by Jack Higgins
JACOB Malik was Polish by birth and had left the country of his origin for political reasons just before the outbreak of the Second World War. For a couple of years, he had worked for the Deuxieme Bureau, the old French secret service organization that had died in 1940. He had spent the war working with the British Special Operations Executive, acting as a courier to French resistance units. An adventurous career had been brought to an end by an FLN grenade through his hotel bedroom window during the Algerian troubles. He had retired to a small café on the Marseilles waterfront with his Moorish wife and three children. He had been acting as Bureau agent in that city for six years and Chavasse had worked with him twice.
He was standing beside a Renault station wagon, leaning heavily on his walking stick, when they emerged from the station, a thin, elegant-looking man with a spiked moustache who carried his sixty years well.
He limped toward them and greeted Chavasse with enthusiasm. “My dear Paul, how wonderful to see you. How goes it?”
“Excellent.” Chavasse took his hand warmly. “And Nerida and your family?”
“Blooming. She still misses Algiers, but we could never go back. I wouldn’t last a week. They have long memories, those people.”
Chavasse introduced him to Darcy and they all got into the Renault and drove away. It was warm and rather sultry, the sun hidden from view by heavy gray clouds, and yet there was that intense light common to Marseilles, dazzling to the eyes.
“What have you arranged?” Chavasse asked.
“I gave the whole thing a great deal of thought after your phone call,” Malik said. “At exactly four a.m., I hit upon an idea of some genius, though I say this with all due modesty. To get into the Camargue presents no problem. To stay without being observed is impossible.”
“In three hundred square miles of lagoon and marsh?” Chavasse said. “I don’t follow.”
“Oh, the population is small enough, mainly wild fowlers and a few cowboys who tend the young bulls and the horses that run wild in all parts of the area. It is because of the sparseness of the population that it is difficult for outsiders to enter without it being known. What you need is a legitimate reason for being there, a reason that anyone who sees you will accept.”
“And you’ve found it?”
“Bird-watching,” Malik said simply.
Darcy Preston laughed out loud. “He can’t be serious.”
“But I am.” Malik looked slightly injured. “The Camargue is famous for its wild birds, particularly its colony of flamingos. People come to study them from all over Europe.”
“You know, I think you might actually have something there,” Chavasse said.
“More than that, my dear Paul, I have the equipment to go with it. A small cabin cruiser and all the extras I could think of. A rubber boat, shooting jackets and waders, binoculars, a decent camera. I checked with S2 in London and got the go-ahead. It seemed pointless to waste time.”
“Marvelous.” Chavasse was aware of a sudden irrational affection for him and clapped him on the shoulder. “Truly marvelous.”
“No need to overdo it, Paul. For this kind of exercise, I get a handsome fee—double if I assist in the field.”
“Do you want to?”
“I know the Camargue and you don’t, so it would seem sensible.” He smiled. “And you really have no idea how boring life is these days. A little action would definitely be good for my soul.”
“That’s settled then.” Chavasse turned to Darcy, who was sitting in the rear. “Nothing like some organization.”
“Oh, I’m impressed,” Darcy said. “I’d be even more so if someone could remember to fill my belly within the next couple of hours. It’s contracted so much it’s beginning to hurt.”
“That, too, I have arranged, monsieur,” Malik said. “My café is a stone’s throw from the harbor. There my wife will reluctantly provide you with bouillabaisse, simply because it’s the local speciality, but if you have sense, you will choose her stuffed mutton and rice and earn her eternal friendship.”
“Lead on, that’s all I ask,” Darcy said, and Malik swung the Renault from one line of traffic to the next, narrowly missing a bus, and turned into a narrow side street leading down to the harbor.
THE stuffed mutton and rice was everything Malik had promised, and afterward, they went down to the old harbor, parked the Renault and walked along a stone jetty. There were boats of all shapes and sizes riding at anchor, and scores of dinghies and tenders of every description were tied close to the jetty. They went down the steps and Malik hauled in a six-man yacht tender.
Chavasse did the rowing and, under orders, threaded his way through the crowded harbor until they fetched alongside a twenty-foot fiberglass cabin cruiser powered by an outboard motor. She was named L’Alouette and was painted white with scarlet trim. Darcy climbed aboard, then turned to give Malik a hand. Chavasse followed, after tying up the tender.
The cabin was small, the two padded side benches making up into beds at night. The only other accommodation was a lavatory and a small galley.
Malik sat down with a sigh, produced a thin black cheroot and lit it. “And now to business. You’ll find a map in that locker, Paul, as well as a false bottom, under which are a couple of machine pistols and half a dozen grenades. It seemed like a good idea.”
The map unfolded to show the Camargue in detail, and not only the several mouths of the Rhone, but every lagoon, every sandbank, every waterway.
“You can’t go too much by this,” Malik said. “The action of the tide and the current from the river combine pretty forcefully. A sandbank can be there one day and gone the next, and some of the waterways can silt up just as quickly. We shouldn’t have too much trouble, though. L’Alouette only draws two or three feet.”
“And Hellgate? Have you managed to pinpoint it on the map?” Darcy asked.
“Indeed I have. See, just a little on the Marseilles side of the Pointe du Norde. Three or four miles inland is the village of Châtillon. Hellgate is marked there, a couple of miles northeast of the village.”
Chavasse found it at once, an island in a lagoon that was shaped like a half-moon. “Have you managed to find out anything of the place or Montefiore?’
“Naturally, I’ve been mainly restricted to Marseilles because of the time element, but I’ve managed to produce some useful information. The house is about seventy years old. Built in the nineties by a Russian novelist called Kurbsky, who didn’t like the czar and made it obvious. His novels had quite a vogue at the time in America and Europe generally, and he became a wealthy man. He came across the Camargue on a visit to a bull farm in the area and decided to stay. He had the house built where it was because he had an obsession with privacy. It’s a wooden building and very Russian in style.”
“What happened to him?”
“He returned home after the Revolution—a grave error. He didn’t like Lenin any more than he did the czar, only this time he couldn’t get out. He died in 1925, or was killed off. None of this required any genius, by the way. There is an excellent library in Marseilles. I had a friend in the provincial land-records office telephone through to Arles to see who owns the place now. It was used as a base by German troops during the war. Afterward, it was empty until four years ago, when it was purchased by someone named Leduc.”
“Leduc?” Chavasse frowned.
“That was the name on the register.”
Chavasse nodded slowly. “All right, I’d better fill you in on the details, then you know where you stand.”
When he had finished, Malik looked thoughtful. “A strange business. This man Rossiter, for example. On the one hand, a bungling amateur who leaves himself wide open. On the other, a ruthless, cold-blooded killer without the slightest scruples.”
“And Ho Tsen?”
“Nasty—very nasty. What’s a real pro doing mixed up with people like that?”
“That’s what we’ve got to try and find out,” Chavasse said. “Although I’ve got my ow
n ideas on that subject. You know how difficult it is for the Chinese where espionage is concerned. The Russians don’t have anywhere near the same trouble because they can pass off their own people as nationals of most other countries. The Chinese obviously can’t do that, which explains why they’re willing to use a man like Rossiter, amateur or no amateur. Mind you, that still doesn’t explain how someone like Montefiore fits in.”
Malik nodded. “And what happens afterward?”
“Elimination—total and absolute.”
“And the girl,” Darcy put in. “What about her?”
“If we can, we get her out.”
“But only if we can?”
“Exactly. Now let’s get going. With most of the afternoon left, we can get a hell of a lot done before nightfall. Agreed, Jacob?”
Malik nodded. “I’ll take her out of the harbor. I know what I’m doing. With this engine, we should make it in a little over three hours, allowing for the weather, of course, which I must say doesn’t look too good.”
He went out on deck and Chavasse followed him. He stood at the rail, looking back at Marseilles, as they moved out to sea. An old city—they had all been here. Phoenician, Greek, Roman. Beyond Cape Croisette, the sky was dark and ominous, and as they lifted to meet the swell from the open sea, rain spotted the deck in great heavy drops.
FROM the sea, the Camargue was a line of sand dunes drifting into the distance, and as they moved in, great banks of reeds and marsh grass lifted out of the water as if to greet them. With them came the heavy, pungent odor of the marshes compounded of salt and rotting vegetation and black gaseous mud, a smell that hinted at a darker, more primeval world, a place that time had bypassed.
The bad weather had not developed as expected and the rain had held off except for intermittent showers. As they moved in toward the land, Malik once more took the wheel and Chavasse and Darcy stood at the rail.
A half dozen white horses stood on a sandbank and watched them as they went by, and beyond, hundreds of flamingos paced through the shallows, setting the air aflame with the glory of their plumage.
“What happens now, Paul?” Malik asked. “Do we stop at the village or keep going?”
“No harm in calling in,” Chavasse said. “You can visit the local store, see what you can find out. Darcy and I had better stay in the background, just in case.”
“All right.” Malik nodded. “To pass through without stopping would probably engender an unhealthy interest about our identity and business anyway. Small communities are the same the world over.”
And Châtillon was certainly that: two primitive wooden jetties standing just out of the water, an assortment of small boats and a couple of dozen houses. Malik took L’Alouette to the extreme end of one of the jetties and Chavasse tied up. Darcy stayed below.
The Pole limped away and Chavasse lounged in the stern, fiddling with a fishing rod, part of the general equipment Malik had provided. There didn’t seem to be a great deal of activity on shore. About fifty yards away, a man worked on a boat, and two old men sat on the other jetty mending wildfowling nets.
Malik returned in fifteen minutes, carrying a paper bag loaded with various provisions. “Typical French provincials,” he said, as Chavasse helped him over the rail. “Suspicious as hell of all strangers, but wanting to know every last detail of your business.”
“And what did you tell them.”
“That I was from Marseilles with a friend to do some bird-watching and a little fishing. As I told you before, they get people like that in here all the time.”
“And they accepted your story?”
“Completely. It was an old woman in her seventies and her idiot son. I got out the map and asked her where there was a good place to tie up for the night, which gave me an excuse to put my finger on Hellgate amongst other places.”
“What was her reaction?”
“Nothing very exciting. It’s private. Nice people, but they don’t encourage visitors.”
“Fair enough,” Chavasse said. “Let’s get moving. It’ll be dark soon.”
Thunder rumbled menacingly in the distance, and Malik pressed the starter as Chavasse cast off. Darcy didn’t come on deck until they were well away from the village and proceeding along a narrow channel, reeds pressing in on either hand.
Chavasse scrambled up on top of the cabin and opened the map. At first it was relatively simple to chart a course, but it became progressively more difficult the deeper into the marshes they went.
They had deliberately avoided staying with the principal waterway that gave direct access to Hellgate and kept to the northeast, so that in the end, they were approaching it from the rear.
It was almost dark when they turned into a small lagoon, and he called softly, “Okay, we’ll make this do.”
Malik cut the motor and Darcy heaved the anchor over the side into eight or nine feet of water. Suddenly, it was quiet except for the croaking of bullfrogs and the occasional stirring of a bird in the thickets.
“How far?” Darcy asked.
“Quarter of a mile, no more,” Chavasse said. “We’ll go on in the rubber boat at first light and take a look at the place.”
“An interesting prospect,” Malik said.
“Oh, it should be that, all right.”
Above them, thunder cracked the sky wide open, and as darkness fell, rain fell with it in a sudden drenching downpour that sent them running to the shelter of the cabin.
HELLGATE
It was a cold gray world that Chavasse stepped into when he went on deck at four-thirty on the following morning. Rain hammered into the waters of the marsh with a thousand voices and yet life stirred out there in the gloom. Birds called and wild geese lifted into the rain.
He was wearing waterproof nylon waders and a hooded anorak and a pair of binoculars hung around his neck. Darcy Preston joined him, wearing a similar outfit, and was followed by Malik, who sheltered under a large black umbrella.
“The last place God made.” The Pole shuddered. “I’d forgotten there was such a time of day.”
“Good for the soul, Jacob.” Chavasse hauled in the dinghy. “We shouldn’t be long—a couple of hours at the most. I just want to size things up, that’s all.”
“Just make sure you know how to find your way back,” Malik said. “It’s not too easy in a place like this.”
Darcy Preston took the oars and pulled away, and in a few moments L’Alouette had faded into the murk. Chavasse used the map and compass and charted a course for Hellgate that took them in a straight line through mud and reeds and narrow waterways, penetrating deeper and deeper into a lost world.
“This is how it must have seemed at the beginning of time,” Darcy said. “Nothing’s changed.”
There was a rustle in the reeds on their left, they parted, and a young bull plowed through. He stopped in the shallows and watched them suspiciously.
“Just keep going,” Chavasse said. “That’s a fighting bull with a pedigree as long as your arm. They don’t take kindly to strangers.”
Darcy pulled harder and the bull faded from view. “I certainly wouldn’t like to be on foot with one of those things on my tail,” he said. “What in the name of good sense are they doing running around loose?”
“This is where they raise them. This is bull country, Darcy. They just about worship the damn things. We’re the interlopers, not the bulls.”
They emerged into a large lagoon, and the towers of the house loomed out of the mist fifty yards away. Chavasse made a quick gesture and Darcy pulled into the shelter of the reeds on the right. There was a patch of high ground beyond and they beached the dinghy and got out. Chavasse crouched and focused the binoculars.
As Malik had said, the house was very Russian in style and constructed of wood, with a four-story tower at each end and a verandah at the front. The whole was surrounded by pine trees that had probably been specially planted when it was first built, but what had originally been the garden was now an overgrown jun
gle.
There was something curiously false about the place. It was too much like the real thing—a film set for a Hollywood version of a Chekhov play.
Chavasse couldn’t see the landing stage, which presumably was on the other side. From an approach point of view, the house couldn’t have had a better strategic situation. The lagoon was half-moon shaped and about a hundred yards wide and two hundred long. There was no possibility of an approach under cover during daylight.
He passed the binoculars to Darcy. “What do you think?”
The Jamaican had a look and shook his head. “I don’t see how anyone could get any closer during daylight without being spotted.”
At that moment, a dog barked and two men came running round the corner of the house. They jumped into view when Chavasse focused the binoculars—two Chinese men, each clutching an assault rifle. The dog joined them a moment later, an Alsatian who ran backward and forward, rooting in the undergrowth.
“I don’t know what he’s looking for, but he won’t get much of a scent in this rain, that’s for certain,” Darcy said.
“I wouldn’t be too sure.” Chavasse watched intently through the binoculars. “It takes a lot to fool a German shepherd.”
There was a sudden commotion over on the right, a heavy splashing, as something forced its way through the reeds. At first Chavasse thought it might be another bull, but he pulled out the Walther PPK just in case. There was a groan of pain, then a splash followed by a cry for help in French.
Chavasse and Darcy pushed through the reeds and emerged on the other side of the sandbank, as a head broke the water in the channel beyond and a hand clutched feebly at air.
Chavasse plunged forward, the water reaching to his chest, and grabbed for the outstretched hand as the man went under again. Their fingers met and he went back slowly, the thick black bottom mud reluctant to let him go.
Darcy gave him a hand and they laid him on his back in the rain, a thin, gray-haired emaciated man of seventy or so. He wore pyjama pants and a sleeveless vest and his body was blue with cold. His eyes rolled wildly, he gibbered with fear, then passed out.
