by Lex Lander
Lux lifted the key by its tag, dangled it. ‘Why so far away? More sensible surely to let me examine the merchandise before you leave.’
‘Comme ça.’ Because. An evasion not an answer.
‘Try again, pal. Try harder.’
Simonelli looked as if he might get ugly, the lips peeling back, the spade-shaped chin coming up. ‘If we didn’t need you ...’
‘But you do. So tell me what game you’re playing.’
A further internal struggle with his fragile temper, then Simonelli said, ‘Let me put it this way, Lux: we realise you do not trust us, that you are taking precautions in case we break our promises. This is understandable. We do not blame you for it. So you must not blame us if we do not trust you either. If you chose, you could cause us much embarrassment, could even expose our plan to install our nominee as President. At the very least you could retard our schedule. We are conscious of this. So, it is natural that we should take precautions of our own. To be photographed handing over a package to you - for instance - whether or not the contents of the package were revealed, might compromise me and my associates.’
‘If that were my intention - ’ and it wasn’t such a lousy idea at that, Lux reflected, ‘ - I would surely have picked a less public place to meet and arranged for my photographer to record what was in the package whilst in your presence.’
The Corsican acknowledged this with a tilt of his gleaming head. ‘But before I came we could not know that this place was not secluded. And even if we had it would have made no difference. Like you, we leave nothing to chance.’
He clicked his fingers and a waiter swooped.
‘Not for me,’ Lux said.
‘As you wish.’ Simonelli requested another Ricard. ‘Encore un Ricard,’ just like the billboard stickers.
‘I need a man,’ Lux said
Simonelli quit dabbing his red lips with his polka dot handkerchief. ‘A man? You disappoint me. According to your dossier you are something of a Casanova.’
‘Don’t be funny. I need a driver who can be trusted to keep his mouth zipped tight when the going gets nasty.’
Simonelli considered this until his Ricard showed up. Then he drank to help the considering.
‘This man will be involved in the ... operation?’ With so many ears around even Simonelli resorted to euphemism.
‘He will be an accessory. He will be in ignorance of my real intent.’
‘You cannot use one of Barail’s people - he will not allow it.’
‘If that was what I wanted I would ask Barail. I’m asking you because I expected you would have the right kind of connections. If I’m wrong ...’ Lux gave a dismissive shrug, implying contempt. ‘Forget it. I’ll go elsewhere.’
‘No! If you need outside help you must not go elsewhere.’ Simonelli looked earnest, which was rare in Lux’s experience of him. ‘I will provide someone ... a countryman of mine and loyal to me. But he will want paying. What will be expected of him?’
Lux dabbed with a fingertip at a runnel of perspiration that was threatening his eye. ‘As I said - drive a car and keep his mouth shut. If he could provide the car too, this would be worth a bonus. A dark saloon, new or nearly new - Citroën or Renault, French anyway. As for payment ... ten thousand francs nouveaux? Does that sound like the going rate?’
‘It is a starting point for negotiation, no more than that. Where should he meet you?’
‘Tell me where and I’ll go to him.’
Simonelli nodded. ‘Telephone me tomorrow morning. I will stay in this area for twenty-four hours anyway, in case there should be any problems, c’est à dire, any questions concerning the merchandise I have delivered.’ He opened his wallet and slid out a blank piece of white card, wrote on it with a svelte gold fountain pen, four groups of two digits.
Lux tucked the card away without so much as a glance at it. A crowd of new arrivals, young, garrulous, and Italian, came onto the terrace and whipped the spare seats from Lux’s table to make up a shortfall. Under the umbrella of their staccato chatter Simonelli asked Lux what progress he had made.
‘All’s well for the 2nd,’ Lux assured him. ‘Let’s hope the President doesn’t change his plans.’
‘How will you do it?’ Simonelli asked. ‘How will you gain entry to the estate?’
‘Who said anything about gaining entry?’
A sneer. ‘Because of the wall you must, unless you plan to use a missile launcher.’ He smirked, pleased with the logic of his reasoning, elementary though it was.
‘Maybe I’ll do it from a chopper.’
Simonelli looked incredulous. ‘You would never be allowed to enter the airspace over the chateau. It will be patrolled, you know this …’
‘It’s not your concern.’
‘That’s where you are wrong,’ he retorted, shoving his face close to Lux’s. ‘To fail is not an option. We are all in jeopardy here, not just you. I am already a wanted man. I will console myself with the money I will be paid, though I do not need it. But to make the attempt and fail means I remain on the run - for nothing.’
‘Aw, quit shooting off, Simonelli. Let me do the job my way. At least you’re not risking a bullet.’
Simonelli lit a cigarette with an unsteady hand. ‘In some ways that would be preferable.’
* * *
‘Darling ... oh, darling, is it really you?’
Lux grinned into the mouthpiece. ‘Hi, there, gorgeous. Missing me?’
‘Missing you? I’m dying for want of you. Why am I here in Menton all on my own. Where are you? You sound as if you were in the next room.’
‘Still in the land of pasta. How are your problems? Did you talk to Michel?’
‘Yes.’ More subdued now. ‘It isn’t good but at least we are still speaking.’
‘How did he take it?’
‘How do you think?’ Her tone was harsh. He had exposed a raw nerve.
‘Sorry, my love. I’ll leave that side to you. But yell if you need me.’
‘I need you all the time - every minute, every second.’ The tone reverted to soft, alluring. ‘But I wouldn’t know where to yell to. Why don’t you have a cellphone. Everyone has them now. Can’t you at least give me a number where I can reach you? If I can’t have your body on tap, I’ll have your voice. I do so long for you.’
He put her question on hold. ‘How did your third visit to the Crillon place go? You weren’t arrested, I hope.’
‘Pas du tout. I was in and out inside half an hour and saw no one and was seen by no one. Satisfied? It was not a new experience for me, you know.’
‘I know. You’re brave as well as beautiful and talented.’
‘You say such nice things to me. You should be here saying them not … not … wherever you are.’
Lux stared out through fly-speckled glass at a sea bathed red by the setting sun. Two men were loading fishing tackle into a small sailing boat down on the pebble beach, attended by two small children and a black-and-white dog. Somewhere close by but out of sight from the telephone kiosk, a woman laughed.
He wished Ghislaine were here with him, wished it so intensely it was a physical hurt.
‘Darling ... are you still there?’
‘I’m here,’ he said, ‘and I love you, and no, I can’t give you a number ... we’re continually on the move. It won’t be long now, though, before I’m back home.’
Home. With Ghislaine there the word, the idea, had real meaning. Wasn’t just a convenient caption to describe his base.
‘Hurry. I’ll be waiting. I’ll always be waiting.’
* * *
At the Ste Maxime house the swimming pool construction team had turned up in force with a mechanical digger and were hard at it transforming the once immaculate garden into a First World War landscape. Back from his drive to Fréjus Station Lux made coffee espresso from freshly ground beans and tried to ignore the roar of the digger’s motor as he unwrapped the surprisingly bulky package and spread its contents across the bare wood of
the kitchen table: the Canadian Passport, dark green with a soft cover was superficially okay; he would compare it with a genuine article at a later date. The RG passe-partout was in the name of Richard Lefranc. It was of plastic and the photograph - taken from the kiosk facial he had provided for the passport - was reproduced by computer and formed an integral part of the card. Nowhere in the text was the RG mentioned; intelligence and security outfits never provide their operatives with papers proclaiming their real function. He was classed as an Attaché Personnel, and there was an assortment of codes together with a telephone number, otherwise it was an austere piece of work.
Authenticating the card was outside Lux’s competence. Certainly it was not within a lawyer’s remit. Much as it went against the grain, he would have to take it on trust. It was a reasonable assumption that Barail would not employ him to perform so critical a task as killing the President only to issue him with a useless Identity Card. The more he thought about it, tapping the edge of the card on his knuckle, the more he came to accept that above all his RG credentials were flawless, that if anything was dubious it would be the passport.
The third document was a confirmation copy of the Letter of Credit, drawn as specified, on the Schweitzer Kreditanstaltbank of Zürich. Four million United States dollars made a lot of noughts. Somehow, seeing it in writing made it more real than having it read out over the phone.
‘Four fucking million,’ he breathed. It had a sweet ring to it, though ten million would ring sweeter still.
Thus far then, Barail was playing ball. Had given him all he had demanded with the minimum of fuss.
The fourth and final item was a colour brochure and a maintenance manual for the Ecureuil helicopter. After leafing through the latter to verify that it contained the diagrams he sought, he set it aside.
Next on his shopping list was the gun, that essential tool of his bloody trade. From being small he had always loved guns. Oddly, a minor incident from his boyhood was lodged in his memory with total clarity of recall, possibly because it was the first occasion when he had confessed openly to this fascination with weaponry. Not really an incident even: he was in his tenth summer, and the little girl from next door, a year younger, had come round to play. Ordinarily he would never have entertained a girl (yuk!) in his domain. According to the perception of the day they were such boring creatures, only interested in dolls and things. He should have been goofing off with Buzz, Des, and Spex at Buzz’s place with its spacious yard and tree house, or maybe over at River Bay. But all three of his regular buddies were away on vacation or at summer camp and, lacking other lures, he had condescended to devote an hour or so to Joanna. Admittedly she was above average in the looks department - long blue-black hair and beseeching brown eyes. Five, six years later there would have been no holding him.
‘What do you want to do, Denny?’ she had asked him, as they lay on their tummies on the rug on the sweeping lawn. ‘When you grow up, I mean.’
‘I am grown up.’ Had he not overhead his mom say so the other day: ‘My Denny’s very grown up for his age.’
Joanna tickled his nose with a long blade of grass. He brushed it away irritably.
‘I mean ... when you’re really grown up, when you’re a man, like our daddies.’
‘Oh.’ He was flummoxed. Fact was, he hadn’t given it a deal of thought. Life was too full of just being a boy, school a chore that had to be endured because your parents made you go, not because it prepared you for the future, a dimension too remote and imprecise to figure in the scale of priorities.
‘Well then?’ she prodded when he didn’t answer, persistent as a wasp at a picnic.
‘Oh,’ he said again, then, abashed, plumped for ‘a cowboy.’ It was the first thing that entered his head and he recognised the absurdity of it.
So did she.
‘Don’t be stupid! They don’t have cowboys nowadays. That was hundreds of years ago.’
‘Course they do,’ he countered. ‘They still have cows, don’t they? Who’s supposed to look after them?’
‘Yes, but they don’t call them cowboys and I expect they drive around in cars and things. Anyway, Mommy says it’s all nonsense and that it only happens in movies and the funnies.’
That, he was sure, was not true, but he didn’t have the proof at his disposal. So he resorted to a dismissive grunt and rolled over onto his stomach, pressing his face into the grass, savouring its coolness and freshness. An ant was marching across a bare patch of earth near his splayed hand. He flicked it away, chanting, ‘Ant, ant, fly away, come back another day.’ Then, still irked by his inability to get the better of Joanna, he said, ‘I know! If I can’t be a cowboy, I’ll be a soldier, a general.’
He expected her to be impressed but all she said was, ‘Why?’
He remembered his answer because it was so patently honest.
‘Because ... because ... I like guns and shooting.’
And here he was, a quarter of a century on, still liking guns, still liking shooting.
* * *
Tomas Leandri was the man recommended by Simonelli and he might have passed for the Corsican’s younger brother: scraggy features, lean jawed, with slick black hair and eyes like two blobs of tar. He wore lightweight caramel-coloured slacks with matching shoes, a pale green shirt with some subtle interweaving that flashed in the sun like polished armour. He was the type who would carry a shiv and wouldn’t need much encouragement to stick it between your ribs. Simonelli rated him ‘the most trustworthy man I know, and an implacable enemy of Chirac and France. If he agrees to work for you, I guarantee his secrecy.’
For maximum privacy Lux had arranged to meet at Leandri’s house, a single-storey log cabin affair not far from Toulon and with a spectacular view of that city. Several warships, lean and grey, were berthed side by side in the naval dockyard.
The man was married - or at any rate he presented a curvy but otherwise rather plain blonde girl who wore a wedding ring as ‘ma femme’. She smiled coyly, addressed Lux respectfully as ‘monsieur,’ making him feel like a grandfather, and left them to their negotiations. They parked their bottoms in comfy outdoor chairs under a eucalyptus tree too sparsely foliated to give much protection from the mid-afternoon sun, which shone with its usual relentless brilliance, churning out heat like a flame thrower.
Leandri hailed from Bonificia at the extreme southern tip of Corsica. Profession dubious, earnings - to judge from the size and style of his property and the nearly-new Mercedes and Alfa Sports that squatted under the car port - substantial. He came swiftly to the point.
‘Simonelli says you want a driver.’
‘A little more than that.’ Lux enlarged on the job specification as the blonde girl brought cold beers in chilled glasses.
Leandri sucked in his top lip contemplatively. ‘The car will be obtained by someone else; I am not in that line of business. It will cost about un million de francs. Anciens,’ he appended, chuckling at Lux’s expression of dismay. The American still hadn’t got used to the tendency of many French, especially in the Midi, to calculate in old francs.
‘That includes a respray and the special plates,’ he said while Lux was still doing the mental arithmetic.
Twelve thousand dollars American, maybe a bit less, for a ‘clean’ stolen car. It was a fair price.
‘Agreed,’ Lux said. ‘And for yourself and the second man?’
‘What second man?’
‘Another man will be required to assist you. He will be your choice and must be guaranteed by you.’
Leandri adjusted fast. ‘Shall we say … fifteen times the amount for the car for the two of us.’ His voice was like silk, almost a caress. He had unusually long eyelashes and he fluttered them like a tart giving the come-on.
Lux unstuck the front of his shirt from his chest and tutted, shaking his head.
‘If not,’ Leandri said, grinning broadly, ‘I can recommend someone cheaper.’
Lux was pretty sure he was bluffing but it was
quality bluffing. Pretending to consider it, he quaffed his beer, already losing its chill.
‘If I agree there must be no questions asked. I want absolute obedience, absolute discretion, from you and your helper.’ He was talking for the sake of it. Had he held doubts on either count he should not have been here. Surprisingly for him, who bestowed trust but rarely, he trusted Simonelli and therefore his judgement.
A point Leandri uncannily proceeded to make. ‘Simonelli is an old friend, also we are related by blood. We trust each other implicitly. Do not forget, mon ami, I also will be taking risks. And, please ...’ A raised hand, like a policeman stopping traffic, ‘Do not insult my intelligence by continuing to pose as a journalist. Whatever you are, you are not of the paparazzi.’
‘Did Simonelli ...?’ Lux left the question unfinished; such an indiscretion was unthinkable.
‘It is my own deduction.’ Leandri smiled and wiped an errant black forelock from his eyes. ‘You and I are perhaps, in the loosest sense, of the same breed. Or do I flatter myself?’
Lux let that go. Agreed his three hundred thousand franc fee.
‘Half now,’ Leandri said and the hand was already outstretched.
Lux scuffed at the turf with his shoes. It was as fine as baize and cropped short. It would not have been out of place in an English Country Garden.
‘Well now,’ he said slowly, ‘I thought a quarter now another quarter when you show up with the car, the rest after the job’s done.’
These were the terms Barail had imposed on Lux. He didn’t see why he should be more magnanimous when sub-contracting work out.
Leandri got to his feet, very fast like a switchblade springing open. And the simile was apt for, even as Lux tensed defensively, just such a knife was inches from his solar plexus. He made to move; Leandri discouraged him by pushing him back with the flat of his free hand and shoving the blade of the knife under his ear lobe.
‘Stay perfectly still if you don’t want to lose an ear, mon ami.’
For now Lux opted for caution. He couldn’t tell how much of this performance was front and how much was the McCoy. The man was an unknown quantity. The knife point stayed below Lux’s ear lobe as his free hand wormed inside Lux’s jacket, lighted on the fat envelope there. Tugging it loose he stepped away, again very smooth, very fast ... so fast that by comparison Lux’s own reflexes were those of a snail, and an old tired snail at that.
