"Call you back in two minutes."
The connection was broken. Carter got a fresh cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. They were both half gone when the phone rang again.
"Yeah?"
"There's an alley called Bedouins Row, off rue Germain in Pigalle. Do you know it?"
"No, but I'll find it."
"At the end of the alley is an erotica shop. Go through the rear curtains and up the stairs. It's a whorehouse. Her name is Madame Zola. Use the DuBain name."
"Got it."
"An hour?"
"Make it an hour and a half. I have to pick up the loot."
Carter hung up and moved into Amani's bedroom. It took him five minutes to find the flight maps, and another five to J learn nothing from them.
The rest of the room revealed nothing. If Amani made notes, they were either in his head or on his person.
He dressed quickly and drove the Fiat toward the Champs-Élysées.
The Swiss tellers carefully scrutinized the amount of the draft and his passport, and then gave an audible sigh as they passed it back.
It hurt them to give out money.
"How would you like it, monsieur… a draft?"
"Cash."
"Cash, monsieur?" The man's face was pained.
"Cash, all kinds of bills."
"That will be a large amount… bulk, monsieur…"
"I have a briefcase."
When it was full, Carter asked to be directed to the rear exit of the bank. "I'm sure you understand."
"Oui, monsieur."
Carter exited the bank and walked the few blocks to the Etoile metro station. He took the Number 2 line and got off at Pigalle. Once he located rue Germain, he bypassed it and walked all the way around a six-block stretch, entering from the other end.
Because of his pace — fast, slow, fast, slow, with a lot of window shopping and a pause for an ice — he was positive that, if he had picked up a tail, he had also lost it.
The alley was just that, wide enough for two people to pass, and dark as night in the middle of the day.
A couple of seedy-looking pimp types working dexterously with fingernail clippers gave him a hard once-over as he went into the garish shop.
The clerk, looking tike a graduate student at the Sorbonne. looked up, nodded, and went back to his textbook.
Carter perused nude women, nude men, nude men and women, and a few magazine covers for about five minutes, and then headed for the rear curtain.
"Monsieur?"
"Madame Zola."
"Oui, monsieur."
Carter spotted the man's hand hit a button under the counter, then went on through the curtain.
The stairs were lighted by a series of bright red bulbs.
The French, he thought, are wonderful. They believe in tradition.
A steel door opened just as his foot hit the top step.
"Monsieur?"
"Madame Zola?"
"Oui."
"I am DuBain."
"Come this way."
She was very wide and easy to follow. They moved down a hallway lined with doors both open and closed. Carter could hear mewling, cooing, and an occasional groan of either passion or desperation from behind the closed doors.
"Monsieur Jason is in the S&M suite, right here." She opened a door and stepped aside. "Go right in!"
Carter did, and the door closed behind him.
There were a lot of chains and leather on the walls, garish red carpet and drapes, and a huge circular bed with a black leather spread.
In the center of the bed was Jason Henry with a bottle of wine and a plate of cheese.
"Well," Carter said, looking around, "this is depressing."
"Glad you like it," Henry said, rolling off the bed and seating himself in one half of what looked like an iron maiden. "Now, what have we got?"
Carter handed over the flight plan. Henry smoothed it out and produced a navigational computer and his own charts of Europe.
Carter took a seat in the other half of the torture device and lit a cigarette.
A half hour later he asked, "Well?"
"Tough."
Carter continued to chain-smoke and helped himself to a few slugs from the wine bottle. Twenty minutes later, Henry got up and paced, rubbing his eyes.
"This is going to take some time. There's a continuous sex show at the end of the hall…"
"I'll wait here."
It was another hour before Henry turned the charts and Amani's carefully drawn flight plan around and revealed his findings.
"All right," he said, wetting his throat with a fast swig from the wine bottle. "We've got five ways to go, based on flight time and fuel, along with his altitude designations. I'm assuming Italy's out. Both of you are too hot there."
"Good assumption," Carter said.
"Germany's out; the mountains there don't have the altitude indicated on his flight plan. And England's out, even if he were trying to trick us by asking for more gas than he needs."
"So that leaves…?"
"Over the Swiss and Austrian Alps to here, just short of Vienna… or over the Pyrenees to here, southern Spain."
Carter remembered the cable to Cordoba. "Try Cordoba."
Henry did some quick figuring, looked up, and nodded. "It would fit. Also, we're only crossing one frontier… much less risky."
Carter mulled over the charts, then shook his head. "If it is Cordoba, I would guess it's a jumping-off place. That many high-flying terrorists coming into Spain would be spotted."
"Then my guess is he's setting himself up some secondary transportation, to here."
Carter watched the point of Henry's pencil fall on the northern tip of Algeria, and nodded. "That would sure as hell fit."
"And if that's the case, Amani has already called ahead for a welcoming party for us in Spain."
"It would seem so." Carter stood and stretched.
"So what do we do?"
"We go," Carter said. "It's all we can do."
He hefted the briefcase to the bed and opened it.
"There's your payroll… plus."
"Pretty," Henry sighed. "Very pretty."
"How far can you trust the guns you hired?"
"With the Crown Jewels, as long as they get paid."
"Okay," Carter said. "We leave at ten tomorrow night."
Twelve
Carlotta and Amani left by the rear door of the apartment house. They were picked up three blocks away by Jason Henry in the van.
Carter went over the roofs and dropped down into a small back street a block away. The big black Citroen was waiting with its motor running.
"What's your name?"
"Maurice."
"Do you know the route?"
"Oui."
They rendezvoused just past the Bois with four more guns in a Renault sedan. Just south of Paris, they turned off the A10 and found the old road to Orleans, Route 20.
"Where will the van be?"
"Just short of Arpajon. There is a rest stop."
Just outside Paris, a misty rain turned to sleet. When Maurice the driver turned off the highway, the sleet was quickly becoming snow.
Carter noted that the Renault had sped on by the cutoff.
There were two cars besides the van in the rest area. When the car stopped. Carter slid from the passenger seat and entered the building.
Jason Henry was already at a urinal.
"Any trouble?"
"None. You?" Carter asked.
"We're in business. I'll lead you out."
"Good. What about the other two cars out there?"
"Couples… kids who can't afford a hotel room," Henry explained with a grin.
Going out, Henry climbed into the driver's seat of the Citroen, and Carter veered to the van.
Amani was on the passenger side, his Beretta in his lap. Carlotta was at the rear doors, cradling an Uzi. In the driver's seat was another Beretta, compliments of Henry. Carter shoved it in his coat pocket and climbed into the van.