Beyond the fence was a small cavern of a garage, mechanics in overalls laconically wandering about carrying tools. He walked casually around inside until he spotted a man in a thin, pin-striped suit whom instinct told him to approach.
It took less than ten minutes, explanations kept to a minimum, a Jaguar’s disappearance to North Africa guaranteed with the filing of engine numbers.
The silver monogrammed keys were exchanged for six thousand francs, roughly one-fifth the value of Chamford’s automobile. Then Dr. Washburn’s patient found a taxi, and asked to be taken to a pawnbroker--but not an establishment that asked too many questions. The message was clear; this was Marseilles. And a half hour later the gold Girard Perregaux was no longer on his wrist, having been replaced by a Seiko chronograph and eight hundred francs. Everything had a value in relationship to its practicality; the chronograph was shockproof.
The next stop was a medium-sized department store in the southeast section of La Canebière.
Clothes were chosen off the racks and shelves, paid for and worn out of the fitting rooms, an ill-fitting dark blazer and trousers left behind.
From a display on the floor, he selected a soft leather suitcase, additional garments placed inside with the knapsack. The patient glanced at his new watch; it was nearly five o’clock, time to find a comfortable hotel. He had not really slept for several days; he needed to rest before his appointment in the rue Sarrasin, at a café called Le Bouc de Mer, where arrangements could be made for a more important appointment in Zurich.
He lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, the wash of the streetlamps below causing irregular patterns of light to dance across the smooth white surface. Night had come rapidly to Marseilles, and with its arrival a certain sense of freedom came to the patient. It was as if the darkness were a gigantic blanket, blocking out the harsh glare of daylight that revealed too much too quickly. He was learning something else about himself: he was more comfortable in the night. Like a half-starved cat, he would forage better in the darkness. Yet there was a contradiction, and he recognized that, too. During the months in Ile de Port Noir, he had craved the sunlight, hungered for it, waited for it each da wn, wishing only for the darkness to go away.
Things were happening to him; he was changing.
Things had happened. Events that gave a certain lie to the concept of foraging more successfully at night. Twelve hours ago he was on a fishing boat in the Mediterranean, an objective in mind and two thousand francs strapped to his waist. Two thousand francs, something less than five hundred American dollars according to the daily rate of exchange posted in the hotel lobby. Now he was outfitted with several sets of acceptable clothing and lying on a bed in a reasonably expensive hotel with something over twenty-three thousand francs in a Louis Vuitton billfold belonging to the Marquis de Chamford. Twenty-three-thousand francs ... nearly six thousand American dollars.
Where had he come from that he was able to do the things he did?
Stop it!
The rue Sarrasin was so ancient that in another city it might have been designated as a landmark thoroughfare, a wide brick alley connecting streets built centuries later. But this was Marseilles; ancient coexisted with old, both uncomfortable with the new. The rue Sarrasin was no more than two hundred feet long, frozen in time between the stone walls of waterfront buildings, devoid of streetlights, trapping the mists that rolled off the harbor. It was a backstreet conducive to brief meetings between men who did not care for their conferences to be observed.
The only light and sound came from Le Bouc de Mer. The café was situated roughly in the center of the wide alley, its premises once a nineteenth-century office building. A number of cubicles had been taken down to allow for a large barroom and tables; an equal number were left standing for less public appointments. These were the waterfront’s answer to those private rooms found at restaurants along La Canebière, and, as befitting their status, there were curtains, but no doors.
The patient made his way between the crowded tables, cutting his way through the layers of smoke, excusing himself past lurching fishermen and drunken soldiers and red-faced whores looking for beds to rest in as well as new francs. He peered into a succession of cubicles, a crewman looking for his companions--until he found the captain of the fishing boat. There was another man at the table. Thin, pale faced, narrow eyes peering up like a curious ferret’s.
“Sit down,” said the dour skipper. “I thought you’d be here before this.”
“You said between nine and eleven. It’s quarter to eleven.”
“You stretch the time, you can pay for the whiskey.”
“Be glad to. Order something decent if they’ve got it.”
The thin, pale-faced man smiled. Things were going to be all right.
They were. The passport in question was, naturally, one of the most difficult in the world to tamper with, but with great care, equipment, and artistry, it could be done.
“How much?”
“These skills--and equipment--do not come cheap. Twenty-five hundred francs.”
“When can I have it?”
“The care, the artistry, they take time. Three or four days. And that’s putting the artist under great pressure; he’ll scream at me.”
“There’s an additional one thousand francs if I can have it tomorrow.”
“By ten in the morning,” said the pale-faced man quickly. “I’ll take the abuse.”
“And the thousand,” interrupted the scowling captain. “What did you bring out of Port Noir?
Diamonds?”
“Talent,” answered the patient, meaning it but not understanding it.
“I’ll need a photograph,” said the connection.
“I stopped at an arcade and had this made,” replied the patient, taking a small square photograph out of his shirt pocket. “With all that expensive equipment I’m sure you can sharpen it up.”
“Nice clothes,” said the captain, passing the print to the pale-faced man.
“Well tailored,” agreed the patient.
The location of the morning rendezvous was agreed upon, the drinks paid for, and the captain slipped five hundred francs under the table. The conference was over; the buyer left the cubicle and started across the crowded, raucous, smoke-layered barroom toward the door.
It happened so rapidly, so suddenly, so completely unexpectedly, there was no time to think.
Only react.
The collision was abrupt, casual, but the eyes that stared at him were not casual; they seemed to burst out of their sockets, widening in disbelief, on the edge of hysteria.
“No! Oh my God, no! It cannot--“ The man spun in the crowd; the patient lurched forward, clamping his hand down on the man’s shoulder.
“Wait a minute!”
The man spun again, thrusting the V of his outstretched thumb and fingers up into the patient’s wrist, forcing the hand away. “You! You’re dead! You could not have lived!”
“I lived. What do you know?”
The face was now contorted, a mass of twisted fury, the eyes squinting, the mouth open, sucking air, baring yellow teeth that took on the appearance of animals’ teeth. Suddenly the man pulled out a knife, the snap of its recessed blade heard through the surrounding din. The arm shot forward, the blade an extension of the hand that gripped it, both surging in toward the patient’s stomach. “I know I’ll finish it!” whispered the man.
The patient swung his right forearm down, a pendulum sweeping aside all objects in front of it.
He pivoted, lashing his left foot up, his heel plunging into his attacker’s pelvic bone.
“Che-sah.” The echo in his ears was deafening.
The man lurched backward into a trio of drinkers as the knife fell to the floor. The weapon was seen; shouts followed, men converged, fists and hands separating the combatants.