Liberation Day

Chapter 41

Antibes and its harbor, Port Vauban, is Yachting Central for the Mediterranean. A third of the world’s megaboats are based on the Riviera, and the majority of them are parked in this one port. Here, even boats with a helicopter on the deck are sneered at by those on Millionaires’ Row, where the smallest looks as if it’s owned by Cunard.

The support services for all these thousands of pleasure craft make Antibes an all-year-round town, not a sleepy, seasonal place like Juan-les-Pins or any of the others along the coast.

I passed the nondescript apartment buildings that had spread out of the old town like a wave, swamping everything in their path, and as I neared the port the streets began to narrow and the buildings got much older. There were just inches on each side for maneuvring past rows of motor scooters and cars, all of which looked abandoned rather than parked. Maybe the mayor awarded a weekly prize for the most artistic parking arrangement.

The Romans had built Antibes into an important town, but in the seventeenth century the public baths, aqueduct, and open-air theater had been torn down and the stone used to build its defenses, including a fort to protect the port where Napoleon was once imprisoned. All that was left of the old city wall was a few hundred yards that faced the port.

The old town proper was picture-postcard stuff, apart from the Christmas lights taped onto windows and straddling the streets. Tall, shuttered buildings lined the streets, with laundry strung on lines between them. I drove through a small archway set into the old wall, which was maybe ten yards thick. On the other side and ahead of me was a forest of masts, illuminated by the harbor lights. To my left was a parking lot that followed the wall until it ended, maybe two hundred yards away. To my right, the wall continued, and rows of small fishing boats were moored in the water. Behind them, small market stalls waited empty to sell the day’s catch. If Greaseball was correct, then somewhere among the fishing boats, in the poor man’s area, was the Ninth of May.

The parking lot was virtually empty, and not a VW camper to be seen. Not that I expected to see it: if the police were here, they certainly wouldn’t be using the same vehicle. Keeping a constant speed, I checked out the parking lot hours before turning left, back into the old town, parking in the first space I could find.

If there was a French trigger on the Ninth of May, they’d spot me as well if I used the parking lot. Just like the Romeos, I always wanted to be behind them, out of their field of view. I’d abandoned my jacket and cap after the gang fuck at the marina and cleaned myself up a bit before putting on the new green baggy sweatshirt I’d bought at Cap 3000 during the brush contact yesterday.

Before getting out I checked the Browning and the fanny pack for the umpteenth time before following the wall town-side back toward the port. To my right was a line of small restaurants and cafés in the shadow of the massive blocks of granite or whatever it was. They were closed for the night, their outside furniture stacked, wired, and padlocked to the ground.

I headed past the archway toward the stone steps up to the ramparts, so that I could get a better view of the boats.

Once through an alleyway between the wall and a closed-up bar, I emerged into a small, cobbled, tree-lined square that had made many a postcard photographer’s day. As I started up the steps, I looked at the sky. The clouds had gone and stars were out, twinkling as best they could against the man-made stuff thrown up from the town and harbor.

I stopped about four steps before the top to check out the ramparts. Along each side of the wall was a three-foot-high parapet, which must once have run its entire length. Now, it was blocked in both directions, leaving quite a large area for people to use as a viewing platform. To the left, the wall over the archway was blocked by a rusty wrought-iron gate and railings, and to my right it had been made into a small parking lot. How they got up here was a mystery, but I saw three empty cars and a Renault van. The van was a dark color, and had been reversed against the parapet. Its rear windows looked down over the port.

I moved back down the stairs a little, into dead ground, and sat on the steps. A dog started to yap somewhere in the old town and a moped rattled along the cobblestones below.

There was only one way to find out if the van was occupied or not. I stood up and climbed to the viewing area. The van had a sliding door on its passenger side, so I kept to the right-hand side of it, in case it suddenly opened to reveal a bedraggled, short-haired woman in a damp leather jacket.

As I approached, I could see that the driver’s area was blocked off from the rear, screening the interior. I’d have expected a vehicle like this to be full of old newspapers and soda cans, even an air-freshener hanging off the mirror, but there was nothing.

I got on the right side of it, between the flush body panel and a BMW, before standing still, doing my open-mouth trick, and waiting.

The dog started up again. Still I waited, and maybe three or four minutes passed before there was movement. The steel creaked just a little; maybe they were changing over the trigger; but enough to tell me there were people inside.

I moved forward, closer to the parapet, but not beyond the line of the rear windows, to look down at the quay. I couldn’t help but smile as my eyes followed the line of boats below me. There, tied up next to the first of a whole row of bigger boys, a fifty-foot monster called the Lee, was the Ninth of May, looking as if it were hiding behind its mother’s skirts.

Like the owners of plenty of other small craft here, Curly had made the place look just like home. The quay behind boasted an array of very weathered garden furniture.

I studied the couch cover on the top deck, and it looked much the same as when I’d left it. There were no lights on board and the blinds were down.

I turned slowly, walked back to the steps and down into the square, leaving the police to it as I thought through potential exit points for the Romeos. They’d have to come along the quay, past the fishing boats and stalls, until they got to the road through the archway. They could then go straight, following the wall on either side until it stopped, then uphill, out of the old town, toward the railway station. The other option was to turn left through the archway and head for the bus station through the old town. Neither was more than ten minutes’ walk away.

According to traser it was three-fifty-eight. I still had time to do a more detailed recce of both, and work out how I was going to get a trigger in on the boat without getting spotted by the police. I crossed the archway, staying out of sight on the town side of the wall, and went to check out the rail option first. I thought about the two, maybe three people inside the Renault. Chances were, they had a camera mounted, ready to take pictures of the boat as soon as there was movement on board. Like me, any food they had with them would have been removed from its original noisy packaging, and wrapped in Saran wrap or a plastic bag. Their bathroom arrangements would be a little better than mine, though: they might even have managed plastic jerrycans. The inside of the van would be protected to cut down on noise. Maybe the floor was covered with soft gym mats and the wall padded with foam. They’d certainly be wearing sneakers or soft shoes.

But even so, at night, with hardly any ambient noise to drown their gentle movements, thank fuck I had heard them.