he didn’t dare say, or he just refused to admit it. Her safety was irrelevant now, with Little Finn gone. She was as good as theirs. It was all over.
Willy talked on the phone to the car in front of them and gave instructions. They weaved through country roads, turning right and left with little logic. It was Willy’s own devised maze, the way he’d always approached the salt pans when she and Finn had stayed there. Confuse and lose. But there was nothing behind them. It would take twenty minutes, probably, to clear the road by the exit.
Ahead, the night shadows of the smokestacks lightly bleached the darkness with their white smoke, as the Mercedes, the point car, and the electricity truck approached an old gravel pit to the right. They turned in and descended into the pit, along sand-covered tracks.
The car in front pulled up, and the elder officer stepped out. Willy swung round and halted behind them. The electricity truck followed suit. They were at the start of the hidden road across the salt pans, and completely concealed from view.
The officer stepped forward and indicated the electricity truck.
“They’ll stay here and close the entrance, just in case,” he said. Then he looked at Willy. “It seems a good place,” he said. “What’s down there?” He waved his head in the direction of the sea.
“There’s a half-hour ride across a broken salt road,” Willy said. “There’s nothing on the way, just the pans running out to either side, for as far as you can see in daylight. At the end are just dunes. And beyond that, my hut. I came here in ’fifty-six,” he said. “From Hungary.”
“I know when you came,” the officer said.
“There are a few hippies who’ll be there,” Willy said. “They pay me for campsites in the summer, go to India in the winter. Like the birds. But it’s all concealed from the land side, and mostly from the sea. I make them keep their tents down in the dunes. No one else comes here. To the left along the beach, there’s nothing until you reach the industrial zone; to the right, there’s three miles to the first tourist beach. Too far for anyone to bother to walk. No roads lead to the beach on either side of the camp for three miles. It’s a beautiful beach,” he added. “With a fine view of Marseille’s factories and occasionally a filthy smell that comes from them too, when the wind’s in the wrong direction. It’s no tourist trap. It’s a place of exiles.”
The officer walked across the dusty track to where the electricity truck was waiting. He gave some instructions, and Anna watched as the truck reversed and then drove back up the track to the top. The men opened the rear doors and began to put out cones, and an excavation vehicle was wheeled off a ramp.
The officer had returned.
“We’ll come with you until we know you’re okay,” he said.
“Have they found him?” Anna said, knowing it would have been the first thing she was told.
“Not yet,” he replied. He looked at her with compassion. “Do not give up hope,” he said. “There is still hope, until long after we hear from whoever took him.”
Anna and Willy decided they would prefer that their protection be concentrated at this end of the road. There was nothing and nobody at the far end in the dunes, except the hippies. Reluctantly, the officer agreed; he would come there personally at dawn unless there were developments, he said, in which case he would come immediately.
It was a fine night as they drove across the slightly raised causeway, with only the stars visible, more prominent without the moon. The stars were so bright in this dead place, Willy had once said, they made shadows.
In less than half an hour, they were approaching the dunes. There were no lights.
Anna felt her heart constricting as they approached. It was the last place she’d seen Finn, before his disappearance and death. From here, against all operational necessity, he had gone to tie up one loose end, as he’d put it. The next time she’d seen him was in the back of a car in Germany, dying, while Mikhail drove them through another night as dark as this one.
Willy pulled up the Mercedes behind a high dune, parking where they were invisible from both land and sea. He took her arm outside the car. They stared up at the stars, no words to say what they both were feeling.
And then they tramped over the dune and saw the little driftwood hut. Other similar cabins and tents dotted the sand, until they reached the sea. There was a fire burning, a guitar was playing somewhere inside the hippie encampment, and the smell of good hashish wafted across the beach.
Chapter 12
BURT STOPPED AT THE sea’s edge, a hundred yards from the hut. He could just make out the dull glow of a fire from this angle, flickering between the dunes. Taking a long pull on his cigar, he exhaled into the night sky, and walked on as if this were a postprandial stroll.
He saw the two figures before they saw him. They were standing back from the edge of the water, perhaps looking out to sea, perhaps staring into space. He began to approach until he judged he was both within earshot and far enough away not to threaten them. It was quiet; he could make out the distant chords of a guitar now, but otherwise there was no noise. The almost nonexistent waves made hardly any sound. When he was satisfied, he stopped again.
“Anna?” he called, just loudly enough without shouting. “Anna?”
He saw them both whip round and take a step away. Willy seemed to reach for something, but he evidently didn’t have anything to reach for. Anna had a weapon in her hand, but he couldn’t see what it was at this distance.
“Anna,” Burt repeated. “I’m a friend. Take it easy.”
“Who are you?” she said, and he saw her lift a long-barrelled pistol into the aiming position.
“Remember Burt?” he said. He hadn’t moved. But once again, he took a long draw on the cigar.
She said nothing. The pistol remained pointed at his head.
“You, me, and Finn had dinner at my house in London,” he said simply. “January twenty-eighth, 2004. I’m Burt. Burt from London. Burt from America. Burt, Finn’s friend.”
He still didn’t move.
“What are you doing here? How did you get here?”
Burt watched her standing quite still and staring hard at him, but she didn’t lower the gun. He saw Willy withdraw a little behind her. Maybe he was going to have a go at getting up the beach. Would he have a gun too? Probably. Knowing Willy, it would likely be something old-fashioned, a Browning 9mm, something like that, he guessed.
“May I approach?” he said.
She was silent.
“I’m not armed.” Burt held his hands in the air.
“Keep your hands like that, then,” she said at last. “Come up to ten yards, no more.”
He didn’t move immediately. “And ask your friend, please, to stay where he is,” he asked politely. “And be visible.”
He saw her turn and say something to Willy, who now moved into his vision again from behind her.
He began to walk on again at his own leisurely pace, his yellow slacks now glowing like a smallpox distress flag and his cigar waving in his hand above his head.
Anna and Willy stayed absolutely still. He walked until he was standing ten yards away, and then he stopped again.
“May I lower them?” he asked.
“Keep them in sight,” she said.
When he was up this close in the darkness, he saw from her face that Anna recognised him. But she still kept the barrel of the pistol aimed steadily at his head.
“Why are you here?” Willy spoke at last.
Burt addressed her. “Anna, we’ve found your son. He’s safe,” he said.
A silent beat seemed to envelop them. And then she burst out, “Where? Where have you got him?” Fear, anger, and relief were mingled in her voice. “What have you done with him?”
