Liberation Day

Chapter 38

I passed Lotfi’s vehicle position in the hotel parking lot and could see nothing out of the ordinary. Below and ahead of me was the marina, and quite a few of the boats were still lit up. Driving down to the entrance, I saw nothing to get me worried, nothing parked near the bus stops, no bodies sneaking around. I continued on up to the turnout behind the OP. It was empty, no sign of Hubba-Hubba’s vehicle. Good man: he had thought about the third party, parked elsewhere, and walked over to pick up my Mégane.

So far everything looked normal — which didn’t mean a thing.

A vehicle approached from the other direction, passed me, forgetting to dip its lights, and continued. I followed the line of the mountains toward Monaco, not wanting to park behind the OP now in case the van was back: it’d make too much noise this time of the morning. The marina lights in my rearview mirror disappeared as I completed the corner and drove into the darkness. Eight or nine vehicles were parallel-parked in a turnout ahead. They probably belonged to the cluster of houses above me on the steeper ground — apart from Hubba-Hubba’s Scudo. I pulled in at the end of the line.

I got out, checked my fanny pack, and moved the Browning hammer away from the sore on my stomach, which had started to bleed. From the back of my Mégane, I retrieved the towel, left in the Saran-wrapped dump and urine-filled water bottle, and replaced them with my fresh supply of water and Snickers bars.

I locked the Mégane, slung the towel and its contents over my left shoulder, and started back down to the OP with my cap firmly on my head to keep me warm later on.

There were just one or two lights on in the houses way up the hill; other than that the mountain was asleep.

An animal scurried away from me as I approached the entry point in the hedge. I had a quick look around before climbing over and following the hedge line on my hands and knees until I reached the V-shaped palm shrub.

I sat there for a while and tuned in, then got the binos out of the towel. They worked well as a night-viewing aid with a little help from the dull lighting around the marina. I started with pier nine, but couldn’t be sure that the Ninth of May was still there. A boat was parked in its position, but it didn’t seem to have the same silhouette. The binos were inconclusive; they were good, but not that good.

I’d have to go down to the pier to confirm physically, and do it right away. There was no point sitting waiting for first light, only to find that the thing wasn’t there.

I scanned the general area through the binos for the van. There were about a dozen vehicles in the parking lot, only two of them vans. These were right next to each other, and parked facing the boats. The one nearest to me had some signwriting on that I couldn’t make out from here. Worryingly, both had a good view of pier nine.

Leaving the towel and its contents behind, I crawled to the exit in the hedge but, instead of going through it, continued on for another twenty-five or thirty yards as a vehicle moved into the marina. I turned downhill toward the Petite Afrique beach. There was no pathway, just scrub and dry earth all the way down to the sand.

Once I hit the sand I got up and walked to the parking lot. My detour meant I was approaching the vans from the rear, on the assumption that if anyone was inside them they’d be concentrating on the target.

I passed the swings and jungle gym, using the huge piles of sand as cover but walking normally, as if I were taking a shortcut back to my boat. It was pointless getting tactical and running, crawling, ducking, all that sort of stuff. I was out in the open and, no matter what I did, I would be seen when I crossed the flat, open expanse of parking lot, if not before.

My Timberlands slipped and slid as I negotiated the sixty-odd yards of beach; then I hit the heat-cracked asphalt of the parking lot. I checked inside the cars as best I could, to see if any heads were pulled back in their seats, with their car windows open just an inch to prevent that ever-compromising condensation. The odd vehicle still moved to and fro along the main road, and I heard laughter from the far side of the marina. As I got closer to the parking lot I could see the silhouette of a couple kissing in a sedan to my right, near the garbage area, but that was all. It was probably the vehicle that had come in while I was moving down here. I didn’t think I’d seen it there before. I sauntered along until I got between the two vans. Once there, I stopped and listened, standing as if I were taking a piss. If there was surveillance, it would probably be in the unmarked one. The other was too easy to spot with such a VDM — visual distinguishing mark.

There was nothing I could do but stand there and listen. I put my ear gently against the side and opened my mouth to cut off any cavity noise, but heard nothing. I did the same with the other one, but again, nothing. It would look highly suspicious to anyone watching, a guy putting his head against a couple of vans, but I didn’t have any other options.

I must have been there for about three minutes, hearing nothing but the gentle lapping of water against boats, and the odd clanking of the rigging.

A vehicle screamed along the main road toward Monaco as I stepped out onto the pier. I wasn’t concerned about the kissers: they had other things on their minds, and might be there all night. The Germans weren’t dreaming of life on the big blue sea along with everyone else around here. Their TV was still going full blare as I passed, but it was the last thing on my mind by then. I had a horrible, empty feeling in my gut. I took a few more steps and stood, looking foolishly at the laundry that hung along the back of a boat called the Sand Piper, which was parked where the Ninth of May should have been. I stood there like an idiot, willing my boat to materialize, hoping I was about to discover I was on the wrong pier. But it wasn’t to be.

Fuck — now what?

Spinning on my heel, and quickening my pace, I checked farther down the pier, just in case it had been shifted a few spaces. I went back and checked the first pier. No luck. I was going to have to search the whole fucking place: I didn’t know how the system worked, maybe they’d been moved to another parking place, or they had a technical problem and were parked alongside the workshop on the other side of the marina. I wanted to cover as much of the area as I could, in as short a space of time as possible, but I couldn’t run. There was still third-party awareness to think about.

As I made my way back toward the stores I delved into my fanny pack for the phone card and started to recite the pager number to myself. 04…93–45…Fuck, what if they’d left for Algeria already? What if Greaseball had been wrong, and there was only ever going to be one pickup? My mind raced. The tennis bags had been big enough to hold at least a million and a half dollars between them, more than enough to pay off a busload of relations.

Shit, shit, shit.

Clenching the phone card in my fist and reciting the number like a madman, my eyes darted everywhere, still in hope of spotting the boat. My plan now was to work my way methodically around the whole marina. There was no other way to confirm whether the boat was there or not. I walked past the cars that were parked to my right, but kept on looking out to my left, at the boats.

Two bodies stepped out from the kissing car. There was a challenge from the driver. “Arrêtez! Arrêtez! Arrêtez!”

I carried on walking, my hands in my pockets, eyes down at the concrete. I wasn’t going to stop, but I didn’t know what I was going to do. Water was behind me: the only escape was forward, past them and up to the main road.

The driver, a man, was about six yards away and came out past his car, blocking my path, his door left open. “Police! Arrêtez!”

Now the other body, a woman, emerged, leaving her door open as well. She ran behind and past him, and continued down to the quay, maybe to make sure I didn’t jump in. Her black leather jacket glinted dully under the lights.