by Neil Russell
Julien had done his job. Three sets of black commando gear, an Alpine package, and night-vision goggles, compliments of a GIGN counterterrorist unit commander looking to retire. “I can get him a job handling security for our high-end properties, like the one you’re staying in,” Julien explained. “And I gave him a thousand dollars to take his team out to dinner. These guys have people’s lives in their hands, and they get paid less than street sweepers. I hope you don’t mind.”
It isn’t limited to France. I’d have probably given him more.
Our last stop was the Musée d’Histoire du Marseille. I wanted to see if I could find something about the Fortress of Apollonica that might show a floor plan. We got lucky. A few years earlier, the museum had commissioned a photographic team to document Corsican places of worship. Technically, the fortress didn’t qualify, but the team’s leader had managed to wrangle his way inside anyway, and Bruzzi himself had shown them around.
The results were more than I could have hoped for. Hundreds of high-quality black-and-white photographs taken from every conceivable angle. Since the museum had a no-copy policy, we commandeered a table and began constructing a photographic schematic, and after a couple of hours of working with the images, we felt we had a good enough mental picture to get around. The only thing they had not gotten—either by Bruzzi mandate or photographer omission—was a shot of the monitoring station for the security system.
And so, just before dawn on Saturday, with everything stowed in waterproof seabags, we boarded the Aquascans and ran southeast through the Strait of Bonifacio. An hour later, Julien, who was alone in the lead boat, indicated that we were inside Italian waters, and we cruised another half hour until there were no other vessels visible. Using empty wine bottles we’d brought from the villa, it took us only a short time to sight in and get used to the feel of the .45s. Then we headed for Sardinia.
The Maddalena Archipelago on the northeast coast is accessible only by boat, but unlike their sour, wary Corsican neighbors, Sardinians are as warm as a Brooklyn wedding party. We put in at a pink sand beach, and a pair of smiling young men in their twenties waded out and took our boats. I was concerned about leaving our things aboard, especially the guns, but Julien said that theft wasn’t a problem in the marina and the tip he promised the men would turn them into better security guards than the police.
We ate a huge breakfast of eggs, sliced lamb, fresh fruit and yogurt at a small sidewalk restaurant run by a beyond-friendly family named Cavalli, who kept bringing out more platters no matter how much we protested. Finally, we just had to get up from the table, exchange forty handshakes and kisses and leave.
Julien knew of a neatly kept tourist hotel on the beach, and after paying cash for three rooms, I changed and took a hard swim in the warm, calm water. Afterward, we sat in comfortable chairs under a cork tree and went over the plan one more time. Then we turned in and slept until late afternoon.
An hour before sundown, Napoleon’s funeral barge rounded the protruding isthmus on Corsica’s east coast sixty miles north of Bonifacio. Turning west into the mouth of the gorge, it fought its way past the foam of river meeting sea, the life-sized replica of the general’s coffin riding high abovedecks and draped with his personal flag. A six-man, period-uniformed honor guard rode with the bier, one man standing at each corner, the others at the bow and stern.
Behind the barge came a flotilla of private vessels keeping a respectful distance but filled with partiers on their way to the festival. Some of the larger boats were strung with lights, while attractive young ladies caught the last rays of the Mediterranean sun. The decks of others were so dangerously full that they looked like entire neighborhoods were aboard. Regardless of the size of the party, however, alcohol was in plentiful supply, and a cacophony of music drifted across the water.
We were laying about a mile to the north in the Aquascans, watching through binoculars, and when the last of the parade disappeared upriver, we started our engines and followed. When we entered the gorge, the darkening 150-foot rock walls loomed over us, bouncing back the rumble of the big Mercs. I calculated that in a little less than two hours, the moon would be directly overhead. If we were lucky, we wouldn’t be around to see it.
It was eleven miles from the mouth of the river to Apollonica, and we lagged well behind the other boats. Julien, riding only a few feet off our port side, called over, “A pair of police cruisers will be patrolling to make sure no one gets too close to the fireworks, but they’ll be drinking too, and their boats are old and slow.”
Forty minutes later, we rounded a bend, and suddenly the Roman bridge came into view. It was even more impressive from the water, only now, lining it and the cliffs on both sides of the river, stood hundreds of men, women and children, quietly watching the mythical drama of Napoleon’s homecoming unfold. Along with the other boats, we cut our engines and drifted. The only sounds now were the low thump of the barge’s inboard and the gentle rush of water against hulls.
With the sun low, it was difficult to see the faces of the onlookers, only their silhouettes. I thought of the terra-cotta soldiers at Xian. Though these Corsican sentinels were playing out a living drama, both were serving rulers whose only contribution now was to remind them of what they no longer had. It was hard not to appreciate both the irony of the moment and its theatricality.
Eddie didn’t share the wonder. “Gives me the fuckin’ creeps,” he whispered. “All this make-believe bullshit.”
“This from a guy whose people tell fortunes from chicken guts,” I said.
Julien didn’t quite grasp what I meant, but he thought it was funny.
The barge swung toward shore, and we now saw a priest and two dozen men, also dressed in period, standing along the river. One of the deckhands threw out a line, and the men eased the barge in. It took some time to get the coffin of-floaded, but as soon as it was hoisted onto strong shoulders, the slow trek up the steep path to Apollonica began.
We had drifted backward with the current, separating us from Julien. Now he throttled back to us. “Once they get to the square, there’ll be a speech by the mayor followed by a mass written specifically for Napoleon. At its close, the priest will lead the descendants of Octave LeDucq to the coffin to place violets on it. That’ll be the signal to crack open the wine, sing ‘Regina Salvo’ a couple of times and head back to the river.”
“And that will take ninety minutes,” I said, confirming.
“Maybe a little less. If the crowd gets restless, the priest will cut it short. He knows everybody’s there for the party, not to listen to him.”
“Then he’d be the first,” said Eddie. “My money’s on the ninety.”
We brought our boats to speed and drove past the funeral barge. I saw no one onboard. The captain and crew must have gone up too. Across the river, another long, low shape sat at anchor. The fireworks barge. According to Julien, it would be attended by at least two technicians, but if they were there, they weren’t out where I could see them.
Two miles further upriver, we came to the road we’d passed a few days earlier. Unpaved, it descended steeply from the top of the ridge and looked too narrow for anything wider than a golf cart. However, the two red Pinzgauers were parked along the water, so unless they’d flown in, they fit.
The Pinzes had their lights off, but I could make out two men sitting on the bumper of one, smoking. As we turned toward them, they got up and started waving their arms and shouting. “Non! Non!”
We ignored them and beached the Aquascans on a small apron of sand. The men came charging toward us like they were heading into a bar fight. Without a word, Eddie stepped into the lead guy and slammed him in the face with his Colt. It sounded like a hammer going through a ripe peach—the gelatinous mashing of nose followed by the hard crunch of teeth.
The guy grabbed his face with both hands, blood running between his fingers. He went to his knees, then fell forward in the dirt, motionless. Just for good measure, Eddie kicked him a couple o
f times in the ribs. The kicks were over the top, and I probably should have stopped him, but I didn’t.
The other trucker’s attitude changed immediately. He stopped and shut up. Julien approached him and asked in French how many more there were. “Just two,” the man replied. “With the barge.” Then Julien hit him so hard and so fast I didn’t see it coming. The man went down, but not out. Julien looked down and said calmly, “Learn to drive, motherfucker.”
We taped them together inside one of the trucks, locked it and threw the keys in the river. Then we unloaded the boats and dressed quickly in our ops gear. I checked to make sure Eddie remembered how to operate the night-vision goggles and reminded him not to have them on when the fireworks began.
“How about giving me a little credit, boss,” he said irritatedly. “I don’t think I’m going to need them anyway. Where I’m from, you can’t see at night, a gator eats your ass before you’re five.”
A couple of minutes later, he tied our Aquascan to his and headed upstream to find a place where he could see the ridgeline. Julien and I got in the remaining Pinz, and I jammed it into gear and headed up the steep incline, our left side all but scraping rock and the other barely hanging on the edge. If all went well, we’d signal Eddie from the top, and he’d be waiting for us by the time we got down to the river. If that didn’t happen, as soon as he saw the fireworks begin downstream, he’d head back to the bridge and wait for us there. Not a Good Housekeeping-approved egress, but all we had.
The mud in the pass wasn’t an impediment to the Pinz. We blew through it at 35mph, and I turned off the headlights as soon as I saw the crescent moon peeking through the exit slit at the other end. Sometimes, the fate of missions hangs on the smallest of decisions—and luck. This was one of those times. Had I left the headlights on, their natural low angle would have kept me from seeing Julien’s BMW sitting in the middle of the road. But backlit by the moon, its silhouette registered a half second before I would have slammed into it.
I jerked the Pinz right and felt that side start to come up. I wrestled the wheel into the roll and jammed the accelerator to the floor. We spun once in the wet slop, then slid back across the pavement to the other shoulder, where I finally brought us to a stop forty yards later, facing the wrong direction.
More angry at myself than anyone else, I dropped the Pinz into gear and headed back. We’d almost died before we’d even gotten to the dance, and it was my fault for allowing my brain to model the road as empty as it had been the only other time I’d driven it. Then I’d compounded my mistake by expecting the BMW to be waiting on the other side of the pass, not stopped in the middle of the fucking road in the fucking dark.
As I pulled alongside the car, I could see three shapes sitting inside. Julien got out of the Pinz and hurried to the driver’s side window. He kept his voice low, but I could tell he was reaming somebody out. When he got back in, he said, “Alain apologizes.”
We exited the pass, and I looked up at the fortress. Lights burned along the length of the wall, and several windows in the tower were illuminated. From this distance, I couldn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean anything.
Julien and I put on our night-vision goggles and, instead of following the paved road, turned right and started overland, the twin chain-link fences on our left. Eddie had overflown the property on his way back from Bastia and reported that about a quarter of a mile in, the barrier turned uphill. It was rough going, and as the ground steepened, the left side of the Pinz rode higher and higher. Finally, the fences took the awaited 90° turn, and we went with them.
“It doesn’t seem to make sense,” said Julien. “Why go to all the trouble to build this then leave one side of the place exposed?” asked Julien.
“Technology and cost,” I said. “Once people cover the obvious with cameras and sensors, they assume the show is enough. In the army, we used to train by penetrating secure facilities, and we always got in. Always.”
It was steep but, with all six wheels of the Pinz engaged, climbable with only a minimum of backsliding. More difficult was the heavy underbrush and the occasional tree that would loom up. The brush disappeared as the trees became thicker, but a couple of times, we had to scrape our way between a pair of pines.
Finally, we reached the fifty-foot fortress wall, and I pulled the nose of the Pinz against it while Julien got out and chocked the wheels with rocks. I’d estimated our climbing angle at 30°, but here the ground was slightly flatter. The wall looked like it had seen better days, but it was hard not to be impressed with the size of the stone blocks that the anonymous builders had carried up the mountain centuries earlier.
I climbed onto the roof of the Pinz and engaged the aerial ladder. It slid slowly up until all its sections were extended and I could bring it gently down against the stone. There was still a good twenty-foot gap between the last rung and the top of the wall, but that was acceptable. I nodded down to Julien, and he dialed his cell phone.
“Immédiatement,” he whispered.
Julien and I walked along the wall to a spot where we could see past the trees and through the fence, and we took off our goggles to save battery life. Far below, the bright headlights of the BMW came barreling out of the pass and fishtailed along the fence, rap music booming from the radio. We saw it make the right turn where the wall intersected and disappear, but we could track its progress by watching the floodlights come on sequentially.
“Fast enough?” Julien asked.
I nodded. “We want Remi’s adrenaline pumping. Who’s in the car?”
“Alain, who works with me, and his friend, Guy. Playing you is Hassan, a Moroccan basketball player who keeps a place on the island. What if Remi doesn’t react?”
“He might not believe it, but he can’t ignore it. And everybody who doesn’t go with him to the gate will be huddled in front of the monitors, watching. I just hope your friends stay cool.”
“That’s not a problem, but just in case somebody from Bruzzi’s camp doesn’t, Alain’s father is a judge—a famous one.”
Suddenly, a dark, four-legged shape ran by on the other side of the fence. Then another and another. Six in all. A seventh, a heavily pregnant female, stopped and looked through the chain link. We locked eyes, and she seemed to want to challenge me, as if sensing I was responsible for her missing mate. She took a step forward, bared her sharklike teeth and cackled, the mottled black and brown hair of her neck expanding and contracting. Then pack instinct took over, and she turned and ran after the others.
“I hope the judge is famous enough,” Julien said softly.
We heard, then saw, the motorcycles racing down through the vineyard, only this time they were accompanied by two military-style Hummers.
I looked at Julien. “How do you say ‘Showtime’ in French?”
“Showtime.”
I went up the ladder first, uncoiled the grappling hook, swung it a couple of times for momentum and heaved it over the parapet. I pulled hard on the Beal rope, and it held, so I dropped it to Julien, who tied it off at the ladder base. I redonned my goggles, attached two ascenders to the line and went up—fast. It was only twenty feet, but I remember climbing as being easier. A few seconds later, Julien followed.
41
Knights Quarters and Zeus
We had landed on a guardwalk on top of a perimeter building. The main residence was about thirty yards across a large courtyard. With the moon, we had exceptional visibility and saw no one. We moved quickly to find a way down.
What you gain with night-vision equipment, you lose in peripheral and depth perception. The first indication that we weren’t alone wasn’t from something I saw but something I heard. Running feet on stone—bare feet.
We were making our way along a wall under a portico bordering the courtyard. Julien was out front. I reached out and grabbed his arm, and he froze in place. I stripped off my goggles and swept the area in the direction of the sound. There was a stairway directly across from us on the corresponding por
tico leading to a level below. Someone was coming up, fast. I motioned Julien down, and we flattened ourselves on the stone. The moon was behind us, so our side remained dark while the other caught the light.
A woman appeared on the stairs. Naked. And frantic. Just as she reached the top, a man wearing a red tortil came up the steps behind her and hit her with his fist in the back of the head. She sprawled across the stone. He bent down and said something I couldn’t make out, then grabbed her arm, jerked her upright and pulled her back down the stairs. She was resisting a little, but most of the fight had gone out of her.
I motioned to Julien, and we rose and crossed the courtyard. From the top of the stairwell, we couldn’t see anything. It was at least fifty steps down, and whoever was there was out of sight. We descended slowly, keeping our backs against the wall, and when we reached the halfway point, the backs of two Les Executeurs came into view, their pants around their ankles as they prepared to rape an attractive ash blonde, who was on her hands and knees, sobbing. The woman looked up and stared directly at me, and I knew that if we didn’t move immediately, her eyes would give us away.
I took the guy on the right, and Julien hit the second rapist on the top of the head with the butt of his .45. He staggered, then fell. I grabbed the other man’s head in the crook of my elbow and jerked him up and onto my hip while I wrenched his neck well beyond its intended arc. There was an audible snap, and he instantly became dead weight. I let him drop.
The surviving man was stunned but had gotten to a sitting position and was fumbling at his bunched-up jeans, almost certainly looking for his knife. Julien found it for him, flicked it open, stuck it in his throat and pulled hard right. Blood erupted, and the man’s eyes went wide as he clutched at the wound with both hands. There was a loud gurgling sound, and his lips began to foam red. A few seconds later, he slumped over and died.
We were standing in a wide, pale stone room interspersed with graceful arched columns supporting a Gothic ceiling. Four corridors intersected at right angles, forming the shape of a cross and running off into darkness. The girl’s clothes were in a pile near an upturned tray. Broken dishes and remnants of food were scattered about.