Liberation Day (10 page)

“What if the source doesn’t come up with the goods?”

George waved this aside. “Everything’s in a state of flux. Just get down there, meet up with the two guys who’ll be on your team, and wait for my word on the source meet.”

He looked me directly in the eye. “So much depends on you, Nick. If you succeed, none of these guys gets to see December fourteenth, let alone the twenty-fourth. But whatever happens, that money must not make it to Algeria.”

He sat back in his chair once more and spread his hands. “And it goes without saying, this has to be done without the French knowing. It takes time to go through all that human rights and due process bureaucratic crap—that’s time we don’t have.”

“And we have to make sure the rendered
hawalladas
still have their heads on, so they can chat to you people, right?”

George helped himself to another Coke. I didn’t notice him offering me one. “I don’t have to tell you this, Nick. If someone hits you and then threatens to hit you some more, you’ve got to stop them. Period.”

The can went into the garbage and he started collecting together the stuff on the bed and put it back into his briefcase. The briefing was over. “You leave in the morning. Enjoy the flight—I hear Air France has some great wines.”

He stood up, tightened his tie, and buttoned up his jacket. “We have a lot of catching up to do if we’re to win this war, Nick, and you’re now part of that catch-up.”

He turned back halfway to the door. “Until they kill you, of course, or I find someone better.”

He gave me a big smile, but I wasn’t sure he meant it as a joke.

10

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 10:37 HRS.

I
sat in the
laverie
on Boulevard Carnot, watching my sheets tumble about in the soapy water, deafened by the constant roar of traffic that drowned even the drone of the washing machines. I was waiting to RV (rendezvous) with the source. The RV was to take place across the busy boulevard at Le Natale brasserie at eleven, either inside or at a sidewalk table, depending on where the source decided to sit. She was calling that particular shot, and I didn’t like it.

The midmorning temperature had climbed into the low sixties. The thinnest clothes I’d brought with me from Boston were what I was wearing now, jeans and a blue Timberland sweatshirt, but judging by one or two of the passersby, I wouldn’t have been out of place in winter furs.

Le Natale was a
café-tabac
where you could buy a lotto ticket and win a fortune, put all the winnings on a horse, watch the race while eating lunch or just downing coffee, then buy your parking tokens and a book of stamps on the way out.

I had picked the laundromat for cover. The sheets had been bought yesterday after I’d recced this area. You always have to have a reason for being somewhere.

George had told me three days ago that the source would be supplying me with details of a pleasure boat that was parking sometime soon, somewhere along the coast. On board would be the al-Qaeda team, an as yet unknown number of people, who would be collecting the money from three different
hawalladas
before taking it back to Algeria. We were to follow the collectors, see who they picked up the money from, then do our job the same day. There was no time to waste. George wanted them in that warship ASAP.

I was the only one in the
laverie,
apart from the old woman who did the service laundry. Every few minutes she hitched up her shabby brown overcoat and dragged her slippered feet across the worn linoleum tiles to test the dampness of the clothes in the tumble dryers. She kept dabbing the clothes against her cheeks and seemed to be complaining to herself about the lack of drying power every time. She’d then close the door and mumble some more to me while I smiled back at her and nodded, my eyes already returning to the target on the other side of the plate glass window, or as much of it as I could see through the posters for
Playboy
and how
“super économique”
the machines were.

I’d been in the South of France four days now, having left Boston on the first flight to Amsterdam, then on to Paris, before finally arriving here on the eighteenth. I got myself a bed in a hotel in the old quarter of Cannes, behind the synagogue and the fruit and cheap clothes market.

Today was the day the covert three-man team I commanded was about to take the war to al-Qaeda.

My washing machine was spinning like mad as a stream of people moved in and out of the brasserie doors, buying their Camel Lights or Winstons along with their paper as the world screamed past in both directions.

The money we were after from the
hawalladas
had been made here in Europe. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban between them controlled nearly seventy percent of the world’s heroin trade. The
hawalla
system had been used very successfully to move that cash to the U.S. to finance the ASUs.

The old woman pulled her weary body up once more, mumbling to herself as I pretended to look interested in a man on a moped who was weaving in and out of the traffic with only one hand on his handlebars. The other was holding a plastic coffee cup. His helmet straps flew out on each side of his helmet as he tried to take a gulp at the same time as cutting off a Citroën.

This was a good place to watch the RV before making contact, and it hid me from the CCTV (closed-circuit TV) camera mounted outside on a high steel pole. It seemed to be monitoring the traffic on the incredibly busy four-lane boulevard that connected the auto route with the beach, but for all I knew it might be movable. I wasn’t taking any chances. There was not only al-Qaeda and the
hawalladas
to worry about, but French police and intelligence surveillance as well.

Since this was a totally deniable operation, every precaution had to be made to ensure the security of our team. The French had vast experience fighting Islamic fundamentalism. They had an excellent human intelligence network in North Africa and could discover that we were operating on the Riviera at any time. It didn’t matter how or why; they might have monitored the al-Qaeda money movement, and we’d get caught in the middle. Then we would really be in the shit, as no one would be coming to help us. In fact, George would probably help the French to convict us as terrorists to cover his ass. I still wondered late at night why the hell I did these jobs. Why did I not only take them on but get screwed by the very people I should have had the most reason to trust? The money was good—well, it was now, working for George. But I still couldn’t come up with the answer, so last night I used the same mantra I’d always muttered to stop me thinking too much about anything. “Fuck it.”

This meet with the source was the first of many high-risk activities my team was going to undertake in the next few days. I had no idea who this woman was; for all I knew, the French, or even al-Qaeda, might already be onto her, and I’d be caught up in a total gang fuck on day one.

The café had large, clear windows, unobstructed by posters or blinds, which was something else I didn’t like. It was too easy for people to see in, especially people with telephoto lenses. A red canvas awning protected some of the outside tables for those who wanted to keep out of the sun. Two customers sat at different tables reading newspapers under it, and a couple of women seemed to be comparing the hairstyles of their little puffed-up poodles. The Riviera’s morning routine was just generally ambling along.

A few of the women had to be Italian. They didn’t so much walk as glide in their minks, but maybe they were simply steering clear of the poodle shit. Everyone in Cannes seemed to own one of the heavily coiffed little shitters, and trotted them along on their fancy leads, or looked on lovingly as they took a dump in the middle of the sidewalk. I’d already had to scrape three loads off my Timberlands since arriving, and had now become a bit of an expert at the Cannes Shuffle, dodging and weaving as I walked.

To my right, the boulevard headed gently uphill, getting steeper as it passed two or three miles of car dealerships and unattractive apartment buildings before hitting Autoroute 8, which took you either to Nice and Italy, about an hour away, or down to Marseille and the Spanish border.

To my left, and about five minutes’ walk downhill, lay the train station, the beach, and the main Cannes tourist traps. But the only part of town I was interested in today was where I was right now. In about fifteen minutes the source should be turning up wearing a red pashmina shawl and a pair of jeans; she was going to sit at a table and read a month-old copy of
Paris-Match,
one with a picture of Julia Roberts on the cover.

I didn’t like the physical setup for this meet. I’d had a coffee and croissant inside the café yesterday for a recce and could see no escape route. It wasn’t looking good: large, unobstructed windows letting the world see what was happening inside, and an exposed sidewalk outside. I couldn’t leap off a fire escape at the back, or go to the bathroom and climb out the window if anyone came barging through the main door. I would have to go for the virgin ground of the kitchen. I had no choice: I had to make contact with the source.

The dryer door behind me opened onto a batch of very flowery patterned sheets. I shifted my weight onto my left buttock and adjusted my fanny pack, which hung over the fly of my jeans and contained my passport and wallet. The pack never left me, and to help make sure it stayed that way I’d threaded a wire through the belt. Pickpockets in the crowds down here used Stanley knives to slit belts and straps, but they’d have had a tough job with this one.

The old woman was still mumbling away to herself, then raised her voice to me, looking for my agreement on the crap state of the machines. I turned and did my bit,
“Oui, oui,”
smiled, and turned my eyes back toward the target.

Tucked down the front of my jeans was a worn-out 1980s Browning 9mm with a thirteen-round mag. It was a French black-market job, which, like all the team’s weapons, had been supplied by a contact I had yet to see, whom I’d nicknamed Thackery. I hadn’t laid eyes on him; I just had this picture in my head of a clean-shaven thirty-something with short black hair. The serial number had been ground out, and if the Browning had to be used, ballistics would link it to local Italian gangs. There were enough of them around here, with the border so close. And, of course, I had bought myself a Leatherman. I’d never leave home without one.

As I checked up and down the road and across once more at the café, the world was buzzing around me and my new girlfriend in the laundromat. Teenagers raced around on motor scooters, some with helmets, some without, just like the police on their BMWs. Small cars were driven like ballistic missiles in both directions. Christmas decorations were rigged up across the boulevard; the most popular number this year was white lights in the shape of stars and lighted candles.

I thought about how things had moved on since Logan.

“All the people that you care about live here.” George had known exactly what he was doing even before he got me to take Zeralda’s head. Blind watchmaker, my ass.

I scanned up and down the boulevard for the hundredth time, looking for anybody wearing red on blue, checking to make sure no one else was lurking around waiting to jump me once I’d made contact.

I had a contingency plan if there was a problem before the meet. My escape route was out of the
laverie
service door, which was open. It was lined with bags of unclaimed laundry and lost socks and underwear, and led through a small yard into an alleyway. At the end was a low wall, which led into the backyard of the perfumery on the boulevard to my left. From there I’d slip into an adjacent apartment building and hide in the basement garage until the coast was clear.

I checked traser. Four minutes to eleven. To my left I caught a flash of red among the pedestrians on the curb, waiting to cross in the direction of the café. I hadn’t seen it before; she must have come from one of the shops or the other
tabac
farther down the hill. She’d probably been sitting having a coffee, doing pretty much what I’d been doing. If so, it was a good sign; at least she was switched on. I kept the patch of red in my peripheral vision, not searching for the face in case there was eye contact.

There was a gap in the traffic and the pashmina made a move. It was a man; he had a magazine rolled up in his right hand and a small brown
porte-monnaie
—or fag-bag, as a few of my new fellow countrymen called them—in his left. If I was wrong, I’d soon be finding out.

Once over the road he went up to an empty pavement table and took a seat. As in all French cafés, the chairs were facing the road so the clientele could people-watch. He got settled and laid the magazine out flat on the table. I continued to watch through the traffic. A waitress in a vest went over and took his order as he brought a pack of cigarettes out from the fag-bag.

I couldn’t see much of his face, owing to the distance and the volume of traffic between us, but he was wearing sunglasses and was either dark-skinned or had a permatan. I’d find out later. I didn’t look at him anymore now. My gaze shifted elsewhere; there were more important things to check. Was it safe to approach him? Was anyone else around, waiting to ruin my day?

I ran through my plan once more in my head: to go and sit near him, order coffee, and, when it felt safe, come out with my check statement. I was going to point to Julia Roberts and say, “Beautiful, isn’t she?” His reply would be, “Yes, she is, but not as much as Katharine Hepburn, don’t you think?” Then I was going to get up and go over and sit by him and start talking Katharine. That would be the cover story: we just met and started talking about film stars because of the cover of the magazine. I didn’t know his name, he didn’t know mine, we didn’t know each other, we were just chatting away in a café. There must always be a reason for being where you are.

I still felt uneasy, though. Meeting inside the café would have been bad enough, with nowhere to run, but outside was even worse. He could be setting me up for a snapshot that could be used against me, or maybe a drive-by shooting. I didn’t know this character, I didn’t know what he was into. All I knew was that it had to be done, no matter what was out there; if everything went according to plan, I would come away with the information we needed.