The Templar Cross by Paul Christopher Read Free Book Online Page A

Holliday.
    “Bien,” murmured Japrisot. He flipped yet another cigarette butt into the greasy water, nodded pleasantly to the young lady on the deck of the Dirty Girl and turned away. “Attendez-moi,” he instructed. He climbed into an angle-parked, dark blue Peugeot 607 four-door sedan, probably the most ubiquitous car on the highways of France. This one was almost ten years old and looked like a well-used taxi, which was probably the point.
    Rafi got into the back and Holliday slid in beside Japrisot. He wrinkled his nose. The inside of the car smelled like an ashtray and the windshield was fogged with a slightly yellow film of old nicotine. Japrisot lit another Gitane and switched on the ignition. The car chugged to life. The French cop watched as Valador finished loading the fish boxes into the rattletrap van and then had a brief conversation with Kerim Zituni. Conversation over, Zituni climbed back onto La Fougueux while Valador started up the Citroën and drove off. Japrisot followed the square-nosed little truck. They headed east, staying well behind the van, moving steadily away from the center of town.
    “He’s not going on the Autoroute,” commented Rafi. On their right hand the Mediterranean glowed like an immense blue jewel, bright light bursting off the sun-dazzled facets of the waves sweeping in to crash against the base of the craggy limestone cliffs.
    “No,” answered Japrisot, “he’s following the coast.”
    “You’ve done this before,” said Holliday.
    “Bien sûr,” answered Japrisot. “Several times.”
    They spent the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening tracking the Citroën along the length of the Côte d’Azur, stopping to make deliveries in the towns of Cassis and La Ciotat, then bypassing the larger city of Toulon before stopping again in Hyeres, Bregancon, Le Rayol and Frejus.
    In Cassis the van stopped in front of Chez Nino’s on the harbor front, delivered a box of fish and then moved on. It was the same each time they stopped. In Ciotat it was Kitch and Cook; in Hyeres it was the Hotel Ceinturon. Bregancon was a motel-style place called Les Palmiers; in Le Rayol it was a rustic-looking old winery called l’Huître et la Vigne—the Oyster and the Vine. In Frejus it was a gaudy Moroccan dining room called La Medina. In none of these places did he leave more than three of the boxes and usually only one. By the time the sun was beginning to set they had reached suburban Cannes and the huge Florida white slab of the Royal Casino Hotel in Mandelieu-la-Napoule, complete with a six-story-high blue and yellow flashing neon image of a slot machine on the side of the building. A little bit of Vegas on the French Riviera.
    The Casino Hotel was part of a complex of interconnected buildings right on the beach beside a river estuary that led back to the Cannes Marina and the Mandelieu Golf Course. Japrisot parked the Peugeot in the fifteen-minute lot in front of the hotel and they watched as Felix Valador took a dolly loaded with two boxes of fish around to a side entrance. Presumably he was going to the hotel kitchen.
    At the main entrance a good-looking, well-dressed European with a neatly trimmed Vandyke beard climbed out of a blue Audi Quattro with his beautiful companion and slipped one of the car jockeys a folded bill. The valet parker looked at the bill, saluted the bearded man and climbed into the Audi.
    “He paid him not to park the car in the big lot under the overpass,” explained the French cop, nodding toward the busy Avenue General de Gaulle behind them. “It’s blackmail, really. Local boys sneak into the parking lot and sometimes roll cars right into the water. P’tit loubards! Little hooligans. Worse than the English football yobs sometimes.”
    The elegant couple strolled into the hotel and the car jockey drove the Audi a hundred feet up the driveway. A few minutes later Valador reappeared with the empty dolly.
    “That’s eighteen boxes of fish spread