Diamondhead (60 page)

Authors: Patrick Robinson

Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #Political, #Thrillers, #Weapons industry, #War & Military, #Assassination, #Iraq War; 2003-

Mack decided it was obvious the police knew of both his existence and his intent. Which did not unduly worry him, because he had always intended to leave a very definite, but false, trail to set them in search of a killer who did not exist. A big bearded killer named Gunther. If, however, the police had somehow found the unmarked Peugeot, they must by now have guessed he was either in the shipyard or, at least, trying to get in.

Again he watched the workers clearing the security system, and wondered how long it would be before the police conducted their inevitable search of this warehouse, and whether he could hide, and whether the guards would just take a cursory look around the empty sixth-floor storage area in which he now resided. He considered the possibility of discovery by one, two, or even three guards as
“a kinda pain in the ass,”
but not terminal.

By two thirty ten busloads of security guards were in the shipyard. The other ten were deployed around the city, especially along the wharves beyond Saint-Nazaire Maritime, both east and west. They hunted in packs of four, rampaging through boatyards, marine stores, parking lots, shops, and private residences, asking questions, probing like Nazi SS men in Belgium, seeking out the bearded killer.

In the shipyard, the dragnet tightened by the hour as squads of guards, directed by Pierre and Raul, closed in on the concourse, clearing out buildings and leaving small platoons of guards in each one. Mack watched them from on high, passing the time counting the active security operators in their bright-yellow jackets, the afternoon sun glinting off their rifles.

Shortly after two thirty the accompanying police convoy that would travel to Saint-Nazaire with Henri Foche was assembled outside the elegant townhouse in the most expensive part of Rennes. There were four armed officers positioned in the tree-lined front driveway, one on the front door, and one inside the hallway. Four of them would ride shotgun on police motorbikes that were parked on the street, blue lights flashing. The street was temporarily cordoned off. The Foche Mercedes-Benz was flanked front and rear by police cruisers, each of which contained four armed officers, including the driver. They waited with engines running, blue lights flashing. To the casual bystander it looked like a psychedelic nightclub had escaped into the daylight.

Henri Foche and his wife were finishing their coffee, and Claudette had asked him for the umpteenth time to “call off this crazy trip to this stupid shipyard where a madman is waiting to shoot you, and probably me.”

“No one is going to murder me in Brittany,” he scowled. “These shipyard people are counting on me. Nothing is going to prevent me from addressing them this afternoon. For them! And for France.”

Claudette rolled her eyes heavenward. “I just have no idea why you want to do this—deliberately walking into danger, and taking me with you.”

“First of all,” he replied, “the danger is minimal. Half the security forces in France are swarming through Saint-Nazaire. And in Raul Declerc I have one of the best professional killers in the world. And he works with the French police. I made sure of that. He’s with Pierre in the shipyard right now.”

“Even Pierre wanted to call it off.”

“Claudette, my policies must be heard by the workers, the people who look to me. They want to know their jobs are safe, and that I will protect those jobs. We will build France, with our own hands.
Pour la France! Toujours pour la France!
”

“Well, since you are obviously planning to get us both killed today, I ought to tell you that little actress you’re seeing in Paris telephoned about two hours ago. I know it was her, even though she put down the phone. Why don’t you send her a condom with
Viva la France!
inscribed on it?”

“Shut up about that. I’m not even seeing her. And stop changing the damn subject. This is a big day for me. I must be faithful to the wishes of the voters.”

“Wow! Faithful! Coming from you, Henri Foche, alley cat.
Pour la Bretagne! Pour la France!”

“Claudette, for the wife of the next French president, you have a low mind.”

“And for the next French president, you have a low life. And one day, it will catch up with you.”

Foche just stared at her, incredulous that she could not comprehend his true greatness. He shook his head, at a loss for words at the astronomical level of her dumbness.

Just then the guard at the door called, “Monsieur Foche, the police think we should leave now. Everyone’s ready when you are.”

Henri and Claudette both stood up from the table. Foche picked up his jacket, and his wife walked over to the mirror and brushed her hair. Within two minutes they were seated in the back of the Mercedes, with the final two police guards in the front, one driving. The convoy moved slowly through the streets to the southwest side of Rennes and then drove swiftly out to the fast N137 highway that leads down to Nantes and the road along the Loire to Saint-Nazaire.

Foche was not talkative. There were times when he detested his wife, whom he knew he had treated abominably. But his stature, his ability to allow her to live like a duchess, must surely have overridden that. She was, after all, a former call girl, and in Henri’s mind that overrode his marriage vows.

There was a natural law in the universe, he believed, a law that ensured the order of things, and he, Henri, had married a trophy wife, beneath him in every sense. And all he wanted from her was gratitude, and plenty of it. Not insolence and smart-ass remarks. Surely that was not too much to expect?

The procession sped south. The two lead motorbikes kept their flashing lights going all the way. But the other police vehicles drove without illumination. The plan was that all lights and sirens would go on, blazing and blaring, once the outskirts of Saint-Nazaire were reached. It was an integral part of an overall scheme masterminded by Pierre Savary, designed to unnerve the assassin.

Foche read his speech and occasionally made pencil marks on the pages. Claudette tried to sleep, even though, in the deepest recesses of her mind, she thought it entirely possible this might be her last day on this earth. Christ, she hated Henri. But she had an ingrained code of loyalty in her soul. And if he wanted to walk into the jaws of death, and he wanted her with him, then she would follow.

They reached the city of Nantes around four. The police officer in the front seat was on the phone to Raul Declerc, reporting speed and position. Back in the shipyard Raul ordered the final search of the buildings around the concourse to begin.

He was particularly concerned with the drydock, where there were so many workmen, all in blue overalls, all looking the same, all toiling on the hull of a new freighter. There were steelworkers, painters, plumbers, and electricians. There were men on the scaffold, dozens more inside the hull. How the hell could he tell if one of them had a hidden firearm right here in the drydock, with the intention of attacking the Gaullist leader?

It was the busy places that concerned Raul. The remote outlying places would be accurately searched, and were easy to locate. Around the main concourse vast squads of guards were beginning to congregate, and, as he had planned, Raul deployed them into the workshops and unfinished ships. Their orders were simple: search every inch of this place for a hidden gunman or firearm. Raul ordered the underside of the podium to be swept with metal detectors every twenty minutes. The street beyond the yard was out of bounds for both cars and pedestrians.

When Henri Foche walked to the podium on this simmering summer afternoon, there would be a steel curtain of forty guards surrounding him. As far as Raul and Pierre Savary could tell, Henri would be the most difficult man in the whole of France to assassinate on this particular day.

Up on the sixth floor of the warehouse, Mack Bedford began to change. All plans to bluff his way out of trouble as a workman were abandoned, just because it was too late. Foche would be arriving in a half hour. Mack stripped off his blue overalls and slung them high onto the shelves. He had nowhere to carry a flashlight, but the SEAL wet suit had a slim custom-made recess on the thigh for the combat knife.

He removed his Jeffery Simpson wig, mustache, and spectacles. Deep inside his wet suit top, there was just one waterproof pocket, and he folded the lightweight wig and slid all three items inside. Then he took down the toolbox and assembled the rifle made with such loving care by Mr. Kumar in Southall.

Into the breech he slotted all six of the chrome-colored bullets, setting one of them into the firing chamber. He slid the telescopic sight into place, and screwed the silencer onto the barrel. Then he held it in the firing position, almost caressed it, as he pulled the stock into his shoulder and stared through the sight, balancing the rifle, centering his whole body for the shot that would echo around the world.

He delved once more into the toolbox and removed the Draeger, the underwater rebreathing equipment, and he strapped it to his back rather than the correct position on his chest, where it would be a hopeless encumbrance. He pulled up his hood and fitted it snugly over his forehead.

He took out his big underwater goggles and tightened them on, fixed high on the hairline, ready to be tugged down fast as soon as he was in the water. Last time Mack did that he’d just stormed and dismantled Saddam’s offshore oil rig.

Then he took out the attack board and fitted all three instruments—the clock, the compass, and the GPS—with the batteries he’d bought at the hardware store. He screwed them back into place, watertight. When he’d completed this he pushed the rifle, the toolbox, and the attack board back into the shelves behind his locked door.

But soon he would unlock it. If they searched this building, as they surely must, and found just one locked door, they would definitely blast it open and come charging in, mob-handed, as the SAS was apt to describe a full-blooded raid. If, however, the door was unlocked like all the rest, there was an excellent chance that just the regular two- or three-man search party would come in alone—unsuspecting and, he hoped, not particularly thorough.
The door gets unlocked—no ifs, ands, or buts. But not until the last moment.

Mack walked to the window and looked down. He could see two of the three men who had emerged from the limousine seven hours previously. They were standing in the center of a great throng of guards, probably waiting for orders. When Raul’s cell phone rang at 4:30, Mack saw him answer it. Foche was within seven miles of the shipyard.

Immediately, Raul ordered the search of the big empty warehouse that faced the podium. He’d ordered it last because it was the emptiest, most obvious, and easiest place to clean right out. There were ten floors. Raul ordered fifteen men into the building, three armed guards to each floor, moving up. The two Foreign Legion men were to close right in on the front door, ensuring no one went in or came out while the search was being conducted.

Mack could see the sudden surge of the guards, and he turned away and climbed the shelves once more to the smaller window, set high above the little side throughway that led to the wall above the water. This window had a different catch, and he quietly pushed it open and peered outside, looking down to the single door on the side of the building, through which he had entered the previous night.

The guards were beginning to arrive in formation and move into the warehouse. Mack pulled the window shut and climbed down, listening. Far below he heard the general commotion as the security parties separated and began to search each floor. There were footsteps on the stone stairway, and the shouts of the men echoed in the cavernous stairwell.

Mack pulled his driving gloves on and opened wide one window on the front side and one on the back. He unlocked the door. Then he flattened himself behind it, tight against the hinges. Three or four minutes went by before the men from the ground floor leapfrogged the others and ran up to the sixth-floor landing.

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