mumbling to herself as I pretended to look interested in a man on a moped who was weaving in and out of the traffic with only one hand on his handlebars. The other was holding a plastic coffee cup. His helmet straps flew out on each side of his helmet as he tried to take a gulp at the same time as cutting off a Citroën.
This was a good place to watch the RV before making contact, and it hid me from the CCTV (closed-circuit TV) camera mounted outside on a high steel pole. It seemed to be monitoring the traffic on the incredibly busy four-lane boulevard that connected the auto route with the beach, but for all I knew it might be movable. I wasn’t taking any chances. There was not only al-Qaeda and the hawalladas to worry about, but French police and intelligence surveillance as well.
Since this was a totally deniable operation, every precaution had to be made to ensure the security of our team. The French had vast experience fighting Islamic fundamentalism. They had an excellent human intelligence network in North Africa and could discover that we were operating on the Riviera at any time. It didn’t matter how or why; they might have monitored the al-Qaeda money movement, and we’d get caught in the middle. Then we would really be in the shit, as no one would be coming to help us. In fact, George would probably help the French to convict us as terrorists to cover his ass. I still wondered late at night why the hell I did these jobs. Why did I not only take them on but get screwed by the very people I should have had the most reason to trust? The money was good—well, it was now, working for George. But I still couldn’t come up with the answer, so last night I used the same mantra I’d always muttered to stop me thinking too much about anything. “Fuck it.”
This meet with the source was the first of many high-risk activities my team was going to undertake in the next few days. I had no idea who this woman was; for all I knew, the French, or even al-Qaeda, might already be onto her, and I’d be caught up in a total gang fuck on day one.
The café had large, clear windows, unobstructed by posters or blinds, which was something else I didn’t like. It was too easy for people to see in, especially people with telephoto lenses. A red canvas awning protected some of the outside tables for those who wanted to keep out of the sun. Two customers sat at different tables reading newspapers under it, and a couple of women seemed to be comparing the hairstyles of their little puffed-up poodles. The Riviera’s morning routine was just generally ambling along.
A few of the women had to be Italian. They didn’t so much walk as glide in their minks, but maybe they were simply steering clear of the poodle shit. Everyone in Cannes seemed to own one of the heavily coiffed little shitters, and trotted them along on their fancy leads, or looked on lovingly as they took a dump in the middle of the sidewalk. I’d already had to scrape three loads off my Timberlands since arriving, and had now become a bit of an expert at the Cannes Shuffle, dodging and weaving as I walked.
To my right, the boulevard headed gently uphill, getting steeper as it passed two or three miles of car dealerships and unattractive apartment buildings before hitting Autoroute 8, which took you either to Nice and Italy, about an hour away, or down to Marseille and the Spanish border.
To my left, and about five minutes’ walk downhill, lay the train station, the beach, and the main Cannes tourist traps. But the only part of town I was interested in today was where I was right now. In about fifteen minutes the source should be turning up wearing a red pashmina shawl and a pair of jeans; she was going to sit at a table and read a month-old copy of Paris-Match, one with a picture of Julia Roberts on the cover.
I didn’t like the physical setup for this meet. I’d had a coffee and croissant inside the café yesterday for a recce and could see no escape route. It wasn’t looking good: large, unobstructed windows letting the world see what was happening inside, and an exposed sidewalk outside. I couldn’t leap off a fire escape at the back, or go to the bathroom and climb out the window if anyone came barging through the main door. I would have to go for the virgin ground of the kitchen. I had no choice: I had to make contact with the source.
The dryer door behind me opened onto a batch of very flowery patterned sheets. I shifted my weight onto my left buttock and adjusted my fanny pack, which hung over the fly of my jeans and contained my passport and wallet. The pack never left me, and to help make sure it stayed that way I’d threaded a wire through the belt. Pickpockets in the crowds down here used Stanley knives to slit belts and straps, but they’d have had a tough job with this one.
The old woman was still mumbling away to herself, then raised her voice to me, looking for my agreement on the crap state of the machines. I turned and did my bit, “Oui, oui,” smiled, and turned my eyes back toward the target.
Tucked down the front of my jeans was a worn-out 1980s Browning 9mm with a thirteen-round mag. It was a French black-market job, which, like all the team’s weapons, had been supplied by a contact I had yet to see, whom I’d nicknamed Thackery. I hadn’t laid eyes on him; I just had this picture in my head of a clean-shaven thirty-something with short black hair. The serial number had been ground out, and if the Browning had to be used, ballistics would link it to local Italian gangs. There were enough of them around here, with the border so close. And, of course, I had bought myself a Leatherman. I’d never leave home without one.
As I checked up and down the road and across once more at
the café, the world was buzzing around me and my new girlfriend in the laundromat. Teenagers raced around on motor scooters, some with helmets, some without, just like the police on their BMWs. Small cars were driven like ballistic missiles in both directions. Christmas decorations were rigged up across the boulevard; the most popular number this year was white lights in the shape of stars and lighted candles.
I thought about how things had moved on since Logan.
“All the people that you care about live here.” George had known exactly what he was doing even before he got me to take Zeralda’s head. Blind watchmaker, my ass.
I scanned up and down the boulevard for the hundredth time, looking for anybody wearing red on blue, checking to make sure no one else was lurking around waiting to jump me once I’d made contact.
I had a contingency plan if there was a problem before the meet. My escape route was out of the laverie service door, which was open. It was lined with bags of unclaimed laundry and lost socks and underwear, and led through a small yard into an alleyway. At the end was a low wall, which led into the backyard of the perfumery on the boulevard to my left. From there I’d slip into an adjacent apartment building and hide in the basement garage until the coast was clear.
I checked traser. Four minutes to eleven. To my left I caught a flash of red among the pedestrians on the curb, waiting to cross in the direction of the café. I hadn’t seen it before; she must have come from one of the shops or the other tabac farther down the hill. She’d probably been sitting having a coffee, doing pretty much what I’d been doing. If so, it was a good sign; at least she was switched on. I kept the patch of red in my peripheral vision, not searching for the face in case there was eye contact.
There was a gap in the traffic and the pashmina made a move. It was a man; he had a magazine rolled up in his right hand and a small brown porte-monnaie—or fag-bag, as a few of my new fellow countrymen called them—in his left. If I was wrong, I’d soon be finding out.
Once over the road he went up to an empty pavement table and took a seat. As in all French cafés, the chairs were facing the road so the clientele could people-watch. He got settled and laid the magazine out flat on the table. I continued to watch through the traffic. A waitress in a vest went over and took his order as he brought a pack of cigarettes out from the fag-bag.
I couldn’t see much of his face, owing to the distance and the volume of traffic between us, but he was wearing sunglasses and was either dark-skinned or had a permatan. I’d find out later. I didn’t look at him anymore now. My gaze shifted elsewhere; there were more important things to check. Was it safe to approach him? Was anyone else around, waiting to ruin my day?
I ran through my plan once more in my head: to go and sit near him, order coffee, and, when it felt safe, come out with my check statement. I was going to point to Julia Roberts and say, “Beautiful, isn’t she?” His reply would be, “Yes, she is, but not as much as Katharine Hepburn, don’t you think?” Then I was going to get up and go over and sit by him and start talking Katharine. That would be the cover story: we just met and started talking about film stars because of the cover of the magazine. I didn’t know his name, he didn’t know mine, we didn’t know each other, we were just chatting away in a café. There must always be a reason for being where you are.
I still felt uneasy, though. Meeting inside the café would have been bad enough, with nowhere to run, but outside was even worse. He could be setting me up for a snapshot that could be used against me, or maybe a drive-by shooting. I didn’t know this character, I didn’t know what he was into. All I knew was that it had to be done, no matter what was out there; if everything went according to plan, I would come away with the information we needed.
I stood up, adjusted my sweatshirt and fanny pack, and nodded to the old woman. She folded some jeans and mumbled something as I set off left, downhill toward the town center. There was no need to watch Pashmina Man. His window for the RV was thirty minutes, he was going to be there until eleven-thirty.
Everything seemed normal as I passed the perfumery. Women were doing their sniff tests on overpriced bottles, and young men with plucked eyebrows and waxed-up hair were wrapping their purchases in very expensive-looking boxes. The tabac farther along wasn’t that packed. A few old guys were drinking beers and buying lotto tickets. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
I reached the pedestrian crossing about fifty yards farther downhill and, once on the RV side of the road, I headed back up toward the red pashmina past the newsstand and pâtisserie. Only in France could a man wear one of these things and not even get a second glance.
As I approached I got a glimpse of him in profile, sipping espresso, smoking and watching the world pass by a little too intently. He looked familiar, with his slicked-back hair, slightly thinning on top, and round, dark face. I got a few paces closer before I recognized him, and almost stopped in my tracks. It was the greaseball from Algeria.
11
I ducked into the first doorway to my left, trying my hardest to look interested in the glass display cabinets along the wall while I collected my thoughts. The elderly shopkeeper gave me a smile and a genial “Bonjour.”
“Bonjour, parlez-vous anglais?”
“Yes.”
“Just looking, thank you.”
He left me alone as I looked at the array of wooden and plastic pipes and all the paraphernalia you need to smoke one. I turned my wrist and checked traser: 11:04. Greaseball still had twenty-six minutes to wait until the RV was closed, and I was in no rush. I took my time. I needed to think.
I didn’t want to meet up with him, source or not, especially outside, especially if he was a known face. That was bad professionally: I needed to be the gray man.
I turned to the door and gave the old man a mechanical “Au revoir,” straight from the phrasebook, wishing that what little time I’d spent in high school had been at French lessons.
Without looking in the direction of the RV I went back out into the street, turned right toward the pedestrian crossing, over the road, and pushed my shoulder against the door of the tabac. It was a dreary place, the walls covered in dark brown carpet to complement the dark wooden floors. The old men in here had half a dozen Gauloises lit up, the haze of smoke adding to the gloom. I sat back from the window so I could keep an eye on Greaseball, and ordered myself a coffee.
He’d lit up another cigarette. The pack was on the table with the lighter on top, next to his porte-monnaie. He ordered something more, and as the waitress turned to go back into the café, I took my paper napkin and wrapped it around the espresso cup before taking a tester sip. Greaseball started to get a little agitated now, checking his watch for the fifth time in as many minutes. There were three more minutes to go until eleven-thirty, and once again he checked through the café window to see if there was anyone seated inside on his own, before twisting around again and making sure the magazine was flat and easy to spot.
I poured my change onto the table from my small brown coin purse and left eleven francs, which were collected with a grunt by the old guy running the show.
Greaseball checked his watch once more, then leaned across to ask the waitress cleaning the next table for the time. Her reply seemed to confirm what he feared, because he got to his feet and checked up and down the road again as if he knew what he was looking for. It was eleven-thirty-four before he packed away his cigarettes and finally headed up the hill.
I picked up the cup for the last time, gave the lip a quick wipe before leaving with the napkin, and followed him from my side of the road as trucks and vans blocked him from view for split seconds. I needed to make a little distance and be right on top of him in case he got into a car. If he did, I could stop him before he moved off. I would have to approach him at some time, but not yet. First of all I needed to make sure no one else was following him—or me.
I couldn’t see anything suspicious: no one talking to themselves with their eyes glued to the back of Greaseball’s
head; nobody leaping into or out of cars in a desperate measure to get behind him, or concentrating so much on not losing him in a crowd that they took a slide in dog shit or bumped into people and lampposts.
Gambling with death, I crossed the road, then focused on his brown suede loafers, which perfectly matched the fag-bag. He had bare, hairy ankles. No socks: very South of France. He walked with Julia in his right hand and the bag in his left.
I didn’t want him to have any opportunity to turn and make eye contact, since he’d be unlikely not to recognize me. And, given the circumstances of our last meeting, I guessed he might be a tad nervous when he did.
I checked constantly to my left at the shops and apartment-building entrances for somewhere I could go if he stopped. It’s not an easy bit of tradecraft, because by the time the target has turned and looked back, you have to be static if in view or, better still, hidden. And you can’t afford to draw attention to yourself in the process.
He turned left, off the main road, and became unsighted. I quickened my pace to get to the corner, did the Cannes Shuffle, and crossed the road. No way was I turning into dead ground without first checking what was waiting for me.
Looking left and right for traffic as I crossed, I had the target once more. He was still on the left-hand side of the road and wasn’t checking behind him. He was walking purposefully: he wasn’t running from something, he was going to something.
Once on the other sidewalk I turned left and went with him. He was a bit farther away now, but that was fine because the road was a lot narrower, just a normal street lined with houses and apartment buildings. There weren’t many real people here, so a little distance was a help.
Looking ahead and keeping the red in my peripheral vision, I could see the large blue neon sign ahead for an Eddie’s on my side of the road. The supermarket took up the ground floor of an apartment building. It was one of a chain called E. Leclerc. I didn’t actually know what the E stood for, but it had been a boring four days so I’d made up the name, along with Thackery’s.
