by James Easton
“Yeah. Sorry about this. Came out of nowhere.”
Max shrugged. “We’re dealing with it.”
“Everything lined up in Morzine for us?” asked Jean.
“Yeah, the guys I will stay with are in place.”
“Who are they?”
“Eric Scandella, a loan guy I know, and one of his clients. He owns the house. Eric will give him a break on the money, so the guy’s solid. He has no idea what this is.”
“And nobody knows we know each other?”
“Jean, you going paranoid? Except for Rafa and Dino and your backers, no.” Max glanced up toward the lounge. “I’ll go there today, after this. You know what? The place Eric has arranged is close to where you are going.”
He held his palm up for Jean, drawing a map with his index finger. “You are here. Then over the next hill is some house there, and I will be there over the next hill again. Just the one little valley between us. Practically neighbours.”
Jean nodded. “Anything from Rédoine?”
“On his way. He wants to check Morzine out, look at the handover points for the exchange. I’ll leave soon after that if it’s all smooth. What about you?”
“Doing the film with the journalist. Could take a couple of weeks.” He winked.
“She must be hot to keep you in France so long.”
Jean shrugged. “Morzine is rich. Nobody will look for me there. But you are right, she’s something else. How do I look?” He grinned.
“Like a damn banker heading for his winter holiday in Morzine, man. You’ll fit right in.”
They heard a car pull up. A text arrived on Max’s phone, the driver telling him he was there.
“When did you tell him this address?” said Max.
Jean looked through the doorway. The driver got out of the car. A young guy who checked back in the car, seeing he hadn’t left anything.
“A minute before you came,” he said. “You can take care of this?”
Max said, “I’ve got it. This other guy is upstairs?”
Jean nodded. “In the salon. Name’s Raymond. He’s a landscape gardener. All yours.”
Jean handed over the key to the house and accepted the car key from Max. The driver knocked as he came in. Jean slipped around the door. The driver didn’t look at him directly. He was discreet.
Max said to the driver: “Well done. Your name?”
“Xavier.”
“So, some chop guys I know are coming for the cars. You want coffee? Some breakfast?”
“Yeah, please.”
“One second. Let me check upstairs.”
The driver waited as Max went up the stairs into the sitting room. There was a cheap three-piece suite and a small kitchenette. He nodded at the guy in the corner. “You must be Raymond? Bonjour.”
He checked out the fridge. A few basic groceries, enough for a good breakfast. Max was hungry. He went downstairs again.
“So, it’s OK. Pass me that towel, would you?” He nodded at an old bath towel on the workbench in the garage, then shepherded Xavier with a welcoming arm toward the stairs. When Xavier took the first step, Max drew his small handgun from his waistband and brought it up in the same movement, stepped right behind Xavier and made sure he felt the weight of the weapon, relaxing his hand, smooth and calm as he squeezed a round into the back of the young driver’s head for an immediate lights out. Xavier crumpled onto his haunches in the stairwell. Gone. He would never tell anyone about this place.
Max wrapped Xavier’s head in the towel to limit the clean-up and laid him out at the bottom of the stairs before going up to the salon.
He liked a compact weapon for close-in stuff. This one, a Glock 43, was new, but he liked the feel of it in his hand, and he’d been confident with it. The big Beretta under his arm would have been as good, but it just felt right to use a shorter handgun when you wanted to execute a guy. But then Max thought of where he’d got the Beretta, a Marseilles competitor, and felt it made sense from a ballistics analysis point of view to change it up. Nobody would suspect a connection in the unlikely event both bodies were found. The Glock went into his waistband, and he drew the big black Italian cannon. Now, that did feel good.
Raymond’s eyes were wide with terror. He was mumbling from behind the duct tape over his mouth, which also bound his legs and hands and secured him to the heating pipe in the lounge. From the plates on the draining board, washed, it seemed Jean had given him dinner before securing him. He was thoughtful like that.
Max sat down on the arm of the sofa. “Raymond? Ah, you weed your pants. Don’t worry, eh? Now, this is a Beretta M9. Classique. Time to say your prayers.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It took Jean a couple of hours to get to Morzine.
The house was a simple chalet-style place. Whitewashed bricks on the ground floor, timber cladding on the first. The bedrooms had balconies and big, full-length windows. He thought it went with his new image. Low-key and middle class. He went to the end bedroom, opened the curtains, and looked all the way up the hill. He remembered what Max had said about the other places here, and looked at a map of the area on his phone.
Max had called this a valley, but it was more of a dent in the hills, really. Nothing like the one the town lay in a few kilometres away. Jean had studied this terrain on maps and knew it well. Max was right. There were three of these dents in a row. Him - and Robin when she arrived - then Max two places over and their mutual neighbour in the middle. The place had a business name: AB Langrenn.
Jean looked it up on the internet. It was some kind of winter sports school, although the main chalets were a kilometre away. The place in the valley next to him was a headquarters and staff residence by the look of it. Similar to this place in some ways, though not as smart. He looked at the bio of the business owner on the website.
Anders Hooper-Berg, Norwegian, former army officer, Olympic reserve biathlete. There was a picture of a handsome, mixed-race guy, in climbing gear, looking up at a frozen waterfall.
Jean unpacked the bags Max had left in the car for him. Full re-kit: snow gear, some nice jeans, three shirts, a couple of sweaters. Max has even got him some underwear and socks, heavy ones for outside, fine ones for his banker act. The smaller bag had a laptop, some phones, some cash, a few rolls of duct tape, and handcuff-style cable ties.
Max had included a pair of ski gloves along with black leather military gloves, and a box of nitrile gloves in case he had to do any work here.
There were two wash bags. One had the usual basic toiletries. The second one had the syringe. He read the bottle alongside it. A doctor in prison had explained how to use the stuff. It would knock someone out and if given in high enough doses, kill them.
Carolina and Miguel were on the smallest and gentlest slope she’d been able to find. Near but not on the snowfields, with good tree cover on either side. Miguel has seemed relieved that the spot Carolina had chosen was private. She’d checked it for hidden rocks, and there was a nice drift at the bottom, six metres away, just to the side of the area where she hoped he would turn in to.
“So, we’ll start here,” she said.
Miguel sat down, looking glum. Carolina crouched and helped him strap one foot in. She did her board in the same way and rolled up to her feet and sat back down.
“Watch this time.” She did it again. “OK, watch this too.”
She lifted her free foot onto the board, and a second later, she put it back on the slope, stopping herself sliding. Then she walked up the slope, stepping with her free foot in front of the board, bringing the board up to her heel, then stepping forward again. She repeated it all without saying anything, letting Miguel watch her. She turned at the top. “So ready to try?”
He looked at the slope and wiped his glove over his mouth.
“If you fall over, you won’t hurt yourself. Miguel, I want you to fall over, you understand?”
Miguel had no problem there, overbalancing and landing on his face after a metre.
“So, you’re good at something.”
He laughed, bitterly, into the snow. She could use that. It was a release, of a sort. She had to convert it to something. Carolina got into a plank position looking at him. She lowered herself down. Her face was half a metre from his.
“You see my board?” She was rocking it on its leading edge. She pushed up on her hands and knees, and then pushed up onto her feet but kept the board tilted. “So you push up, like this, keep tilted on your toes, then you control like this.” She waggled the board, pressing the leading edge into the snow. “You see, when I do that, I don’t slide. Now, you.”
Miguel got up, kind of heavy with it, but he did it. The board slid before he could tilt it, and he fell on his face again. Carolina got him to walk with her, slowly, up to the top of the slope where it was flat and he could practice controlling his weight, rocking the board through his toes. She told him things about keeping his body still in his own mind, trying to find different ways of saying the same thing. What worked was telling him to imagine it as he did it, let his mind guide him. That seemed to appeal to Miguel, and he didn’t overdo the energy he was putting into it. In the end, he managed to rock onto, and off, his toes, fifty times straight. And he smiled when he’d finished.
Max walked in carrying two holdalls. He saw a soft looking guy taking him in and went over to speak to him. “Nice place,” said Max. “You know, all goes well, we’ll be out of your hair soon. But don’t worry. I’m house trained.”
The guy smiled as they shook hands. “Henri.”
“That’s it?” asked Eric, “The stuff?”
“That’s it. And half of it is my clothes.”
There was a small wine cellar in the study floor, and Eric wanted Max to leave the kit in there. The cellar had a spiral staircase, with almost no floor area at the bottom and the wine shelving built around the stairs.
“What is it?” asked Eric.
Max said. “I told you. Some advanced rifles, two of those. The other is tech, an interface. Part of a smart weapon.”
“Advanced rifles? What does that mean?”
“Not yet in commercial production. I’ll show you.”
He unzipped one of the bags, took out something like a flute case. From the case, he took out a length of black polymer with square edges, a short curving trigger emerging near one end. Max pressed a button near the opposite end, and a short barrel extended, then another came out of that from within the first. Then he pressed a button near the end where the trigger was, and a thirty-centimetre rod came out of the back. He unfolded a stock from that.
“Sniper rifle,” Max said. “More powerful than other short pieces on the market. So concealable.”
“What about the sight? That’s bulky, no?”
Max took a small black case out of the bag and handed it to Eric.
“Ski goggles? They feel heavy.”
“Put them on.”
Max pointed the weapon out of the window and pressed a button on the side.
“Latest lens technology over the barrel, here, you see. Takes images, sends it to the specs. It’s a sight.”
“How far does this work?”
“Range is one thousand metres for full accuracy.”
Eric smiled, handing back the shades. “Congratulations, Max. Who the hell wants to buy this from you?”
Max glanced toward the part of the house where they’d left Henri. Then he held Eric’s gaze. “Who? Are you serious? I could get killed for telling you that. The client is big. That’s all you need to know.” He kept staring at Eric.
Eric looked up at him.
“Of course. I don’t deal with this kind of thing. Sorry, the fresh air here. It’s doing strange things to me. Can I ask, though, why he wants to be in Morzine? I can’t work it out.”
“He likes to exchange in the open. And Morzine has a lot of space. I don’t know, maybe he likes to ski too. All I care about is the deal.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Jean was on a tree-covered slope. After years of prison, he couldn’t believe how clean the air was. Too cold maybe to smell a lot, but he had a drift of the pine trees, and it seemed to hit his brain. It looked white but smelled green.
He wore a scarf around the lower part of his face, a beanie, and ski shades. He heard someone’s tread, the boots sliding after each gentle crunch through thirty centimetres of snow.
A man of about forty, a little shorter than Jean with long, almost black hair, was approaching. He wore a thermal headband and shades, but the hair gave him away. Rafael Nieto.
He hugged Jean and laughed quietly. “You did it.”
“Rafa. Good to see you.”
Jean looked up through the trees. Rafa had a couple of guys up on the cusp of the road. They walked a little further down the slope.
Rafa smiled. “I saw you on the news. Those hampers made me laugh.”
“A little touch of humour. You got the stuff?”
Rafa unzipped his jacket, pulled out two long vacuum-sealed packages. “Best tuna loin carpaccio. You dropping that from a helicopter too?”
“I’m entertaining.”
“Nice.” Rafa got more serious “You all set up here?”
“More or less. You got your men?”
“If you need us, we’re here. I hired a crew. And some of my own guys. Are you expecting problems?”
“You trust the hires?”
“Yeah, Georgians and Romanians. Some of them are older. Look nothing like us. They’re partying here. They don’t know it’s you I’m dealing with, of course.”
Jean broke off some spruce, smelled it. “I don’t expect problems. The guy Max and I are selling to is serious. But with your guys, we can make sure. Max can get people, too.”
It made sense to have a lot of hands to call on. If necessary, the men would be able to draw unwanted attention away while Jean left Morzine.
“You have the goods with you?” asked Rafa.
“Not where I’m staying. If the worst happened and they caught up with me, we could still sell it, have the money for the next escape. But if we do this right, and we will, I’ll be gone. You enjoying Morzine?”
He laughed. “Yeah. We got thrown out of a restaurant last night. They don’t know how to have fun here.”
“Rafa, don’t draw attention. This is a nice sort of place. Relax. Be like everyone else.”
“I am just a tuna farmer.” He grinned. “People can look at me as much as they like.”
It was true. Rafa sold his tuna for seven thousand Euros each.
“Jean, why don’t you have dinner with us tonight?” he said, “You don’t look like you with that hair and those specs.”
Miguel Pérez lay in the snow with a bloody nose, laughing. He’d crashed at the bottom and landed on his face. Carolina was crouching next to him, worried that he had whacked his nose. He didn’t care.
“I balanced! I did it. All six metres.”
She sat in the snow next to him, her hands folded in front of her knees.
Miguel sat up, grinning. “I was worried I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’m not good at sport. I know this is super modest. But it’s a big deal for me.”
She smiled. Enjoying his pleasure. “And our team, Miguel. You and me. We’ll do it. You felt it right, the balance?”
“Yes. For one whole second, at least.” He punched the air.
She got up, hauled him up by his hand, patted his back. “Enough for today. You need to be able to walk tomorrow, and you’ll feel this everywhere. Let’s get back to the car.”
They walked, carrying their boards, winding their way through the snow-laden conifers. It was overcast, heavy and quiet, their boots juddering on the surface as they pushed up the hill.
“It’s private here,” said Miguel.
“I wanted you to be comfortable. We’ll come back tomorrow. But let’s say you’ll go on one of the main slopes before the end of your holiday.”
Carolina heard laughter. The trees displaced and d
isguised the direction of its source. Then they almost walked into two men, right in front of them as they pushed past some branches, closer than she had thought from the laughter. Carolina stepped in front of Miguel. Looking at their movement, where their hands were, their balance and communication. It was safe. She smiled, said, “Bonjour.” They smiled politely, greeting her back, and let her and Miguel past. She heard their conversation restart.
Carolina remembered them as she moved away. One had dark, side-parted hair. She hadn’t seen much of him. The other was a few years older, his hair was longer and slightly wild, gathered on the scarf around his ears.
“I was scared of this, to be honest,” said Miguel as they trudged up through the trees, sometimes pulling themselves with the branches. He looked around. “How can you remember the way?”
“It’s just three hundred metres from where we practised and straight up here. If you paid attention, you’d know the route.” She winked.
Carolina had the feeling she’d seen one of the men before. The long-haired one.
Back down on the slope, Jean Haim said to Rafa Nieto, “You see how she moved in front of him?”
“She’s protection. I wonder who the kid is.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Carolina got the heat going, and they put their jackets in the back seat. Miguel said, “What’s your worst fear?”
“Kind of a personal question.” He was an interesting boy. She saw he was serious. Her answer would mean something to him. She wondered if he had a fear she hadn’t seen.
“I mean,” said Miguel, “You were a soldier. I’ve been terrified of anything like that all my life.” He jerked his head back at the slopes. “Just anything physical, with some risk. God knows how I’d be in a war.”
Carolina was thinking of the guy’s hair. The way it flowed out around his ears a little. That shape. She recognised it from somewhere. And the way they were talking there, on a hillside. No skis, no boards. No snowshoes, even. Nothing overtly furtive, nothing suspicious. Except they were talking in the trees, standing still.