CHAPTER 4

 

 

The next couple of days went fast. I used them well. First thing I did was to warm up the contacts I’d made with the security forces of France and Canada back when I was with the SAS full-time. Through a friend who’s the boss of security at Toronto airport I was able to get the pass I needed to wear my gun while boarding. I could have smuggled it through in the bag I checked, but there was the outside chance it would miss the flight and end up in Addis Ababa.

A phone call to Claude Fussel of Interpol in Paris got me the same permits at his end, and I was able to travel armed, prepared for trouble.

I also spent a beery evening with Martin Cahill, a good buddy of mine who is an inspector with the RCMP, the Mounties. He’s involved with the dope squad and has access to all the information they hold on organized crime worldwide. I wanted to know what he could tell me about the Corsicans, specifically Vittore Orsini, the guy who was making my trip necessary.

Martin brought me a photograph. “It’s fifteen years old,” he apologized. “That was the last time he was arrested, murder. He got off, of course. The key witness lost his memory.”

I checked it over. Orsini looked tough. According to the details on the back of the photograph, he had been forty- nine at the time. He was 168 centimeters tall, around five feet six, and had a couple of interesting scars—knife and bullet wounds. The photo showed me that he was a solid- shouldered guy, the fisherman type, arms knotted up with muscle from hauling nets. He had a full head of black hair, graying handsomely at the temples, and a full mustache. His face had that flat, expressionless quality you see in a lot of criminals, especially those who’ve done heavy time inside. According to the file he hadn’t, but Martin gave me some details that explained the look.

“Interesting guy,” he said. “Born in Corsica, grew up in Marseilles. In 1942 he was seventeen. That was when the Germans took over all of France, not just the north, which they occupied in 1940, after Dunkirk. Seems his family owned a bar in the dock area. Anyway, some German soldier got rough with Orsini’s sister. Could have been a rape, could’ve been just that he groped her. Anyway, it was enough to get Vittore fired up, and he cut the guy’s throat.”

“Then what? Did the Germans shoot a bunch of hostages?” That was their usual tactic, courtesy of Clausewitz, their high priest of total war.

Martin nodded, creasing his big Irish face into a frown. “They did, and they also put a price on the kid’s head. So he dropped out of sight. Nothing more about him on the record until after the war.”

“Then what? Did he cut more throats?”

“For a while.” Martin took a pull at the glass of Bushmills I’d poured him. “Things were pretty hectic at that time. The civil authorities were in disorder, food was short, and there were still some German troops around, trying to get back home. The authorities didn’t know how to handle things. I don’t have any details. However, they do know that Orsini drifted into the black-market rackets, and when things improved, he went from that into rackets, period. He’s the godfather to a whole Marseilles family.”

“What kind of stuff are they into? The same as the mobs over here?” I expected the worst. Gangsters are gangsters in any culture, but I could almost empathize with Orsini. Maybe he would have grown up to be a hood anyway, but there was an outside chance that he was just another war casualty, a man whose life had been altered totally by the experiences he’d had as a young guy in an occupied country.

“ ’Bout the same,” Martin said. “Protection, girls, dope. Dope’s big, of course. I guess you know that Marseilles is on the pipeline from Thailand into the States and Canada.”

“I saw The French Connection.”

“Yeah, well, the guy with the beard could’ve been Orsini.”

That was about all the hard information he had for me. I took a long last look at the photograph, committing Orsini’s face to memory, trying to work out what he would look like now. Martin solved that problem for me. “We’ve got a computer program at the office; it shows us what age will do to a guy’s face. I’ve already asked the operator to work on this one, and I’ll have a computer likeness for you by tomorrow.”

“Thanks. I don’t want to have to wait for this girl to remember whether it’s him or not. That’s liable to take too long if Orsini shows up.”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Which reminds me, I’ve gotta be back in the office at seven. I’m for bed. You wanna crash on the couch?”

“Naah, I’ll head home.” I stood up. “Thanks for the help, Martin. Okay if I call you if I run into some questions over there?

“Always happy to oblige a taxpayer,” he said, “’specially when he’s just bought me a jug of Bushmills. Thanks, buddy.” I gave him a thumbs up and left.

I picked up the photograph next day. Two of them, in fact; one eight by ten, the other a reduction to wallet size. It was a remarkable job. The computer had shown the sagging of age and the lines that would have developed, based on the original round, hard structure of Orsini’s skull. He still looked tough, but now it seemed that he was more vulnerable, more likely to delegate any rough stuff. It made me conscious that I would have to earn my keep on this trip. Anybody from outside the community we were staying in could be one of Orsini’s men.

We flew out of Toronto the following Wednesday night, first-class on Air France, courtesy of Wainwright. It’s the civilized way to travel, and I enjoyed it. Amy looked delicious. She had made it clear by her attitude that I was the hired help and had better not write any scenarios containing clinches. That didn’t stop the attendants from drawing the obvious conclusion when they saw us traveling together, and they poured the champagne as if it were our wedding night. Surprisingly, Amy had a head for it and socked back three glasses before saying no. After an excellent dinner we both slept and woke up to coffee and croissants before landing at Charles de Gaulle Airport around nine.

It’s ultramodern, built like a set for 2001, with interconnecting glass tubes containing the escalators. But it’s not all show. The French are very businesslike, and security is tight.

Amy went ahead of me in the line and had to explain all about her archaeological chores and listen to a stern warning not to export any antiquities. My French isn’t bad, but hers left me for dead. She rattled at the guy just as rapidly as he did to her. I decided to let her do the bargaining for us if I wanted to bring back a souvenir. Finally, she was through and stood waiting for me.

I preempted any problems for myself by showing my Interpol pass at Immigration and was waved through, much to Amy’s annoyance.

“How come you rated the VIP treatment?” she wanted to know as she picked up her carry-on bag.

“Friends in high places,” I said.

We had time for a café au lait and then took our flight to Lyons. “That’s another thing,” she grumbled as we lined up for the flight. “Why did you insist on coming through Lyons? Marseilles is an hour closer to Vaison.”

“It’s also Orsini’s hometown,” I reminded her. “If he’s serious about getting even, he’s probably got somebody paid to check the passenger lists.”

She tossed her head impatiently. “And just how is he to know I’m coming back?”

“Remember that Corsica invented the vendetta. If this particular Corsican is serious, he’s likely found out everything there is to know about you, including the fact that you’re working on a thesis. He knows you’ll come back, and he wants to know when you’ll get here.”

She paused to hand in her boarding pass, beaming at the girl who took it, then turning to frown at me. “If you ask me, it sounds like you’re dressing this incident up so that you can inflate your paycheck.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I said. I didn’t bother arguing. One of the maxims in the SAS is train hard, fight easy. That’s the way I still work, regardless of client comment.

We took our seats, and I pulled out the eight by ten Martin had given me. “Is this your man?”

She took it, surprised. “Where did this come from?”

“Is it Orsini?” I can be high-handed, too.

“His mustache is dark, not grizzled, but otherwise yes,” she said. “But where did you get it? I know Eric was trying to find a picture and had no luck. And he’s got friends all over the place.”

“So do I,” I said. Advantage Locke. I made a note to tell Martin that his computer guy did neat work.

We picked up our hire car from Hertz, a neat Ford Sierra, a British car, but with left-hand drive. From the airport we drove out to the Périphérique, the road that encircles Lyons, paying six francs for the privilege, and then headed south on to the Autoroute. Just outside the city we stopped and picked up our ticket at the péage booth, and I wound the car up to a smooth 140 K, about 85 miles per hour. It was pleasant. The road was busy with vacationers. Maybe a third of France takes holidays in July—the rest do it in August but most of the cars were driving slower than me, and I was able to cruise comfortably. The scenery was interesting. The land is cultivated but dry and rugged, much like Tuscany. The sun was already high, and the temperature was in the low thirties, pushing ninety on the old Fahrenheit scale.

Amy slept until we left the highway at Bollène, paying forty francs, about seven American dollars, for our two hundred k of highway. And then we were out into Provence proper. The road winds through vineyards and little villages of the local yellow stone with orange tile roofs, most of them sun-bleached with age down to a soft umber.

“You know how to get to Vaison?” she asked.

“I’ve checked the map. Are we going right there?”

“First,” she said, “I want to talk to my contact in town before I go on to Faucon.”

“Who are you seeing, the local director of antiquities?”

“No,” she said tersely.

I glanced over at her. “Sorry if I stepped on a corn. I figured there’d be somebody in charge of history there, that’s all.”

“There is, but I’m not working on the Romans this time.”

I mouthed an “Oh.” There’s enough history in the region to keep an army busy for a lifetime. The place has been inhabited virtually forever and been farmed for close to two thousand years. When she volunteered nothing, I prodded a little. “I’m not about to pirate your work, Amy. It might help me do my job if I knew your plans, that’s all.”

“I don’t see how,” she said tartly.

“It will give me a general idea of what the people you know and trust will look like,” I said. “If you’re researching the Benedictines, I’ll know that priests are going to be in and out of your life. If it’s Roman history, I’ll expect scholarly-looking people with small hands and feet. That kind of thing.”

She relaxed a little. “Okay, I see what you mean. “Well, I’m working on something different.”

“World War II,” I ventured.

She gave a little gasp of surprise. “What makes you say that?”

“You didn’t respond to Benedectines, and you’re not doing the Romans this time. I made the natural assumption.”

She turned her face away, staring down the road at the endless grapevines on either side. “Why would you assume that?”

“This place has been a backwater for the last five hundred years.” I was glad of the chance to air a little knowledge of my own. “They’re largely Catholic still. The Reformation didn’t make much headway down here. The Franco-Prussian War didn’t affect them as it did the north. Nor did the First World War. That leaves the Second. They were occupied, and a few places had a hard time, but not Vaison.”

“There are some people here who have information I want,” she said. “It’s the kind of stuff you have to dig for. People don’t volunteer it. I have to spend time with them, earn their trust.”

I didn’t say anything, but I wondered why she had chosen Provence as a research project. To the best of my knowledge, war activity in the area had consisted of sporadic attacks on German installations, sabotage of trains and supplies. And very few people had been involved. Even as late as 1945 most French people were passive toward the Germans. They’re republican, often anti-American, but they have lots of rightists there, and they liked the law and order that Hitler provided. The Maquis had been a very small group, consisting for the most part of Communists plus a few hotheads like Vittore Orsini. Now, forty-five years later, everyone old enough claims to have been a Resistance fighter. But even the president’s credentials have been questioned. Amy would have to be half detective, half diplomat if she was going to find any facts.

“So you’ll be dealing mostly with elderly people?” I suggested.

“Yes,” she said, and shut up until we reached Vaison- la-Romaine.

We drove up the rising road past the cathedral and pulled into the main square, the Place de Montfort. It’s what people imagine when they picture rural France. There’s a row of bistros down one side, sheltered by plane trees that have been cut back over the years until they resemble oversized bonsai. In the center of the square is an open area, used as a parking lot except on Tuesdays—market days— when it fills up with stalls. There’s a moss-covered fountain in it and trees of its own. At Amy’s suggestion I parked under one of them and locked the car; then we sauntered across to Le Siècle, one of the busier restaurants.

We sat outside under an awning, and a waiter bustled up wearing a shirt with tricolor decorations. Amy studied the shirt as she ordered a cafe au lait for us.

“You forgot the Revolution in your vest-pocket history of the region,” she said dryly.

“Yes, I know this is the bicentennial year, but again, it didn’t hit this region in any special way.”

She looked amused. “Not just a pretty face, are you?”

“Not even,” I responded automatically. She was studying me, and I did the same with her. Here, in a French cafe where all the girls were chic and interesting looking, even the plain ones, she was not such a standout as she had seemed in Toronto. But she had an intelligence in her eyes that made her beauty remarkable. I’m the typical male chauv, but I like bright women, and I liked her. Maybe things would work out differently from the way she had it planned. Time would tell.

We finished, and I paid for the drinks. “Okay, work time,” she said. “Why don’t you take a look around? I’ll be about half an hour.”

“That’s not the way it goes,” I said politely. “If you’re seeing somebody, I’ll wait outside the place, but I’m not losing touch with you.”

“Oh, brother,” she said, but she didn’t argue. “Okay, I guess that makes sense for now. But if I change my mind, I’ll let you know.”

“If you need to be alone with anybody, you won’t even know I’m there,” I promised. “I’ve done a lot of this, including taking care of rock stars and politicians who wanted privacy for their assignations. Don’t worry.”

She flushed slightly at that, and I wondered whether I’d touched a nerve. Perhaps her contact here was some boyfriend from the previous year.

We took the car and drove up to the Haute-Ville, the old fortified section of the town. The streets are narrow and steep, and not many cars penetrate this high, but we found a parking space in a little open square, and she said, “I’m going to see somebody now, in that house over there.”

I glanced at it. It was a row house, one of a street of separate homes side by side in a single building. The one she pointed out had only one door, and I knew that all the houses backed onto a sheer drop down to the river. “Fine. I’ll wait,” I said.

We got out, and she clipped over the cobblestones on her wooden-soled sandals. I kept her in sight but moved away. There was nobody in the square but the pair of us, and most of the windows were shuttered. Those that were not had nobody at them. If this had been a case of protecting her from an assassin’s bullet, I would still have been concerned, but I figured Orsini wanted her very much alive. That meant he was going to have to take her prisoner, and that wasn’t going to happen here, not with me on her side and armed.

She tugged the bell pull beside the door, and after a few seconds a man answered it. He was fortyish and had a pale face and the small-lensed, round spectacles of a scholar. He looked annoyed when he opened the door, but he beamed with delight when he saw her, and they exchanged enthusiastic kisses on the cheek, the three kisses of good friends. He was the reason she had flushed, I guessed.

He invited her in, and I made myself inconspicuous. I’d brought my camera with me, and I made like a tourist, clicking away at the hanging flowerpots and the ancient doorways and a big yellow dog with its left front leg missing. He was lying in the sun like an old war veteran. I clicked my tongue at him, and he opened one eye to look me over, then closed it, uninterested.

Time passed slowly. There wasn’t much traffic: a very few pedestrians, women mostly, carrying their shopping bags back from the stores in the town center, and a couple of kids. There was also a tourist couple, honeymooners by the look of them, and a few cars. Most of them drove through in low gear, going slowly over the bumpy stones. But then a Mercedes drew up. It had two men in it in shirtsleeves.

There was plenty of room beside my car, but they parked awkwardly across the street, and they didn’t get out. The passenger had a small camera, and he aimed it around the square in a bored fashion, but the only time it clicked was when he had my car in his sights, including the rear license plate. I unzipped the light jacket I was wearing but went on taking pictures. They looked at me without interest, and I moved off, around the first corner, out of their line of sight. I could still see the door Amy had gone through, plus the rear of their car, and I was close enough to hear if their doors opened. Two steps would bring me back into the square if anything changed.

Nothing did for half an hour. Then the house door opened again, and Amy stepped out, the man holding her arm. I heard the snap of a car-door lock, and I took the two steps back into the square, knotting the strap of my camera around my left hand, turning the Pentax into a handy club. My right hand was free, and I reached around and unsnapped the catch of my holster.

The two men were out of the car. Amy was not paying them any heed. She was holding both of the man’s hands, and he was gazing into her eyes with what passes for adoration among Frenchmen.

The two men separated and wandered toward Amy, one on each side of her, but there was no menace in their gait, and I noticed that their hands were empty. If they had designs on her, they were to abduct her, not to harm her. Orsini had specified that, I was certain.

I kept coming, strolling as casually as they were, the idle tourist. And then, when I was a dozen yards away, they pounced.

The one on the left moved first. He stepped forward and shoved Amy’s friend, sending him sprawling on the cobblestones. The other one grabbed Amy by one hand. It looked amateur, but he was good. He had her in a come-along hold, and all she could do was shriek and go with him, backward, reluctantly, but at the speed he was dictating with the pressure he had on her hand.

I went into my act. “I say,” I shouted in an effete English accent, “I say, you. Fellow. Let go of that girl.”

The one who had done the shoving turned and grinned at his buddy, almost licking his lips. Then he came at me.

I could tell by his stance that he was a savate expert, a foot boxer, and I knew what to expect. He sprang toward me, but instead of falling into a boxing crouch, as he’d anticipated from my accent, I sprang toward him, too close for the kick he was swinging at my jaw, hinging his leg in from the side. I was against him by then, and I uppercut him straight into his unprotected testicles.

He fell, writhing, clutching his groin, and I came on at the second man. He was smarter. He pulled a knife and held it against Amy’s neck, not her throat but the side of her neck. He grinned at me, and I noticed he had a bum eye on the left. It was focused off center, making him look even more menacing. He made a flicking motion with his knife, a signal for me to leave.

Amy was staring at me, her eyes wide, the whites showing. She said nothing, but her fear filled the square. I went back into my act, the concerned tourist. Maybe he would think I’d just been lucky with that punch to his partner’s equipment.

“Drop that silly knife,” I said angrily. He hissed something and backed up, dragging Amy toward the car. I glanced over my shoulder; his friend was trying to get to his knees. Time was running out. I changed gears, shouting past him in deliberately lousy French. “Gendarme! Cet homme avez une couteau

It worked. He had me figured for a lucky fool, and he glanced over his shoulder. I balled my fist, with the thumb projecting a half inch, and stabbed him in the eye. It was not enough to burst the eyeball, but he screamed and dropped the knife, and I kicked him in the stomach, sending him sprawling. Then I picked up the knife and stabbed it into both rear tires on the Merc.

Amy was standing straddle-legged, speechless. Her friend was picking himself up. “This is terrible,” I said to her, still affecting the English accent. “Habitez-vous ici?” Do you live here? I winked at her at the same time and indicated the house she had left.

She caught on. “Out, m’sieur,” she said.

“Bonne,” I said, then lapsed back into English. “Why don’t we all go in there and call the gendarmes?”

Amy’s friend was adjusting his glasses. From scholarly pale his complexion had gone almost green. He was terrified but game.

“D’accord,” he said, and then rattled off an invitation to us in French too fast for me to follow.

I took one last look around at the two men, who were on their feet now, one holding his eye, the other his testicles.

“We’re going in to call the police,” I said sternly, and followed the other two into the house.