I went back to the car.
The marina was larger than I’d expected from the postcards. Two or three hundred shiny masts rocked and glinted in the sunlight.
Just before turning through the entrance, I saw bus stops on either side of the road and a glass phone booth. Whoever was on the boat had chosen their location welclass="underline" there were buses to both Monaco and Nice, and the train station was just a ten-minute walk away. The phone booth was certainly going to be a bonus for us.
The large blue sign welcomed me, thanked me for my visit, looked forward to me coming back again, and gave me a list of available stores and services. I took a right onto the access road, a short avenue with neatly trimmed hedges on either side. There was a mini traffic circle ahead of me, and beyond that, the world’s largest supply of pleasure craft. I turned left toward the parking lot.
Chapter 14
A one-story, flat-roofed building housed a promenade of stores and cafés that ran for maybe a hundred yards on each side of the mini traffic circle. I drove slowly over a succession of speed bumps, past fancy restaurants with glinting glasses and dazzlingly white linen tablecloths, all laid out for lunch. It was just after midday, so they’d be full pretty soon, once the boaters had emerged from the clothing stores, shopping bags bulging with Lacoste polo shirts and sweaters.
Coffee drinkers sat at café tables just a few yards from the water’s edge, probably wishing they were sitting aboard the sleek and beautiful boats just out of reach to my right instead. The craft all seemed to have English names like Suntreader or Kathy’s Dreams, and it was obviously the time of day for their owners to be out on deck, to take an aperitif, and enjoy being envied.
I reached the point where the promenade merged with a series of administration buildings that bordered the parking lot. I pulled up next to the deserted beach, by a sign saying “Petite Afrique,” probably because that was where the sand came from. I was alongside a little playground area, which was halfway through being given a facelift.
Thanks to the postcards and what I’d seen so far, I now had a pretty good sense of how the boats were arranged. From the mini traffic circle, a central pier ran straight out into the middle of an open square, with four smaller piers branching off on each side at right angles. Another three piers jutted out from the quay by the stores, and three more from the opposite side. The place was jammed with row after row of boats, their masts, with whatever bits and pieces they had hanging off them, towering up to the sky. I had no idea where the Ninth of May was going to find room to park; it didn’t look like there was a space to be had.
My first priority was to find a single OP (observation point) that would cover the whole area, so no matter where this boat parked, I’d be able to set eyes on and trigger the collectors as they left to pick up the cash. If that couldn’t be done, I’d have to find a number of different ones.
I could already see two routes out of this place, apart from the sea. There was the access road I’d come in on, and a footpath to the right of the stores, which led up to a terraced garden.
I left the Mégane, hitting the key fob before walking back past the stores toward the traffic circle and the central pier. Ambling around with my camera in hand, I particularly admired the terraced garden. It was nearly as long as the promenade, and was packed with small palm trees and exotic, semitropical plants set in light, dry soil — well worth a couple of photos. A shiny green hedge ran along the back of it, hiding the road, but I could now see there was a way through, because a man walking his dog along the path had just headed up some steps and disappeared.
The majority of the boats seemed to have red flags hanging off the back. A lot were registered in the Cayman Islands. I heard a group of Brits sitting on the back end of a huge motorboat, enjoying a beer and listening to Riviera Radio. There was quite a lot of activity aboard, and not just the clinking of glasses. Decking was being pulled up, cleaned, and varnished, and chrome was being polished until you could see your Gucci sunglasses in it.
There was an incessant ching ching ching of steel rigging and the one thing I did know that hung off boats, radar reflective balls, as I wandered along, snapping away, playing the tourist. When I got to the mini traffic circle I could see the rest of the stores. There was a tire replacement center, several boat chandlers, and a high-tech yard with yachts up on blocks and shrink-wrapped in white plastic as if they’d just come off the supermarket shelf. There was also another set of stone steps that led directly to the road.
I turned left at the mini traffic circle onto the main pier, which was built of gray concrete slabs. As I got to the first set of branches, I looked down the line of boats. Every two or three parking spaces there was a shared utilities station, with pipes and cables feeding the rear of each vessel with power, water, and a TV antenna. I saw the occasional satellite dish too, weighted down by sandbags and cinder blocks so the boat owners could get Bloomberg to check if the markets were performing strongly enough for them to buy the next size up.
The yachts nearest the promenade were large enough to keep most America’s Cup teams happy, but the farther I walked along the pier, the closer I got to the really big guys, until I was among the kind of vessels that had radar domes the size of nuclear warheads on the back and only needed a splash of gray paint to be confused with battleships. One even had its own two-seater helicopter. No doubt about it, I was in the wrong job and had been fostered by the wrong family. I’d always said to myself I should find out who my real parents were, and I realized that now was the time I should start trying.
From the end of the main pier I looked back once more to the garden, working on the theory that if I could see a possible hiding place from where I was now, I could probably see down here from up there. I took more pictures. The only place that looked possible as a one-size-fits-all OP was to the far right of the marina, above the flat roof of the administration building, and among the bushes that were about level with the parking lot. I wandered back, feigning interest in the boats but really looking under the piers to check how they were constructed. Huge concrete pillars rose out of the water, topped with T flanges, on which sat the concrete sections.
A thin film of oil coated the water at the rear of the boats, a hundred different shades of blue and orange swirling in the sunlight. I could see shoals of tiny fish fussing around the pillars quite easily through the clear water. I didn’t know how yet, but I had to get on board the Ninth of May and plant the device that was going to stop it reaching Algeria with the cash. Getting wet might be the only way to do it.
As I walked back toward the parking lot I could hear British, French, and American voices settling down for lunch. Waiters and waitresses hovered with expensive-looking bottles of water and wine, and baskets of freshly cut baguette. I was beginning to feel quite hungry.
I stopped at a tabac and inspected another carousel of postcards as I devoured a jumbo-size Snickers bar. I listened to a group of twenty-something Americans drinking beer at one of the tables outside. It had been a lot of beer, judging by the number of empty glasses and the content of their conversation. And, judging by their severe haircuts, tattoos, and tight polo shirts, they had to be on shore leave from the warship at Villefranche.
“No way, man, we should fucking nuke ’em, man, tonight!”
Another guy started chanting, “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.,” getting very worked up. The others chorused their agreement and swigged some more Kronenbourg. It must have been hell being stuck in the Mediterranean instead of bobbing up and down on the Indian Ocean, waiting to hose down the Afghan mountains with cruise missiles.