‘We haven’t seen American cigarettes here for nearly four years,’ Marouf said, bringing out a Zippo lighter.
CHAPTER 3
The Yale lock snapped shut behind him. Neil was alone. The car was not outside. He felt a spasm of terror and looked up and down the alley.
It was about fifty yards away, near the corner, parked at a clumsy angle against the steel-shuttered doors. The man had promised to be waiting directly outside; perhaps he had gone away and got the doors confused when he returned.
Neil started up the alley, walking fast. It was the right car — a black Aronde. As he came closer he noticed that the offside wing had been crushed against the shutters. The driver sat with his head resting on the back of the seat. Neil came level and looked in.
The man’s throat gaped open like a shark’s mouth, bulbous and wine-red, with the severed cords glistening like dark streaks of bubble-gum. His rimless glasses had dropped into his lap and his eyes stared at the roof. Both hands were thrust out along the seat, fists clenched; and a sheet of paper splashed with blood was pinned to his shirt, with the scribbled words in biro: ‘JE SUIS UNE BARBOUZE’. Neil thought for a second, how odd the word should be feminine. The blood was still thick and wet.
Then he turned and ran. He reached the right-angled corner, slipping on a lump of squashed fruit, catching himself with his hands: stumbled up arid raced down the narrow street, his feet clattering between the high walls: feeling the sweat prickling on his face, his palms chafed raw with his fall, running on towards the CRS roadblock.
He took a second turning, dizzily, his bearings gone, seeing only another stretch of black arcades: dented dustbins and rinds of fruit and dreadful cats thin as wire, watching him, ready to flee.
He dodged back, trying frantically to remember where the CRS had been. He thought the car had taken two turnings, perhaps three. There were some railings on his left. They led to a long flight of steps into a little square far below lined with trimmed palms.
He started down, four steps at a time. There was a fountain in the square tinkling over mossy stones. He ran into another street heading down towards the sea. There was barbed wire in front of him; it stood six feet high, sunk into concrete blocks and riveted into the walls on either side. There were no CRS here, and no way out.
He doubled back into the square and tried a second turning. The street was crooked and ended on a plot of wasteland. He caught glimpses of the sea as he began leaping down the steep slope, loose tins and stones rolling away in front of him. Traffic hummed by in the street below. There was a wire fence about four feet high under a faded poster for Source Vittel. He clambered over the wire, ripping the inside of his trouser-leg.
There was a café on the corner. It was full of Europeans in blue overalls drinking wine and eating calimares. He went in and asked for a brandy. The barman seemed to look at him for a long time, scooping a dishcloth round the inside of a glass. He nodded slowly and turned to the bar. Neil could see himself being watched in the mirror as the man poured the drink. He looked at his own face, and it seemed to belong to someone else.
The barman came back with the brandy. ‘Un franc dix,’ he said, looking Neil in the eye. He was a bald man in a soiled apron. Neil gave him the money and gulped down the drink. He put the glass on the counter and saw several people watching him. One of them moved forward. He turned, walked quickly towards the door. A voice shouted, ‘Eh — monsieur.’
He began to run, through the door and round the corner, into a lane crowded with orange barrows. He tried to think clearly, to keep his mind under control, imagining that he was a long-distance runner. He must not look back. Just keep running, steadily, without panic, dodging between the barrows, heading down towards the sea. Faces swept past: suspicious European faces, stubble-black and fanged with cigarette butts, turning to watch him. Someone backed out in front of him with a tray of oranges. They collided and the tray crashed to the pavement.
He ran on, with the oranges bouncing down the street beside him, hearing shouts behind him, as he turned off at the back of a covered stall, down a flight of steps that led into the main shopping boulevard. He came out by the Air France building and knew at last where he was.
No one followed him out of the opening up the steps; and gradually he began to relax, dragging himself down into the next street and along the last stretch to the Miramar.
The armoured cars were out, the iron-faced Gardes Mobiles behind their heavy weapons, and he felt suddenly reassured, protected. They couldn’t chase him here.
He went into the Miramar, up in the cage-lift, along to his room. He wanted a shower and a cold beer, and it would be time to meet Anne-Marie for lunch at Le Berry. He unlocked the door and went through into the bedroom.
A face grinned at him from the window: ‘Come in, have a drink!’
CHAPTER 4
He was a big man of about forty-five with beige hair going grey, and bright piggy-blue eyes set close to a wedge of broken nose. He sat with his back to the window, holding a glass of brandy in one hand and a
