The Snake Flag Conspiracy

Chapter One

There was no moon. There was only starlight. The shadows cast by the boulders at the foot of the limestone cliffs that rimmed the beach were either ominous or romantic, depending on whom you were with. Up to now, they had been as romantic as only the Riviera can be when you’re with a beautiful, uninhibited girl.

Clarisse pressed her nude body closer to mine, whispering into my ear in a voice as soft and as dark as the Mediterranean night that shrouded us as we lay on a soft wool picnic blanket.

She whispered again, but this time my attention leaped away from her voice to a fainter sound, the scrabbling grate of a loose pebble on sand-covered rock.

I put my hand over her mouth, feeling her moist lips on the palm of my hand, and rolled away from the softness of her body to the edge of the blanket.

I heard it again. The sliding rasp of sand on rock.

All along the Côte d’Azur, from Marseilles to Toulon, the coastline is indented by a continuous series of deep water inlets. The waters of the Mediterranean cover ancient river beds, so that in these small bays the limestone cliffs drop precipitously into the sea. Here and there, along the edges of some of the inlets — the calanques — there are small, rough sand beaches.

Clarisse and I had found one earlier in the day, not far from Cassis. We had picnicked and gone swimming, and when the sun went down, going pink and then red and finally flaring out as it went into the sea, we had made love in the dark.

Now, in an instant, the whole atmosphere changed. The sound I’d heard could only have been made by leather slipping on sand-covered rock — and a footstep made that stealthily in the night meant danger!

I half rose, bending over Clarisse, putting my face close to hers so she could see me touch my lips with the index finger of my left hand. Clarisse’s eyes questioned mine, but she made no sound. I took my hand away from her lips.

Reaching for the tangled bundle of my slacks and jersey, I pulled out my Luger. With my other hand I found Hugo, the small but deadly knife I usually carry strapped to my wrist, and put him back in place.

I would have put on my sandals, too, because that calanque sand is not just coarse, it’s cutting. It can scrape the soles of your feet raw in no time if they’re not thickly calloused.

But I knew that only bare feet would be silent on those sandy rocks and decided not to make the same mistake as my pursuer. Leaving my sandals by the blanket, still in the nude, I moved away from Clarisse into the shadows of the nearby boulders. I motioned to her to hide behind another cluster of mountainous rocks and, her naked body glistening in the moonlight, she followed my instructions.

Silently I waited. Let them come to me. I was ready.

For a long time there was nothing. Minutes passed. And then I saw it. Moving slowly into the far waters of the inlet, gliding soundlessly like a dark ghost in the black night on the even blacker water, its silhouette was all that gave it away. With its blunt bows, wide beam, and triangular sail drooping because there was no wind to fill it, the fishing sloop moved into the inlet from the sea so slowly it hardly caused a ripple on the water. The phut-sput of its engine was so muffled it could barely be heard.

There are a lot of craft of that sort all along the French coast. And along the Spanish and Portuguese coasts, too. Hell, I might as well add the Italian and Greek coasts. In fact, everywhere along the Med, you’ll find boats like these. They’re painted in a variety of dark colors, and they look just like other fishing boats. But they sound very different, for they’re almost completely silent. They’ve had their engines altered and muffled because they’re used for smuggling.

I heard the scraping sound for the third time. Only now it was fainter and came from the other side of the narrow inlet. There was more than one man out there.

I hunched down in the shadow of the boulder and waited, wondering who had set this ambush for me. And why.

The flash of light from the fishing sloop was so small it could have been made only by a penlite. It winked on and off twice, paused and then winked a quick triple flash.

I twisted my head to scan the blackness of the cliffs around me. Sure enough, there was an answering flash.

Now the scrape of footsteps was clear. This time there was no stealthiness about them. They came in a hurried rush, as if someone were scrambling down the steep slope of the cliff, anxious to get at me. I turned, putting my back to the solid safety of the stone boulder. My left hand snapped back the elbow action of Wilhelmina, cocking the Luger and driving a fat, deadly 9mm round into its chamber.

I heard a scramble of running footsteps coming at me. Instinctively, I started to slide away. I wasn’t going to shoot until I had a clear target, but suddenly the target was past me, racing at full speed to the water’s edge.

He had taken three big leaps into the sea when the gunfire opened up.

There were two of them. The man at the top of the cliffs across the inlet wasn’t doing much good. He had too high an angle of fire to be accurate even if he had a sniperscope mounted on his rifle and could see what he was aiming at.

The one halfway up the cliff behind me was more accurate. A Kalashnikov has a distinctive, coughing stutter that you can’t forget if you’ve ever heard one close up, and I’ve heard more than one. That Russian automatic rifle is one of the best in the world. It was a shame that the guy using it wasn’t as good. He just put the piece on “auto” fire and held down the trigger.

The water’s edge erupted in a display of miniature geysers. In the same second, the body of the man who’d started to wade into the sea snapped erect, jerked spastically a couple of times and then collapsed in a wild thrashing of arms and legs.

Up on the cliff behind me, the Kalashnikov stopped firing. He’d run through a complete clip in seconds. In my mind I could see him unsnapping the magazine, trying to jam a fresh one in place.

His victim was still alive. Water splashed crazily as be threw himself backwards toward the shore, crawling in panic for the sand and the safety of the boulders that rimmed the inlet.

Two more shots came from the cliff top across the inlet. They kicked up sand yards away from their intended victim.

And then the bullets from the reloaded AK-47 began to smash the boulder above me. I swore as stone splinters sliced painfully into my back and flung myself sideways toward a better shelter.

For a moment I thought I was the new target. Then I saw that their original victim had lunged his way in desperate thrusts far up the beach and was scrabbling toward me, dragging one leg. his hands clawing blindly at the sand like a sightless, wounded crab.

The shots from the cliff tops were methodical even if they weren’t accurate, spaced only seconds apart. It was a question of which one of the two gunmen would kill him first. The poor son-of-a-bitch didn’t have a chance in hell of coming out of this alive. By now I knew they weren’t after me, and I damn well wasn’t going to interfere. I told myself it was none of my business, and I wouldn’t have gotten involved except that I heard the victim cry out.

In Russian.