Man on Fire (27 page)

Creasy had taken a taxi straight to the railway station and picked up the black-leather briefcase from the baggage room. At the station restaurant he found a quiet table, ordered a coffee and took out Guido's letter. He looked up the numbers and opened the combination lock. Inside was a large Manila envelope. It contained a key, a street map of Marseilles, and two sets of papers. One set was the passport and personal papers of one Luigi Racca-a vegetable importer from Amalfi. The other set were papers for a Toyota van. He opened the street map and noted the small inked circle and the instructions in the margin, then he put them all back into the briefcase and spun the lock. As he sipped the coffee, his eyes roamed around the restaurant and through the glass partition to the movement on the station concourse. But his mind was on Guido.

Without his help the whole operation would have been infinitely harder. Creasy knew that Luigi Racca would be a genuine vegetable importer, quite unaware that his name was being borrowed. He knew that the passport and other papers would be the work of the best forger in Naples-a city justly proud of its forgers.

When he arrived in Naples he knew that everything would be ready. Within a week the killing would begin. He guessed that Pietro had delivered the van to Marseilles-driving overland. He must talk to Guido about his safety once the business started.

He finished his coffee and caught a taxi to the post office and picked up the parcels that had arrived from Paris and Brussels. Then he checked into a small hotel, using the papers of Luigi Racca.

Their steps on the stone floor echoed up into the high steel girders. Long lines of packing cases were stacked on pallets under a maze of pipes and sprinklers. Creasy inhaled the familiar smell of an arsenal, the coppery odor of grease on metal. A section of the warehouse was partitioned off with heavy steel sheeting and a padlocked door. Leclerc unlocked it and threw a switch. A bank of overhead neon tubes flickered on, illuminating two long metal tables, one bare, the other covered with a variety of weapons and equipment.

Leclerc stood by the door while Creasy walked slowly past the laden table, examining the different groupings. Then he moved back and stopped at the first set-the pistols. Leclerc joined him.

"You wanted a forty-five and something smaller and lighter." He gestured. "Take your pick."

There were a dozen pistols on the table from a variety of countries, and several silencers. Creasy picked up a Colt 1911 and a British Webley .32. Leclerc looked a bit surprised at his second choice.

"I know," said Creasy. 'It's old-fashioned, but it's reliable, and I'm used to it."

He turned and put the two guns on the table behind him, and then picked up two silencers and put them with the guns. "I'll take five hundred rounds for each."

Leclerc took out a small pad and a ball-point pen and made a note. They moved to the next grouping-submachine guns. There were four types, the Israeli Uzi, the British Sterling, the Danish Madsen, and the one Creasy immediately picked up-the Ingram Model 10. The metal butt was folded, and the weapon measured only ten and a half inches. It looked more like a large pistol than a submachine gun, and it had a firing rate of eleven hundred rounds a minute.

"You've used one?" asked Leclerc, and Creasy nodded, hefting the gun in his hands.

"Yes. In Vietnam. Its biggest advantage is its size. The rate of fire is too high if anything, but for my purposes it's perfect. Do you have a suppressor?"

"I can get one within a couple of days."

"Good." Creasy put the gun on the table behind him. "I'll take eight magazines and two thousand rounds."

Next were two sniper rifles, a modified M14 with the Weaver sight and the British L4A1 with the standard 32 sight. Creasy selected the M14.

"It's got twice the feed," he commented. '"I'll have two spare magazines and a standard box of cartridges."

They moved to the rocket launchers.

"It's no contest," Creasy said. "For the size and weight, it's got to be the R.P.G.7."

Leclerc grinned and picked up the squat tube. "I could sell a million if I could get them." He held the tube at each end and twisted. It unscrewed in the middle.

Creasy nodded with satisfaction. "The Stroke D," he said. "Better still. What's the standard packing for the missiles?"

"Cases of eight or twelve," Leclerc answered, screwing the launcher together and laying it next to the Ingram.

"A case of eight, then," Creasy said, passing on to the grenades. He picked out the British Fragmentation 36 and the Phosphorous 87.

'"I'll need less than standard packing. Can your boys knock up a case for fifteen of each?"

"Can do," Leclerc replied.

Next Creasy picked up a double-barreled shotgun, barrels and stock sawed off short. He flicked open the breach, held it up to the light, and examined it, then snapped it shut and put it down next to the grenades. It looked incongruous alongside the other weapons.

"A couple of boxes of S.S.G.," he said, and Leclerc made a note.

He went on to select a Trilux night sight, a commando knife in its sheath, and a variety of webbing.

Finally, at the end of the table, a number of small objects lay in a shallow metal tray. Creasy picked up several and examined them closely.

"They're the very latest," Leclerc said at his shoulder. "Perhaps you haven't seen them before?"

Creasy held a small circular tube in his hand. A narrow needle projected half an inch from one end.

"I've used this type of detonator," he said, "but not the timer."

Leclerc picked up another metal tube. It had two prongs, like an electric plug. He unscrewed the tube and showed Creasy the cadmium cell battery and the two graduated dials. Then he plugged the timer into the detonator. The combined mechanism was less than two inches long and three quarters of an inch in diameter.

Leclerc smiled. "Electronics make things so much easier. Guido specified a kilo of Plastique. I have it ready elsewhere."

"Good," Creasy said, looking back along the table. "That's everything I need."

Leclerc surveyed the assortment, his curiosity tinged with satisfaction. For him, fitting out Creasy was an exercise in professional pleasure. He wasn't sure what Creasy wanted the stuff for, and he wasn't about to ask, but he would be reading the Italian papers in the coming weeks. Knowing the American's background and experience, he could imagine the potential destruction that the weapons represented.

"Can you get me a good light shoulder-holster for the Webley, and a belt holster for the Colt?"

Leclerc nodded. "Standard issue canvas for the Colt."

"That'll do fine." Creasy had taken out a tape measure and a notebook. "Do you have any scales?"

"Sure." Leclerc went out into the main warehouse and Creasy got busy with the tape measure.

"Where can I drop you?"

"Anywhere near the fishing harbor."

Creasy didn't mention the name of his hotel. He had decided that Leclerc could be trusted-but old habits die hard.

The Frenchman asked, "Anything else I can do for you in Marseilles? -Female company?"

Creasy smiled and shook his head. "I thought you were an arms dealer."

"You know what it's like," Leclerc answered. "When you're selling, you have to hang bells on the stuff. The Arabs are the worst-they get so little at home."

"Business must be good out that way," Creasy commented. "They've got enough little wars going on to keep half the arms factories in Europe on overtime."

"It's a fact," grunted Leclerc, "and it will get better-or worse, depending how you look at it. This Islamic resurgence means more wars-it's a violent religion."

He glanced at Creasy. "Apart from arms dealers, there'll be a lot of work for men like you."

Creasy shrugged. "Could be."

They pulled up by the wharf, and Creasy opened the door.

"Ten o'clock then, Thursday night," he said.

Leclerc nodded. "I'll be waiting."

Creasy consulted the street map and told the taxi driver to leave him at the corner of Rue St. Honore. He had changed at the hotel and now wore more simple work clothes-denim jeans and shirt. His eyes roamed the streets idly as they drove eastward through the city. He liked Marseilles. A man could sink into it and be anonymous. People minded their own business. It was an ideal city for drug smuggling, arms dealing, or just getting lost.

The taxi pulled up and Creasy paid the driver and walked for ten minutes until he reached the corner of Rue Catinat. He stood for several minutes, watching the street.

It was a working-class suburb. Tenement buildings, small workshops, and factories. Halfway down was a row of lock-up garages. He located Number 11, and without looking around took out the key and unlocked it, then switched on the light and closed the door.

Most of the space was taken up by a Toyota Hiace van. It was painted a deep gray, with faded black lettering on the side: Luigi Racca-Vegetable Dealer.

The van looked old and suitably battered, but Creasy knew that the engine and suspension would be in perfect order. He opened the back doors. Immediately in front of him, on the van floor, was a coil of electrical cord attached to an electrical plug. He smiled briefly at Guido's forethought, picked up the plug, went over to the wall, and connected the plug to the socket. The bulb inside the van lit up the rest of the contents. There were lengths of timber, several sacks packed tight with cotton waste, a long roll of thick felt, a wooden bench with a vise attached, and a large toolbox. Creasy unloaded all this onto the floor behind the van, then moved to the front of the compartment and carefully examined the paneling that backed onto the driver's seat. He went to the toolbox, selected a screwdriver and, being careful not to mark the paint, eased out the dozen countersunk screws. The false panel fell gently back, revealing a space about a foot deep and as wide and high as the van's compartment. He grunted in satisfaction and carried the panel out and rested it gently against the garage wall. Next he took out a tape measure and a notebook and jotted down the exact dimensions of the secret compartment.

Referring to previous notes, he then drew a rough plan and stuck it on the garage door.

For the next two hours he worked steadily, measuring the timber and cutting it up with a small power saw.

He enjoyed the work, but eventually had to stop because the air in the closed garage had become stuffy. It was dark outside, and he walked for ten minutes in the cool night air to clear his head. Then he found a small bistro and went in to have dinner.

At eight the next morning he was back in the garage.

He worked through till noon, then went for lunch to the same bistro. The food was simple and good, and with his rough clothes and colloquial French, he was not out of place among the other customers. By midafternoon he had finished shaping the timber, and he fitted it into the compartment. First the heavy frame and then the cross pieces, each slotting exactly into its prepared joint. He stood back and surveyed his work. The compartment now resembled a giant, half-finished child's puzzle. On Thursday he would fit in the missing pieces.

Back at the hotel he looked in the yellow pages and rang a rental agency. In the name of Luigi Racca, he arranged to hire a Fiat van the next day, for twenty-four hours.

Leclerc waited with a watchman. There was no one else on the street. At five past ten, a dark-blue van turned the corner and parked a hundred meters away. Its lights flickered twice and went out.

"Go down to the other corner and wait," Leclerc told the watchman. "Don't come back until that van has left." As the watchman disappeared into the dark, the van moved forward again.

"OK?" Creasy asked, jumping down from the cab.

"OK," Leclerc replied, and unlocked the warehouse door. Just inside were three wooden packing cases on a fork lift. They were lettered "A," "B," and "C." Leclerc pointed to each in turn. "Ammunition, weapons, other equipment." Within a couple of minutes the cases were loaded in the van and Creasy climbed back into the cab.

Leclerc looked up at him. "Come into my office tomorrow afternoon. Your papers will be ready."

Creasy nodded and drove away.

He drove around the city for forty minutes, varying his speed and making unpredictable turns. Then, satisfied that he wasn't being followed, he drove to Rue Catinat and parked fifty meters from the garage. He turned off the lights and engine and sat listening and watching for half an hour. Then he started the engine and backed up close to the garage door. He quickly wrestled the three cases from the van and into the garage. He locked up and drove back to his hotel-again constantly watching his mirror.

In the early morning he returned the rented van and by nine o'clock was back in the garage. He prized the lids off the three cases and, one by one, fitted the weapons, the boxes of ammunition, and the grenades into their allotted places. He took handfuls of cotton waste and packed it into all remaining gaps between equipment and frame. Then a curtain of felt was tacked across the entire framework. He fetched the false panel and, again being careful not to scratch the paint, he screwed it back into place. He banged the side of his fist against it in several places. It felt and sounded solid. Finally, he spread his legs and shifted his weight back and forth, rocking the van on its springs.