The Devil's Dozen

Eight

The border-crossing at Iran, in the Pyrenees between Spain and France, is a narrow valley. Our Mercedes was in a long line of cars being inspected by Franco’s border patrol. I played the part of the bored businessman. Vera read a French paperback. The sun was hot. The car radio blared American rock music.

About now, my freight-load of almond powder was crossing the border inspection on a different route fifty miles away. The Spanish and French wouldn’t be satisfied with just the appearance of the powder. They’d open every bag and dip in for a sample not only once but a few times, in case almond powder had been laid over some deeper opium. I wanted them to. I wanted everything as legal as possible.

Which meant we would have to take the risk now at the border-crossing. I wasn’t worried about Spanish customs. The dead man had been found by the Portuguese by now, but there was no connection between him and us yet, and there probably never would be. The Corsican’s family would know, however, and that posed special problems for us.

France has Corsicans in the Mafia but, at the same time, the French espionage network, SDECE, and particularly its assassination team, action, is composed in great part of hardened Corsicans. Actions training center is in Corsica. It’s as if AXE and the CIA were made up of Sicilians. The Corsicans in Action are very close to the drug dealers of Marseilles, which is one reason why efforts to stop the narcotics trade had been so unsuccessful until late.

Kill a Corsican and you commit suicide, that is the unspoken law of France. And having done just that, we were headed for France.

The Spanish official looked at our passports, visas, car registration, and insurance. After a moment of dignified perusal he handed the papers back and waved us through.

It was fifty yards of white highway to the French checkpoint. We handed over our papers again.

“Would you pull your car to the side, if you please?” the Frenchman said.

“What for?”

“Normal inspection.”

We left the line of cars for an area on the side of the road. Two men in plainclothes were waiting for us. They were Corsicans, one wirey, with olive skin, the other thick-set with beetled brows.

“What is this all about?” I demanded.

“Papiers.” There was no “s’il vous plait.”

“You have anything to declare?” the thickset Corsican pushed me. Not hard, it was almost accidental, but a push to let me know where I stood.

“Nothing.”

“He is a Turk,” Beetlebrow said as if this automatically meant something.

“Why are you traveling with him?” the burly one asked Vera.

“He’s a friend.”

The two men coarsely ran their eyes over Vera. Parked by the customs shed was a black sedan with official plates and a Paris suffix. The Corsicans were from Action, and they could do anything they wanted, as long as it looked legal. Revenge was not their only interest, though. The Mercedes was running a close second to Vera for their attention.

“Open the hood and the trunk, Turk, and be quick about it.”

This time a push knocked me back two feet. My face stayed blank, and I didn’t resist. One move and I would be shot down for assaulting an officer of the law.

I opened up the engine and trunk but their search didn’t stop there. The two thugs uncoupled numerous tubes, knocked off the hub caps, pulled up every bit of matting and, when they still found nothing, had the Mercedes put on a lift and disengaged the muffler.

“We can pull this whole car apart if we want to, Turk. Why not just tell us where the stuff is?”

“What stuff are you talking about?”

“Don’t be clever.” The burly thug picked up a tire jack and swung it lightly. “Maybe you want me to ask questions in a different way?”

“Hey, you two! Are you finished?” the captain of the border guard shouted from the line of cars at the checkpoint. “I’m pulling somebody else over.”

In a red MG were five longhaired kids, their heads lolling from side to side. Moroccan hash, I guessed, and they’d indulged themselves a little too early.

“Stay where you are,” one of the Action men shouted back.

The captain of the guard flared. He was elegant in a dark blue paramilitary uniform, and he resented the two agents from Action intruding in his station.

“I am in charge here. If I find narcotics I pull a car to the side. What are you doing with those people, anyway?” The captain came over, his fists on his belt. The Corsicans of Action are not popular with French police. The Corsicans call gendarmes “Little Blue Riding Hoods.” The gendarmerie call the Corsicans “Les Bouches,” the Butchers. “If you can’t find anything in that car, let them go.”

“They’re wanted.”

“For what? I have names and descriptions or all wanted persons. I don’t recognize these two.”

“Look, my little captain, if you don’t get your ass out of here, I’m going to put some lead in it for you,” the Corsican with the jack snarled.

“Is that so?” the captain seemed aristocratically amused. He nodded back at two of his guards who were watching the scene with great interest. Each had unslung his Lebell submachine gun. “My two little greasy islanders, if you so much as spit the wrong way you will find yourselves circumsized.”

The captain was an arrogant bastard, but I felt he had a certain charm. The Corsicans wavered.

“Pardon me, captain,” I interjected, “but this is very embarrassing. Can’t we go to your office to settle this? There you can call Paris and make sure of their authorization.”

“An excellent idea,” the captain concurred. In his office, his authority would be even less in dispute.

“Forget it.” The Corsican dropped the jack and slapped his friend on the back. “Never mind.”

“The car!” the captain pointed righteously at the parts of my Mercedes. “What about that, now that you’ve taken it apart?”

The Corsicans chuckled and gave him a pair of raised fingers. While he still sputtered, they jumped into their sedan and drove off.

“I apologize for France,” the captain said to me at attention.

He had the car put back together by fearful subordinates. The MG of spaced-out kids was forgotten as the captain did his commanding-officer routine for Vera. I amused myself by counting the minutes that Vera and I had left to live.

The Corsicans would be waiting for us past the checkpoint. The small town of Iran was nothing more than a two-lane road with shabby tourist hotels stuck on each side and beyond the hotels shrub and mountain. There were no side roads we could detour on. Iran was a trap. We could simply turn around and go back to Spain but not even the captain was so dense that he wouldn’t find that suspicious.

“Your car is as good as new, monsieur, with my compliments,” the captain gave me a little bow. I shook his white-gloved hand and thanked him. “You understand,” he added in an undertone, “that the Corsicans are not really French. They are only kept because they are useful.”

“Useful for that?” Vera asked with a touch of scorn.

“To use against the Communists, naturally,” he spread his hands. As we got in the car, he leaned on the windshield and gave innocent Vera a broad man-of-the-world smile. “Bon voyage, mademoiselle, and for my sake stay out of trouble.”

We returned his goodbye wave and drove off from the checkpoint.

“The Corsicans,” Vera said as she stopped waving, “they have to be killed.”

The Corsicans’ black sedan began playing bumper tag with us halfway through the border town. Vera fixed her long hair in a bun. Her Beretta was in her lap.

“You can put your gun away,” I said. In my side mirror I could see the thick-set Corsican at the wheel.

“If we don’t kill them, they’ll kill us.”

That wasn’t entirely true. I glanced at Vera.

The man in the car behind us would kill me, but not her. How did the first Corsican show up in our hotel room? There was only one way: Vera. By then she was supposed to know where the opium was. That was why she was upset on the drive back from the almond orchard, because she knew the Corsican would be waiting. Under my deal with DeSantis, all his money would be forfeited if there were any interference from his “representative.” Having the Corsican show up as Vera’s partner would have blown everything, so Vera made a decision. She blew a hole in her partner’s back.

Now she was willing to kill two more men so they wouldn’t say or do the wrong thing. And I had to kill them too because having Action on my back would ruin AXE’s project. So, Vera and I, two lovers, made a mutual, lethal business decision.

A tanker truck coming in the opposite direction pushed the Corsicans out of the passing lane. As soon as the Corsicans pulled out again to pass, a logging truck made them pull back. I gunned the Mercedes up to ninety; it would reach 140, but I wanted to remain in the Corsican’s eyesight.

Mountain pine and oak flashed by. The Pyrenees was logging country, with deer, bear, and wolf. I might be able to lure the Corsicans up a logging trail, but the net result would look too much like murder. I needed a fatal accident.

I pushed the button that rolled my window down and told Vera to do the same.

“You do want me to shoot their tires?”

“Just do as I say, Vera. We’re setting a trap.”

I swung into the left lane and slowed to sixty-five around a tight curve. Iran was far away in the valley now. We were high and ten feet away from the road’s edge was a 1,000-foot drop. A track klaxon wailed, and I swerved the Mercedes onto the right lane. The tires screamed, and the lines of Vera’s jaw tensed.

Another girl would have been clutching the dashboard with terror.

The Corsican’s black sedan loomed behind us again. I swung left into the oncoming lane.

“He’ll just come up on the right, Raki.”

“That’s the whole idea. You be ready for him and we’ll be all right.”

One s-curve followed another. The tires of both cars kept up a dangerous howl as we swung left and right up the mountain. The Corsicans would have shot one of our tires by now but for one reason: the car. They still believed that opium was being brought in m the Mercedes. A road accident would draw gendarmes, who would be bound to spot opium spilling from a wreck.

My rear left tire skirted the road’s edge, throwing pebbles into thin air. Vera looked at the white crosses we were passing by the roadside-each cross planted for a death by accident. A heavy truck in first gear appeared before us. As I moved to pass, a second truck came barrelling down the mountain. I fishtailed the Mercedes from eighty to ten miles per hour. As soon as the truck went by in a shudder of wind, I pulled out with the other sedan right behind.

We were at the crest of the mountain now, cut off from view in back and ahead. The air was sharp with the taste of pines. I held the left lane, the sedan moved alongside on the right.

The Corsican driving had his window down. He had a gold tooth among the lower molars, I noticed for the first time. I edged the Mercedes closer until the two cars, traveling at sixty miles per hour, were almost touching. With his left hand, the driver shoved a .45 in through Vera’s window.

She ducked out of the line of fire, as was natural. And as I wanted her to do. Exultant, at a range of four feet, the Corsican aimed the automatic at my head.

“Slow down, Turk!”

The muzzle pointed at my temple. I continued driving. The Corsicans wouldn’t want an accident, not yet. The dark-browed Corsican glanced ahead, steering with one hand. His head turned sharply when he noticed the pressure on the wrist of his gun hand.

Vera had pushed the button that rolled up her window. She leaned on the button, locking his hand inside. I began steering toward the right of the road with its steep drop. The Corsican, seeing where he was heading, screamed.

I ducked. Two .45 slugs went over my head and out my open window, their heavy caliber claps echoing in my ears. They were desperate shots. The Corsican dropped his .45 on Vera’s lap to free his hand. It didn’t work. His hand remained in the Mercedes up to the wrist. The other Corsican in the passenger seat tried to fire, but the driver couldn’t pull out of the way. Slowly, the more powerful Mercedes pulled its way right. The space left for the sedan dwindled from ten feet, to six, to five.

Vera released the window button.

The hand vanished first, the Corsicans second. Where there was a sedan was now whistling air, and a moment later the sound of something falling very fast down the mountain side.

Vera picked up the .45 with her scarf and threw the gun out the window. It spun far down toward the trees. Then she sat back, looked at me and sighed.

“You’re very good. Raki. In every way. What I don’t understand is how we never heard of you before.”

“You’re not so bad yourself, Vera.”

She thought it over. My meaning was clear enough. There just was no way the Corsicans could have been on our trail without her leading them to us, and no way to dispose of their untimely appearance without murder.

Three dead men in three days. It was a Mafia daisy. She loves me. She loves me not. She loves me.

The next petal might be me.