know what they say about New Englanders and the cold, Nick?"
     I shook my head.
     "When  the temperature hits zero  all the  people in Miami die. But New
Englanders, they just close the windows. Trust my ex-wife to be different."
     If he was extending a hand of friendship, I wasn't shaking.
     Just like in the old picture  of years ago, square-jawed and  muscular,
George was still looking like something off  a  recruitment poster. The only
difference now was that  his short back and sides was  greying. His face was
cold and  unyielding. This setting  of New England family domesticity didn't
suit him at all.
     "What the fuck are you doing  here, George? We  were  supposed  to meet
downtown Wednesday, remember?"
     "Our plans  have  changed,  Nick.  We're not talking  about  a  holiday
booking."
     He  pursed his lips  and picked  up a framed photograph  from the Welsh
dresser.  I could  see it was of the  three of them.  Carrie must  have been
about ten years old in her blue checked  schoolgirl summer dress.  He was in
his medal- and badge-festooned military uniform, holding a certificate, with
his wife  standing proudly  beside him. I'd told Carrie when I first saw  it
that they looked the perfect family. She'd laughed.
     "Then hellooo ... meet the camera that lied."
     "You could have sent somebody. You didn't  have to come  in person. You
know I wanted to keep her out of this."
     He  didn't answer as I looked down at  him.  He was a man who had never
let power  and success go  to his clothes.  He  was dressed in his  civilian
uniform, a brown corduroy sports jacket  with brown suede elbow  pads, white
button-down collar shirt, and a brown tie. There had been one addition since
11  September:  he now had a Stars  and Stripes button badge pinned  to  his
right lapel. But, these days, who didn't?
     At last he looked up.
     "She didn't even give you time to dry your hair." There was just a hint
of a smile as he  thought  of  his daughter fucking me off, as he placed the
frame carefully on the tabletop.
     "I've done you a favour, son.  She needed to  find out some time. And I
happen to think she deserved to know." He bent down  and picked up a leather
folder from beside his feet.
     "Maybe this will help. Compliments of the US Government."
     He went and poured himself some  coffee from the percolator while I sat
opposite his chair at the table and unzipped the folder.
     "It's  not as if  it's a bad  thing you've done, you've  nothing to  be
ashamed of." He turned round and gestured towards the mug  in  his  hand.  I
accepted with a grudging nod. Carrie's mother would  go ape if  the wood got
marked so I took two pineapple-motif coasters from the pile in the centre of
the table as George continued, now with his back to me.
     "This isn't a war of  choice like Vietnam or Kosovo. This  is a  war of
necessity. It's in our yard now, Nick. Carrie should be proud of you."
     I  glanced  into  the folder and  saw my passport, driver's licence and
other documents. This could have waited, George."
     "What you did for  us  out there, it  had to be done, Nick. This is not
the time to be showing the world we're nice guys. This outreach thing that's
going on, every school kid gets a  Muslim  pen pal, that  kind of thing,  it
makes no sense. This isn't a time to hug, this is a time to be feared."
     I flipped through  the passport and there was something wrong, big-time
wrong. These weren't Nick Stone's documents; they belonged to someone called
Nick  Scott,  who had the same face as  me.  I looked up sharply. George was
still pouring creamer.
     "I didn't want a new name, I wanted my own back."
     He came and sat down  with the two  mugs  of coffee, passing one across
the  table then  waving my  last words aside. He kept the other in his  huge
left hand, his veteran's onyx signet ring glinting on his wedding finger. He
took a tentative sip; too hot the mug went on the coaster.
     "Do you know over six hundred people died in floods over in Algeria two
days ago? You were lucky to get in-country before the storms."
     I cupped my hands around the mug and felt the heat.
     "I heard something."
     "You know why? Because the  drains had been blocked  to stop terrorists
planting bombs under  the streets and killing people. Kind of  ironic, isn't
it?"
     I didn't  know where  this was  headed, but I wasn't feeling good about
it. I just wanted to get out of here and go and find Carrie.
     "Know what  my  job is  nowadays, Nick? To  make sure we  don't have to
block our drains.  You've helped  me do that, and the first  thing I want to
say today is thank you."
     This was really starting to worry me. I picked up the dull-looking brew
with not enough creamer, and took a sip.
     "For years,  we've  been fighting  this war  with  our hands  tied. Now
people  are  looking  for scapegoats because  America doesn't feel safe  any
more. America says,  "The  government should have known, the CIA should have
known,  the  military should  have known. Thirty billion of  our tax dollars
spent  on  intelligence, why didn't anyone know?" He paused to lift his mug.
Well,  here's  the news.  On  nine-eleven  America  had  the  exact level of
protection that it was willing to pay for. We've been telling government for
years that we need more money  to fight this thing. We told them this  would
eventually happen but Congress wouldn't give us  cash. Doesn't anyone  watch
C-Span any more  to  see what their  own government is doing?  Maybe they're
just too busy watching Jerry Springer. What do you think?"
     I shrugged, not really understanding what  he was on about, not that it
mattered. I just got the feeling the place we were going to wasn't one where
I wanted to be.
     "Did any  of the complainers see the intelligence chiefs talking  about
the new terrorism? We kept telling Congress, live on TV, there wasn't enough
money to build intelligence  networks  in the  areas where  these  scum  are
operating and that they needed to untie our hands so we could deal with this
situation. We've told them for years that this is a clear and present danger
within  America's borders that needs to be  taken on and defeated  but, hey,
guess what? Congress just said no, looking at ways of  saving a nickel."  He
took a long, slow breath of frustration before continuing.
     "So why didn't America demand more protection  from their  Congressmen?
Because  they  were  watching  one of their  two hundred other channels  and
didn't catch the  news. Didn't catch Congress telling us we didn't need more
capability. Telling us we were just looking  for something  to  replace Cold
War. Know why  Congress did that? Because  they think that's what the people
think, and they don't  want to upset  them,  because they don't want to lose
their vote. Now everything is different.  Now we have all the  nails we need
to shut the stable door, but the horse has already bolted.
     "Goddamn it, Nick, why  didn't things change after the terrorist attack
on  the USS Cole?  Seventeen American sailors  came  home  in body-bags  why
didn't that  open their eyes?  And what about  the bombing of the air  force
base  in  Saudi  Arabia? Or the  embassy  staff in  Africa?  Or our soldiers
mutilated and dragged through the  streets  of Somalia?  Why wasn't  anybody
letting us do anything then?
     "Because  those guys up on the Hill were just  too damned busy worrying
about  the civil rights of  paedophiles and rapists, worrying about interest
rates  on credit cards that the voters use to buy wide screen digital TVs to
make them feel life is good. But those home-movie  centres don't seem to get
C-Span. Nobody knows what's going on, and that's just how Congress wanted to
keep  it.  Then they have the gall to ask  us:  "Why  did  they  attack  the
innocent  people? Why didn't they go after  the  military?" Well, the answer
is, that's a done deal, but no one took any notice."
     He  picked  up his mug and looked genuinely  sad, the first  time I had
ever  seen him like that. He seemed to be lost in his own world for a  while
until I cut in.
     "So now what?"
     "Now?" The mug went down.
     "We've  got  the money. A  billion-dollar  down-payment. The problem is
finding a  way to fight  these  people. They don't have anything  to defend.
It's not like the  Cold War, or any war, that we've  seen before. There's no
real estate  to fight  over,  and the  notion  of deterrence doesn'tapply to
these  guys. There's  no treaty to be  negotiated, no arms control agreement
that's going to guarantee our security. The only way  we  can deal with them
is to hit them hard and fast  and take them down. You know it's crazy only a
few  months ago,  they were saying a hundred  million  for the  Navy was too
much..."
     He paused and reflected. I wasn't too  sure if this was all part of the
performance: George might be sad, but he still had a job to do.
     "But, hey, you can't unring a  bell, Nick. I'm here  because I want you
to work for me. For us. Nick Scott would be your cover name."
     I shook my head.
     "The deal was one job. You agreed on that."
     "Events have taken a serious  turn  these last couple days,  Nick." His
voice was steely, his gaze level.
     "Al-Qaeda  have  upped the  ante,  these  guys are  just programmed for
trouble. I can't tell you how unless you commit. But I can tell you, this is
the front page  of the threat matrix the president  gets to read  every day.
These are scary days, Nick. Yesterday's ran to thirty pages." He looked down
at the table and traced a figure of eight with his mug.
     "You know  what? At the  moment I feel like  a  blind  watchmaker, just
throwing the components into the case and waiting to see what works."
     I didn't look up, because I  knew  he  was waiting,  his eyes  ready to
ambush mine.
     "I need your help, Nick." It was a challenge, not an entreaty.
     Things are good here with Carrie."
     "Are they?" He gave an exaggerated frown.
     "I don't think she took it too well. She's like her mom."
     The arse hole Divide and rule. He'd done it on purpose. I forced myself
to stay calm.
     "You didn't tell her everything, did you?"
     "Son,  I don't even tell God everything.  I'll leave that until  I meet
him face to face. But, right now, I see it as my duty to make sure there's a
big fucking bunch of al-Qaeda ahead of me in the line."
     He stood  up and  turned his back to me again as he  placed the  framed
picture back on the dresser. Maybe he didn't want me to see how proud he was
of the way he'd delivered his lines.
     "The secret of combating terrorism is simple don't get terrorized. Keep
a clear head  and fight back on their terms. That's the only way we're going
to win this war or, at least, contain it, keep a lid on it. But we can  only
do that if we take the battle to them, with every means at our disposal. And
that's  where you come in, Nick.  I need  to stop the drains getting blocked
and fast. Do you want to know more, Nick, or am I wasting my time here?"
     I looked at him and took another mouthful of  coffee. I'd like to  know
what happened to Zeralda's head."
     There was a bit of a smile.
     "It came back here and was presented to his cousin in Los  Angeles on a
silver salver. By all accounts it kind of freaked him out."
     "What about the grease ball who was there  with him? Was he the source?
Is that why no one else was to be killed?"
     "Greaseball?" He managed to complete the smile.
     "I like it. Yes, he was and still is a  source, and a good one too good
to lose just yet." The smile faded.
     "Nick,  have you  ever heard of hawallaT I'd  spent enough  time in the
Middle East to know it,  and when I was a kid in London, all the  Indian and
Pakistani families used it to send cash back home.
     "Like Western Union, but without the ADSL lines, right?"
     He nodded.
     "OK,  so  what we've  got is a  centuries-old system  of  moving money,
originally  to  avoid  taxes and  bandits along the ancient Silk  Road,  and
nowadays to avoid the money laundering laws. A guy in San Francisco wants to
send some cash to, say, his mother in Delhi. So, he walks into one  of these
haw  alla bankers,  maybe  a shopkeeper,  maybe  even  working in  the money
markets  in San Fran. The  hawallada  takes  his  cash  and gives the  guy a
codeword.  The  hawallada then faxes, calls  or  emails his  counterpart  in
Delhi,  maybe a restaurant owner, and gives him the  codeword and the amount
of the transfer. The guy's mother goes into the Delhi restaurant,  says  the
codeword and collects. And that's it takes less than thirty  minutes to move
huge sums of money anywhere in the world, and we have no track of it.
     "These  haw  alla  guys  settle   their  debts  and  commissions  among
themselves. In Pakistan, business  is huge. There's maybe five,  six billion
dollars US sent back there every  year by migrant workers just from the Gulf
states.  But  only  one  billion  goes  through  normal   banking  channels.
Everything else goes  via  hawalladas.  These  guys work on  total  trust, a
handshake  or a  piece  of  paper  between  them.  It's  been  going on  for
centuries,  must  be about  the  second  oldest profession. It  even gets  a
mention in the New Testament." He gave me a wry smile.
     "Carrie's mother is a very religious woman. You know the tale of Ananis
and Safia?"
     As if. I shook my head.
     "Go read some day. These haw alla guys were hiding money that they were
due to give  to Peter, so  they  were deemed  sinners.  And  when they  were
confronted  with  their  shame they  just  fell down and died." There  was a
pause.
     "That's  what you did for us, Nick: you made Zeralda fall down and die.
This haw  alla network has been used to funnel money to the terrorist groups
in  the Kashmir  valley. It's  been  used by the heroin trade coming out  of
Afghanistan, and now it's here, in the US.
     "This  is not good,  Nick. Zeralda was a hawallada, and we  reckon he'd
moved between four and five million dollars into this country  for terrorism
in the last four years. You can be sure the legit banks are doing their  bit
now and cracking down on laundering  all around the world, but with haw alla
we can't check accounts or monitor electronic transfers.
     "Well,  we've  got  to  close  it  down.  Al-Qaeda  is  retreating  and
regrouping their assets in both manpower and cash. We've got to turn off the
faucet, Nick, and we've got to  do  that before al-Qaeda moves all its funds
to safe harbours. Money  is the oxygen for their  campaign in  this  country
your new country. I say again, am I wasting my time here, Nick?"
     I really needed room to think.
     "What happened to the cousin in Los Angeles?"
     "Let's put it  this way, we didn't stand in  his way when he  jumped on
the first plane he could get out of the States. All he left behind was a few
clothes,  a  pair  of leather  motorcycle gloves, a  Qur'an, and maybe sixty
pages of Arabic text off  the Internet. All  his  accounts  are  frozen, but
we're  not after  his  money. We  want  him to go spread  the news  of  what
happened to the other half of the transaction route. He's back in Algeria, a
very scared man, and much more use to us there than he would be sitting in a
penitentiary."
     The  coffee was almost cold. I took another sip to buy myself some more
thinking time.
     "See,  Nick,  you were  the key. The key that switched on the  power of
terror.  Bringing back that head showed these guys that for  us anything  is
possible  as  well. They've got to know  we're coming for  them,  that  they
shouldn't start reading any long books, know what I mean?"
     He liked that one and took another swig himself.
     "As Rumsfeld just told the world, Nick, there will be covert operations
and they'll be secret even in success."
     "Did you know beforehand that Zeralda was into boys? We were briefed it
was just hookers."
     "As I said, even God  doesn't know everything I  know. I wanted to make
sure you guys finished the job.  Not being  mentally  geared up for it, then
seeing  something  as sick  as  that  would make it  ...  shall I  say  less
confusing? I just figured you'd be thinking  it could be your own kid. Am  I
right?"
     I nodded. The expression in those boys' eyes had reminded me of the way
Kelly looked when her parents were killed.
     "Nick,  I  understand what  you want  from life now,  but  things  have
changed for all of us since September, and everything's  ratcheted  up again
in the  last  twenty-four hours.  My grandfather was only here a year before
fighting for this country in the First World War. My  father did the same in
the Second,  because he wanted this  country  to  remain free. I've done the
same all my life, and even found myself crying on nine-eleven and that's not
a place I often go to.
     "Do  this  new job for  me,  and  I guarantee you'll  get a Nick  Stone
passport. All you'll need  to do is swear your oath of allegiance and that's
it, you're one  of the seven hundred  thousand  new Americans this year." He
switched on the kind of expression  you normally  only see in  stained-glass
windows.
     "You're one of us now, Nick. All the people you love  live  here. Think
about Kelly. What world do  you  want her  to grow up in?  The kind of place
where you freak  out every time she flies here to see you? Who knows?  It'll
take a while, but Carrie will understand. Think about it, Nick, just think."
     I'd done my thinking. I'd heard all I needed to hear.
     I stood up, handing him the empty mug.
     "No. I've  done  my bit. We had a deal  and my only job now is to  make
things right with Carrie."
     Eight.
     I ran out on to the street. I didn't need to  be  Oprah Winfrey  or Dr.
Phil to work out where she had gone  I mean, where do  you  go when  the man
you've poured your heart out to turns round and head butts you?
     I  found  the Plymouth and  walked down into  Little  Harbor.  She  was
sitting on the  beach,  staring out at  the houses on the other  side of the
bay. My footsteps crunched on ice as I approached.
     "Carrie, I'm so sorry ..."
     She turned very slowly to face me.
     "How  could you?"  Her  voice  was weary, defeated, empty  even of  the
bitterness I expected and, I guessed, deserved.
     "How do you think this makes me feel? I trusted you."
     "I'm  not turning into your dad. It  was just that once.  One job. It's
over now."
     "Of all people ... He caused Aaron's death, remember? The same  man who
was going to blow  up  an American cruise ship just so the White House would
have the excuse to march  back  into Panama. Doesn't that mean  anything  to
you?"
     I hated it when she looked at me like  that. It was as though she could
see right through  me, and it wasn't a view  I'd  ever much enjoyed. I'm  so
sad, Nick. I'm feeling bereaved all over again. I feel  so goddamn stupid; I
thought we had something good happening here."
     I sat down beside her.
     "Look, I'm sorry  I couldn't tell you,  but  what could  I have said to
make it sound all right?"
     The  truth,  that's all I needed and always need from you. The truth  I
can  handle, the truth I can work with, but this ..." She turned away, tears
running down her face.
     I thought about Zeralda's head, and gave mine a shake.
     "Carrie,  you remember how  it  was in Panama. You know how these  jobs
work. There are some truths you really don't want to know..."
     This  has been the story  of my life, Nick. I just  can't risk  it  all
happening again. I know  it's selfish of me, but I don't think I can take it
any more. That man is responsible for so much pain in my life. He sacrificed
me and my mom by  dedicating himself  to his double-dealing world. But  even
so,  I allowed myself to  be sucked in, and  because  of it my  husband  was
killed. I kid myself I blame George for Aaron's death, but do you know what?
Really, I blame myself. I let my own father exploit me,  the way he exploits
everyone.
     "In Panama, he  knew I was  desperate to  get a passport  for Luz so we
could get back  to the States.  But I've never gotten  anything from him for
free. Even as a little girl, I always had to earn it first."
     I watched her as her eyes  concentrated on the water  but  her mind was
elsewhere.
     "Aaron was  right all along. He told me that once it started and George
knew we were  desperate for the passport, it would never stop because George
wouldn't let it. And you know what? He was right, because here we are again.
How can I let myself be  with  you until I  know you've no longer got even a
toe in that world?
     "I've made the  mistake  of depending  on  you. Depending on you  being
there when  I wake up in  the morning. And, worse  still, Luz has started to
get used to  you being around, too. I'm not going to run  the risk of having
to tell her that another person she loved, that she relied upon, is lying in
some ditch with a bullet in the back of his head ..."
     I reached out to touch her but she stiffened and moved away.
     "You could have applied for citizenship. You could have  gone  back  to
school,  had  a home, you  could  have  had me.  Doesn't any  of  that  mean
anything?"
     I didn't answer her immediately.
     "I can't think of anything I'd  like more. It's the full fairytale, for
me." I didn't  know how she did it, but  I always found myself saying things
to her that I thought I'd kept well buried.
     "Perhaps the real  truth is  that I can't quite believe there's a place
for me in your  perfect world. Remember what I said to you in the jungle? My
world may look like a pile  of shit' 'but at  least you sometimes get to sit
on the top of it..."
     I looked at her, hoping for even a  hint of a smile, but I  hadn't come
close.
     "That's not the issue here." Her voice was still sad and tired.
     "You lied to me,  Nick, that's the long and the  short of it. Nothing's
changed.  You  betrayed what I thought we had. Oh, God, when I  think what I
said to you today, I feel so ridiculous."
     My  heart was pounding as I stood behind  her,  trying to think what  I
could say.
     "We just need time, Carrie. We just need time..."
     She shook her head. The  tears were  running off her face now and on to
her Puffa jacket, staining the nylon a darker green.
     "You'd  better go. Both of us have got  to  do  some thinking.  I don't
think I can  just now. When you're ready to  come back to  me  on my  terms,
Nick, give me a call.
     "Until then, if it has to be  you who does  my father's dirty  work for
him,  Nick, it has  to  be you. I'll  never forget what  you did  for  us in
Panama. I'll always admire the man you are, and I'll always love the man you
might have allowed yourself to  be. But don't  expect Luz and me to come and
put flowers on your grave ..."
     Nine.
     Navigation  lights  flashing  in the  gloom,  an American  Airways  jet
thundered down the runway and took off, quickly disappearing  into dense low
cloud.  I turned  back from  the window and looked at George. His finger was
jabbing a copy of the Boston Globe so I could see the front page pictures of
dead Taliban scattered across Afghanistan.
     "A  wounded  animal is the  most dangerous of  all, Nick. There will be
another strike; it's  just a matter of where and when." He gave me a look of
such intensity that I began  to realize  I was going to be going sooner than
later.
     "We've  received A grade int  in the last few days that they're putting
something together for  Christmas.  But  we  have no idea of  the target and
that's where you come in."
     We'd come straight to the Hilton at Logan airport,  and it  had already
been  getting dark  when we arrived. He had booked the room well in advance.
The arse hole had known precisely how Carrie would react when she  heard the
truth, and had still been in the kitchen, waiting for me, when I got back to
the house. He didn't exactly have to twist my arm to  get me working for him
again. I'd already made up  my mind on the walk back  to Gregory Street  or,
rather, it had been made up for me. The fact was, I  had nowhere else to go.
What was I going to do? Check  into a motel down  the road and try  to patch
things up  with  her over  the next few months, between pulling pints at the
yacht club?  Go back  to  the  UK? There was  nothing  for  me  there except
trouble; George would make sure of that.  No, if I  wanted to stay in the US
to  see Kelly and perhaps really get a life,  I had to play by his rules. My
immediate objective had to be to earn a  real passport, and when the job was
over, just see which way the wind was  blowing. Well, that was where my half
an hour of thinking had taken me,  and  it had seemed  to make  some kind of
sense at the time.
     "You have to  ask yourself, Nick, which is  scarier, the  noise  or the
silence?  Even before nine-eleven, we knew  that there  were al-Qaeda active
service units  out there, and they haven't gone away." He was sitting at the
desk to the left  of the  TV and mini-bar; the chair had been turned to face
the bed where I was lying against the headboard.
     "You got anything on them?"
     "If only ..." He jabbed at the newspaper again.
     "The word is they'll all  have mad eyes and beards not so. This side of
the  Atlantic   they're   just  ordinary,   respectable   people.   Computer
technicians, accountants, realtors; sometimes even born and raised here." He
looked around the room.
     "Even hotel receptionists, some  of  them married  with two point  four
children, an MPV and a mortgage.
     They don't have  to hide themselves  in ethnic ghettos, Nick. They live
in our neighbour  hoods shop  in our malls, wear Gap, hey, even drink Coke."
He took a can from the minibar and lifted the ring pull
     "These  folks  are well-spoken,  intelligent pillars of the  community.
They come here as kids, lie low, blend in, bide their time classic sleepers.
But  they don't even have to be foreigners.  Guys are converting to Islam by
the hundred in our own  prisons and,  believe  me, they're not  turning into
Allah's answer to Billy Graham..."
     He sat back, the can resting on his knee.
     "We  don't know who, or how many, are in the ASUs. All we know is these
sons  of  bitches are  ready and waiting to  press  the  button  on December
twenty-fourth."
     He  pulled  some  papers  from  his  alloy briefcase, and a fistful  of
airline tickets for Nick Scott.
     "These  are copies  of  stuff found  by  Special Forces in Afghanistan,
transcripts  from  tactical  interrogations of  prisoners, and more in-depth
material from  al-Qaeda,  rendered in  Pakistan." He sat back in  the  chair
while I scanned the first few pages.
     "It  confirms  three things. One, al-Qaeda  have the  knowhow to  build
radiological  bombs.  Two,  they've   gotten  their  hands   on  substantial
quantities of radioactive material in the US. And three, they plan to use it
December twenty-fourth. Dirty bombs you know what I'm saying, don't you?"
     I knew what he was saying. These things had radioactive material packed
around  conventional  explosives.  When  detonated,  the immediate explosion
would cause just as much damage as a conventional weapon, but it  would also
blast  radiation  into the  surrounding  atmosphere.  An area  the  size  of
Manhattan or bigger,  if  the wind blew would have to be cordoned off  while
they sandblasted buildings, replaced tarmac,  bulldozed  contaminated  earth
and for  years after, the queues of cancer  victims would grow outside every
hospital.  Dirty bombs are a perfect terrorist weapon;  they don't just blow
you up, they rip out the nation's heart.
     George was reading my thoughts.
     "We're talking Chernobyl, Nick.  Chernobyl, in our own backyard ..." He
paused, holding up his hands, fighting back the words.
     "And if that happens, they've won.  No  matter what happens after. Just
imagine what  will happen  if  a truck with  maybe  four  thousand pounds of
homemade explosive  and  radioactive waste drives at  ninety  into the White
House railings,  right on to  the  lawn, maybe into  the house  itself. Now,
imagine another heading  into  Rockefeller Plaza, when  you  can't  move for
Christmas shoppers,  and another, say, on Wall Street. Or maybe  not trucks,
maybe  twenty people on  foot, in malls across Boston, carrying  two, three,
four pounds of contaminated HE in  ac arrier  bag  or  strapped  under their
winter  coats. Imagine them detonating all at the  same time. Imagine  that,
Nick. I do, and haven't slept for weeks."
     He squeezed the empty can of Coke  like he was throttling the life  out
of it, and this time it wasn't part of the act.
     "According  to  these documents,  their  guys  have  been stealing  and
storing isotopes  for two years,  the  stuff used in hospitals and industry.
We're talking a big enough stockpile  to make either a  lot of small devices
or maybe  five  or  six  Oklahomas  we  could be talking  of  both truck and
pedestrian attacks."
     He leant forward, elbows on knees.
     "We  have one straw to grasp  at. These guys  are on a suicide mission.
But," he raised his  right  index finger,  'but  they're not going  to do  a
damned thing until they know family business is taken care of."
     "You mean,  the ASUs won't commit until they get  confirmation that Dad
has a new Landcruiser with all the trimmings?"
     "Exactly.  They  may be  crazy,  but they're not stupid.  So, here's my
thinking. The set-up funds for these attacks  have  been coming into  the US
for  nearly three years,  and  they'd  have had  everything in place  before
hitting the WTC  because they'd know the shutters would  come down  straight
afterwards.
     "We  know from the Zeralda connection that al-Qaeda channelled the cash
to their ASUs in the US via  three hawalladas based in the South  of France.
These guys  would also get the compensation money to the ASUs' families, via
their  counterparts in  Algeria." He smiled for the  first  time  since we'd
entered the room.
     "But that isn't  going  to  happen now, since  you  did  your John  the
Baptist trick with Zeralda.  All hawallada activity has come  to a  halt  in
Algeria, and other al-Q money-movers have followed suit.
     "So,  the way it looks is that these French hawalladas  have a mass  of
cash around three million US which they still  have to get  to the families.
If not, no attack.
     "We know from our source in France that an al-Qaeda team is on its  way
there  they're going to physically package up the money and take  it back to
Algeria." He  paused, to make sure I got the message.  Tour job, Nick, is to
make sure that doesn't happen."
     In  George's language, we had to  'render' them. In  mine,  once we had
identified  the  three  hawalladas  with  the  help of  information from the
source, whom I'd be contacting once I got into France, we were to lift them,
drug them,  and leave them at a  DOP [drop off point]. From there, they'd be
picked up and taken  aboard an American  warship that would be anchored near
Nice on a goodwill visit. Once on board,  a team of interrogators would  get
to work on them  straight away, to find out who  their US counterparts were.
There'd be  no time to bring them back to  the States, it  had to be done in
theatre.  They'd not enjoy coming round  in the belly  of that  warship; the
inquisition would be doing their stuff to protect their own flesh  and blood
back  home,  not  some far-off  bit of  desert or jungle.  It  makes quite a
difference. Once the hawalladas had been sucked dry, maybe they'd have their
heads chopped off, too. I didn't want to know, and I didn't much care.
     "The FBI  and CIA are  doing everything they can to locate these ASUs,"
George said.
     "But as far as I'm concerned,  these hawalladas  are the quickest route
to fingering  the  guys  sitting  at home  in New Jersey  or wherever with a
truckload of caesium wrapped around some homemade explosive."
     "What if the source doesn't come up with the goods?"
     George waved this aside.
     "Everything's in a state of flux. Just get down there, meet up with the
two guys who'll be on your team, and wait for my word on the source meet."
     He looked me directly in the eye.
     "So much depends on you, Nick.  If you succeed, none of these guys gets
to see December  fourteenth,  let alone twenty-four. But  whatever  happens,
that money must not make it to Algeria."
     He sat back in his chair once more and spread his hands.
     "And  it goes without  saying, this has to  be  done without the French
knowing. It takes time to go through all that human  rights  and due process
bureaucratic  crap that's time we don't have." "And we have to make sure the
rendered haivalladas  still  have their heads on, so they  can  chat  to you
people, right?"
     George helped himself to another  Coke. I didn't notice him offering me
one.
     "I  don't  have to tell you this, Nick. If  someone hits  you and  then
threatens to hit you some more, you've got to stop them. Period."
     The can went into the bin and he started collecting together  the stuff
on the bed and  put it back  into his briefcase. The briefing was over. "You
leave in  the morning. Enjoy  the flight I hear Air France have  some  great
wines."
     He stood up, tightened his tie, and buttoned up his jacket.
     "We have a lot of catching up to do if we're to win this war, Nick, and
you're now part of that catch-up."
     He turned back half-way to the door.
     "Until they kill you, of course, or I find someone better."
     He gave me a big smile, but I wasn't sure he meant it as a joke.
     Ten.
     WEDNESDAY, 21 NOVEMBER, 10:37 hrs
     I  sat in  the  laverie on  boulevard Carnot, watching my sheets tumble
about in the  soapy water,  deafened by  the constant  roar of traffic  that
drowned even the drone of the washing machines. I was waiting to RV with the
source.  The RV  was to take place  across the busy  boulevard at  Le Natale
brasserie  at eleven, either inside  or  at a  pavement table, depending  on
where the source decided to sit. She was calling that particular shot, and I
didn't like it.
     The  mid-morning  temperature had  climbed into  the low  sixties.  The
thinnest clothes I'd  brought  with  me from Boston were  what I was wearing
now,  jeans and a blue  Timberland sweatshirt,  but judging by one or two of
the passers-by, I wouldn't have been out of place in winter furs.
     Le Natale was a  cafe-tab ac where you could buy a lotto ticket and win
a  fortune, put  all the winnings on a  horse, watch the  race  while eating
lunch or just throwing coffee  down your neck, then buy  your road tax and a
book of stamps on the way out.
     I had  picked the launderette  for  cover.  The sheets  had been bought
yesterday after  I'd recced this area. You always have to have a  reason for
being somewhere.
     George had told me three days ago that the source would be supplying me
with details  of a pleasure boat that was parking some time soon,  somewhere
along  the coast. On board would  be the al-Qaeda  team,  an  as yet unknown
number  of people, who would  be collecting the money  from  three different
hawalladas  before  taking  it  back  to Algeria.  We  were  to  follow  the
collectors, see who they picked up the  money from, then do our job the same
day. There was no time to waste. George wanted them in that warship ASAP.
     I was the only one in the laverie, apart from the old woman who did the
service  washes. Every few minutes she hitched up  her shabby brown overcoat
and dragged her slippered  feet across  the  worn  lino  tiles to  test  the
dampness of the clothes in  the tumble  dryers. She kept dabbing the clothes
against her cheeks and seemed to be complaining to herself about the lack of
drying power every time. She'd then close the door  and mumble some more  to
me  while I smiled  back at her and nodded, my eyes already returning to the
target the other side of the plate glass window, or as much of it as I could
see through the posters for Playboy and  how 'super economique' the machines
were.
     I'd been  in the South of France four days  now, having left  Boston on
the first flight to Amsterdam, then on to Paris before finally arriving here
on the eighteenth.  I got  myself a  bed in  a hotel  in the old quarter  of
Cannes, behind the synagogue and the fruit and cheap clothes market.
     Today was  the day  the covert three-man  team I commanded was about to
take the war to al-Qaeda.
     My washing machine was spinning like mad as a stream of people moved in
and out of  the brasserie doors, buying their Camel Lights or Winstons along
with their paper as the world screamed past in both directions.
     The  money we  were after  from the hawalladas had been  made  here  in
Europe. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban between them controlled nearly  seventy per
cent  of  the world's heroin trade. The  haw  alla system had been used very
successfully to move  that cash to the US to finance the ASUs. The old woman
pulled  her weary body up once more,  mumbling to herself as I  pretended to
look interested in a man  on  a  moped  who  was weaving in and out  of  the
traffic with  only  one  hand  on his handlebars. The  other was  holding  a
plastic coffee cup. His helmet straps flew out each side of his helmet as he
tried to take a gulp at the same time as cutting up a Citroen.
     This was a good place to watch the RV before making contact, and it hid
me from the CCTV camera mounted outside on a  high  steel pole. It seemed to
be monitoring the  traffic  on the incredibly busy four-lane boulevard  that
connected  the autoroute  with the beach,  but for  all I knew  it  might be
movable. I wasn't taking  any chances. There was not  only al-Qaeda and  the
hawalladas to worry about, but French police  and  intelligence surveillance
as well.
     Since this was a totally deniable operation, every precaution had to be
made to ensure the  security  of  our  team. The French had  vast experience
fighting Islamic fundamentalism. They  had  an excellent human  intelligence
network in North Africa and could discover  that we were  operating  on  the
Riviera at any time. It didn't matter  how or why; they might have monitored
the al-Qaeda  money  movement,  and we'd  get  caught in the middle. Then we
would be really in the shit,  as no one would be coming to help us. In fact,
George would  probably help the French to convict us as terrorists to  cover
his arse. I still wondered  late at night why the fuck I did these jobs. Why
did I not  only take them on but get fucked over by the very people I should
have had most reason to trust? The money was good well, it was  now, working
for  George. But I still couldn't come  up with the  answer, so last night I
used  the same mantra I'd always muttered to stop me thinking too much about
anything.
     "Fuck it."
     This meet with the source was the first of many high-risk activities my
team was going  to undertake in the next few  days.  I had no  idea who this
woman was; for all I knew, the French, or even al-Qaeda, might already be on
to her, and I'd be caught up in a total gang fuck on day one.
     The cafe  had large, clear windows, unobstructed by posters or  blinds,
which was something else I didn't like. It  was too easy  for  people to see
in,  especially people with  telephoto lenses. A red canvas awning protected
some of the outside tables  for those who wanted to keep out of the sun. Two
customers sat at different tables reading newspapers under it, and a  couple
of  women  seemed to  be comparing  the hairstyles of their little puffed-up
poodles. The Riviera's morning routine was just generally mooching along.
     A few of the women had to be Italian. They didn't so much walk as glide
in their  minks,  but maybe they were  simply  steering  clear of the poodle
shit. Everyone in Cannes seemed  to own one  of the  heavily coiffed  little
shifters, and trotted them along on their fancy leads, or looked on lovingly
as they did a dump in the  middle of the pavement. I'd already had to scrape
three loads off my Timberlands since arriving,  and had now become a bit  of
an expert at the Cannes Shuffle, dodging and weaving as I walked.
     To my right, the boulevard headed  gently uphill, getting steeper as it
passed two or three kilometres of car dealerships and unattractive apartment
blocks before hitting Autoroute  8, which took you either to Nice and Italy,
about an hour away, or down to Marseille and the Spanish border.
     To my  left, and  about  five minutes' walk  downhill,  lay the railway
station, the  beach and the main Cannes tourist  traps. But the only part of
town I was interested  in today was where I was right now.  In about fifteen
minutes the source should be turning up wearing a red pashmina and a pair of
jeans;  she was  going  to  sit  at  a  table and read a month-old  copy  of
Paris-Match, one with a picture of Julia Roberts on the cover.
     I didn't like the physical set-up for this meet. I'd taken a coffee and
croissant inside the  cafe  yesterday for  a recce and could  see no  escape
route. It wasn't looking good: large, unobstructed windows letting the world
see what was happening inside, and an exposed pavement  outside. I  couldn't
leap off afire escape at the back, or go to the toilets and climb out of the
window if anyone came barging through the main door. I would  have to go for
the virgin ground of the kitchen.  I  had  no choice: I had  to make contact
with the source.
     The tumbler  door  opened  behind me on  to  a batch  of  very  flowery
patterned sheets. I  shifted my weight on to my left buttock and adjusted my
bum-bag, which hung over the fly  of my jeans and contained my passport  and
wallet.  The bag never left me, and to help make sure it stayed that way I'd
threaded a wire through  the  belt. Pickpockets in the crowds down here used
Stanley  knives to slit belts and straps, but  they'd  have had a  tough job
with this one.
     The old woman was still mumbling away to herself, then raised her voice
to me, looking for my  agreement on the crap state of the machines. I turned
and  did  my bit,  "Oui, oui,"  smiled and turned  my eyes  back towards the
target.
     Tucked  down the front of my  jeans  was a worn-out 1980s Browning  9mm
with a thirteen-round mag. It was a French black-market job, which, like all
the team's weapons, had  been supplied by a contact  I  had yet to see, whom
I'd nicknamed Thackery. I  hadn't laid eyes on  him; I just had this picture
in  my head of a clean-shaven  thirty-something with short  black hair.  The
serial  number had been  ground out, and if the Browning  had  to  be  used,
ballistics would link it  to local Italian gangs. There were  enough of them
around here, with the border so close. And, of course, I had bought myself a
Leatherman. I'd never leave home without one.
     As I checked up and down the road and across once more at the cafe, the
world  was buzzing around me  and  my  new  girlfriend in  the  launderette.
Schoolkids raced around on motor  scooters, some with helmets, some without,
just like the  police on their BMWs.  Small cars  were driven like ballistic
missiles in both directions. Christmas decorations were rigged up across the
boulevard; the most  popular number this  year was white lights in the shape
of stars and lighted candles.
     I thought about  how much  things had moved  on since  Logan.  "All the
people that you care about live here." George had known exactly what  he was
doing even before he  got me to take  Zeralda's head.  Blind watchmaker,  my
arse.
     I scanned up and down the boulevard for the hundredth time, looking for
anybody wearing red  on blue, checking to make sure no one  else was lurking
around waiting to jump me once I'd made contact.
     I had a contingency  plan if there  was a problem  before the meet.  My
escape  route was out of the laverie service  door,  which was open. It  was
lined  with bags  of left  washing and  lost socks  and  underwear,  and led
through a small yard into  an alleyway. At the end was a low wall, which led
into the back-yard of the perfumery on  the boulevard to my left. From there
I'd  slip into an adjacent apartment  block and hide in  the basement garage
until the coast was clear.
     I checked traser. Four minutes to  eleven. To my left I caught a  flash
of red  among the pedestrians on the kerb, waiting to cross in the direction
of  the cafe. I  hadn't seen  it before; she  must have come from one of the
shops or the other tab ac further down the hill. She'd probably been sitting
having a coffee, doing pretty much what I'd been doing. If so, it was a good
sign; at least she was switched on. I kept the patch of red in my peripheral
vision, not searching for the face in case there was eye contact.
     There  was a gap in the traffic and the pashmina made a move.  It was a
man;  he  had a  mag  rolled  up  in  his  right  hand  and  a  small  brown
porte-monnaie  or fag-bag, as a few of my new  fellow countrymen called them
in his left. If I was wrong, I'd soon be finding out.
     Once over  the road he went  up to an empty pavement table  and  took a
seat. As  in  all French  cafes,  the  chairs were  facing the road  so  the
clientele could  people-watch. He got settled and  laid the mag out flat  on
the table. I continued to watch through the traffic. A waist coated waitress
went over and took his order  as he brought a packet of cigarettes out  from
the fag-bag. I couldn't see much of his face, owing to  the distance and the
volume  of traffic  between us, but he was wearing sunglasses and was either
dark-skinned or had a permatan. I'd find out later. I didn't look at him any
more  now. My gaze  shifted elsewhere; there were more important  things  to
check. Was it safe to approach him? Was  anyone else  about, waiting to fuck
up my day?
     I ran through my plan  once more in  my head: to go and  sit near  him,
order coffee and, when it felt safe, come out with my check statement. I was
going to point to Julia and say, "Beautiful, isn't she?" His reply would be,
"Yes, she is, but not as much as Katharine Hepburn, don't you think?" Then I
was going to  get up and go over and sit by him and start talking Katharine.
That would be  the cover  story: we just met and started  talking about film
stars  because of  the cover  of the magazine.  I  didn't know his name,  he
didn't know mine, we didn't know each other, we were just chatting away in a
cafe. There must always be a reason for being where you are.
     I still felt uneasy, though.  Meeting  inside  the cafe would have been
bad  enough, with nowhere  to run,  but outside  was even worse. He could be
setting  me  up  for  a snapshot that could be used against  me,  or maybe a
drive-by shooting. I  didn't know this character, I didn't know  what he was
into All I knew was that it had to be done, no matter what was out there; if
everything went to plan, I would come away with the information we needed.
     I  stood up, adjusted my  sweatshirt and bum-bag, and nodded to the old
woman.  She  folded  some  jeans and  mumbled something as  I set  off left,
downhill towards  the town centre. There was  no need to watch Pashmina Man.
His window for  the RV was  thirty  minutes,  he was going to be there until
eleven thirty.
     Everything seemed  normal as I  passed  the perfumery. Women were doing
their sniff tests on  overpriced  bottles, and young men sporting the Tintin
look, with plucked eyebrows and waxed-up hair, were wrapping their purchases
in  very expensive  looking  boxes.  The tab ac  further  along wasn't  that
packed. A few old boys were drinking small beers and buying lotto tickets. I
couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.
     I reached the  pedestrian crossing about fifty metres further  downhill
and, once on  the  RV side  of the road,  I headed back up  towards the  red
pashmina past the news stand and patisserie. Only in France could a man wear
one of these things and not even get a second glance.
     As I approached I got a glimpse  of him in  profile, sipping  espresso,
smoking and  watching the world pass  by  a  little too intently.  He looked
familiar, with his slicked-back hair,  slightly thinning on top,  and round,
dark face.  I got a few paces  closer before I  recognized him,  and  almost
stopped in my tracks. It was the grease ball from Algeria.
     Eleven.
     I  ducked into the first doorway to my left, trying my hardest  to look
interested in the glass display cabinets along the wall while I collected my
thoughts. The elderly shopkeeper gave me a smile and a genial "Bonjour1'.
     "Bonjour, parlez-vous anglais?"
     "Yes."
     "Just looking, thank you."
     He  left me alone  as I looked at the array of wooden and plastic pipes
and  all  the paraphernalia you  need to  smoke  one. I  turned my wrist and
checked traser: 11:04. Greaseball still had twenty-six minutes to wait until
the RV was closed, and I was in no rush. I took my time. I needed to think.
     I didn't want to  meet up with him, source  or not, especially outside,
especially if he was a known  face. That was bad professionally: I needed to
be the grey man.
     I turned  to the door and gave the old  man a mechanical  "Au  revoir',
straight  from the  phrase  book wishing that what little  time I'd spent at
school had been at French lessons.
     Without  looking in the  direction of the  RV I went back out into  the
street, turned right  towards the pedestrian crossing,  over  the road,  and
pushed my shoulder against the door of the tab ac It was a dreary place, the
walls covered in dark brown carpet to complement the dark wooden floors. The
old men in  here  had half a dozen  Gauloises  on the go, the haze  of smoke
adding to the gloom. I sat back  from the window  so  I could keep an eye on
Greaseball, and ordered myself a coffee.
     He'd  lit up another cigarette. The pack  was  on  the  table  with the
lighter on top, next to his porte-monnaie. He ordered something more, and as
the  waitress  turned to go back into the  cafe  I took my paper  napkin and
wrapped it  round  the espresso cup before taking a  tester sip.  Greaseball
started to get a little agitated now, checking his watch for the  fifth time
in as many minutes. There were three more minutes to go until eleven thirty,
and once again he checked through the cafe window to see if there was anyone
seated inside  on his own,  before  twisting round again and making sure the
mag was flat and easy to spot.
     I poured my change on to  the table from my small  brown coin purse and
left eleven francs, which were collected with a grunt by the old guy running
the show.
     Greaseball checked his watch once more,  then leant across to  ask  the
waitress  cleaning the next table for the time. Her reply seemed to  confirm
what he  feared, because he got to his feet and checked up and down the road
again as if  he  knew what he was  looking for. It  was  eleven  thirty-four
before he packed away his cigarettes and finally headed up the hill.
     I picked up the cup for the last time, gave the lip a quick wipe before
leaving with the napkin, and followed him from my side of the road as trucks
and vans blocked him from view for split seconds. I  needed to make a little
distance and be right on top of  him in case he got into a car. If he did, I
could stop him before  he moved  off. I would  have  to approach him at some
time,  but  not  yet. First of  all I needed  to  make sure no one  else was
following him or me.
     I  couldn't  see anything suspicious: no one talking to themselves with
their eyes glued to the back of  Greaseball's  head; nobody leaping into  or
out of  cars in  a desperate  measure to get behind him, or concentrating so
much  on not  losing him in a crowd that they  took  a slide in dog shit  or
bumped into people and lamp posts.
     Dicing  with death, I crossed the road then focused  on his brown suede
loafers, which perfectly matched the fag-bag. He had bare,  hairy ankles. No
socks: very South of France. He walked with Julia in his  right hand and the
bag in his left.
     I didn't want him to have any opportunity to turn and make eye contact,
since he'd  be unlikely not to recognize me. And, given the circumstances of
our last meeting, I guessed he might be a tad nervous when he did.
     I  checked constantly to  my  left  at  the  shops  and apartment-block
entrances  for somewhere I  could go if he stopped. It's not an easy bit  of
tradecraft, because by  the  time the target has turned and  looked back you
have to be static if in view or, better still, hidden. And you can't  afford
to draw attention to yourself in the process.
     He turned left, off the main, and became unsighted. I quickened my pace
to  get to the corner, did the Cannes Shuffle, and crossed the  road. No way
was I turning into dead ground without first  checking  what was waiting for
me.
     Looking left and right for traffic as I crossed, I  had the target once
more. He was still on the  left-hand  side of  the road and wasn't  checking
behind him. He was  walking purposefully:  he wasn't running from something,
he was going to something.
     Once on the other pavement  I turned  left and went with him. He  was a
bit further away now, but that was fine because the road was a lot narrower,
just a normal street lined  with  houses and apartment blocks. There weren't
many real people here, so a little distance was a help.
     Looking ahead and keeping the red in my peripheral vision, I could  see
the large blue neon sign ahead for an  Eddie's on my  side of the  road. The
supermarket took up the ground  floor of an apartment block. It was one of a
chain called E. Leclerc. I didn't actually know what the E stood for, but it
had been a boring four days so I'd made up  the name, along with Thackery's.
There was a rotisserie van at the kerb with its  sides open, selling freshly
cooked  chicken  and  rabbit. A flock of small  cars  were  trying to  force
themselves into impossible  spaces and  double-park  around  the shop.  They
bumped  up on to the  kerb, and into each other. People  didn't seem to care
much about their paintwork down here.
     Greaseball  crossed  towards  the  store  and disappeared  up  the road
immediately before it. I quickened my  step.  As I got to the junction I saw
him  easily  beyond the chaos of shoppers, moving  up the  road. It was very
narrow here, just single track, and quite steep now that we'd got further up
the  hill.  There were no pavements, just iron fences and stone walls either
side, flanking houses and apartment blocks. Some of the buildings were quite
new and some needed a lick  of paint, but they all  had one thing in common,
and that was the amount of ironwork that covered every point of entry.
     He kept to the  left.  I  followed, allowing  him to become temporarily
unsighted now and again as the road twisted  uphill, in case  he stopped. We
were  the only two  on this stretch of  road  and  I didn't want to make  my
presence  too  obvious.  If he'd disappeared by  the time  I  got  round the
corner, the drills for finding him would be long, laborious and  boring, but
I  had no  choice.  I'd have  to find  a  place to hide  and wait for him to
reappear.  If I had no luck I'd have to contact George and  tell him the bad
news.  I'd lie, of course, and say I'd  seen something suspicious around the
RV. He would have to get his finger out in quick time and do whatever he did
to get another RV organized.
     I wasn't  worried any longer  that he  was going  to a car,  because he
wouldn't  have parked this far from  the  RV. The  thought did cross my mind
that he'd pinged me  and was moving around the town  a  bit to confirm I was
following him.  What that  would mean to me, I didn't know maybe a reception
as  I turned a corner. But I  had no  option, really.  I had  to  follow and
contact  him once we were somewhere safer and  less  exposed. The old  terra
cotta roofs that overlapped the walls here  and there each side of me  would
have been there  for donkey's  years before  the dull cream apartment blocks
that had sprung up on every  available patch of land since the sixties. They
were no more than five or six storeys high; quite a few of the balconies had
towels, duvets  or washing  hanging off  them; one or  two had  barbecues. I
could hear the drone of the traffic from the main drag off to my right.
     Greaseball  took off  the pashmina  to reveal a blue checked  shirt. He
wasn't the only  one getting  hot; I was starting to leak around my face and
down my spine as I made my way uphill. We passed some more apartment blocks,
which seemed  a little the worse for wear, and Greaseball stopped for  a car
to   squeeze   past.   He   rummaged   in   his   fag-bag.   There   was   a
not-too-good-looking  block  opposite, with  a  line of cars nosy-parked  in
front.
     I carried on towards  him, head down,  not making eye contact. He might
be  pinging me this very moment, waiting  for  me to betray myself.  The car
accelerated  past me and  I had  to stop  to let him  through as  Greaseball
disappeared into the covered, mosaic-tiled porch way
     There was no time to  be subtle.  I only had one chance. I  ran towards
him and got there just  as he  turned the key  in the glass-and-brass-effect
main door. He had his back to me but he  could see  me in  the reflection of
the glass.
     "Beautiful, isn't she?"
     He spun round,  leaving the key in place. His eyes were bulging and his
arms  fell to  his sides as  he moved back  against the glass.  My left hand
grabbed the  hem of my  sweatshirt, ready to pull  it up and draw  down  the
Browning. His eyes darted after it. He had a  good idea of what that was all
about.  For  several  moments  he just  stared  at  me in  horror,  then  he
stammered, "You? You?"
     I wasn't  surprised he'd  remembered me. Some  things stay with you for
ever.
     Even  from a  couple of feet away  I could smell his heavy  aftershave,
mixed with the  odour of heavily lacquered hair.  Isaid  again,  "Beautiful,
isn't she?" and nodded  at  the magazine  in his hand.  There  was  still no
reply.
     "Answer me. Beautiful, isn't she?"
     At last I got something.
     "Yes, but Katharine Hepburn ..." His  face  wobbled. He  realized  he'd
fucked up.
     "No,  no,  no, please. Wait, wait. She is, yes, she is, but not as much
as Katharine Hepburn, don't you think?"
     It was good enough.
     "Where are you going?"
     He  half turned and pointed. He'd  shaved this morning, but already had
shadow.
     "Is there anybody in there with you?"
     "Now."
     "Let's go in, then. Come on."
     "But..."
     I shoved  him through the  door, and into  the  dark  foyer. The rubber
soles of my Timberlands squeaked on the grey phoney-marble floor. A baby was
crying in one of the  ground-floor flats  and  I  could  smell frying  as we
headed for  the  lift. He was still flapping big-time. There  was some heavy
erratic breathing going on in front of me as he cradled his pashmina  in his
arms. I was going  to  reassure  him  about my intentions, but then thought,
fuck it, why bother? I wanted to keep him on the back foot.
     The small, box-like lift arrived and we got  in. The smell changed. Now
it was like the tab ac He pressed for the fourth floor and the thing started
to shudder. I was standing behind him, and could see the sweat trickle  down
from his neck hair on to his shirt collar as I tapped him on the shoulder.
     "Show me what's in the bag." He  was only too eager to comply, and held
it  up for inspection over his shoulder. There  was nothing in there  that I
hadn't seen already:  a  pack  of Camel Lights, a gold  lighter and a  small
leather money pouch. The keys were still in his hand.
     The lift climbed so slowly it was hard to tell if it was moving at all.
Looking  at him from the  rear, I could  see that  his jeans were a bit  too
tight around his  gut.  His love handles flopped  out  each side,  straining
against his shirt, and folding over his waistband. A gold Rolex and a couple
of  thin gold  bracelets dangled  from  his left wrist  on to  his perfectly
manicured hand. He also had a matching pair of bracelets on his right wrist,
and  a signet  ring  on his  little finger.  All  in all, he looked  like an
over-the-hill gigolo who thought he was still twenty-one.
     He zipped up the bag and wiped the sweat from his neck.
     "There's no one here," he assured me.
     "I promise you."
     The lift doors opened and I gave him a shove into a semi-dark landing.
     "Good. What number?"
     "This way. Forty-nine."
     I squeezed behind him, my right hand ready to draw down on my 9mm again
as he placed the key into the cylinder lock in a dark brown varnished  door.
It  opened into  a small room, maybe ten by ten. The sun was  trying hard to
penetrate the net curtains  covering the glass sliding doors of the balcony,
and not  quite  succeeding. He walked in while I waited where I was, hand on
my pistol grip. He turned back towards me,  arms sweeping  around  the room,
"Look, you see, everything is OK."
     That was his opinion. He might be Mr. Gucci out on the boulevards,  but
this place was a tip. To  my left was a door into the kitchen. It was fitted
with 1970s faded blue  and white  veneered units that had been worn down  in
places to  the chip board An ashtray overflowed on to a half-eaten baguette.
The sink was piled high with dirty pans and dishes.
     I closed the door with my heel as I walked  in and motioned to him with
my head.
     "Bolt it."
     I moved aside as he obeyed, breathing heavily.
     There was another door to the left.
     "Where does that go?"
     The bedroom and bathroom."
     He started to walk towards it, eager to please.
     "Let me go and ' "Stop, we go  together. I  want  to see every move you
make. Got it?"
     I followed a few steps  behind  him as  his  loafers squeaked over  the
light grey mock marble. Both of the other rooms were in a similar state. The
bedroom just  fitted the  bed,  and the rest  of the floor  was covered with
newspapers, dirty underwear, and a couple of Slazenger  tennis bags still in
their Decathlon sports-shop carrier. He didn't look the tennis type, but the
two  used syringes  that  lay on top  of the bags were very much  his style,
which was why he tried to kick it  all under  the bed  without me seeing. He
was obviously contributing energetically to al-Qaeda's heroin profits.
     A  pair  of  wardrobes were  packed  with brightly coloured clothes and
shoes, all looking  new. The bedroom stank of aftershave and cigarettes, but
not as badly as the tiny bathroom did.  It had  a faded  yellow sink, toilet
and a typical French half-bath  with a hand-held  shower. Every surface  was
covered  with bottles  of shampoo,  cologne and  hair colour. The  bath  had
enough pubic hairs around the plug-hole to stuff a mattress.
     "You see everything is correct. It is safe."
     I didn't even bother to check  if he was embarrassed as we  walked back
into the living  room. I squeezed around the furniture and went over  to the
patio-style  window  that led on  to the balcony overlooking the road we had
just walked up. A couple of tennis rackets leant against the railings, and a
pair of scrunched-up beach towels hung over the balustrade.
     By now he  was sitting nervously on  a green settee, which had probably
been installed at the same time as the kitchen. It was against the left-hand
wall, facing  a dirty Formica wall unit that was dominated by a huge TV  and
video.  Everything  was covered in so much dust I could even  see his finger
marks  around the controls.  VHS tapes and all manner of  shit was scattered
around the  shelves. A  small boom box-type CD player stood on a shelf above
the  TV,  surrounded  by  a sea  of  discs  lying out  of  their  boxes. The
videotapes  had no  titles, but I could  guess the sort of thing he was into
watching.
     The rectangular  waxed-pine coffee table at the  centre of the room was
covered with more old newspapers, a  half-empty bottle  of red  wine,  and a
food plate that had doubled as an ashtray  I was beginning to feel greasy as
well as grubby in this guy's company.
     I got to the point, so I didn't have to spend too much more time around
him.
     "When will the boat be here?"
     He crossed his  legs and placed both hands around his knees,  feeling a
little more comfortable now it  seemed I wasn't going to take his  head off.
Tomorrow night, at Beaulieu-sur-Mer, it's towards Monaco."
     "Write it down." I knew where it was, but wanted to make sure I had the
right  place. He leant forward, found a pen among the mess on the table, and
wrote on the edge of  a  newspaper,  in  a scrawl that any doctor would have
been proud of.
     There is a port, a marina, I think you call it. It's not  far. Her name
is the Ninth of May. It's a white boat, quite large. It's coming in tomorrow
night." He ripped off the edge of the paper "Here' and pushed it towards me.
     I looked  out of  the  window and down into  the garden  of one of  the
original  houses  opposite.  An  old  man was  tending  a  vegetable  patch,
attaching bits of silver paper to bamboo sticks. I kept watching him.
     "How many are going to be on board?"
     There are  three. One will always remain with the boat, while the other
two collect the money.  They're going to start on Friday, the first of three
collections. They'll make one a day, and leave for Algiers with the money on
Sunday. They are trying to close their accounts here in France before you do
it for them, no?"
     I turned back to Greaseball. He rummaged around in his bag and  dragged
out a Camel. With an elegant flick  of a lighter, he sat back and  let smoke
curl out of  his nostrils.  He  crossed his legs once more and laid his left
arm  along the  back of the settee  as  if he  was running  the show. He was
starting to get a bit too confident.
     "Where are they going to collect the cash, then, Greaseball?"
     He choked on his cigarette and smoke blew  uncontrollably from his nose
and mouth.
     "Greaseball?" Composing  himself,  he  took another drag and  this time
exhaled slowly, smiling at his new name.
     "Where? That  I do  not  know, and I won't until tomorrow night, maybe.
I'm not sure yet. But I do know they're only going to  use public transport,
buses,  that  sort  of  thing. It's safer than Hertz. Conductors don't  keep
records."
     It made sense to me.
     "Do you know how much money?"
     "Anything between two point five and three million American."
     He took another drag and I went back to watching the old guy dig around
his vegetable patch, thinking about the number of suicide bombers'  families
with Landcruisers with all the trimmings that could be funded with that sort
of cash.
     "Are they collecting from hawalladas?"
     "Yes,  of course. These guys on the coast, the ones who will be handing
them the money, are haw alla people."
     I moved back one of the net curtains so I could get a clearer view.
     "What time will the boat arrive?"
     "Did  you  know this  is where the money  was collected to  finance the
attack  on the  American embassy in Paris?" He took another drag and sounded
almost proud.
     "Can you imagine  what would have happened if that  had been successful
too?"
     "The boat, what time?"
     There was some shuffling as he adjusted himself in his seat.
     "In  the evening some time, I'm  not too sure." There was a pause and I
could hear him stubbing out his cigarette and pulling another from the pack.
I turned as he gave the lighter a flick  and looked at the  CDs on the  wall
unit. It was obvious he was a big Pink Floyd fan.
     "Zeralda  liked me to bring  a new tape for him each  trip. I'd collect
the  boys too, of course." He  cocked his  head  to one side,  measuring  my
reaction.
     "Did you  see me drive  back to the house that night? I  was hoping you
would have finished  the job by  then. But he  kept  calling on my cell.  He
didn't like to be kept waiting ..."
     The fucker was smiling, taunting me.
     I pulled the sliding glass panel with my sweatshirt  cuff to letin some
air, and was greeted by the sound of traffic from the main drag, and the old
boy outside clearing his passages. I  resisted the temptation to go over and
give Greaseball a good smack in the teeth and looked outside again instead.
     "So you two liked the same music as well as the same boys?"
     He blew out another lungful of smoke before he replied.
     "You find it distasteful but are you telling me it's worse than cutting
off a man's head? You don't mind using people like me when you need  to,  do
you?"
     I shrugged my  shoulders, still  looking out  at  the old man. I'm here
because it's my job, believe me. And  distasteful isn't a strong enough word
for what I think about you."
     I heard  what sounded like a snort of  derision and turned back to face
him.
     "Get real, my friend. You may hate me, but you're here, aren't you? And
that's because you want something from me."
     He was right, but  that didn't mean to say  I  was  going to share  his
toothbrush.
     "Have you got anything else for me?"
     That's  all  I  know  so far.  But  how  do  I  inform  you  about  the
collections?"
     I'll come  here at eleven tonight. Make  sure you're here,  and no  one
else is. You have  a bell that rings downstairs, yeah?" He nodded and sucked
the last mouthful out of his Camel.
     "Good. Open the door."
     He moved towards the exit. I went over to the coffee table and took the
marina address, as well as the newspaper. Beaulieu-sur-MerI did know it, and
so would  anyone else if  they picked up the paper. The imprint was clear to
see  on the pages beneath. As I bent down I could see  the  lower shelves of
the wall unit and did a double-take at some Polaroids. I  knew he liked rock
music, but this was  something else. Greaseball was  in a bar, drinking with
one of  the  guitarists  from Queen.  At least,  that's who it looked  like.
Whoever it was, he had the same mad curly hair.
     Greaseball  was  trying to  work out what had caught my eye as I waited
for him to pull back the bolt.
     "Those  people, the ones on the boat... Are you going to do the same to
them as you did to Zeralda?"
     I checked  my 9mm to  make sure it  was concealed as he opened the door
and glanced outside. I didn't bother to look back at him.
     "Eleven. If  you  don't know by then, I'll be  back in the  morning." I
went past him, my left hand ready to pull up the sweatshirt.
     As I walked towards the lift I saw the stairwell and decided to go that
way  instead, just to  get  off the floor more quickly. I  elbowed the light
switch as I passed it. A couple of floors down, I was smothered in darkness.
I waited for a moment, then pressed the next one.
     I reached the  ground  floor and headed  for the  main door as  a young
woman in red tracksuit bottoms and pullover was packing a crying baby into a
pram on the landing.
     Out in  the sun again, I had  to squint as I  checked the bell-push for
number forty-nine. There was no name by  it but, then, who would want to own
up to living in a place like  this? As  I walked  away, I wondered how I was
going  to  break the news  to Lotfi and  Hubba-Hubba that Greaseball was the
source.
     Twelve.
     As I headed back  along boulevard Carnot, I knew I'd  have to move from
my hotel. It was far too close to Greaseball's  flat, and I didn't even want
him to see me, let alone find out where I was staying.
     I stopped at the launderette and picked  up my sheets. They were now on
top of the washing machine,  still wet.  As I shoved them into the black bin
liner the  old woman  gob bed off at me for leaving them in when there  were
about four other people waiting. I'd obviously breached the laverie protocol
big-time, so I just smiled my apologies to everyone as I finished my packing
and left.
     I set off down the hill towards the beach. I had to contact George  and
give him a sit rep,  and that meant going to the  Mondego, a cyber cafe, and
getting online. He needed to know where the collectors were going to park up
their boat  and, later on, where they  were going to  collect the  cash.  My
surroundings got  very  smart very quickly. Luxury hotels that  looked  like
giant wedding cakes lined the coast road, La Croisette, and Gucci shops sold
everything from furs to baseball caps for dogs.  I tipped the  sheets into a
street bin,  hanging  on to the plastic  bag.  As I carried  on  walking,  I
screwed up the  newspaper  I'd taken from Greaseball's apartment inside  it.
This might have been the upscale end of town, but anything that stuck out of
the pavement, like a parking bollard or a tree, was decorated with fresh dog
piss and a couple of brown lumps.
     New cars, motorbikes and scooters were crammed into every possible, and
impossible,  space,  and  their owners, the  customers in the  cafes, looked
extremely  cool  and  elegant in their  sunglasses, smoking, drinking,  just
generally posing around the place.
     There were quite a few homeless around here as well. Fair one: if I was
homeless  I'd want to sleep in a warm place with lots of good-looking people
about, particularly if they were the sort to throw you a few bob. A group of
four or five dossers were sitting on benches alongside a scruffy old mongrel
with a red polka-dot scarf around its neck. One guy had a can of beer in his
coat pocket, and as  he bent over to pat  the dog the contents were spilling
on to the ground. His wino friends looked horror struck
     I'd never used this cafe to get online:  normally, I drove to Cap 3000,
a  huge centre  commercial on  the  outskirts of  Nice.  It  was only  about
forty-five minutes away, driving within speed limits, which I was meticulous
about, and  always crowded. But this time I needed to tell George what I had
found out immediately. I was  leaving Cannes now anyway, so wouldn't need to
come here again.
     The  place   looked  quite   full,  which   was   good.  A   group   of
twenty-somethings wearing designer  leather  jackets and shades  posed  near
their motorbikes and scooters,  or sat on shiny aluminium  chairs and sipped
small glasses of beer. Most had a pack  of Marlboro or Winston  on the table
with a  disposable lighter  on  top, alongside a  mobile that got  picked up
every few seconds in case they had missed a text message.
     I wove my way through the temple of cool, past walls lined with  boring
grey  PCs,  towards the rows of  gleaming  drinks  optics  and  the steaming
cappuccino machine that stood at the black, marble-topped  bar. I pointed at
the nearest PC and tried to make myself heard above the beat of the music.
     "I want to get online.... Er, parlez-vous anglais?"
     The guy behind  the  counter  didn't  even look  up  from unloading the
dishwasher.
     "Sure, log on, pay  later. You  want a  drink?" He was dressed in black
and sounded Scandinavian.
     "Cafe creme."
     "Go, sit down."
     I headed to a vacant PC station, perched myself on one of the very high
stools, and logged on. The screen information was all in French, but I'd got
the hang of it  by now and went straight into Hotmail. George  had set up an
account for  me  that  was  registered in Poland.  The user name was BB8642;
George was BB97531, a sequence of numbers that  even  I  couldn't forget. He
was as  paranoid as I was, and he'd  gone to quite a  lot of trouble to make
our correspondence untraceable. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd fixed
it for Bill Gates  to erase  our messages personally, as soon as they'd been
read.
     Signing in, I  made  sure the font  size  was the smallest  possible so
nobody  could read  over my  shoulder,  and  checked  my  mailbox. He wasn't
getting information  on this job from anywhere else. He  just wanted it from
me. I  was his  only  line  of  information: anything else  would  have been
dangerous. There was  no other way of  making contact: I'd never had a phone
number for him, even when I was with Carrie, never even knew where he lived.
I wasn't sure if she did, these days.
     George's email asked me if I'd got his present, and said I mustn't open
it until Christmas. He was referring to the kit left for me at  the DOP, and
the drugs we were going to use to help  the  hawalladas on their way to  the
warship.
     I tapped away with my index fingers.
     Hello, thanks for the present, but  I'm not too sure if I can wait till
Christmas. Guess what? I just saw Jenny and she said that Susanna is  coming
to town on business, arriving tomorrow night. She'll be in town until Sunday
and has  three meetings while she is  here, one a day starting Friday. Jenny
is  finding out the details so she can arrange for all of us to get together
and try that place you are  always talking about,  the one that serves great
White  Russians.  I have  so  much  to tell  you. You were right,  Susanna's
business is worth anything between 2.5 and 3 mill. Not bad! You'd better get
in there quick  before some  stud moves in. I know she likes you! I'm around
tomorrow, do you want to meet up for a drink, say 1 p.m.?
     My coffee arrived and I took a sip of froth without picking it up. This
was  the second email  I'd sent George  since arriving in-country. Each time
any contact was made, a colour was  used for  authentication.  The first was
red, this one was white, the third, the brush contact tomorrow at one, would
be  blue. Then  I'd  start  the colour  sequence again. All  very  Stars and
Stripes, all very George, but these things  needed to be simple or they were
forgotten. Well, by me, anyway.
     George  now knew that I had met  the source, the boat  was coming in on
Thursday night, and  I  wanted  a brush  contact tomorrow  to  pass over the
collection details. Things like that are far too sensitive to send in clear,
even if Bill Gates was in the good lads club.
     I  finished  the email  "Have a nice day'. After all, I was  nearly  an
American now.
     Signing out of Hotmail, I reopened with the addresses I used to contact
Lotfi and Hubba-Hubba.
     Anyone checking the subscriber would discover he lived in Canada.
     There was  nothing in my  mailbox from these two, which was good  news.
Like me, they were just waiting for the  time to meet up and get on with the
job.
     I invited  each of them for coffee  at  four  o'clock  today. They'd be
checking their  boxes  at one-ish, so they'd get  the message  in plenty  of
time.
     I wrapped a napkin around the coffee cup and took a sip while  I worked
out  what  to  do  next. I  had  to  check  out  of  the  hotel then  go  to
Beaulieu-sur-Mer and do a recce before the boat arrived. I'd need to look at
the vital  ground before meeting up with Lotfi and  Hubba-Hubba  at the safe
house at four.
     I took another slow sip. This was going to be my last quiet time before
I started running around like a crazed dog.
     I wondered  what Carrie  was doing now,  and spent a minute or two just
staring  at  the keyboard,  trying to shake that last  image  of her  at the
harbour out of my head. In the end I just logged off, and wiped the keys and
cup rim clean with the napkin.
     My hotel was right  next  door to a synagogue, and  above a kosher take
away pizza joint called Pizza Jacob. It had been perfect,  not  only because
it was cheap but because the ageing manager took cash. My fellow guests were
a  bunch of dodgy-looking comb and pencil salesmen, trying to save money  by
sleeping in a room with no TV or phone, and very thin blankets.
     I checked out and threw  my  holdall  into the  boot of the  dark  blue
Renault Megane.  The bin liner,  still containing the bits  of  Greaseball's
newspaper I hadn't already chewed up and swallowed, joined a couple of paper
cups, three empty Coke cans and napkins in  the passenger  foot  well I made
what must have been  about  a  sixty-point turn  and  eventually managed  to
squeeze out  of the  small  and crowded car park at  the rear.  I put  on my
sunglasses and dark blue baseball cap before I emerged on to the street. The
sun was bright, but it wasn't what I was shielding myself from. CCTV cameras
were everywhere along this coastline.
     I'd sort myself out a new hotel when I needed it, and if I had time.
     Thirteen.
     I hit  the coast road, turned east, and headed towards Nice, flanked by
the  railway  tracks and the sea.  About  a K outside  Cannes  I pulled  up,
bumping the car half up on to the kerb behind a row of others belonging to a
bunch of rod fishermen down on the beach. Bad  parking was so common here it
didn't draw a second glance, and it meant I could check to see if I'd picked
up any tracking devices in the last twenty-four hours.
     I wasn't expecting anything just  yet, but I'd still taken precautions.
I'd bought  a little pot of silver  enamel modelling paint and a  brush, and
had coated all the retaining screws  on the bumpers and the number plates If
anybody had been tampering they would have had to cut the paint.
     I looked round the wheel arches and underneath  the chassis. Then I had
the bonnet up and checked the engine compartment.
     If I found a device, I'd simply walk away, and that would be the end of
the job as far as I was concerned. The other two would have to carry on.
     But  everything was fine.  I got back behind the wheel and  carried  on
along the coast road, passing through all sorts of places I'd heard about in
songs.
     The sea was almost totally still today,  and shimmered in the sunlight.
It all looked  just  like the South of France should look,  except that  the
sand was heaped up in gigantic  mounds. They  imported it  by  the truckload
from North Africa, and now was obviously the time of year when they gave the
beach a makeover before the new season.
     Nobody  was  sunbathing  but  quite a lot of  people were  out blading,
walking their dogs and just generally enjoying  the space. Stony beach  took
over again as I  neared Nice proper. I skirted the airport and Cap  3000, my
email centre and the place where the brush contact would happen tomorrow.
     The airport was right at the edge of the city, virtually on the  beach.
A new terminal  was under construction, and large pictorial banners  told me
how wonderful it would be for the future of the area.
     I drove into the city along a wide dual carriage way punctuated by palm
trees.  The  automatic  sprinkler  system threw  up a series  of  pint-sized
rainbows along  the central reservation. The traffic  was  funnelled between
glass  and  steel  hotels and  more  construction  sites. It got busier  and
busier, until it  turned into the Wacky Races, with the contestants stopping
and starting like maniacs, slaloming from lane to  lane and leaning on their
horns.
     I switched on the English-speaking  Riviera Radio  and  listened  to an
Alan Partridge soundalike make his link from the  closing  bars of  a Barbra
Streisand weepy into  a  string of  commercials for  financial and  yachting
services. Before long I even knew the price  of a barrel of Brent crude, and
what  was happening on the  Nasdaq. It was obvious what type of  Brit ex pat
they were  broadcasting to: the very rich  kind. But I always listened to it
because they had a review of the US papers in the afternoon, and carried the
BBC World Service hourly.
     I hit the Promenade des Anglais, the main  drag along the coast. It was
a glamorous stretch, lined with palm trees and glitzy old-world hotels. Even
the buses were immaculate: they looked as though someone had just given them
a good  polish  before they were  allowed into town. I  carried on round the
harbour, which  was heaving with  pleasure cruisers and ferries  en route to
and from Corsica, and started to see signs for Beaulieu-sur-Mer.
     The road wound uphill until only the cliff edge and a hundred-foot drop
separated  it  from the sea. As  I  got  higher I  could see mountain ranges
inland that seemed to go on for ever. I guessed Riviera Radio was right when
it  said you  could  be  on  the  beach in  the  morning, and  skiing in the
afternoon.
     Nice disappeared behind me as the  road snaked along  the cliff. I felt
like I'd been  caught up  in  a Sunday  afternoon  black-and-white movie;  I
expected to turn a corner at any  moment, and meet  David Niven in an Austin
Healey coming the other way.
     I took  a  steep left-hander, and Villefranche and its huge  deep-water
bay lay spread out below me. Home of the US Sixth Fleet until France decided
to pull its military out of Nato, it was one of the biggest natural harbours
in the world. American and British warships still dropped anchor  there when
on a courtesy visit or when spiriting away heavily anaesthetized hawalladas.
     The dull grey shape of  the warship  dominated the  bay with  its large
registration number stencilled in white paint on the back. It had more domes
and  antennae  than  the Starship Enterprise,  and a helipad on the back big
enough to take a jumbo jet.
     The crew wouldn't have a clue what  was happening. The most they'd know
was that an area was out of bounds, and some important guests were on board.
Only the captain and a few officers would have been  told  what the goodwill
visit was really all about. The guests were probably getting a  sit rep from
George this very  minute, using  the information  I'd just  sent. They'd  be
sparked up now making their final  preparations in  some small, steel-walled
room, out of screaming distance from the crew. I  really hoped we were going
to make it all worth their while.
     Beyond the  warship  was Cap Ferrat.  It  looked  very green, and  very
opulent, with  large houses surrounded by trees and  high fences. I  made my
way  round the  bay, through Villefranche and past a  small left-hander that
hair pinned up to the mountains. Up that road and just over sixteen Ks away,
on the  other side of a couple of small villages and the odd isolated house,
was the DOP. It was an illegal tipping area,  full  of rusting freezers  and
household waste. It looked like it could host the biggest jumble sale on the
planet, and was just the place I needed.
     A few minutes later  I  was in Beaulieu-sur-Mer.  The harbour  was  the
other side  of the  town,  so I followed signs to the gare.  It  was a small
cream-coloured  building  with  a  taxi  rank and flower beds  that were  so
manicured they looked like they had  a  personal stylist. After a  couple of
circuits, I  found  a  spot and  parked.  I got out and retrieved my digital
camera from my holdall.
     The Megane  was a perfect  vehicle for this sort of job: it was a  dark
colour,  a popular  make,  and about  as nondescript as they come, once  I'd
peeled off  the  sticker from the dealership  the hire company had bought it
from.  It was also small  enough to park quickly, but  big enough to  hide a
body in the boot. Which was why, as well as my personal kit, I had two rolls
of silver gaffer tape in  the boot. Lotfi and Hubba-Hubba also had  some; we
wanted to make sure that once we got a body inside a vehicle it was there to
stay.
     All three vehicles had been played  about  with so that the reverse and
brake lights  could be cut out. It was simple enough: we just sliced through
the  leads  and  added an on off  switch to the  circuit.  When  we  drove a
hawallada into the DOP with the lights out, the last thing we wanted was for
the brake  or reversing lights to  kick  in and show everyone around what we
were up  to.  For  the  same reason,  all  the  interior lightbulbs had been
removed. We'd  have  to return the cars to Alamo, or wherever the  other two
had got theirs from, in the  same condition we'd hired them, but it wouldn't
take more than an hour or so to change everything back.
     I wandered around between the post office  and the station, making like
a tourist, taking the  odd snap  while the  taxi drivers stood  around their
Mercedes, preferring to talk and smoke rather than take a fare.
     The gare was  immaculate, as  French  railway  stations  always  are. I
glanced  at  the  timetables regular services in  both directions along  the
coast, either back to Nice, Cannes and Marseille or on to Monaco and Italy.
     I bought myself nine francs' worth of percolated while-you-wait  coffee
from  the machine and tried not to over-excite three small white  hairy dogs
that  were  tied by lengths  of string to the news-stand  on my  left.  They
looked at me as if it was lunchtime. I  stepped around them and went to look
at the postcards carousel. Cards are a really good source of information for
people like  me, because they usually  have shots of locations you can't get
to  easily.  It's a  Standard  Operating  Procedure  for  most  intelligence
operators  to  collect  them as they travel round  the  world,  because  the
agencies want  these things  to  hand.  If there's an incident,  say, at  an
airport in the middle of Nowhereland, they just have to open their files and
they've got a collection of visuals  to  refer to until  more information is
gathered.
     I picked up several  pictures of  Beaulieu-sur-Mer,  which  showed  the
marina  from  different angles and heights, all shot in fantastic  sunlight,
with  beautiful women and sharply  chiselled men strolling among  the boats.
Next  to the  carousel was a display  of  town maps, so I  picked  out three
different ones.  The vendor had  a big round face  and  an annoyingly  happy
smile.  I gave him my "Merci, au  revoir and  walked  away with  the change,
which the  French  never  seem to  put  into  your  hand, but  always on the
counter, in case you've got some disease.
     I went back to the car.
     The  marina  was  larger than  I'd expected from the postcards. Two  or
three hundred shiny masts rocked and glinted in the sunlight.
     Just before  turning through the entrance,  I saw  bus  stops on either
side  of the road and a glass phone box. Whoever was on  the boat had chosen
their location well: there were buses to  both Monaco and Nice, and the rail
station was just a ten-minute walk away.  The phone  box was certainly going
to be a bonus for us.
     The  large  blue sign  welcomed  me, thanked  me  for my visit,  looked
forward to me coming back  again, and  gave me a list of available shops and
services. I took a  right on to  the access road, a short avenue with neatly
trimmed  hedges on either side. There was a mini-roundabout ahead of me, and
beyond that, the world's largest supply  of  pleasure  craft. I  turned left
towards the car park.
     Fourteen.
     A one-storey, flat-roofed  building  housed a parade of shops and cafes
that ran for  maybe a  hundred metres each  side of the  mini-roundabout.  I
bumped  slowly  over  a  succession   of   sleeping  policemen,  past  fancy
restaurants  with glinting glasses  and  dazzlingly white linen tablecloths,
all laid out for  lunch. It  was just after midday, so they'd be full pretty
soon,  once  the  punters had emerged  from the  clothes shops, carrier bags
bulging with Lacoste polo shirts and jumpers.
     Coffee drinkers sat  at cafe tables just a few metres  from the water's
edge,  probably wishing  they were  sitting aboard  the  sleek and beautiful
boats  just  out of reach to my right instead. The craft all seemed  to have
English names like Suntreader or Kathy's Dreams, and  it  was obviously  the
time of day for  their owners  to  be out  on deck,  to take an aperitif and
enjoy being envied.
     I  reached  the  point  where  the  parade  merged  with  a  series  of
administration buildings that bordered the car park. I pulled up next to the
deserted beach, by a sign saying "Petite Afrique', probably because that was
where  the sand  came  from. I was  alongside a little play  area, which was
half-way through being given a facelift.
     Thanks to  the postcards and what I'd seen so  far, I  now had a pretty
good  sense  of how  the  boats  were arranged.  From the mini-roundabout, a
central pier  ran straight out into the middle of  an open square, with four
smaller piers branching  off each side at  right angles. Another three piers
jutted out  from the quay by the  shops, and  three more  from  the opposite
side. The  place was jammed  with row  after row of boats, their masts, with
whatever bits and pieces they had hanging off them, towering up to the  sky.
I had no idea where the Ninth of May was going to find  room  to park up; it
didn't look like there was a space to be had.
     My  first priority was  to  find a single OP that would cover the whole
area, so no matter where this  boat parked,  I'd  be able to get eyes on and
trigger the collectors as they left to pick up the cash. If that couldn't be
done, I'd have to find a number of different ones.
     I could  already see two routes  out of this place, apart from the sea.
There was the access road I'd come in on, and a footpath to the right of the
shops, which led up to a terraced garden.
     I left the Megane,  hitting the  key fob before  walking back  past the
shops  towards the roundabout and  the central pier. Ambling around with  my
camera in hand, I particularly admired the terraced garden. It was nearly as
long  as  the parade,  and  was  packed with  small  palm trees  and exotic,
semi-tropical plants set in light, dry soil well worth a couple of photos. A
shiny green hedge ran along the back of it, hiding the road, but I could now
see  there was a way through, because a man  walking his dog along the  path
had just headed up some steps and disappeared.
     The  majority of the  boats seemed to have red  ensigns hanging off the
back. A lot  were registered in the Cayman Islands. I heard a group of Brits
sitting on the back  bit of a huge motor boat, enjoying a beer and listening
to Riviera Radio. There was quite a lot of activity aboard, and not just the
clinking of glasses. Decking was being pulled up, cleaned and varnished, and
chrome was being polished until you could see your Gucci sunglasses in it.
     There was an  incessant ching ching ching of steel rigging and  the one
thing I did know that hung off boats,  radar reflective balls, as I wandered
along, snapping away, playing the tourist. When I got to the mini-roundabout
I could see  the  rest  of the shops.  There  was a tyre replacement centre,
several  chandlers  and  a  high-tech yard  with  yachts  up on  blocks  and
shrink-wrapped in white  plastic  as if they'd just come off the supermarket
shelf. There  was also another set of  stone steps that led directly to  the
road.
     I turned  left at the mini-roundabout on to the  main  pier, which  was
built  of grey  concrete  slabs. As I got to the  first  set of  branches, I
looked down the line of boats. Every two or three parking spaces there was a
shared utilities station, with  pipes  and cables  feeding the  rear of each
vessel  with power,  water and  a TV aerial.  I saw the occasional satellite
dish  too,  weighted  down by  sandbags and breeze blocks so the boat-owners
could get Bloomberg to check if the markets were performing strongly  enough
for them to buy the next size up.
     The  yachts nearest the parade were large enough to keep most America's
Cup teams happy, but  the further  I walked along the pier, the closer I got
to the really big boys, until I was among the kind of vessels that had radar
domes the size of nuclear warheads on the back and  only needed  a splash of
grey paint to be confused with battleships. One even had its  own two-seater
helicopter. No doubt about it, I was in the wrong job and had  been fostered
by the wrong family. I'd always said to myself I should find out who my real
parents were, and I realized that now was the time I should start trying.
     From the end  of the main  pier I looked back once more to the  garden,
working on the theory that if I could see a possible hiding place from where
I  was now,  I could  probably see  down here  from up  there.  I  took more
pictures. The only place that looked  possible as a one-size-fits-all OP was
to the far  right of  the marina, above  the flat roof of the administration
building,  and among the bushes that were about level with the  car park.  I
wandered back, feigning  interest in the boats but really looking under  the
piers to check how they  were constructed. Huge concrete pillars rose out of
the water, topped with T flanges, on which sat the concrete sections.
     A thin film of oil coated the water at the rear of the boats, a hundred
different shades  of blue and orange swirling in  the sunlight. I could  see
shoals  of tiny fish fussing  around  the pillars  quite easily through  the
clear water. I didn't know  how yet, but I had to get  on board the Ninth of
May and plant the device that was going to stop it reaching Algeria with the
cash. Getting wet might be the only way to do it.
     As I walked back towards the car park I could hear  British, French and
American voices settling down for lunch. Waiters and waitresses hovered with
expensive-looking  bottles of  water  and wine,  and  baskets of freshly cut
baguette. I was beginning to feel quite hungry.
     I stopped at a tab  ac and inspected another carousel of postcards as I
tucked  into   a  jumbo-size  Snickers  bar.  I  listened  to  a  group   of
twenty-something Americans drinking beer at  one  of  the tables outside. It
had been  a lot  of beer, judging  by the  number of empty glasses  and  the
content  of  their  conversation.  And, judging by  their  severe  haircuts,
tattoos and  tight polo  shirts, they  had to  be on  shore leave  from  the
warship at Villefranche.
     "No way, man, we should fucking nuke 'em, man, this very p.m.!"
     Another  guy started chanting, "USA, USA, USA," getting very worked up.
The  others chorused their  agreement  and swigged some more Kronenbourg. It
must have  been  hell being stuck in the Mediterranean instead of bobbing up
and down on the Indian Ocean, waiting to hose down the Afghan mountains with
cruise missiles.
     I rotated  the spinner. These cards  weren't as good as the ones at the
station, but then I caught sight of something in a display  case that I knew
would make Lotfi's day a baseball hat wit han arm sticking out of the top of
it,  holding a hammer. When you pulled  a  piece of  string the hammer swung
down on  to the peak. I  couldn't resist it: it would send  him ballistic. I
went inside  and handed over a hundred francs. It was pretty outrageous, but
as she  was selling Hermes scarves for those windy days on the  waves for  a
couple  of thousand, I guessed I got off  pretty lightly. No  wonder all the
shops had alarm boxes with yellow strobe lights above their front doors.
     The sailors were still honking as I came out.
     "We shouldn't be kicking back here, man,  we should be kicking some Bin
Laden ass right now."
     I looked beyond them to the central pier, and stepped back rapidly into
the  doorway. Two white  vans with blue light bars and riot grilles over the
windows  had pulled up, and were spilling out heavily armed men in navy blue
jumpsuits on to the quay.
     I suddenly got very interested in the latest issue of Paris-Match as an
estate car, also with a blue light bar, stopped next  to the vans. The  word
"Gendarmerie' was emblazoned along the door panels.
     Not flapping  just  yet, and still  engrossed  in the contents  of  the
magazine rack, I checked chamber. If they were here for me, they  didn't yet
know where I was: otherwise why get together  for  a briefing at the rear of
the vehicles?
     I watched as the Americans continued to develop the Kronenbourg plan of
attack on Bin Laden, unaware of what was happening just past the roundabout.
     It couldn't have anything to do with me. But, just in case, I moved out
on  to the  pavement  and turned left,  away  from  them,  heading  for  the
staircase that would take me up to the terraced gardens.
     The  American  table-thumping  slowly  faded  out  of  earshot.  They'd
probably never  know how much  Bin Laden ass  they  were  about to  kick, if
George's plan hit the target.
     I found the concrete steps at the end of the block that  led up to  the
higher ground. They were  well worn and there was no notice to say they were
private. If I did get challenged I'd just play the dickhead tourist.
     The steps took me up on to the roof,  which was covered in red  asphalt
and  formed a balcony. There was even a set of railings to stop  you falling
into  someone's soup on a windy day. The roundabout was in  dead ground from
here,  which was good; I couldn't see them,  they couldn't see  me.  A stone
wall, about a metre high, ran the length of the path, against which concrete
benches  had been installed at ten-metre intervals,  facing in the direction
of the marina for a nice relaxing view. Nearer  the road, an old man with  a
wheelbarrow was giving some weeds the good news with a spade.
     The  dirty  white top  of a truck  zoomed past above  me and beyond the
hedge, heading for Nice. This looked good so far: not only should I  be able
to see the entire marina, once I'd  got into the  bushes a few  metres above
me, but I could be over the hedge and on to the main drag in no time.
     A bench  stood directly in front of the  bushes where I  would probably
try to  establish  the  OP. Someone had sprayed "I fuck girls!"  in  English
across the back of it in blue paint. After  my morning  with Greaseball,  it
was a breath of fresh air.
     I  glanced  up  towards the gardener, and down in the  direction of the
gendarmerie, but both were out of  sight. I slipped over the bench and on t