Diamondhead

by Patrick Robinson

  There were, however, several provisos for this modest-seeming lunch for the emperor of Remsons Shipbuilding. For starters, the wine had to be French, and it had to be white burgundy, and it had to be from the legendary vineyards of Montrachet on the Côte de Beaune, and it had to be Puligny from the supreme Olivier Leflaive Frères estates. The salmon was even more esoteric. First, it had to be Scottish. It had to be wild, and it had to have been caught in a Scottish river. But the Scottish river had to be the Tay, and the fish had to have been residing in one of the glorious, lonely reaches southeast of Loch Tay, in Kinross.

  Harry’s father had taken him there to fish one summer when he was fifteen years old, and the spell the river cast on the future shipyard boss was lifelong. He had never forgotten killing his first salmon, the largest fish that can be taken on a fly in freshwater—the thrill of outwitting the fish on his double-handed twelve-foot-long Scottish fly rod, judging the speed and drift, and all the life-or-death guile brought to bear in this silent, occult art. This was Izaac Walton’s King among Gamefish. Harry had never forgotten his father’s story of the wild salmon’s long and mysterious journey from the depths of the Atlantic, back to the waters of the place where it had been spawned, in the Tay River. And he had never forgotten the taste of the sandwiches packed up in the small hotel where he and his father had stayed.

  Harry had been back to fish the Tay several times, but one ritual he never missed. Every year he ordered from a small Scottish smoker, not four miles from the hotel where he had first stayed, twelve full sides of wild salmon from the Tay, one for every month of the year. Today Jane had asked the butler to slice one of the precious fish for Harry’s lunch.

  And now the Remsons boss was on his way through the house. The problem was that he spotted the sandwiches at precisely the same moment John Morgan announced on Fox that Monsieur Henri Foche had been assassinated. Harry shouted involuntarily, “Jesus Christ!”

  Jane came rushing in and saw him staring at the television screen, transfixed by the account of the death of the Gaullist, the public announcement of the only serious wish for which he had prayed in living memory.

  Harry did not speak. Just listened to the trail of havoc that had plainly dogged the soft footsteps of Lt. Cdr. Mack Bedford in France. Neither he nor Jane uttered one word until the opening part of the newscast was complete.

  Each of them stood there in their own private space—Harry thanking Christ no one knew who the hell had rubbed out the Gaullist, and glorying in Eddie Laxton’s assessment that there was a pretty good chance they never would. Jane was personally thunderstruck. She had overheard the conversation. She knew as well as anyone that her husband had taken out a contract on this Henri Foche in order to save the shipyard, that a huge sum of money was involved, that Mack Bedford was involved. That whatever foul deeds had taken place in France, they had almost certainly emanated from her little town of Dartford, Maine, courtesy of her own husband.

  Jane spoke first. “Harry,” she said, “I think you owe me an explanation, a reasonable account of just how deeply we are both involved in this.”

  Harry smiled at her, his normally cheerful face reflecting his personal joy and gratitude. “I think I once told you never to broach the subject again. Henri Foche had many enemies, especially in the military. And while I cannot pretend I am sorry he has died, neither can I shed any light on how it happened.” He walked out onto the terrace, followed by his wife. “Let’s just treat this day as if it were any other,” he said. “The only difference may be that I have an extra glass of that delicious white burgundy with my sandwich.”

  The assassin was still asleep, right there in the back seat of the bus, his left arm resting on the leather bag. They had reached the outskirts of Brittany’s former capital city of Nantes, and the bus was much busier than it had been when Mack first boarded.

  He awakened at the first stop inside the city limits when several people left and even more boarded. He checked his watch and saw the time was five minutes past eight, which left him twenty-five minutes to catch the last train running from the South Station in Nantes to the city of Bordeaux.

  Mack left the bus at the Gare Central Station and walked the remaining half mile to the trains. In a deserted shop doorway he removed his wig, mustache, and spectacles and slipped them into his bag before purchasing a one-way first-class ticket down to the great capital of France’s most illustrious vineyards. It was the first time he had looked like Mack Bedford since he left the United States almost two weeks previously. Unless you count the view that Loire turbot had of him earlier today.

  His general policy was to leave no continuity behind him. Just as Gunther Marc Roche had vanished totally three miles beyond Laporte’s garage, so Jeffery Simpson vanished totally before Mack stepped onto the train for the four-hour, 240-mile journey to Bordeaux.

  The train was not busy, and he slept most of the way, secure in the knowledge that no one was looking for him. No one in France even knew he existed. No one knew his name. And there sure as hell was no record of him entering the country. He awakened when the train stopped at La Rochelle, the old Atlantic seaport that dates back to the fourteenth century. It was dark now, almost ten thirty, and Mack was asleep again before the train pulled out of the station.

  The conductor awakened him by calling out, “Bordeaux—cinq minutes. Gare de Saint Jean—cinq minutes.”

  Mack grabbed his bag and hoped to high heaven there was a hotel still open near the train station. He disembarked and was pleasantly surprised at the warmth of the night. There was a porter still on duty, and he cheerfully told Mack he should go to the Hotel California, which was a very short distance away.

  The Bordeaux railroad station is not in the most ritzy part of the city, and there was a slightly rowdy gang of unpleasant-looking youths loitering on the street. Mack had to walk past them, and as he did so one of them made a feeble attempt to trip him, and another couple shouted something that sounded threatening.

  Mack ignored it and kept walking. Generally speaking, he considered he’d killed quite a sufficient number of people for one day. And that particular section of French youth would never know that this was indeed their luckiest of nights. All of them still had their eyesight, no one’s arm had been snapped in half, their noses were still in place, not having been rammed into their brains, and no one’s throat had been cut.

  The hotel was still open, and the peace-loving Mack Bedford walked to the front desk, where the receptionist was listening to the radio. He heard only a short part of the newscast before she turned it down. . . . The Northwest of France has been brought almost to a standstill following the assassination of Henri Foche. Every major highway north of the Loire has been blockaded by the police. Ferry ports are closed and are not expected to reopen in the morning. All airports are experiencing . . .

  “Bonsoir, monsieur,” said the girl.

  “I’m just glad you’re still open,” replied Mack, speaking in an American accent.

  The receptionist was bilingual. “We always wait for that late train from La Rochelle. One single room with a bath?”

  “Perfect.”

  “May I see your passport, monsieur?”

  Mack handed it over and watched her copy down the number. She glanced up at him, checked the photograph, and said, “Merci, Monsieur O’Grady.”

  Mack said he’d pay cash in advance since he was leaving early and would not be using the phone.

  “No problem,” said the girl. “That will be two hundred euros.”

  Mack gave her four 50-euro bills, and she handed over the key to Room 306. She automatically turned up the radio, and the subject had not varied. Shaking his head, Mack said, “Terrible thing, that murder, eh? Have they caught him yet?”

  “Oh, non, monsieur. There is nothing else on this channel, and I’ve been listening the whole evening. Some people are saying he is a big Swiss man with a black beard. A couple of people say they saw him in the shipyard. But a policeman was speaking just befor
e you came in— he said they have been able to confirm nothing. They have no idea who he is, or where he is.”

  Mack fought back a grin of pure delight. He nodded gravely, saying, “A bad business, a very bad business.” And he walked over to the elevator, assuaging his conscience with one thought—what did Marcel, Raymond, Raul, and the three dead guards have in common? Every one of them had been trying to kill him, would have killed him. “Self-defense, Your Honor,” he murmured.

  He did not even consider Henri Foche. That had been a military mission, nothing personal, just the elimination of an enemy, an illegal combatant, who had effectively opened fire and killed members of the U.S. armed forces serving in Iraq.

  That night he slept the sleep of the just. But he awakened early and flicked on the television, tuning to the satellite channel, BBC World, out of London. The first words he heard were, “It’s been a long night, but we will be staying with the main story throughout the day.” Then the anchor started again with the same lead item Mack had heard on the receptionist’s radio the previous night, about Northwest France being paralyzed while the police combed town, country, seaport, and highway for the mystery assassin who had cut down Henri Foche at the age of forty-eight.

  There had been no update for eight hours. Mack Bedford was delighted. Norman Dixon would have fired someone. All Mack could do was to thank his lucky stars that nothing had happened. He fell only slightly short of actively congratulating himself when the newscaster mentioned that police had appealed publicly for any information leading to the arrest of the alleged Gunther Marc Roche, the bearded Swiss boat thief, who remained their number-one suspect.

  Throughout the night they had been inundated with phone calls and e-mails from members of the public who had definitely seen the man, from Paris to Cherbourg, on to Saint-Nazaire and all stations in between. They’d seen him driving, walking, running, robbing, hiding, kidnapping, and fighting, in places as diverse as seedy late-night bars to the crypt of a cathedral, from the main street of Rennes to a pole-dancing club in Paris.

  “No wonder I’m still tired,” said Mack to the empty room. He switched off the television and opened the door to his room. There on the corridor carpet was today’s Le Monde, Étienne’s headline blazed across the width of the front page: HENRI FOCHE SLAIN BY ASSASSIN’S BULLETS.

  “That was a hell of a rifle,” he muttered. “Pity I had to leave it at the bottom of the goddamned harbor.”

  He shaved and dressed, and decided to find some breakfast at the airport, which the hotel guidebook told him was out at Merignac, seven miles west of the city, thirty euros away.

  He handed back his key, checked there was no further money owing on his bill, and asked the doorman to call him a taxi. It arrived almost immediately, and Patrick Sean O’Grady of Herbert Park Road, Dublin, climbed aboard.

  The city was busy in the morning rush hour, and it took a half hour. Life was not much quicker at the ticket desk, either. They did run a direct flight to Dublin but not until noon, which was neatly in time for Mack to miss the only two daytime flights Aer Lingus ran from Ireland to Boston.

  Not having any choice, he purchased a first-class ticket in cash from Bordeaux to Dublin. He showed the girl his passport, and she replied, “Thank you, Mr. O’Grady. Enjoy the flight.”

  Then he wandered off to the restaurant and ordered an omelet with toast and coffee, his first hot meal since the night before last, the grilled fish in the workmen’s café near the shipyard.

  On the arrivals board he had noticed an aircraft was in from London at 10:00 A.M., and he wondered if it had brought the morning newspapers to France. For some reason there were no English publications in the rack at the airport store, but there was a copy of USA Today , the entire front page of which was dedicated to the assassination of Henri Foche. In a black box in the center of the page was a short list of French airports in the Northwest where long delays could be expected while police searched for the killer—Rennes, Saint-Malo, Quimper, Lorient, Caen, Cherbourg, Nantes, Saint-Nazaire, Tours, Le Mans, Rouen, and Paris.

  Inside the newspaper, on page 4, crushed by the events at Saint-Nazaire, was a story on which most U.S. publications would normally have splashed—

  SIX MORE U.S. SPECIAL FORCES BURNED ALIVE BY DIAMONDHEAD MISSILE UNITED STATES DEMANDS ANSWERS FROM FRENCH GOVERNMENT

  Mack Bedford was horrified. The attack from some lunatic group of insurgents had been launched from the wreckage of an apartment block in the northern suburbs of Baghdad. Of the six men who died, four of them had been SEALs, guys he almost certainly knew. SEAL Team 10, Coronado.

  The missile had blasted out of a downstairs window, crashed straight through the fuselage of the tank, and incinerated all the occupants. If that thing hit, no one had a chance, and its heat-seeking guidance system was so powerful, the bastard never missed. At least that was how it seemed to Mack.

  There was a statement from the United Nations Security Council expressing its “intense displeasure,” deploring the use of the missile, and issuing formal reprimands to both the Islamic Republic of Iran and to all Shiite Muslim militia leaders in the Middle East.

  “As if anyone gives a shit,” murmured Mack. “There’s only one effective way to deal with these fucking savages, and that’s well documented in the navy’s record of my court-martial.”

  The fury of the U.S. military was barely contained in a statement from General Thomas, the U.S. C-in-C on the ground in Iraq, who was quoted as declaring, “This illegal killing has gone far enough. It is beyond our understanding why no one, and I repeat no one, seems capable of tracing this missile to its source, the factory that makes it, and stopping the production.

  “We’re getting reports that six of them have just been fired at U.S. forces in Afghanistan, fortunately on armored personnel carriers that turned out to be empty. We have Intel on possible Diamondhead stockpiles in Iran, and it is the opinion of both myself and my senior commanders that we should take them out with an air strike and the hell with the consequences.”

  The final words of the American C-in-C were the words of a very angry soldier. “Everyone knows the damned things are made in France. Checking the explosive and chemical is nothing less than elementary. The Diamondhead is as French as the Eiffel Tower, and it’s time someone was forced to admit it. France is, I believe, a founding member of the UN Security Council.”

  “Hey,” breathed Mack, “they finally managed to make old Ben Thomas good and mad. And that means the president will pay attention. They were at West Point together.”

  It was still another hour before the flight to Dublin was due to be called, and Mack whiled away the time in deep thought. Inevitably, he found it impossible to cast aside the vivid image of the burning tanks on the bank of the Euphrates. But another more urgent issue was muscling its way into his mind—how and when to contact Anne and Tommy.

  He had vowed to himself that he would never use Harry’s magic astronaut cell phone unless it was a matter of his own life and death. There would be no footprint left, anywhere in France, to prove Mackenzie Bedford had ever left the shores of the United States. He knew the phone was as secure as modern aerospace science could make it. But he also knew there is no such thing as 100 percent security for anything, anywhere, anytime. Jesus, you could put the most highly trained group of U.S. combat troops, armed to the teeth, in a battlefield tank that the record says is impregnable, and a bunch of crazed, illiterate tribesmen, guys dressed in fucking sheets, somehow find a way to wipe everyone out.

  The superphone was still the superphone, but would Mack risk leaving even the most fleeting set of footprints right here in France at this stage of the game? Answer: no, he would not. He would call immediately after he arrived in Boston, not before. So he just sat in the restaurant, sipping a second cup of coffee and fighting back the obdurate truth that he had no idea whether his little boy was alive or dead.

  But he couldn’t be dead; the greatest surgeon in the world wouldn’t let him be dead. No, Tommy
was alive—he had to be alive. They’d go fishing together very soon. Hang in there, kid. I’m nearly there.

  Senator Rossow was in his office in the Capitol when the telephone rang from Paris. “Monsieur Jules Barnier on the phone,” called his assistant.

  The senator picked up the phone, and said in his naturally rather sophisticated manner, “Good morning, Jules. Do I have the pleasure of speaking to the next president of France?”

  The full impact of murder, assassination, shock, and sorrow had not hit Washington, D.C., as it had France, essentially because citizens of the USA are inclined to think France is just another country full of goddamned uncooperative foreigners.

  Jules Barnier was startled at Stanford Rossow’s somewhat flippant attitude to a crime that had stunned his nation. But the two men had been friends for many years, and the ex-Lazards Bank chief understood that many powerful Americans lack just a little savoir faire in certain matters, particularly of the heart.