'I suppose I was lucky I'd developed my disguise, for Jean Daniel was there. He was on his own, didn't notice me. But when he left I was waiting in my car, followed him to the villa. And having found the place, I sat back out of sight and watched it, watched its clientele… hard men, all of them! Then, for some few weeks, I followed them, too. Well and good — now I knew the places to avoid if ever Natasha came back to Marseille; I mean, I knew which routes not to take getting her out of there. And I knew to get her out fast.
'For despite all my earlier intentions, finally I was getting some sense. These people played rough, played for keeps. So maybe I'd be wise to forget the revenge thing, simply take Natasha and run for home. If she ever came back. 'And eventually she did.
'It was less than three years ago, in early November. I got a message from a friend, who gave me a Moscow telephone number. And when I called… I knew it could only be Natasha. She was scared. Castellano had done a job on her, ruined her reputation with the Moscow Mob. For a long time they'd left her alone, let her go to the dogs. She'd been unable to find work, and finally she'd become desperate. Then she'd begged a Mob boss to let her run drugs again. And now she was coming to Marseille. But Castellano knew she was coming and she was more afraid of him than ever.
'I asked her if she remembered our previous plans. She did, and was ready to do whatever I'd worked out for us. But her own idea was a lot more daring: to dump her drug consignment cheaply on a rival French gang, and then to run with the money! Even cheaply it would still be worth a quarter million sterling!
'At first I backed away from it. But the more I thought it over the more I liked it. Wouldn't it be as good, even better, than the somewhat more physical revenge that I'd once planned? And it would hit them all, not just Jean Daniel, who obviously had been my principal target.
'Natasha had already contacted her buyer; she was supposed to come by yacht but instead would fly into Marseille. That way she'd have time to dispose of her load and get out of France — with me, of course — before Castellano and his people even knew she was missing. My part of it would be simple: drive like hell for Lyon, Dijon, and Paris, finally the Tunnel. I'd studied the routes, couldn't find any fault with the plan. We'd be on board a train and passing beneath the English Channel before the Marseille Mob even thought to backtrack Natasha's movements. So we reckoned, anyway.
'Maybe it would have been easier to fly. But that way would have meant leaving my car behind. I had a beauty, an almost new Peugeot. Also, if we'd flown the Mob would find it a lot easier to track us. Idiot that I must have been, I still hadn't fully appreciated just what kind of people I was fooling with…'
Jake paused to look at Trask. 'You compared the modern Mob to terrorist organizations. Well, I thought I had learned something about terrorism in the SAS. Maybe I had, but plainly not enough. And anyway, that was just classroom stuff. Whatever, I thought of the Mob a lot differently from you: as just a bunch of hoods, I suppose. But you were right and I was wrong.
'They were probably watching her all the way down the line. They'd probably always watched her… maybe they have watchers for all their couriers and dupes. Take Jean Daniel, for example. That spindly bastard was just another watchdog. Not so hard to understand when you consider the street value of the merchandise…
'Natasha was wearing dark glasses, a wig and all when I met her off the plane. But I knew her immediately. And so did they. Then… it was like a repetitive nightmare, almost a repeat of last time. Except this time there were five of them at the villa, and the way they went at it…
'… Oh God! Oh God! — I knew they wouldn't be taking prisoners this time.'
Jake's face was ashen now. Earlier tonight he'd known more or less what to expect; even if he had only half-believed in it, still he had been doing a job. But at the time of his collision with the Mob, Castellano's people — that kind of monster — he had been… what, naive? Well, no longer.
Ben Trask knew it was time to step in, but more forcefully now. 'That's enough, Jake/' he said. 'You don't need to go into any further details. Why upset yourself) We've all heard enough and we're on your side. As for 'justice' — the justice you received? — I might know a lot more about that than you do. So for now, let's skip that night at the villa.' But:
'That long, long night,' Jake husked, sweating and shivering at the same time, his skin almost visibly crawling. 'All of them, and that bastard Castellano watching it from the shadows. God, I still don't know what he looks like! But afterwards, oh, I remembered the rest of them in minute detail, would never let myself forget them. And their laughter, like jackals. And their jokes. The way they went at her, leaving no marks, no signs…'
'Skip it, Jake!' Trask's grating voice, shaking him out of it… Jake sat back and gulped at the air, gradually quit shuddering. Eventually a little colour returned to his face, and finally he was able to continue:
'I came to in the water. Underwater! My car's windows were half open and we were sinking like a brick. At first I was disorientated, didn't know what the hell was happening. I think I woke up because I couldn't breathe. Like when I was a kid: I'd come screaming awake thinking I was drowning, only to discover that my head was under the covers. But this time it was river water. And I was stupidly trying to push back the covers… I mean I felt stupid, drugged — which of course I was! But then, as I remembered what had gone down, I looked for Natasha in the passenger seat. She wasn't there, and I thanked God—
'—Thanked Him, as I somehow managed to wind my window down and drifted out and up and free. But as the car went down and I floated up, buoyed up in an eruption of big bubbles, I saw Natasha in the back of the car! Her face… her hair floating… her eyes wide open… her mouth gaping. And her spread fingers flattened and white, the hands of a corpse — I hoped! — against the curved back window.
'But dead? I didn't know, I still don't know to this day if she was dead or alive. But I've got to keep telling myself that she was
dead, because that's the only way I can bear it. And in any case, I couldn't have done a thing about it. Weak as a kitten, I felt half dead myself! My lungs were bursting — my ears, too — we were that deep. And I drifted up oh so slow, while the car went down, disappearing into the deeps. And this girl I had loved, still loved, Natasha disappearing with it…'
This time it was a while before Jake could go on. He was like a man apart from reality; he started and sat up straighter in his chair when the Old Lidesci coughed, and looked around for a moment as if wondering where he was. Then:
'Are you okay, Jake?' Liz asked him.
A nod was his only answer, until he was able to continue.
'Don't ask me how I got back to Marseille,' he finally went on. 'I can't for the life of me remember. But I did, and I laid low with a trusted friend. By then my earlier plans for revenge were firmly back in place. Before that, however, I actually considered going to the police. Then I remembered what Natasha had told me about the police being in Castellano's pocket and decided against it. I would wait it out, see what happened.
'I didn't have long to wait. It was in the newspapers, home and abroad. My car had been found in the Verdon River where it comes down from the Alps of Provence near Riez. Locals had been alerted by a hole in the wall of a stone bridge over a torrential gorge. Natasha was still in the car, also a quantity of illicit micro-drugs and other evidence that she'd been a bad lot. As for me: well with my past record I would have been a wanted man — her partner, obviously — except they assumed I was dead
'But I wasn't dead And now I had absolutely nothing left to lose. Also, I knew a few things about Castellano's people, where they hung out and who with, and I wasn't about to waste any more time…
'There was one thing I had been really good at during my couple of years with the SAS: sabotage. Sabotage, booby-traps, and demolition. And I still remember — and I cherish the memory — of the night I found Jean Daniel drinking alone in that discreet little bar that I knew so well. I was there, watching the place, when he arrived, and I was there when he left.
'It was a rainy night. As he got in his car in the alley, I stepped out of the shadows maybe twenty-five yards in front. I stood there with my legs spread like an inviting target, and I waved at him. And I started oh so slowly to walk towards him. He saw me; I saw him flinch, knew that he'd recognized me. Then he turned the key in the ignition, and I knew exactly what the bastard was thinking: that he would run me down.
'By then I'd turned my back and hit the deck just in case. But no, there wasn't much of a blast; what little there was of flying glass went over my head. So I got up, walked to his car and looked in through the shattered window. I knew pretty much what I'd see, for I'd been determined to make the best kind of job of it. And I had.
'I had taken a small hacksaw and cut halfway through the four spokes of his steering wheel close to the column. And I'd fitted a trembler to the high-explosive charge that I'd placed under the plastic casing where the
