Led by Laval, the group on the path moved quickly through the trees, taking only a minute or two to cover the short distance to the cliff edge. A hundred feet or so below, the sea shone grey as the early-morning light just began to touch the water. As they looked down, they could see a small dinghy moving out into the cove, the puttering of its outboard motor just audible from where they stood.
‘That’s him,’ said Milraud, and Laval radioed confirmation to Team Bravo. He issued an order: ‘Attempt to detain. Otherwise destroy.’
They watched as Piggott picked up speed, heading straight towards the south. Next stop Algeria, thought Liz.
But then she saw the commando craft appear at the mouth of the cove. Even loaded down with its team of commandos, it was going much faster than Piggott. As it drew closer, on a line to cut off his escape, Piggott changed course sharply to the east.
Suddenly a long arc of red dots jumped out of the commando boat, syncopated tiny flares, fluorescent against the dark-grey sea. They disappeared just ahead of the bow of Piggott’s little dinghy. Tracer bullets, thought Liz. Watching in silence, she heard the sharp crack of a weapon. Piggott was returning fire. He must be crazy.
The commandos fired another line of red bullets, this time even closer to the target. And again Piggott fired back, accurately enough to cause the commando dinghy to veer. There was a momentary lull, then the commando boat fired again, and these were not warning shots.
Suddenly flames appeared at the back of the small dinghy. Piggott jumped up from his seat in the stern, his clothes on fire. As the illuminated figure moved to leap overboard, the dinghy wobbled perilously. But before he could jump, the outboard motor burst into flames, and a split second later exploded with a bang that reverberated round the cliffs. The sky above the dinghy lit up like a rosy-pink firework, and the shockwave reached the watchers on the cliff.
‘Mon dieu,’ exclaimed Seurat. Liz looked in vain for signs of the dinghy. But it had completely disappeared, blown to bits by the force of the explosion.
58
They stood for a moment in silence. Then Laval said, ‘We must get to the house fast. That must have been heard from there.’
Milraud pointed to a track. ‘This way is quickest.’
They moved along as fast as they dared; it was still quite dark in the woods, and the track was overgrown with tangled shrubs and tree branches that hung low. Laval led the way with one of the commandos, while Liz, Milraud and Seurat proceeded in a line behind them. The second commando brought up the rear.
Suddenly Laval stopped and held up his hand in warning. He had reached the edge of the trees. In front of him was an open courtyard and, looming in the background, a long stone building with a veranda up wooden steps to one side. The farmhouse.
Laval gathered the group round him. ‘If the Spaniard is still asleep where will he be?’ This was addressed to Milraud.
‘That leads into the kitchen,’ the Frenchman said, pointing at a door covered by a fly screen. ‘There are two doors out of it. The green baize one leads into a sitting room; the other one opens into a corridor running the length of the house. Gonzales sleeps in the first room off the corridor.
‘The stairs between the kitchen and his room lead down to the cellar where Willis is locked up. There’s another door to the house at the front. It opens into the other end of the corridor. If you go in that way, Gonzales’s room is the fourth off the corridor on the left-hand side.’
Laval nodded and turned to one of the commandos who was short and stocky but looked very strong. ‘Gilles. You cover the front of the house. Once you get there, wait till you hear my order then move inside and throw the stun grenades into the Spaniard’s room. If he comes out your way, don’t let him escape. Compris?’
Gilles nodded, his jaw clenched.
He turned to the second commando. ‘We’ll go in through the kitchen door. We will try to flush out the Spaniard before we release the hostage. Seurat, you go in up those steps and watch our backs and keep Milraud with you. We may need him to talk to Gonzales. Madamoiselle, you keep under cover out here in the trees.’
Next, Laval radioed the team on the other side of the island and told them to stay in place in case Gonzales escaped and made his way over towards the ferry. That done, he said, ‘Let’s get going. It’s starting to get light.’
As she positioned herself behind the broad trunk of a pine tree on the edge of the courtyard, Liz felt her heart beating painfully against her ribs. This was the moment when Dave would either be saved or killed. It seemed to her that Laval had split up his forces far too much. Pitifully few of them were actually here to do the job they had come to do: rescuing Dave. He’s left the courtyard unguarded, she thought, her spine crawling at the thought that Gonzales might already be out of the building and in the woods, perhaps creeping up on her, unarmed and unprotected as she was.
She watched as Martin Seurat and Milraud crept up the rickety wooden steps and disappeared into the farmhouse. Then she turned to look at Laval and the commando moving stealthily round the edge of the courtyard, towards the kitchen door, keeping low, holding their weapons ready. They had reached an open-doored barn containing an old car, when suddenly the screen door of the kitchen was kicked open from inside and Dave appeared, staggering as though he was being pushed. Right behind him, clutching Dave’s shirt in one hand and holding a 9 mm automatic against the back of Dave’s head was Gonzales. He was using his hostage as a human shield.
Laval stopped moving at once and slowly stood up from his crouch, raising his gun. The other commando had disappeared. Laval hesitated. He couldn’t fire for fear of hitting Dave. There was a momentary stand-off. Then suddenly Gonzales pushed Dave to the side, still holding onto him with one hand, and fired at Laval. Then he quickly pulled Dave back in front of him.
Laval fell, dropping his weapon and rolling over on the packed earth until he lay sideways, one arm twitching in obvious agony. Gonzales took a step towards him, as Dave suddenly twisted in his grasp and raised his hand. As Gonzales lifted a protective arm and tried to bring his gun round, Dave’s hand flashed down and he plunged something into his captor’s chest.
‘Ahhhh!’ the Spaniard shouted, flinching in pain and letting go of Dave.
Dave ran for the edge of the yard. He was perhaps twenty feet away from where Liz was standing when Gonzales lifted his gun and fired. Dave went down at once, clutching his side. Simultaneously the commando stood up from behind the car and fired at the Spaniard. He hit him in the leg and the Spaniard fell heavily but held onto his gun.
Lying where he’d fallen, he lifted his hand and pointed his gun at Dave, still alive but groaning and helpless on the ground. He’s going to finish him off, thought Liz. She had to do something. Stepping out from behind the tree she ran forward to Dave, shouting at the Spaniard at the top of her lungs. ‘Stop! Stop or I’ll shoot.’
Gonzales’ head jerked up, and he raised his gun to fire at this new target. Liz watched with a growing sense of horror as the black gun pointed directly at her. She tensed, waiting for the shot, but though she heard the flat crack of a gun, she felt nothing. Had Gonzales missed?
She dived flat onto the ground before he could fire again – surely he couldn’t miss twice at such short range – but then she saw that Gonzales had dropped his gun; his head had flopped to the ground and she watched with macabre fascination as blood poured from it, staining the ground like spilt juice. The commando and Seurat had fired together and this time neither had missed.
Liz staggered to her feet as Martin Seurat rushed down the wooden steps and across the yard, kicking away the Spaniard’s gun as he passed, though there was not the remotest chance he’d ever use it again. ‘Liz!’ he shouted, ‘Are you all right?’ He put his arms round her as her legs gave way and she almost fell again.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘I did a very silly thing, rushing out like that. But I thought he would kill Dave.’
‘No, no. You were very brave.’
> But she wasn’t listening. She was kneeling beside Dave. He was alive but barely conscious, breathing shallowly. The bullet had hit him low on one side of his stomach, and blood was spreading like water through a sponge, gradually turning the blue of his shirt ominously black.
‘He’s going to die if we don’t get him to hospital,’ whispered Liz as she helped Seurat gently open up Dave’s shirt. Blood continued to flow from the bullet hole in his lower stomach, as Seurat folded the cotton fabric back against the wound to staunch it.
The commando who had fired at Gonzales had been talking on the radio and was now kneeling beside Laval next to the garage. His colleague Gilles came running from the front of the farmhouse with his gun at the ready. ‘It’s all over,’ Seurat called out to him, and he lowered his gun, though his eyes warily scanned the woods around the yard.
Then almost directly overhead Liz heard the phut-phut-phut of a helicopter, and felt the lightest of breezes stirring her hair. Soon the breeze was a stiff wind, then a gale, and within moments she watched as the underbelly of the helicopter hovered above the middle of the yard, sending up dust in a fine spray.
As soon as the chopper settled on the yard and the blades began to slow, the side door slid open and an armed man in military fatigues jumped out, followed by two men in whites. Stretchers and medical equipment were unloaded and within thirty seconds the doctor had taken over caring for Dave from Liz and Seurat. Before long Dave was strapped to the stretcher, drugged now with a morphine injection, a drip in his arm, and loaded into the helicopter. The doctor quickly turned his attention to Laval, who had been hit high in the collarbone. He too was strapped to a stretcher and loaded on board.
Liz, Martin Seurat and the two commandos stood in the courtyard looking up as the helicopter lifted away. As the noise died down, Gilles came over and spoke to Seurat. ‘L’autre, monsieur?’ was all Liz could hear above the deafening whirr of the chopper.
‘L’autre?’ asked Seurat, frowning with incomprehension.
‘Oui, oui. L’autre. Le troisième. Où est-il?’ said the commando insistently.
‘He means Milraud,’ said Liz, suddenly conscious of what the commando was saying. ‘Where is he?’
Seurat froze, a look of anguish on his face. ‘He’s gone. He slipped away while I was focused on what was happening in the courtyard.’
‘Oh no,’ said Liz. ‘Just when you thought you’d got him.’
‘He can’t have got very far,’ said Seurat. ‘Radio to the team at the ferry and alert them,’ he ordered Gilles. ‘I’ll call for air surveillance. He knows the island well but it’s pretty small, and if he can’t get off it I’m sure we’ll soon track him down.’
59
But they didn’t. All day helicopters hovered over the island of Porquerolles and the surrounding sea. Some had heat-seeking equipment that flushed out a couple of cyclists, a walker, and two lovers furious to be disturbed from above. But no Milraud.
Gendarmerie had been recruited from as far as Marseilles to search the mainland ferry port and the nearby town of Hyères. The CRS had sent a platoon to go through the empty houses and hotels on the island, and the navy had been patrolling a two-mile sea perimeter around the island. But the results for all these seekers, on land and at sea, was so far the same: no Milraud.
As Liz sat in the naval base canteen in Toulon the next afternoon, watching through the window the daily life of the base going on outside, she gave a silent prayer of thanks for the hundredth time that Dave had survived. Although Martin Seurat was furious that Milraud seemed to have escaped, Milraud had not been her priority.
She’d been to see Dave that morning in the base hospital. He was drowsy with morphine but he’d given Liz a weak smile as she came in. ‘I’ll be fine again sooner than you know,’ he’d declared, and Liz had refrained from sharing with him what the doctor had told her the day before – a half-inch higher, and the bullet fired by Gonzales would have killed him. A close call then, but Dave would be well enough to be flown back to hospital in London the next morning. As it was, he had a deep gunshot wound, two broken ribs, and a persisting concussion to show for his involuntary stay in the Ile de Porquerolles. Liz wondered if he’d be sent back to Belfast after recuperating, and hoped so. Life there would not be the same without him.
‘I suppose I’ll be in trouble when I get back,’ Dave had said ruefully. ‘Judith warned me not to go back to Milraud’s shop and she was right. I can’t think what I was doing.’
‘Don’t worry, Dave. Everyone will just be delighted you’re alive.’
‘Do we actually know what Piggott and Milraud were trying to achieve?’
She’d given him a look of mock-sternness, like a ward sister with a recalcitrant patient. ‘There will be lots of time for that. Right now, you just concentrate on getting better.’
‘Okay, okay. But I can’t do that till I know what it was all about. Why did they bring me all the way down here if they were going to end up shooting me? Did they have a plan?’
‘Hard to say. Our French colleague Martin Seurat thinks they panicked and made it up as they went along. His guys found two laptops in the farmhouse. They’d been sending emails to somebody. They may tell us what the plan was, but it will take a bit of time to unscramble it all. And that’s all I’m telling you now. Go back to sleep; I’ll see you in the UK.’
Now as she watched some workmen erecting a grandstand on the parade ground, her mind still on the dramatic events of the day before, she felt a hand on her shoulder and a voice asked quietly, ‘Where are we now?’ Martin Seurat sat down at the table opposite her.
‘I was just thinking about our mysterious Monsieur Milraud. How did he get away and where has he gone?’
‘There’s some news about that. We’ve been conducting a house-to-house search on the island – and it appears that a summer cottage on the outskirts of the village has been broken into. Nothing’s been taken, but some food from the freezer was heated up in the kitchen. We’ve also just heard from the harbour master that a resident in the village reported his skiff’s been stolen from a small jetty near the harbour.’
‘When was this?’
‘The owner can see the skiff from his house, but he was off the island yesterday. When he got back this morning, it wasn’t there. We think Milraud may have taken it some time yesterday, before the cordon round the island was in place. They’re looking for it now along the mainland coast.’
‘Where would Milraud head for?’
‘He could go anywhere, especially since I think he had help once he reached the mainland. I’ve just come back from his house in Bandol – Annette Milraud has disappeared as well. We had surveillance outside the house but she fooled them. We found her maid tied up in the kitchen.’
‘The maid?’
‘She’d been there since last night – mon dieu, was she cross! Especially as she was in her underwear.’
‘What?’ asked Liz, laughing.
‘Annette made her take her clothes off, then she put them on herself, before driving away in the maid’s car. Our surveillance thought she was the maid going home and didn’t stop her. They are very embarrassed – I’m not surprised. They should have been onto a trick like that.’ He frowned and shrugged. ‘But it’s too late now. She’s gone.’
‘Presumably the car will be stopped soon.’
‘It’s been found already. Parked in Cannes. We think they must have a safe house there. Knowing Milraud, he’ll have a set of false documents too.’
‘So where do you think they’ll go?’
‘Somewhere far away – like South America. Or perhaps one of the former Soviet Union states. But Milraud will pop up again – give him time. Annette will grow dissatisfied with life in a backwater, and the lure of the arms trade will have Antoine back in circulation. He’ll need the money too. I would say my hopes of catching him have been deferred, not destroyed.’
Seurat brushed his chin thoughtfully with one hand. ‘You know, it’s a very strange fee
ling, sitting here talking like this – I mean, after so much événement only yesterday. It seems slightly unreal.’
Liz nodded. ‘I know. I feel the same.’
‘I was considering taking a few days off. If only to readjust oneself to the obvious fact that life goes on.’
Liz laughed. ‘That sounds like a good idea. What are you thinking of doing?’
Seurat paused, then said lightly, ‘There’s a little hotel I know. Not far from here, up in the hills – a beautiful setting, though the hotel itself is nothing fancy. Still, it has excellent food, and the walks are simply wonderful. At this time of year, you’re beginning to see the first signs of spring. It starts early in the south.’
He turned and looked at her, and Liz realised it was not his intention to stay at the hotel alone. Her heart began to beat a little faster but she waited until his meaning was absolutely clear. Not that she had many doubts.
Then Liz’s mobile phone rang.
It was a London number, which seemed familiar. The name came up on the screen: Charles. How funny that she hadn’t immediately remembered a number that she used to know so well.
‘Liz, it’s Charles. Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine, thanks. And so is Dave – or at least he’s going to be.’
‘So I gather. Michael Binding’s over here and he’s been keeping us informed. You’ve all had quite a time of it, I gather.’
‘Quite exciting,’ she said dryly. ‘Unfortunately there’s one loose end – Milraud the arms dealer seems to have got away.’
‘I wouldn’t worry much about that. Piggott was by far the greater threat, and you’ve taken care of him – and his organisation. As well as his Spanish hit man. A job well done by any standard.’
That was true, and she wished she could take more satisfaction from it. The cost had been high – and Dave was very lucky to have survived with his life. She knew that if she’d been more on the ball and had reported straight away from Paris instead of lunching with her mother and Edward, and forgetting to switch her phone back on, she could have stopped Dave from rushing in. They would in time have managed to put Piggott away.
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