60
Achor Bale fell to his knees behind a rock. Something was moving in front of him. He squinted through the dusk but was unable to make out sufficient detail to satisfy himself. Easing the Redhawk into his hand, he began to inch his way further down the hillside. Whatever was moving was making a meal of it. Small stones clattered down ahead of him and there was even a grunt as whatever it was encountered an unexpected obstacle. Not a wild goat, then, but a man. The smell of sweat and stale cigarette smoke wafted towards him on the lightly heated breeze.
Bale was just ten yards away from Macron when he finally caught sight of movement. Macron was using the night glasses to follow his superior’s tortured attempts at a soundless progress down the hillside. Bale levelled the silenced pistol on the back of Macron’s head. Then, dissatisfied with his view of the front sight, he felt around in his pocket for a small piece of white paper. He balled up the paper in his mouth, covered it in saliva, then wadded it, papier-mâché like, over the red-tipped aiming nipple, so that it stood just proud of the silencer. He lined the sight up once again with Macron’s head, then let out a long, disappointed sigh. It was quite simply too dark for accuracy.
He sheathed the Redhawk, and felt around for his leather sap. With this in hand, he began to belly his way over the rocks towards Macron, using the distant clatter Calque was still making as cover.
At the last possible moment Macron sensed something, and reared up from his position, but Bale’s first blow caught him fl at on the side of the head. Macron scythed to the ground, his arms pressed tightly against his flanks. Bale crept forward and squinted into Macron’s face. So. It wasn’t Sabir. And it wasn’t the gypsy. Lucky, now, that he hadn’t used the pistol.
Grinning, Bale felt around in Macron’s pockets until he found his cellphone. He lit up the screen and checked for messages. Then, with an angry grunt, he ground the phone into the earth with his foot. Only a policeman would encrypt his text messages and, once encrypted, make them accessible only with a password - it was like wearing a belt and braces.
He dug around further in Macron’s pockets. Money. Identity papers. A picture of a coloured girl in a white dress sporting an overbite that her parents were obviously either too tight or too poor to have rectified. Lieutenant Paul Macron. An address in Créteil. Bale pocketed the wad of material.
Reaching down, he took off Macron’s shoes and tossed them behind him into the brush. Then, taking first one foot in his hand and then the other, like a mother cat scruffing her kittens, he struck Macron a further sharp blow with the sap against each instep.
Satisfied with his work, he picked up the night glasses and monitored the surrounding hillside. He was just in time to catch sight of Calque’s spectrally pale head disappearing behind a bluff six hundred metres below him.
So what was happening? How much did the police already know about him? He had obviously underestimated them as well, for they too must have had access to the message hidden on the Virgin’s base, thanks to Sabir’s quick thinking in not making off with her when he had the chance.
Bale rather regretted knocking out Macron now. A missed opportunity. To question a man in absolute silence and on a staked-out hillside - that would have been a definite first in his experience. How could he have achieved it? Only one way to find out.
Bale eased himself out of the hide and set off towards the bluff. It was obvious that these idiotic policemen were only looking for him down in the valley - it would have taken far too much imagination for them to imagine him traversing a barren and, to all intents and purposes, impassable mountainside. This meant that he would come up with them conveniently from behind.
Every fifty metres or so he stopped and listened with his mouth open and both hands cupped behind his ears. When he was about two hundred metres from the bluff he hesitated. More cigarette smoke. Was it the same man coming back? Or was one of the paramilitaries sneaking a quick drag?
He eased himself away from the bluff and down towards the final escarpment overlooking the Sanctuary square. Yes. He could make out a man’s head highlighted against the almost luminous backdrop of the stone cladding.
Bale snaked his way down towards the man’s hideout. He had had an idea. A good idea. And he intended to test it out.
61
Calque dropped into the front seat of the control car beside Villada. Villada briefly acknowledged him with his eyes and then continued his scanning of the railway line and surrounding buildings.
When he was satisfied that nothing was moving, he put down his night glasses and turned towards Calque. ‘I thought you were staking out the hillside?’
‘I left Macron doing that.’ He squatted down in the car-well and lit a cigarette, cupping it between his two hands. ‘Want one?’
Villada shook his head.
‘The eye-man. He’s here.’
Villada raise an eyebrow.
‘Our people botched it. He used his tracker four hours ago, up near Manresa. He also killed a man back at Rocamadour. Last night. A security guard. Got his dog, too. This man is no lightweight, Villada. I’d even go so far as to say he was trained in assassination. Both the gypsy, in Paris and the security guard at Rocamadour had their necks broken. And that diversionary scene he set-up on the N20. With the man and the woman. That was masterfully done.’
‘You almost sound as if you admire him.’
‘No. I hate his guts. But he’s efficient. Like a machine. I only wish I knew what he was really after.’
Villada flashed him a smile. ‘Perhaps he’s after you?’ He reached down for the radio transceiver, as if to defuse the import of his words. ‘Dorada to Mallorquin. Dorada to Mallorquin. Do you receive me?’
The transceiver crackled and shot out a brief burst of static. Then a measured voice came through. ‘Mallorquin to Dorada. Receiving.’
‘The mark is close by. There’s a chance he may be coming in over the Sierra. Adjust your position if you have to. And shoot to kill. He murdered a French security guard last night. And that wasn’t his first. I don’t want any of our men to be next on his list.’
Calque reached across and took Villada’s arm. ‘What do you mean, coming in over the Sierra?’
‘It’s simple. If your people noted him four hours ago in Manresa and we haven’t picked up any sign of him since, I will give you odds of fifty to one that he’s coming in across the ridge. It’s what I’d do in his place. If he finds no one waiting for him, then he just sneaks in and hijacks the Virgin, hops on a train or steals a car and he’s out again. If he finds we’re here, he simply hikes back over the Sierra and we’re none the wiser.’
‘But I’ve left Macron out there. Like a sitting duck.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll send one of my men back for him.’
‘I’d appreciate that, Captain Villada. Thank you. Thank you very much.’
62
Bale was on his belly, about twenty yards from the camouflaged paramilitary, when the man suddenly turned round and began to monitor the hillside behind him through his binoculars.
So. His plan to waylay the policeman, question him and steal his clothes, was a non-starter. Tant pis. It was obvious, too, that he would no longer be able to break into the Sanctuary and check out the base of La Morenita. Wherever you found one of these concealed clowns lurking about, there were always more nearby. They operated in packs, like meerkats. The idiots obviously thought there was safety in numbers.
Bale felt around for his pistol. He couldn’t just wait there until dawn - he’d have to take action. The policeman was now outlined neatly against the luminous expanse of the Sanctuary square behind him. He would kill the man, then lose himself near the buildings. The police would figure that he’d headed back into the hills and focus their manpower in that direction. By morning, the place would be abuzz with helicopters.
But then they would almost certainly find his car. Lift it for DNA and prints. They’d have him cold. Get him on to their computers. Start up a record on him. Bale
shivered superstitiously.
The paramilitary stood up, hesitated a little and then started up the hill towards him. What the Hell was happening? Had he been seen? Impossible. The man would have let rip with his Star Z-84 sub-machine gun. Bale smiled. He had always wanted a Star. A useful little gun: 600 rounds a minute; 9mm Lüger Parabellum; 200-metre effective range. The Star would provide some compensation at least for the loss of his Remington.
Bale lay still, with his face turned to the ground. His hands - the only other part of him that might show up in the incipient moonlight - were tucked safely away underneath him, cradling the pistol.
The man was coming straight at him. He’d be looking ahead, though. Not expecting anything at ground level.
Bale took a deep breath and held it. He could hear the man breathing. Smell the man’s sweat and the waft of garlic left over from his dinner. Bale fought back the temptation to raise his head and check out exactly where the man was.
The man’s foot slid off a stone and brushed Bale’s elbow. Then the paramilitary was past him and heading up towards Macron.
Bale swivelled around on his hip. In one surge he was behind the man, the Redhawk held against his throat. ‘Drop. To your knees. No sound.’
Bale noted the sharp intake of breath. The tensing of the man’s shoulders. It was no-go. The man intended to respond.
He thrashed the man across the temple with the barrel of the Redhawk and then again across the base of the neck. Pointless killing him. He didn’t want to alienate the Spanish any more than was strictly necessary. This way they’d just resent the French for having put them in such an invidious, humiliating position. If he killed one of them, they’d sic Interpol on him, and harass him until the day he died.
He liberated the Star and then rifled the man’s pockets for anything else of use. Handcuffs. Identity papers. He was briefly tempted to take the man’s helmet transceiver but then decided that the rest of the paramilitary chameleons might be able to trace him on the back of it.
Should he revisit Lieutenant Macron? Give him another tap on the head?
No. No point. He had maybe half an hour’s start across the mountains before they cottoned on to what had happened. With luck, that would be enough. There was no way they could track him effectively in the dark - and by dawn he would be long gone. Back to Gourdon to renew acquaintance with friend Sabir.
63
‘I think you’ve had enough to drink, Alexi. You’re going to feel like Hell tomorrow.’
‘My teeth and my ribs are hurting now. The rakia is good for them. It is antiseptic.’ He slurred the word so badly that it sounded like ‘athletic’.
Sabir looked around for Yola, but she was nowhere to be seen. The wedding celebration was on its final legs, with musicians gradually dropping out either through exhaustion or inebriation, whichever came first.
‘Give me the gun. I want to shoot it.’
‘That wouldn’t be a good idea, Alexi.’
‘Give me the gun!’ Alexi grabbed Sabir by the shoulders and shook him. ‘I want to be John Wayne.’ He threw his hand out in a great arc to encompass the camp and the surrounding caravans. ‘I am John Wayne! You hear me? I am going to shout-out your lights!’
Nobody took any notice of him. Throughout the evening, at surprisingly frequent intervals, men had stood up, in a fever of alcohol and declared themselves. One had even claimed to be Jesus Christ. His wife had hurried him off to catcalls and jeering from as yet less inebriated souls. Sabir supposed this must be what the novelist Patrick Hamilton had meant when he defined the four stages of drunkenness as plain drunk, fighting drunk, blind drunk and dead drunk. Alexi was at the fighting drunk stage and clearly had a long way still to go.
‘Hey! John Wayne!’
Alexi swung around dramatically, his hands falling to his hips and to an imaginary pair of six-shooters. ‘Who asks for me?’
Sabir had already identified Gavril. Well here goes, he thought to himself. Whoever said life isn’t predictable?
‘Yola tells me you lost your balls. That the same guy who kicked out your teeth also bit your balls off.’
Alexi weaved a little, his face contorted in concentration. ‘What did you say?’
Gavril wandered closer but his eyes were elsewhere, as if part of him felt detached from whatever it was he was machinating. ‘I didn’t say anything. Yola said it. I don’t know anything about your balls. In fact I’ve always known you didn’t have any. It’s a family problem. None of the Dufontaines have balls ‘
‘Alexi. Leave it.’ Sabir put one hand on Alexi’s shoulder. ‘He’s lying. He’s trying to wind you up.’
Alexi shrugged him off. ‘Yola never said that. She never said my balls didn’t work. She knows nothing about my balls.’
‘Alexi…’
‘Then who else told me?’ Gavril threw out his arms in triumph.
Alexi glanced around, as if he expected Yola suddenly to appear from around the corner of one of the caravans and confi rm what Gavril was saying. He had a peeved expression on his face and one side of his mouth was hanging down, as if he’d suffered a minor stroke alongside his crushing by the chair.
‘You won’t find her here. I just left her.’ Gavril sniffed his fingers melodramatically.
Alexi lurched across the clearing towards Gavril. Sabir reached out one arm and swung him around, just as you would do a child. Alexi was so taken aback that he lost his footing and landed heavily on his rump.
Sabir stepped between him and Gavril. ‘Leave it off. He’s drunk. If you have a problem, you can sort it out another time. This is a wedding, not a kriss.’
Gavril hesitated, his hand hovering over one pocket.
Sabir could see that Gavril had worked himself up into thinking that he could deal with Alexi once and for all - and that Sabir’s presence between him and Alexi was not something that he had made any allowances for. Sabir felt the cold weight of the Remington in his pocket. If Gavril came at him, he would pull out the pistol and shoot a warning round at his feet. End the thing there. He certainly didn’t fancy taking a knife-thrust through the liver at this early stage in his life story.
‘Why are you talking for him, payo? Hasn’t he got the balls to talk for himself?’ Gavril’s voice had begun to lose its urgency.
Alexi was lying face down on the ground, with his eyes shut and was obviously way beyond talking to anybody. He had clearly moved from fighting drunk all the way through to dead drunk without bothering to visit blind drunk in between.
Sabir pressed home his advantage. ‘As I said - you can both sort this out another time. A wedding is certainly not the place to do it.’
Gavril clicked his teeth and gave a backwards thrust of the head. ‘All right, gadje. You tell that prick Dufontaine this from me. When he comes to the festival of Les Trois Maries, I shall be waiting for him. Sainte Sara can decide between us.’
Sabir felt as if the earth was gently rocking beneath his feet ‘The festival of Les Trois Maries? Is that what you just said?’
Gavril laughed. ‘I forget. You are an interloper. Not one of us.’
Sabir ignored the implied insult - his eyes were fixed on Gavril’s face, willing him to answer. ‘Where is that held? And when?’
Gavril turned as if to go, then changed his mind at the last moment. It was clear that he was relishing the sudden turnaround in the dynamics of the conversation. ‘Ask anyone, payo. They will tell you. The festival of Sara-e-Kali is held every year at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in the Camargues. Four days from now. On the 24th of May. What do you think we are all doing here at this piss-pot of a wedding? We are making our way south. All French gypsies go there. Even that eunuch lying next to you.’
Alexi gave a twitch, as if he had registered the insult somewhere deep inside his unconscious mind. But the alcohol proved too powerful a soporific and he began to snore.
64
‘Why John Wayne?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why John Wayn
e? Last night. At the wedding.’
Alexi shook his head in a vain attempt to clear it. ‘It was a movie. Hondo. I saw it on my grandfather’s television. I wanted to be John Wayne when I saw that movie.’
Sabir laughed. ‘Strange, Alexi. I never had you down as a film buff.’
‘Not any films. I only like cowboys. Randolph Scott. Clint Eastwood. Lee Van Cleef. And John Wayne.’ His eyes shone. ‘My grandfather, he preferred Terence Hill and Bud Spencer, but to me they weren’t real cowboys. Just Italian gypsies pretending to be cowboys. John Wayne was the real stuff. I wanted to be him so bad it gave me heartburn.’ They both fell silent. Then Alexi glanced up. ‘Gavril. He said things, didn’t he?’
‘Some.’
‘Lies. Lies about Yola.’
‘I’m glad you realise they were lies.’
‘Of course they’re lies. She wouldn’t tell him that about me. About that guy kicking me in the balls when he was tied up.’
‘No. She wouldn’t.’
‘Then how would he know? How did he get this information?’
Sabir closed his eyes in a ‘God give me patience’ sort of a way. ‘Ask her yourself. I can see her coming through the window.’
‘Vila Gana.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Does vila mean vile? Is that it?’
‘No. It means a witch. And Gana is Queen of the witches.’
‘Alexi…’
Alexi threw off his blanket dramatically. ‘Who else do you think told Gavril? Who else knew? You saw that diddikai sniffing his fingers, didn’t you?’
‘He was winding you up, you idiot.’
‘She’s broken the leis prala. She’s not lacha any more. She’s not a lale romni. I shall never marry her.’
Mario Reading - [Adam Sabir 01] Page 14
