“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.
Chapter 10
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.