“Here and in Corsica, he’s untouchable. On the mainland . . .” Umberto shrugged. “I’ll make some calls. I think with the right evidence, real or otherwise, the Carabinieri will be happy to embrace him. As for the other one, his partner . . . he’s a coward. We’ll be fine, my friends. Now, finish eating and we’ll see about getting you off the island.”
Knowing Bondaruk’s influence and Kholkov’s thoroughness made the Marina di Campo Airport too risky, they’d enlisted Umberto’s cousin Ermete, who ran a charter fishing boat, to ferry them back to Piombino on the Italian mainland. From there they’d returned to Florence, checked into the Palazzo Magnani Feroni, and called Selma, who’d directed them to e-mail her the photographed symbols from Laurent’s codebook then head straight to Marseille. The next morning they dropped the book itself into an overnight envelope for San Diego, then headed to the airport.
“Why all the mystery? Remi now asked Selma. Sam sat down on the bed and Remi put the phone on speaker.
“No mystery,” Selma replied. “I was hashing out some details, but I knew you’d want to be in Marseille one way or the other. By the way, Pete and Wendy are working on the symbols right now. It’s fascinating stuff, but the book’s condition is the big question—”
Sam said, “Selma.”
“Oh, sorry. Remember Wolfgang Müller, captain of the UM-77? I found him.”
“Him? You mean—”
“Yep, he’s still alive. Took a lot of legwork, but it turns out he was aboard the Lothringen when it was captured. After the war he was shipped back to Germany by way of Marseille. He got off the boat, but didn’t take the train home. He lives with his granddaughter. I’ve got their address. . . .”
The next morning they got up and walked to a café, Le Capri, a few blocks away on Rue Bailli de Suffren overlooking the Vieux Port, or Old Port, which was filled with sailboats of all shapes and sizes, their sails dancing in the offshore breeze. The bright morning sun glinted off the water. At the mouth of the port, rising from the north and south shorelines, were the forts of Saint Jean and Saint Nicholas. Above these on the hillsides stood the Abbaye de Saint Victor and the churches of Saint Vincent and Saint Catherine. Farther out, in the Bay of Marseille proper, lay the four-island archipelago of Frioul.
Sam and Remi had been to Marseille three times together, the last a few years earlier on their way to the Camargue up the coast. Every May some twenty thousand gypsies from western and eastern Europe gathered there to celebrate their gitane heritage.
They finished breakfast and hailed a taxi, giving the driver an address in the Panier, a cluster of medievalesque neighborhoods filled with tightly packed pastel-painted houses sandwiched between the town hall and the Vieille Charité. Wolfgang Müller lived in a two-story butter yellow, white-shuttered apartment on Rue de Cordelles. A blond woman in her mid twenties answered the door when they knocked.
“Bonjour,” Sam said.
“Bonjour.”
“Parlez-vous anglais?”
“Yes, I speak English.”
Sam introduced himself and Remi. “We’re looking for Monsieur Müller. Is he at home?”
“Yes, of course. May I ask what this is about?”
They’d already discussed this and decided honesty was the best course. Remi replied, “We’d like to talk to him about the UM-77 and the Lothringen.”
The woman cocked her head slightly, her eyes narrowing. Clearly her grandfather had told her about his time in the war. “One moment, please.” Leaving the door open, she walked down a hall and disappeared around the corner. They heard muffled voices for a minute, then she reappeared. “Please, come in. My name is Monique. This way, please.”
She led them into the front room, where they found Müller sitting in a rocking chair in front of a muted television tuned to France’s version of the Weather Channel. He wore a gray cardigan buttoned up to his throat, and his lap was covered in a blue and yellow argyle blanket. Completely bald, his face heavily wrinkled, Müller watched them through a pair of placid blue eyes.
“Good morning,” he said in a suprisingly strong voice. He gestured with a trembling hand to a floral-patterned couch across from him. “Please. Can I offer you some coffee?”
“No, thank you,” Remi answered.
“Monique tells me you found Ilsa.”
“Ilsa?” Sam asked.
“It’s what I named the 77. After my wife; she died in the Dresden bombings a few months after we left Bremerhaven. You found her in the cave, in Rum Cay?”
Remi nodded. “We were doing some exploring and came across the entrance. We found her sitting on the bottom, in almost pristine condition.”
“She’s still there?”
Sam smiled. “Well, no, not exactly. There was a . . . problem. We used her as what you might call an escape raft.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The main entrance collapsed. We rode the 77—”