Once more, Mack Bedford set off for the secret cove where he and Tommy had caught the bluefish. And there he once more dialed the number in Marseille. It was 10:45 now, not his call time in the French seaport, and the phone was answered by the machine.
“This is Morrison calling from London for Raul,” he said.
Instantly, the familiar voice came on the line. “That was quick,” said Raul. “We usually consider that a good sign.”
“Raul, I want you to listen very carefully. First I am going to suggest a plan and a payment. And then I am going to tell you the name of the target. Is that agreeable?”
“Perfectly.”
“Okay. This is going to require a recce and a plan of action that suits both of us. While you complete it, I am going to leave a payment of fifty thousand U.S. dollars with a lawyer in Geneva. When you have had time to consider the project, you can let me have the name of the man who will collect it. Meanwhile, the man we wish to eliminate is named Henri Foche. He is believed to be—”
“HENRI FOCHE! You have to be joking! That’s like a contract on that Russian billionaire who owns Chelsea Football Club in London. He’s got more security than the U.S. president. It’d take an army.”
“Bullshit,” snapped Mack. “He’s not a head of state. He’s just a politician running for office in a pain-in-the-ass European republic that is probably going broke.”
Raul, a.k.a. Reggie Fortescue, laughed despite himself. “Not quite, Mr. Morrison. Henri Foche is going to become president of France. Trust me. And I have no idea which banana republic you are representing, or why. But I can tell you this. I can think of no more difficult person in the whole of France to kill and then escape afterward.”
“Well, will you take it on?”
“Perhaps. But we are talking a very great deal of money.”
“We have a very great deal of money, but we’re not spending it stupidly. Gimme a price.”
“Mr. Morrison. We would not even continue this conversation for less than a two-million-dollar flat fee—win, lose, or draw. I do not know whether you quite understand. Monsieur Foche is a very popular man here in France, but he has sinister connections. He is believed to be in some way involved with the international arms business at a very high level. You know—aircraft, warships, missiles. He is surrounded by bodyguards, men of a rather unsavory type. Not officers and certainly not gentlemen. Before I speak to you again, I need to have a conference with our most experienced and professional operators.”
“I understand. By the way, where does Foche actually live?”
“He has a house in the city of Rennes. That’s in central Brittany, where he also has a political office. When he launches his campaign on behalf of the Gaullists, it will be from Rennes. But like many men of his type, he keeps an apartment somewhere in Paris.”
“When will you decide if the mission’s go?”
“Give us twenty-four hours. Call at the usual time.”
“Is the price firm? Two million?”
“Firm. If my colleagues will undertake the contract, it’s two million U.S. dollars.”
“If it’s firm, it’s agreeable.”
“Oh, one more question, Mr. Morrison. Were you in the military?”
“Why do you ask?” replied Mack.
“Civilians don’t normally ask if missions are go.”
“Let’s hope this one is. ’Til tomorrow.” Mack disconnected, ducking the question, as if it had been a bullet.
In Marseille, Raul summoned his top men, the two rough, violent former Legionnaires and the crooked lawyer Carroll. Very calmly he told them someone was offering two million U.S. dollars for a contract. At which point there were smiles all around, especially from the Legionnaires, who stood to collect four hundred thousand dollars each from a successful hit. Then he revealed the target, and all three smiles vanished. Carroll blew coffee out of his nose in an involuntary act of pure astonishment. Jean-Pierre, the Legionnaire wanted for murder, accidentally tipped over his chair when he stood up and shouted, “FOCHE? HENRI FOCHE? Even his fucking car’s bulletproof!”
Raul asked him how he could possibly know that.
Jean-Pierre, his voice still raised, said, “I’ve read stuff. Everyone’s read stuff about Foche. Jesus Christ, he’s supposed to be an arms manufacturer. His guys would probably take us all out with a fucking nuclear missile. Fuck that!”
“Does that mean you decline, Jean-Pierre?” Raul was all charm.
“Christ, no. I’ll do it for the cash. What the hell have I got to lose? In the end the cops will catch me for the guy I already killed in that bar. This way I’ll have the money to hide a lot better . . . and I’ll be able to afford a lawyer.” Jean-Pierre glanced over at Monsieur Carroll, whom he plainly hated, and muttered, “A better one than this asshole.”
Carroll ignored him, having calculated that he stood to make two hundred thousand dollars if Jean-Pierre could shoot straight.
Which brought Raul to the second Legionnaire, Ramon, who was very much the henchman and number two to the wanted Jean-Pierre. This was curious since Ramon was a huge man, exuding menace, possibly six-foot-five, fit, black-haired like a Moroccan, and a master with a knife. He just nodded and murmured, “I’m in. I’ll kill him. Just give me an address.”
“Ramon, I don’t want you to oversimplify this,” interjected Raul. “Henri Foche will have armed bodyguards with him night and day.”
“Yeah, but I’ve read shit about him. Seen pictures of him with girls in Paris. He ain’t got his guards with him when he’s fucking, right? He’ll be lucky I don’t chop his cock off.”
“Yes, er, quite,” said Raul, who had never absolutely come to terms with the sheer low-life brutality of these two former desert fighters from the French Foreign Legion. “I understand entirely. But I want you to understand the importance of stealth, cunning, and vanishing without a trace. Quite frankly, the prospect of you two chasing the stark-naked Henri Foche through Montmartre trying to chop off his cock fills me with horror. This is a big man, the most important person we’ve ever tackled. We must be professional all the way—quiet, well planned, and very quick. This Foche is not going to be easy.”
“Might even need a sniper rifle. Take him from a distance,” said Jean-Pierre. “That way no one’s going to recognize us.”
Raul nodded. He understood the danger of letting these two brain-dead killers loose and the consequences of them being caught and charged with attempted murder. One wrong sentence could bring down the entire French operation of Forces of Justice, right here in Marseille. But Raul did not think that would happen. If Jean-Pierre and Ramon were caught, they would most certainly be shot dead by Foche’s men, and dead men say very little. So far as Raul was concerned, there was much to be gained—in his case a million dollars—and almost no downside, to him at least. He wanted the mission to proceed, and he wanted Morrison’s fifty thousand dollars in expense money in order to put together a professional-looking plan of operation that would impress the paymasters in London.
He could do no more than wait for Morrison to make contact tomorrow. Three times Raul had attempted unsuccessfully to trace the call. FOJ actually had a highly advanced military tracking system (stolen) in the attic of the building. This electronic satellite transmitter could trace any incoming call from anywhere in the universe. Maybe not the precise telephone number, but certainly the area of origin, any city in the world, accurate to within a couple of hundred yards. This was achieved by sending a second satellite beam on a replica wave length from the head office in Africa and then establishing the intersecting point of the two global lines. And it never failed. Except for Morrison’s calls, when a high-pitched shriek darn near sent the operator deaf.
It was that, more than anything, that convinced Raul that this Morrison character was on the level, probably working for a government and using state funding. Not to mention this state-of-the-art telephone blocking system. If the money was good, Raul could put up with the anonymity of his c
lient.
Four hundred miles to the northwest of Marseille, in the heart of the city of Rennes, Henri Foche was looking at the newspaper. “Frowning” would be too mild a word. Henri was glowering at a front-page story that announced the burned-out wreck of a S500 Mercedes-Benz had been discovered in a deep green swamp in the middle of one of the most desolate parts of the flat, gloomy plain of Sologne, south of the Loire.
French police had called in Mercedes engineers from Germany, and they had pronounced the vehicle to be no more than eight months old. Forensic experts had been working on the car for several days in the police garages at Vierzon and believed the car may have been the one owned by the missing French missile scientist, Olivier Marchant. There was no trace of the rocket man, which was scarcely surprising since the automobile had been completely destroyed, almost certainly blown up by some kind of bomb, and it had been in the swamp for many weeks.
According to French police the vehicle was found by game wardens trying to rescue a deer from the muddy water who realized it was standing on a submerged platform. This turned out to be the hood of the Mercedes, which the wardens considered to be an unusual parking spot for a car like that.
The nationwide search for Monsieur Marchant had yielded nothing, and police said the discovery of the vehicle had not provided one single clue as to his whereabouts. A spokesman from Montpellier Munitions near Orléans, where M. Marchant worked, said, “None of us has given up hope that Olivier may return. He was a very popular member of the staff here, and is missed every day on matters of high-tech aviation.”
His widow, Janine, age thirty-four, was not called upon to identify the Mercedes, or even to see it. Last night she would say only, “I don’t think we will ever know what happened to Olivier. He called home that day to tell me he would be here for lunch, and no one ever heard from him again. The discovery of his car makes me believe even more strongly that something very terrible has happened to him.”
Henri Foche did some more glowering. “I said, ‘without a trace,’” he grated. “I did not say to put Olivier’s vehicle on the front page of every newspaper in France.”
His face betrayed a level of exasperation unusual in ordinary mortals. No one could hate quite like Henri Foche. At least no one in the free world. And right now he was perfectly willing to have both of his loyal bodyguards, Marcel and Raymond, executed without trial.
He took a knife and spread strawberry preserves on his warm croissant, fantasizing that the thin puff-pastry end was Marcel’s throat. His very pretty wife, Claudette, a former nightclub dancer, came into the room, took one look at him, and wondered whether he thought the known world was about to come to an end.
“Shut up, you stupid bitch,” he growled.
“Such charm, such gallantry,” she said. “The great Henri Foche, rude pig.”
He put down the newspaper and turned to face her. “You don’t think I have enough on my mind without the police trying to resurrect the mystery of Olivier Marchant? They’ll be at the factory again soon I imagine, asking damn fool questions. How the hell do any of us know what happened to him? He left the parking lot that day, alone in his car, seen by several staff members, and vanished.”
“Well, how come the police found the car in the swamp?” asked Claudette. “They say there’s no trace of him. So somebody must have taken him out of the car and then blown it up.”
“How the hell do you know all this?”
“Because I just saw it on the news. The car had almost been blown in half, but they’ve been looking for Olivier for weeks and still not found one trace of him.”
“Maybe some crazy thief stopped him and robbed him.”
“For a supposedly intelligent little man, you are remarkably foolish at times,” she replied. “Crazy robbers do not go around with heavy-duty transporters, blowing up Mercedes-Benzes, and then driving miles and miles away to hide the damn thing in a Sologne swamp. This crime was planned and carried out by a professional operation.”
“Okay, Madame Claudette Maigret. How do you know all that?”
“Because that’s what the police inspector just said on television. And for the first time they are treating Olivier’s disappearance as murder.”
Foche looked up sharply. “Did he say that? It’s not in the paper.”
“That’s because the stupid newspaper was printed at ten o’clock last night. The policeman was speaking on television about fifteen minutes ago in Vierzon.”
“That’s all I need. A murder inquiry involving a member of my board of directors, just as I launch my campaign for president.”
“And that’s not your only problem,” said Claudette, an edge of spitefulness in her voice. “Last night while you were out I took a phone call from that little actress you’ve been seeing in Paris. I pretended I just work here, and took her number. She would like you to call her if you are going to the city on Friday. Which of course you are.”
Foche pretended not to be listening, but Claudette had something to say. “I am prepared to tolerate your behavior because of the lifestyle you have given me. But I am not going to be humiliated. And if you become president, you will humiliate me with your endless affairs.”
“So what are you going to do? Go back to the gutter where you were when I found you? ‘Madame Foche, wife to the president of France.’ Isn’t that enough for you? Enough for any Saint-Germain whore?”
Claudette Foche was used to this. But this time she smiled and said softly, “Henri, I think you will find the shoe is on the other foot these days. If I decided to leave you, it would be a mortal blow to your chances of election. And then, of course, I could sell my story of your sex-crazed unfaithful tyranny to the nice little magazines for a very large sum of money.”
“You couldn’t give up this lifestyle—the glamour, the fame, the admiration.”
“Not only could I give it up, but I’m only thirty-eight and I’d willingly start again. Perhaps you forget these days. . . .” Claudette carefully undid the top two buttons of her blouse, turned to face him provocatively, and added, “I can attract almost any man I wish. I’m still very slim and very sexy. And you have made me acceptable in French society.”
“I guess once a whore, always a whore,” he growled.
“Perhaps,” she said, tossing back her long mane of blonde hair. “But I have never been unfaithful to you. Whereas your morals belong to an alley cat.”
At this point the telephone rang noisily on the far side of the room. “Get that,” he said sharply. “Hurry up.”
Claudette walked across the room with the unhurried strut of a cat-walk model, as if practicing for a new life back on the game in the expensive bars and hotels of the French capital. Foche could not help but admire her. And he agreed—she could have any man she wished.
“Hello,” she said. “Yes, Marcel. He is here. Just a moment.”
She stood by the phone and said, “Marcel.”
“Well, bring the damn thing here, will you?” he rasped. “And then get out.”
Claudette walked slowly back to her husband and handed him the phone. He snatched it rudely and repeated, “Get out.”
His wife left the room, and Foche almost shouted, “I told you to get rid of that car—not have it all over the national news! Jesus Christ!”
Marcel, however, was no pushover. His actual words were, “Well, how the hell was I to know the stupid deer would find the fucking thing? I drove it into the swamp, damn near drowned myself and Raymond, somehow blew the bastard sky-high, and now you want me to act like a fucking part-time deer guard. For Christ’s sake, sir. Be reasonable.”
Henri Foche knew he had to be careful with Marcel, who knew his misdeeds even more thoroughly than his wife did. “But what about the fucking body?” he demanded. “Where’s that?”
“In the foundation of that new shopping center about fifty miles east of Orléans. Buried in about a thousand tons of rock-hard concrete.”
“How the hell did you manage that?” asked Foche
.
“I got friends,” replied Marcel. “Good friends.”
“Anyone else know?”
“Of course not. I dumped it into the wet concrete. Drove the mechanical digger myself. Then my pal tipped about three truckloads of wet concrete on top of it. He probably guessed a body. But never mentioned it. I waited there until he’d finished the job. Gave him two thousand euros, like you said.”
“Okay, okay. Sounds fine. I just wish they hadn’t found the Benz.”
“Million-to-one chance, boss. Can’t fight that. We just keep our heads down.”
“See you at midday, Marcel.”
“No problem.”
“Claudette! Where the hell are you?” Foche’s voice rose in exasperation.
Diamondhead Page 17
