[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel (37 page)

At that precise moment, a hand clamped on my right shoulder. A knee caught me in the back and I felt myself being pushed to the ground.

“You’re under arrest, scumbag,” hissed a voice in my ear. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

(IV)

At least my cover story was working.

My first thought was that it was part of a show arranged by the DEA to improve my bona fides with the drug ring and talk to me at the same time. So I played along, complaining about the handcuffs and bitching about being pushed into the backseat of the plainclothes car waiting outside the hotel, while being just compliant enough to avoid getting thrashed.

Trace and the others held back, knowing from the car registrations that these were real cops. We headed to a building used by a local drug task force, with its own security, apparently chosen to make it more difficult for any spies in the department to leak information. There was an underground garage with a private elevator; I was hustled unceremoniously inside and taken upstairs through darkened corridors to an interrogation room.

Remember those old movies where the bad-guy cop comes in and shines a bright light in the face of the criminal before slapping him around a bit? Then the good-guy cop comes in and offers a cigarette?

These guys tried the modern version, but I’m afraid it doesn’t have quite the same sting. The bad-guy cop came in and tortured me with a minute description of what had happened on
Dancing with the Stars
the night before, then the good-guy cop entered and offered me a fresh Starbucks latte.

Maybe I have the good-guy/bad-guy thing turned around. In any event, the officers looked like identical twins, both blond-haired and blue-eyed, deeply tanned, wearing golf shirts, chinos, and a little too much aftershave. I felt like I had stumbled into a slightly updated version of
Miami Vice,
cleaned up for the young adult crowd and following a script written by the most politically correct screenwriter in Hollyweird.

“Now, we’re going to record this,” said good-guy. “When you see that little red light over there, then we are recording you.”

“Some of this may be uncomfortable,” said bad-guy.

“Is the air-conditioning OK?” asked good-guy. “We can turn it down if you want.”

Finally they got down to business, asking what I knew about Granny. Their politically correct interrogation techniques had obviously been developed with the help of the FBI, or as we affectionately call it, the Fucked-up Bunch of Idiots.
39
I kept expecting a
real
cop to come in and, if not rough me up, at least ask some pointed questions about what I was up to.

About an hour into the interrogation—if I can use that term loosely—my lawyer arrived. She marched into the interrogation room, escorted by several members of the task force, all of whom seemed to be having trouble breathing.

Trace in a miniskirt does that to people. She demanded to know what the charges were; they supplied half a dozen, all misdemeanors, ranging from loitering to vandalism—someone had kicked over a planter on the way out.

In the end, I was handed an appearance ticket on the vandalism charge and the others were forgotten. I was still puzzled by what was going on when Trace handed me a piece of paper as we got into the cab she’d called to take us to our hotel.

T
HEY HAVE A WIRETAP WARRANT.
R
OOM AND PHONES BUGGED
.
T
HEY WERE STALLING TO GET IT SET UP.

“They could have played a little harder,” I groused. Trace shot me a shut-up look—she thought maybe the cabbie was part of their operation, like the bodyguards who had checked me out. Granny apparently was the focus of quite a lot of work by the task force, which seemed to be a few days if not hours from shutting her down.

Unfortunately, the local task force and the DEA did not get along, so when Danny tried using his DEA sources to get information, there was little to be had. He tried talking to the task force directly, but made no inroads.

“You threw them for a loop,” he told me a few hours later, after I’d napped and recovered from my horrible ordeal at the hands of the police. “There is one positive—they see the connection to the New Jersey mob as a reason to delay their bust. They want big headlines. They’re burning up the phone lines north. That may give us a couple of more days to fill in the details.”

Danny knew this because Shunt had infiltrated their communications and computer system. As far as we could tell, they had no information on the connection with the bank; we’d already figured out the account that was being used, and had the fake addresses and IDs. But they did have one vital piece of information that we didn’t—they had figured out how Granny’s network was receiving the drugs.

*   *   *

Which is a roundabout explanation of why I found myself two days later in Toulon, southern France, heading for the Hotel Général Leclerc, an establishment that had been awarded three stars by Michelin in its heyday.

That heyday had been during the 1970s, but from the look of the place, I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had coincided with the Lascaux cave paintings. Paint peeled from the walls in the lobby, the marble floors were scuffed and missing about half their tiles, and even with the windows open and a stiff breeze, the reception area smelled like day-old beer.

The hotel did have its charms, however. One was an absolute rock-bottom price on rooms—thirty euros a night, which included a continental breakfast. Said breakfast consisted of stale croissants and rancid butter, but free is free.

Another was the five o’clock senior citizen special in the dining room, which offered a full prix fixe meal complete with wine for only ten euros. The food wasn’t particularly good, but the wine was all you could drink.

As you may gather, the place was a magnet for budget travelers, and it was especially attractive to senior citizens, who were courted with a number of other amenities, starting with the vintage music that played in the lobby. Besides dyeing my hair gray and putting a definite lean in my back, I picked up a pair of grandpa blue jeans and a rosewood cane to fit in.

“Bonjour,”
said the desk clerk as I poked my way across the lobby to his station. He looked to be about the age of the average patron, namely eighty.

“I have a reservation,” I said, handing over my passport. “Julio Julio.”

He checked his list—a hand-written roll in an old-fashioned book.

“
Oui,
very good,
monsieur.
” He smiled. The hotel may have been down on its heels, but the old-fashioned service was top rate. “And you will be with us for just the night?”

“I have a reservation on the
Bon Voyage,
” I told him.

“Ah, leaving in the morning.” He had a light French accent, and his English tilted more toward the States than Britain, which is atypical. “We have a number of guests with the same plans. You will require a taxi in the morning?”

“Oui.”

He smiled indulgently at my use of French. Our business concluded, I headed for the elevator at the side of the lobby, and from there to my room on the fourth floor.

*   *   *

How and why did we get from Florida to a port in southern France? And what does any of this have to do with terrorists, prescription drugs, and crooked bankers?

Two months before, Granny had been basically a part-timer, supplying fellow oldsters with the odd baggie of pot every few days. Some of her customers were reformed hippies who’d never given up a taste of the weed. Most of the others used it as a painkiller for various ailments and cancer treatments. Talking to them, Granny realized there was a burgeoning market for something a little stronger than weed. She made some inquiries, and eventually hooked up with a German who was visiting Miami. The German had just started buying from the Allah’s Rule on Earth network. He didn’t know about the connection with al Qaeda, though I suspect he didn’t ask many questions about the possibility either.

That much came from the files Shunt had infiltrated. Danny had then used his Interpol connections to track the German, who was no longer in the United States. In fact, he was no longer among us at all—he had been incarcerated in Egypt a few weeks before, apparently at the request of the CIA. According to the security forces there, he died while trying to escape jail.

At least they know how to do
some
things right.

The German had been replaced by a French Arab, not identified in the local task force records and apparently unknown to Interpol as well. He had consolidated and moved the operation, and was looking to expand, having indicated to Granny that he could supply considerably more drugs if she wanted.

How were the drugs getting into the States? The task force had photographed two pickups at a cruise ship dock in Miami. Presumably because they weren’t interested in or didn’t have the resources to make arrests overseas, that’s as far as their investigation went. But Shunt’s magic fingers and Danny’s golden tongue had brought us to Toulon and Hotel Général Leclerc.

*   *   *

After checking into my room, I hit the shower, freshened up, and went down to dinner. It was early, but the room was packed. The maître d’ came over and with a tsk-tsk apologized that he had no immediate offerings for
monsieur.

“If you would prefer to wait at
ze
bar, I will send
ze
girl to get you when the table she is ready.” He sounded like a dead ringer for Pepé Le Pew in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

“Where is ze bar?” I asked.

“You go zis way and zat.”

I found the bar and bellied up, ordering a wine: Bourdeaux, Chateau Coquin 2003. I was waiting for it to arrive when a good-looking young woman brushed against my arm. The glass in her hand tipped toward the floor. I caught it with my right hand; with my left I settled her onto the bar stool next to me.

“Oh, thanks to you,” she said. Her English was lightly accented with French and heavily with drink. She had trouble focusing her eyes, which were hazel and very dilated.

I gave her the glass back. “You should be careful,” I told her. “You don’t want to spill it on your dress.”

“Oh no, that would be tragedy.” She crossed her legs and smoothed the silky material. The hem made a sharp line above her knees. She tilted her head to the side, letting her shoulder-length hair hang down.

Nice effect. Even if she hadn’t been about a third of the age of everyone else in the place, she would have been the prettiest thing there. Her chin narrowed a little too much, but it was the sort of flaw easily forgotten.

“You are very kind,” she said to me. “Very nice. American?”

“American,
oui.
”

“And you speak the French.” She took a sip from her glass, finishing the small amount of wine.

“What are you drinking?” I asked, offering to refill.

“Le Monde Chateau 2007. Eeetz wonderful.”

I had the bartender get her another glass, and had mine refilled. We made some light conversation; she claimed to work as a tour guide, specializing in the sights.

“I’ll bet,” I told her.

She had come south with a group from Paris, but now was on her own for the night; she would return home the next morning.

“I like the American tourists the best. You are all so handsome and gentleman. Not like the French. French men—they are all very arrogant, yes? But paper tigers. They do not know how to treat a woman.”

“It takes practice,” I allowed.

“I am jest waiting for the table,” she told me, slipping off the stool. “But I am not so hungry now. Maybe I will go down the street instead to my hotel to bed. Good night.”

I caught her as she started to stumble. Being a gentleman, I naturally decided that I would have to shepherd her to her destination. By the time we reached it, she was barely conscious. I escorted her upstairs to her room.

Somewhere between the hall and the door, the wine I had drunk went to my head. The next thing I knew, I was sitting on the floor of her room. The bed was unmade; the room empty.

Not the usual effect I have on women.

There was a knock on the door. Before I could get up, two policemen burst in, guns in hand. One yelled at me in French not to move; the other went and checked the bathroom.

“Merde!”
he yelled. “Send for an ambulance!”

The other policeman left me and ran to his friend. This was my cue to make my own exit. I jumped up and ran through the door—only to be tripped in the hall. I got my hands out in front of me and broke the fall, but something hit the back of my head as I started to get up. Everything went black.

This time I stayed down for quite a while, and when I woke up, I was in my room at the Hotel Général Leclerc. A large man in a trench coat was shaking me. As I jerked awake, I almost belted him before I got control of my reflexes.

He smiled, but stepped back nonetheless.

“Monsieur Julio, nice for us that you join us, no?” The speaker was a light-complexioned Arab, sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed. A long, shallow scar ran down the right side of his face, tracing a semicircle below his cheekbone. Scarface looked to be in his mid-thirties; he had an assured look about him. He was dressed in loose white pants and a long, baggy white shirt; toss in a floppy hat and we could have been on a plantation.

“What’s going on?” I pushed myself up on my elbows, still disoriented.

“Relax. We have liberated you from the police.” Scarface smiled, then nodded at the gorilla who had woken me, dismissing him. “My friend will wait in the hall. Not that I believe you will be giving me any trouble, eh?”

“What is it you want?” I asked.

“I want to help you. You are in trouble with the police. I can make it go away.”

“What trouble with the police?”

He gave me the disapproving stare a father might show a five-year-old caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Your temper got the better of you with that girl. She is no more. A shame.”