Black Diamond

dung …” He sipped at his drink. “What are your plans tomorrow?”
    “We both have a meeting with the brigadier and the prefect at nine, and then I have to be at Merignac airport at eleven for another liaison session with the navy and the British. You’re right, there’s a ship we’re monitoring. And then in the afternoon I thought I’d better take a discreet look at this campsite near Arcachon the Viets told us about.”
    “Be careful,” he said.
    “We might not be boarding the ship at all, if the campsite is where they’re planning to bring them ashore. We could seal the place off and round them up there. I suppose that’s what tomorrow’s meetings will be about.”
    “Sounds like an early start for both of us.” He began to push back his chair.
    “Give me a minute to go up first, Bruno,” she said. “It would be too embarrassing to stand with you in the elevator, wondering if you were going to escort me to my door and pounce.”
    “I’m not the pouncing type.” He grinned at her.
    “No, but sometimes I am,” she said, rising, and leaned forward to kiss him on the mouth. “Good night, dear Bruno.”
    Isabelle left with that proud and straight-backed stride of hers, and Bruno sighed and turned to the bar to pay for the drinks. As he headed through the foyer, he saw she hadn’t taken the elevator at all. She was standing on the pavement outside the revolving door, smoking another cigarette. He paused, tempted to go out to her.
    He pressed the UP button and rose alone to his room, telling himself he should have joined her on the pavement and held her close. He shook his head. It would simply have forced them to decide all over again whether to revive an affair that had run its course. But he went to bed asking himself just what it was about his relationship with Pamela that he was being faithful to. With her new interest in politics she seemed to be spending as much time with Bill Pons as with him. He drifted off to sleep until the hotel phone woke him just after 4:00 a.m. It was J-J, telling him to get dressed fast because he was coming to pick him up.

22
    “It’s the breakthrough we need,” said J-J as the unmarked car from the Bordeaux police pool raced up the deserted rue de Pessac. J-J had turned down the volume on the radio, but Bruno could still hear the constant chatter of the dispatchers and other cars reporting in. “Thanks to the bank card, and a security man who became unusually cooperative once we said this was about a terrorist bombing, we got the little bastard’s address. Apparently it’s a small apartment house above a cinema and another of their Chinese restaurants, owned by one of the holding companies linked to the
treizième
.”
    “Bordeaux police are running the show?” asked Bruno, looking at his watch. It was not yet four-thirty. Dawn was more than three hours away.
    “They’ll make any arrests, but the brigadier runs the show.”
    “Does Bordeaux know that?” Bruno asked.
    “The brigadier’s in the ops center, and he’s cleared it with the prefect. For once, Bordeaux will do what they’re told,” J-J said.
    “How many cars are they sending?”
    “We’re promised four, and they’re supposed to wait for my order before moving in. They’re led by an Inspector Verneuil. He’s supposed to be good. He’d better be. This has all been set up at the last minute.”
    J-J slowed as the cinema and restaurant came into view. At the next side street, Bruno saw two police cars, displaying only parking lights, stopped with their engines running. An unmarked police car waited at the corner, a tall man wearing a Russian fur hat stood beside it, a radio in his hand. J-J pulled up alongside him.
    “Inspector Verneuil?” Bruno asked. The fur hat nodded.
    “You got my message?” asked J-J, leaning across Bruno to speak through the open window. The fur hat nodded again.
    “Can we get a dedicated channel on these things?” J-J asked, gesturing at Verneuil’s radio.
    “Not without setting it up earlier,” Verneuil replied.
    “Well, if you hear me refer to Operation Deutschland, that’s you. If I say Operation Deutschland Now, bring your guys at the double. If I don’t, sit tight.”
    “Got it,” said Verneuil. “Why Deutschland?”
    “Because nothing else sounds like it, and it has no obvious connection to the target. I wouldn’t put it past these bastards to be monitoring our radio. Understand?”
    Verneuil nodded again, the fur hat exaggerating