“Let him get close and then call out his name—Gunther. What else can we do?”
“It’s gotta be him,” said Raymond, sliding his Sig Sauer service revolver out of its holster. “Let’s take him right now, soon as he gets close enough.”
“No. No. I want to check. We can’t just gun down the local grocer or someone. I wanna know it’s really him.”
By now Mack was within thirty yards, and Marcel shouted, “Gunther! Right here!”
“You talking to me, pal?” said Mack, still striding toward them.
“Gunther Rock, we are from the French police because you answer the description of someone who has committed piracy on the high seas, and attempted to murder the crew. Put down both those bags and raise your hands.”
Raymond, meanwhile, standing just ten feet away, drew his revolver, and aimed it straight at Mack Bedford’s heart.
CHAPTER 10
Mack made his very best effort to look resigned to his fate, and adopted a downcast look, nodding his head to confirm he would do precisely as he was told. Wearily, he leaned forward and placed the toolbox and the bag on the ground, as if they were precious. As he straightened up, he raised his arms into the surrender position, staring all the while into the eyes of Raymond the gunman.
And then Mack Bedford struck with dazzling speed, snapping both hands around Raymond’s right arm, swaying sideways, and smashing the arm on the sharp edge of the wall, breaking it in half at the elbow like a rotten stick.
Raymond screamed with pain, and the gun flew over the wall and onto the beach, at which point Mack delivered a stupendous kick to his groin that knocked him flat on his back, writhing in agony.
Marcel had no time even to draw his revolver, and he leaped at Mack from behind, ramming his forearm around the former SEAL’s throat. But Marcel was simply not strong enough. Mack twisted and brought his right arm around in what looked like a haymaker delivered by a boxer.
But this was no punch. This was unarmed military combat, a lifetime of training. And Mack’s right hand was traveling at the speed of light as he rammed two fingers into Marcel’s eyes so hard he would have been blinded for life. But that was not relevant. Marcel tried to veer away from the monster who now faced him, but he never had a chance. Mack grabbed him by the ears and sharply twisted his head right around, first left, then right, snapping the neck almost in half.
Marcel was dead before he hit the ground. And before he did hit the ground Mack had hauled Raymond by the ears into a sitting position and done precisely the same thing to him. It had taken him 9.7 seconds to kill them both. And now he heaved them both over the wall.
Mack could hear Marcel’s phone ringing as the body thudded onto the beach, but this time Pierre Savary would receive no reply. He did not, of course, know there were two vacancies this morning on Henri Foche’s security staff. Which was just as well, since he was already fuming, fit to explode at the pathetic failure of Marcel to answer his goddamned phone.
Mack picked up his bag and toolbox and muttered, “Fucking amateurs,” as he considered the sheer futility of the two killers who had been sent to murder him. The image of his beloved Tommy stood before him, and he added quietly, “Guess that one was for you, kid.”
The street that led up to the village of Val André was deserted. Mack’s watch showed a few minutes past six, but France was an hour in front of England, and he knew it was just after seven. Thus far, he had been operating purely on matters of darkness and lightness, sunrise and sunset. But now he moved officially onto French time, six hours in front of Maine, but the same as Switzerland.
Mack knew perfectly well he had to stop torturing himself over Anne and Tommy, because there was nothing he could do, and while he did not give a rat’s ass for the late Marcel and his dimwitted cohort, he could very easily have sat down and wept helpless tears for his wife and their little boy. Deep down he was sure the great Carl Spitzbergen was going to save Tommy, and they would go fishing again together, and they’d throw the baseball and watch the Red Sox. He wasn’t going to die. Mack was struggling for control, just to stop his tears, which were rolling into his beard as he strode toward the village. It’s often that way with the bravest of men.
The street narrowed as he walked, and high above, slung right across the road between the shops, were two huge banners proclaiming, HENRI FOCHE—POUR LA BRETAGNE, POUR LA FRANCE. There were already one or two early customers buying warm baguettes from the boulangerie, but no one paid much attention to the big bearded man carrying his toolbox up the main street.
Mack was resolved to walk through the town until he came to a garage, and it turned out to be a fair distance, just less than a mile. But there it was, with a Foche banner strung across the forecourt—Laporte Auto. It was really a gas station with a half-dozen cars lined up for sale outside.
There was a dark blue Peugeot for fourteen thousand euros and a red Citroën for nineteen. In any event, the garage was closed, and a notice said it would not open before eight. Mack put down his bag and box and leaned on the doorbell, and he heard it ring loudly inside the building.
No response. So he hit it again. And again. Two minutes later, a sleepy, unshaven, and very angry Frenchman opened an upstairs window and shouted, “Are you crazy! It’s seven fifteen in the morning, and we don’t open until eight o’clock. Go away! We’re closed.”
Mack stared up at him, and in the most desperate German accent, which sounded like a Punjabi peasant, he shouted back, “You see this Peugeot right here? I’ll give you twenty thousand euros for it, in cash. So long as you’re down here in sixty seconds.”
“Go away. I’m in bed with my wife. You must be a pervert! I call the police.”
He slammed down the window. And Mack waited, still looking up at the building. The window flew open again.
“How much?” yelled Monsieur Laporte.
“Twenty thousand.”
“I’ll be right down.”
One minute later the garage owner unlocked the front door. “You want the car now?” he asked.
“Right now,” said Mack, delving into his bag and removing seven bundles of euros. “How many miles has it done?”
“Eleven thousand. It’s a good car. Belonged to a local man. I serviced it myself.”
“I’m paying you this much money to get the documents signed and to get me out of here inside of ten minutes, so get buzzing.”
M. Laporte got buzzing. He produced registration documents and said he needed, legally, to see Mack’s passport—“Photo identification, n’est ce pas?”
Mack pulled out his scarlet Gunther Marc Roche Swiss passport and handed it over, complete with the photograph taken in Portland of the bearded Swiss national. This was laminated onto the page, with a small white computerized cross set onto the right side of his face, the way all Swiss passports are designed.
The Frenchman wrote down the details carefully—“Passport number 947274902 . . . 18 rue de Basle, Geneva—and I need to see your driver’s license, if you want to drive away from here on French roads.”
Mack gave him the Gunther Marc Roche license, and watched M. Laporte add it to the document, complete with date of issue—July 2008. He handed over the money and signed the registration documents for the French government—Gunther M. Roche. Monsieur Laporte dated it, and stamped it with the authentic seal of Laporte Motors.
“No bullshit,” said Mack.
“Pardon, monsieur?”
“Do I get a guarantee?”
“For a cash deal like this you get my personal guarantee that I will repair this car free no matter what, for a period of six months.”
“One year, you stingy little prick,” said Mack, confident that a man who was unable to translate the word “bullshit” would have real trouble with “stingy little prick.” Anyway, he felt better for saying it.
“Okay, one year,” said Laporte, and Mack refrained from calling him a stingy little prick again. Instead, he patted him on the back and told him to send the offici
al documents to his address in Geneva when they arrived from the government. They went outside, and Monsieur Laporte washed the price off the windshield of the car. He gave Mack the key and asked if he would like the tank filled.
“Good idea,” said Mack, and sat in the driver’s seat while twelve gallons were pumped in.
When this was completed, he said to the garage owner, “Remember, with a cash transaction like this, you will never breathe one word about it to anyone.”
“Never,” said M. Laporte, who now had the twenty thousand euros stuffed into his pocket. “That will be sixty-two euros for the petrol.”
“Why don’t you go fuck yourself?” said Mack cheerfully, accelerating away into the street and heading east, fast, away from Val André, away from this parsimonious little sonofabitch and the bodies of the two hoodlums he’d just killed.
“Fuck it,” said Mack. “I’ll be darn glad when this French bullshit is over.”
For the moment, he concentrated on what the navy describes as leaving the datum. He drove fast along a lonely country road headed in the general direction of Rennes, remembering how his guidebook on the bench at Brixham had informed him that Brittany’s main city had been a crossroads since Roman times. In his opinion crossroads were good, because he was uncertain in which direction he may need to travel, uncertain where Henri Foche might suddenly show up. However, he guessed the city of Rennes, where the politician lived, would consider him to be permanent news. The Foche travels and speeches would probably be easier to find there than anywhere else.
But first he had tasks to complete, and the first of these involved another killing . . . well, a killing off. Lt. Cdr. Mackenzie Bedford is pleased to announce the death of Mr. Gunther Marc Roche of rue de Basle, Geneva.
He found a deserted stretch of road and pulled off onto a rough farm track with trees on either side. And there he ripped off, for the last time, his black curly wig, his beard, black T-shirt, and navy-blue sweater, and stuffed the disguise items into the deep recess of the false bottom of his bag, along with the red Swiss passport and the driver’s license.
He pulled on a clean white T-shirt and his lightweight tweed jacket, and then carefully fitted his light-blond wig, the neat mustache, and the rimless spectacles that contained only plain glass. It was just about impossible even to equate him with the black-bearded hijacker who was currently being hunted by the English police, the British coast guard, the entire French government Maritime Services, and the police department of Brittany.
Mack had laid a sensational trail. There were confirmed sightings of him just about every yard of the way from the pub opposite his Brixham hotel to Laporte Auto, now ten miles astern of his new Peugeot. There were waitresses, harbor masters, parking lot attendants, booksellers, trawler captains, even some guy out fishing who’d done his best to help the Saint-Malo coast guard officer. And then there was the garage boss who had dutifully filled in the government forms, inspected his passport and license. In Mack’s view Interpol would be knocking on the door of 18 Basle Street within four or five hours. Gods knows what they’d find, especially since he’d made the address up. He did not even know if there was a Basle Street in the entire mountainous Swiss Confederation.
As far as Mack could tell, there would be a general murder hunt and panic in Geneva, and there’d be a real panic and murder hunt in Rennes, and another in Val André. There’d be a massive alert and attempted-murder inquiry in Brixham, especially when the parking official blew the whistle on the bearded guy with the weird accent, the one who’d left behind a Ford Fiesta with no license plates, no tax disk, no registration, and no fingerprints.
Mack smiled to himself. “And all for a man who never existed, and could never be found—a Swiss ghost.”
He supposed that in the end the English police would strip down the car and find its chassis number, which would, perhaps, lead them to Dublin. And there they would meet Mr. Michael McArdle, who would tell them all about Patrick Sean O’Grady, of 27 Herbert Park Road, Dublin 4, a fair-haired Irishman, slim mustache and rimless spectacles, born in County Kildare, passport number and license registered with the proper authorities.
Mack almost burst out laughing at the compelling thought that Mr. O’Grady had never existed either. And neither did his address or his passport and license.
But the entire exercise was too serious for laughter, and sometime in the next few hours he would destroy the evidence that could link him to Gunther Marc Roche. Right now he needed to complete his second task. Clean-cut in his Jeffery Simpson mode, he drove out onto the road and set forth again, urgently now looking for a French café.
Five miles later he found one, a small country restaurant with a large parking lot and several cars sharing the space with a couple of enormous trucks. He pulled in and parked the Peugeot at the back of the lot, then walked around his vehicle with his screwdriver and swiftly removed both plates. He put them on the backseat and walked to the café for breakfast.
It was a bright, clean, inexpensive place, and it was busy. Mack was shown to a small table for two next to the window. He ordered orange juice and coffee and took a copy of Le Monde from the newspaper rack. When the waitress came for his breakfast order he glanced down at the menu and settled for an omelet and bacon with a croissant and fruit preserves.
He turned to the newspaper, and the lead story’s headline on page 3 read:SECURITY ALERT AS HENRI FOCHE FACES SAINT-NAZAIRE WORKERS TOMORROW
Mack sipped his coffee and grappled with the French language, trying to grasp the gist of the story. In the ensuing ten minutes, before the arrival of his omelet, he learned that there had been unrest among the workforce in the Saint-Nazaire shipyards. Le Monde assumed that Foche himself held a substantial shareholding in this sprawling industrial complex, and he was nervous that the dissatisfaction might cause the entire workforce to vote against him in the forthcoming election.
Foche was essentially going to Saint-Nazaire to put out a fire, but he would disguise it with an inspiring political speech designed to convince everyone that life would improve dramatically, for everyone, if they would sweep him to victory and install him in the Elysée Palace. Pour la Bretagne, Pour la France!
He planned to address the great throng of workers in the Saint-Nazaire yard shortly after five, at the end of the shift. The executive had agreed to postpone the start of the next shift for one hour, with no loss of pay. There was a picture of a wooden stage being constructed with a lectern and microphone, beneath a patriotic red, white, and blue striped awning, and a huge Foche battle banner, as above. The workers interested Mack, all dressed in standard royal-blue overalls.
Mack stepped once more to the newspaper rack, where he could see a selection of road maps of France on the lower shelf. He helped himself to one of these and took it back to the table, just as his breakfast arrived. He told the waitress to add the cost of the map and his newspaper to the bill.
She replied that of course she would, and was there anything more she could bring him? Mack confirmed he was fine for the moment and attacked his breakfast, the first food he had eaten since the fried cod with the overweight chips back in the pub on Brixham harbor thirteen hours before. And he’d been up all night, fighting the elements and local villains.
The omelet was supreme among all omelets, flavored with Parmesan cheese, tarragon, and chives. Mack assessed, conservatively, that he could probably have eaten about twelve of them. But he did not want too much food, because he needed to stay sharp. He ate the delicious French bread with strawberry preserves and said yes to a coffee refill.
Then he asked to pay the bill, and for a large black coffee to go. The waitress brought both, the coffee in a plastic container with a lid. Mack paid, left a tip, and said he’d sit there for a few more minutes and finish his second cup. The waitress privately thought he must be a coffee addict and would probably become a basket case sometime in the next half hour. Wrong.
Two minutes later, Mack watched a small Citroën drive into the par
king lot. Two men got out, walked the short distance into the café, and took a small table across the room. Instantly, Mack stood up, took his second cup of coffee with him, and hurried out the door, helping himself to a small book of matches as he went.
He walked casually to the parking lot, where the Citroën was out of the sight line of the café’s main serving area. And then he went to work.
He knelt down at the front and rear of the car, swiftly removed both plates, and screwed them onto his dark-blue Peugeot. Then he took the other plates off the backseat and screwed them onto the Citroën. He poured the fresh black coffee into the hedge, kept the container, jumped into the driver’s seat, and gunned that Peugeot onto the highway at a pace that would have made the late gunman Raymond gasp.
Ten miles later he stopped on a long, quiet stretch of tree-lined road and consulted his map. Saint-Nazaire was about eighty miles to the south, but he no longer needed to head for Rennes. He needed to cut across country to Lorient, and find Brittany’s great coastal highway that runs straight past the ancient city of Vannes down on the Morbihan coast. From there it was a straight shot down the highway to the French shipbuilding hub.
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