Mirage Page 17

  ‘Not quite,’ said Daniel, grinning in embarrassment. News that he was one of the Chel Ha’Avir’s ‘few’ earned him a hearty back pounding. Another glass of Pernod was thrust in front of him. ‘But I did manage to get myself shot down.’

  ‘Hence the limp, Daniel?’ Cartier inquired politely, still not smiling.

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ Daniel replied. He turned to Joe. ‘So what are you doing here? I thought you were in the navy?’

  Joe laughed. ‘About five of us are. But the froggies get a bit stroppy if we wear our uniforms. Not the locals - they’re a fabulous crowd. Specially the girls. Wowee.’ He waved his glass at his companions. ‘Most of this disreputable lot are civilians. We’re here supervising the construction of—’

  ‘Joe ...’ said Cartier warningly.

  ‘Oh don’t be such a wet weekend,’ said one of the older men. ‘The whole of Cherbourg knows why we’re here.’ He turned to Daniel. ‘Walter Etzan. Deputy engineer. Pleased to meet you, Daniel. You boys put up a good show last June. A bloody good show.’

  There was a chorus of agreement from the gathering around the table.

  ‘So what the hell are you doing here?’ Joe demanded. ‘I know - you’ve heard about the chicks here.’ He glowered at his companions. ‘Okay - who’s been spreading the word? Can’t trust you guys. We’ll, have half the bloody air force turning up at this rate. Then what’re our chances with the local chicks? A big, round zilch.’

  Daniel laughed. ‘I did my foot in when I was shot down. They booted me out of the air force so I thought I’d take a look round Europe.’

  ‘Yes. But why here, Mr Kalen?’ Cartier asked levelly.

  ‘I came over on the Southampton ferry.’

  ‘I mean, why to this particular part of Cherbourg?’ Cartier waved his hand at the railway marshalling yards. ‘This place isn’t exactly Cherbourg’s main tourist attraction.’

  ‘Wrap it, Jack,’ said a voice.

  Daniel smiled disarmingly. ‘I heard in the town that you were here so I thought I’d take a look - see what you’re all up to. I certainly wasn’t expecting to run into Joe. So what are you all up to, Joe?’ ‘Supervising the construction of twelve Saar boats for the navy,’ Joe replied. ‘That’s what we were told. In fact we’re really here, being worked like dogs, to save on labour costs. Specially this month. Trouble with the froggies is that they think working in August is a guillotinable offence so they’ve all buggered off to Spain with their poodles and tents leaving us to soldier on alone and unloved.’

  ‘I wondered why the place looked so deserted. How much longer do you reckon to be here?’

  Joe shrugged. ‘Two boats are nearly ready for delivery. Five next year. The rest in sixty-nine. Another two years, we reckon, then it’s hey-ho and back to the motherland and girls with legs sewn together at birth.’

  Daniel grinned and swallowed the second Pernod. ‘Serve you right for not joining the air force.’ He stood and looked at his watch. ‘Thanks for the drinks, everyone. I’d better be moving. My car’s in the town.’

  ‘Where are you heading?’ Joe asked.

  ‘Oh - south-east. Bavaria. Austria.’

  ‘I’ll run you back into town,’ Joe offered. He brushed aside Daniel’s protests and felt in his pocket for his car keys. Jack Cartier did not join in the chorus of farewells as Joe’s ancient 2CV rattled off towards the town. His gaze remained on the receding car; his expression hard and thoughtful.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of Jack,’ yelled Joe above the roar of the air-cooled engine. ‘He’s been a bit hyper-sensitive about security since this loony partial embargo business with de Gaulle. Hell’s teeth - we all had our mugs in the local paper when we first arrived so what we’re doing isn’t exactly a state secret. Anyway, the boats are paid for.’

  ‘So were the Mirages.’

  Joe laughed. ‘De Gaulle doesn’t want to upset the locals. They’re a touchy lot. Thank God they’re on our side. A daft word from the Elysée and they’d have their tractor roadblocks out.’

  He swung the car over the bridge that spanned the inner basin and hooted at a pedestrian. ‘When in Rome .... The other thing is that there’s a helluva difference between what we’re building here and fifty Mirages. A dozen little boats with forty-millimetre popguns and Mark Forty-Six torpedoes isn’t going to bring the United Arab Republic to its knees. Where’s your car?’

  ‘The theatre square.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll drop you here. The Place du Theatre’s a couple of hundred metres down that street.’ Joe swung the car into the kerb, forcing a following truck to jam on its brakes and hoot angrily. Daniel climbed stiffly out of the car and thanked Joe.

  ‘My pleasure, Daniel. Don’t forget a postcard of the Alps. 200a Rue Dom Pedro. Be seeing you. Good luck. My love to that gorgeous mother of yours when you see her.’ Joe let in the clutch and gunned the engine. The car shot away like a VI off its launching ramp, narrowly missing a cyclist.

  Daniel limped slowly along the Rue du Foch, turning over in his mind what Joe had said about the length of time that the Israeli team expected to be working in Cherbourg. He entered the Place du Theatre and found the Mini. He was too preoccupied even to notice the Zodiac parked beside his car. Normally such a magnificent automotive beast would have commanded a few minutes of his attention.

  ‘Two years,’ he muttered to himself as he started the engine. Two years! It was still early days, but everything seemed to be dropping neatly into place. Much depended on what he discovered in Switzerland.

  20

  NORTHERN FRANCE

  Most people driving in a strange country for the first time usually keep their speed in check for a day or two until they are no longer intimidated by the different laws and strange road customs.

  Not Raquel.

  As soon as an opportunity presented itself, she slammed the Zodiac into second, rammed the accelerator’s organ pedal to the floor, and screamed past the truck at eighty while leaning on the horn and cursing McNaill for not providing her with a left-hand drive car when he knew full well that she would be driving on the continent. She had spent the last ten miles of the long straight out of Caen trying to get past the truck; pulling right out to see past the huge vehicle and having to swerve back into lane to avoid oncoming vehicles. While she was at it she heaped curses on the heads of French road engineers who, unlike the British, knew how to build straight roads but had much to learn from the British about the blindingly obvious art of building divided highways. Also their failure to appreciate that traffic lights demanded sensible wattage lamps had nearly landed her in trouble at the last village. Worse - a dithering tractor, the size of a house, on the approach to Caen had resulted in her losing sight of the Mini with the result that she had no idea which route Daniel had taken out of the town. As General Patten had discovered a few years earlier, Caen was the crossroads of the Cherbourg peninsula with main routes radiating to Northern Germany, Spain, Italy and Switzerland. She had opted for the road to Orleans.

  Once past the truck, the road was clear. Raquel wound the car up to ninety and kept accelerating. She went through several villages at a speed that could have earned her a lengthy stay in the local Bastille. The Zodiac handled much better than she had expected. In terms of road holding it could never hope to match a Mini, but on the long straight roads of France stability was not a problem. Wind noise was. The vicious slipstream howled around the vinyl hood like a thousand tormented banshees, threatening to rip the thing away. The sustained racket impaired her concentration. After twenty minutes, she was forced to drop back to a steady eighty.

  She flashed past a road sign that said Orleans 100 kilometres. It was 4.00pm. The car’s ridiculous polythene seat covers made her sweat uncomfortably in the afternoon heat. She decided that if she hadn’t caught up with Daniel by the time she reached Orleans, she would spend the night in the most expensive hotel the city had to offer and return to England the following day. Maybe Daniel had gone to Paris. Maybe he
had been telling the truth all along. She hoped so. It would be one in the eye for McNaill and his stupid spy games. To hell with his research grant. Somehow she would wangle a work permit, get a job and continue her studies while living with Daniel without having to depend on the fat CIA man and his handouts. She hated the whole business. Being forced to spy on the one man whom she had ever learned to respect struck her as obscene. It had been even worse seeing Daniel in Cherbourg and not being able to be with him. McNaill could go to hell.

  ‘Shit!’

  Her body arched off the bench seat like a bow as she crammed the brake pedal through the floor. The front disc brakes screamed a deafening protest at the enormity of their task of converting the hurtling car’s one and a half tons of kinetic energy into heat. The back of the van swelled in her windscreen like a jet fighter diving at a cliff. She instinctively swung the wheel to the right. Luckily there were no kerbstones that might have rolled the charging Zodiac. Instead it careered across a stretch of grass like a maddened rhinoceros and ploughed to a sickening stop alongside cars that had come to a halt in the traffic holdup using more conventional methods than those favoured by Raquel. She was aware of startled faces in the cars turned towards her. With commendable aplomb, she picked up the road map that had fallen to the floor and studied it intently as if the spectacular manoeuvre had been intentional. At least the Zodiac’s British registration meant that the French motorists would be blaming the wrong nationality.

  She looked up at the stationary tailback of cars snaking up the hill. Some two hundred yards ahead was a green Mini-Cooper.

  21

  ORLEANS, CENTRAL FRANCE

  ‘New Orleans!’ McNaill echoed in astonishment over the telephone. ‘What in the world are you doing in New Orleans?’

  ‘I said “Orleans”, dumbo! Orleans, France. Why don’t you wash your ears out?’

  ‘Okay. So what’s happened?’

  ‘You’ve wasted five hundred pounds, that’s what happened, Mister McNaill.’

  ‘There should be some change!’ McNaill howled.

  ‘Not at the rate I’m getting through it, there won’t.’

  ‘Just tell what’s happened, honey, without getting over excited.’ Raquel gave the CIA man a detailed account of the previous twenty hours’ events.

  ‘Okay,’ said McNaill, making notes, ‘so there was a two-hour period in Cherbourg when you lost him?’ McNaill regretted using the word ‘lost’ as soon as he uttered it because it gave Raquel another opportunity to have a go at him. ‘For Chrissake calm down, woman. I know you’re doing your best. Did he return to his car carrying shopping or anything like that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you don’t know what he got up to during that two hours?’ ‘I’ve just told you that!’

  ‘What beats me,’ said McNaill, thinking aloud, ‘if he’s heading for Switzerland, why go via Cherbourg? Dover would’ve been quicker.’ ‘I’ll tell you what, Mister McNaill,’ said Raquel sweetly, ‘there’s a US Consulate here in Orleans. Why don’t you put them on the job? Maybe they’re better at gawping into crystal balls than I am.’ McNaill came close to panicking. ‘Don’t go involving them, for Chrissake!’

  ‘Only joking, Mister McNaill.’

  McNaill calmed down. The thought of Raquel involving anti- American organizations such as the US Consulate in Orleans appalled him. ‘Okay, honey. Stick with him tomorrow. Where are you staying?’

  ‘The Sofitel Hotel.’

  ‘Let me guess. Five stars?’

  ‘Yep. Right now I’m lounging on a bed the size of a football pitch. ’ ‘And our friend?’

  ‘The Commercial.’

  ‘No stars?’

  ‘That’s right, Mister McNaill. Clever old you.’

  ‘Okay, honey. You’ve got to be up early so make sure you get some sleep.’

  ‘I intend to. I haven’t slept properly for twenty-four hours.’ ‘Well at least you’ve gotten yourself a decent room for the night, honey.’

  ‘Correction, Mister McNaill. It isn’t a room - it’s a suite.’

  22

  LONDON

  Even in a well-cut hundred guinea Savile Row suit, in the lobby of the Cumberland Hotel, Robbie Kinsey looked as conspicuous as a pile of soot on an ice rink. He moved cat-like across the carpet and leaned his bulk on the reception desk. The desk of a cheaper hotel would have creaked under the load.

  ‘I’ve come to see Mr Jose Raphael,’ he grated.

  The receptionist looked worriedly at Robbie, consulted her register and dialled a room. ‘Who shall I say—’

  ‘Mr Nathan’s general manager.’

  ‘Mr Nathan’s general manager to see you, Mr Raphael.... Fine - I’ll send him up.’ She replaced the telephone and smiled at Robbie. ‘Room six-twenty, sir. Mr Raphael is expecting you.’

  As Robbie walked towards the lifts, the receptionist noticed that his briefcase was handcuffed to his wrist.

  Jose Raphael was a fixer. Anything legal not considered because illegal activities were usually more profitable. He dropped the telephone on to the cradle and returned to the bathroom, pulling on a silk bathrobe. Hotel bathrooms were his favourite place for making love. Hotel bathrooms had showers, grab handles on the walls, bottles of liquid soap, sponges and towels, good lighting, even fly swats - in fact all manner of provocatively sensual accoutrements calculated to add to the piquancy of imaginative lovemaking were provided by the management of good hotels. And, of course, bathrooms were easy to clean up afterwards. He smiled at the naked girl standing in the bath. She hadn’t moved. She was still bending over, hanging on to the taps to maintain her balance. Her naked body gleamed under its coats of baby oil like a partially sucked boiled sweet. Her nipples were still swollen and angry-looking from their recent rough manhandling.

  ‘You must go now, please,’ he said curtly. ‘I have visitors.’ He dropped some banknotes on the dresser. ‘Thirty pounds - like we agreed but you must go now.’

  The girl straightened and glared at him. ‘First I shower this gunk off.’

  ‘No - you must go.’

  The girl spun the shower controls. ‘You carry on with your visitors, Mr Smith. I won’t come out. But I can’t go back to work like this.’

  Jose sighed and closed the bathroom door. In Rio and Sao Paulo, the girls were high-spirited but they did as they were told. English girls were such amateurs. Jose opened the door when the buzzer sounded and beamed at Robbie. ‘Ah - Mr Kinsey. Please come in. Come in. A drink?’

  Robbie turned his head suspiciously to the noises coming from the bathroom.

  ‘A friend, Mr Kinsey. She won’t trouble us while we’re discussing business.’

  ‘There’s not much to discuss,’ said Robbie shortly, sitting on the bed and unlocking the handcuffs.

  ‘You’ve brought it?’

  Robbie regarded the South American steadily. ‘The first payment, Mr Raphael. Twenty-five thousand pounds. Just like you and Mr Nathan agreed in Rio.’

  Jose’s eyes were riveted on the briefcase. He sat on the bed opposite Robbie and watched as the big man released the latches. The lid swung open to reveal neat bundles of banknotes. Jose picked up one of the bundles, his eyes gleaming. He flipped through them with his thumb, his expression rapt as though the sound was music. In his excitement, he failed to notice that his bathrobe had fallen open.

  ‘Fifty bundles of five hundred each,’ said Robbie. He leaned forward suddenly and caught hold of Jose’s exposed testicles. The South American gave a yelp of surprise and fear.

  ‘Don’t make any sudden moves, Mr Raphael,’ Robbie advised softly.

  ‘I was not planning to, Mr Kinsey,’ Jose stuttered.

  ‘You weren’t the only one that Mr Nathan made contact with in Rio, Mr Raphael.’

  Jose nodded his head in vehement agreement. ‘Mr Nathan makes many friends. He is a friendly man.’

  ‘He made friends with the Cortez Gang.’

  Jose looked even more frightened.

  Ro
bbie chuckled and tightened his fingers very slightly. He picked up a bundle of banknotes with his free hand. ‘You wouldn’t believe what they’d do for just one of these bundles, Mr Raphael. They’d stoop to anything. Just remember that we know your home address, Mr Raphael. We even know what school your daughter Marie goes to. We’d really hate to have to pass on those addresses to the Cortez Gang if anything goes wrong. Do you understand, Mr Raphael?’ Jose looked fearfully down at the banana-like fingers encircling his balls. He licked his lips and nodded. ‘The first ten aeroplanes will be released the day I cable Brasilia when the first payment is made. I personally will fly home to see that they are loaded on to the ship at Rio. This is what I have agreed with Mr Nathan. You must tell him that he has nothing to worry about. Nothing.’

  The bathroom door opened. The girl stepped out fully dressed and surveyed the curious scene on the bed. ‘Diversity is the spice of life, eh, Mr Smith?’ she observed philosophically.

  23

  BELFORT, EASTERN FRANCE

  Raquel began worrying the second time Daniel drove down the left bank of the River Savoureuse. Her first thought was that he had discovered that he was being followed even though she was always careful in towns to keep several vehicles between them. It was when he pulled up by the monument of the three sieges and consulted a map that she realized he was lost. She stopped a hundred yards behind the Mini and stretched her body. After nine hours of nonstop driving across France, having to concentrate continuously on keeping Daniel in sight while avoiding being spotted herself, she was exhausted, and was fast reaching the point when she no longer cared if he did discover that he was being followed. As luck had it, the route Daniel had taken was popular with British motorists; throughout the day she had passed and had been passed by a number of British registered vehicles that had come across on the same ferry. If Daniel had noticed the yellow Zodiac, it was quite possible that he would not think anything of it.