Liberation Day (12 page)

He started to walk toward it, eager to please. “Let me go and—”

“Stop, we go together. I want to see every move you make. Got it?”

I followed a few steps behind him as his loafers squeaked over the light gray fake marble. Both of the other rooms were in a similar state. The bedroom just fitted the bed, and the rest of the floor was covered with newspapers, dirty underwear, and a couple of Slazenger tennis bags still in their Decathlon shopping bag. He didn’t look the tennis type, but the two used syringes that lay on top of the bags were very much his style, which was why he tried to kick it all under the bed without me seeing. He was obviously contributing energetically to al-Qaeda’s heroin profits.

A pair of wardrobes were packed with brightly colored clothes and shoes, all looking new. The bedroom stank of aftershave and cigarettes, but not as badly as the tiny bathroom did. It had a faded yellow sink, toilet, and a typical French half-bath with a handheld shower. Every surface was covered with bottles of shampoo, cologne, and hair color. The bath had enough pubic hairs around the drain to stuff a mattress.

“You see everything is correct. It is safe.”

I didn’t even bother to check if he was embarrassed as we walked back into the living room. I squeezed around the furniture and went over to the patio-style window that led onto the balcony overlooking the road we had just walked up. A couple of tennis rackets leaned against the railings, and a pair of scrunched-up beach towels hung over the balustrade.

By now he was sitting nervously on a green couch, which had probably been installed at the same time as the kitchen. It was against the left-hand wall, facing a dirty wood-veneer wall unit that was dominated by a huge TV and video. Everything was covered in so much dust I could even see his fingermarks around the controls. VHS tapes and all manner of shit was scattered around the shelves. A small boom box-type CD player stood on a shelf above the TV, surrounded by a sea of discs lying out of their boxes. The videotapes had no titles, but I could guess the sort of thing he was into watching.

The rectangular waxed-pine coffee table at the center of the room was covered with more old newspapers, a half-empty bottle of red wine, and a food plate that had doubled as an ashtray. I was beginning to feel greasy as well as grubby in this guy’s company.

I got to the point, so I didn’t have to spend too much more time around him. “When will the boat be here?”

He crossed his legs and placed both hands around his knees, feeling a little more comfortable now that it seemed I wasn’t going to take his head off. “Tomorrow night, at Beaulieu-sur-Mer, it’s toward Monaco.”

“Write it down.” I knew where it was, but wanted to make sure I had the right place. He leaned forward, found a pen among the mess on the table, and wrote on the edge of a newspaper, in a scrawl that any doctor would have been proud of.

“There is a port, a marina, I think you call it. It’s not far. Her name is the
Ninth of May
. It’s a white boat, quite large. It’s coming in tomorrow night.” He ripped off the edge of the paper—“Here”—and pushed it toward me.

I looked out of the window and down into the garden of one of the original houses opposite. An old man was tending a vegetable patch, attaching bits of silver paper to bamboo sticks. I kept watching him. “How many are going to be on board?”

“There are three. One will always remain with the boat, while the other two collect the money. They’re going to start on Friday, the first of three collections. They’ll make one a day, and leave for Algiers with the money on Sunday. They are trying to close their accounts here in France—before you do it for them, no?”

I turned back to Greaseball. He rummaged around in his bag and dragged out a Camel. With an elegant flick of a lighter, he sat back and let smoke curl out of his nostrils. He crossed his legs once more and laid his left arm along the back of the couch as if he were running the show. He was starting to get a bit too confident. “Where are they going to collect the cash, then, Greaseball?”

He choked on his cigarette and smoke blew uncontrollably from his nose and mouth. “Greaseball?” Composing himself, he took another drag and this time exhaled slowly, smiling at his new name. “Where? That I do not know, and I won’t until tomorrow night, maybe. I’m not sure yet. But I do know they’re only going to use public transport, buses, that sort of thing. It’s safer than Hertz. Bus drivers don’t keep records.”

It made sense to me. “Do you know how much money?”

“Anything between two-point-five and three million American.”

He took another drag and I went back to watching the old guy dig around his vegetable patch, thinking about the number of suicide bombers’ families with Land Cruisers with all the extras that could be funded with that sort of cash.

“Are they collecting from
hawalladas
?”

“Yes, of course. These guys on the coast, the ones who will be handing them the money, are
hawalla
people.”

I moved back one of the net curtains so I could get a clearer view.

“What time will the boat arrive?”

“Did you know this is where the money was collected to finance the attack on the American embassy in Paris?” He took another drag and sounded almost proud. “Can you imagine what would have happened if that had been successful too?”

“The boat, what time?”

There was some shuffling as he adjusted himself in his seat. “In the evening sometime, I’m not too sure.” There was a pause and I could hear him stubbing out his cigarette and pulling another from the pack. I turned as he gave the lighter a flick and looked at the CDs on the wall unit. It was obvious he was a big Pink Floyd fan.

“Zeralda liked me to bring a new tape for him each trip. I’d collect the boys too, of course.” He cocked his head to one side, measuring my reaction. “Did you see me drive back to the house that night? I was hoping you would have finished the job by then. But he kept calling on my cell. He didn’t like to be kept waiting….”

The fucker was smiling, taunting me.

I pulled the sliding glass door with my sweatshirt cuff to let in some air, and was greeted by the sound of traffic from the main drag, and the old guy outside clearing his passages. I resisted the temptation to go over and give Greaseball a good smack in the teeth and looked outside again instead. “So you two liked the same music as well as the same boys?”

He blew out another lungful of smoke before he replied. “You find it distasteful—but are you telling me it’s worse than cutting off a man’s head? You don’t mind using people like me when you need to, do you?”

I shrugged my shoulders, still looking out at the old man. “I’m here because it’s my job, believe me. And distasteful isn’t a strong enough word for what I think about you.”

I heard what sounded like a snort of derision and turned back to face him.

“Get real, my friend. You may hate me, but you’re here, aren’t you? And that’s because you want something from me.”

He was right, but that didn’t mean to say I was going to share his toothbrush. “Have you got anything else for me?”

“That’s all I know so far. But how do I inform you about the collections?”

“I’ll come here at eleven tonight. Make sure you’re here, and no one else is. You have a bell that rings downstairs, yeah?” He nodded and sucked the last mouthful out of his Camel. “Good. Open the door.”

He moved toward the exit. I went over to the coffee table and took the marina address, as well as the newspaper. Beaulieu-sur-Mer—I did know it, and so would anyone else if they picked up the paper. The imprint was clear to see on the pages beneath. As I bent down I could see the lower shelves of the wall unit and did a double-take at some Polaroids. I knew he liked rock music, but this was something else. Greaseball was in a bar, drinking with one of the guitarists from Queen. At least, that’s who it looked like. Whoever it was, he had the same mad curly hair.

Greaseball was trying to work out what had caught my eye as I waited for him to pull back the bolt. “Those people, the ones on the boat…Are you going to do the same to them as you did to Zeralda?”

I checked my 9mm to make sure it was concealed as he opened the door and glanced outside. I didn’t bother to look back at him. “Eleven. If you don’t know by then, I’ll be back in the morning.” I went past him, my left hand ready to pull up the sweatshirt.

As I walked toward the elevator I saw the stairwell and decided to go that way instead, just to get off the floor more quickly. I elbowed the light switch as I passed it. A couple of floors down, I was smothered in darkness. I waited for a moment, then pressed the next one.

I reached the ground floor and headed for the main door as a young woman in red sweat pants and sweatshirt was packing a crying baby into a stroller on the landing. Out in the sun again, I had to squint as I checked the bell push for number forty-nine. There was no name by it but, then, who would want to own up to living in a place like this? As I walked away, I wondered how I was going to break the news to Lotfi and Hubba-Hubba that Greaseball was the source.

12

A
s I headed back along Boulevard Carnot, I knew I’d have to move from my hotel. It was far too close to Greaseball’s apartment, and I didn’t even want him to see me, let alone find out where I was staying.

I stopped at the laundromat and picked up my sheets. They were now on top of the washing machine, still wet. As I shoved them into the black garbage bag, the old woman jabbered at me for leaving them in when there were about four other people waiting. I’d obviously breached the
laverie
protocol big-time, so I just smiled my apologies to everyone as I finished my packing and left.

I set off down the hill toward the beach. I had to contact George and give him a sit rep, and that meant going to the Mondego, a cyber café, and getting online. He needed to know where the collectors were going to park their boat and, later on, where they were going to collect the cash. My surroundings got very smart very quickly. Luxury hotels that looked like giant wedding cakes lined the coast road, La Croisette, and Gucci shops sold everything from furs to baseball caps for dogs. I dumped the sheets into a street garbage, hanging on to the plastic bag. As I carried on walking, I screwed up the newspaper I’d taken from Greaseball’s apartment inside it.

This might have been the upscale end of town, but anything that stuck out of the sidewalk, like a parking meter or a tree, was decorated with fresh dog piss and a couple of brown lumps.

New cars, motorbikes, and motor scooters were crammed into every possible, and impossible, space, and their owners, the customers in the cafés, looked extremely cool and elegant in their sunglasses, smoking, drinking, just generally posing around the place.

There were quite a few homeless around here as well. Fair: if I were homeless I’d want to sleep in a warm place with lots of good-looking people about, particularly if they were the sort to throw you a few bucks. A group of four or five bums were sitting on benches alongside a scruffy old mongrel with a red polka-dot scarf around its neck. One guy had a can of beer in his coat pocket, and as he bent over to pat the dog the contents were spilling onto the ground. His wino friends looked horror-struck.

I’d never used this café to get online: normally, I drove to Cap 3000, a huge
centre commercial
on the outskirts of Nice. It was only about forty-five minutes away, driving within speed limits, which I was meticulous about, and always crowded. But this time I needed to tell George what I had found out immediately. I was leaving Cannes now anyway, so wouldn’t need to come here again.

The place looked quite full, which was good. A group of twenty-somethings wearing designer leather jackets and shades posed near their motorbikes and scooters, or sat on shiny aluminum chairs and sipped glasses of beer. Most had a pack of Marlboros or Winstons on the table with a disposable lighter on top, alongside a cell phone that got picked up every few seconds in case they had missed a text message.

I wove my way through the temple of cool, past walls lined with boring gray PCs, toward the rows of gleaming drinks signs and the steaming cappuccino machine that stood at the black, marble-topped bar.

I pointed at the nearest PC and tried to make myself heard above the beat of the music. “I want to get online…. Er,
parlez-vous anglais
?”

The guy behind the counter didn’t even look up from unloading the dishwasher. “Sure, log on, pay later. You want a drink?” He was dressed in black and sounded Scandinavian.

“Café crème.”

“Go, sit down.”

I headed to a vacant PC station, perched myself on one of the very high stools, and logged on. The screen information was all in French, but I’d gotten the hang of it by now and went straight into Hotmail. George had set up an account for me that was registered in Poland. The user name was BB8642; George was BB97531, a sequence of numbers that even I couldn’t forget. He was as paranoid as I was, and he’d gone to quite a lot of trouble to make our correspondence untraceable. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d fixed it for Bill Gates to erase our messages personally, as soon as they’d been read.

Signing in, I made sure the font size was the smallest possible so nobody could read over my shoulder, and checked my mailbox. He wasn’t getting information on this job from anywhere else. He just wanted it from me. I was his only line of information: anything else would have been dangerous. There was no other way of making contact: I’d never had a phone number for him, even when I was with Carrie, never even knew where he lived. I wasn’t sure if she did, these days.

George’s e-mail asked me if I’d gotten his present, and said I mustn’t open it until Christmas. He was referring to the gear left for me at the DOP, and the drugs we were going to use to help the
hawalladas
on their way to the warship.

I tapped away with my index fingers.

Hello, thanks for the present, but I’m not too sure if I can wait till Christmas. Guess what? I just saw Jenny and she said that Susanna is coming to town on business, arriving tomorrow night. She’ll be in town until Sunday and has three meetings while she is here, one a day starting Friday. Jenny is finding out the details so she can arrange for all of us to get together and try that place you are always talking about, the one that serves great White Russians. I have so much to tell you. You were right, Susanna’s business is worth anything between 2.5 and 3 mill. Not bad! You’d better get in there quick before some stud moves in. I know she likes you! I’m around tomorrow, do you want to meet up for a drink, say 1
P.M.
?