Let's Enjoy the Festival
The armistice ending the Great War had already been finalized five hours before it was announced.
Because the declaration itself was delayed, more than ten thousand casualties occurred in the interim.
Henry Gunther, killed with one minute left on the clock, became the most famous victim of that lag.
In any case, the four-year war was over.
It was only natural that the governor and the military-police commander would seek me out after I had predicted the end of hostilities.
"When I heard the news of the armistice, my first thought was of you. I'm almost embarrassed at how lightly I took your words at the time."
"Just how the devil did you foresee the end of the war?"
To the men I had merely said it was a hunch, but in this company I needed something with a bit more polish.
I shored up my argument with details drawn from a book I had once read, Inside the German Empire, and delivered it with appropriate gravity.
The governor and the commander of the gendarmerie nodded in admiration, as if everything now made perfect sense.
The highlight of the evening was the crate of fireworks I had brought with me.
"Y-you don't mean to say you prepared these knowing this would happen?"
"You even predicted the date?!"
They made such a fuss that I could only shake my head in mild embarrassment.
"Hardly. I had intended to use them in Manhattan, but leaving them sitting aboard ship on a night like this felt like a waste. Consider them a small token of gratitude for the warm hospitality you and the townsfolk have shown us—and a modest contribution to the festive mood."
The moment I offered free fireworks that would lift the rather flat celebration into something memorable, the governor's mouth stretched from ear to ear.
I also promised to help their business affairs whenever possible. Whether that offer would remain mere courtesy or become something I could exploit remained to be seen. I slipped a probe into the opening.
"During the few days I've been here I've heard some rather dark rumors. Their particular line of work seems quite interesting."
The smile hanging on the governor's face collapsed at once. The military-police commander looked equally uncomfortable.
The governor spoke with visible reluctance.
"Armand and Leonard are both well-known to me. Regardless of the truth of those rumors, I don't believe it's any of your concern."
In other words, whatever fate might befall Leonard, it was no business of mine.
"I have no interest in the relationship between the two of them either."
I carefully avoided any mention of smuggling and steered the conversation toward liquor distribution.
"As I mentioned before, SCL owns its own distribution channels and warehouses in Manhattan. Spirits form a sizable portion of that trade. I understand a man named Leonard handles liquor distribution there as well."
"That matches what I've heard. Is there something I can do for you?"
"If Your Excellency would simply arrange an introduction, speaking with Leonard would become considerably easier."
"That's no trouble at all. I'll set something up tomorrow."
"I'm grateful."
The military-police commander ordered his men to prepare the fireworks. After establishing my alibi I slipped out of the governor's residence.
The harbor of Saint Pierre and Miquelon lay on the eastern side of the island. Being November, sunset had already begun by five in the afternoon. Islanders were streaming toward the docks with the dying light at their backs.
The governor had chosen the village square as the site of the armistice celebration.
Locals called it Place du Vent—the Windy Square—and used it for Bastille Day in July, Sailors' Day in June, and the Basque festival in August.
I paid attention to the location because of its relationship to the harbor piers.
"River, assuming it's night, do you think Leonard's ship would be clearly visible from here? From where I'm standing it looks hidden."
River Grey narrowed his eyes and studied the berths.
The square sat in a recessed pocket of the harbor; from there the piers fanned out left and right like an open fan. Leonard's vessel and River Grey's own ship were moored at a pier some distance away.
River shook his head with certainty.
"Absolutely not. Once the fireworks start it'll be even darker. You could do just about anything and no one would notice."
Besides, every soul on the island was already consumed by the festival. The gendarmes charged with coastal watch no longer had any reason to scan the horizon for sudden German warships.
"Conditions are ideal. All that remains is…"
Leonard and his companions' movements.
As if on cue, Phyllis—the man who had been watching them—reported in.
"Boss, they're heading for Sophia's place!"
"How many?"
"Three! Leonard and the Italian gangsters."
Leonard and his party had already seized Sophia while she worked at the harbor and pressed her about the rumors.
She neither confirmed nor denied them; instead she mentioned the existence of a letter, which only enraged Leonard further.
—Armand treated you so well all this time and you stabbed him in the back? Everything you did was written in that letter!
Furious, Leonard had resorted to every curse and threat he knew in an effort to get his hands on Armand's nonexistent letter.
—I burned it! It's gone!
—Don't give me that shit. I have to know exactly what Armand wrote about me.
And that moment had arrived now, just before the festival.
The bastard clearly intended to take advantage of the chaos and do something at Sophia's house. A festival and the confusion it brought were the perfect cover for dirty work.
"Fuck. He's trying to put his spoon in the dish I already set. Carly, bring the bag from the ship."
"On it!"
Carly returned with the bag of weapons.
Taking only Phyllis with me, I headed for Sophia's house. Just as we were leaving the harbor district, a familiar old woman stepped into our path.
"Un jeune homme prometteur."
The harbor's guardian spirit beamed and held out a sack. Inside were bread, dried fish, and nuts.
She was offering festival snacks, I supposed, though I understood not a word of her French.
"Thank you. I'll enjoy them."
I hadn't ended the war, yet the old woman hugged me with tears glistening in her eyes.
That was how desperately she had been waiting for her second son's return.
"See you at the festival."
I mimed fireworks exploding with my hands. She copied the gesture and nodded that we would meet there.
"Boss, we could start a whole religious order with this. Think of that sack as a tithe. She's paying protection money without even being asked."
"Oho. I'm almost tempted."
We laughed as we wound through the tightly packed houses.
Not far along we ran into an unexpected group. Sophia herself was coming down the alley, holding her children's hands.
"The festival's about to start. Where are you going?"
Sophia blinked at me in surprise.
The house on the hill.
The joy of the armistice had reached Sophia's family as well. Knowing that her husband, absent more than three years, would soon return, Sophia took the children's hands and left the house.
Left alone, Armand sat at the kitchen table preparing a solitary toast—whiskey, glasses, and a few simple dishes.
That was the exact moment Leonard and the Italian gangsters came calling.
"Shit."
He yanked the iron ring set into the living-room floor. A cluttered cellar—his hiding place for the past several days—was revealed.
Armand held his breath and strained every sense toward the world above. Footsteps circled the house, then stopped at the front door. Someone pulled on the handle.
In a fishing community of fewer than four thousand souls, where crime was rare and trust was the rule, people rarely locked their doors.
The door creaked open with ease, and the intruders stepped inside.
"Looks like they went to the festival. Makes our job that much simpler."
"Let's see what's lying around first."
"Finding the letter is the priority."
They switched on the lights without a care, flooding the house with brightness. Above Armand's head the floorboards groaned under their boots and shadows moved across the cracks.
Sweat beaded on the palm clamped over his mouth. His other hand gripped a shotgun pointed upward.
Damn it. If it's Leonard, he knows about this place.
The cellar had been their first smuggling stash when the partnership began. Of course Leonard knew it existed.
"Where the hell did she hide that letter?"
"She might have burned it like she said. Doesn't matter anyway. Whatever scheme Armand is cooking up, all we need are the brats as hostages."
"Già che ci sei, perché non fai anche finta di essere suo marito?"
"Non sarebbe neanche una cattiva idea."
The Italians snickered over something. Ignoring the rest, Armand ground his teeth at the mention of taking his nieces and nephews hostage.
Damn them. What the hell is everyone doing?
When he had first heard the plan to eliminate Leonard amid the island's chaos, he had been half skeptical.
Then the quiet fishing village had transformed overnight. Word of the European armistice arrived and the whole town turned festive.
How the chaos had been predicted no longer mattered; every piece of the plan seemed to be falling into place. So he had prepared a private toast.
And now the bastards are turning that same chaos against us…
Growing frantic, Armand ran through half a dozen contingency plans in his head, revising them on the fly.
No matter how hard he thought, nothing useful emerged. He was still biting his lip in desperation when he heard:
"Come to think of it, we haven't checked the cellar."
"Cellar?"
"Armand's old smuggling stash is right under this living room."
Damn it—Leonard had remembered the cellar.
Every step the man took made the wooden floor creak. Armand's eyes darted wildly in the narrow strip of light between the boards. Leonard's shadow glided toward the ring pull.
Kieran. What the hell made me trust that greenhorn enough to bring him to this island in the first place?
A gang that couldn't even operate in the open.
He had never meant to pin everything on a single letter of introduction. No—listening to Maurice Rodenberg's nonsense in the detention cell had been the first mistake.
Armand's face filled with despair as he cursed his own judgment.
Ten minutes earlier.
After studying the house through the binoculars I moved into action.
"When I reach the house, draw their attention."
"Okay! But Boss—why are you taking off your shoes all of a sudden?"
"What's the first rule of stealth?"
Declan peeked out from behind a tree.
"Staying out of sight."
"Before that you hide your presence."
I slipped a Colt M1911 into my hand and dropped a suppressor into my pocket. A curved 27-centimeter Bowie knife went into my belt. Then I flattened myself against the ground.
The moment my chest pressed into the dry grass I felt that primitive sensation of becoming one with the earth.
"Watch carefully. This is how you crawl properly."
"Ooooh."
The distance to the house was roughly fifty meters.
The low-crawl technique I had perfected as a special-forces operator and later as a mercenary in the Middle East came alive again on the soil of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
Right now I was a snake.
Legs, abdomen, arms, and head moved in a single undulating wave that carried me forward.
Behind me I heard Phyllis and Hubert murmuring in admiration. Declan muttered that all this was overkill. The next chance I got I would drag that bastard to Alaska and make him crawl through snow until he learned some respect.
I started fast, then paused twenty meters out to catch my breath and screw on the suppressor. Oiled threads meshed silently and smoothly onto the muzzle.
Pistol in hand, I resumed the crawl.
When I was close enough that conversation drifted through the window in broken fragments—
"…the cellar…"
"…cellar?"
"…where he used to hide the smuggled goods…"
I already knew the layout of Sophia's house by heart.
I rose slowly against the wall beside the front door.
That was the signal. The three men began their approach, making deliberate noise.
Startled by the sudden arrival of outsiders, hurried footsteps sounded inside the house.
I risked a glance through the living-room window.
Leonard stood half-turned at the cellar ring. The Italians were peering out the window toward my men.
All their attention was fixed in one direction. The perfect moment.
I eased the door open just enough to brace it with my foot, brought the pistol up close to my face with both hands, then pivoted and pushed the door the rest of the way.
"!"
Every head snapped toward me.
Closest man first.
Phut!
Phut!
Phut!
Bullets punched into skulls. Blood sprayed. Bodies hit the floor with heads flung back.
I advanced with the muzzle still trained on them and checked for movement. Their eyes already stared into the next world.
I holstered the pistol and called down through the floorboards.
"Armand, if you don't want to mop up blood, get me something to wrap them in!"
A frantic scrabbling answered me, then the trapdoor lifted and Armand's head poked out. He stared up at me.
The problem was his appearance.
"What happened to your face? Did you catch a bullet?"
"B-blood dripped on me."
Armand flinched and wiped at his cheek. He was smeared with blood that had fallen from the corpses.
"Why the hell are you painting your face with it? Stop staring and get up here to help with the cleanup."
My men arrived at that moment. They whistled and exclaimed at the interior.
"We're short on time. Open every window and erase the evidence."
Armand fetched a large canvas he used for drying fish. We rolled the bodies in it and dragged them outside. The others mopped the floor and even went down into the cellar to wipe away every trace.
Meanwhile Armand loaded the corpses onto a handcart that belonged to the house. Throughout the whole process his hands shook violently. He had smuggled plenty of liquor, he admitted, but this was his first time dealing with bodies.
"W-what do we do now?"
"Armand, gather every personal item you own. It's time to leave the island."
We erased the last traces and extinguished every light in the house.
When they started casting sidelong glances about who would pull the cart, I made the decision for them.
"Declan, you win."
Phyllis and Hubert took the lead. Armand and I, scarves and masks covering our faces, followed. We made a wide circuit of the village along the hillside, avoiding the cramped alleys and taking the rougher path down.
By the time we reached the harbor, fireworks were already climbing into the night sky.
Fwoosh!
Fwoosh!
Red and blue light painted the waterfront; the detonations shook the little island. Distant cheers rose from the square.
Out of the darkness River and Carly appeared.
"Everyone's busy celebrating in the square. The docks are completely empty."
"Gangway's already down and the mooring lines are free."
"Good. Only three of us move from here."
Declan pulled the cart while Armand and Carly headed for the pier. Their final destination was Leonard's ship—more accurately, the vessel that had originally belonged to Armand. They rolled the cart up the gangway and transferred the bodies aboard.
Shortly afterward the anchor came up and the gangway was hauled in. Just before that, Declan and Carly slipped back ashore and rejoined us.
On deck Armand removed his hat and gave a slight bow. Without the sound of a motor the schooner drifted silently away from the pier.
"Boss, that's the greatest advantage of a schooner."
"Nothing quieter."
Pride colored both River's and Carly's voices. I watched the fireworks bursting overhead and started walking.
"Now let's enjoy the festival."
Even if someone noticed the departing ship, it would not matter. They would simply assume Leonard had fled in fear of Armand's revenge, using the celebration as cover.
Fwoosh!
Fwoosh!
More fireworks climbed into the sky—probably the last crate.
When we reached the square it was overflowing with the joy of the armistice.
People danced, sang, and raised their glasses. We joined them, sharing the snacks the old woman had given us, as though nothing at all had happened.