The Templar Cross by Paul Christopher Read Free Book Online

large figures on her bow and there was a nameplate on her transom as she passed, heading toward the tent-covered fish market on the plaza at the end of the harbor.
    “That’s her, Valador’s boat , La Fougueux ,” said Japrisot. “In English, Tempestuous , I think.”
    “Now what?” Rafi asked.
    “Perhaps we should go for a little stroll,” suggested the French policeman. He lit another cigarette, stood up, flicked ash off his bright yellow tie and stepped out into the sun-dappled afternoon. Rafi followed. Sighing, Holliday dropped three fifty-euro notes on the table to cover their tab and went after them. Japrisot hadn’t shown the slightest sign of paying for his own lunch even though he’d been the one to order wine. Apparently whatever his obligation was to the old lawyer Ducos it didn’t include cash.
    The Rive Nueve, the New Side of the old port, seemed to be wall-to-wall restaurants and bars. There was everything from a Moroccan place called Habib’s to an Irish pub and a German beer garden called Kanter’s. They made their way down the broad quayside, keeping on the shady side, threading their way around café tables full of patrons finishing lunch and enjoying the weather.
    Holliday watched as La Fougueux tied up at the dock, nestled beside the little double-ended, black-hulled ferry that took tourists from one side of the harbor to the other for a few euro. A blond-haired man stepped out onto the foredeck wearing a bright red nylon shell. He looked tall and athletic, somewhere in his thirties. Another man appeared, shorter, heavier and older. Together they started hauling fifty-kilo rope-handled fish boxes up on deck.
    Holliday, Rafi and Japrisot walked across the Rive Nueve and stood looking out over the water, leaning on the beige metal fence that ran around the seawall. Japrisot flicked the butt of one cigarette down into the oily water and lit another. A young woman was sunbathing topless on a sail-boat almost directly below them. The boat was a Contessa 32, named Dirty Girl . The sunbathing woman was much larger than that, at least a 38. Japrisot paid no attention.
    “The one in the red shell is Valador,” he said. “The older man is Kerim Zituni. A Tunisian. Some people say he was Black September once upon a time. Others that he was one of the Tunisian Black Suits—their secret police.”
    “Is that signifigant?” Holliday asked.
    “He’s old enough for it to mean that he probably worked with Walter Rauff,” answered Japrisot.
    “Never heard of him.” Holliday shrugged.
    “I have,” said Rafi, his voice dull. “He murdered my grandparents. He was one of the men who invented the mobile gas trucks the Nazis used in the sub-camps. He was also in charge of the Final Solution in North Africa. He rounded up all the Jews in Morocco and Tunisia and exterminated them. If Rommel had taken Egypt, Rauff’s next step would have been Palestine.”
    “What happened to him?”
    “He died in Chile in 1984. Peacefully, in his sleep,” answered Japrisot. “He was seventy-eight. He was an intelligence advisor to Pinochet.”
    “So we take it this Zituni is not a nice man,” said Holliday dryly.
    “And potentially very dangerous,” Japrisot said and nodded.
    They kept watching the ship as Felix Valador and his Tunisian companion continued to stack fish boxes on the deck. At forty boxes they stopped and Valador began humping the boxes down onto the narrow plaza and loading them into a bright red boxy old Citroën HY van with corrugated sheet metal sides. A sign on the side of the van read Poissonnerie Valador in gold with a phone number beneath. He loaded the first ten boxes through the side door and the rest through the doors at the back of the van.
    “Notice the order,” commented Japrisot, watching as Valador loaded the boxes one at a time.
    “Last ones out of the hold went into the truck first,” said Rafi.
    “Remember that,” said Japrisot.
    “He’s almost done,” said