No Mercy (25 page)

'Why?' asked Paula.

'Because someone on a motorbike followed us from Park
Crescent to Waterloo.' His expression became serious.
'Marin warned me how to handle our arrival in Marseilles.
There's a second-class coach a little way behind us. Arriving
at Marseilles, we hurry back into that.'

'Why?' asked Paula, again.

'So we mingle with other passengers when we get off. Tweed, with Paula you get into the back seat of a yellow Citroen waiting outside. The first one. There'll be a second
vehicle, same make, same colour, a little way back. I'll get into
that one with Pete and Harry. Marin will be driving your cab.
Both vehicles have been fitted with very tough rams.'

'What are they for?' Paula persisted.

'If there's trouble driving us to the hotel, you'll see why.'

Marler left them, followed by Harry. Nield moved back to his earlier position beyond the entrance to the coach. All this tension, she was thinking, on such a glorious day. Gazing out of the window, she saw endless grids of vineyards spreading
up the sloping fields. She thought they were already
beginning
to sprout under the blinding rays of the glowing
sun.

Her mind wandered. Why had Tweed had that dream of the clanging bells they'd heard in the Dartmoor tower near
the church? Then the vicar, Stenhouse Darkfield, advancing
on him with a knife. She'd thought the vicar a sinister man
from the moment she'd clapped eyes on him. She glanced at
Tweed, who appeared to be enjoying a doze. The TGV
began slowing down.

White-walled houses and factory plants appeared,
hemming in the rail track on both sides. Poor properties with
grubby walls. The usual approach to any major terminus.
Tweed was awake as Marler appeared, and waved to Pete.

'Time to get moving.'

He hauled their luggage down from the rack, including a large flat case of his own. Paula wondered what was inside
that. She decided she'd asked too many questions already.

'I'll lead the way,' Marler instructed. 'Shuffle along - no hurrying.'

They were approaching the coach with quite a few
passengers when the platform began to slide past. Tweed
grunted.

'Here we are,' he said. 'Marseilles. Cesspit of Europe.'

The express stopped smoothly. Paula stretched her legs, stiff
from sitting so long. The automatic doors opened.
Passengers began alighting. A mix of businessmen, poorly
dressed women with scarves over their heads. It was a
different atmosphere from bustling Paris, a hint of brutality.

She forgot the steep step down and nearly fell. Marler steadied her. He smiled. 'On the Continent they built the train steps for giants.'

He kept hold of her, guiding her away from the passenger exit as Tweed followed with Harry and Pete bringing up the
rear. Paula glanced along the platform in both directions. It
seemed to go on for ever. Marler had reached a pair of
double doors. They were closed. He lifted the handle on one
of them, pushed it open.

'You can't go out that way,' a small portly uniformed official screamed at them in French. 'That's for luggage.'

'Police,' Marler snarled back at him in French. 'Keep your voice down. This is a police operation. Shut your stupid trap
or I'll have you demoted.'

Paula's French was good enough to understand every
word. The rail official opened his mouth, then closed it like
a fish. He had been thoroughly intimidated by Marler's outburst. Paula walked quickly out on to a pavement and
saw a yellow Citroen parked opposite. The driver, an Arab, waved to her to hurry. Carrying her small suitcase - she had
foreseen they were unlikely to be dining in a top restaurant -
she crossed the street into the blinding sun.

'Is this right?' she whispered to Marler, carrying the
strange flat case in one hand, another case in the other, golf bag slung over his shoulder.

'Yes, get in the back.'

She caught a glimpse of massive rams attached to the front
and rear of the car. The heat beat down on her. Settling
herself inside, she rested her case on her lap and looked through the rear window as Tweed joined her. Marler had jumped into the second Citroen behind the wheel of the car
with Harry beside him and Pete clambered into the back.

'Get ready for a rough ride, Paula,' the driver told her with
a smile and in perfect English.

'I thought you were an Arab,' Paula said, astonished.

'That's the idea.' The driver smiled again as he started the
engine. 'I've been out here long enough to get brown as the
genuine article. That, plus the clothes, helps me to merge
into the scenery. I also speak fluent Arabic.'

'This,' Tweed said, 'is Philip Cardon. I knew all along that
he and Marin were one and the same. Used to work for me.
And he was good at his work. Second to none. Then he
experienced a grim tragedy.'

'My dear wife died,' Cardon explained as he watched
through his rear-view mirror to check that the second
Citroen crew were ready. 'Long time ago,' he said casually.
'I still have bad days. Her birthday, our wedding
anniversary, the day she died.' His voice changed, became
urgent. 'Got your seat belts fastened? I may be going at speed and then stop very abruptly.'

He drove off at a moderate pace. Paula peered out of the
window. So far she wasn't impressed with Marseilles: a lot of
shops on ground floors of shabby two-storey white buildings.
Kids ripping off tyres from parked cars, already little more
than battered wrecks.

'Main street coming up,' Cardon informed them. 'Hardly the Champs-Elysees.'

It wasn't, Paula thought. Litter was scattered everywhere.
The shops were cluttered with junk. Cardon nodded his
head to both sides.

'See that travel agent on the left, the currency-exchange
outfit opposite? An American tourist wanted to change a
load of dollars for euros and went to the travel agent. Owner
said he never kept cash on the premises - too dangerous.
Pointed out the exchange just yards opposite. Warned him
to be damn careful. The American starts to walk to the exchange, is knifed in the back, wallet taken, rushed to hospital. DOA. Marseilles.'

'Charming,' Paula commented.

'We're near your hotel. A quarter of a mile. To hell with kilometres. Hold tight! Here we go.'

Paula looked back. A black Renault with tinted windows
was on their tail. No sign of the other Citroen. Cardon
rammed his foot down. They shot forward like a racing car
at Le Mans. Paula braced herself, gripping the door handle,
but couldn't resist looking back. The Renault was also
moving at high speed. She caught a glimpse of the second
Citroen coming up behind it.

'Now!'
Cardon shouted.

He braked suddenly. The Renault rushed into the ram at
the rear of Garden's car. Behind it the second Citroen
slammed its ram into the rear of the now stationary
Renault, which concertinaed between the two Citroens.
Hurled forward, Paula was saved by the seat belt, as was
Tweed. She looked back again. Compressed by the two
rams at top speed, the Renault was hardly recognizable,
looked much smaller. Its windscreen was shattered. No
sign of movement. Marler reversed a few feet, jumped out,
peered inside the squashed vehicle, ran to Tweed, who had
lowered his window. Marler talked across him to Philip
Cardon.

'They're all dead. Automatic weapons scattered over the
inside. We move on?'

'We do.'

Cardon revved up. Paula heard the crunch of the
Citroen's ram, tearing itself from the Renault's radiator, then
they turned a corner and Tweed saw the Vieux Port for the
second time in his life.

The ancient oyster-shaped port was crammed with
pleasure craft - small powerboats, big jobs, yachts and
smaller craft. Tweed stared in disbelief.

'Where are the fishing vessels? From my hotel window I used to watch them sailing out at all hours to catch the fish.'

'Not here any more,' Cardon explained. 'They have to use
another harbour these days. Vieux Port is strictly for rich
men's pleasure craft. Some expensive stuff down there.'

A short distance further on he swung the car up a curving
drive, stopped at the entrance to the hotel above the
harbour.

'Won't that smashed-up Renault cause the police to come looking for us?' Tweed wondered.

'No way.' Cardon grinned. 'They find four Arabs inside
the wreck, assume it was the result of gang warfare. They'll
just want to haul it but of the once famous Canebiere.'

'Once famous?' Paula asked.

'Years ago the Canebiere was a street of expensive shops. Parisian women with money went there to buy the best. Like
Marseilles, it's deteriorated into a filthy slum.'

Tweed managed to get the same room he had once
occupied on his earlier visit years before. He was staring
down out of the window when Paula tapped on his door and
he called out. for her to come in. She joined him.

'This place isn't the Ritz but I guess it will do. You look nostalgic,' she remarked.

'I should have foreseen this. Everything changes, not
always for the better. When I was last here I used to love watching the fishing craft coming in, moving out - often in
the late evening. It was beautiful. Now they've ruined it.
Look at those boring horrors. They weren't here then.'

He pointed across the harbour to the mainland, where
large ugly office and apartment blocks stood shoulder to
shoulder. It could have been anywhere. 'Progress' had
advanced with leaps and bounds.

'I wonder why Cardon chose this place,' Paula mused.

'Marler said he was insistent we should stay here.'

He paused as someone knocked on the door, which Paula
had locked when she came in. Holding his Walther
automatic by his side, Tweed went to the door, asked who it
was, then unlocked the door and Philip Cardon walked in.
Paula stared in surprise. Cardon was now clad in a smart cream suit with open-necked shirt.

'What happened to your Arab outfit?' Paula asked. 'You
really look something.'

'After I'd dropped you here I drove to a quiet nearby alley,
stripped off the clothes I was wearing, put on this gear. Not
the thing to walk into this place like an Arab. Asked the nosy
girl on reception for your room numbers. She was stubborn
until I showed her my fake DST card - French
counterespionage - then told her France hoped to conclude
profitable commercial deals with you. I hauled the register
round, found where you all are. I noticed Marler is in the
adjoining room on that side, with Nield adjoining you on the
other side. Good strategy.'