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“We don’t even know what it is,” Remi said.
“You get my point. I’m worried about you two.”
“We appreciate that, Rube, but we’re going to see this through.”
Haywood sighed. “At least let me help you.”
“What did you have in mind?” asked Sam.
“I’ve taken a second look at Kholkov. A few years ago he was in Chechnya; we think he was playing middleman for a black-market AK-47 dealer. Wouldn’t take much to get his name slipped onto the Terrorist Watch List. A couple calls and I could put him on the radar of the DCPJ,” he said, referring to the Direction Centrale Police Judiciaire, or Central Directorate Judicial Police, France’s version of the FBI. “There’s nothing they could arrest him on, but they might be able to detain him and his buddies for a while.”
“Do it. Any breathing room you can buy us will help.”
“The question is whether they’ll be able to find him. Given his background, he’s not going to make it easy for them.”
Three hours later Rube had called back: The DCPJ had put out a bulletin for Kholkov, but he wouldn’t know anything more for a few hours, if then. The French, Rube told them, were cagey about sharing information.
“I don’t suppose you know a French version of Guido the Shoe maker-slash-Arms Dealer?”
“Sam, the French are rabid about their gun laws; you don’t want to get caught with an unregistered one. But, I do know a guy named Maurice. . . .”
He gave Sam the phone number and they hung up.
Now Remi pulled up her jacket collar against the chill and huddled closer to Sam beneath the umbrella. “I don’t see anyone else.”
“Me neither. Shall we?”
With one last look around they stepped from the alley and started down the sidewalk.
Using the rudimentary tradecraft skills Sam had picked up at Camp Perry, they strolled the streets north of the harbor for an hour, doubling back on their path, stepping abruptly into cafés and then out the back door, and generally watching for any signs of pursuit. Satisfied they were alone, they hailed a cab and directed the driver to take them to Rue Loge on the Vieux Port.
As promised by the rental company’s manager, at a slip in the northwest corner of the harbor they found waiting for them a gray eighteen-foot Mistral. Though essentially a motor whaleboat with a glassed-in pilothouse barely bigger than a phone booth, it was wide-beamed and sported a reliable and quiet Lombardi engine. It would, they hoped, serve their purposes.
Using the key the manager had messengered over, Sam undid the padlocked hawser and the lines while Remi started the engine. He jumped aboard and she throttled up, pointing the bow toward the mouth of the harbor.
Ten minutes later the breakwater appeared off the bow. Astern the lights of Marseille, hazy in the rain, reflected off the rippled surface of the water. Working to keep up with the droplets streaming down the pilothouse windscreen, the single windshield wiper thumped softly.
Beside Remi at the wheel, Sam said, “I’ve been thinking about what Kholkov said.” He saw her expression and quickly said, “Not about his offer—about what Bondaruk’s interest is in whatever-it-is. He said it was a legacy. We know he’s deadly
serious about it, so maybe the answer’s in his family history.”
“Good point,” Remi said, taking a buoy down the Mistral’s port side. “We’ll turn Selma loose on it. You’re not, are you—having second thoughts, I mean?”
“Only as far as you’re concerned.”
Remi smiled in the darkness, her face dimly lit by the helm console’s green lighting. “We’ve been through worse.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for starters there was that time in Senegal when you insulted that shaman—”
“Forget I asked.”
Thirty minutes later Île d’If appeared, a white lump rising from the dark ocean a half mile off the bow. The château had closed at five thirty and aside from a lone navigation beacon pulsing red against the night sky, the island was completely dark.
“Doesn’t look as welcoming at night, does it?” Remi asked.
“Not even close.”