Last Call For Caviar (21 page)

Noah came down from Washington this week, and it sure came in handy that he was a munitions expert in the Army for all those years. He and Jack have rigged a booby trap for the entrance to the tunnel. Once we are through, that little surprise should slow down any pursuers. They won’t be able to follow us below, and they won’t know our direction above. That head start should give us enough time to reach the vehicles and lose them in the rainforest.

There are plenty of old logging roads the pot growers use to access their rainforest plantations. If you don’t know these woods, it’s easy to get lost. The tree canopy will shield us from any drones or ’copters. We should be able to put a hundred miles behind us before they know which way we’ve gone.

If the military comes snooping around, or we get awoken by black helicopters over the beach, we’re gonna vanish. For all anybody’ll know, we’re among the “Disappeared.” They can sit on their asses for a week to see if we turn back up!

I’ll be sending you updates as long as I can. If we have to bolt, I won’t be able to give you a heads-up. But I’ll find a way to get word to you as soon as it’s safe.

Remember, sweetie, to stay nimble; don’t let yourself be boxed in. When you stay ahead of the game… no one can catch you.

Leah

P.S… I know we are going to see each other again.

P.S.S… I’m never wrong.

I reread the letter, admiring the way Leah’s mind worked. Devious. Circles within circles. Always calculating the odds and staying a couple steps ahead. Leah had nerves of steel and metaphorically speaking, a huge set of balls. Slippery as an eel, she wouldn’t be easy to catch.

I thought about Leah’s mysterious reports. Were individuals and communities disappearing in this part of the world, too? I’d been so wrapped up in my own delirium and dilemma. Sometimes, I felt like I was drifting back and forth from dreamland to reality. And the membrane separating the two worlds was getting thinner all the time.

Strange times were coming. “Be nimble.” I liked the sound of that advice.

I moved up to the Astrarama the next day and spent the next couple of nights ferrying supplies between my villa and the dome, after midnight in Arnaud’s Land Rover. I waited until the streets were deserted, so no one could observe my preparations or tail me back to the Astrarama.

There was still no word from Julian. I had to accept it was really over. The split between us was too great, and there was no way to find our way back to each other across a militarized zone and a civil war.

My options had narrowed. It was going to be either Abu Dhabi or a globe-spanning flight and the dangerous trek alone through British Columbia to Leah’s compound in the wilds of northern Oregon.

I needed to get in touch with Giovanni, but I’d avoided contacting anyone since that day at the lake camp. I needed these days on the heights, alone with my thoughts, Buddy, and the stars to grieve for my failed dreams.

The vicious storm that struck Lac Saint Cassiens spawned other tornadoes that day. One touched down on the runway at Nice, mowing down twenty airplanes parked on the tarmac before hanging a left and exploding straight through the middle of the Terminal 1 building. The airport was slowly digging out from under the devastation but was barely operating at fifty-percent capacity. Military aviation had priority out of Terminal 2. I didn’t know if there were many commercial flights still departing out of Nice Cote d’Azur Airport, but I did know it would take heaving on a lot of strings to get me on one.

Abdul’s return from Abu Dhabi had been delayed by damage at the airport. Although following him out to the Gulf States didn’t seem like the best move, I hoped he might be able to help me with the first part of my journey to Leah. Rome’s Leonardo di Vinci Airport was mostly operational, and Emirates Airlines flew out of there to Dubai. Hopefully, there were still flights connecting out of the Dubai hub to Vancouver. It might be the longest way to get to my destination, but it was looking more and more like going by way of the Arabian Gulf was my best bet.

Indeed, the only escape route left was south, towards the heel of Italy and eastward from there. An ocean-going vessel could, under optimal conditions, and allowing for refueling, make the sea voyage from Monaco to Rome in a few days, a week at the most. Giovanni might be able to help me find passage on a boat heading that way.

One month, maybe three, but it was getting closer to the time to finally run.

Last night, when I heard the guns booming and saw the explosions to the west, it seemed as though the voice of a messenger rode the night winds and tolled the approach of Armageddon across the sky.

The fighting was in Frejus, and if the town fell, the road to Cannes—passing through the coastal towns of Agay, Theoule sur Mer, Mandelieu, La Napoule, names like beads on a string—would be breached. The menace was now so close, it seemed as if the gates to hell yawned.

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CHAPTER 23

T
HE
E
ND
G
AME

It had been less than three weeks since I’d last been in Monaco, but it seemed like I’d been away for a year. Time hadn’t stood still. Although the façades of the Casino and the Hotel de Paris were still as elegant as they had been for the last hundred-odd years and the waiters bustled about the terrace of the Café de Paris with energy, something had altered the very fabric of the atmosphere—a tiny rent, like a balloon slowly leaking air.

Normally, on a mid-September evening at this hour, the terrace fronting the Place du Casino would be packed with people enjoying the leisurely ritual of “le petit apero.” But the tables were half-empty, and the patrons enjoying the early-evening breeze weren’t laughing and planning their evening’s escapades. Their faces were shadowed. What little laughter rang out seemed forced. Their movements were self-conscious, almost as though they knew they were being observed. There was a smell that lingered on the air, a stench. The smell was fear.

Giovanni stepped away from our table to take an urgent call, and I knew he would be a while, so I decided it was a perfect time to multi-task and set off to seek out the ladies’ room and have a little snoop around. I avoided the restrooms inside the restaurant and headed instead into the gaming rooms of the Café de Paris. There were a half-dozen patrons, nursing their various poisons, perched along the curving chrome bar, but each seemed lost in a private world of misery. Shoulders slumped over their drinks, lamenting lousy luck and money lost, the reek of desperation stale in the air.

My footsteps were muffled by the thick carpeting as I made my way through the tables towards the bathrooms in the rear. The air-conditioning wasn’t working, and the room felt close and muggy, perfumed by the musk of perspiration and alcohol. With the dim lights and fluorescent glow from the slot machines casting an unhealthy pallor across skin and distorting perception in the cavernous room, it was like wading through the bottom of an aquarium. It was still early and most tables were closed, but at one of the few open tables, a dealer enticed me to step up and play. His eyes numbed by apathy, his robotic hands, dexterous and gleaming white under the lights, rhythmically shuffled and reshuffled several decks of cards, fanning them out like a wave across the green-felt surface, before picking them up and repeating this routine. At another table, a croupier, skeletal-thin, spun the roulette wheel, the small metallic ball, like a miniature death’s head, careening around and around inside before coming to rest on the number thirteen.

The craps tables were empty; no boisterous crowds gathered to shout, “We have a shooter” or “Baby wants a new pair of shoes” disturbed the deadened atmosphere. A pair of sweet old ladies in back near the entrance to the bathroom—dressed in chiffon cocktail dresses straight out of
La Dolce Vita
, ropes of pearls around their necks, dandelion puffs of silver haloing their paper-thin skin—methodically fed coins into the maws of the mechanical bandits. As I passed the old dears, jackpot was announced in a shower of coins and bells. There was a flutter of excitement and girlish squeals as they clinked their glasses in a toast to winning.

I smiled at their high spirits and the camaraderie between them that probably had outlasted several husbands and scores of years. But as I turned away to the restroom, I noticed out of the corner of my eye an attractive, dark-haired woman of about forty, watching intently. I don’t know if it was a trick of the dim lighting or the reflection from the slot machines lining the aisle that distorted her features, but for a second her mask slipped and a twisted and hungry visage showed through. I felt I’d caught a glimpse of her true essence. The attractive, well-dressed woman was a disguise, only a witch’s glamor, gossamer-thin, conjured up to hide the evil behind. Like a black hole that sucks all energy and matter into itself, this woman devoured the light around her, and in its place remained something black and hungry, as though she sought to suck the very marrow from living bones.

A shiver passed through me from head to toe, though moments before I’d been weighed down by the cloying heat in the room. My hand went automatically to the crystal chapelet from Laghet that I always wore against my skin as a talisman. I felt the comforting shape of the crystal cross that dangled in my hand.

I had to get away. I couldn’t breathe; all the air was being sucked out of the room. I stumbled through the doors into the bathroom.

I stood before the mirror, cool water running over the cloth I pressed to my forehead, my flushed cheeks and the nape of my neck. I didn’t know what had just happened. I didn’t spook easily, but I still felt shaky, as though I had stepped through a door into the twilight zone.

The hag hadn’t seen me. Her gaze had been fixed hungrily on the two old friends. I knew it was irrational, but I sensed that if her gaze had touched me, I wouldn’t be standing here. And as that thought crossed my mind, I remembered the two old friends laughing together and toasting their winnings. For a second, I was glad it was them, instead of me. But then Mama’s face swam before me, and I knew whatever spooky shit had been going down out there, I couldn’t leave those sweet old gals to face it alone.

I angled the door open from the bathroom and cautiously peeked outside. The old girls were no longer perched on their stools in front of the winning slot machines. The hag wasn’t there, either. I quickly made a circuit of the aisles that housed the mechanical bandits. Maybe they’d gone to the Casino’s cage to cash out their winnings. I noticed the sign indicating where the cashier, was tucked away in the deepest reaches of the Casino, and hurried in that direction.

The instinctual fear and recognition of evil I’d felt only moments before was fading away. I hoped it was just nervous exhaustion from these last weeks that made me imagine an entity so dark and sinister shadowing the old ladies. But my skin crawled when I remembered the look of naked hunger on the hag’s face. I was practically running as I rounded the corner and saw the cashier’s window up ahead. There were two people waiting in line, but neither was silver-haired, in their late seventies nor wearing a chiffon cocktail dress.

I stepped up to the window and asked the pale young man if he’d seen either of the two older women cashing out their winnings.

“Je suis desole Madame, but I can’t give that kind of information about any of our clients—for their security. I’m sure you can understand and appreciate our policy,” he recited by rote, his eyes reflecting the same apathy that I had noticed in the other employees this evening.

I turned away from the cashier and decided to make a tour of the gaming tables before I went back to Giovanni on the terrace. There were more players now. My glance swept the room. They weren’t at the roulette wheel. One craps table had five players, but the old gals were nowhere to be seen.

I asked a couple of security guards, discreetly attired in dark suits, if they had noticed the two elderly women accompanied by a younger, dark-haired one. But their answers were brusque; their eyes were empty like zombies, their features without animation or concern. This place and its employees were creeping me out. I appeared to have stumbled into a casino run by the living dead.

I had all but given up my search when I noticed a dark-haired woman making her way towards the private poker rooms for the deep-pocket players in the back. I couldn’t see her face, but instinct made me follow her. I was twenty meters away when she was stopped by the guard posted before the door. This was a private game, invitation only to buy in.

I moved to the side, joining the players at the roulette table which stood at an angle about five meters away. From here, I could observe her unobtrusively and maybe, when the doors finally opened, I could see who was playing inside. I studied her profile while they waited for another guard to verify her identity with the Casino host. I thought it was the same woman, but I couldn’t be certain unless I saw her eyes.

The host returned in a couple of minutes, a broad smile of welcome on his face, and opened the doors wide. I moved quickly forward at an angle, passing directly behind her, and looked inside. I had only ten seconds to take in the room at a glance, the dealer and half-dozen men concentrating on their cards. Bodyguards, arms folded, lined the walls. I must have been expecting it, because when I saw the massive shoulders, the shaved head and dark sunglasses wreathed in cigar smoke, I wasn’t surprised to see Slava.

The door was closing as I saw her take a seat at his side. Maybe I’d just imagined seeing through the veil of her glamor to the hag within, but evil attracts evil; my antennae were working overtime.

What did surprise me were the broad shoulders of the man across from Slava, his snow-white guthra held in place by a twist of black rope. I couldn’t identify him from the back, but one of Sheik Sakr’s boys was playing cards with the devil. And as any blues man from the Mississippi Delta can tell you, that always turns out bad.

Giovanni was concluding his phone call as I slipped into my seat. The ice had barely melted in my vodka tonic; I’d been gone no more than twenty minutes. I decided not to tell him about my spooky encounter in the Casino. I didn’t want him to start questioning my sanity. I’d been doing enough of that myself lately. I didn’t like that I was keeping so much from Joe these days. I knew I couldn’t give him any more ammunition, or before I knew it, he would have me packed up and moved into town.

Giovanni looked tired. He had that dazed ten-thousand-yard stare. And though I wanted to do something silly or comic to bring a smile to his face, I knew things had to be pretty serious to see him look so beaten down.

I laid my hand on his arm, and when he finally came out of his reverie and looked into my eyes, I said, “Things are looking pretty grim, aren’t they, Joe? You know I’m here for you to talk to. Always. You can confide in me. Please tell me what’s really going on.”

“It’s all falling apart.” He swirled the remaining eyes cubes around his empty glass. “Slava’s lost control of the militias he armed. I thought he just wanted to rattle the Prince and keep the pressure on so that he could step in and take over security. But he’s overplayed his hand, and his war dogs have slipped their leash.”

“That bad? The French forces have more firepower than the rebels—all those jets, tanks and bombs! Surely the French aren’t going to abandon the whole Cote d’Azur?”

“The French have the firepower, but their jets and bombs are only effective against a meaningful target. Those crazy bastards out of the southwest are now embedded in the very cities and towns the French are trying to protect. They drop a bomb and everyone dies, non-combatants included. The French don’t have the stomach—or even the troops—to go in on the ground and slug it out, building by building, and street by street. And it’s not just happening in Nice, the whole country is going up in flames. “

He signaled the waiter for two more drinks before continuing. “This is just one corner of France. The Palais d’ Elysee might just decide it’s easier to hold the central part of the country and the north around Paris. Most of the southwest is in the rebels’ hands already. Monaco isn’t France, and the residents don’t pay taxes or serve in the military. Sure, there are treaties, ensuring Monaco’s borders and security, but strategically this region just isn’t that important. From Cannes eastward, this part of France is just a summer playground for the rich from other parts of the world.”

“But if Slava cuts off their supply of arms? Surely the rebels won’t be able to advance any further or hold the territory they’ve already won.”

He thought for a moment, then shook his head sorrowfully. “That might delay them for a while, but I think it’s too late. They’ve gotten a taste of victory and grown accustomed to the spoils of war. Their coffers must be pretty full by now. Slava isn’t the only guy who could hook them up with arms. That genie’s out of the bottle. They’ve got contacts. They know their way around the world of arms dealers now.”

“Damn! And they know France’s ministers and elites don’t have the stomach for this kind of fight. They see what happens: city after city, France evacuates the inhabitants and pulls back. They’re getting really good at this game of chicken. But you really think it’s gone that far?”

“I think it’s at the tipping point. If they break through and do battle in the streets of Nice, then the writing’s on the wall. If the battle doesn’t go in France’s favor immediately, they’ll cut their losses and pull out. All the rats will leave the ship. Can’t you feel the fear already? Look around you! Most of these poor fools are in denial. They never thought they would wake up and have to face this reality. The party would just keep going on and on. But the day of reckoning has arrived just the same.”

We both sat there in silence, nursing our drinks, while all the ramifications of Joe’s dire prediction sank in.

“Slava really screwed us all, the bastard! What do you think he’s going to do, now all hell’s breaking loose?”

“Who knows? But it’s hard to believe this was his plan. I thought it was all an elaborate bluff. Maybe I’m wrong; maybe he wanted to bring us to the edge of ruin. It might be easier to pick over the pieces and forge a new order when everyone else is panicking and running. And now that’s begun, in the last two weeks, half the population has vanished. And no one knows how or where they’ve gone. It’s like they’ve just melted away.”