“It’s the last stop that’s the important one,” said Japrisot obscurely.
Valador climbed wearily up into the Citroën and drove off. He headed for the service road that led to the parking lot on the other side of the overpass. The little truck disappeared.
“Where the hell is he going?” Holliday asked.
“Watch,” murmured Japrisot.
A few minutes later the van reappeared. The gold lettering on the side of the truck had been covered by a magnetic sign that read Camille Guimard—Antiquaire, 28, rue Felix Faure Le Suquet, Cannes.
“Who’s Camille Guimard?” Rafi asked from the “Who’s Camille Guimard?” Rafi asked from the backseat.
“Felix is,” said the French policeman. “In Marseille Valador is a smelly fisherman. In Cannes he is a sophisticated antique dealer named Guimard. Une grandes blague, n’est-ce pas? A neat trick, yes?”
“And Le Suquet?” Holliday asked.
“Like El Souk in the Kasbah of Marrakech,” explained Japrisot as Valador’s transformed Citroën rattled by. “The old quarter of the city, up on the hill.” He put the Peugeot in Drive and followed the van at a discreet distance. Ten minutes later, driving along the Boulevard du Midi at the water’s edge, they reached Cannes and Le Suquet, a rabbit warren of narrow, twisting streets that rose up from the stone quays of the Old Port to the formidable square tower of the eleventh-century castle built by the Cistercian monks of Lerins.
“Cistercians again,” said Rafi after Japrisot explained the geography. “They’re everywhere.”
“Pardon?” the Frenchman asked, frowning.
“A private joke,” said Holliday.
They followed the Citroën around the harbor then turned up the lush treelined boulevard of rue Louis Pasteur and started to climb the hill. Valador turned right onto rue Meynadier. They crossed the wider rue Louis Blanc, then turned abruptly into an alley that seemed to take them down the hill again. It was fully dark now but Japrisot was driving with only his parking lights.
“I’m lost,” said Holliday.
“I’m not,” said Japrisot.
“We’re going around in circles.”
“It’s the one-way streets,” said Japrisot, cocking one bushy eyebrow. “They’re everywhere.”
The policeman slowed and they watched Valador turn right and disappear from view.
“He’s getting away,” said Rafi.
“No, he’s not,” answered Japrisot, his voice calm. He cracked his window, flipped out his cigarette butt and lit another. Holliday had long ago lost track of how many the burly man had smoked, but strangely enough he found himself enjoying the rich earthy scent of the tabac noir. They waited in the alley for almost ten minutes. Holliday could hear Rafi fidgeting in the backseat. The French cop smoked. Finally Japrisot glanced at the illuminated dial of his wristwatch.
“Bien,” he said and nodded. “On y va.” Let’s go. He eased the shift back and they rolled slowly out of the alley. According to the sign they were now on the rue Felix Faure, another one-way street, this one lined with small shops. Japrisot slid the Peugeot into a parking space on the far side of the street. At the end of the block Valador was unloading the van. He was parked in front of a narrow shuttered storefront, unloading the last of the fish boxes. Beside the store, taking up the entire corner, was the awning-covered façade of a restaurant with a brightly lit green and yellow sign that read Huitres Astoux & Brun.
“An oyster bar,” said Holliday, realizing that they hadn’t eaten since lunch in Marseille.
There were a dozen or so plastic tables under the white fabric awning, all empty. A fat man in a long white apron was chaining plastic stacking chairs. The restaurant was closing.
“What now?” Rafi asked.
Japrisot shrugged.
“We wait. We smoke. Perhaps we talk about women.” He paused and smiled. “Who knows? The night is long.”
Valador finished his unloading, locked up the van and disappeared inside the store. A few seconds later a light could be seen behind the shutters. Almost half an hour passed. Then the light in the shop went out, and after a few moments another light went on, this time in the apartment above the store.
“He’s gone to bed,” said Rafi, a note of anger in his voice.
“I think perhaps you are right,” said Japrisot.
Rafi snorted.
“So we spent half the day following a guy all the way along the Riviera delivering fish and this is what it amounts to? Watching him get ready for sleep?”
“Police work is mostly waiting,” answered Japrisot. “And very boring. I’m afraid you must be patient.”
“Rafi’s right,” said Holliday finally. “My cousin has been taken hostage. We don’t have time for staking out some low-level smuggler. We need information. Now.”
“Stakeout?” the French cop said. “You mean comme le bifteck? Une barbeque?” Japrisot lifted his caterpillar eyebrows and winked. Holliday scowled, realizing that he was being teased.
The headlights of an approaching car washed through the rear window of the Peugeot.
“Attendez,” said Japrisot, and hunched down in his seat. Holliday and Rafi did the same. The car went past, then parked between a pair of wrought iron stanchions at the curb in front of the dark, deserted restaurant. There was an old-fashioned streetlight on the corner and Holliday could see the car clearly. It was a dark blue Audi Quattro. Two people got out: a well-dressed man with a Vandyke beard and a highly attractive woman in a short black cocktail dress.
“That’s the couple I saw at the casino,” whispered Holliday. “What are they doing here?”
“As they say in my country, Colonel Holliday, Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre. Good things come to those who wait.”
6
They watched as the couple from the Audi walked back along the sidewalk in front of the restaurant and paused in front of Felix Valador’s store. There was an intercom box high on the left-hand side of the doorframe. The man with the Vandyke reached into his jacket and took something out of the pocket.
“What’s that?” Holliday asked, squinting.
“Gants de latex, je pense,” said Japrisot. “Surgical gloves, I think.”
The man with the beard deftly snapped the gloves onto his hands, then pressed a button on the plastic intercom box and waited. A few seconds later there was a loud buzzing sound and the bearded man leaned forward to speak. His companion kept her back to the door, looking up and down the street. Without the film festival, nighttime in Cannes was relatively quiet. The sidewalks were deserted.
There was a second buzz from the intercom, and then a heavy clicking sound Holliday could hear from halfway down the block. The door opened and the couple from the blue Audi disappeared inside the store. A moment later the light came on behind the shutters over the front windows.
Japrisot took a small notebook and a gold-plated automatic pencil from his sagging suit coat pocket and climbed out of the Citroën. He walked down the street and wrote down the license number of the Audi. Thirty seconds later he slipped back into the car.
“AHX 37 45,” he said. “Czech. I think ‘A’ is for Prague.”
“What do the Czechs have to do with any of this?” Rafi asked.
Japrisot turned in his seat.
“Maybe nothing, maybe everything.” The policeman shrugged. “Prague was once the European end of the old Silk Road. It is still a central point for smugglers. You can find anything you want in Prague from beautiful Russian girls to heroin from Bangkok. Why not stolen artifacts?” He held up a finger. “Moment.” He dug a cell phone out of his jacket pocket and let out a burst of rapid-fire French. He snapped the cell phone closed and returned it to his pocket. “Now we wait again.”
No more than two minutes later the lights in the store went off. Almost immediately the woman from the Audi stepped out and stood by the door, wiping her hands on a tissue. She looked up and down the street, then turned and spoke through the open doorway behind her. T
he man with the Vandyke stepped out, carefully closing the door behind him, then stripped off the latex gloves and slipped them back into his pocket. He stood for a moment, then reached into his other pocket and brought out a flat gold cigarette case. He took out a cigarette, put the case away, then pulled something from his lapel and began delicately poking at the filter.
“What the hell is he doing?” Holliday asked.
“I know precisement what he is doing,” said Japrisot with a grimace. “He is putting pinholes in the paper of the cigarette. It is something longtime smokers do to convince themselves they are being healthy.”
“That’s crazy,” said Rafi from the backseat.
“Bien sûr,” replied Japrisot. “Of course. Smoking is for crazy people, yes?”
They watched as the bearded man brought out a heavy-looking gold lighter and lit his cigarette. Then the couple walked back up the street to the Audi and got in. The engine started, the headlights came on and they drove off. They turned right on rue Louis Blanc and went up the hill.
“They were in there for less than three minutes,” said Rafi. “I timed it.”
“Not very long,” said Holliday. “What kind of business can you do in three minutes?”
“Bad business,” said Japrisot. He stared out the window at the darkened storefront. He slapped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Je suis une connard! Nique ma mere!” He swore under his breath. “Something is wrong.”
The Frenchman sat for a moment, his features grim.
“M-e-r-d-e,” he breathed, drawing out the word. Finally he reached across the console, popped open the glove compartment and took out an ancient and enormous Manhurin-73 revolver with a wooden crosshatched “blackjack” grip and a huge five-inch barrel.
“Big gun,” commented Holliday, impressed. The revolver was chambered for .357 rounds. It was the French version of the weapon used by Dirty Harry.
“Yes,” said Japrisot. “And it makes very big holes in people, which is why I like it.” The grizzled policeman looked at Holliday severely. “Stay in the car, please.” He got out of the Peugeot and approached Valador’s shop, the heavy pistol held at his side.
“We going to stay in the car?” Rafi asked.
“Mais non,” said Holliday. “Not a chance.”
They got out of the vehicle, keeping their eyes on Japrisot. The policeman turned and saw them. He scowled, gesturing them back, then turned to the door once again and raised the revolver. He spread his fingertips on the door and pushed gently. It opened slightly. He toed it with his foot and it opened wider. Japrisot took a hesitant step forward, arm raised and elbow locked, the long barrel of the big pistol leading the way.
Holliday and Rafi held their breath as Japrisot stepped inside the store. A few moments later the lights went on and a few moments after that Japrisot appeared in the doorway, the revolver by his side again. With his free hand the cop waved them forward.
The interior of the shop looked more like something out of a Dickens novel. There were antiques and collectibles piled everywhere in no kind of order: wooden filing cabinets, a thirties-style leather couch, a sunburst mirror from the fifties, armoires, religious paintings, eighteenth-century gas lamps, a Louis Sixteenth Bergere confessional chair, chandeliers, figurines, an old-fashioned Bakelite wall phone between two plaster columns, lamps, picture frames, a giant clock face, granite garden lions, a pair of Pallisandre armchairs, a dozen faux wax fruit clusters in bell jars, three holy water fonts, seven ornately framed copies of Edgar Degas’s Two Dancers in Blue, a giant stuffed peacock staring into a long cheval glass beveled mirror in a tilting stand and a Minnie Mouse ventriloquist’s dummy laid over the leather saddle of a battered and faded carousel horse. Ten of the fifty-kilo fish boxes were piled up in front of the merry-go-round figure. There was no sign of Felix Valador.
Japrisot was standing in the middle of it all, the big pistol stuffed haphazardly into the sagging pocket of his jacket. He had a handkerchief in one hand and a bemused look on his face.
“Good grief,” said Rafi, looking around at the array of exotic clutter.
“Where is he?” Holliday asked, looking at Japrisot’s expression.
The policeman eased his bulky figure down the central aisle of the little shop and stopped in front of a tall, dark oak armoire with carved bird and floral patterns on the doors. The triple-barrel hinges and the long, turned handles were brass. There was a single sunburst spot of blood on the floor in front of the armoire like a tiny crimson marker. Japrisot used the handkerchief on the door handles and pulled the doors open.
“Voilà,” said the policeman.
Valador was crouched inside the armoire, knees drawn up under his chin, head bent forward and twisted to one side, one hand under his buttocks, the other between his upraised knees. One eye was wide open and the other half closed in a grotesque parody of a wink. Bizarrely, an obviously fake ruby the size of a robin’s egg was neatly balanced in the dead man’s earlobe.
Holliday squatted and took a closer look.
“I don’t see any wound,” he said.
“Strangled?” Rafi suggested calmly. As an archaeologist he’d seen hundreds of dead bodies in his time, but generally not so fresh as Valador’s. The eyeballs were only just beginning to glaze and shrink in their sockets. “And what’s with the plastic ruby?”
“There’s no sign of a struggle,” answered Japrisot. “And there wasn’t time. Strangulation is a very slow way of murdering someone.” The policeman grimaced. “Also, his face would have become purple and his tongue would be sticking out.” The Frenchman shook his head. “It was quick and it was a surprise.”
The blaring first chords of ABBA’s “Mama Mia!” boomed out. It was the ring tone of Japrisot’s cell phone. He dragged the cell out of his pocket and held it to his ear.
“Oui?”
He listened, staring down at Valador’s corpse and plucking a fleck of cigarette tobacco from his fleshy lower lip.
“D’accord,” he said after a few moments.
He closed the cell phone and slipped it back into his pocket. He cleared his throat.
“According to my people the couple in the Audi are Antonin Pesek and his Canadian-born wife, Daniella Kay. They live on Geologika Street in the Barrandov district of Prague. They are contract killers. Assassins. They work regularly all over Europe. The Peseks, en famille, have worked for everyone from the East German Stasi to the Albanian Sigurimi. Monsieur Pesek’s weapon of choice is a short-barreled CZ-75 automatic pistol. His wife prefers ornamental plastic hatpins. They go right past the metal detectors at airports. Apparently she is quite the artist. In her file it uses the phrase ‘surgically precise.’ ”
Japrisot crouched down on his haunches beside Holliday and, still using the handkerchief, he gripped the ruby in Valador’s ear between his thumb and forefinger. He tugged. The ruby slid out along with six inches or so of clear Lucite plastic. The hatpin made a slight grating sound as it was withdrawn from Valador’s head, like someone chewing on a mouthful of sand. He held it up to the light. It was lightly greased with brain matter. A trickle of pink, watery blood drained out of Valador’s ear.
“Surgically precise, indeed,” murmured Japrisot, squinting at the needle-like murder weapon. “Into the middle ear and then through the temporal bone to the brain via the internal auditory nerve canal.” The policeman nodded thoughtfully to himself. “It would take a great deal of skill.”
“You sound as though you know your anatomy,” commented Holliday.
Japrisot lifted his shoulders and sighed.
“I spent three years in medical school. My father, God rest his soul, was an otologist.” The policeman shook his head sadly. “Unfortunately it was not to be. I could not face a lifetime of oozing pus and wax. Japrisot Pere was very disappointed, I am afraid.”
He stood up, grunting with the effort. He turned and gently laid the ruby- ended stick-pin down on a convenient stack of Blue Willow polychrome dinner plates. The dinne
rware was stacked up on a dusty chunk of architectural marble that had once been part of a fluted column on an old building.
“C’est ca,” said Japrisot. “Now we shall see what this is all about.” He went down the crowded aisle to the pile of fish boxes. Holliday and Rafi followed. The cop looked at the boxes for a moment, made a little grunting sound in the back of his throat and used one of his meaty hands to pry the close-fitting lid off the top of the box.
“Viens m’enculer!” Japrisot whispered, his eyes widening.
“What is it?” Holliday said, stepping closer and looking over the policeman’s shoulder. He stared, gaping.
Carefully fitted into custom-made Styrofoam slots was a row of five gold bars, each one approximately five inches long and two inches wide. Japrisot reached into the box and pried one of the bars out of its nest. It looked about half an inch thick. Holliday reached into the box and took another one out. It was heavy in his hands, almost unnaturally so, and it had an odd, greasy feel to it that was unaccountably repellant.
The bar was rudely made, the edges rounded and the surface slightly pitted. “1 KILO” was stamped into the upper quadrant, the letters E.T. in the middle and an instantly recognizable impression in the lower end of the bar: the palm tree and swastika insignia of the German Afrika Korps of the Third Reich. There was no serial number or any other coding on the bar.
“Fifty kilos a box, ten boxes, five hundred kilos,” said Japrisot quietly.
“One thousand one hundred and three pounds,” murmured Rafi. “A little more than half a ton.”
“Dear God,” whispered Holliday, “what have we stumbled onto?”
“Clearly our Czech friends Pesek and his wife didn’t know, either,” said Japrisot. He put the bar back in its niche. “If they’d known what was in the boxes they wouldn’t have been so quick to leave.”
“At eight hundred an ounce that’s about thirteen million dollars,” calculated Rafi.
“Motive for any number of murders,” said Japrisot.
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