“Yes, I can.” The patient looked around the room; there was a telephone on a desk by a window. He crossed to it and yanked the cord out of the socket. “Now no one will disturb you,” he added, picking up the knapsack.
“You won’t go free, you know!” snapped Chamford. “You won’t get away with this! The police will find you!”
“The police?” asked the intruder. “Do you really think you should call the police? A formal report will have to be made, the circumstances described. I’m not so sure that’s such a good idea. I think you’d be better off waiting for that fellow to pick you up later this afternoon. I heard him say he was going to get you past the marquise into the stables. All things considered, I honestly believe that’s what you should do. I’m sure you can come up with a better story than what really happened here. I won’t contradict you.”
The unknown thief left the room, closing the damaged door behind him.
You are not helpless. You will find your way.
So far he had and it was a little frightening. What had Washburn said? That his skills and talents would come back … but I don’t think you’ll ever be able to relate them to anything in your past. The past. What kind of past was it that produced the skills he had displayed during the past twenty-four hours? Where had he learned to maim and cripple with lunging feet, and fingers entwined into hammers? How did he know precisely where to deliver the blows? Who had taught him to play upon the criminal mind, provoking and evoking a reluctant commitment? How did he zero in so quickly on mere implications, convinced beyond doubt that his instincts were right? Where had he learned to discern instant extortion in a casual conversation overheard in a butcher shop? More to the point, perhaps, was the simple decision to carry out the crime. My God, how could he?
The more you fight it, the more you crucify yourself, the worse it will be.
He concentrated on the road and on the mahogany dashboard of the Marquis de Chamford’s Jaguar. The array of instruments was not familiar; his past did not include extensive experience with such cars. He supposed that told him something.
In less than an hour he crossed a bridge over a wide canal and knew he had reached Marseilles. Small square houses of stone, angling like blocks up from the water; narrow streets and walls everywhere—the outskirts of the old harbor. He knew it all, and yet he did not know it. High in the distance, silhouetted on one of the surrounding hills, were the outlines of a cathedral, a statue of the Virgin seen clearly atop its steeple. Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde. The name came to him; he had seen it before—and yet he had not seen it.
Oh, Christ! Stop it!
Within minutes he was in the pulsing center of the city, driving along the crowded Canebière, with its proliferation of expensive shops, the rays of the afternoon sun bouncing off expanses of tinted glass on either side, and on either side enormous sidewalk cafés. He turned left, toward the harbor, passing warehouses and small factories and fenced off lots that contained automobiles prepared for transport north to the showrooms of Saint-Etienne, Lyons and Paris. And to points south across the Mediterranean.
Instinct. Follow instinct. For nothing could be disregarded. Every resource had an immediate use; there was value in a rock if it could be thrown, or a vehicle if someone wanted it. He chose a lot where the cars were both new and used, but all expensive; he parked at the curb and got out. 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 dawn, 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.”