“I’ll stop at the next bend,” Pearl said. “You will have to walk back. Don’t forget the camera.”
The traffic moved a little fester. Around the bend and out of sight of the soldier, Pearl began to slow down.
“Be quick,” she said. “I’ll be back in half an hour.”
Sweating in the heat, Sadu grabbed the 16 mm movie camera he had brought with him, then slid back the catch on the door. Pearl put out her hand and signalled that she was stopping, then braked to a standstill. The long line of traffic behind her came to a slow, cursing halt.
Sadu and Jo-Jo slid out of the car and reached the narrow sidewalk as the driver behind the 404 blasted his horn. Pearl sent the car forward again.
The gun pressed painfully against his stomach as Sadu began to walk back. Jo-Jo, carrying the violin case and a rucksack containing food and wine, walked with him.
The path, overgrown and hidden from the road, was some hundred metres from the parked Jeep.
Sadu and Jo-Jo walked slowly towards the gap in the wall which led down to the path. They both felt like flies on a wall. There were no other pedestrians, and they were also aware that people in the crawling cars were looking at them. Sadu felt certain the violin case was attracting attention.
Jo-Jo said under his breath, “He’s spotted us. Take some pictures.”
Fairfax had just deposited his wad of gum on the undershelf of the Jeep’s dashboard. He saw the two men, and for a brief moment, his mind became alert, then when one of them lifted a movie camera and began to take distant shots of the village below, he sneered to himself and began to peel the wrapping off another piece of gum.
Tourist! he thought. All the goddam equipment money can buy and I bet he takes lousy pictures!
A rubberneck bus was approaching.
“We go down the path when the bus is between him and us,” Sadu said.
They waited. Sadu still pretended to take photographs.
Jo-Jo said, “Now...”
Under the eyes of thirty tourists, but out of view of the Jeep, they quickly slid down the steep slope, through the undergrowth, moving dangerously quickly until they reached the path itself.
Sadu pulled the gun from his waistband and began to move forward. Jo-Jo waited for a few seconds before he followed him. When they were in sight of the Villa’s roof and when Sadu had satisfied himself there was no guard to worry them, he stopped.
“It’s all right,” he said. “They haven’t found it. I’ll get back. You must find your own way back to the hotel. Stay here until the job’s done.”
Jo-Jo grunted, moved past Sadu and continued on down the path. Sadu turned and began to climb back to the road. He was lucky. A long line of rubberneck buses were passing and Fairfax, trying to get a change of programme on the receiving set had completely forgotten the two men taking photographs.
Jo-Jo now reached a spot where he could look down at the Villa’s terrace which was deserted. He dropped his haversack and squatting on his heels, he rested his back against a tree. He felt concealed and safe. He spent the next few minutes assembling the rifle. He took aim at the terrace. The telescopic sight was so powerful he could easily make out the cracks in the paving stones. Satisfied, he loaded the gun, then with the gun across his knees, he settled down to wait.
While he waited, Henri Dumaine who ran a successful Insurance and Estate Agency business in Eze village was regarding Petrovka without much interest. He did not think this young, shabbily dressed man could have enough money to buy land in his district, but at the same time, he told himself, he might be acting as an agent for someone with money so he decided to be helpful.
“Yes, of course, I know Monsieur Dorey’s villa,” he said. “There are no villas in this district I do not know. You are interested in buying land above the villa?”
“Yes,” Petrovka said. He had already been out to the Grande Corniche and he had seen the Jeep and the soldier. He had decided it was unsafe to search for a path with the soldier on guard, and in desperation, he had gone to the Estate Agent.
“Well, it is not impossible, of course. There is land for sale there, but I should tell you there is no water.”
“That could be arranged,” Petrovka said in his careful French. “I would like to look at the land. Is there a path down to the Villa?”
“There was a path,” Dumaine told him. “At least, I think so.” He got up and crossed to his filing cabinet. He took from it a number of sketch maps. “Yes, indeed, but I don’t advise you to make use of it. It is dangerous. No one ever uses it now, and the soil must be loose.”
“Could I see the map?” Petrovka asked, sweat breaking out under his arms. So he had failed! he was thinking. There was a path and he had told Malik there was no path.
Shrugging, Dumaine handed the map across the desk.
Petrovka studied it. He saw at a glance that he had passed the opening to the path which was close to where the Jeep had been parked.
He made a mental note of the opening down to the path, then returned the map.
“It might be interesting,” he said and got to his feet. “I will let you know.”
Dumaine was scarcely able to disguise his disgust.
“As you will, monsieur,” he said, rose, bowed, shook hands and watched Petrovka depart.
Petrovka drove back to the Grande Corniche. He was uneasy and unhappy. He knew he had wasted valuable time. Glancing at his cheap watch, he saw it was now 1.10 p.m. Malik would be waiting impatiently for his report. But since the path did exist, he must get details.
The traffic had slackened and he drove past the Jeep without difficulty. A few metres farther on, there was a lay-by. He pulled into it and turned off the car’s engine.
There was now this problem of exploring the path without the sentry seeing him. He got out of the car and walked briskly back along the narrow sidewalk until he reached the bend in the road. Then waiting until there was a lull in the traffic, he climbed over the wall and lowered himself down onto the mountainside. He had a dangerous and difficult scramble to where the path was, but he managed it. Every now and then, his feet slipped, and he thought he was going to fall, but by grabbing a shrub here and thudding against a tree trunk there, he finally managed to reach the path without being seen.
He began a cautious descent.
Relaxing in the sun, Jo-Jo heard him coming. His first warning was a stone that came rattling past him. He got silently to his feet, snatched up the haversack and moved off the path into the thick undergrowth. He waited, crouching, his lips drawn off his discoloured teeth, his finger around the trigger of his gun.
Then he saw Petrovka, a Mauser 7.63 mm gun in his hand, coming cautiously down the path. Jo-Jo lifted the rifle. It was an easy shot. The .22 bullet smashed into Petrovka’s forehead and he died without a sound.
Jo-Jo wiped the sweat from his face, reloaded the rifle, then walking to Petrovka’s dead body, he dragged it into the scrub.
In the drab little villa at Cagnes, Malik waited, pacing up and down. Smernoff, sitting at the open window, watched the girls in their bikinis, displaying themselves on the beach.
It wasn’t until Girland was nearly at the end of Feng Hoh Kung’s file that he suddenly became alert. He began to read a cutting from The Art & The Connoisseur, dated 1937 that was clipped into the file.
Up to this moment he had ploughed through a mass of uninteresting reports from various Agents, a summary of Kung’s character, his past achievements, his general background and his present work. Then suddenly this article from a defunct magazine caught his interest.
The article stated that over the centuries the Kung family had been collectors of rare antiques, precious stones and jade and Feng Hoh Kung had inherited all these treasures.