Our destination was Lou Soleilat, an area of rough brush and woodland, situated around a big parking lot/picnic area lined with recycling bins, where the Coke Light marker was going to be placed to show that there was a hawallada ready for collection.
The pickup team, probably embassy or naval personnel, would drive past the picnic area from the opposite direction, from Nice. If the Coke can was in position, they’d throw it away with the rest of the crap they’d be dumping for cover, and continue downhill about five hundred yards to the DOP, pick up the hawallada, and continue to follow the road down to Villefranche and the warship.
The picnic area had been cut into the woods and laid with gravel. Wooden benches and tables were sunk in concrete for those Sunday afternoons with the family. I supposed the bottle bins were just there so the local fat cats could drive up in their overpowered 4x4s and dispose of a week’s worth of empty champagne bottles, and feel they were doing something for the environment.
We continued on until we were about four hundred yards short of the drop-off point, then I turned off into a small parking area while Lotfi headed on beyond the DOP to the picnic area. There was room for about six vehicles; it was used by people during the day while they took their dogs for walks in the woods, and at night by teenagers and philandering businessmen for a different kind of exercise altogether. There were enough used condoms scattered around the place for an army of dogs to choke on. Whatever, it was too late for dogs and too early for any backseat stuff, so I was alone.
As Lotfi disappeared into the darkness I hit the lights on the Audi, letting the engine turn over. My head fell back onto the headrest for a few seconds. I was beat: my brain hurt just thinking about what I was going to do next.
Lotfi’s job at the picnic area was to warn me if anything came from his direction as I dumped off Gumaa, and to leave the Coke Light marker once the job had been done. Hubba-Hubba would be joining me here soon, and he would cover me from this direction.
It wasn’t long before Lotfi came on the net. “That’s L static in the parking area. There are two other vehicles, with a lot of movement in a Passat. The occupants are being very energetic with their map-reading. The Renault next to it is empty.”
I double-clicked. I’d obviously been wrong: it wasn’t too early for that sort of stuff. Maybe they’d just wanted one more for the road before they went home to their respective partners.
While I waited, I got out the pen, hoping that whoever was picking up Gumaa would be driving past at intervals during the night, and not only just before first light. It wouldn’t be good if he woke up in a tarpaulin thinking, What the fuck am I doing here with this pin in my mouth?
I couldn’t hear any movement from him yet, but he was going to need another burst of Special K to keep him floating, or whatever he was doing in the back there.
Headlights approached from down the hill and turned into the parking area. As they bumped over the gravel I recognized the Mégane. Hubba-Hubba pulled up level with me and powered down the window. I did the same and leaned over my passenger seat to talk to him. He looked eager for instructions.
“Would L’Ariane be a good place to burn this thing?”
It needed to be somewhere that wouldn’t arouse too much attention, not for three days anyway, and the housing project seemed a safe bet.
He thought for a moment, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel. “I think it would be, but I need to wait until much later. It’s too busy there at the moment. Maybe past midnight sometime. Is that okay?”
I nodded. All I wanted was to make sure there were none of my prints or DNA, or anything else, to connect us to this job. I said, “Make sure you lose the plates as well, mate.”
Hubba-Hubba smiled just enough for me to make out the whiteness of his teeth. “Of course. I’ll give them to you as a souvenir.” He jerked his head at the rear of the Audi. “How is he?”
“Haven’t heard a word. He’s going to get the good news with the pen right now, just in case he’s got a long wait.” I felt for the trunk-release catch and got out into the fresh and rather nippy air. The light came on as I opened the lid, and there was a heavy smell of exhaust as the engine turned over. I could just make out his face from the trunk light, and it was obvious the movement of the car, or maybe his own efforts, had done him no favors. The diaper pin had ripped some of his lip and tongue. He was still breathing; blood was bubbling from the corner of his mouth and onto the handkerchief that had slipped down his face, and one glazed and dilated eye was open.
I pulled his eyelid down and pushed the handkerchief up over his eyes once more before turning him over a bit. I pressed the pen against his ass and pushed down the trigger. He was going to wake up thinking someone had implanted a golf ball in his cheek. Not that he’d be worrying about it that much when he saw he was in the steel hull of the warship with a roomful of very serious heads bearing down on him.
I shut the trunk, packed away the pen as I coughed out the exhaust fumes from my lungs, and walked over to Hubba-Hubba. “What did you say to him earlier on? You know, to get him into the garage.”
He smiled even more, pleased that I had asked. “I told him I wanted to go back to where he’d just come from. He asked me why, and I told him I wanted the money. He said he didn’t know what I was talking about. So I insisted.”
“How?”
“It was easy. I introduced you as the man who cuts off the heads of the hawallada, and promised that if he didn’t hand over the money you’d do that to him. I told him that we all have very thin skin.”
No wonder he hadn’t been too keen to shake hands.
Hubba-Hubba finished the story. “At first he kept saying he had no money. I knew that — he had just handed it to the Romeos. I just wanted to get him off the street so we could lift him. But then he started to say that I could have the money, that he had it in his car. It was pretty good, no?”
“For a beginner…” I grinned back at him. “Listen, thanks for getting us all out of the shit this afternoon. It was really quick thinking.”
He took his hands off the wheel momentarily in surrender. “It was nothing. He had to be stopped. Besides, it was you that was going to cut his head off, no?”
Now there was something he wanted to say. “About the money…” He touched the lump in his chest. “What are we going to do with it?”
“Split it three ways. Why not?”
He didn’t like that. “We can’t, it’s not ours. We must put it with the body and it’ll be taken to the ship. If we keep it, it’s stealing. Lotfi would agree with me.”
If we handed it back, it would be lost in the ether. I shook my head. “Tell you what, keep hold of it and we’ll decide what to do on Sunday. You never know, there might be a lot more of this to worry about in the next two days.”
Before he could say anything more, I explained how I was going to carry out the Gumaa drop-off.
Hubba-Hubba had something else on his mind. “We got away with it, didn’t we?”