“We just can’t go in like that.” I gestured for him to get into the van. “Look, we don’t know where they are, how many of them there are. It could be a trap. Come on, get in the car, let’s take our time and we’ll all get out of this alive.”
But Lotfi wasn’t having any of it. “He might be dead soon. We have to—”
“I know, I know. But let’s find out where he is first, so we can work out how to get him out in one piece.”
“I will not leave my brother behind.”
“We’re not leaving anybody behind. Just get in the car. We’ve got to stay calm and work out how to get him out. Come on, you know it’s the right thing to do.”
He thought about it for a couple of seconds, then walked around the front of the Citroën and climbed in beside me. He stared at the rocky riverbed to the right, where the wall of the brocante ended. I left him to it, changed channel back to two, and listened in case Hubba-Hubba was sending. There was nothing coming over the air at all, so I switched it off and removed it from my belt as Lotfi checked chamber.
“I cannot wait any longer, he could be dead any minute. Are you coming with me?”
I turned to a heavy nostril-breathing Lotfi, who was trying to calm himself down as he stared into my eyes. I couldn’t make out whether he really cared if I went with him or not: he was going anyway.
“You know this is fucked up…You don’t know how many there are, you don’t know what weapons they have, you don’t even know where the fuck they are. You are going to die, you know that, don’t you?”
“God will decide my fate.” He turned for his door handle.
I hated this shit. I should have just dropped it and headed for the airport back at the boulevard. Fuck it. I started to suck in my stomach so I could draw down the Browning. I tapped his arm with my spare hand to get his attention before nodding at the radio. “We can’t use these things anymore, mate. They might start scanning channels on Hubba-Hubba’s. Let’s just hope they didn’t switch to channel four and listen to us panicking on the way here, eh?”
Lotfi turned and gave me a smile as I pulled back the hammer from half-cock and checked chamber. My head was spinning. Why was I doing this? “Thank you,” he said quietly.
“Yeah, right. Kismet my ass. If I’m going to die I might as well make sure a couple of those fuckers come along with me — so they can get their books, whatever they’re called, weighed.”
He finished checking that his magazines were correctly positioned on his belt carrier before looking up at me as I did the same. “Destiny — their books of destiny. You know exactly what it is called.”
“Come on, then, let’s get—”
Lotfi’s eyes darted beyond me and he sank back into his seat. Instinctively, I followed.
“Lexus.”
I heard a vehicle crunch over the gravel filling some of the potholes on the road toward the industrial complex.
“Two up in the front.”
I looked, but now being side-on I couldn’t see who was behind the darkened rear windows. Baldilocks was definitely driving.
“Romeo Three, with the goatee, I saw him in the same restaurant as Greaseball the other night. I don’t know if they met or what, but…”
The vehicle had gone past the gates and I jumped out of the Scudo, shoving away my Browning.
“Come on, we can do this without getting killed now, we have time.”
Lotfi ran around the vehicle to make up the distance with me as I headed toward the rusty, sagging chain-link gate that hadn’t been closed in ages. I kept to the left against the brocante wall for a little cover as I passed the gate. Lotfi had caught up with me, and he still had his pistol out. “Put it away,” I snapped. “Third party, for fuck’s sake.”
Leaving him a few steps behind to sort himself out, I kept walking. In front of me was a ramshackle collection of buildings, at least thirty or forty years old, some of brick or stone, some of a corrugated material. Pipes that ran between the buildings had been covered and painted with tar, and held together with bits of chicken wire. Dumpsters were overflowing all over the place. Stacks of old tires had collapsed across the diesel-infected asphalt that had lost its straight edges and was starting to merge with the mud. There was even an old stone farmhouse and barns, which had long since given up the struggle against the encroaching banlieues.
I inched forward, using the wall, trying to look as normal as I could. Then, as I reached the end of the wall of the brocante, I saw movement to my left. The rear of the Lexus was disappearing inside a tall brick building. I held out my hand behind me. “Stop, stop.”
I leaned back against the wall, just as a train came into the station off to my right, beyond the factory complex. The screech of its braking wheels drowned out the clatter of the roller shutter as it crashed down behind the hawallada and his men.
Chapter 49
I took my shades off for a better look at the building and put them into the fanny pack.
The industrial complex consisted of six or seven worn-out structures spread around the edge of a large open square. The target building, which I hoped the van had driven into, was in the left-hand corner farthest away from us. It was about forty yards long and twenty-five high, and constructed of dark, grimy brick. There were no windows on the front elevation, just the rusty shutter in the left third, tall enough to take a truck. The roof was flat, with lines of triangular glass skylights sticking up in the air like a dinosaur’s fins. Two other buildings — a converted stone barn, and the old farmhouse — formed the left side of the square and met the back of the brocante. Just beyond them was the river.
Lotfi was trying hard to control his breathing; he had his mouth closed and pulled in air heavily through his nose. The veins throbbed in his temples as his eyes stayed glued to the building. “He knows I’m coming for him,” he said. “He’s waiting for me.”
He started to move forward and I held out my arm to stop him, looking around anxiously for third party. It was midday, people were on the move, traffic hummed up and down the main road. “I reckon nothing’s going to happen to him just yet, mate. Goatee will want to know what all this means — that’s why he’s here, it must be. We have time now to do a little planning.”
I made an effort to get eye-to-eye with him, but he was too focused on the building. “We won’t be able to get in there anyway — look, there are no windows on this side, no possible point of entry. Just those shutters, and they’re down and locked. And even if we could get in, we haven’t got a clue how many players are in there….”
Lotfi’s gaze was still locked on the building as he lifted his hand to cut off my objections. “None of that matters to me. God will decide the outcome. I’ve got to go.”
“We’ll both do it. Look, if God’s going to decide what happens, let’s give him a hand here and do a recce, give him something to work with.” I managed eye contact, and he sort of smiled. “You might be in the good boys’ club with him, but I’m not sure I am.” I tilted my head to indicate the way we’d just come. “Let’s look around the back.”
There were two elements to this now. The first was to get Hubba-Hubba out in one piece, the second was to lift the hawallada. We still had a job to do. If we did it right, maybe we could achieve both — but not if we just went for it like Lotfi wanted to.
We turned right, passing the Scudo, and walked along the front of the brocante toward the fence line just as two happy shoppers tried to fit a couple of chairs onto the roof rack of their Nissan. I hoped we could work our way along the riverbank, passing the barn and the farmhouse, get behind the target building, and see what we could see.