I forced the death grip just open enough to free the gun and slip a glass into the hand.
“Now what?” Vera asked nervously.
“We wait.”
Eight hours is the usual time for rigor mortis to set in, but the hot Portuguese day speeded the process along. Within six hours our visitor had stiffened appreciably.
Vera paced from one end of the room to the other, occasionally flinging herself in a chair to smoke and flip through a magazine, but always getting up to pace again. I lay in bed with my gun in my lap and watched the door and balcony. It was, as she said, possible that another visitor might try barging in. But the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed.
“It’s dark. Can’t we go now?” she asked finally.
I undid the belt that had supported the Corsican’s torso. He stayed sitting up smartly. I replaced his shoes and socks with slippers and rolled his pant cuffs up, then did the same with his jacket cuffs. As a final touch, I refreshed the drink in his hand with new ice cubes and pulled the robe’s hood as far over his head as I could.
Whatever attack of nerves Vera had been having was over. Suddenly, she was as cool as the ice cubes.
We began our promenade.
Down in the elevator and through the lobby we rolled our rigid friend. Tourists on all sides exchanged tips on sunburn lotions. A maitre d’hotel stopped us to ask whether we’d be dining in. All the while, Vera and I kept laughing and joking, occasionally making a point of including the man in the wheelchair in the conviviality.
Outside it was dark. Vera opened the back door of the Mercedes, and I carefully lifted our friend into the car. I put the wheelchair in the trunk, and we got in front. No one tried to stop us.
No one followed us out of Albufeira, either.
Twenty miles west, I cut the lights and drove the Mercedes out onto a cliff. I removed the convalescent’s robe and slippers and put back the shoes and socks and rolled down the cuffs. It was impossible to get the glass from his hand so I smashed the glass with a rock.
“If you cut the stomach open, gas can escape, and he won’t float,” Vera suggested.
In the moonlight her face was soft and delicate, a complete mismatch to her words.
“Let him float.”
I dragged the body to the edge and looked down. Surf pounded into the cliff’s ragged skirt of rocks. The tide was rising, and water hissed over razor-sharp barnacles. Within minutes the dead man would be slashed past recognition. I pushed my foot forward.
A black form dropped onto the foaming rocks. A wave dashed over the boulders, and the form was gone.
“That’s it. He’ll turn up in a fishing net a day or two from now. If anyone thinks of us, we pushed a laughing, drinking, live man out of our room.”
Vera smiled, almost glowed.
“Raki, you’re a very smooth operator.”
“Vera, not as smooth as you.”
She faltered.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, I only got rid of him, Vera. You killed him.”
Eight
The border-crossing at Iran, in the Pyrenees between Spain and France, is a narrow valley. Our Mercedes was in a long line of cars being inspected by Franco’s border patrol. I played the part of the bored businessman. Vera read a French paperback. The sun was hot. The car radio blared American rock music.
About now, my freight-load of almond powder was crossing the border inspection on a different route fifty miles away. The Spanish and French wouldn’t be satisfied with just the appearance of the powder. They’d open every bag and dip in for a sample not only once but a few times, in case almond powder had been laid over some deeper opium. I wanted them to. I wanted everything as legal as possible.
Which meant we would have to take the risk now at the border-crossing. I wasn’t worried about Spanish customs. The dead man had been found by the Portuguese by now, but there was no connection between him and us yet, and there probably never would be. The Corsican’s family would know, however, and that posed special problems for us.
France has Corsicans in the Mafia but, at the same time, the French espionage network, SDECE, and particularly its assassination team, action, is composed in great part of hardened Corsicans. Actions training center is in Corsica. It’s as if AXE and the CIA were made up of Sicilians. The Corsicans in Action are very close to the drug dealers of Marseilles, which is one reason why efforts to stop the narcotics trade had been so unsuccessful until late.
Kill a Corsican and you commit suicide, that is the unspoken law of France. And having done just that, we were headed for France.
The Spanish official looked at our passports, visas, car registration, and insurance. After a moment of dignified perusal he handed the papers back and waved us through.
It was fifty yards of white highway to the French checkpoint. We handed over our papers again.
“Would you pull your car to the side, if you please?” the Frenchman said.
“What for?”
“Normal inspection.”
We left the line of cars for an area on the side of the road. Two men in plainclothes were waiting for us. They were Corsicans, one wirey, with olive skin, the other thick-set with beetled brows.
“What is this all about?” I demanded.
“Papiers.” There was no “s’il vous plait.”
“You have anything to declare?” the thickset Corsican pushed me. Not hard, it was almost accidental, but a push to let me know where I stood.
“Nothing.”
“He is a Turk,” Beetlebrow said as if this automatically meant something.
“Why are you traveling with him?” the burly one asked Vera.
“He’s a friend.”
The two men coarsely ran their eyes over Vera. Parked by the customs shed was a black sedan with official plates and a Paris suffix. The Corsicans were from Action, and they could do anything they wanted, as long as it looked legal. Revenge was not their only interest, though. The Mercedes was running a close second to Vera for their attention.
“Open the hood and the trunk, Turk, and be quick about it.”
This time a push knocked me back two feet. My face stayed blank, and I didn’t resist. One move and I would be shot down for assaulting an officer of the law.
I opened up the engine and trunk but their search didn’t stop there. The two thugs uncoupled numerous tubes, knocked off the hub caps, pulled up every bit of matting and, when they still found nothing, had the Mercedes put on a lift and disengaged the muffler.
“We can pull this whole car apart if we want to, Turk. Why not just tell us where the stuff is?”
“What stuff are you talking about?”
“Don’t be clever.” The burly thug picked up a tire jack and swung it lightly. “Maybe you want me to ask questions in a different way?”
“Hey, you two! Are you finished?” the captain of the border guard shouted from the line of cars at the checkpoint. “I’m pulling somebody else over.”
In a red MG were five longhaired kids, their heads lolling from side to side. Moroccan hash, I guessed, and they’d indulged themselves a little too early.
“Stay where you are,” one of the Action men shouted back.
The captain of the guard flared. He was elegant in a dark blue paramilitary uniform, and he resented the two agents from Action intruding in his station.
“I am in charge here. If I find narcotics I pull a car to the side. What are you doing with those people, anyway?” The captain came over, his fists on his belt. The Corsicans of Action are not popular with French police. The Corsicans call gendarmes “Little Blue Riding Hoods.” The gendarmerie call the Corsicans “Les Bouches,” the Butchers. “If you can’t find anything in that car, let them go.”