by Andy McNab
I crossed the street, to get a better view of the place, and checked the road Curly had gone down. As I closed in, I could see that the sign showed a belly-dancer with a veil and low-cut bikini top. There was no sign of Curly, and it looked as though Greaseball was now being entertained by the “Fiancée of the Desert.”
The outside of the building looked as if someone had gone berserk with a truckload of plaster, flinging handfuls at the wall to make it look ethnic. Ornate grilles covered two small windows on each side of the door, through which I could just make out shadows bobbing about in the glow.
I went back across the street, head down, checking left and right. There was no traffic, just a mass of tightly parked cars. I tried to see what was going on inside, but couldn’t make out much through the small, square window. I couldn’t see Greaseball anywhere.
Continuing on past the solid wood door, I peeped inside the next window as casually as I could. I still couldn’t see anything but low light and tablecloths.
It looked as if a pizza would have to be shelved for a few hours. I went to the top of the street, and stopped in a doorway on the opposite side. Three motor scooters screamed past with their engines at bursting point. The riders looked about fourteen.
The streetlights and decorations cast a haphazard pattern of shadows, so it was easy to find a corner to lurk in, in the doorway of a lingerie shop. It was probably the best place not to arouse any suspicion in this country; if Greaseball could get away with wearing a pashmina shawl, I could probably wear this stuff without anyone batting an eye.
Diners finished their meals. Groups and couples kissed, laughed, and went their separate ways, but still no sign of Greaseball.
After two hours I was quite an expert on bustiers and garters. The only people on the street now were old men and women taking their dogs out for a last dump before bedtime. Only the odd vehicle came in either direction.
A Lexus glided up the road from my left and stopped outside the restaurant. The chrome wheels and bodywork were so highly polished you could see the Christmas decorations in them. The driver stayed put with the engine running as his passenger finished off a telephone call. When he finally got out, I could see he looked like a dark-skinned version of George Michael, with a goatee and flat, short hair. As he slid into the restaurant, the car moved farther along the road and parked. The driver, also dark, had a shaved head that gleamed as impressively as the Lexus. I could tell that he was already bored with waiting.
Fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Greaseball emerged into the glow of the Christmas lights. He turned toward me and I moved back into the shadows. If he got level with me, I’d have to sit down, hide my face, and pretend to be drunk. But it would be difficult for him to see me over the parked cars from the other side of the road.
I waited for him to pass, then came out onto the sidewalk and followed. The Lexus was still there, waiting for George Michael to stop stuffing his face. The driver had the interior light on, trying to read a paper; this probably wasn’t his idea of the perfect night out. Greaseball turned left, heading for the taxi stand at the train station.
I watched as he got into the back of one and moved out onto the main, toward Cannes. I checked traser: nine-thirty-seven, not long to go before the meet. He must be going home. It was pointless rushing back to my car since I was pretty certain where he’d be at eleven. Besides, I didn’t want to scream around after him and get stopped by the police for jumping a red.
I headed back in the direction of the Fiancée of the Desert.
At ten-forty-five, having finally grabbed something to eat, I turned the Mégane up Boulevard Carnot and made my way past Greaseball’s apartment building.
I took a few turns, methodically checking out the area for people sitting in cars or lurking in shadows before parking outside Eddie Leclerc’s.
I moved into an alleyway behind the store and waited to see if anyone was following me up the hill. I just stood as if I were taking a piss between two large Dumpsters full of cardboard boxes, and let ten minutes go by.
I could still hear vehicles on the main drag as I walked up the hill, but at this time of night it was no longer a constant drone. Otherwise, there was just the occasional burst of music from a TV, or a dog barking.
There were lights on in a couple of the apartments on Greaseball’s floor. I checked traser. I was a couple of minutes early, but it didn’t really matter. I hit the bell with the cuff of my sweatshirt over my thumb. I heard crackling, and a rather breathless “Hello, hello?”
I moved my face nearer the small grille and said, “It’s me, it’s eleven.”
There was a buzz at the door. I pushed it open with my foot, then pressed the intercom again. The door buzzed once more and the intercom crackled again. “Push the door,” he said.
I gave the handle a rattle, but didn’t move. “Nothing’s happening. Come down, I’ll wait here.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, then, “Oh, okay.”
I slipped into the hallway and closed the door gently behind me, then moved to the side of the elevator, by the door to the stairs, and drew down the Browning, making myself feel better by checking chamber before packing it back into my jeans.
The elevator rattled its way up the shaft. I eased open the door to the stairs and hit the light switch with my elbow, just in case he had friends waiting to move in behind me once I’d gotten up to the apartment.
The stairwell was empty. I closed the door as the light went out and waited where I was for the elevator to come back down. It stopped and Greaseball walked out, expecting me to be at the front door. There were no keys in his hand. How did he plan to get back into his apartment?
I drew down in preparation, and whispered, “I’m here.”
Greaseball spun around. He could see the weapon down at my side and his eyes flickered in alarm.
I said, “Where are your keys?”
He looked confused for a second, then smiled. “My door is open. I rushed down to meet you.” He looked and sounded genuine enough.
“Is anyone with you?”
“No, non.” He gestured. “You can see.”
“No. Is there anyone with you upstairs?”
“I am alone.”
“Okay, let’s go.” I ushered him into the elevator and, just as before, stood behind him in a cloud of aftershave and alcohol. He was dressed as he had been earlier in the day, except for the pashmina, and still had his leather jacket on. He wiped his mouth nervously. “I have the—I have the—”
“Stop. Wait until we get inside.”
The elevator stopped and I moved him out. “Off you go. You know what to do.” He headed for apartment 49, with me three paces behind, the weapon held alongside my thigh.
20
H e hadn’t lied: the door was still open. I touched him gently with the pistol on the side of his arm. “In you go, and leave this as it is.” He did as he was told, and even opened the door that led into the bathroom and the bedroom, to prove the place was deserted.
I stepped inside and it was immediately obvious that the magic cleaning fairy hadn’t paid any surprise visits since this morning. I turned the light off above me with the Browning’s muzzle, then pushed down the button that released the deadbolt so I could close the door with my heel. I raised the Browning, ready to go into the room.
The moment the door was shut, I reactivated the deadlock. I didn’t want anyone making entry with a key while I was clearing the apartment.
He was standing by the table. “I have the addresses….” He had to force his hand into his jeans, which were straining to hold in his gut.
“Turn the light out.”
He looked confused for a second, then understood. He reached for his Camels before moving to the switch; then we were plunged into darkness. A streetlight across the road glowed against the old man’s garden wall. Greaseball was nervous; the lighter wouldn’t keep still as he tried to direct the flame toward the tip of his cigarette. The shadows that fl
ickered across his face made him look even more like something out of the Hammer House of Horror than he normally did.
I didn’t want the darkness for dramatic effect. I just didn’t want anyone to see a silhouette waving a pistol about through the net curtains.
“Now close the blinds on these balcony windows.”
I followed the red glow in his mouth as he pulled down on the canvas strap that controlled the wooden roller blinds, and began to lower them. “I really do have—”
“Wait, wait.”
Once the blinds were down I watched the glow of ash move back toward the couch, and listened to him wheezing as he tried to breathe through his nose with a mouth full of cigarette. He knocked into the table and I waited for the sound of him sitting down.
“You can turn the light back on now.”
He got up and walked past me to hit the switch.
I started to clear the apartment, with him in front of me as before. I glanced at the wall unit for another look at Curly. The Polaroids weren’t there. A dog barked its head off on the balcony above us as we entered the bedroom. It looked as if he had decided against tennis, after all. The bags, along with the syringes, had gone from under the bed. The apartment was clear: there was no one here but us.
As I moved toward the living room, I pushed the Browning back into my jeans and stood by the door. He collapsed back onto the couch, flicking his ash at an already full plate.
“You have the addresses?”
He nodded, pushing himself to the edge of his seat and reaching over the coffee table for his pen. “The boat, it will be at Pier Nine, berth forty-seven. I’ll write it all down for you. I was right. There are three collections, starting Friday in Monaco—”
I lifted my hand. “Stop. You’ve got the addresses in your pocket?”
“Yes, but—but…the ink’s bad. I’ll write them again for you.”
“No. Just show me what you’ve got in your pocket.” His excuse sounded too apologetic to be true.
He managed to squeeze his hand back into his jeans, and produced a sheet of lined paper that had been torn from a notebook and folded three or four times. “Here.” He leaned toward me with the sheet in his hand, but I pointed at the table. “Just open it up so I can read it.”
He laid it down on top of yesterday’s Nice Matin, and turned it around toward me. It wasn’t his writing, unless he’d been to neat lessons since this morning. This was very even and upright, the sort that girls in my grammar school used to practice for hours. And it belonged to a Brit or an American. The first address contained the number 617; the one didn’t look like a seven, and the seven didn’t have a stroke through it.
Monaco was marked “Fri.” Nice marked “Sat.” Here in Cannes was labeled “Sun.” “Who gave you these?”
He shrugged, visibly annoyed with himself, and probably shaken because he knew he’d messed up when he panicked at the beginning and got too eager to give me the addresses so I would go away. “No one, it’s my—”
“This isn’t your handwriting. Who gave it to you?”
“I cannot…I would be—”
“All right, all right, I don’t want to know. Who cares?” I did, really, but there were more important things to worry about right now and, besides, I thought I already knew. “Do you know the names of the collectors—or the hawallada?”
He shook his head and sounded breathless, probably because of the amount of nicotine he was inhaling. He couldn’t have been more than forty years old, but he’d be dead of lung cancer long before sixty.
“What about the collection times?”
“This is all I was able to find out.”
“How do I know these are correct?”
“I can guarantee it. This is very good information.”
I went over to crazy-threat mode. “It had better be, or you know what I will do to you, don’t you?”
He leaned back in the couch and studied my face. He wasn’t panicking now, which surprised me. He smiled. “But that’s not really going to happen, is it? I know things. How do you think I’ve survived so long?”
He was absolutely right. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it. These people can screw you around as much as they want. If they provide high-quality intelligence, nothing can happen to them unless people like George want it to. But what sources often fail to understand is that they’re only useful while they can provide information. After that, nobody cares. Apart from Hubba-Hubba and Lotfi, that is; I was sure they would continue to care a great deal.
He studied me for a long time and took another drag of his cigarette. The smoke leaked from his nostrils and mouth as he spoke. “Do you know what slim is?”
I nodded. I’d heard the word in Africa.
“That’s me—slim. HIV-positive. Not full-blown AIDS yet. I pump myself with antiretrovirals, trying to keep the inevitable from happening, but it will come, unless…. Well, what do I care what you do to me? But I used to wonder about Zeralda. I used to wonder if he had slim…” He was trying to hide a smile but couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from turning up. “Who knows? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he did, but didn’t know it. Slim has a way of doing that. It just creeps up on you.” He flicked some ash angrily onto the plate. “Maybe you should have a checkup yourself. There was a lot of blood, wasn’t there?”
Taking more nicotine into his lungs, he sat back and crossed his legs. He was enjoying this.
I didn’t let him know that I wasn’t that concerned by Zeralda’s splashed blood. I knew that I had about the same risk of contracting the disease from it as being struck by lightning on the same day I won the lottery.
I stared back at him. “If you don’t care about dying, why were you so scared in Algeria? And why were you scared earlier?”
He started to smoke like Oscar Wilde on a bad day. “When I go, my friend, I plan to go—how do you people say?—with a bang. Let me tell you something, my friend.” He leaned forward and stubbed out his second butt end. “I know there is no hope for me. But I do plan to end my life the way I wish to, and that certainly isn’t going to be at a time of your choosing. I still want to have a lot more living before slim really gets me—then bang!” He clapped his hands together. “One pill and I’m gone. I don’t want to lose my figure—as you can see I’m still the prettiest boy on the beach.”
I picked up the newspaper and folded it around the notebook page, making sure it was nice and secure, then rolled it up, as if I were on my way to the building site. “If you’re Iying about these addresses, I’ll get the green light to hurt you bad, believe me.”
He shook his head, and extracted another cigarette. “Never. I’m too valuable to your bosses. But you, you worry me, you have been out of your kennel too long.” He jabbed a nicotine-stained finger at me. “You would do it of your own accord. I felt that in Algeria.” There was the single click of his lighter and I heard the tobacco fizz. “I know you don’t like me, and I suppose I can understand that. But some of us have different desires and different pleasures, and we cannot deny ourselves our pleasures, can we?”
I ignored the question. I opened the door and he got to his feet. I left with the newspaper in my hand, wanting to get out of there quickly so I could resist the overwhelming urge to splatter him against the wall.
21
I dumped the newspaper, still with the piece of paper inside, in the footwell of the passenger seat, and took one of the pairs of clear plastic gas station gloves from the glove compartment and put them on. Then, bending down into the footwell, I fished out the piece of paper and read the addresses, holding it by just one edge.
The first was Office 617 in the Palais de la Scala, at Place du Beaumarchais, Monaco. I remembered the building from my recce. It was just to the side of the casino and the banking area, not that that meant much: the whole of Monaco was a banking area. The de la Scala was Monaco’s answer to the shopping mall, with real marble pillars and bottles of vintage champagne that cost the same as a small ha
tchback. It was also next to the Hôtel Hermitage, the haunt of rock stars and fat-cat industrialists.
The Nice address was on Boulevard Jean XIII, which a quick check of the road atlas told me was in an area called La Roque, near the freight depot that I had passed to get to the safe house, and with a train station, Gare Riquier, no more than seven hundred yards away. The last one, I knew very well. It was along the Croisette in Cannes, just by the PMU betting shop/café/wine bar, facing the sea and cheek by jowl with Chanel and Gucci. Women in minks sat there with old Italian men whose hands wandered under the fur like ferrets as they bet on horses, drank champagne, and generally had fun until it was time to be escorted back to their hotels. The only difference between the women in minks and the ones who worked the road near the airport was the price tag.
I was tempted, but it was far too late to go into Monaco to do a recce of the Palais de la Scala. For a start, the mall would be closed, but that wasn’t the main reason. Monaco has the highest per capita income in the world, with security to match. There’s a policeman for every sixty citizens, and street crime and burglary simply don’t exist. If I went into Monaco at this time of night for a drive-by of the target area, I’d be picked up and recorded by CCTV, and could very well be physically picked up at a roadblock. Drive in and out of Monaco three times in a day and there’s a high possibility you’ll be stopped by the police and asked why. It was all designed to make the inhabitants feel cocooned and protected, and that didn’t just mean the racing drivers and tennis stars who lived there to avoid tax. The population also included others who made their money from the big three: deception, corruption, and assassination.
I decided to leave the recce for the morning, and take a look at the Nice address on the way to Beaulieu-sur-Mer, where I planned to spend the rest of the night. That meant parking overnight somewhere, and joining the morning traffic lines into the principality, but it carried far less risk. I folded the piece of paper and placed it inside another glove, then hid it under the seat, pushing it right up into the upholstery.
