Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [9]
Boris looked bored. “My name is Jan Hocht,” he said. “I am a citizen of Argentina—”
“Don’t bother,” said the officer disgustedly. “Take him away.” He turned to Rahmi. “Well?”
“I have nothing to say!” Rahmi said, managing to make it sound heroic.
The officer gave a jerk of his head and Rahmi, too, was handcuffed. He glared at Ellis until he was led out.
The prisoners were taken down in the elevator one at a time. Pepe’s briefcase and the envelope full of hundred-franc notes were shrouded in polythene. A police photographer came in and set up his tripod.
The officer said to Ellis: “There is a black Citroën DS parked outside the hotel.” Hesitantly he added: “Sir.”
I’m back on the side of the law, Ellis thought. A pity Rahmi is so much more attractive a man than this cop.
He went down in the elevator. In the hotel lobby the manager, in black coat and striped trousers, stood with a pained expression frozen to his face as more policemen marched in.
Ellis went out into the sunshine. The black Citroën was on the other side of the street. There was a driver in the front and a passenger in the back. Ellis got into the back. The car pulled away fast.
The passenger turned to Ellis and said: “Hello, John.”
Ellis smiled. The use of his real name was strange after more than a year. He said: “How are you, Bill?”
“Relieved!” said Bill. “For thirteen months we hear nothing from you but demands for money. Then we get a peremptory phone call telling us we’ve got twenty-four hours to arrange a local arrest squad. Imagine what we had to do to persuade the French to do that without telling them why! The squad had to be ready in the vicinity of the Champs-Élysées, but to get the exact address we had to wait for a phone call from an unknown woman asking for Mustafa. And that’s all we know!”
“It was the only way,” Ellis said apologetically.
“Well, it took some doing—and I now owe some big favors in this town—but we did it. So tell me whether it was worth it. Who have we got in the bag?”
“The Russian is Boris,” said Ellis.
Bill’s face broke into a broad grin. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said. “You brought in Boris. No kidding.”
“No kidding.”
“Jesus, I better get him back from the French before they figure out who he is.”
Ellis shrugged. “Nobody’s going to get much information out of him anyway. He’s the dedicated type. The important thing is that we’ve taken him out of circulation. It will take them a couple of years to break in a replacement and for the new Boris to build his contacts. Meanwhile we’ve really slowed their operation down.”
“You just bet we have. This is sensational.”
“The Corsican is Pepe Gozzi, a weapons dealer,” Ellis went on. “He supplied the hardware for just about every terrorist action in France in the last couple of years, and a lot more in other countries. He’s the one to interrogate. Send a French detective to talk to his father, Mémé Gozzi, in Marseilles. I predict you’ll find the old man never did like the idea of the family getting involved in political crimes. Offer him a deal: immunity for Pepe if Pepe will testify against all the political people he sold stuff to—none of the ordinary criminals. Mémé will go for that, because it won’t count as betrayal of friends. And if Mémé goes for it, Pepe will do it. The French can prosecute for years.”
“Incredible.” Bill looked dazed. “In one day you’ve nailed probably the two biggest instigators of terrorism in the world.”
“One day?” Ellis smiled. “It took a year.”
“It was worth it.”
“The young guy is Rahmi Coskun,” Ellis said. He was hurrying on because there was someone else to whom he wanted to tell all this. “Rahmi and his group did the Turkish Airlines firebombing a couple of months ago and killed an Embassy attaché before that. If you round up the whole group you’re sure to find some forensic evidence.”
“Or the French police will persuade them to confess.”
“Yes. Give