by Lex Lander
* * *
When her cellphone tinkled, Ghislaine was on the couch, her legs tucked under her, skimming the fashion page of Nice-Matin. She unclipped the phone from the waistband of her cords.
‘Dennis?’ she said, before her caller could announce himself.
‘Yes. Listen, I want you to take a taxi to Monaco. Meet me at the Café de ...’ A squiggle of static briefly erased his voice. Reception in Menton was always patchy owing to the high ground surrounding the town. ‘ … in about forty-five minutes, but if I’m late, don’t worry.’
‘Repeat the name of the café, please, mon amour. Your voice faded.’
‘Café de Paris,’ he said, enunciating precisely. ‘Give me an hour.’
‘I know it. By the Casino.’
‘Take a table. If you want to eat, eat. Don’t wait for me.’
‘I am not hungry. Where are you?’
‘Cannes.’ A silence; she could hear him breathing. ‘I love you,’ he said.
‘And I, you.’
And then he was gone. She listened to the dialling tone for a long moment, nibbling her lower lip, the questions she had meant to ask left unasked.
Decision hour. To run away with the man she loved or to stay with the security of the status quo. It wasn’t such a dilemma. The elements of her life she would lose if she chose love over pragmatism, she could bear to lose. The same couldn’t be said for the converse: a future without Lux was too barren to contemplate. For good or ill, he was now essential to her wellbeing.
The cellphone trilled again. She checked the number on the screen and grimaced. She had no wish to speak to her boss. After ten rings the voicemail cut in. She left the phone trilling on the couch and went over to the telephone table to hunt for a taxi service in the Pages Jaunes.
* * *
As the taxi driver slid her valise into the trunk of his long-in-the-tooth Mercedes, Ghislaine’s cellphone summoned her again. Not unexpectedly, it was her boss again, the persistent bastard. The temptation to hurl the phone from her was strong. She resisted it. Apart from its general indispensability, she had to keep the line of communication open for Lux.
In the back seat of the taxi she reflected on the consequences of her decision to throw in her lot with Lux, to effectively reject her lifestyle and entrust mind, body and spirit, and her so-precious son to uncertainty, no matter what the ultimate cost.
And found she didn’t care a bit.
Such was her distraction that when the cellphone claimed her once more as the taxi filtered into the autoroute, she absently put it to her ear and thumbed the oui key.
Even as her mouth opened to speak her caller pre-empted her. ‘Agent quatre-cent onze? Ici Mazé.’
* * *
As Ghislaine was paying off the taxi by the acenseur station on Avenue d’Ostende she noticed the green Peugeot that had stuck too close to her the entire drive from Menton to Monaco cruising past in search of a space. The two occupants of the car were plain-clothes CRS, part of a team designated to keep Lux’s house under continuous surveillance these past months. Fifty metres on the Peugeot gave up its quest for a legal slot and came to a stop, double parked. The man in the passenger seat got out.
‘Call me as soon as you get parked,’ he ordered his junior colleague.
The Peugeot sped off with no consideration for approaching vehicles, nearly causing a minor pile-up. The CRS officer turned towards the kerb and promptly blundered into an elderly overweight woman with a poodle under each arm who was emerging from a gap between two parked cars. He sent her reeling and fell on top of her amid canine yaps and flying curses, the woman outdoing the policeman in the latter respect. His elbow cracked painfully against the bumper of one of the cars.
‘You stupid fucking cow!’ he rasped, as he strove to disengage himself.
‘How dare you!’ she shrilled back at him. ‘I’ll report you to the police, you hooligan!’
‘I am the fucking police.’
Leaving her to round up her pets, who had chosen to abscond in opposite directions, he staggered onto the pavement, nursing a throbbing elbow. The Fougère piece was of course long away and no amount of ‘Merdes’ would bring her back.
* * *
While the hapless CRS man floundered in the Avenue d’Ostende, another interested party was doing somewhat better.
Rafael Simonelli had travelled by hired Honda Civic from Auxerre to Menton, entering the town in the late morning, leaving time enough for a leisurely plat du jour at l’Oursin Restaurant, watching the boats come in and the girls go by. His lingering worry about venturing out soon dissipated, secure behind his dark glasses, beard and floppy coiffure, and not least his Belgian passport, for which he was indebted to Barail. Not that the Commissaire had supplied it free of charge, damn his grasping ways.
Simonelli punctuated his excellent repast of “fruits of the sea” with a second herbal tea. While he sipped he pored over Barail’s sketch of the location of Lux’s house.
* * *
It was approaching two o’clock when he came to the cul-de-sac in the heights above Menton, where Lux’s villa snuggled amid a half dozen similarly exclusive properties. To park in the cul-de-sac itself would be a little too blatant. Not only was there Lux’s girl to consider, but also, Barail had warned, the CRS surveillance team lodged in an empty villa opposite. So Simonelli parked on the Route de Castellar, a few metres short of the turn. From there he enjoyed an outlook of spectacular beauty: the red rooftops of Menton, the jutting nose of Cap Martin with its toytown dwellings, and above all the dazzling blue of the Côte d’Azur. Almost the equal of the view from the terrace of his house in Corsica, alas no more.
Among other goodies provided by Barail was a transcript of a conversation between Lux and his floozie, presumably obtained by tapping the telephone, which made reference to the couple’s exit plan - but only up to the point where she was to leave the house and rendezvous with him. The location of their assignation was still unknown. Follow the girl, Barail had suggested, and she will lead you to Lux.
‘And then what?’ Simonelli queried. ‘They will probably be inseparable.’
‘Then do what you must do,’ Barail said, no change in his expression.
Simonelli was patient by nature and did not mind the heat. What they called hot here on the mainland was merely balmy to a Corsican. Whenever he felt like dozing he did a couple of circuits of the car, smoked a cigarette. Thirty-five minutes into this wait an old Mercedes taxi rolled up and turned into the cul-de-sac. Simonelli went on full mental alert. He got out and walked briskly - not too briskly - to the corner. From there, ostensibly lingering to light a cigarette, he perceived that the taxi’s destination was indeed Lux’s villa.
Back in the Honda he started the engine, waited for a dusty Deux Chevaux to pass, and executed a three-point turn that left him facing down the hill towards the town.
The taxi with its solitary female passenger edged out onto the Route de Castellar and turned right. Simonelli was about to set off after it when a second car, a green Peugeot containing two men, shot out of the cul-de-sac and away down the hill in the taxi’s wake.
This was not unexpected. If the girl was the CRS team’s only lead to Lux, the Corsican reasoned, they would have to keep track of her. He allowed them a two hundred metre lead before moving off.
Keeping the Peugeot and the Mercedes in sight was no hardship at first. The Sunday afternoon, pre-season traffic was light and the drivers less combative than their weekday contemporaries. It was only when the taxi and the Peugeot descended into the tangle of Monaco’s streets that he came close to losing them. Fortunately for him, the gendarmerie tend to be less numerous and less alert on Sundays, and his occasional minor infractions (jumping red lights, overtaking on prohibited sections of road, and so on), went unnoticed.
The taxi came to a halt opposite the Acenseur on Avenue d’Ostende to disgorge a brunette in a short blue and yellow print dress. Ever the Romeo, Simonelli almost ran off the road ogling he
r. Lucky Lux, he reflected, to have a piece like that to warm his bed. He stopped just short of the taxi, unlike the Peugeot, which continued some fifty metres or more beyond. As good fortune would have it a Jaguar with a GB sticker on its backside vacated a space two cars behind the taxi. He backed into it, parking untidily, and leapt out. The woman, a large suitcase and a grip by her feet, was paying off the taxi. Farther along the street a man in a dark jacket was climbing from the double-parked Peugeot. A passer-by jostled Simonelli as he bent to manually lock the Honda.
‘Excusez-moi.’ Foreign-accented, like half the inhabitants of the Principality.
Simonelli hardly registered the apology. His eyes were only for the woman, now descending the stairway to the Quai des Etats-Unis, luggage and all. He watched her for a moment, out of basic male appreciation rather than professional interest. She had nicely-shaped legs that the short dress did proud and tits that bounced a little with each step. Remembering why he was there, he privately upbraided himself and set off towards the steps.
Twenty-Seven
* * *
The Monaco-registered fifty-foot motor cruiser Ocean Deep, ploughed through the rolling swell at a relaxed fifteen knots. Her course was east-north-east, her position some twenty nautical miles off the Italian coast. At the wheel was a man called Edwin Keating, a husky American with a head of thick grey hair; beside him his stepson, Nick. Keating owed Dennis Lux a huge favour and was in the act of working it off.
In the stern of the boat, under a blue awning, Lux and Ghislaine sat thigh to thigh, each seeking comfort of a different kind from the other. As the euphoria engendered by his successful hit faded, Lux was beset by unease, increasingly convinced that he had made some fatal slip-up that would lead to his downfall. Ghislaine on the other hand was beset by a whole gamut of emotions, from misgivings to exhilaration. The sudden discovery, less than twenty-four hours earlier, that she truly loved this man after weeks of pretence had thrilled and devastated her. So intense was that love that it had driven her to stay by his side and in doing so cross over from lawmaker to lawbreaker.
Lost in introspection, they had barely spoken since leaving Monaco harbour under benign skies and the still-hot late afternoon sun. Now, after an hour at sea, Ghislaine was the one to end the silence.
‘Are you ready to tell me what is happening, Dennis?’ she said. Although she well knew that today was the day he was supposed to shoot the President and it was reasonable to suppose he had gone through with it, she could only guess at the outcome. Had he succeeded in the crime of the decade or not? She was determined that he would be open with her, that he would speak of it first.
Lux’s arm was about her shoulders. He squeezed her, and she interpreted this as a substitute for the truth that he was not ready to tell.
‘Not yet, sweetheart.’
Not that he could delay long, he well knew. She would hear soon enough on the radio or TV and put two and two together.
‘I do so love you,’ she said earnestly, stroking his forearm so that the blond hairs stood up like stalks of corn in miniature.
‘Me too, you,’ he said with a quick grin.
‘No, I mean I really do love you,’ she persisted.
Now he looked surprised. ‘Well, sure, sweetheart. I never doubted it.’
Such an accolade to her acting ability. From the start, when she contrived for him to ‘stumble on’ her in the copse at the Crillon Estate, she had flitted from one lie to the next. From simulated fright to fake flirtatiousness, from demonstrations of lust to avowals of love. Hardly an utterance passed her lips nor act was performed that was not counterfeit. Yet falseness was not in her nature. Her professed honesty was real. Only her job - this job - required deception.
Since two hours ago she was free of all that. From now on she would speak only the truth.
‘I love you, darling,’ she said again, snuggling into his embrace.
He didn’t speak. He was suddenly remembering those lies that, thanks to Barail, he had found out about. Soon he would confront her with them. But not yet, not here. Better wait until they were safe in Lausanne.
* * *
Ocean Deep hove to off the Italian seaport of Genova, just in sight of the city’s lights, at around ten-thirty that night. A motor cruiser of about half her length came up on the windward side. The two hulls nudged, sausage-shaped fenders keeping the paintwork from rubbing, and Nick secured them to each other with a length of line.
A man wearing a black T-shirt and baseball cap vaulted aboard from the small cruiser, leaving its outdrive engine ticking over.
‘Good evening,’ he said to Nick, strongly Italian accented.
‘Caio,’ Nick responded. Just then, Keating joined them and hands were clasped. Some rapid Italian ensued.
‘Denny - you can come out,’ Keating called, and Lux and Ghislaine appeared from behind the superstructure. More greetings. Nick bustled about transferring luggage to the small boat.
Ghislaine bit back a question about the reason for the transfer. Her mind was trained to think like a criminal, so she guessed that to go ashore in an Italian registered craft - the square stern showed the smaller boat’s port of registration to be Genova - was to make it less likely they would be noticed, though these enlightened days nationals of EU member countries traversed borders more or less without constraint.
Lux exchanged fraternal hugs with the bearlike Keating and mock-punched a grinning Nick. Ghislaine kissed cheeks with them both, thanked them, and was wished all the luck in the world. She spurned a helping hand in the transfer to the Italian boat. Lux went after her and they descended into the tiny cabin under the foredeck.
The boats separated. As the note of Ocean Deep’s engine rose and she curved away into the night, the Italian, an unprincipled rogue called Zeppi - from Guiseppi - dropped into the cabin hatchway. Lire changed hands. It looked a lot but with the lira at about 1300 to the dollar it was less than a thousand.
‘Will we stay in Genova tonight?’ Ghislaine asked Lux.
‘No. We’re sleeping on board.’
Ghislaine patted the cushion of the bench seat. ‘Not exactly four-star. Why can’t we go ashore?’
Zeppi stopped counting lire to look at her. His brown eyes in their whiter than whites were appraising, perhaps appreciative of her loveliness.
‘In daytime you go on shore. It is safer in daytime. More peoples, more busy. In night polizia always watch. Bad guys always come at night.’
It made sense to her. She didn’t contest it.
Zeppi finished counting, saluted Lux with the wad of notes and returned to the helm. The deck angled upwards as he piled on the knots.
As the little boat bucked its way to Genova with unnecessary haste - or so it seemed to Ghislaine, a poor sailor - the thud-thud of the keel on the water was a constant refrain. Surprisingly quickly she grew inured to it. She curled up on the seat, her head on the lap of her lover and was soon asleep.
* * *
The sky over the Palace was red and the city cowered in the shadow of the Tête de Chien massif. The lights around the port came on as the sleek motor cruiser entered the passage between the breakwaters, its engine beat amplified in the hush of the evening.
From the quayside bench Rafael Simonelli watched impassively as the boat manoeuvred to reverse into its berth. The lettering of the name on the stern, Ocean Deep, was gilt and glistened under the lights. A two-man crew, one about sixty, the other in his twenties. Father and son possibly. Simonelli smiled to himself thinly. A blood tie was good for what he had in mind.
With the older man at the helm the boat crept into its space under minimal power, fenders nudging those of the craft on either side, making little whimpering sounds. The young man leapt onto the quay, line at the ready and hooked the end loop over a bollard on the starboard quarter, then repeated the exercise on the other side. The engine died. Words were exchanged, American-accented English that Simonelli didn’t quite catch. The young man plugged a power line into the qua
yside power supply and followed the older man below. Lights sprang on. Simonelli heard them talking, the crackle of laughter. ‘Hell, no!’ someone exclaimed.
Darkness was fast spreading its cape. The quay was deserted but for a couple walking a dog and, three boats up, a man working under an arc lamp on the bow of a tired-looking ketch.
Simonelli left the bench and made for the nearest payphone.
* * *
Once he had extracted Lux’s whereabouts from the grey-haired American, Simonelli would be faced with a greater Rubicon - how to discourage the man from alerting Lux. He had toyed with the idea of silencing him and his companion permanently. But even Simonelli, a man of few scruples and fewer nerves, shrank from a double murder without proper preparation. So he phoned a couple of fellow-islanders who lived in Nice.
Tracking them down to an inevitable bar took until well after midnight but, tempted by a twenty thousand franc payday between them, they finally rolled up in a wreck of an open-topped Renault Floride. One of them was the worse for drink. It took a succession of black coffees at the all-night café where Rue Grimaldi intersects Albert 1er to restore him to a tolerable level of sobriety.
In lowered tones Simonelli explained his requirements: overpower the two Yanks, take the boat out to sea and stay there and baby-sit them for three days. The older of the pair, a hook-nose, muscular individual with an ear-ring like Simonelli’s, except that the stone that dangled from it was less precious than a ruby, was a former fisherman who had the skills it took to handle a boat the size of Ocean Deep. He was known as Le Boeuf - the Bull.
Both men accepted the contract as if it were no more routine than walking a dog. Simonelli had already drawn half the agreed fee from a nearby cash dispenser. He doled it out, sixty-forty in Le Boeuf’s favour.
The operation went as smooth as glass. Dawn was still an hour away and the Americans sleeping soundly when Simonelli and his helpers boarded Ocean Deep. A gun under the grey-hair’s chin secured their full co-operation. He parted with an address in exchange for his stepson’s life. The pair were then bound and gagged and locked in a cabin with a single porthole too small for even a child to wriggle through.
