Liberation Day (20 page)

He shook his head and sounded breathless, probably because of the amount of nicotine he was inhaling. He couldn’t have been more than forty years old, but he’d be dead of lung cancer long before sixty.

“What about the collection times?”

“This is all I was able to find out.”

“How do I know these are correct?”

“I can guarantee it. This is very good information.”

I went over to crazy-threat mode. “It had better be, or you know what I will do to you, don’t you?”

He leaned back in the couch and studied my face. He wasn’t panicking now, which surprised me. He smiled. “But that’s not really going to happen, is it? I know things. How do you think I’ve survived so long?”

He was absolutely right. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it. These people can screw you around as much as they want. If they provide high-quality intelligence, nothing can happen to them unless people like George want it to. But what sources often fail to understand is that they’re only useful while they can provide information. After that, nobody cares. Apart from Hubba-Hubba and Lotfi, that is; I was sure they would continue to care a great deal.

He studied me for a long time and took another drag of his cigarette. The smoke leaked from his nostrils and mouth as he spoke. “Do you know what slim is?”

I nodded. I’d heard the word in Africa.

“That’s me—slim. HIV-positive. Not full-blown AIDS yet. I pump myself with antiretrovirals, trying to keep the inevitable from happening, but it will come, unless…. Well, what do I care what you do to me? But I used to wonder about Zeralda. I used to wonder if he had slim…” He was trying to hide a smile but couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from turning up. “Who knows? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. Maybe he did, but didn’t know it. Slim has a way of doing that. It just creeps up on you.” He flicked some ash angrily onto the plate. “Maybe you should have a checkup yourself. There was a lot of blood, wasn’t there?”

Taking more nicotine into his lungs, he sat back and crossed his legs. He was enjoying this.

I didn’t let him know that I wasn’t that concerned by Zeralda’s splashed blood. I knew that I had about the same risk of contracting the disease from it as being struck by lightning on the same day I won the lottery.

I stared back at him. “If you don’t care about dying, why were you so scared in Algeria? And why were you scared earlier?”

He started to smoke like Oscar Wilde on a bad day. “When I go, my friend, I plan to go—how do you people say?—with a bang. Let me tell you something, my friend.” He leaned forward and stubbed out his second butt end. “I know there is no hope for me. But I do plan to end my life the way I wish to, and that certainly isn’t going to be at a time of your choosing. I still want to have a lot more living before slim really gets me—then bang!” He clapped his hands together. “One pill and I’m gone. I don’t want to lose my figure—as you can see I’m still the prettiest boy on the beach.”

I picked up the newspaper and folded it around the notebook page, making sure it was nice and secure, then rolled it up, as if I were on my way to the building site. “If you’re Iying about these addresses, I’ll get the green light to hurt you bad, believe me.”

He shook his head, and extracted another cigarette. “Never. I’m too valuable to your bosses. But you, you worry me, you have been out of your kennel too long.” He jabbed a nicotine-stained finger at me. “You would do it of your own accord. I felt that in Algeria.” There was the single click of his lighter and I heard the tobacco fizz. “I know you don’t like me, and I suppose I can understand that. But some of us have different desires and different pleasures, and we cannot deny ourselves our pleasures, can we?”

I ignored the question. I opened the door and he got to his feet. I left with the newspaper in my hand, wanting to get out of there quickly so I could resist the overwhelming urge to splatter him against the wall.

21

I
dumped the newspaper, still with the piece of paper inside, in the footwell of the passenger seat, and took one of the pairs of clear plastic gas station gloves from the glove compartment and put them on. Then, bending down into the footwell, I fished out the piece of paper and read the addresses, holding it by just one edge.

The first was Office 617 in the Palais de la Scala, at Place du Beaumarchais, Monaco. I remembered the building from my recce. It was just to the side of the casino and the banking area, not that that meant much: the whole of Monaco was a banking area. The de la Scala was Monaco’s answer to the shopping mall, with real marble pillars and bottles of vintage champagne that cost the same as a small hatchback. It was also next to the Hôtel Hermitage, the haunt of rock stars and fat-cat industrialists.

The Nice address was on Boulevard Jean XIII, which a quick check of the road atlas told me was in an area called La Roque, near the freight depot that I had passed to get to the safe house, and with a train station, Gare Riquier, no more than seven hundred yards away. The last one, I knew very well. It was along the Croisette in Cannes, just by the PMU betting shop/café/wine bar, facing the sea and cheek by jowl with Chanel and Gucci. Women in minks sat there with old Italian men whose hands wandered under the fur like ferrets as they bet on horses, drank champagne, and generally had fun until it was time to be escorted back to their hotels. The only difference between the women in minks and the ones who worked the road near the airport was the price tag.

I was tempted, but it was far too late to go into Monaco to do a recce of the Palais de la Scala. For a start, the mall would be closed, but that wasn’t the main reason. Monaco has the highest per capita income in the world, with security to match. There’s a policeman for every sixty citizens, and street crime and burglary simply don’t exist. If I went into Monaco at this time of night for a drive-by of the target area, I’d be picked up and recorded by CCTV, and could very well be physically picked up at a roadblock. Drive in and out of Monaco three times in a day and there’s a high possibility you’ll be stopped by the police and asked why. It was all designed to make the inhabitants feel cocooned and protected, and that didn’t just mean the racing drivers and tennis stars who lived there to avoid tax. The population also included others who made their money from the big three: deception, corruption, and assassination.

I decided to leave the recce for the morning, and take a look at the Nice address on the way to Beaulieu-sur-Mer, where I planned to spend the rest of the night. That meant parking overnight somewhere, and joining the morning traffic lines into the principality, but it carried far less risk. I folded the piece of paper and placed it inside another glove, then hid it under the seat, pushing it right up into the upholstery.

I hit the coast road. It was much less busy now; just the odd Harley or two thundering along as their riders took advantage of the deserted pavement.

As I approached Nice, the whole coastline seemed to be bathed in neon. It reminded me of the United States, a never-ending stream of shocking pink and electric blue.

There was heavier traffic in both directions along the Promenade des Anglais, and the whores were doing good business with curb crawlers near the airport. Quite a few bars were still open for diehards.

I turned inland on the same road as I’d used to go to the safe house, and headed for La Roque, on the east edge of town. It turned out to be just a big sprawl of apartment buildings, much like those around the safe house, only cleaner and safer. There were no scorch marks above the windows, no bricked-up buildings, no burnt-out cars. There were even supermarkets, and a street market, by the look of the boxes of damaged fruit and vegetables that were piled up in the main street. A garbage truck lumbered along, bedecked with yellow flashing lights, and sanitation workers in fluorescent jackets moved among the bums rooting through the debris.

I pulled over to check the map. Boulevard Jean XIII was the second right turn, so I overtook the garbage truck and turned right. Cheap shoe stores, thrift shops, and groceries were on both sides of me. Maybe this was where Lotfi and Hubba-Hubba had bought their outfits. A few takeout pizza joints were still open, flanked by lines of mopeds with boxes on the back, ready to zip off to an apartment building with a large
quatre fromages
and some special-deal chicken fingers.

The building turned out to be not a house but a storefront covered completely by a large pull-down shutter plastered in graffiti. Huge padlocks anchored it to the pavement.

I hung the next right at the intersection, just two storefronts along, then right again, taking a quick look at the back of the store. I found rough, broken asphalt and crushed Coke cans, and hundreds of signs that I presumed said, “Fuck off, don’t park here, proprietors only.” Big Dumpsters lined the long wall that ran along the rear of the promenade of shops.

I drove along the back of the promenade. There was no need to park, and it wouldn’t be wise to spend too long hanging around commercial premises at this time of night. It might attract attention, or even a couple of police cars. At least I knew where it was; I’d do the recce the night before the lift.

Turning right again after about a hundred yards, I was back on the boulevard; I turned left, back the way I had come, toward the sea and BSM. Nice’s harbor was a forest of lights and masts. As I drove around it, I noticed an Indian restaurant, the first I’d seen in France. I wondered if it was full of expats tossing back pints of Stella and shrimp cocktail appetizers while the cook added a little squirt of Algipan to the vindaloo, to give it that extra zing.

I reached the marina at BSM at just after one-thirty, and drove into the parking lot between the harbor and the beach. The world of boats was fast asleep, apart from a couple of lights that shone out of cabins rocking gently from side to side in the light breeze. Dull lighting came from tall, street-style poles following the edge of the marina. These were a bit fancier, branching out at the top into two lights per pole, though a few of the bulbs were on their last legs and flickering. Luckily for me, they’d been designed not to give out too much light, or no one would have been able to get to sleep.

My only company in the parking lot was two cars and a motorcycle chained to the two-foot-high steel tubing set into the ground to stop vehicles parking in the flower bed.

With the engine off, I opened my window and listened. Silence, save for the soft chink of the rigging. I felt under the seat for the piece of paper and put it into my fanny pack. I got out, making the Browning comfortable as I headed toward the office end of the promenade. Quickly climbing the concrete steps, I got to “I fuck girls,” jumped up onto the OP, and settled myself in for the remainder of the night, having first buried the addresses in the earth at the base of the palm tree. I needed to be detached from it, in case I’d been seen by some well-meaning member of the public and got picked up by the local police for sleeping in a public place.

It was going to be a pain in the ass staying up here for the next seven hours, but it had to be done. The car was a natural draw point if people had surveillance on me, so I didn’t want to sleep in it. Also, from here I could see anyone trying to tamper with it.

I brushed some of the stones from under me as I leaned forward against the palm, and alternately watched the car and studied the layout of the marina.

The addresses were in my head by now; I didn’t need the information anymore. That bit of paper was for George. The handwriting, the fingerprints on it, even the paper itself could be useful to him, either now or later. After all, this was going to be a long war.

It started to get quite nippy at about four o’clock. I dozed off for a few minutes now and again, having pulled the baseball cap down as far as it would go, and curled my arms around myself, trying to retain some warmth.

22

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 07:27 HRS.

M
y eyes stung more and more and my face got colder, which kept me checking my watch. It was still dark. I retrieved the addresses from their hiding place and moved along the hedge before jumping over, then walked along the road to the entrance, down to the traffic circle, and past the stores and cafés. Everything was still closed; the odd light could be seen behind the blinds of a couple of the smaller boats as they put the kettle on for the first coffee of the day.

I got my washing kit from the car; there was a freshwater shower by the beach on the other side of the parking lot. I washed my hair and gave myself a quick once-over with the toothbrush. I’d spent a third of my adult life out in the field, sleeping rough, but today I couldn’t afford to look like a bum. I wouldn’t last five minutes in Monaco if I did. Also, I couldn’t walk around in swimwear, or go bare-chested anywhere but the beach. No camper vans, either.

A comb through my hair and a brush-down of my jeans and I was ready. I went back to the Mégane and hit the road, with the heater going full blast to dry my hair. Monaco was twentyish minutes away if the traffic was good.

I hit Riviera Radio just in time for the eight o’clock news. The Taliban were fleeing the bombing campaign, Brent crude was down two dollars a barrel, and the day was going to be sunny and warm. And now for a golden oldie from the Doobie Brothers…

I disappeared into a couple of mountain tunnels, the bare rock just a few feet away from me, and as I emerged into the gathering daylight I put my hat back on and made sure the brim was down low for the trip into the principality. The first people I saw were policemen in white-brimmed caps and long blue coats down to their knees, looking like they’d come straight from the set of
Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang
.

The road was quite congested, with a hodgepodge of license plates. There was a lot of French and Italian traffic, but just as much from the principality, with red-and-white diamond checkered shields on their plates.