“I don’t know anything about you.”
“Nor I you. As if you are really South African, scheisse.”
“Where were you born?”
“Lebanon. My parents brought me to Germany when I was a baby.”
“Where’d you go to school?”
“What is this?” she snapped. “You know me. I hate the Islamists! You saw me at the demonstration.”
“In my business we call that ‘deep cover.’ Five minutes,” he told her as the taxi pulled up to the hotel. She went up to the room as he retrieved his laptop from the front desk clerk.
“Are there any messages?” he asked.
“No, monsieur,” the clerk said, not looking at him.
“Check again,” Scorpion said.
The clerk checked the room box and the computer and shook his head, still not looking at him.
“Has anyone asked about us, anyone suspicious, maybe more than one? N’ayez pas peur.” Don’t be afraid. He slipped the clerk a fifty euro bill. The man glanced around and nodded once, almost imperceptibly. Merde, Scorpion thought in French as he headed for the elevator. It only took a few seconds to kill someone; Najla was in the room alone.
Their room was on the next to top floor. He took the elevator up to the top floor and walked downstairs to his floor. He took out his gun, put the silencer on, cracked the stairwell door a fraction of an inch and peered out at the corridor. It was empty. Stepping out, he walked silently to the door and, careful to stay out of sight range of the peephole, listened. The room was silent; there were no sounds of her moving around. He went to the room next door, listened and then knocked.
“Service d’etage, madame,” he called softly. There was no answer. He slid a credit card between the door lock and the frame, opened the lock and stepped inside. The room was dark and empty. He closed the door behind him, walked to the balcony door, opened it and stepped outside. The night was cool and clear, the lights from the hotel windows reflected in squares of light on the water of the bay. The balcony of his and Najla’s room was empty, and glancing over, there was just enough curtain to give him cover. There was about two feet of space between the rails of the two balconies, where he could fall three stories to the concrete yard below. The key, he knew, was not to make a sound.
Scorpion climbed onto the rail, the gun in his left hand and his right pressed against the side of the building for balance. He stepped over the gap to the rail of his balcony, sliding his hand forward as he balanced between the two balconies, then, still on top of the rail, he knelt and while balancing precariously, almost losing it, felt for the balcony floor with one foot until he touched it. Once on the balcony, he took a deep breath, transferring the gun to his right hand and peering into the room for an instant through the glass door, then ducking back.
He’d seen two men inside, one a Corsican, by the look of him, the other a black African. The Corsican was positioned, gun raised, against the wall next to the door of his room. The African was holding Najla in the middle of the room, his hand over her mouth, a knife pressed to her throat.
Scorpion knew he would only get one shot, and he needed them alive to find out who sent them. When he was ready, he stepped into the middle of the balcony in a two-handed firing position, aimed and fired, the bullet tearing a hole at the center of a spiderweb of cracked glass and hitting the gunman by the door in the shoulder. With the gun still pointed at him, he tapped the balcony door.
“Ouvrez la porte!” Open the door, he said, aiming at the gunman, who tried to aim his own gun at him, realized he couldn’t with his injured shoulder and indicated the African holding Najla.
“We’ll kill the pute,” the gunman said in French.
“Open the door or the next bullet’s in your head,” Scorpion answered, also in French.
The wounded gunman came over, unlocked the balcony door with his good hand and slid it open. Scorpion took his gun away, shoved him back into the room and stepped inside.
“Put down the gun or I’ll cut her petasse throat,” the African with the knife said, his hand still over her mouth. Najla’s eyes were wide and she looked desperately at Scorpion, who turned and aimed at the forehead of the man holding her.
“Va t’enculer! I don’t give a shit what you do. You and your mec,” he said, indicating the gunman, “will both be dead before her windpipe’s cut. Don’t be an asshole. I want to pay you money.”
“What are you saying?” the African asked.
“Is the man who paid you tall, thin, with a black leather blouson?”
“Go faire foutre yourself! What’s it to you?” the man with the knife said.
“How much did he pay you?”
“Four hundred. Two hundred each,” the gunman said, and sat suddenly on the floor. “I’m shot, you salaud. It hurts.”
“I’ll give you five hundred each,” Scorpion said, lowering his gun and taking out the money, putting it on a table. “Go get a towel,” he told Najla as the African with the knife let go of her and came to the table for the money. As he started to pick up the money, Scorpion pressed the muzzle of the gun onto the top of his hand, stopping him.
“You’re from West Afrique?” he asked the African.
“Senegalaise. What of it?”
“And you? Corsican?” Scorpion asked the gunman, who nodded. “But not of La Brise?”
“How do you know we’re not?”
“Because if you were of la Brise de Mer, you’d be getting paid from someone taking his orders from Cargiaca instead of my old copain, Didier,” he said, moving the muzzle so the man could pick up the money. Najla came out of the bathroom with a towel that she applied as a compress to the gunman’s shoulder wound.
“Cargiaca’s not running la Brise. He’s in Provence, counting his money and mistresses,” the gunman said. “These days, it’s Jacky, if he survives le Belge.” The Belgian.
“Jacky?” Najla asked.
“Jacky le chat. They call him the cat because he’s survived eight assassination attempts. But after last week, who knows?” the gunman said, pressing the towel to his shoulder. “Three of his men were killed in their auto while waiting at a traffic light right on the Canebiere. The Journal Televise said it was riddled with hundreds of bullets.”
“Are they still running heroin through the container terminals?” Scorpion asked.
“Not so much,” the Senegalese said. “My brother works in the container terminal, the salaud. They pay him plenty to look the other way. The containers are mostly for le cocaine and le vert.”
“Le vert?” Najla asked.
“Marijuana,” Scorpion translated.
“Oui, le cannabis,” the Senegalese nodded. “For the heroin, these days they mostly recruit mules by taking a member of someone’s family hostage and cutting off one finger or ear at a time till the mule brings it from Athens to Marseilles. It’s a good business, but because of the fighting between the Belge and Jacky le chat, dangerous.”
“So if I wanted to smuggle something big through Marseille Fos, say big guns, missiles, there’s a good chance it would be hijacked?” Scorpion asked.
“You want to do that, mec, you tell us. We have plenty of copains; we’ll do that for you,” the gunman said. So Didier had lied all the way, Scorpion thought. About Cargiaca and about the douanes at the port making it tough on la Brise’s smuggling. The reason the Palestinian didn’t want to bring the U-235 through Marseilles was the likelihood of it being hijacked.
“About my old copain, Didier, the salaud in the black blouson. What did he want you to do with us?”
“He wanted us to take you both out in the country. He said he would call and tell us where. What happened, mec? He double-cross you on a job?” the Senegalese asked.
“C’est ca.” That’s it. “You want another thousand?”
“I don’t know. You shot me, you salaud,” the gunman said.
“You shouldn’t play with guns. They’re dangerous,” Scorpion said. “When he calls, tell him you’ve got us.”
The gunman’s cell phone rang then, startling them. A thousand euros, Scorpion mouthed, indicating with his gun that the gunman should answer.