The Case Officer (32 page)

Lim reflected on the hours since
the disposal of Le Belge. It had been an easy kill, all things considered. The
man was drunk, out of shape and, most of all, had been taken completely by
surprise. A good kill, clean and neat. The idiot never knew what hit him.

After the job was done, Lim had
calmed himself and then had cleaned up in a café restroom. As planned, there
wasn’t much blood to mess up the crime scene. Most of the bleeding had been
internal. That was the beauty of killing with a stiletto. You could get to the
victim’s heart without slashing the stupid sonofabitch to pieces.

All he had to do was wipe off the
knife and wash his hands. Not a drop had spattered on his clothing. Neat.
Really neat.
MacMurphy should have trained the poor sonofabitch better
.

MacMurphy would get his, too. And
that sonofabitch would die slowly, very slowly. He would plan that one very
carefully. But that was another matter; first he had to concentrate on François
Leverrier.

After the killing of Le Belge,
Lim had to kill time before the rental car agencies opened. He found a whore
who took him to a cheap hotel where identification was not required. She was an
ugly old
pute
with overstuffed silicone breasts and saggy skin. But all
he really wanted was to get a couple of hours of sleep.

So after attempting to fuck her,
he pushed her away and tried to sleep. He was still traveling on a high from
the neat job he had done on Le Belge, so he didn’t get the sleep he needed. He
was still exhausted when he got to the Hertz counter at seven the next morning,
and he was on the road headed south by seven-thirty.

He willed himself to stay awake.
It would be several more hours before he could even think about sleep.

Gazing down at the town, he
continued to plan. All he knew at this moment was that the surveillance team
had lost Leverrier on the
autoroute
heading toward Bern. When they later
checked his apartment in Paris they found it empty—not even a maid present. 

They reviewed their past
surveillance reports and came up with the name of François’s current
girlfriend. A check with her apartment roommate revealed that she had gone
sailing in the south of France with her boyfriend. A little more investigation
revealed that François Leverrier owned a ten-meter yacht named
Tout Va Bien
,
and that the yacht was kept at the marina in Villefranche.

He focused on the marina clearly
outlined below him. He counted a total of ten rows of slips jutting out into
the harbor. Each slip moored about a dozen boats on each side, and there were a
couple more dozen yachts anchored in the harbor. The
Tout Va Bien
had to
be among them, and François Leverrier was more than likely on it. Locating
François’s ten-meter yacht among about two hundred others shouldn’t be too
difficult.

First, however, he needed some
rest, and to pick up a few things. The outline of a plan was germinating in his
mind.

Assaulting and killing MacMurphy’s
girlfriend had not been enough…not nearly enough. She was irrelevant. He needed
to kill MacMurphy…and to do it in such a way that the man suffered. He was
looking forward to it.

Chapter Eighty-Three

W
hile Lim climbed back into his
car to begin his descent into Villefranche, François Leverrier was waking from
his afternoon nap next to Solange Lançelot, the curvy blond sleeping peacefully
beside him.

They had spent the morning
swimming, baking in the sun and waterskiing. Later, they had enjoyed a
leisurely lunch aboard the yacht, and then a nap. The
Tout Va Bien
was
rolling and tugging gently at its anchor in Villefranche harbor. As he stirred awake
among the tousled sheets of the circular king-size bed set in the center of the
main cabin, Solange awakened too.

 “What do you feel like doing
now?” Solange asked hopefully, stretching luxuriously and running her long,
manicured fingernails through the hairs of François’s chest.

Feeling delightfully indolent
after his nap, François suggested, “Let’s go back up on deck to catch the
afternoon sun with a cool
aperitif
.”

Solange agreed. She jumped out of
the bed and padded nude up toward the afterdeck, calling back to him over her
shoulder, “Fix the drinks, Cheri. Meet you on deck.” 

She had a great body and loved to
show it off and have it admired. She knew that he was watching and accentuated
the sway of her hips as she walked aft gracefully out of the forward cabin and
climbed the ladder up to the deck. She dropped into a lounge chair and let the
warm sun work its way into her pores, soothing and recharging her.

François brought the drinks and
plopped into a lounge chair next to her. They languished nude on the deck,
luxuriating in the beneficent sunshine and watching the sun move slowly across
the sky.
Just another great day in paradise, another great day in paradise….

Chapter Eighty-Four

L
im awoke at eight-thirty the next
morning. He had slept well at first, the exhaustion forcing him into a deep,
dreamless, coma. But in the dreamy state before waking, the nightmares
returned. Ghosts from the past haunted him at night. That’s why he hated to
sleep. Awake, he could cope with the ghosts – asleep, they attacked his
subconscious in force. He pushed them out of his mind and replaced them with
thoughts of revenge and planning.

He had things to do, and the
sleep had recharged his batteries. He would waste no more time in this
flophouse of a hotel room. He was showered, shaved, and on the street in less
than thirty minutes.

After fortifying himself with a
breakfast of buttery croissants and strong coffee at a nearby café, he drove
directly to the marina and found the management office. At the counter he was
met by the grizzled old assistant harbor master, deeply tanned and weather
beaten. He wore a sweaty white tee shirt with an anchor logo and “
Marina de
Villefranche
” emblazoned across the chest, old, frayed blue jean cutoffs,
and worn-out flip-flops on his leathery feet. A wet brown Gitanes cigarette
smoldered from his lower lip.

He looked at Lim unguardedly. “
Oui
,
can I help you?”

Lim was straightforward.
Expediency was foremost in his mind at this point. Although he would have
preferred to make his inquiries in a manner designed to protect being described
to the police during the inevitable investigation after the hit, there simply
was no time. He’d be long gone anyway, and they would never find him. He was
quite sure of that. Other than his Oriental appearance, they’d have nothing to
go on.

“Could you direct me to the
Tout
Va Bien
, please?”

“Are you expected?” The man spoke
with a raspy, sing-song Marseilles accent.

“Not until tomorrow morning, but
I want to locate the yacht now so I can go directly to it in the morning,” Lim
backed away from the pungent odor of the smoke blowing directly in his face.

“I’m supposed to announce all
visitors, so you’ll have to return here in the morning anyway,” the man said as
his finger traced down a long index of the yachts moored in the marina. “Here
it is, the
Tout Va Bien
, slip number D-19.” He glanced down at the row
of yachts lining the marina. “But it’s not in its slip; it’s gone,” he
announced with finality.

“That’s impossible, I’m supposed
to meet him here in the morning. Can you tell me where it went?”

The man assessed Lim for a
moment, allowing smoke to ooze out of his mouth and billow up into his nose and
eyes. He muttered, “
Un moment
,” and reached across the desk to grasp the
microphone of a CB radio. He triggered the send key: “Base to Line D, come in
please. Over.” A moment later the radio squealed its reply: “Line D, base. This
is Robert. Over.”

“Robert, do you have any idea
where the
Tout Va Bien
has gone? And if she’s due back this evening?
Over.”

“She’s out for the day, base.
Over.”

“When do you expect her back in
her slip? Over.”

“Well, I expect her back this
evening, base, but when she returns she’ll probably anchor out in the harbor. When
he’s here the owner only uses the slip for his speedboat. To ferry back and
forth from the yacht. He doesn’t handle the yacht very well in the harbor, so
he prefers to anchor rather than use the slip. His captain is off for the rest
of the week. Over.”

“
Merci,
Robert. Over and
out.”

The man stubbed out his cigarette.
“That’s it. She’s here. Lots of owners have too much boat to handle by
themselves, so they just hang out in the harbor when they’re without crew.
You’ll have to take a water taxi out in the morning. Pick one up at the A row,
right over there.” He indicated the slip at the far north end of the marina.
“They’ll be able to find her for you.”

“Thank you, sir. You have been a
great help. Thank you.” Lim pumped the man’s callused hand with great
enthusiasm and left the office. He was satisfied. Now he knew where François
LeVerrier would be spending the night…his last night on earth. He also knew
exactly what he, Lim, would have to do for the remainder of the day. He had
some shopping to do before the stores closed for the evening.

Chapter Eighty-Five

L
im’s first stop was at a hardware
store. He purchased one meter of electrical wire, a six-volt battery, a wire
cutter, needle-nose pliers, screwdriver, a soldering iron and solder,
electrician’s tape, and a kilo of ten-penny framing nails.

He then drove up the road to a
household goods store and bought a mechanical alarm clock and one box each of
plastic garbage and sandwich bags. Further up the road he located a hunting and
fishing outfitter, where he purchased two boxes of 12-gauge shotgun shells, a
roll of strong fishing line, and a small, child’s canvas backpack. While
checking out, he asked the clerk for directions to the nearest farm supply
store and was told it was about six miles inland on the north side of the same
road he had entered the town on. ”Hurry,” the clerk cautioned him. “They close
at five.”

Lim checked his watch and saw
that time was not on his side. He needed to hurry…yet he did not want to draw
the attention of the gendarmes, nor get into an accident due to speeding. He
felt caught in a vise whose one side was the need to arrive at the farm supply
store before five or risk at least delaying his mission, at worst failing
altogether, and whose other side was the need for prudence in speed. Lim cursed
aloud at the situation.
Merde,
why did he allow himself to sleep so
late?

He drove as fast as he dared,
stopping only once, at a gas station, to pick up a gas can and fill it with a
liter of diesel fuel, and arrived just as the store was closing for the day.
Fortunately, the storekeeper was kind enough to permit him to make his final
purchase: ten kilos of ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

H
e had about three hours of work
ahead of him, and then he would be ready.

Chapter
Eighty-Six

S
olange and François cruised back
into Villefranche Bay at ten minutes to six. They dropped anchor and secured
the yacht for the evening, showered and dressed casually for dinner.

They relaxed with aperitifs and
hor d’oeuvres on the after-deck while watching the extraordinary Mediterranean
sunset, and then rode in on the speedboat to the marina. They left the boat in
its slip and strolled leisurely, hand in hand, up along the
quai
toward
La Casita.

Chapter Eighty-Seven

L
im stuffed himself with Chinese
food in a local restaurant and headed back to his hotel.

The ingredients he had purchased
during the afternoon were spread out on the bed. Sitting at the small desk, he
began removing the pellets, gunpowder, and percussion caps from the shotgun
shells. Each was separated into plastic sandwich bags laid out in front of him.

He then set about assembling a
primitive detonator with the caps and gunpowder. He made a tight package of the
mixture with one of the sandwich bags and tape, and inserted a wire into each
end. He then fabricated a timer with the clock and wired it to the detonator.
Next, he wired the battery to the detonator package. He set the charge to blow
when the big hand hit twelve.

Then he began working on the body
of the bomb. First he lined the backpack with a plastic garbage bag and filled
it with the ammonium nitrate. Next he added the shotgun pellets and nails and
mixed them evenly throughout the fertilizer. He added the diesel fuel slowly
and kneaded the mixture into a congealed, gooey mush, being careful not to
stick himself with one of the nails. All of this was then pressed tightly into
the bottom of the backpack and sealed with tape. He taped the detonator package
securely on the top of the mixture.

The timer would be wired and set
at the last minute.