One Step to Danger

by John Gubert

  We parked in front of the place. It looked normal. “Is Georges still the patron here?” Jacqui asked a sullen looking girl at the counter.

  “Yes, he’s round the back,” came a surly reply.

  Jacqui walked straight round with me in tow. A squat fat man in a slightly grubby vest sat there. His gauloise drooped from his open bottom lip, curling smoke into the abundant nasal hairs that merged into a straggly moustache. His top trouser button was undone to reveal an enormous paunch. A pair of old braces held up his trousers. He was balding but kept his hair long and naturally greasy rather than slicked back. It was better that this caricature of a cafe owner did not serve up front. I hoped that he did not cook the food or even touch the croissants. For his stubby fingers were topped by bitten down nails that still retained a thin thick layer of grime.

  “You get more beautiful with age, you old crook,” said Jacqui.

  He looked at her sourly. “The Di Maglio girl. You look like your father wanted. A rich upper class bitch. What do you want?”

  “Two guns. We want handguns. Mine has to fit into my bag. We’re not fussy as long as they work.”

  He poked a finger in his ear and tried to excavate whatever was in it. “Who do you want them for?”

  “That’s not your look out,” came the sharp reply. “If you want to do business with us, that’s fine. If you ask questions, you’ll be in trouble.”

  “OK. I may have what you want but it’ll cost you. Come this way.”

  And with that, he took us through a door at the side of the room and down a flight of stairs to a cellar. There was a concealed door at the end and he opened that to reveal a good-sized arsenal. It did not take long to find the right weapons. I took an identical one to the gun I had been using and Jacqui took another small handbag sized pistol.

  “Give me a price,” she said.

  “For you darling,” he sneered, “I’ll make it a thousand dollars a piece or five hundred if you make me happy.”

  A sharp gesture from Jacqui held me back. Her response was cold. “You’ll get a thousand dollars from both of us and we want half a dozen rounds each. And if you as much as breathe on me, you’ll feel a few bullets in your gut.”

  We completed the sale and I handed the man the note. He was surprised to get a single thousand.

  “Is it genuine?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I responded.

  “If it’s not,” he said, turning to Jacqui, “I expect those favours from you.” She walked away. I decided to follow her example. On leaving I turned to him, “We haven’t been here. If anyone asks. The girl wanted to use the toilet. We ordered a coffee but didn’t drink it. You made us feel sick. OK?”

  He did not respond and I did not ask him to.

  “What a sleaze,” I said as I got into the car. “How on earth could you go back there?”

  “You can’t be choosers in this game and he had the goods, even if he cheated us on the price. Moreover he’s so revolting, that makes him a safer bet from our point of view.”

  We drove the short distance to the airport and I picked up our tickets to Paris. A voice behind me said, “Don’t forget that you can’t take arms on board.”

  I turned to face the inspector. “If you are following me, I’ll have you for harassment.”

  The inspector laughed for the first time and showed me a ticket to Paris. “I happen to be going to Paris. I was only being courteous.”

  I smiled and wished him a good journey. “I have to say,” I added, “I hope I don’t have to take up any more of your time.”

  He looked amused by this, “Me too. But if it must be…”

  I returned to Jacqui and asked if she thought that was an accident. She was doubtful, but pointed out we were not doing anything illegal that afternoon. I smiled and said “other than having two guns that are not licensed.”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “They’re after bigger fish. Even if they are on our trail, they’d be hoping to catch my father or something.”

  “All the same,” I said, “we may need to have a sudden change of plan. Let’s keep that in mind.”

  We reached Cannes just after midday and went straight to the hotel. We headed to our room. As it had been made up, Jacqui started packing her two cases. I packed mine. We had actually finished by the time Ali was announced.

  We greeted him. He was once again with Yussef who looked even less pleased to see us than on the previous occasion. After a few words of greeting we went to United Bank’s palatial offices just behind the Martinez. The manager was waiting for us. The transaction was quite simple. The banker’s draft was produced. It was a cheque drawn on United Bank for forty five million dollars. It had two signatures and the manager produced, at my request, the signature book to allow me to validate them and to establish their signing powers.

  I warned the manager I would need him to do a money transfer for me later that day. He confirmed that he would be at the bank. He had obviously heard from his offices in Monte Carlo about the sums we dealt in and was treating us with kid gloves. Or he believed we were undercover agents and with that sort of money we had to be important. Or perhaps he cultivated Ali for his wealth. I could think of three good reasons for his attention. That satisfied me.

  There was a cab rank outside and, as is common off-season, plenty of cabs available. That did not stop the driver from looking resentful when he heard we wanted to go to our bank, just a short distance away. In any case he took us there.

  We went down in the vault. We went through the usual routine. Ali looked through the contents. Then he handed me the banker’s payment we had collected from United. I asked the vault supervisor to arrange for the ownership of my vault to be passed over to my associate and to rearrange the keys. “My associate will also pay the outstanding fees,” I said.

  I turned to Ali. “You owe us nothing as you have changed the money without a fee and, more importantly, saved us a lot of problems. Now I owe you a favour and one day I will try to repay it.”

  We actually shook right hands this time. I knew Ali meant me well. He politely kissed Jacqui on the hand. Yussef pretended we did not exist.

  We walked back down to United. The manager again waited for us. “I want you to place this money into my account and remit it to these accounts in Switzerland.”

  The manager looked at the schedule and nodded. He went out of his office and gave instructions to an employee. Minutes later a series of advices had been prepared. The first was to credit my account at United in Monte Carlo. That brought the total to about fifty million. There were three others, all paid out of the United account I had just provisioned. One was a credit to Fucquet for a further forty five million dollars. The second was a two million dollar one for Bankhaus Hochzeit and the third for a million dollars to United in Geneva. That still left a couple of million in the account in Monte Carlo. I checked the dates for the credits. They were for the next day except for the one in Monte Carlo, which was still for that day. I signed them all and passed them back to the manager.

  “I need a receipt for the banker’s payment and copies of the transfer advices.” I was rather pleased. We now had our war chest ready. The hundred million dollars had been banked. The play had started.

  We strolled back along the sea front, arm in arm. It was a pleasant day again and there were few people around. One or two brave souls were on the beach. But Cannes was getting the look of a resort about to change its profile. Soon it would be conferences and expense account dinners. The odd tourist would feel isolated among the deserted daytime cafes and the eerily unpopulated tourist restaurants.

  We got to the hotel and I asked the doorman to bring round the car. “I want it there in five minutes,” I said. “I just need something from the room.”

  Everything had gone so smoothly. It wasn’t even three. I picked up the phone. “We have a flight to Paris if we want at four thirty,” I said to Jacqui. “I’ll get them to change our tickets. There’s no reason to hang around.”

>   We took our luggage down ourselves. Two of the cases were on wheels in any event. Jacqui carried her vanity case and my briefcase. I had the suit carrier over my shoulder and pulled the other cases along. At ground floor level, the porters rushed to help and we handed them all over with instructions to put them into the car. At reception, I said I did not need to see the bill. They agreed that they would send it to Mr. Di Maglio.

  I told the porters in passing that we were off to Geneva for business. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw someone sticking something onto one of the cases. I decided to ignore that. I mentioned this to Jacqui as we drove away.

  “It will be a bomb or a bug,” I said. “Mind you I may be wrong. I’ll drive to the corner at Palm Beach and check it out.”

  I was right. It was a bug. A tracker bug. All the other cases seemed OK.

  “I’ll hold on to this. It must have been a precaution,” I then thought. “If they placed this on the luggage as we left, they can’t have expected us to go. We were not expected to notice. I only just saw it out of the corner of my eye and that was through a reflection as something caught the sun. That should mean the rest is safe. We need to drive close to the airport area and plant it on a moving vehicle. That will stop them knowing where we turned off.”

  As we got to the toll, I had a thought. I pulled in. “Wait a moment,” I said to Jacqui, and walked to a police car that was parked near by, its engine running. I went over to the policemen and said, “Excuse me, which exit do I need to take for the airport?”

  They looked at me as if I was a fool. “Continue straight on. It’s marked and takes you straight to the terminal buildings.”

  I thanked them, and they did not notice how I dropped the bug onto the floor of their squad car, through the open rear window.

  I returned to our car and said to Jacqui, “That could be amusing. Was it your father do you think?”

  She laughed and said; “I guess so. He’s not going to be happy.”

  Minutes later we were turning off into the airport. I drove into the car rental return area and handed in the keys. I declined to check over the car and commented that it was unscratched but only had half a tank of petrol. They could add that to the credit card.

  We loaded a trolley with our luggage and wheeled it into the airport. I asked Jacqui to hand me her gun. I slipped it into my pocket. With our luggage checked we walked to domestic departures. We had half an hour to spare. “Give me a moment before we leave. But walk through. It’s safer.” I watched Jacqui through the security barrier and turned to the toilets.

  I went into a cubicle. I carefully wiped down Jacqui’s gun and then, opening my briefcase, did the same with mine and with the bullets. I then took some gloves from the case, the type used by jewellers to avoid fingerprints on their gold and silver ornaments, and also a band of tape. I taped the guns and cartridges together and tied them to the rear of the cistern in the toilet. I then replaced the cistern top. I was sure they were safe, at least for the moment. I then took out a card I had quietly picked up at the inspector’s office and wrote on it the location of the toilets and recommended a search of the cubicles. I addressed the envelope to the airport police, marking it urgent in large capitals. I threw the gloves and the tape into a bin, and walked out of the toilet.

  We hadn’t needed them after all but I now knew that, whatever the chance of danger, it paid to take all possible precautions. In my new world one only made one mistake.

  I was soon through security and back with Jacqui. We had fifteen minutes to wait before we were loaded on to the plane. We sat in the cramped positions that appear to be favoured for domestic flights, doing little else other than browse through the airline magazine. We landed on time at Orly. Once we had picked up our luggage we got a taxi to Roissy. But not before I had slipped my envelope and its warning into the open bag of a flight stewardess talking with her friends near the transit desk. I had done all I could to ensure the gun did not get into the wrong hands.

  We arrived at Roissy and managed to catch the earlier British Airways flight. And at just after seven local time I landed again at London. It had been almost a year from my departure. But in that time I had lived a lifetime. And most importantly, I had lived it with Jacqui.

  THE ROAD TO RIO

  We waited for our luggage in the crowd. People around us milled anxiously as they in turn waited for theirs to appear. We ignored them and talked of our plans for the evening. Should we go to a restaurant or a night-club, or both? The only thing we had to do was to meet the London manager of Fucquet in the morning before leaving.

  I wanted to be ready to head off for Boston and had already established that the flight left around ten in the morning.

  That would mean that we would have to leave the hotel around eight. I was planning to book our seats from the hotel at the last minute. A mid week flight was unlikely to be full. And I saw no reason to warn anyone with access to the information of our plans. I wanted to avoid being followed, especially after the events of the past few days.

  I put my arm around Jacqui. She lent against me, her head on my shoulder. I felt the warmth of her body through the light dress and, almost instinctively, my hand moved up her side towards her breast.

  Almost as instinctively, she caught it and whispered, “Do behave. There are women and children around. And most likely a lot of impressionable men.”

  I laughed and looked around saying “Where?”

  I noticed him immediately. He was a stocky man in a grey suit. His whole demeanour said that he was police or some other form of officialdom. I thought it was strange how I now recognised them by instinct. But why was he watching us so closely? Could he have recognised me as Charles Ryder?

  I turned away and whispered to Jacqui, “Be careful, we are being watched. I don’t know why. Whatever happens, play the dumb bimbo. Don’t get implicated.”

  She nodded and we waited for our cases. They came round in quick succession. I loaded them on to a trolley and pushed them through the blue channel. I was hardly surprised by the hand on my shoulder. Then a voice said, “Would you please step this way Mr De Roche, and you Miss Di Maglio.”

  If they knew us by those names, there could only be one explanation. The French police had tipped them off. I wondered if the inspector had thought we might be in the drugs trade. He could have had had us followed and then warned them of our arrival. I reflected on that possibility for a moment. It was a bit far fetched, as in such a case he surely would have had us searched before we left France.

  “We have had a tip off that you may be carrying illegal substances. Is there anything you would like to tell us?”

  I looked as surprised as I could, “That’s ridiculous. Who on earth would have tipped you off? We are reputable business people, not drug runners.”

  Jacqui said, “How dare you make such accusations. Is this somebody’s joke or something?”

  A man entered the room. “I think Miss Di Maglio that someone doesn’t like you very much. He tipped us off that you had drugs in your luggage”

  “Impossible” said Jacqui. “I packed our cases myself this morning.” Her voice trailed off. She went white. “They were left in our room. They were locked. But that’s not a problem. Have we been set up? Has someone tampered with our luggage?”

  That threw me. It was possible. And the only person who could have done that would have been Di Maglio or one of his men. How they would have got into the room I did not know. But I supposed that it was not hard to get some piece of technology that operated the doors. After all they were fairly basic electronic keys that were used by the hotels these days.

  “I still say this outrageous,” I said. “Why don’t you search the cases?” The customs officers opened the suit carrier. They took everything out and searched every inch of it. They then went through the suits item by item. They found nothing.

  They next tackled one of Jacqui’s cases. They removed everything and searched through the lining of the case. There was
nothing there. They looked disappointed I thought. They looked through all the clothes. Again they drew a blank. Jacqui had recovered and went to repack her case. She was pushed away and told not to touch anything. Perhaps they were worried that she had something on her person and would transfer it to the case?

  I was now really worried. They were too certain that they would find something. Had we been lulled into a sense of false security when we found the bug? Were we meant to see it so that we did not think of looking through the cases? I cursed myself for my laxness.

  The final case was opened. It contained both our clothes and once again the routine search was completed. It revealed nothing.

  Then the customs officers took Jacqui’s vanity case. They tipped everything out and felt the padded lining. I went cold with trepidation. Jacqui gasped as they produced a knife and cut through the lining. The padding was non existent. Instead the case was lined with plastic bags filled with a white powder. It looked like cocaine. We had been set up.

  The customs officers looked overjoyed. They told us that we would be stripped and body searched. They had tipped out most of Jacqui’s creams and lotions but found nothing else.

  I protested, “you need to test that substance. In any event it must have been planted. We knew nothing about it.”

  The response was formal. Both Jacqui and I were warned in turn that we would be searched and held in custody while the powder was analysed. Apparently an initial test could be undertaken quickly. In the meantime, they repeated, we would be stripped searched and then body searched.

  We were told we could have a lawyer if we required one. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. Any lawyer I knew would not know me as Charles De Roche. I turned to Jacqui and asked if she knew a lawyer in London. She shook her head miserably. She knew her way around France or Switzerland or even the main cities in the USA, but London for her was a shopping centre. She too could not help.

  I went into a room and stripped. One of the officers told me to sit on a bench, covered by a paper sheet. He pulled on a pair of plastic gloves and commenced his search. I closed my mind to his actions. I shut my eyes. But I could not shut my mind from what was happening. I thought of Jacqui. This would be worse for her. Someone would pay for this. And they would pay for it with their life.