Denis and I sat down opposite them. There were no pleasantries. We had never been friends. They belonged to a Legion long lost in the sands of Algeria; I’d never made the connection. Denis had. They smiled at him, slapped him on the shoulder.
I was almost as if I wasn’t there. They spoke only to Denis, didn’t spare a glance for me.
‘T’as les clarions?’ Denis asked.
The one opposite me lifted a black sports bag from the floor, thumped it on the table between us. Inside were two MAT-49 sub-machineguns: 9mm, heavy, old. They hadn’t been in service for almost thirty years. Denis raised an eyebrow.
‘It was all we could get at such short notice.’
I lifted one from the bag. It was a little sticky, still in its packing grease. It had never been used. Apart from the second sub-machinegun, there were a number of fully loaded magazines in the bag. More than enough for a small war. Denis pressed a bunch of euros in the man’s hand, took the MAT from me, returned it to the bag, zipped it closed, put it on the floor between his feet.
As if on cue, the shutter man returned, this time carrying a large steaming tray of food. We ate it as only Legionnaires can, helping ourselves as soon as it hit the table, shovelling it down like it was our last meal. There was no conversation, just the sound of clicking chopsticks, chewing and the occasional oath as some morsel escaped an unskilled chopstick wielder. Then the bowls were empty and it was time to go.
Marseilles was only a twenty-minute drive, so when we got back to the car we took the time to strip and check the weapons. It took a while to wipe all the grease off with the help of one of my shirts. There was no way we could test the weapons, so we each racked a few rounds through the chamber to check that everything was working, then shoved a full magazine in and put the weapons at our feet, out of sight.
Chapter 62
It was three in the afternoon by the time we’d penetrated the Marseilles traffic, nudged into the Quai de Rive Neuve. In contrast to the winter we had left behind not long before, Marseilles was positively toasty. The pavement cafes were full of tourists taking advantage of the afternoon sun. A forest of masts filled the marina to our left as we crawled towards our destination.
At the end of the marina we turned into Rue Glandèves, the buildings closed in around us. We drove past Le Melo-Man. It was dark inside: closed. It wasn’t the sort of place that was open at three in the afternoon. There was no parking outside; I had to go around the block before I found a spot around the corner. We sat in the car for a while, deciding what to do. I suggested that I walk past to have a closer look while Denis waited in the car.
I was about to open my door when Denis grabbed my arm, ‘They are here.’
‘Where?’
Denis was staring intently into the rear-view mirror. I didn’t want to attract attention by looking, so while Denis watched them I reached down for the MAT-49 and laid it on my lap. Denis pointed out two men as they passed us. They had a street-gangster swagger, that overconfidence that comes from being a big fish in a small pond. We waited for them to round the corner, then quickly got out the car and followed.
It was probably a few degrees too warm for our winter coats, but they were excellent cover for the MAT-49’s. The sub-machineguns had wire collapsible stocks that slid down the side of the weapon, making them easy to conceal under the bulky coats.
As we rounded the corner, we saw the two men enter Le Melo-Man. We stopped for a moment to go over our plan. It wasn’t much of a plan really. Normally a snatch operation would involve days of reconnaissance, hours of meticulous planning: we had minutes. In the end we decided on the bold approach, we’d walk in and see what happened.
Denis entered first: they thought he was dead, so the sight of him would get us the biggest shock value. It worked. The two who had passed us in the street were sitting at the bar, both staring at Denis in disbelief. We whipped out the MAT’s, covered them. Up ‘till then it went quite well, but started to unravel quite quickly. They weren’t the only two in the place. Someone walked out the kitchen, saw our little tableau, bolted back in before we could do anything. The distraction was enough to embolden the two at the bar. The one on the left reached for a gun and Denis shot him with a quick burst from his MAT. The noise was deafening. We wanted at least one of them alive, so I shoulder charged the other, bowled him over before he could pull his gun out. Then the fun really started.
There was an explosion from the kitchen. I glanced across, saw the third man standing in the doorway with a shotgun at his hip. Smoke curled from the barrel. Denis dived for cover behind the bar. I couldn’t do the same because I was still fully engaged with the man I had knocked over. He was winded, but hadn’t given up yet. I got an arm free, punched him once in the throat, pulled the MAT to bear and ripped off a burst towards the kitchen. It went all over the place, sent Mr Shotgun to ground. My guy grunted. I punched him in the face; he went limp. I pushed him to one side, got a good grip on the MAT, called for Denis to cover me.
We didn’t have much time. The shooting would have attracted a lot of attention; and in that part of town the police were never far away. I fired a burst through the door and charged through, hoping to keep anyone in there down long enough to stop them shooting me as I barged into the kitchen.
It worked. The kitchen was empty. A shotgun lay on the floor next to the stove, blood smears pointed to a back door. There wasn’t time to take up the chase. We had one man, and that’s all we needed. It wasn’t about revenge, it was about information.
Back at the bar I found Denis securing the man I had dropped. He was coming back to life, writhing on the floor, gasping for breath. Denis slipped a pair of flex cuffs over his wrists, secured them behind his back. We lifted him between us, frog-marched him to the door.
‘The other one?’ I asked Denis.
‘Dead. Yours?’
‘Got away.’
Denis raised an eyebrow. He might still be a threat. We tucked the MAT’s under our coats and emerged into the street. A crowd had begun to form already. They were all at a respectful distance, moved back as we came out. A growing wail of sirens signalled the imminent arrival of the police. We gripped our man tightly and marched purposefully towards the Audi. Nobody stopped us. We bundled him into the back seat, pulled a pillowcase over his head. Denis climbed in with him while I did the driving.
I headed away from the old port, kept away from the main thoroughfares, stayed in the warren of back streets that characterised theDeuxième Arrondissement. Despite the growing cacophony of sirens, we never saw a police car and were soon back on the A50 and on our way back to Aubagne.
Chapter 63
Denis pushed our captive down onto the floor of the car, stuck the barrel of the sub-machinegun into the nape of his neck to keep him there. He groaned now and then, received a boot in the ribs for the disturbance.
Denis directed me to the Parc Jean Moulin, not far from the Hong Kong Restaurant, where we’d had lunch. I knew of it, but had never been there before. There wasn’t much time for wandering around in parks in the Legion, and when I had time off I’d used it productively: drinking.
We pulled into a small parking lot over the road from the park entrance. Ours were the only tyre tracks marring the snow. We pulled the Corsican from the back. He groaned, but didn’t resist; so much so, that Denis and I had to carry him between us over the small bridge and across the road to the park entrance. The gates were closed, locked. Denis let go our charge, left him with me, scaled the gate, dropped down on the other side. The Corsican’s legs buckled, I struggled to keep him on his feet. I had a bad feeling about him, but there wasn’t time for anything but to lift him as best I could and pitch him over the top of the gate. He landed with a thud on the opposite side. I scrabbled over, helped Denis drag the limp form away from the gate, away from prying eyes.
When we were safely out of sight, we sat our captive up against a tree. Denis pulled the pillowcase from his head. He looked at us with a fixed stare that only a de
ad man can manage.
‘Merde.’ Denis exclaimed, slapped the corpse in the face. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t flinch.
I checked the carotid, no pulse. But he was still warm. Freshly dead.
‘What the fuck did you drop ‘im on ‘is ‘ead for?’ Denis asked accusingly.
‘Why didn’t you catch him?’
Denis ignored me. ‘’E might ‘ave‘ad information for us. Now ‘e is useless.Putain de bordel!’ He strode away down one of the narrow trails cursing and kicking ineffectually at the snow.
I crouched down in front of the corpse and began going through his clothes. When I withdrew my hand from his jacket, I got a clue as to how he had died, my hand was covered in blood. The thick bomber jacket he was wearing had hidden the wound. He must have been hit by a ricochet in the bar, slowly bled out on the way to Aubagne. The fall might have finished the job, but it wasn’t the main cause. I didn’t think that it would make Denis any happier. I wiped the blood off on the jacket, continued searching. There wasn’t much in his pockets. A wallet contained a driver’s licence in the name of Andria Peretti and a wadge of two-hundred euro notes, probably payment for Denis’ ‘assassination.’
‘What did you find?’ I hadn’t hear Denis return, jumped at the sound of his voice.
‘Not much. A wallet and driving licence; unless you count the condoms.’
‘’Oo was ‘e?’
‘Andria Peretti. One of the brothers.’
Denis noticed the blood smears on my hand, raised an eyebrow.
‘We must have shot him in Marseilles.’
He shrugged. It didn’t matter anymore. He was dead, no longer a useful source of information.
‘What now?’ I asked.
Denis looked around for a place to dispose of the body. But the ground was still frozen solid. Even if we could dig through the frozen crust, we would leave unmistakeable evidence of his final resting place.
Suddenly Denis turned, marched towards the gate. ‘Bring ‘im.’
I slung the corpse over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift, followed.
‘Where are we going?’
‘You will see.’ He answered. I dropped the body into the boot of the Audi, followed Denis’ directions out of Aubagne, towards the coast. He would not give up the destination, no matter how hard I tried; but behind the stony façade there was the hint of a smirk: he clearly was very proud of his solution and was looking forward to the reveal.
We headed off along the toll road towards La Ciotat, but before long Denis told me to take the exit towards Cassis. The narrow road dropped sharply towards the town, as we reached the outskirts Denis had me make a left and we climbed back up the escarpment overlooking the town. I gave up trying to discover our destination and drove on in silence, mesmerised by the headlights lighting the increasingly windy road.
Then Denis put a hand on my arm, ‘Stop ‘ere.’
I pulled over to the side of the road. We hadn’t seen a car for a couple of kilometres. I tried to open the door, but he stopped me, kept his hand on my arm. It was already quite dark, but there was just enough light from the rising moon to make out our surroundings. The ground fell away to our left to a copse of trees nestled in the crook of a small valley. On our right there was a small boulder-strewn berm. It didn’t seem like the perfect place to dispose of a body.
‘Switch off the lights.’ Denis said. I did as he said, killed the engine. It was deathly quiet. Finally satisfied that we would not be disturbed, Denis climbed out. I helped him lift the body from the boot. At first we went in opposite directions. I’d assumed that he wanted to leave it in the woods, but he pulled towards the berm. I followed.
The berm was low, only a couple of metres high, but as we ascended, the wind freshened. At the top it was howling. I’d been concentrating on not dropping the legs, looking down at my feet. When I looked up I nearly shat myself. We were at the edge of a massive sea cliff. Denis saw the shock on my face, laughed.
‘You like my idea?’
I couldn’t fault it. We used some of the climbing rope to tie a large rock to the body, pitched it over the edge. Judging by the clattering, it hit the side a few times on the way down. We waited for a while, but didn’t hear a splash. For a moment I had a vision of some poor sailor anchored off the cliff, just settling down for his evening meal when… I tried to put it out of my mind. Odds were that the body was already at the bottom. We tossed the MAT-49’s over too. Time to get out of France and back home to Czech.
‘Do you want me to drop you off in Marseilles?’ I asked Denis.
He looked at me as if I was mad, ‘What for?’
‘Don’t you want to go home?’
‘We still ‘aven’t found out ‘oo is after us.’
He had a point. ‘So now what?’
‘We go to Prague.’
‘And?....’
Denis shook his head. ‘Where do think the assassins ‘ave been getting their information?’
I hadn’t dwelled on it much until then. I’d realised that Mossad was behind all the attacks in one way or another, assumed that they’d been following us, intercepting our calls.
‘It could only be Bill… or Radka… I suppose.’
‘Or…’
‘Not Martina!’
‘Why not?’
‘I’d only just started going out with her.’
He looked at me from behind hooded brows. ‘When exactly’
I thought about it for a moment. I wasn’t happy with the answer I came up with. ‘The day I met Jahangir at u Černého Vola. That’s the day she first stayed over, I think.’
His eyebrows were triumphal arches.
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ I protested. ‘She was in hospital when I was attacked in Johannesburg.’
‘And you did not tell her where you were going?’
I hesitated. ‘I don’t think so. I can’t remember.’
‘Hmm.’
I rushed to her defence, ‘What about the attack outside the casino? She was poisoned.’
‘You said yourself that you caught them by surprise. It was maybe an accident. They didn’t mean to stab her. The poison was for you.’
‘But she didn’t know that you were going to Roquebillière. How did they find you there?’
‘They might ‘ave followed me.’
Bill knew you were here, Bob too. He said that he didn’t tell anyone, but…’ I was tired, my addled brain couldn’t process it all properly.
‘It’s Bill. I’m sure it’s Bill’
‘Why?’ Denis asked.
‘I don’t know. But the CIA’s been watching you until recently; they could have got at you any time. It was only when I asked Bill to find you that you got the call to come to Prague. It must be Bill.’
‘But why? ‘E was going to make a lot of money from the deal. Why would ‘e risk that?’
‘Maybe he’s working for Mossad. We need to get back to Prague to find out.’
Chapter 64
I punched Prague into the Audi’s GPS. It led us back, past Aubagne, before taking us north towards the German border. Denis fell asleep almost immediately. We were barely past Aix-en-Provence when my sleep monster began its assault. At first it was just micro-naps; I’d feel the rumble of the cars tyres as they left the tarmac, wake up, shake my head: press on. As the naps became more frequent, I cracked open the window, shoved my face into the icy blast. Eventually even the air wasn’t waking me, just bringing me close to frostbite.
I passed through Lyon singing Legion marching songs at the top of my voice. Neither the cold nor the cacophony stirred Denis. He lay huddled in his seat like a dead man. I envied him, started a one-sided conversation with him when even the singing was starting to lose its effect. ‘So you think Martina’s a spy you bastard? What’s she ever done to you? You ungrateful miserable shit. You lazy fucker. You just lie there and sleep while I do all the work. Don’t you worry; I’ll drive through the night while you dream of rent boys and beer. Fuck you fucker…�
�� On and on, over and over until, without warning, a flaming dinosaur ran into the road in front of me. I swerved, but I was too late, braced myself for the impact… It disappeared. I knew then that it was time to stop before I killed us.
Fortunately there was a lay-by a little further on. I pulled in there. It was almost midnight. I intended to buy a six-pack of Red Bull, fill the tank, press on; but the sight of the Ibis Besançon Hotel shattered my resolve. I parked the Audi outside, woke Denis.
He yawned, stretched, rubbed his eyes and asked, ‘Why ‘ave we stopped?’
I wanted to punch him. ‘Fuck you. I can’t stay awake any more. We’re about a hundred and fifty kilometres from the German border; you drive.’
He looked around, saw the hotel, ‘I am too tired. Look, there’s a ‘otel. Why don’t we stay there, continue in the morning?’
‘No, I’ve got a better idea. Let’s book into the hotel.’
We took a double room – two single beds. When we got to the room, Denis wanted to talk, I think he tried to have a conversation, but the sight of the bed did something to my brain; I fell asleep immediately.
When I woke the next morning I was still fully dressed. Denis has tossed the coverlet over me; he wasn’t in the room. I was showering when he returned with a large pot of coffee and a basket of croissants.
‘Eh, roastbeef. You better hurry or there will be nothing left.’
I knew he wasn’t joking, cut the shower short, emerged from the bathroom still dripping to claim my share of the breakfast.
‘So ‘ow are we going to be sure ‘oois thecafteur?’ Denis asked.
‘I don’t know.’ I was feeling guilty about suspecting Martina. But it was something that had to be faced, so we sat for the next few hours going over various plans, none of which was very promising. The coffee was stone cold when I suddenly had an idea. ‘What day is it?’
Denis looked at his watch, ‘Friday. Why?’
Elements of Risk: A Noah Stark Thriller Page 31
