Black Diamond - Martin Walker [92]
“How many cars are they sending?”
“We’re promised four, and they’re supposed to wait for my order before moving in. They’re led by an Inspector Verneuil. He’s supposed to be good. He’d better be. This has all been set up at the last minute.”
J-J slowed as the cinema and restaurant came into view. At the next side street, Bruno saw two police cars, displaying only parking lights, stopped with their engines running. An unmarked police car waited at the corner, a tall man wearing a Russian fur hat stood beside it, a radio in his hand. J-J pulled up alongside him.
“Inspector Verneuil?” Bruno asked. The fur hat nodded.
“You got my message?” asked J-J, leaning across Bruno to speak through the open window. The fur hat nodded again.
“Can we get a dedicated channel on these things?” J-J asked, gesturing at Verneuil’s radio.
“Not without setting it up earlier,” Verneuil replied.
“Well, if you hear me refer to Operation Deutschland, that’s you. If I say Operation Deutschland Now, bring your guys at the double. If I don’t, sit tight.”
“Got it,” said Verneuil. “Why Deutschland?”
“Because nothing else sounds like it, and it has no obvious connection to the target. I wouldn’t put it past these bastards to be monitoring our radio. Understand?”
Verneuil nodded again, the fur hat exaggerating the gesture.
“We’re going to take a quick look around on foot,” J-J went on.
“The radio is attached to the car,” Bruno said.
“Putain de merde. We’ll get closer in the car, then Bruno here will take a look on foot, and I’ll stay close to him.”
“And I’ll wait for the words Operation Deutschland Now,” said Verneuil.
All lights switched off, J-J crept ahead slowly, cruising past the target building at just under the speed limit. All the lights were off. J-J turned left at the second corner and then left again, to find the way ahead blocked by a high wire fence surrounding a parking lot.
“You take a quick look around,” said J-J. “I’ll go back to the main road so there’ll be no interference if I have to use the radio. If there’s an emergency, whistle and I’ll call in the troops. Otherwise I’ll wait till you get back, and I’ll keep the window open so I can hear you.”
Bruno reached up to turn off the master switch for the overhead light. The last thing he needed now was a flare of a courtesy light as he opened the door. He got out of the car, leaning against the door to close it with minimum noise, and headed for the fence. There was little light, but the parking lot seemed huge, probably for the cinema patrons, and now mainly empty. He turned right, following the fence for another ninety feet, and then turned left until he recognized the looming hulk of the target building.
Two large commercial trucks were parked at strange angles close to the building’s rear. Bruno followed the fence farther until he came to a double gate, chained and padlocked. He moved on, trying to get closer to the trucks. They seemed to have been positioned in a way that hid something else. He crept on, trying to make out what lay behind them. It was too tall for a car, too small for a truck, in a pale color, perhaps white. Then Bruno saw the dark shape of a large window and the outline of a narrow stepladder, and he realized it was a camper. Now that his eyes were attuned to the shape, he saw that there were three, no, four of the campers parked closely against the rear wall of the building.
Campers, Isabelle, the campsite by the beach at Arcachon and the company recently bought in the north; the connections snapped together in his brain. He began jogging toward the main street, taking the risk of running past the front of the building to alert J-J that Operation Deutschland would have to be aborted.
“Cancel it. Close it down,” he gasped into J-J’s window when he reached the car. He made an effort to calm his breathing. “Four campers are parked at the back. It’s the connection to Isabelle’s operation, the illegal immigrants and the campsite at Arcachon. If we raid them now, they’ll abort the landing.”
“I get you,” said J-J,