“Mr. Riske is fine on his own,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
Neill put a hand on the driver’s shoulder. “Let’s get to the airport. The plane’s waiting.”
Neill arrived at Orly Airport thirty minutes later.
The van passed through a special security gate and drove across the tarmac to the Gulfstream jet parked anonymously at the far corner of the airfield. Unlike Valentina Asanova, Neill did have a plane at his disposal.
He’d be in Marseille in a little more than ninety minutes. Well ahead of his bird dog.
Chapter 42
Nervous, flighty, and fatigued from a poor night’s sleep, Tino Coluzzi parked his car and walked the three blocks downhill to the port. The sky was a flawless blue. A light breeze scalloped the sea’s surface. Gulls wheeled and turned overhead, crying lustily. The beautiful morning failed to lift the mantle of dread. A Russian assassin had killed Luca Falconi, his best friend. Worse, Falconi had seemingly told her everything he knew about him and about Le Coual. And in case that wasn’t enough, Simon Ledoux, a man he’d thought dead and buried these long years, was not only alive but on his way to find him.
It had come to this.
One call.
Coluzzi crossed the Place aux Huiles and soon came in sight of the harbor. His heart sank. Panicked, he looked left and right. Nowhere did he see the Solange’s proud navy-blue hull, the sharp bow, the skull and crossbones fluttering from the fantail.
Ren had lied to him. He had not tried to reach Borodin after all.
In a daze, Coluzzi crossed to the quai and ran to the Solange’s mooring. In place of the two-hundred-foot superyacht was an eighteen-foot tender, bobbing at the dock. A lone crewman in white shorts and striped sailor’s tunic busied himself wiping down the seats. Coluzzi lowered his head, feeling as if he were the brunt of some cruel practical joke. He thought of the briefcase cached at Le Coual and the letter returned to its hiding place inside it.
Now what?
“Mr. Coluzzi?”
Coluzzi looked up to see the young crewman waving. “What do you want?”
“Mr. Ren departed at dawn for Entre les Îles.”
“I can see that.”
“Come aboard. He asked that I bring you.”
“To Entre les Îles?”
“He’s expecting you.”
“He is?… I mean, of course he is.” Coluzzi hurried to the mooring. With a new spirit, he jumped into the boat. The sailor cast off and started the engines, maneuvering the boat past a line of incoming trawlers. When they’d cleared the breakwater, Fort Saint-Nicolas above their shoulder, he pushed down on the throttle. The bow rose, the wind picked up, and in seconds they were making twenty knots over a shallow chop.
The boat turned east and skirted the coast, leaving Marseille behind and traversing Les Calanques. After a minute, Coluzzi spotted Le Bilboquet, the beach bar where he’d spent so much time when he’d first arrived from Corsica. His eye moved up the craggy vertical face behind it to the bluff. He looked a few hundred meters to the right, trying hard to find Le Coual among the red rocks. He could not, and this made him feel safer, proud of how well he’d camouflaged his hideout. If he couldn’t see it, no one could.
The boat turned away from the coast, heading out to sea on a course of south by southeast. The wind picked up. The sea grew rougher. The small boat began to rise and fall dramatically, the bow slapping the water with force. Coluzzi kept a death grip on the handrail. He was a landlubber, pure and simple. His family was from the mountains. Pig farmers, who even at the height of summer rarely visited the beach. The violent bounce, the subtle pitch and roll, provoked the first uneasy stirrings of nausea.
“Are you okay?” asked the skipper. “You look a little green.”
“I’m fine,” said Coluzzi, giving a tepid smile and a thumbs-up.
A smudge of brown appeared on the horizon and, soon after, a collection of white specks.
“Five minutes,” said the skipper.
The specks grew into yachts, but the smudge of brown remained flat, barely rising above the horizon. The boat rounded the eastern tip of land and pulled into a broad channel, passing between two long, similarly low islands. The boat slowed. The wind abated. The water was calm and the color of aquamarine, the sandy seafloor visible below. No fewer than a dozen yachts were anchored here and there. The largest among them, occupying pride of place nearest the white sand beach, was the Solange.
The skipper continued past the motor yacht and pulled alongside a dock extending fifty meters from land. Directly behind the dock, situated on a low bluff overlooking the beach, was a restaurant with thatched roofs and billowing white canopies. The smell of smoked seafood filled the air.
