Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [41]
As he waited for the men to continue down the beach, a cool gust off the bay made the tree limbs and bushes sway noisily. A variation on opportunity knocking, he thought. He reached slowly until his fingertips knocked the handset from its cradle and into his other hand.
The men on the beach didn’t turn to look.
Charlie extended the handset back toward the coconut until the rounded earpiece pressed the CONCIERGE button on the telephone’s keypad. As the line rang, Charlie took the handset and withdrew, in synch with a windblown palm frond, into the shadows between the bushes and the shack.
“Concierge,” came a chipper male voice.
“Hi, this is Mr. Glargin,” Charlie whispered. “We’re staying here at L’Impératrice and, well, my young daughters and I were just walking on the beach where I’m afraid we saw two young men engaged in—I don’t really know how to put it—lewd behavior.”
Within seconds, hotel security guards appeared from the main lodge and discreetly headed down to the beach. Much as Charlie would have enjoyed staying to hear the contract agents’ protests, he knew that each second could make the difference between escaping or not.
The N5 to Fort-de-France wasn’t the crudely paved, single-lane road alongside sugarcane fields that Charlie expected, but a sleek and ultramodern highway with elevated ramps that wound around, across, and, occasionally, directly through mountainsides. Fortunately, Drummond had relieved the CIA man of his car keys while tying him up, because Charlie found driving the Peugeot challenge enough, particularly keeping up with the local traffic, blazing vehicles whose proportions, unlike the Peugeot’s, were suited to the snaking curves and narrow passageways between rock walls. To allow past a flaming orange Micra—an amalgam of a go-kart and a flying saucer—he swerved right, nearly shearing off Drummond’s door against a cliff that doubled as a retaining wall.
Finding Fort-de-France was also a problem. Although the highway wrapped around the western border of Fort-de-France, because of the dark night, the blinding LED billboards, and the giant outcroppings of rock that blocked the view, the precise location of the city wasn’t clear. Not until signs began popping up indicating that Charlie had already driven past it.
“Do you have any idea where we’re going?” he asked Drummond.
No response.
Drummond was balled up in the cramped front footwell, his usual countersurveillance position. Somehow he’d managed to fall asleep.
Probably a good idea, Charlie thought. Although there was no correlation between rest and episodes of lucidity, rest generally sharpened Drummond’s faculties.
Anyway, how hard could it be to find a large city?
Hoping to make his way to the opposite side of the N5 and head back toward Fort-de-France, Charlie shot onto what had to be an exit ramp. It spiraled into the empty parking lot of a dark six-story supermarket. He navigated a dozen rows of parking meters before reaching a ramp he felt sure would bring him back onto the opposite side of the highway. It dead-ended inexplicably behind an unlit warehouse.
A few moments later, after he had backtracked and found the right way onto the N5, a gap in the retaining wall finally yielded a view of a tight grid of well-lit, three- and four-story Belle Époque buildings. It was so stunning, Charlie nearly missed the exit.
Descending the ramp, he spotted a road sign for Pointe Simon, the area to which Drummond had instructed him to go when they were still in Switzerland. During a series of left turns to check for surveillance, Charlie noted the street signs mounted on the walls of corner buildings. Dark blue plaques with white letters, exactly as in Paris. The streets themselves were packed with bustling boutiques, cafés, and bars. He cracked a window. The balmy air, wonderfully redolent of fresh pineapple, resonated with French banter and jazz.
More wonderful, no one was following them. At least not by car.
At rue Joseph Compère, the supposed location of the Laundromat,