by Marc Olden
De Gaulle’s political ambitions and the ruthless determination of his supporters had given the Corsicans a lot of political influence, and the American people were paying for this with blood and money every day of their lives.
“You are the cynical one, John,” said Craven, leaning back in his black leather chair and placing both hands behind his head. Bolt was a top agent, perhaps D-3’s best, but he needed someone to ride hard on him. Craven wouldn’t admit it, but Bolt might be right, though why tell him and make the bastard more self-righteous than he already was?
“Been through it before,” said Bolt, standing up and yawning. He’d had some bad experiences dealing with French police on narcotics cases. Not all French cops were soft, though. Some were good, smart, tough, shrewd as a hungry fox, and damn nice guys to work with. They didn’t like dope pushers or their important friends, and these guys fought a lonely battle every day of their lives.
Guys like Bolt’s friends Jean-Paul Lamazère, a likable son-of-a-bitch, pleasant as a sunshiny day, the kind of man who’d smile as he shot your dick off; and his buddy Roger Dinard, small, quiet, with a round head and a thick black moustache he was always getting into his food.
Good guys. Straight guys. Not many like them working in France.
“All right,” said Craven, taking charge before Bolt ran away with the meeting. “Let’s say we made a small oversight about Alain Lonzu and his friends. I can also assume his brother, the Count, will be on the dock to greet him, too. They are a close-knit family.”
Oversight my ass, thought Bolt. You came close to fucking up. Aloud he said, “Yeah, by now I’m sure the Count knows the boat’s sailed. Those men we killed, sailors from the La Rochelle, they came on strong. Grenades, guns. Yeah, you can bet they have the word from the Count, maybe Remy Patek, too. Bring our boys back from overseas or else.”
Craven nodded. It both annoyed and fascinated him to see Bolt’s mind work. Bolt was usually out in front of everyone, even Craven on occasion, and that was annoying. When it came to expecting the worst of people and being right about it every time, no one was better at that than Bolt. It was Bolt who was fond of saying that everybody in the drug world lies, including the good guys.
Craven didn’t like to admit that was true.
“You’ve got something in mind,” said Craven. “Let’s hear it.” He was prepared to dislike it, but instinctively he knew it would make sense, because Bolt was good at screwing people he didn’t like, and at the moment he didn’t like Alain Lonzu. An agent had been killed, blown apart by a grenade, and Craven, along with Bolt and everyone in the department, didn’t like that at all.
So you put out your own particular contract on the person who did it, which is to say you went looking and kept looking until you found him.
“I’d like to fly over to Paris and go undercover,” said Bolt, his eyes sweeping the room as if daring any of the men to stand in his way. “I speak French and I’ve got a hunch about this thing.”
He paused, letting the silence draw them all in, making sure his audience was on their toes. The seven men all looked at him and waited.
Showtime, thought Bolt. “My hunch is that Remy Patek isn’t gonna like his brother, Claude, getting choked to death, so he’s gonna be out looking for Alain. Remy’s also got an interest in that four million, which could be anywhere—on the ship, or hidden—because the last time I saw Alain, he didn’t have a pot to piss in. The Count, bless him, will want to keep Alain alive, at least until he hears his side of the story.”
“And hears about the money,” added Craven.
Bolt nodded. “Yeah, I go along with that. Alain’s the key. Now, I also think that Alain, who was supposed to meet Chester Dumas in New York, but didn’t, had a good reason for meeting him here in Washington. I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems to me that Alain had other business here, like maybe Mr. X at the Justice Department. Remember that little rumor we’ve been hearing but haven’t been able to prove?”
The men in the room reacted in different ways, nodding their heads in recognition of a possible truth or taking a deep breath while deciding whether to go along with Bolt or sit back and see Craven’s reaction.
“Go on,” said Craven. A couple of men in the room translated that as: “You have enough rope to hang yourself.”
“I think Alain’s important enough to go for, but without telling the French about it—”
Craven interrupted. “Now, you wait a minute, Bolt, we can’t—”
“We can!” shouted Bolt, “because Vanders is dead. That’s why we can. Now, hear me out, please. O.K.? Cool. Now, Alain’s worth grabbing, for Vanders’ death, and you know as well as I do that we got to come back hard for the four million, for this Mr. X, for information about their heroin-smuggling routes, for information about the two hundred keys they’re bringing in for Dumas soon. That’s the last thing they think we’ll do: sneak in and grab the bastard and squeeze him until he talks. I—”
“Stupid,” said Craven, tossing his pencil on the desk and frowning. Sneaking into a country and grabbing a major heroin trafficker. Stupid. And yet, there was something beautifully sneaky about it, something that appealed to the bastard in Craven, who never liked losing and who wanted to win at all costs. The Corsicans had just shoved D-3’s face in a toilet bowl. That was embarrassing.
“Craven, we’ve talked about it before. We’ve had funny things happen with a couple of cases here involving Corsicans. Witnesses suddenly losing their memories, and the opposition’s lawyers coming into court too prepared and walking out with smiles on their fat faces. I think Lonzu was here to talk with somebody big, and we have got to put that somebody out of business in a hurry.”
Leaning over Craven’s desk, Bolt pounded it, his face red with anger, knowing that he had to come on strong and quick before Craven had time to think about whether or not this was the “correct” thing to do. Fuck the “correct” thing. Bolt wanted Alain in a hurry, before big brother had a chance to stash him away, before Remy Patek got to him and started slicing off his cubes with a dull knife for killing his brother.
Craven’s smile was cold, and even before he spoke, Bolt knew the bastard was going to give him only part of what he wanted. “All right, Bolt. You seem determined to take a vacation, so here’s how you’ll go about it: you’ve got five days, no more. Five days is how long it’ll take the La Rochelle to reach France. You’ll fly over immediately and get started. I assume you plan to use your French police friends, am I correct?” He stopped talking, pressing his palms together as though in prayer, placing his folded hands under his chin. Ready to pounce, thought Bolt.
“Yeah. I’ll work with Lamazère and Dinard. But five days! The boat won’t—”
“That’s all the time you’ll have. Find out where you think he’ll be!” Craven’s voice was sharp, snapping through the room like steel breaking in half. Now he was playing boss, moving confidently over ground he knew well. Instinctively Craven knew when to back off and when to move in. Now he was moving in, taking charge, and letting Bolt know it.
“Five days. Find out the hole you think he’ll be crawling into. After five days, you break cover, introduce yourself to the proper authorities, and work through channels.” He paused, letting seconds of silence hang in the air, then added, “You break cover in five days. Out in the open, understand?” Craven was sure of himself, his voice reeked of it.
There’s a line you don’t cross, thought Bolt, no matter had bad you like to have your way. When you work for somebody else, sooner or later they give you a knee in the balls just to remind you who’s the chief and who’s the Indian. O.K., O.K., you black-suited, black-hearted bastard. Five days.
He smiled. “Five days.” He didn’t mean the smile, and he and Craven both knew it.
“Fine. We understand each other. What’s your cover, anything you’ve used before?”
“Yeah. Buyer for a black mob. Not many blacks speak French, do they, Weaver?” Bolt looked at the big, paunchy
black agent, who gave him a smile so small it was almost invisible, shrugging his shoulders as if to say, “Who the fuck knows or cares?”
“That’s how I’m working it. Buyer for a black mob, advance man, because I speak French and my employers don’t. I’m in France looking for stuff in a hurry. I know about Alain Lonzu through my black contacts here, and the blacks speak highly of him, so that’s why I’m in France, to meet him or some of his people and make a buy.”
Craven, eyes on the desk, hands still folded and under his chin, nodded in approval. “How are you getting in?”
“Lamazère and Dinard. They can get me started. There are people, cafés, places where the Corsicans meet. They’re big on cafés and nightclubs, and Lamazère and Dinard know who the couriers, drivers, front men, girlfriends are. I figure to move in quick, grab Alain or find out his hiding place, and be gone before they know I’m there.”
“You’ll need money. If you carry big money over there, you don’t get asked many questions.”
Bolt nodded. Good point. “Fifty.” Meaning fifty thousand dollars. “I don’t want to carry it with me, in case customs gives me a good toss and spreads the word. Have the American embassy deposit it in a French bank for me. I’ll withdraw it when I get there. Be best if somebody just walks into the bank unofficial like, with some kind of phony story or other, and just dumps it there. Use the name Joe Belli, under the company name, uh, Liberty Incorporated. Nobody will know the difference.”
Craven nodded. So far he had no objections.
Bolt thought, Maybe I can get out of this meeting with almost everything I want. Almost. Jesus, only five days. That might not be enough time to get in, follow a trail, and grab Alain. Frankly, all I want to do is get little brother to talk. I don’t care if he ends up dead.
“You’ll need help from this end,” said Craven. “Want Kramer?”
Bolt smiled. “Better believe it.” Kramer, a black agent, worked out of New York and was one of Bolt’s favorite people. Kramer. Street-smart and cool, together and tough, a former schoolteacher in a southern all-black school, teaching six subjects for five thousand dollars a year until he decided he could do a lot better, and should, before he got much older.
Yeah, my man K. will do just fine. Gotta tell him he’ll be a big New York dope man and he’s getting a trip to Paris out of it. He’ll dig it.
“Maybe Masetta, too,” said Bolt. Masetta was also out of New York, a short, stocky Italian agent who laughed a lot, lived in Brooklyn with a wife and three kids, and who hated Italian food but loved women with big legs. Two good agents, two good men.
If Bolt had to put his ass on the line—that was the name of the game in undercover work—then he couldn’t think of two better men to back him up. There were more details to be worked out of course, and Bolt had to telephone Paris and speak to Lamazère and Dinard, to let them know he was coming and to keep quiet about it.
But five days! Not enough time. He knew it. Just not enough time. But it would have to do, because Craven wouldn’t budge from some things, and this seemed to be one of them.
“O.K., Bolt,” he said, standing up and taking a deep breath. “I’ve got to go and make arrangements for the money and iron out a few other details which you probably won’t think are too important. You wait here. I’ll be back.”
When Craven left the room, Bolt slumped back in his chair, collapsing with an aching tiredness. Fucking Craven. Five days. Asshole. What the hell did he think Bolt was going over there for, a goddamn vacation?
The other men in the room relaxed, taking out cigarettes, breathing normally, glad most of the show was over. That Bolt. Jesus, he made life exciting, didn’t he, folks? Sure.
Weaver was standing over Bolt’s chair, looking down, his fleshy brown face sad as a basset hound’s. “You look like you sittin’ bare-ass on broken glass.”
“Craven,” said Bolt. One word. As if it contained pages of detailed criticism.
“Ain’t that way, brother John.” Weaver’s voice was smooth, deep, and he spoke as though he were a father giving his kid his first lesson on how to fish. “He cares. The man cares. Five days sounds like he’s pushin’, that maybe he don’t want you to rock the boat and get some people mad. But what he sayin’ is that in five days Alain Lonzu hits France and some bad people are gonna be around him. His brother, Remy, cats like that. And some of their friends. You know what that means to you? Means your ass get blown away if you get unlucky. Means you get killed, man. Craven ain’t bein’ mean, he bein’ sensible.”
Shit. All of a sudden it hit Bolt. Craven wasn’t being a prick, he was just trying to cut down the odds on an undercover narcotics agent getting his head blown off, and Bolt was so hot and bothered he never noticed that. Shit.
Bolt exhaled. Yeah, it was true. After five days, things would be goddamn tougher than they were now, and that was bad enough. For a few minutes Bolt had had only one thing on his mind—winning.
He hadn’t thought of losing, of the danger, of the viciousness of the Corsicans.
Craven. He did his job, did it his way, and well.
So did Bolt, but sometimes neither one knew this about the other.
Bolt looked up at Weaver’s sad face. “Guess you’re right, brother man. Craven does it the only way he knows how.”
“Different strokes for different folks,” said Weaver, wondering if white people would ever learn that you couldn’t have it your way all the time.
CHAPTER 5
“STUPID BASTARD! YOU DON’T tell me, I tell you, understand? I don’t care who you are. We do what I say, you hear me?” Alain Lonzu’s throat was raw from shouting, and had he been wiser, he would have known that his anger was weakening him. At the moment, he didn’t care about anything except teaching Hubert Girons an important lesson.
Girons, the quiet, bearded captain of the La Rochelle, knew what that lesson was. He, Girons, was the ship’s captain, ruler over the men serving under him, ruler over the ship under his feet. But Alain Lonzu ruled him, and as hard as it was to accept that, Girons knew he would have to accept it and do as Lonzu wanted. Lonzu, bleeding and in pain, shouting and cursing at anyone who came near him, wanted the ship to change course.
And Girons, flat, bearded face without expression, a forty-four-year-old man who had worked his way up from cabin boy to captain of this very ship, knew that in the end he would do as Alain Lonzu ordered. He hated obeying another man on his ship, hated Lonzu for forcing him to jump in front of his own crew, as much as he hated himself for giving in to all of this.
But Girons would give in, because Count Lonzu could have him tortured and killed, a fact Alain had brought up more than once in the past few hours. So far, the ship was on course for France, making good time over a smooth, calm sea. What was not calm was the bleeding, abusive Alain Lonzu.
“I want a doctor. Can’t you see I’m in pain?” he yelled, face red and perspiring, blood-soaked bandages a dull red around his waist and right arm. There was no doctor on the small freighter. Alain yanked off the bandage around his head, exposing an ugly purple-and-red bruise on his forehead over his left eye. Pain chewed at his body like a hunger-crazed dog. His back felt as though the pain had always been there, and he could hardly move his right arm.
Captain Girons sat in a small chair across from Alain, his eyes calm. Pride made him decide to do little right now, because he knew that whatever he did or said could be overruled by this muscle-bound, screaming idiot sitting across from him at a red card table. Girons’s pride would be stepped on, something he’d had a lot of since Lonzu had come on board.
You don’t keep a crew in line if they see you pushed around, though perhaps they understood that a man who could order your death could at the very least also order you to kiss his ass. Like now.
“I’ve got friends in London,” said Alain, chest heaving with fatigue brought on by nerves, fear, and a losing battle with pain all over his body. Had the bleeding stopped? Shit, he wasn’t sure. All he was sure of was that he
was impatient to land somewhere, anywhere, get a doctor quick, and stop this fucking agony that was raking him from head to toe.
You have friends, thought Girons. Bullshit. You have people who are afraid of you or whom you have bought. You have people who are afraid of your brother. People like me, God forgive me.
“I’ll have to radio ahead,” said Girons calmly, speaking with his eyes on the bleeding man. Let him see I’m not afraid to look him in the eye.
“No you don’t,” shouted Alain, jabbing a stiff forefinger at Girons as though it were a knife. “You just do it, that’s all. Change course. You don’t have to tell France we’re not coming. I—”
“It wasn’t France I had in mind,” said Girons, still keeping his voice level and his eyes on Lonzu’s contorted, tensed face. “Though I must say we’ll have to tell them something, because they’re expecting us. What I had in mind is radioing London when we’re in range, and telling them we’re docking. We have to—”
“Like hell we have to!” Alain pounded the card table for emphasis, making it jump, making glasses and plates go up in the air and come down hard. He wanted to kill this flat-faced bastard. Maybe he would when the trip was over, but right now Girons had to run the ship and keep the crew in line.
“If we don’t, France will think we’ve got trouble and maybe send search ships looking for us. I’m sure you don’t want that. And if we don’t tell London we’re coming in, they’ll think we’ve got trouble, and we’ll be greeted by some official people you might not want to see.”
Alain Lonzu kept quiet, frowning, his pain-racked brain trying to grab on to a piece of what Girons had just said to him. Lonzu wanted things his way, but something about what the captain had just said to him made sense. Yes, it did.
Alain nodded again and again, breathing loudly, nostrils flaring, his eyes burning into Girons, who was getting nervous and tried to hide it by folding his hands in his lap and twirling his thumbs.
