Marcel hurried out of the police department and once more hit the road, bound for the apartment block where Raymond lived. He called his cohort on his cell phone, and the two of them were on the road in ten minutes, both armed with the powerful French Special Forces handgun, the Sig Sauer 9mm. Chief Savary’s wishes were clear to both of them.
* * *
0500
48.42 North 2.31 West
The storm had veered inshore, and Eagle ran on south through the dark. The sea was now choppy, but without those long, rolling swells. Mack switched on his radar only in ten-second bursts, just to check he was not yet being tracked by the coast guard. Right now he was eight miles offshore, just north of the great jutting headland of Sables d’Or les Pin.
He flashed on his depth finder and saw one hundred meters below the keel. He wanted to move in closer to the land because the backdrop would confuse coast guard radar. And he’d already chosen his spot to come ashore, the little town of Val André, about six miles southwest of Sables d’Or. He thus had about fourteen miles to make landfall and an hour to do it before six o’clock when the sun would be above the eastern horizon. Mack knew he was too late to land in darkness, but he wanted the cloak of the night to shield him for as long as possible.
What he did not know was that at four thirty, three coast guard boats, one from Cherbourg and two from Saint-Malo, had cleared the jetties and were out there searching for Eagle, reporting in with signals that were relayed to Pierre Savary in Rennes, and onward to Marcel and Raymond.
Thus far, one of them had located the suspect fishing boat heading into Saint-Malo itself and had discovered only that the perfectly legal Spanish crew had switched off the radio and were listening to flamenco. Their boat was not named Tantrum; it was La Mancha. The master was a slim five-foot-six baldheaded fisherman of some sixty-eight summers. No, La Mancha had not been hijacked, but she was low on fuel.
Those were very moderate events for Lieutenant Commander Bedford because he was by now the only suspect, and deep in his combat-trained soul he guessed there might be some kind of a dragnet closing in on him. But in his mind he knew there had been no other way. He could not possibly have risked coming through a French airport or ferry port with a portable Austrian sniper rifle in his metal toolbox. That would have been suicide. So therefore he had to land in France anonymously, bringing his rifle with him. He could not have hired a boat because everyone in Brixham would have known. He could not have stolen a boat, because it would have been reported missing about three minutes after he left. And he could not have purchased a boat because of the rigid British rules about registration. A car was one thing, a boat, from a working, gossipy seaport, quite another.
The hijack route had been the only route. It gave him time, a head start of several hours, leaving behind a gigantic search area to confuse his enemy. Right now, however, the chase was coming down to what Mack called the short strokes. They must be closing in now. But so far he had not seen another ship. And, thank God, it was still dark.
He rounded the Sables d’Or headland and found himself in much more open water. He switched on his radar, and five miles to the north was a “paint” on the screen. Whatever it was, it was coming dead toward, and it was moving fast, which was unsurprising since this was a brand-new navy cutter, state of the art, with electronic telescopic sights that could pull up a bumblebee on the moon.
Mack slammed open the throttles and aimed straight for the beach at Val André six miles to the southwest, flank speed. Eagle shuddered up to 21 knots, but Mack knew if his apparent pursuer was in a coast guard cutter, it would make 35 knots. They’d be alongside as he came inshore. Not good.
He ran hard for ten minutes. Dawn was breaking, and he used Fred Carter’s binoculars to check over his shoulder. He could see plainly the running lights of his pursuer, both red and green. She was still coming dead toward. Fast.
“0530. This is coast guard cutter P720 two miles north of Sables d’Or. We have POSIDENT fishing trawler Eagle making 20 knots southwest heading toward Val André. Eagle is four miles ahead. We are in hot pursuit, repeat hot pursuit. All personnel armed.”
“Saint-Malo station to Chief Pierre Savary: coast guard cutter P720 located British fishing trawler Eagle making 20 knots southwest, toward Val André. POSIDENT 0530. ETA Val André 0600. We are in hot pursuit.”
“Marcel, make straight for Val André. Eagle is being chased in by the coast guard. Expected to make landfall at 6:00 am.”
Mack Bedford could see the beach as the sun began to climb into the eastern skies. He snapped the helm onto automatic pilot, cutting back the throttles as he did so. Then he ran below, to the engine room, hoping to high heaven Eagle had a plug stopping the drain hole, which he knew most fishing boats have, ready for power-flushing the bilges and fish holds in dry-dock.
It took him a half minute to find it, a wide brass screw-in about eight inches across with two jutting arms. He grabbed and heaved, trying to turn the plug. But it was too tight. He ran to the fire cupboard and found a hefty sledgehammer next to the hydrant. He took aim and hit that plug harder than it had ever been hit in its life, so hard it swiveled a full turn.
Mack spun it out, and seawater cascaded in. He dodged some of it, but got mildly soaked and charged back up the ladder with tons and tons of water gushing in below. He reached the wheelhouse and cut the throttles to all-stop.
His bag and the toolbox were still in the lifeboat. Mack ripped off the cover and lowered away. The lifeboat hit the water on the starboard side, and Mack took one final look around. Then he remembered the binoculars and went back to the wheelhouse, retrieved them, and grabbed a fishing rod. He hit the deck running and vaulted over the side, landing in the lifeboat and damn nearly falling overboard. He was about two miles offshore, and Eagle was sinking fast. He loosed off the lines, and started the outboard the first time with the pull cord. “Say one thing – that Fred Carter keeps a tidy ship.”
He chugged around to the port side and trained his binoculars on the oncoming P720, now about three miles and six minutes away. The water was up to Eagle’s gunwales, and now the sea was surging in over the top. Mack watched her roll left, and then the stern began to go down. Water rushed over the transom, and she went under stern first, her bow rising and then sliding down into sixty fathoms. As she did so a massive air bubble broke the surface. But Mack was too busy to notice. He ripped off his black wig and beard and stowed them in his bag. Then he took the Jeffery Simpson wig and mustache out and changed his appearance beyond all belief.
He took one of the fishing rods, which already had a heavy lure on the line, and cast it over the side. And there, quietly chugging along in the morning sea fret, leaning back without a care in the world, Mackenzie Bedford awaited the arrival of the coast guard.
On board P720 there was pandemonium.
“What do you mean, she’s vanished? She can’t have vanished!”
“Give me a moment. There’s a lot of mist around, and she’s two miles ahead – I’ll pick her up in a minute.”
“Well, where the hell is she?”
“I don’t know, sir. I just can’t see her.”
“Let me look… There you are, right there – I can see a ship!”
“Sir, that’s just a dinghy. Not a sixty-five-foot fishing trawler.”
“Well, what’s a fucking dinghy doing there?”
“I’m not sure, sir.”
Helmsman, head for that dinghy, full speed.
P720 came thundering into the waters where Mack was fishing. A curving white bow wave on the cutter probably frightened the life out of any fish that might have been tempted to have a snap at Mack’s lure.
“Bonjour, monsieur!” the coast guard officer called from the foredeck.
“Bonjour, mes amis!” responded Mack. And of course the officer knew in an instant the fisherman was not French.
“Anglais?”
“Non, American.”
“Ah, oui, monsieur. You have caught anything
today?”
“Couple of small bass. I’ve only been out here for twenty minutes. My wife’s still asleep.”
“Everyone’s still asleep except us!”
Mack wound in his reel, conscious of the word “Eagle” stuck on in adhesive red letters on the inside of the lifeboat’s gunwales, visible only to him. But he grinned cheerfully.
“Monsieur, did you just see a fishing trawler go past? Moving quickly?”
“Yeah, real close, dark-red boat called Eagle.” Mack pointed to a rocky promontory, maybe a half mile to the south. “She went straight toward that headland over there, moving real quick.”
“You didn’t happen to see who was driving, did you?”
“Sure I did. She passed only about forty yards away. He was a big guy. He had a black beard and long hair. Looked like a fuckin’ buffalo.”
“A buffalo, huh? You Americans. So funny. Bon chance, monsieur. Merci.”
Coast guard cutter P720 surged away, making for the headland, throttles open.
Mack decided to hang around for a while, in case they came back his way. So he wound in the reel and cast again.
* * *
The black Mercedes belonging to Henri Foche was being gunned along a straight country road behind the picturesque Côte d’Emeraude. At the wheel was number-two bodyguard Raymond, who was apt to drive as if he were eighty-five miles to the southeast in Le Mans.
Marcel was on the phone to Pierre, who informed him the coast guard was having problems in the mist behind the fishing trawler, but the ETA at Val André was the same, six o’clock. “For Christ’s sake, slow down!” yelled Marcel. “You’ll kill us both!”
“It’s after five thirty, and this fucking place is still another six miles,” retorted Raymond. “We gotta get there. Shut up.”
“We’re not going do much good if you wrap this thing around a tree,” said Marcel. “And I’m still worried about our orders. Pierre wants the job done quickly and quietly, no mess. But Jesus Christ! What do we do if the guy shows up on his own? Just shoot him down in the street, like fucking High Noon?”
Raymond chuckled. “No, we just take him somewhere quiet and shoot him, like The Godfather!”
“Either way, we have to take him out,” said Marcel. “But I can’t help wondering if he really is trying to kill Monsieur Foche. I mean, what if he’s not? What if he’s never even heard of Monsieur Foche?”
“I guess they don’t like the coincidence. The warning about the assassin coming in from England. The sudden theft of the trawler, men being thrown overboard. This guy’s a desperado, the kind of killer who would accept that two million dollars to pull off the job.”
“I suppose so. But we’re not supposed to ask questions. They want this Blackbeard character taken out. And we’ve got the chief of police for Brittany plus the next president of France on our side. Let’s just kill the sonofabitch, get rid of the body, and go home.”
“Guess you’re right.”
By now the Mercedes was running at eighty-five miles per hour into the outskirts of Val André. Marcel thought it was entirely possible this crazy prick Raymond might just drive straight into the ocean, since he obviously had no idea where the brakes were.
Meanwhile, back in Brixham the police had awakened half the town at four o’clock in a local dragnet designed to identify the big man with the beard who had stolen Fred Carter’s trawler Eagle.
They’d roused pub landlords and cafe and restaurant owners all over the area trying to get a handle on the villain who had very nearly sent Fred and Tom to their deaths. There were two landlords who remembered him, his size, his hairiness, and his accent.
One of them recalled the waitress who’d served him, the live-in student, Diana, and she too was aroused from her sleep. “I do remember him,” she told the young detective constable. “He was very nice and gave me a good tip. He said his name was Gunther Rock, I think. He lived in Geneva. I’m sure he didn’t steal the fishing boat.”
“Did he have some kind of a foreign accent?”
“Gosh, yes. French, I think. But it could have been German.”
Within five minutes, the added information on the hijacker was being emailed to the French coast guard and on to Brittany police: suspect believed to be Gunther Rock, a resident of Geneva, heavy foreign accent. That last part tallied with the description supplied by Fred Carter and Tom. And of course with that provided by the Brixham harbor master, Teddy Rickard, who had spoken to Gunther twice.
Pierre Savary dialed Marcel’s number and passed on the new information. “He’s Gunther Rock from Geneva, and he speaks English with a French or German accent, which doesn’t affect you. The description’s the same. Big, bearded and probably dangerous, like most assassins.”
“Okay, Chief,” replied Marcel. “We’ll be ready for him when he comes ashore. I expect we’ll see the trawler.”
Raymond had finally slowed right down, and he came quietly down the main street of Val André, looking for a place to park unobtrusively. He settled for a side street on which no one was awake. The two men rammed new magazines into their pistols, slid them into shoulder holsters concealed under their jackets, and walked down toward the beach.
And here, of course, there was a problem. No trawler – just an almost empty expanse of sea; no sign of life except for a tiny dinghy way out there, hardly moving, and what might have been some guy fishing. The problem was, of course, a natural but tiresome reaction by coast guard P720, who did not wish to call headquarters in Cherbourg and admit they’d just lost a seventy-ton fishing trawler in broad daylight. Right now they were around the headland, helpfully pointed out to them by Mack Bedford, and they had a pretty well uninterrupted view of the ocean for five miles in every direction. No trawler. “C’est impossible!” yelled the coast guard captain.
“Sir, the only thing I can suggest is he turned back to the northeast and ran back up the coast toward Cap Frehel, and we somehow lost him in the mist along that shore.” Privately, Lieutenant Cartier thought he stood a fighting chance of being fired for this. And he was more mystified than the captain, because he’d had the electronic sight trained on the Eagle for five minutes. He had turned away to speak to a crewmate and then gone below to see the captain, and when he’d returned the trawler was gone. Or at least it was gone so far as he was concerned. In fact, at that point Eagle had been lower in the water but still floating. The four-mile distance and the choppy sea state had merely rendered it impossible to see. She did not sink for another six minutes, but now they were right in the area of her last known, and the Eagle really had vanished.
“No other course to take,” agreed the captain. “Helmsman, turn around and steer zero-four-zero. Back up the coast. Full speed.”
“Shall I report in, sir, explain what’s happened to headquarters?”
“Lieutenant Cartier, have you finally gone crazy?” demanded the captain. “Are you really anxious to explain to the admiral that we are in the process of proving we are the most incompetent ship since Villeneuve got his ass kicked at Trafalgar? Get back on that glass, Lieutenant, AND FIND THAT FUCKING TRAWLER!”
“Aye, sir.”
Two minutes later, Marcel and Raymond saw the government boat come hammering out from behind the headland and speed across the bay. She was a mile out, but in this thin morning air, they could hear the growl of her engines.
“What the hell’s going on?” said Raymond. “That’s the coast guard, not the trawler. Are we in the wrong place?”
“I can’t say,” replied Marcel. “But our orders are to wait here for the trawler, locate her master and eliminate him as a dangerous criminal and a threat to the security of France.”
And so they waited, leaning here on the seawall, staring out at the Bay of Saint-Brieuc, waiting for Pierre to call with new instructions. But nothing happened. Because the coast guard did not know what was going on, and neither did the police HQ at Rennes.
And poor old Lieutenant Cartier was searching the surface for a ship
that was not on it. Mack Bedford carried on fishing until the coast guard had gone past. He gave them a quick wave as they went by, and then he tied the heavy binoculars to the fishing line and dropped the rod over the side. He changed his disguise, reinstating himself as Gunther Marc Roche of 18 rue de Basle, Geneva. He turned the Zodiac around and ran lightly through the calming sea, making around 6 knots on his two-mile, twenty-minute journey to the beach at Val André.
Still patrol boat P720 did not report in to Saint-Malo. Pierre Savary heard nothing. And the two hit men leaning on the seawall were completely in the dark. Both of them could see the return of the fisherman, but took little notice. Their eyes were trained on the horizon, compulsively looking for the dark-red shape of Eagle trying to make landfall.
But there was only the fisherman, chugging ever nearer in his little Zodiac, a matter of such underwhelming indifference that Marcel and Raymond scarcely noticed as the inflatable came running easily into the shallows, 150 yards away.
Just then, Marcel’s phone rang. And the message complicated what was already complicated. “There appears to be some doubt as to the landing place of Eagle,” said Pierre. “The coast guard has asked everyone to stand by until they issue a definite location.”
“Well, what do we do?” asked Marcel.
“Better stay right there until further orders,” said the police chief.
“Does this mean they’ve lost the fucking trawler?” asked Marcel.
“I don’t know that. But it’s beginning to look that way. Stupid bastards.”
“Well, how the hell can anyone lose a sixty-five-foot trawler? It’s bigger than the fucking police station,” snapped Marcel.
“Who knows?” grunted Pierre. “Better hold it right there till we finally get organized.”
He rang off and left Marcel wondering what was happening and staring down the beach as the fisherman came onto land. The sun was up now, but still low in the sky, and it had the effect of silhouetting Mack as he raised the little outboard engine and beached the Zodiac, casting no light on his face whatsoever. He hopped adroitly over the bow and hauled on the painter, catching the next incoming wave, which helped shove the boat up the beach. Mack pulled some more, then walked around and gave an almighty heave on the side handles, which hauled the boat around to face the water, its bow rising slightly with the incoming tide.
Diamondhead Page 31