It was Harry’s watch, though he could barely keep his eyes open. He sat behind the wheel of the small Renault, struggling to stay awake. Harry looked at his watch. It was just after four in the morning. Paul would spell him in two more hours.
The entire exercise was a catch-22. The only way they could search the hotel to find out if Liquida was there was to bring in the French police, and the only way they could do that was to see him and identify him first. At least they now had the benefit of the FBI sketch. A computer printout of Liquida’s poster off the FBI website lay on the passenger seat next to Harry. Joselyn was able to produce it using a printer in an Internet cafe.
For two days they camped in the cold car and saw nothing. Once each day they would drive around the block and search for a new parking space to keep from being ticketed.
Harry’s stomach was beginning to growl. He would have killed for a cup of coffee. The sidewalks were dead. There was no one on the street except for an occasional car and driver passing down the rue des Ecoles on their way to work or going home from a night shift somewhere.
Harry decided to get a change of scenery. Perhaps it would wake him up. He turned the key in the ignition, started the car, and turned on his headlights. He checked the side-view mirror for oncoming traffic, then pulled out of the parking space and did a U-turn directly in front of the canvas canopy over the entrance to the Hotel Saint-Jacques. He drove to the end of the block and turned right. This area of the Latin Quarter was a maze of one-way streets. The only way to drive around the block was to backtrack. By now they were used to it.
Two more right turns and Harry found himself on the rue Valette, the side street that bounded the Hotel Saint-Jacques on the right-hand corner up ahead. He planned to cross through the intersection of the rue des Ecoles and try to park on the other side, where he could lean back in the driver’s seat and watch the hotel entrance through his rearview mirror.
Before he got to the intersection, something caught his eye. Harry saw the lights on inside a small cafe at the corner of the alley just behind the Hotel Saint-Jacques. He had but one thought. Coffee!
He slowed to a crawl and looked for a parking space. There were none. Every spot was taken. The street was dark except for a few lamps that hung from the sides of the buildings. He could cross over the intersection, but then he’d have to walk back and cross the street directly in front of the Saint-Jacques and along the side of the hotel. Paul had given strict instructions that none of them were to go near the place. He had seen what happened to Herman.
Harry stopped the car in the middle of the street. He looked in his mirror to make sure no one was behind him; then he turned the wheel to the right and pulled into the brick-paved alley directly in front of the cafe. The two front wheels bounced as they crossed the swale into the alley. The car’s headlights flashed against the masonry wall of a six-story building perhaps a hundred feet away. The alley looked like a dead end.
The sudden bright lights scared two itinerants leaning over a blue bundle on the ground at the foot of the distant building. Bending over, they both looked back, white faces and stark eyes; they stared for a second into the blinding headlights. Suddenly they both turned and took off. They disappeared into an opening on the left side of the alley at the far end. It looked as if it might be a garage, but the opening was too small for a car. The two men had left their bundle behind.
Harry sat there for a moment looking, wondering what it was that he was seeing. The second he hit the bright beams he realized; there was a shoe with a foot in it sticking out of the end of the blue bundle.
Bruno’s two men scrambled down the steps of the passage du Clos Bruneau and clambered into the white van parked at the curb. The second they were inside, one of them slid the door closed.
“Where’s the body?” said Liquida.
Bruno translated. One of them answered in Russian as he pointed back toward the steps and the alley that ran behind several of the small hotels, including the Saint-Jacques. Then he pointed and said, “Politsiya!” something for which Liquida did not need a translation.
Bruno said something to the driver, and the man stepped on the gas. The van pulled away from the curb and down the rue des Ecoles headed for the A6, which would take them south through Lyon and on to Marseilles, where the private jet was waiting.
Harry had no cell phone. He considered whether to back out and take the car back to his hotel to get Paul and Joselyn or simply go into the cafe and have them call the police from there. He did neither. Instead he got out, locked the car, and began hoofing it back to the Hotel Claude Bernard. It was only a short block away. Harry was afraid if he took the car, he would have trouble finding a parking space once he got there.
Running part of the way and walking, he took less than three minutes to get to the room. By the time he knocked on the door he was breathless.
When Joselyn opened the door, she was already dressed and had her shoes on. She took one look at Harry and said, “What’s wrong?”
Harry had his hands on his knees, bent over, trying to catch his breath. He lifted one hand to point, but he couldn’t speak. Finally he said, “Body in the alley!”
“What? Where?”
“Hotel,” said Harry.
“Paul!” Joselyn turned and yelled toward the bathroom.