The Templar Cross (6 page)

“Notice the order,” commented Japrisot, watching as Valador loaded the boxes one at a time.

“Last ones out of the hold went into the truck first,” said Rafi.

“Remember that,” said Japrisot.

“He’s almost done,” said Holliday.

“Bien,”
murmured Japrisot. He flipped yet another cigarette butt into the greasy water, nodded pleasantly to the young lady on the deck of the
Dirty Girl
and turned away.
“Attendez-moi,”
he instructed. He climbed into an angle-parked, dark blue Peugeot 607 four-door sedan, probably the most ubiquitous car on the highways of France. This one was almost ten years old and looked like a well-used taxi, which was probably the point.

Rafi got into the back and Holliday slid in beside Japrisot. He wrinkled his nose. The inside of the car smelled like an ashtray and the windshield was fogged with a slightly yellow film of old nicotine. Japrisot lit another Gitane and switched on the ignition. The car chugged to life. The French cop watched as Valador finished loading the fish boxes into the rattletrap van and then had a brief conversation with Kerim Zituni. Conversation over, Zituni climbed back onto
La Fougueux
while Valador started up the Citroën and drove off. Japrisot followed the square-nosed little truck. They headed east, staying well behind the van, moving steadily away from the center of town.

“He’s not going on the Autoroute,” commented Rafi. On their right hand the Mediterranean glowed like an immense blue jewel, bright light bursting off the sun-dazzled facets of the waves sweeping in to crash against the base of the craggy limestone cliffs.

“No,” answered Japrisot, “he’s following the coast.”

“You’ve done this before,” said Holliday.

“Bien sûr,”
answered Japrisot. “Several times.”

They spent the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening tracking the Citroën along the length of the Côte d’Azur, stopping to make deliveries in the towns of Cassis and La Ciotat, then bypassing the larger city of Toulon before stopping again in Hyeres, Bregancon, Le Rayol and Frejus.

In Cassis the van stopped in front of Chez Nino’s on the harbor front, delivered a box of fish and then moved on. It was the same each time they stopped. In Ciotat it was Kitch and Cook; in Hyeres it was the Hotel Ceinturon. Bregancon was a motel-style place called Les Palmiers; in Le Rayol it was a rustic-looking old winery called l’Huître et la Vigne—the Oyster and the Vine. In Frejus it was a gaudy Moroccan dining room called La Medina. In none of these places did he leave more than three of the boxes and usually only one. By the time the sun was beginning to set they had reached suburban Cannes and the huge Florida white slab of the Royal Casino Hotel in Mandelieu-la-Napoule, complete with a six-story-high blue and yellow flashing neon image of a slot machine on the side of the building. A little bit of Vegas on the French Riviera.

The Casino Hotel was part of a complex of interconnected buildings right on the beach beside a river estuary that led back to the Cannes Marina and the Mandelieu Golf Course. Japrisot parked the Peugeot in the fifteen-minute lot in front of the hotel and they watched as Felix Valador took a dolly loaded with two boxes of fish around to a side entrance. Presumably he was going to the hotel kitchen.

At the main entrance a good-looking, well-dressed European with a neatly trimmed Vandyke beard climbed out of a blue Audi Quattro with his beautiful companion and slipped one of the car jockeys a folded bill. The valet parker looked at the bill, saluted the bearded man and climbed into the Audi.

“He paid him not to park the car in the big lot under the overpass,” explained the French cop, nodding toward the busy Avenue General de Gaulle behind them. “It’s blackmail, really. Local boys sneak into the parking lot and sometimes roll cars right into the water.
P’tit loubards!
Little hooligans. Worse than the English football yobs sometimes.”

The elegant couple strolled into the hotel and the car jockey drove the Audi a hundred feet up the driveway. A few minutes later Valador reappeared with the empty dolly.

“That’s eighteen boxes of fish spread over almost a hundred miles,” said Rafi from the backseat. “He can’t be making much money.”

“It’s the last stop that’s the important one,” said Japrisot obscurely.

Valador climbed wearily up into the Citroën and drove off. He headed for the service road that led to the parking lot on the other side of the overpass. The little truck disappeared.

“Where the hell is he going?” Holliday asked.

“Watch,” murmured Japrisot.

A few minutes later the van reappeared. The gold lettering on the side of the truck had been covered by a magnetic sign that read
Camille Guimard—Antiquaire, 28, rue Felix Faure Le Suquet, Cannes.

“Who’s Camille Guimard?” Rafi asked from the “Who’s Camille Guimard?” Rafi asked from the backseat.

“Felix is,” said the French policeman. “In Marseille Valador is a smelly fisherman. In Cannes he is a sophisticated antique dealer named Guimard.
Une grandes blague, n’est-ce pas?
A neat trick, yes?”

“And Le Suquet?” Holliday asked.

“Like El Souk in the Kasbah of Marrakech,” explained Japrisot as Valador’s transformed Citroën rattled by. “The old quarter of the city, up on the hill.” He put the Peugeot in Drive and followed the van at a discreet distance. Ten minutes later, driving along the Boulevard du Midi at the water’s edge, they reached Cannes and Le Suquet, a rabbit warren of narrow, twisting streets that rose up from the stone quays of the Old Port to the formidable square tower of the eleventh-century castle built by the Cistercian monks of Lerins.

“Cistercians again,” said Rafi after Japrisot explained the geography. “They’re everywhere.”

“Pardon?” the Frenchman asked, frowning.

“A private joke,” said Holliday.

They followed the Citroën around the harbor then turned up the lush treelined boulevard of rue Louis Pasteur and started to climb the hill. Valador turned right onto rue Meynadier. They crossed the wider rue Louis Blanc, then turned abruptly into an alley that seemed to take them down the hill again. It was fully dark now but Japrisot was driving with only his parking lights.

“I’m lost,” said Holliday.

“I’m not,” said Japrisot.

“We’re going around in circles.”

“It’s the one-way streets,” said Japrisot, cocking one bushy eyebrow. “They’re everywhere.”

The policeman slowed and they watched Valador turn right and disappear from view.

“He’s getting away,” said Rafi.

“No, he’s not,” answered Japrisot, his voice calm. He cracked his window, flipped out his cigarette butt and lit another. Holliday had long ago lost track of how many the burly man had smoked, but strangely enough he found himself enjoying the rich earthy scent of the
tabac noir
. They waited in the alley for almost ten minutes. Holliday could hear Rafi fidgeting in the backseat. The French cop smoked. Finally Japrisot glanced at the illuminated dial of his wristwatch.

“Bien,”
he said and nodded.
“On y va
.
”
Let’s go. He eased the shift back and they rolled slowly out of the alley. According to the sign they were now on the rue Felix Faure, another one-way street, this one lined with small shops. Japrisot slid the Peugeot into a parking space on the far side of the street. At the end of the block Valador was unloading the van. He was parked in front of a narrow shuttered storefront, unloading the last of the fish boxes. Beside the store, taking up the entire corner, was the awning-covered façade of a restaurant with a brightly lit green and yellow sign that read
Huitres Astoux & Brun
.

“An oyster bar,” said Holliday, realizing that they hadn’t eaten since lunch in Marseille.

There were a dozen or so plastic tables under the white fabric awning, all empty. A fat man in a long white apron was chaining plastic stacking chairs. The restaurant was closing.

“What now?” Rafi asked.

Japrisot shrugged.

“We wait. We smoke. Perhaps we talk about women.” He paused and smiled. “Who knows? The night is long.”

Valador finished his unloading, locked up the van and disappeared inside the store. A few seconds later a light could be seen behind the shutters. Almost half an hour passed. Then the light in the shop went out, and after a few moments another light went on, this time in the apartment above the store.

“He’s gone to bed,” said Rafi, a note of anger in his voice.

“I think perhaps you are right,” said Japrisot.

Rafi snorted.

“So we spent half the day following a guy all the way along the Riviera delivering fish and this is what it amounts to? Watching him get ready for sleep?”

“Police work is mostly waiting,” answered Japrisot. “And very boring. I’m afraid you must be patient.”

“Rafi’s right,” said Holliday finally. “My cousin has been taken hostage. We don’t have time for staking out some low-level smuggler. We need information. Now.”

“Stakeout?” the French cop said. “You mean
comme le bifteck? Une barbeque?”
Japrisot lifted his caterpillar eyebrows and winked. Holliday scowled, realizing that he was being teased.

The headlights of an approaching car washed through the rear window of the Peugeot.

“Attendez,”
said Japrisot, and hunched down in his seat. Holliday and Rafi did the same. The car went past, then parked between a pair of wrought iron stanchions at the curb in front of the dark, deserted restaurant. There was an old-fashioned streetlight on the corner and Holliday could see the car clearly. It was a dark blue Audi Quattro. Two people got out: a well-dressed man with a Vandyke beard and a highly attractive woman in a short black cocktail dress.

“That’s the couple I saw at the casino,” whispered Holliday. “What are they doing here?”

“As they say in my country, Colonel Holliday
, Tout vient à point à qui sait attendre.
Good things come to those who wait.”

They watched as the couple from the Audi walked back along the sidewalk in front of the restaurant and paused in front of Felix Valador’s store. There was an intercom box high on the left-hand side of the doorframe. The man with the Vandyke reached into his jacket and took something out of the pocket.

“What’s that?” Holliday asked, squinting.

“Gants de latex, je pense,”
said Japrisot. “Surgical gloves, I think.”

The man with the beard deftly snapped the gloves onto his hands, then pressed a button on the plastic intercom box and waited. A few seconds later there was a loud buzzing sound and the bearded man leaned forward to speak. His companion kept her back to the door, looking up and down the street. Without the film festival, nighttime in Cannes was relatively quiet. The sidewalks were deserted.

There was a second buzz from the intercom, and then a heavy clicking sound Holliday could hear from halfway down the block. The door opened and the couple from the blue Audi disappeared inside the store. A moment later the light came on behind the shutters over the front windows.

Japrisot took a small notebook and a gold-plated automatic pencil from his sagging suit coat pocket and climbed out of the Citroën. He walked down the street and wrote down the license number of the Audi. Thirty seconds later he slipped back into the car.

“AHX 37 45,” he said. “Czech. I think ‘A’ is for Prague.”

“What do the Czechs have to do with any of this?” Rafi asked.

Japrisot turned in his seat.

“Maybe nothing, maybe everything.” The policeman shrugged. “Prague was once the European end of the old Silk Road. It is still a central point for smugglers. You can find anything you want in Prague from beautiful Russian girls to heroin from Bangkok. Why not stolen artifacts?” He held up a finger.
“Moment
.
”
He dug a cell phone out of his jacket pocket and let out a burst of rapid-fire French. He snapped the cell phone closed and returned it to his pocket. “Now we wait again.”

No more than two minutes later the lights in the store went off. Almost immediately the woman from the Audi stepped out and stood by the door, wiping her hands on a tissue. She looked up and down the street, then turned and spoke through the open doorway behind her. The man with the Vandyke stepped out, carefully closing the door behind him, then stripped off the latex gloves and slipped them back into his pocket. He stood for a moment, then reached into his other pocket and brought out a flat gold cigarette case. He took out a cigarette, put the case away, then pulled something from his lapel and began delicately poking at the filter.

“What the hell is he doing?” Holliday asked.

“I know
precisement
what he is doing,” said Japrisot with a grimace. “He is putting pinholes in the paper of the cigarette. It is something longtime smokers do to convince themselves they are being healthy.”

“That’s crazy,” said Rafi from the backseat.

“Bien sûr,”
replied Japrisot. “Of course. Smoking is for crazy people, yes?”

They watched as the bearded man brought out a heavy-looking gold lighter and lit his cigarette. Then the couple walked back up the street to the Audi and got in. The engine started, the headlights came on and they drove off. They turned right on rue Louis Blanc and went up the hill.

“They were in there for less than three minutes,” said Rafi. “I timed it.”

“Not very long,” said Holliday. “What kind of business can you do in three minutes?”

“Bad business,” said Japrisot. He stared out the window at the darkened storefront. He slapped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.
“Je suis une connard! Nique ma mere!”
He swore under his breath. “Something is wrong.”

The Frenchman sat for a moment, his features grim.

“M-e-r-d-e,”
he breathed, drawing out the word. Finally he reached across the console, popped open the glove compartment and took out an ancient and enormous Manhurin-73 revolver with a wooden crosshatched “blackjack” grip and a huge five-inch barrel.