Liberation Day

Chapter 40

The Focus drove around for another twenty minutes up on the high ground. At one point the autoroute was visible in the distance; white light, not too much at this time of the morning, moved in both directions.

We came back down the mountain to the cars. We had to get on with the search, and had to take the chance of getting closer once more to the marina, no matter what was happening down there now.

Lotfi shifted down again as we took a steep right-hander.

“Anyway, the Audi.” I chanced a smile in the silence. “How did it go?”

I drank some more water as Hubba-Hubba gave a grin that glowed in the light from the instrument panel. “We burnt it near the incinerator.” By the look on his face, Lotfi had enjoyed himself too. “There was another dead vehicle already burning there, so we just joined the party.”

The main road was clear and we parked where we had started. As I gathered up my towel, the smell hit them. Lotfi quickly opened the door to get out. Hubba-Hubba thought it was funny but got out all the same, for health and safety reasons. He turned back and whispered, “Is that, how do you say, a ‘silent but deadly’?”

I got out of the car on Lotfi’s side. As he locked up he muttered, “He really has been watching too much BB and Blockhead.”

Hubba-Hubba shook his head slowly. “Butthead — Beavis and Butthead.”

I checked traser and it was three-fourteen as I drove through Cannes, stopping two or three times after turning a corner to see who followed. Just short of Greaseball’s apartment off Boulevard Carnot, I turned three sides of a square, but nobody came with me. Finally, I parked about half a mile from his flat and walked in.

I pressed the buzzer for about two minutes and eventually got a groggy, crackly answer. I knew exactly how he felt. “Comment?”

“It’s me. I want to talk to you. Open up.”

He was confused. “Who? Who’s me?”

“Somebody you met in Algeria, remember?”

There was a pause. “What?” He coughed. “What do you want?”

“Open up and you’ll find out.”

The speaker went dead and was replaced by the high-pitched buzz of the electric latch. I moved toward the stairs, taking my time to minimize the squeaking of my Timberlands on the fake marble, and didn’t push the light switch to help me up the stairs. The Browning came out and I pulled back the hammer to full cock and pushed the safety catch up with my thumb, ready to take it off at a moment’s notice as I slowly climbed.

Standing in the stairwell on the fourth floor, I listened with my right ear at the doorway out into the hall, my mouth open to lessen the noise of me catching my breath. There was nothing. I moved into the hallway with the pistol at my side. I got to Apartment 49 and tapped gently on the door, standing to the left of the frame so I could see into the apartment as soon as it opened. There was the rattle of a security chain, then the squeak of hinges.

He looked scared but a bit out of it, with dark rings beneath his glazed eyes. He staggered a little as he led me into the living room. The glass patio doors and blinds were closed, so the smell of cigarettes was overpowering. Fully dressed, he stood by the coffee table, taking nervous sips from a small bottle of Evian. A used syringe lay on top of the table, next to a foil card of oblong-shaped pills.

His hair was greasy as always, but now sticking up. His red-striped shirt was creased, with the tail hanging out. Judging by the scrunched-up pashmina on the couch, that was where he’d been sleeping.

“Is there anybody else here?”

“No, there’s no one. What do you want? I have told you everything—”

I put the Browning muzzle to his lips. “Shut the fuck up.” I nodded toward the door that divided the living area from the hallway into the bedroom and bathroom, then stepped back and closed the front door with my ass. “Go on. You know what to do.”

“I tell you, there is no one here. Why would I lie to you? Why?”

He held out his arms in submission and swayed a little.

“Just do it.”

After two attempts he recapped the bottle, chucked it onto the couch, and walked into the hall. I moved behind him, clearing the apartment. Nothing much had changed: everything was still in a shit state. We came back into the living room and he sat down, slumping into the cushions.

“Where’s the Ninth of May?”

His brain wouldn’t compute. “It’s where I said it would be.”

“No, it isn’t. It was there yesterday, but now it’s moved. Where has Jonathan taken the boat?”

He looked totally confused now. “He? Who? I don’t understand what you—”

“Jonathan Tynan-lah-di-fucking-dah-Ramsay. I know all about him, what he does, what he’s done, who he’s done it with. I even saw you with him Wednesday night. The Fiancée of the Desert, Juan-les-Pins, remember?”

I bent down, looking into the wall unit for the Polaroids, but they were still nowhere to be seen.

I straightened again. “You hearing me?” I pushed up his chin and finally got to look into his eyes. “I have no time to fuck around. Tell me where the boat is.”

He looked genuinely puzzled and very worried as he slumped back into the couch. “I don’t understand, I don’t know what you’re saying. He should—”

“It’s very simple,” I cut in. “The Ninth of May has left Beaulieu-sur-Mer and I want to know where it’s gone. Back to Marseille?”

I wanted him to know I knew a lot more than he thought.

There was no more time to waste. I was losing valuable minutes. I went to the kitchen and used the muzzle of the Browning to rummage in the drawers. I picked up a plastic-handled bread knife and came back into the living room. He pushed himself back an extra three inches into the couch. He was paying a lot of attention to me now.

“I’m going to ask one more time. Where is the boat?”

He hesitated, then began to stutter. “I don’t know…it should be at the port. It isn’t going to Marseille, that was just to pick up the two guys from the Algiers ferry. No, no…Beaulieu-sur-Mer…that’s what he—”

He was rubbing his face now with both hands, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his legs. “It should be there, I…”

I didn’t try to get eye contact again, just pushed him back into the back cushions and pointed the knife at his face. He needed to see it.

“Listen carefully. If you don’t know where it is, you’re no good to me. I don’t give a shit how important you think you are to other people. To me you’re nothing, and I’d rather have you dead than able to talk about me, if you ever live long enough, pumping that shit into you.”

His dopey eyes rolled toward the syringe and pills. “Please, I don’t know anything. The boat should be at the port. The boat was there. I swear, you will make a great mistake, I am protected, I—”

“Shut the fuck up. You’ve got fifteen seconds left. Tell me where the boat is.” I shoved the Browning into my jeans and checked traser. “You saw how messy this gets…especially if this thing isn’t sharp enough.”

His eyes were jumping around in his head. He was losing it, big-time. “I swear I don’t know, please…” His hands suddenly came up, as if he’d had a revelation. “Maybe he’s gone back to Vauban…”

“Antibes?”

“Yes, yes. Maybe he’s moved back there….”

I knew this place, I knew Vauban. It was a massive marina in the old town of Antibes, about ten minutes’ drive from Juan-les-Pins. I pointed the knife back at him. “Why there?”

“It’s always there, in the port, that’s where he lives. He told me he would go to Beaulieu-sur-Mer for three days with those guys. I swear this is the truth, I swear…”

“Where in Vauban?”

“With the fishing boats.”

I reckoned he was scared enough now to be telling the truth. Sweat poured down his face as he leaned forward, nervously pushed a tablet through the foil, and tossed it into his mouth, then fought with the Evian bottle top. I watched as he swallowed it like a gulping dog, hands shaking so badly the water ran down the side of his stubbly face.

He fiddled with the foil, as if making up his mind whether to take a second for luck.

“Is everything still going according to plan?”

He looked up at me, his voice trembling as much as everything else. “Yes, yes, everything. I’m sure. I don’t know why the boat has moved. I didn’t speak with Jonathan since he returned from Marseille with the collectors on Wednesday. He stopped at Vauban with those guys for a few hours, to meet me and try to persuade them to stay there. That was when I learned the addresses of these hawallada. You have to believe me. If the Ninth of May has moved, that is where it will be, by the fishing boats. Jonathan will not be letting anyone down, there will be a reason for him to leave.”

I looked down at the crap he had on the table. He knew what I was thinking.

“You’re disgusted. Everything I do disgusts you.” He waved the card at the syringe. “You think this is heroin, or maybe a little mixer, something like that?” He held up the tablet that he’d just pulled out with his shaky thumb and forefinger. “This, my friend, this is saquinavir, an antiretroviral…” His whole demeanor had changed. I didn’t know whether he suddenly just didn’t give a fuck, or if the chemicals he was taking had made him a bit soft in the head. He put the pill into his mouth, but didn’t follow it with any water. It rattled against his teeth as he spoke. “How times have changed. I take it for keeping slim — for as long as I can. The syringe, that is for my pain. These are the only drugs Jonathan and I take these days.”

He tilted the last of the Evian into and around his mouth before collapsing back into his sleeping position on the couch.

“The police were at Beaulieu-sur-Mer. They were looking at the boat before it disappeared.”

He smiled weakly to himself and moved his head to get more comfortable in the pashmina. “He told them he didn’t want to leave Vauban, he told me at dinner, but that’s what they wanted, so…” He shrugged his visible shoulder. “He is my friend, I know him. He must have moved back home to make things look more normal. Yes, that’s what he has done. The boat would have been watched because it has moved such a small distance. The police, they know these things, the boat is known to them. But those two guys, they don’t know that.”

He smiled to himself once more and rubbed his eye like a child.

He might be right. Curly might have used the Romeos’ freaking out as an excuse to move back to where he felt safer.

Greaseball looked up at me, red-eyed. “Do you know why it’s called that?”

“What?”

“The ninth of May, 1945. The day Guernsey was liberated from the Nazis. Jonathan’s a very patriotic boy.” He was definitely in a world of his own; maybe the pills were making him ramble. He sighed and a little stream of saliva dribbled down the side of his face. “It is going to be our liberation.” He took a deep, whistling breath through his nostrils, and his eyelids drooped. He gave himself a small, secret smile. “Not sad for long. No, no, no.”

“Both of you planning to go out with a bang, are you?”

“Bien sûr, mon ami. That’s the only thing that keeps us alive. I know you want to kill me. But I don’t care what you think. Fuck all of you. All of you are hypocrites. You find us disgusting, yet you use us if it suits you. You give me immunity for what we have done.”

“Fucking boys, you mean? Does he still do it? You take him to Algeria with you?”

“And more, and more.” His eyes were almost shut now, and he was dribbling big-time. Whatever he’d been pumping into his veins over the years had cost him several billion brain cells. “You don’t like me and I don’t like you. But I’ve still given you what you need. You know why? Because we do have something between us. We both hate al-Qaeda.” He tried to stare at me with glazed eyes, but he was just off-line. “Are you surprised? Why else do you think I am doing this? Why do you think I told them I could organize the collections? I have made them a fortune from heroin here, and what do I get?” He threw his arm out, pointing at the apartment. “So, you see, we are the same, you and me. You don’t like that, do you?” He gave up trying to lock on my eyes and turned over.

I opened the door with my sweatshirt cuff and left him to his dreams. I only wished I could have helped him on his way.