‘Let’s suppose they’ve gone off in Mattapan III and taken Dave with them. Where might they be going?’ asked Judith.
‘America?’ suggested Peggy hesitantly. ‘That’s the logical place for Piggott to go.’
‘Surely even a boat like Phil Robinson described couldn’t sail all the way to America at this time of the year, could it?’
‘Probably not,’ Peggy admitted. ‘What about France? Milraud’s base is at Toulon, near Marseilles. They might be going there. Let’s do a bit of phoning round and see if anyone has had sight of Mattapan III in the last twenty-four hours. How far do you reckon they could have got by now?’
Several hours later they had come up with nothing. It seemed incredible that a boat of that size could disappear on the high seas in these days of heightened terrorism alerts. But none of the obvious port authorities had any record of Mattapan III putting in for the night or for fuelling. When Liz put her head round the door enquiringly in the middle of the afternoon she was greeted with shakes of the head.
‘It can’t have disappeared, unless it’s sunk,’ said Peggy gloomily. The lack of sleep was beginning to catch up with her. ‘Do you think we should ask the RAF to put up a Nimrod?’
‘No. We can’t do that,’ Liz responded. ‘Binding is still insisting we keep the enquiry low key and DG agrees with him. So in a way we’re working with one arm tied behind our backs. The fear is that if Dave’s disappearance leaks out or Piggott and Milraud detect us close behind them, they may just kill Dave.’
‘If they haven’t already,’ said Peggy, now close to tears.
‘Peggy, go home and go to bed,’ ordered Liz. ‘You can’t do any more here for the moment. Remember that O’Reilly told Dave that Piggott was into all sorts of drugs – and the vice trade. If he’s been using this cruiser in that business, he may have dodgy contacts in ports all over the place who are prepared to cover for the boat’s movements. And since Milraud is an arms dealer I bet he knows how to move stuff by sea without being detected. We’ll have to hope the police get something useful out of Danny Ryan or the French come up with some development on their side. They’ve got Milraud’s wife under close surveillance, so perhaps we’ll get a breakthrough from that.’
46
On the sixth day they cast anchor in mid-afternoon just off the coast near Marseilles. It had been a steady enough voyage, though they had lost half a day by putting in at a small harbour on the Portuguese coast to avoid a late winter storm that had moved in from the Azores. Mattapan III was well known there and Piggott had certain arrangements with the harbourmaster which ensured discreet service. Both Piggott and Milraud had contacts in a number of Mediterranean ports who regularly helped them hide their movements from the attention of the authorities. They did not grudge the expense; it was the only way to be successful in their business.
A similar storm had delayed them briefly off Cadiz, where they had ridden it out at sea, fearful of straying close to shore and smashing up on the rocks. As they passed the Balearic Islands Milraud had decided to take a risk and ring his wife. The rule they had was no communication when he was away on business, unless he initiated it. He had not spoken to her since he left France. ‘C’est moi,’ he’d announced when Annette answered the phone. ‘Have you missed me, ma cherie?’
Usually she replied in kind to his endearments, so he’d been surprised by the urgency in her voice. ‘Listen, Antoine. What’s been going on? There’s been a visitor here.’
‘Yes?’ He was impressed but not surprised that the British had moved so quickly. ‘Un anglais?’
‘Au contraire. A Frenchman. Someone you used to know very well in Paris. Your closest colleague—’
‘Enough!’ he said sharply, cutting her off. If the British had already roped in Seurat to help in the search, things were serious. Seurat was good and he was thorough. He would certainly have all angles covered and that meant that the phone line at the Bandol house was being intercepted. ‘Tell me later. Is all well otherwise?’
‘A bit lonely toute seule, and worried. Your colleague seems very determined.’
I bet he is, thought Milraud.
Two days after the call, as the sun began to go down, Milraud started up the engine of a small but powerful motor yacht moored in an unremarkable boatyard in the Marseilles docks. He steered the boat gently out to come alongside the larger and more splendid craft, lying at anchor off the harbour. On the offshore side, a swarthy man helped a pale-skinned, ill-looking figure to transfer from the larger to the smaller boat, which then in turn dropped an anchor. The large cruiser sailed slowly and carefully into the boatyard and slotted itself with some difficulty into the vacant mooring. Then two men in a dinghy sailed out to the smaller boat; the dinghy was hauled on board and in the gloom of the evening the smaller boat sailed on south-eastwards, hugging the shoreline until it passed Toulon.
Twenty minutes later Milraud could make out the shape of the island, then the hazy glow of light from the houses in its one hamlet on the north side, facing the mainland. He sat in the pilot’s seat with Piggott next to him. As they moved sharply south to the side of the island furthest from the mainland, the lights receded into the night-time black. Here on the south side the island was uninhabited, its shoreline composed of rocky crags rising sheer from the sea and bare of vegetation apart from the odd Corsican pine, clinging on by roots that had miraculously found a hold. As they neared the south-eastern tip of the island, Milraud turned on the boat’s powerful spotlight and saw what he was looking for – a small cove, the only possible landing place, sheltered on each side by rocks. Oustau de Dieu the locals called it. He knew that near the shore a boom lay across the mouth of the cove – a wooden beam, the length of a telegraph pole, designed to keep craft from landing. But he knew the trick of moving it because this was not the first time he’d landed here.
‘Voila,’ said Milraud, pointing to the dark shadow of the small cove, and as he slowed the boat down to idling speed, Piggott clambered back to the stern where Gonzales was beginning to lower the inflatable dinghy.
Two hours later Milraud sat on the rickety porch of an old farmhouse perched a hundred feet above the cove, on top of the rock that rose straight up from the sandy beach below. The house, the only one on this side of the island, was reached from the cove by a twisting path through the trees. It had taken Piggott and Gonzales twenty minutes to climb, half-carrying their barely conscious prisoner, while Milraud took his motor cruiser round to the other side of the island and moored it in the small marina where it was well known enough not to attract particular attention. He then walked back across the island, along familiar paths, guided by a torch.
The house had woods on either side, but on its inland-facing north end a small meadow fronted onto a now-wild vineyard that had been untended since the death of its owner. That was Annette’s father, who had also owned the house and woods; before him the property had belonged to his family for almost two hundred years. Yet, despite the long family ownership of the place, Annette claimed never to have liked it. She had spent all her holidays there as a child and Milraud suspected that it was only after her years in Paris that this rustic hideaway had lost its charm. After her father’s death, when she had inherited, Milraud had persuaded her to hang on to it and though Annette herself never visited nowadays, the property had served a useful purpose. He had probably spent less than ten hours in the house during the last five years, allowing it to fall even further into disrepair, but its outbuildings, which included a stout brick shed hidden in the woods, had proved an excellent site for storing items that would never be displayed in his antique shops. His boat, kept normally in the Marseilles boatyard, though modest in appearance, was deceptively fast and roomy. It could comfortably hold a dozen crates of assorted weapons, and sat so lightly in the water that it could come in close enough to shore for his North African employees to load and unload his cargoes, wading waist deep, carrying crates on their heads.