I rotated the carousel. These cards weren’t as good as the ones at the station, but then I caught sight of something in a display case that I knew would make Lotfi’s day — a baseball hat with an arm sticking out of the top of it, holding a hammer. When you pulled a piece of string the hammer swung down onto the peak. I couldn’t resist it: it would send him ballistic. I went inside and handed over a hundred francs to the salesgirl. It was pretty outrageous, but as she was selling Hermès scarves for those windy days on the waves for a couple of thousand, I guessed I got off pretty lightly. No wonder all the stores had alarm boxes with yellow strobe lights above their front doors.
The sailors were still honking as I came out. “We shouldn’t be kicking back here, man, we should be kicking some Bin Laden ass right now.”
I looked beyond them to the central pier, and stepped back rapidly into the doorway. Two white vans with blue light bars and riot grilles over the windows had pulled up, and were spilling out heavily armed men in navy blue uniforms onto the quay.
I suddenly got very interested in the latest issue of Paris-Match as a station wagon, also with a blue light bar, stopped next to the vans. The word “Gendarmerie” was emblazoned along the door panels.
Not worrying just yet, and still engrossed in the contents of the magazine rack, I checked chamber. If they were here for me, they didn’t yet know where I was: otherwise why get together for a briefing at the rear of the vehicles?
I watched as the Americans continued to develop the Kronenbourg plan of attack on Bin Laden, unaware of what was happening just past the traffic circle.
It couldn’t have anything to do with me. But, just in case, I moved out onto the sidewalk and turned left, away from them, heading for the staircase that would take me up to the terraced gardens.
The American table-thumping slowly faded out of earshot. They’d probably never know how much Bin Laden ass they were about to kick, if George’s plan hit the target.
I found the concrete steps at the end of the block that led up to the higher ground. They were well worn and there was no notice to say they were private. If I did get challenged I’d just play the dickhead tourist.
The steps took me up onto the roof, which was covered in red asphalt and formed a balcony. There was even a set of railings to stop you falling into someone’s soup on a windy day. The traffic circle was in dead ground from here, which was good; I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me. A stone wall, about three feet high, ran the length of the path, against which concrete benches had been installed at ten-yard intervals, facing in the direction of the marina for a nice relaxing view. Nearer the road, an old man with a wheelbarrow was giving some weeds the good news with a spade.
The dirty white top of a truck zoomed past above me and beyond the hedge, heading for Nice. This looked good so far: not only should I be able to see the entire marina, once I’d gotten into the bushes a few yards above me, but I could be over the hedge and onto the main drag in no time.
A bench stood directly in front of the bushes where I would probably try to establish the OP. Someone had sprayed “I fuck girls!” in English across the back of it in blue paint. After my morning with Greaseball, it was a breath of fresh air.
I glanced up toward the gardener, and down in the direction of the gendarmerie, but both were out of sight. I slipped over the bench and onto stony ground above it.
Moving into a possible OP site from the front was something that I would never normally do: it leaves sign in the very place you are trying not to draw people’s attention to. But it didn’t matter here; there was enough human and dog sign about already.
I scrabbled up the bank and into the bushes, settling behind a large palm bush that branched into a perfect V at about head height. The field of view wasn’t bad; I could see the whole of the marina, and the binos (binoculars) would get me right onto the Ninth of May, wherever it parked. I could also see all three exit points.
The vehicles by the traffic circle were now deserted and the uniforms had split into two groups, each with a hyperactive spaniel on a lead. I watched as the dogs scurried about the piers as if they were demented, darting, stopping, pointing their noses toward the backs of the boats. It had to be drugs; they were carrying out spot checks or looking for some stuff that had been smuggled in. I sat and thought about the three million U.S. dollars that was headed toward the Ninth of May, a vast amount of U.S. bills that would be contaminated with drug residue, as most U.S. cash is. Tens of thousands of them bundled together would send even a half-bored sniffer dog crazy.
Was that what they were aiming for now? Were they checking for the cash? No, they couldn’t be. They would be more proactive; there would be a lot more support. This looked like a routine operation.
I let them get on with it, and stood up to take a look over the four-foot-high hedge. There was an asphalt sidewalk, and beyond that a narrow strip of garden on the level ground before the road, and, maybe fifteen yards downhill, about ten nose-in parking spaces. Just over a hundred yards farther was the marina’s main entrance.
I took off my shades and sat back in the OP, taking a few pictures of the target area before checking traser. There was plenty of time before the safe house meet to stay static and tune in to the place. Could I be seen, for example, from the sidewalk above or the path in front if somebody walked past?
I listened to the traffic, which was constant but not heavy, and started to visualize what I wanted the other two to do when I triggered the collectors off the boat.
I looked down at the uniforms and dogs as they worked their way around the marina, and wondered if French intelligence were on to the collectors as well. Their External Security Service hadn’t messed about in the mid-eighties when Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior had parked for the night in Auckland, New Zealand, as it campaigned against French nuclear testing in the Pacific. DGSE’s (La Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure — the French equivalent of the C.I.A.) Operations Division, using divers from their Swimmer Combat Command, just blew up the boat, no messing around. I was glad these people weren’t allowed to operate on French soil — but then again, we weren’t either, and these were strange times.
Chapter 15
I continued to play around with ways we could take the collectors from the boat to wherever they were going to pick up the money. I needed a half-decent plan I could present to the other two at the safe house. We needed a structure, orders that would be the template for the operation. It would change as more information was gathered or the collectors did something we didn’t expect, but at least we would have something to guide us.
A few old women gossiping at warp speed in high-pitched French were walking behind me with their dogs. I could hear claws scratching the asphalt as they moved past.
I sat for nearly an hour as the police dogs wagged their tails and sniffed like mad things down in the marina. The old guy was still digging his way downhill, unperturbed by the activity going on below us. I wasn’t worried; he shouldn’t see me, and if he did, so what? I’d just pretend to take a piss and hope he wouldn’t be back to tend this part of the garden for another three days.
When I checked traser again it was one-forty-seven. The safe house was no more than an hour away, so I’d stay a little longer. Time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted.
A bit of a wind had come up, and the boats were swaying from side to side now. The cry of a seagull took me straight back to the Boston yacht club, and to the thought that I could be working there now, serving Sam Adams in a place where the dogs weren’t allowed to shit, and I wouldn’t have to spend all day in a bush.