Authors: Patrick Robinson
Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #Political, #Thrillers, #Weapons industry, #War & Military, #Assassination, #Iraq War; 2003-
Diamondhead (64 page)
Mack looked around him. This part of the riverbank, a couple of miles from Saint Brevins, was deserted. Vacationers, looking for a beach, go the other way on the south side of the river, down toward the Atlantic Coast. If ever there was a time to make a run for it, it was now, and Mack dragged himself upright and stumbled, unsteadily, onto the bank.
Even as he did so, he heard the wail of two police sirens, speeding across the Saint-Nazaire Bridge. He glanced back, and he could see the blue lights coming toward the south end of the roadway. If anyone saw him, he was dead. Mack ripped off his flippers and goggles, held on to the attack board, and ran for his life, up the bank, over the grass, across the road, and into the woods. Whereupon he collapsed into the foliage, not having even the remotest idea where his base camp was located.
Now there was another sound splitting the evening summer air, the distinctive clatter of two helicopters, flying low across the river, their rotors making that familiar
BOM-BOM-BOM
on the wind.
BOM-BOM-BOM
on the wind.
In an instant Lieutenant Commander Bedford understood the search had switched sides, and they were now combing this southern bank, despite its hopelessness, despite the pure impossibility of a man swimming across the estuary of the Loire. The police might be desperate, and they might be disheartened, and they might think this was all a waste of time. But that would not stop them from finding him if he was not damned careful.
He wriggled forward back toward the road, and then kept going right to the edge of the woods, “walking” on his elbows like the sniper he was. The coast seemed clear, and, still lying face-down, he scanned the road up to the right, looking for the bus stop, which was about two hundred yards farther along.
Mack stood up and headed back into the woods and then turned to his left and jogged back through the trees to the little camp he had left in the twilight last night. It was a hundred yards in from the road, on a direct line with the bus stop. And it was intact, the two bushy strands still jammed into the ground, which had not been disturbed.
Swiftly, he took the attack board and smashed it against a tree trunk. He hurled the wrecked GPS as far into the woods as possible, obliterated the compass on the tree, and ground it into the soil. The polystyrene he scattered as he walked, and he carried the clock with him.
Mack dived under the overhanging branches of his camp and pulled out the stems he had cut. With his knife he scraped off the top layer of earth, scrabbled around for the handles of his leather bag, and heaved. It came out easily, and Mack shook off the dirt. He set it aside and then stripped off his wet suit top and retrieved his Jeffery Simpson wig, mustache, and spectacles, which were all bone dry.
He pulled off his rubberized trousers and folded them neatly. Then he placed the wet suit, goggles, and Draeger flat in the hole, complete with the flashlight and calculator. Finally, he took the fishing knife and cut away the numbers on his flippers before placing the three items on top of the wet suit. He covered them with dirt until they were completely obscured, a foot below the surface. Then he covered the earth with stones and leaves and bent three branches into position. He jammed in the two fronds he had cut and surveyed his work. In his opinion it would be years before anyone found this little woodland cache, if ever. And so what if they did? Nothing was traceable. Everything was brand new, save for the Taiwan-made wet suit, unmarked flippers and goggles.
It was two minutes after seven o’clock. He pulled out his clothes and dressed—dark slacks, clean white T-shirt, sport jacket, socks, and loafers. He slipped the Jeffery Simpson passport into his inside pocket and stuffed a wad of euros in there with it. He fitted on his wig, mustache, and spectacles and placed the clock in his bag.
Then he moved a hundred yards along the woods and made his exit, onto the river road. He walked casually to the bus stop, where a young girl of around eighteen was already waiting. It was 7:08, and the scene on the river was chaotic. A helicopter was running up and down the shore at a low level, east of the bridge, right in front of them. Another was searching the bank downstream, on the far side of the span. Two coast guard launches were on their way across the river from the north shore. The evening sky had clouded over, and the two boats had bright searchlights on the water. There were four police cars in the middle of the bridge, blue lights flashing, officers aiming radar guns hopefully over the surface, guns normally used to trap speeding motorists. There was another cluster of police cruisers at this end of the bridge, and Mack could see three red lights, probably signifying crash barriers, barring traffic from crossing before a search of their vehicles was conducted.
None of that mattered to Mack. What did worry him was the police car coming dead ahead along the river road, moving slowly, watchful and deliberate. When it reached the bus stop, it pulled up right alongside, and the driver jumped out and opened the door to allow the passenger in the near-side rear seat to exit. Detective Inspector Paul Ravel stepped out. Chief Pierre Savary stayed where he was.
“Good evening,
mademoiselle, monsieur,
” said Paul. “This is just a routine check—but have either of you seen anyone along here who looks as if he might have just swum across the river?”
mademoiselle, monsieur,
” said Paul. “This is just a routine check—but have either of you seen anyone along here who looks as if he might have just swum across the river?”
Mack raised his eyebrows, in the time-honored way of the truly astonished. The girl giggled and said, “Swum across the river! I didn’t think anyone had ever done that.”
“Sir,” said Mack, “could you tell me what is going on over there?”
Detective Inspector Ravel replied, “There has been an attempt on the life of Monsieur Henri Foche. We are searching the area.”
“Wow!” said the girl. “My father was going to vote for him. Is he okay?”
“We have not yet been informed. But I would like to see identification.”
The girl produced a couple of credit cards, and Mack pulled out his passport, handed it over, and inquired, “Al-Qaeda again?”
“No one’s said so yet. But we wouldn’t be surprised.”
Ravel looked at the passport carefully and then said, “American, eh?”
“Yes, Officer.”
“How long have you been in France?”
“Two weeks.”
Ravel flicked through the pages and said, “There’s no immigration stamp. How did you come in?”
“Cross-Channel ferry to Calais. They just looked at my passport through the car window.”
“Do you have a return ticket?”
“No, Officer. I’m going on down to Rome with friends. Then I’m flying home via Dublin.”
“Do you have that return air ticket?”
“I have the e-ticket document.”
“May I see it?”
Mack groped in one of the side pockets of his leather bag, produced it, and handed it to Paul Ravel.
After a very quick glance, he handed it back to Mack and said, “Thank you, Mr. Simpson. I’m sorry to bother you. But if either one of you sees anyone who looks as if he might have been in the river, don’t approach him, but please do let us know, won’t you?” He handed them each a card containing a succession of police numbers.
“Sure will,” replied Mack. “Hope you catch him. From what I read, Henri Foche is a very capable man.”
Paul Ravel reboarded the cruiser.
“Any good?” asked Savary.
“Well, he was the right height, and his passport was not stamped when he came into the country. But there were a few gaps.”
“Such as?”
“As you know, at the busy times of the day, hundreds of people come through French ferry ports without having their passports stamped. Especially Calais, where he came in. The rest were just minor discrepancies, like his entire appearance, name, address, nationality, and the fact that he was dry. That’s quite unusual for someone who just jumped from a seventy-five-foot building into the harbor, and somehow swam across the Loire fully dressed. There was no other way he could have reached this side of the river.”
“Hmmmm,” replied Savary expansively. “Was he French?”
“No. American. American passport and address somewhere in Massachusetts. Showed me his return ticket.”
“I suppose it was only about a billion-to-one shot that he was our man.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, sir. There are only sixty million people in France. Half of them are women, and half of the rest are babies or elderly. So it must have been fifteen million to one.”
“I feel better already,” said Pierre.
The cruiser accelerated farther along the road and stopped alongside two more pedestrians. As it did so, the bus to Nantes came into sight, rumbling along from the bridge. There were just two elderly ladies on board.
The girl and Mack both climbed aboard, and the doors shut. Mack chose the corner seat on the empty back row bench. As he sat down he glanced ahead and noticed the police cruiser was making a U-turn and heading back to the bridge.
Pierre Savary had finally accepted there was no point in searching on this side of the river. Not only had they found nothing, seen nothing, but everyone to whom they had spoken looked at them as if they were stark-raving mad at the mere thought of some maniac jumping in the Loire and swimming all the way across.
Paul Ravel knew how badly his boss had taken it—the assassination against all the odds, his friend Henri gunned down right before his eyes, new security chief Raul Declerc hurled out of a window to his death, and then the total disappearance of the perpetrator.
Just twenty-four hours previously everything had seemed so controlled. They had the killer’s name, address, and description, confirmed and corroborated by several sources. They even had his passport number, driver’s license. The shipyard had contained sufficient security guards to defend the beaches of Normandy in 1944. And they
knew
the assassin was in Saint-Nazaire. His car had been found in a public parking garage on Place des Martyrs. And now he was well and truly missing, vanished from the face of the earth. Paul Ravel’s logic told him the man was dead, probably drowned, and his body would wash up somewhere along the coast in the next five or six days.
knew
the assassin was in Saint-Nazaire. His car had been found in a public parking garage on Place des Martyrs. And now he was well and truly missing, vanished from the face of the earth. Paul Ravel’s logic told him the man was dead, probably drowned, and his body would wash up somewhere along the coast in the next five or six days.
Pierre Savary’s logic also told him told him the man must have drowned in the powerful currents of the estuary, and he might well never be seen or heard from again. Yet a sense of failure settled on him. That was inexplicable, except that Pierre was damned sure the assassin was somehow still alive. And he could not be seen to give up. “We’d better keep the police cordon around the town,” he said. “Stop and question every driver. And intensify the search of the shipyard. Because that’s the most likely place he’ll be. He can’t still be in the water.”
“Sir, we’ve searched that place high and low.”
“I know we have,” replied Pierre. “But this character is on the move. Just think. He could have been hiding out along the wharves, staying in the water for maybe an hour, then crept out and found somewhere to wait it out. He may have had an accomplice. But somewhere, someplace, if he’s alive, he must have come out of the fucking river.”
At 7:15 P.M. the head of the Administration Department walked out onto the steps of the Central Hospital of Saint-Nazaire and announced to the waiting journalists that Monsieur Henri Foche was dead. He had died of two gunshot wounds, to the head and chest. Surgeons had worked for some time to revive him, but the official hospital report would state he was dead on arrival. “There was never any realistic possibility he could be saved,” said the spokesman. “But everyone in our emergency room wanted to try.”
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