Liberation Day

Chapter 30

There was a sudden burst of static in my ear for the eight A.M. check. “Hello, hello — radio check.” As I reached inside my jacket, I heard, “H?” followed by two clicks. Then, “N?” I hit the pressle twice.

“That’s all okay.”

The radio went dead. I brought my hand out of my pocket and pulled up the zipper. The coat had done its job well through the night, and a couple of times I’d even had to undo the top a little.

My face was greasy and my eyes stung, but my job was to keep the trigger on the target boat and that was what I’d done. There’d been no sign of life, outside or in.

First light was a bit later today because of the cloud cover, and for the last hour or so a gentle breeze had been coming off the sea and rustling the vegetation around me. It was going to be a dull, gray, miserable day, not one that the postcard photographers would be rushing to capture.

The traffic was starting to make its presence felt behind me, and a store’s shutter rattled open below. I bet the tabac was going to get one now.

The first thing I’d done on my return from Nice last night was fold the towel and use it as a cushion under my ass. It hadn’t turned the OP into a hotel room on the Croisette, but it had made me quite comfortable. All my Snickers bars had gone, and I’d had a dump in the plastic wrap. Lying next to it was my water bottle, full of urine.

I brushed my hair back with my hands and rubbed my eyes awake. Now wasn’t the time to slack off. I could hear labored breathing: someone running, coming down the road to my left. He took his time to get to me, and I was amazed when he finally did: the wheezing and scraping of feet made it sound like he was about to have a heart attack.

There was general movement around the marina now, with quite a few bodies moving out of their boats. The crew of a garbage truck were emptying champagne bottles and caviar tubs out of the two wheeled bins. I made a mental note to really find out who my biological parents were one day — I wouldn’t mind finding out I belonged in a place like this, maybe even getting served in the Boston yacht club instead of just being able to work in it.

Birdsong had piped up around me. I tipped over onto my side and supported my head with my right arm, stretching out my legs as I tried to restore some sort of feeling in them. I had a better view of the VW camper now. It was yellow and white, one of the newer, squarer-shaped ones, and all the windows were covered with aluminum folding blinds. They must have laid their heads down as soon as the wheels stopped turning.

With just one eye on the binos, because I couldn’t be bothered to sit up and use both, I watched the couple on the boat to the right of the Ninth of May emerge on deck. Hair sticking up, much the same as mine probably was, they did some boat stuff around the deck, their fleece jackets protecting them from the breeze. There was still nothing coming from the Ninth of May: the black blinds still covered the front window and the two on the side facing me. I ran the binos over the plastic covering on the top deck couches and the driving station. It was buckling a little under the breeze, but didn’t look as if it had been disturbed.

I thought about what might be going on behind those blinds. Maybe they were already up, all three of them, just waiting to go and collect, lying in their bunks with time to kill, or memorizing street maps and bus and train timetables. Whatever it was, I wished they’d hurry up and get on with it. The longer they stayed there, the more chance I had of being compromised.

A very small, narrow Japanese van pulled into the parking lot and the old gardener I’d seen yesterday got out: he was dressed in the same baggy green overalls and rubber boots. He seemed more concerned about the camper than about his plants right now; he dragged himself toward it, looking like he was about to start an incident. Maybe campers weren’t welcomed as energetically as everyone else was, according to the marina entrance sign.

When he got there, he shouted and banged on the side panel. One of the blinds went up and he carried on shouting and waving his arms as if he were directing traffic. He obviously got a satisfactory answer, because he went back to his vehicle with a bit more spring in his step. He opened the sliding door to reveal forks and spades and a wheelbarrow. The tools came out one by one, clanging as they hit the ground. I just hoped he hadn’t woken up at three in the morning determined to deal first thing with that V-shaped palm up behind the fuck bench. Whatever he was planning, it wasn’t going to happen yet. He looked as if he were going to take the first break of the day.

Lowering himself onto the sill of the sliding door, he tapped a cigarette out of a pack. The smoke was picked up and dispersed quickly by the breeze.

“Radio check. H?”

I unzipped.

Click, click.

“N?”

Reaching in, I double-clicked the pressle.

“Everything okay. Time to change batteries.”

He was right: we should start the day with fresh power, and I had to get it done before Mr. McGregor dragged himself up here and started digging where he wasn’t welcome.

I took the radio from my jacket, tugged the batteries off the duct tape, pulled off the battery cover, and replaced them. I checked the display to make sure the power supply was on and I was still on channel one, then tossed the Sony back inside my jacket.

It wasn’t that long before the sliding door to Mr. McGregor’s van was closed and he wheeled his way toward the concrete steps before disappearing into the dead ground below me at the start of the stairway. There was nothing I could do but stay where I was and just get on with the job.

The morning commute gathered pace on the main drag, and it wasn’t long before Mr. McGregor wheelbarrowed past me and the fuck bench, looking down at the camper and grumbling to himself. Maybe he hadn’t been as firm as he’d thought. I soon heard metallic noises to my right as his tools were pulled off the wheelbarrow, and he started to dig in the sun-dried soil. If he saw me, I’d just have to play the bum and let him chuck me out. I could walk down to the marina entrance and maybe sit at the bus stop; at least I’d still have an OP on both exits. Then all three of us would have to take turns keeping that trigger until the Romeos moved. It would be a nightmare, but there was nothing I could do about it.

“Hello, hello — radio check.”

I put my hand into my jacket. It must be nine o’clock.

“H?”

Click, click.

“N?”

Click, click.

“That’s all okay.”

The next three and a half hours were a pain in the ass. Mr. McGregor seemed to spend more time smoking than he did gardening, which was fine by me because he took his breaks at the far end of the garden. Down in the marina, people wandered off their boats and returned with baguettes or bags of croissants; delivery vans arrived and did their stuff at the stores; cars drove into the parking lot and men with tool kits and overalls went to work on decks, rigging, and other boaty stuff. I could hear a bit of music now and again from the restaurants, and the occasional loud voice or burst of laughter from customers in the tabac, punctuated by the smashing of more glass. The window-replacement boys must have been on site.

A small electric cart loaded with garbage cans and brooms whined its way out of the dead ground in front of the stores and toward the wheeled bins where I’d hidden my Timberlands. Mr. McGregor shouted down at the driver, who stopped and dismounted with a drag on his cigarette and a wave. His stomach looked about the same weight as the vehicle, which was probably feeling relieved to be rid of him. The garbage cart driver cupped an ear toward the high ground of the gardens as the old boy gave him some verbal broadband, then turned back toward the camper with a determined nod.

The garbage cart driver closed in on the VW, and repeated the performance.

There was a lot of thumping on the side of the van and what I supposed was the French for “Get the fuck out of here, this isn’t a campsite.”

The door slid halfway open and a woman with short dark hair and a black leather jacket appeared in the gap.

Words were exchanged, but whatever was said stopped the cart man in his tracks. He walked away from the camper as the sliding door closed.

My heart beat a little bit faster. This didn’t feel right.

Mr. McGregor called to him, wanting to know what was happening. The cart man beckoned him down the steps.

I hit my pressle. “All call signs, this is N. There could be a problem. The yellow-and-white VW van that came in last night might contain another surveillance team. Roger so far, L.”

Click, click.

“H?”

Click, click.

“I’ll explain more later. Nothing changes for us. Just remember your third-party awareness. If I’m right, there might be others out there. Acknowledge, L.”

Click, click.

“H?”

Click, click.

The woman had been fully dressed. Was that so she could get out of the camper fast if the shit hit the fan, and still have her weapon and radio concealed?

Either way, we still had our job to do. If they were after the hawallada, we just had to get there first. I reckoned George would be able to wring what he needed out of them a lot quicker than any law-enforcement agency.

The engine fired up on the camper. It headed toward the marina entrance, with a man at the wheel.

“Stand by, stand by. That’s the van now mobile, two up. A man with a dark ponytail and a woman with short dark hair and a black leather jacket.” The van went out of sight, following the line of the storefronts. “That’s now unsighted toward the marina exit.”

They both acknowledged with a double-click, and it was no more than a minute before Lotfi came on the net with the van’s progress. “L has the Combi toward BSM, still two up. Now unsighted.”

I tried to convince myself that I’d been wrong about what I’d seen. But only for about three seconds.

Mr. McGregor shuffled his way back up the hill and started digging away to my right as I got another radio check. It was twelve o’clock on the dot. “Hello, radio check. H?”

Click, click.

“N?”

At almost the same moment, my eyes were sucked toward the rear deck of the boat. There was movement: a body appeared. It was Curly, still in his T-shirt and jeans, having a look around as he let down the gangway.

“N, radio check.”

Click, click, click, click.

There was a pause. He would only have been expecting two. “Is that a stand-by, N? Is that a stand-by?”

Click, click.

He got the message. “Stand by, stand by.”