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They drove out of Paris in Renault vans, exactly the same except for the fact that one was black and the other white. Gaston led the way, Dillon beside him in the passenger seat, and Pierre followed. It was very cold, snow still mixed with the rain, although it wasn’t lying. They talked very little, Dillon lying back in the seat eyes closed so that the Frenchman thought he was asleep.
Not far from Choisy, the van skidded and Gaston said, ‘Christ almighty,’ and wrestled with the wheel.
Dillon said, ‘Easy, the wrong time to go in a ditch. Where are we?’
‘Just past the turning to Choisy. Not long now.’ Dillon sat up. The snow was covering the hedgerows but not the road. Gaston said, ‘It’s a pig of a night. Just look at it.’
‘Think of all those lovely dollar bills,’ Dillon told him. ‘That should get you through.’
It stopped snowing, the sky cleared showing a half-moon, and below them at the bottom of the hill was the red light of the railway crossing. There was an old disused building of some sort at one side, its windows boarded up, a stretch of cobbles in front of it lightly powdered with snow.
‘Pull in here,’ Dillon said.
Gaston did as he was told and braked to a halt switching off the motor. Pierre came up in the white Renault, got down from behind the wheel awkwardly because of the false leg and joined them.
Dillon stood looking at the crossing a few yards away and nodded. ‘Perfect. Give me the keys.’
Gaston did as he was told. The Irishman unlocked the rear door, disclosing the holdall. He unzipped it as they watched, took out the Kalashnikov, put the barrel in place expertly, then positioned it so that it pointed to the rear. He filled the ammunition box, threading the cartridge belt in place.
‘That looks a real bastard,’ Pierre said.
‘Seven point two millimetre cartridges mixed with tracer and armour piercing,’ Dillon said. ‘It’s a killer all right. Kalashnikov. I’ve seen one of these take a Land Rover full of British paratroopers to pieces.’
‘Really,’ Pierre said and as Gaston was about to speak, he put a warning hand on his arm. ‘What’s in the other box?’
‘More ammunition.’
Dillon took out the sheet from the holdall, covered the machine gun, then locked the door. He got behind the driving wheel, started the engine and moved the van a few yards, positioned it so that the tail pointed at an angle towards the crossing. He got out and locked the door and clouds scudded across the moon and the rain started again, more snow in it now.
‘So, you leave this here?’ Pierre said. ‘What if someone checks it?’
‘What if they do?’ Dillon knelt down at the offside rear tyre, took a knife from his pocket, sprang the blade and poked at the rim of the wheel. There was a hiss of air and the tyre went down rapidly.
Gaston nodded. ‘Clever. Anyone gets curious, they’ll just think a breakdown.’
‘But what about us?’ Pierre demanded. ‘What do you expect?’
‘Simple. Gaston turns up with the white Renault just after two this afternoon. You block the road at the crossing, not the railway track, just the road, get out, lock the door and leave it. Then get the hell out of there.’ He turned to Pierre. ‘You follow in a car, pick him up and straight back to Paris.’
‘But what about you?’ the big man demanded.
‘I’ll be already here, waiting in the van. I’ll make my own way. Back to Paris now. You can drop me at Le Chat Noir and that’s an end of it. You won’t see me again.’
‘And the rest of the money?’ Pierre demanded as he got behind the Renault’s wheel and Gaston and Dillon joined him.
‘You’ll get it, don’t worry,’ Dillon said. ‘I always keep my word just as I expect others to keep theirs. A matter of honour, my friend. Now let’s get moving.’
He closed his eyes again, leaned back. Pierre glanced at his brother, switched on the engine and drove away.
It was just on half-past one when they reached Le Chat Noir. There was a lock-up garage opposite the pub. Gaston opened the doors and Pierre drove in.
‘I’ll be off then,’ Dillon said.
‘You’re not coming in?’ the big man asked. ‘Then Gaston can run you home.’
Dillon smiled. ‘No one’s ever taken me home in my life.’
He walked away, turning into a side street and Pierre said to his brother, ‘After him and don’t lose him.’
‘But why?’ Gaston demanded.
‘Because I want to know where he’s staying, that’s why. It stinks, this thing, Gaston, like bad fish stinks, so get moving.’
Dillon moved rapidly from street to street, following his usual pattern, but Gaston, a thief since childhood and an expert in such matters, managed to stay on his trail, never too close. Dillon had intended returning to the warehouse in rue de Helier, but pausing on the corner of an alley to light a cigarette, he glanced back and could have sworn he saw a movement. He was right, for it was Gaston ducking into a doorway out of sight.
For Dillon, even the suspicion was enough. He’d had a feeling about Pierre all night, a bad feeling. He turned left, worked his way back to the river and walked along the pavement and past a row of trucks, their windscreens covered with snow. He came to a small hotel, the cheapest sort of place, the kind used by prostitutes or truckers stopping overnight, and went in.
The desk clerk was very old and wore an overcoat and scarf against the cold. His eyes were wet. He put down his book and rubbed them. ‘Monsieur?’
‘I brought a load in from Dijon a couple of hours ago. Intended to drive back tonight, but the damn truck’s giving trouble. I need a bed.’
‘Thirty francs, monsieur.’
‘You’re kidding,’ Dillon said. ‘I’ll be out of here at the crack of dawn.’
The old man shrugged. ‘All right, you can have number eighteen on the second landing for twenty, but the bed hasn’t been changed.’
‘When does that happen, once a month?’ Dillon took the key, gave him his twenty francs and went upstairs.
The room was as disgusting as he expected even in the diffused light from the landing. He closed the door, moved carefully through the darkness and looked out cautiously. There was a movement under a tree on the river side of the road. Gaston Jobert stepped out and hurried away along the pavement.
‘Oh dear,’ Dillon whispered, then lit a cigarette and went and lay on the bed and thought about it, staring up at the ceiling.
Pierre, sitting at the bar of Le Chat Noir waiting for his brother’s return, was leafing through Paris Soir for want of something better to do when he noticed the item on Margaret Thatcher’s meeting with Mitterrand. His stomach churned and he read the item again with horror. It was at that moment the door opened and Gaston hurried in.
‘What a night. I’m frozen to the bone. Give me a cognac.’
‘Here.’ Pierre poured some into a glass. ‘And you can read this interesting titbit in Paris Soir while you’re drinking.’
Gaston did as he was told and suddenly choked on the cognac. ‘My God, she’s staying at Choisy.’
‘And leaves from that old air force field at Valenton. Leaves Choisy at two o’clock. How long to get to that railway crossing? Ten minutes?’
‘Oh, God, no,’ Gaston said. ‘We’re done for. This is out of our league, Pierre. If this takes place, we’ll have every cop in France on the streets.’
‘But it isn’t going to. I knew that bastard was bad news. Always something funny about him. You managed to follow him?’
‘Yes, he doubled around the streets for a while, then ended up at that fleapit old François runs just along the river. I saw him through the window booking in.’ He shivered. ‘But what are we going to do?’ He was almost sobbing. ‘This is the end, Pierre. They’ll lock us up and throw away the key.’
‘No they won’t,’ Pierre told him. ‘Not if we shop him, they won’t. They’ll be too grateful. Who knows, there might even be a reward in it. Now what’s Inspector Savary’s home number?’
‘He’ll be in bed.’
‘Of course he will, you idiot, nicely tucked up with his old lady where all good detectives should be. We’ll just have to wake him up.’
Inspector Jules Savary came awake cursing as the phone rang at his bedside. He was on his own, for his wife was spending a week in Lyon at her mother’s. He’d had a long night. Two armed robberies and a sexual assault on a woman. He’d only just managed to get to sleep.
He picked up the phone. ‘Savary here.’
‘It’s me, Inspector, Pierre Jobert.’
Savary glanced at the bedside clock. ‘For Christ’s sake, Jobert, it’s two-thirty in the morning.’
‘I know, Inspector, but I’ve got something special for you.’
‘You always have, so it can wait till the morning.’
‘I don’t think so, Inspector. I’m offering to make you the most famous cop in France. The pinch of a lifetime.’
‘Pull the other one,’ Savary said.
‘Margaret Thatcher. She’s staying at Choisy tonight, leaves for Valenton at two? I can tell you all about the man who’s going to see she never gets there.’
Jules Savary had never come awake so fast. ‘Where are you, Le Chat Noir?’
‘Yes,’ Jobert told him.
‘Half an hour.’ Savary slammed down the phone, leapt out of bed and started to dress.
It was at exactly the same moment that Dillon decided to move on. The fact that Gaston had followed him didn’t necessarily mean anything more than the fact that the brothers were anxious to know more about him. On the other hand …
He left, locking the door, found the backstairs and descended cautiously. There was a door at the bottom which opened easily enough and gave access to a yard at the rear. An alley brought him to the main road. He crossed, walked along a line of parked trucks, chose one about fifty yards from the hotel, but giving him a good view. He got his knife out, worked away at the top of the passenger window. After a while it gave so that he could get his fingers in and exert pressure. A minute later he was inside. Better not to smoke so he sat back, collar up, hands in pockets and waited. It was half-past three when the four unmarked cars eased up to the hotel. Eight men got out, none in uniform, which was interesting.
‘Action Service, or I miss my guess,’ Dillon said softly.
Gaston Jobert got out of the rear car and stood talking to them for a moment then they all moved into the hotel. Dillon wasn’t angry, just pleased that he’d got it right. He left the truck, crossed the road to the shelter of the nearest alley and started to walk to the warehouse in rue de Helier.
The French secret service, notorious for years as the SDECE has had its name changed to Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, DGSE, under the Mitterrand government in an attempt to improve the image of a shady and ruthless organisation with a reputation for stopping at nothing. Having said that, measured by results, few intelligence organisations in the world are so efficient.
The service, as in the old days, was still divided into five sections and many departments, the most famous, or infamous depending on your point of view, being Section Five, more commonly known as Action Service, the department responsible for the smashing of the OAS.
Colonel Max Hernu had been involved in all that, had hunted the OAS down as ruthlessly as anyone in spite of having served as a paratrooper in both Indo-China and Algeria. He was sixty-one years of age, an elegant, white-haired man who now sat at his desk in the office on the first floor of DGSE’s headquarters on the Boulevard Mortier. It was just before five o’clock and Hernu, wearing horn-rimmed reading glasses, studied the report in front of him. He had been staying the night at his country cottage forty miles out of Paris and had only just arrived. Inspector Savary watched respectfully.
Hernu removed his glasses. ‘I loathe this time of the morning. Takes me back to Dien Bien Phu and the waiting for the end. Pour me another coffee, will you?’
Savary took his cup, went to the electric pot on the stand and poured the coffee, strong and black. ‘What do you think, sir?’
‘These Jobert brothers, you believe they’re telling us everything?’
‘Absolutely, sir, I’ve known them for years. Big Pierre was OAS which he thinks gives him class, but they’re second-rate hoods really. They do well in stolen cars.’
‘So this would be out of their league?’
‘Very definitely. They’ve admitted to me that they’ve sold this man Rocard cars in the past.’
‘Of the hot variety?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Of course they are telling the truth. The ten thousand dollars speak for them there. But this man Rocard, you’re an experienced copper, Inspector. How many years on the street?’
‘Fifteen, sir.’
‘Give me your opinion.’
‘His physical description is interesting because according to the Jobert boys, there isn’t one. He’s small, no more than one sixty-five. No discernible colour to the eyes, fair hair. Gaston says the first time they met him he thought he was a nothing and then he apparently half-killed some guy twice his size in the bar in about five seconds flat.’
‘Go on.’ Hernu lit a cigarette.
‘Pierre says his French is too perfect.’
‘What does he mean by that?’
‘He doesn’t know. It’s just that he always felt that there was something wrong.’
‘That he wasn’t French?’
‘Exactly. Two facts of interest there. He’s always whistling a funny little tune. Gaston picked it up because he plays accordion. He says Rocard told him once that it was Irish.’
‘Now that is interesting.’
‘A further point. When he was assembling the machine gun in the back of the Renault at Valenton he told the boys it was a Kalashnikov. Not just bullets. Tracer, armour piercing, the lot. He said he’d seen one take out a Land Rover full of British paratroopers. Pierre didn’t like to ask him where.’
‘So, you smell IRA here, Inspector? And what have you done about it?’
‘Got your people to get the picture books out, Colonel. The Joberts are looking through them right now.’
‘Excellent.’ Hernu got up and this time refilled his coffee cup himself. ‘What do you make of the hotel business? Do you think he’s been alerted?’
‘Perhaps, but not necessarily,’ Savary said. ‘I mean what have we got here, sir? A real pro out to make the hit of a lifetime. Maybe he was just being extra careful, just to make sure he wasn’t followed to his real destination. I mean, I wouldn’t trust the Joberts an inch, so why should he?’
He shrugged and Max Hernu said shrewdly, ‘There’s more. Spit it out.’
‘I got a bad feeling about this guy, Colonel. I think he’s special. I think he may have used the hotel thing because he suspected that Gaston might follow him, but then he’d want to know why. Was it the Joberts just being curious or was there more to it?’
‘So you think he could have been up the street watching our people arrive?’
‘Very possibly. On the other hand, maybe he didn’t know Gaston was tailing him. Maybe the hotel thing was a usual precaution. An old Resistance trick from the war.’
