“Bon appetit. They make the true bouillabaisse here. You should try it,” Didier said. He was about to leave when he stopped and added in French, “What about your petite amie? For a fee, I’ll take care of it.”
“It’s good to see you again, mon vieux copain,” Scorpion said, and watched him go. As soon as Didier left the restaurant, Scorpion got up and grabbed a waiter, whispered something to him and slipped him some money. He came back and sat down again.
“What was that about?” Najla said.
“Just being careful. In our business, it’s important. But of course you know that.” He smiled. “Shall we try the bouillabaisse?” he said, signaling to the waiter.
As promised, the bouillabaisse was very good. It was done Marseilles style, with the fish and shellfish presented on a separate platter from the broth, which was served in a bowl with floating slices of baguette spread with rouille.
“This ship you asked him about-where’s it from?”
“Ukraine. How’s the bouillabaisse?”
“Delicious, and you’re changing the subject. What’s your interest in this Ukrainian ship?”
“Did you find it curious about the captain dying?”
“I was wondering about that too. You think someone killed him? Why?”
“Maybe he didn’t do what they wanted. Or maybe he demanded more money than they wanted to pay.”
“Maybe someone wanted to go to Genoa, where it would be easier to get something dangerous through customs. Something you could ship in three containers. That good-looking Frenchman at the port thought that was very odd.”
“You just like him because he kissed your hand.”
“With his looks, he didn’t have to. You could learn from him. It’d be interesting to see the autopsy report on that captain, wouldn’t it?”
“Very.”
She put down her fork and looked at him. “You’re a kind of policeman, aren’t you?”
“No, not a policeman.”
“Or a CIA spy,” she said. “‘The Spy Who Loved Me.’ Except you don’t, do you? Love me.”
“That wouldn’t be a good idea, would it?” he said.
“Because you don’t know if I’m on your side, whichever side that is?”
“We need to finish up,” he said, putting his napkin on the table.
“Are we going to Genoa?” she asked, not looking at him.
“We’ll see,” he said, getting up and speaking for a moment with the waiter he had spoken to earlier. He came back, tossed some money on the table, and grabbed Najla’s hand.
“Come on. We have to go,” he said.
“What is it?” she asked, getting up.
“Didier. I had the waiter check outside from time to time while we were eating. He’s sitting in a car down the street.”
“What does he want?”
“He smells money. He’s decided to try to cut himself in,” Scorpion said, guiding her toward the back of the restaurant. As they walked into the narrow kitchen with three workers talking and noisily handling pots, a man in a soiled white apron shouted at them:
“Attention, monsieur! Il est interdit! You may not come back here.”
Scorpion handed him a twenty euro note, and pulling Najla after him, was headed for the back door when he paused for a moment in front of a small TV mounted on a shelf. A chic well-tanned woman was broadcasting the Dix-neuf-Vingt Journal Televise nightly news.
“I thought you wanted to go,” Najla said.
“Wait a minute,” he said, and then the woman on TV said something that stopped him cold. Suddenly all the loose ends came together and he knew exactly where the Palestinian intended to strike and when.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Marseilles, France
He shouldn’t have gone back to the hotel. He hadn’t wanted to, but Najla insisted in the taxi after they’d gotten away from the restaurant.
“Where are we going? Genoa?” she asked.
“Rome,” Scorpion said. He checked flights on his cell phone and booked reservations for the two of them on an Air France flight from Marseilles Provence Airport to Fiumicino for that evening.
“Why Rome?”
“Don’t you know?” he asked, his eyes searching her face in the intermittent flashes of light from passing headlights.
“We haven’t even unpacked and now you want to leave. Why?”
“Because the story you want is in Rome.”
“Where did that come from?”
“You’ll figure it out. C’est a quelle distance de l’aeroport? ” he asked the taxi driver. How far to the airport?
“Ten kilometers, monsieur,” the driver said.
“What about my clothes and things?” she said.
“We’ll buy new ones in Rome.”
“That’s what you think. I have to freshen up. Besides, I’m doing you a favor. You have no idea what those clothes cost. Turn around. Take us to the Pullman Hotel,” she told the driver.
“Ne pretez aucune attention,” he told the driver. Pay no attention. “Keep going.” He didn’t want to tell her that the hotel was a red zone. Didier was ex-DGSE and it wouldn’t take him long to track their hotel down, and that was only half his problem. If anyone from the Utrecht network learned that they had made inquiries about the Zaina, or if they found the bodies and got to Anika, or just put two and two together and figured out where he would go next, it wouldn’t take Al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya long to look for foreigners in Marseilles, a city teeming with Muslims working at every hotel. Even more urgently, he had to connect with Langley without Najla or anyone else looking over his shoulder.
She grabbed his wrist. “I’m tired of this. Either you take me to the hotel now or so help me I’ll scream ‘rape’ at the top of my lungs the second we get to the airport.”
“Forget it,” he said, pulling his wrist away. “I’ll drop you at the hotel and go to Rome myself.”
“I know where you’re going. I can book a flight too. What is it with you? Just five minutes and we’ll go, I swear.”
Suddenly, he realized that he had to go back to the hotel. He’d checked in his laptop at the desk and hadn’t wiped the disk. That was the problem when you weren’t traveling alone. It was hard finding the privacy to do the things you didn’t want anyone to see. You cut corners; you made mistakes.
“Five minutes and that’s it,” he said to her. Then to the driver, “We changed our mind. Allez a l’hotel.” The driver signaled and made the turn back to the city.
“What is your problem?” she asked him. “What’s wrong with going back to the hotel?”
“Didier. How long do you think it will take him to check out the hotels in Marseilles and find us?”
“You realize you’re paranoid, don’t you?” she said.
“You’re not the first person to say that to me.”
“Then maybe it’s true.”
“You’d have to ask them, only you can’t.”
“Why not?” she said as the taxi turned onto the Corniche Kennedy. The street was lined with buildings and hotels fronting the bay.
“They’re all dead.”
“You don’t trust anyone, do you? Especially me.”
