Paced the room, went back to the window.
A knock at the door.
“Yes?”
“Monsieur, your taxi.”
One last look around the room. He put on a sweater, a wool jacket, a peaked cap.
The dock was hidden away on the north side of the waterfront, beyond a long row of warehouses at the Bassin National. Just about abandoned, he thought. Built in Napoleon’s reign of quarried block, with an old customs shed about halfway out and a green warning light at the far end. The night sea was heavy and black, it rammed into the stone, broke across it, and ran back in small rivers. Even in the wind, Casson could smell dead fish and diesel oil.
The Pardoner was already there, wearing an oilcloth slicker, and Degrave showed up twenty minutes later. They stood inside the shack and smoked as rain blew sideways through the broken windows.
It was 2:40 before somebody spotted a bow light, dim in the mist and spray, bobbing up and down as it tried to work its way into shore. It took a half hour before the boat managed to dock, the old tires roped to its bow slamming against the stone as they tied up. The captain was very good, Casson realized, but it helped that the old hulk he commanded, two boom derricks angled up from amidships, had powerful engines hidden down below. He jumped easily onto the dock, younger than Casson expected, with a thin line of beard tracing his jaw and a Luger automatic worn in a shoulder holster over an old sweater. He shouted to the crew in a language Casson didn’t know, and they ran extra lines from the boat to iron rings set in the stone. He shook his head and said something to the Pardoner, who smiled sympathetically and patted him on the shoulder. The crew, barefoot, began to unload the crates, stacking them in the shed. Degrave set one of the crates on the floor and prised up the lid with a crowbar. The Pardoner took a flashlight from beneath his slicker, switched it on, then peeled back a sheet of oiled paper. “As ordered,” he said. The light revealed six submachine guns packed side by side, the black steel gleaming with Cosmoline.
It didn’t take long to finish unloading. And if, at some point, a customs officer was supposed to have played a part in this, he never showed up. They had paid for that, of course, along with everything else. When the crates were counted, everyone shook hands. The captain jumped back on deck, the engines growled as the lines were cast off, the bow light moved out to sea, then vanished.
Just after four in the morning, the truck showed up. Degrave had bought it in Nice a week earlier. Old and solid, it seemed to Casson, with a square radiator grille and a canvas tarpaulin stretched over metal hoops. Degrave paid the hired driver, who took his bicycle from the back and pedaled off into the rain.
Casson and Degrave loaded the truck by flashlight. A fifty-five-gallon drum of gasoline rode just behind the cab. Slowly, they packed the sardine crates around and on top of the guns. Not much camouflage, but better than nothing.
It was almost dawn by the time Degrave got the truck started. “There is one thing I promised to do,” he said. “Not much out of our way.” He jiggled the shift lever, then slowly let the clutch out. Right away it was clear that the weight of the load was not insignificant, not for this truck. They moved, but they could feel the engine strain. The truck had obviously lived a long, hard life-the speedometer frozen at thirty-eight, the other gauges long gone, leaving empty holes with a few wires hanging out. The engine sang, hauling the load up the hill from the dock. At the top they got out, unlatched the hood, and felt the radiator. Hot, but not boiling over. Degrave nodded with grim satisfaction.
“We’ll get there,” he said.
Degrave’s errand was in Cassis, an hour away. They pulled up in front of the villa and Degrave left the engine running and went inside. He came back almost immediately, his wife at his side. They said a few words, kissed, and held each other for a time. When they moved apart she rested her hands on his arms, spoke to him, then kissed him quickly. Degrave nodded, he would, and walked back to the truck. His wife waited at the doorway while Degrave started the engine. The wind was blowing hard and she held her hair back with one hand and watched them until they drove away from the house.
The truck rumbled down the hill, through Cassis, and north on Route 8.
Degrave was very quiet. “You’ve been married, I think,” he said at last.
“Yes,” Casson said. “For a few years, anyhow.”
“Then you understand.”
Casson said he did.
With morning, the rain fell back to a drizzle. The black surface of the road glistened in the winter light. They passed a road marker, thirty kilometers to Aix-en-Provence, PARIS-772.
There was a checkpoint north of Marseilles, where a few trucks and cars were pulled over by the side of the road. Most of the fish and wine moving up to Paris went by train, so the sardines were supposedly headed for Avignon. A gendarme glanced at the permit and waved them through without looking in the back.
Degrave took the main roads, kept a steady speed of fifty kilometers an hour, and reached Salon by midmorning. Then he drove northeast through the countryside, into the foothills of the Vaucluse and across the river Durance, where he turned into a country lane. “They hunt around here,” he said. “Mostly rabbits and birds, ducks sometimes, but every farmer has a shotgun.”
He parked under a plane tree, tight-mouthed as he turned off the ignition-maybe it starts again, maybe it doesn’t-then pulled a valise from beneath the seat. He unbuckled the straps and took out an automatic pistol. “Ever use one of these?”
“No. I shot a rifle-for a morning-when I was in the air service in 1916. The only time I’ve been around pistols is making movies.”
“It’s a Walther,” Degrave said. “German officer’s side arm.” The pistol had a bare snout, like a Luger, but the barrel was shorter. He broke the magazine free, handed it to Casson with a box of 9mm bullets, and showed him how to load it.
They climbed down the embankment of a stream. Degrave found a rock, smooth black basalt, and propped it up at the edge of the water. He paced off a distance down the stream and turned to Casson.
“All right, try to hit it.”
Casson pointed the gun, sighted down the barrel, and pulled the trigger. The gun bucked in his hand, the impact blew some dirt around a few inches from the rock.
He tried again, this time he hit the water.
“Once more.”
He held his breath, squeezed off the shot, same result.
“Let me try,” Degrave said. He took the gun from Casson, held it loosely at his side, brought it up level and, without coming to a full stop, pulled the trigger. A white chip appeared on the rock.
“Should I keep trying?”
Degrave handed the gun back. “Just keep it with you,” he said.
They drove into the late afternoon, Casson behind the wheel for a time, following the edges of the Rhone valley into the hills of Provence. There were two routes to Paris from the south: straight up to Lyons and Dijon, the ancient trade route; or west into the Massif Centrale, the Auvergne, then due north into the city. The mountain route had hairpin turns and steep grades, the valley route had police. Degrave’s idea was to work just east of the Rhone, village to village, on back roads.
They stopped in Carpentras and bought bread and cheese and pears and a few bottles of mineral water, enough for three days. When the sun was low on the horizon, they parked the truck and sat on the running board. Degrave cut up some of the bread and cheese and spread it on a sheet of newspaper. “We dine in style, chez nous,” he said. He carved a bad piece out of a pear, sliced a half off, and handed it to Casson.
“Not too bad,” Casson said. It was hard and burned by frost, but very sweet.
Degrave finished his share and wiped his hand on the newspaper. “I hope this is all worth it,” he said.
“There’s one thing I’ve been wondering about,” Casson said. “We’re giving them a thousand rounds for each of these guns but, according to Vasilis, the cartridge is hard to find. So, when they’ve used up the ammunition, that’s that.”
“Maybe, maybe not. You never know what they’re going to come up with-or they may have to come back to us for more. Fact is, we don’t want them to go to war. A thousand rounds doesn’t mean much in a military action- the Modele 38 empties a thirty-two-round magazine in a few seconds. What you can use it for is assassination,
