f*******n Flights

Chapter 1It was the grey, dreary month of November. The prison of Villepinte, in the northern outskirts of Paris, seemed even more sombre and depressing than usual. Laid out in the middle of the fields like a set of Lego blocks, the place was soulless and lifeless, despite the yellow bands which the administration had painted on the high barbed-wire-topped walls. In the waterlogged car-park, a bus was waiting for its "clients": depending on the time of day, these might be either inmates or visitors. The driver, a Black, probably of mixed race judging by the lightness of his skin, was absorbed in reading his sports daily. Reflexively, he reached out to turn up the volume of the “Tropiques FM” radio station, as the fast and furious Caribbean Zouk music invaded the cabin without disturbing anyone, since the seats behind him were still empty. Just like every day at that time. At regular intervals, he glanced mournfully at the exit door of the concrete cube which was used for receiving the families of the inmates. The minutes ticked slowly by, the red dial on the dashboard flashing on and off like the tick, tock, tick, tock of an old grandfather clock... In this Godforsaken place, it was waiting which defined everything. It was even the only thing that existed, whether you were on the inside or the outside. It is what prison time is made of, a space in which minutes last not sixty seconds but much longer. How much longer? Its duration is beyond the imagination of the average citizen and difficult for its inhabitants to define. The only constant was patience. To get to the shower, the visits, the activities... The Moroccan writer Ahmed Sefrioui wrote: " Waiting is what existence is all about." In prison, waiting only ensures survival, nothing more. So the bus driver did like everyone else connected with the prison world, he waited: for the passengers, for the starting signal, for the light to turn green at the car-park exit.... The police siren preceded the arrival of the police van itself. The policeman drove up to the entrance. The heavy double doors opened and sucked in the vehicle with its barred windows. What had this guy done to be here, how old he is, is he a repeat offender? Such were the questions that any anonymous onlooker might have asked themselves watching the place, where the main occupation was just whiling away the time. At the end of the morning, a dejected, distraught woman emerged from the concrete cube and got onto the bus without a single look for the man sitting behind the wheel, and went to settle down near a window. While she waited for the bus to set off for the Paris suburban railway station, she scanned the walls behind which a son, a husband or a brother was paying his debt to society before regaining his freedom. In this little oasis of happiness, lock number 25421, known as Dio, whose real name was Sergio Nardi, switched off his TV. ‘What a great b****y idea! Why on earth didn’t I think of it earlier?’ He pulled a half-empty packet of menthol cigarettes from his pocket. He took one and tapped it on his finger to pack the tobacco more tightly. Then the Zippo lighter in his left hand performed magic as the lid snapped open against his jeans, the thumbwheel rubbed against the fabric and the flame instantly sprang to life. He had done the trick thousands, maybe millions, of times, ever since he had seen an American soldier on leave in Marseilles light his cigarette that way. Dio stretched out on the bed and started thinking. His left hand gently massaged his neck as he sent curls of smoke up towards the ceiling. The position was symptomatic of his state of concentration. Already as a teenager lying on a park-bench in the Place Caffo, in the Belle-de-Mai area of Marseilles, he had acquired this habit, which invariably prompted the jeers of his friends. And as usual, he remained silent: he was elsewhere, in another galaxy. No-one had ever managed to break in on his thoughts in these times of intense brain activity. The intensity of his concentration disconnected him from reality to a point where it could put him in danger by making him vulnerable. And in fact, when his pals discovered this behavioral flaw of his, they would often use it as an excuse for having a good laugh. Like pushing him off the bench he was lounging on in the fine spring sunshine, before quickly scattering into the nearby streets. Some towards the Rue de la Belle-de-Mai and its leg-breaking slope, the others towards the Boulevard de la Révolution or the Rue Ricard. Dio’s fits of anger were fearful to behold and greatly feared. They were all aware that it was best not to fall into the hands of this strapping lad of one-metre-eighty and ninety kilos, otherwise... The Nardis had lived in Marseilles for several generations, after the family arrived in the working-class district of Belle-de-Mai in the early twentieth century. The grandfather, originally from Tuscany, began working at the Saint-Charles sugar refinery before it burnt down a few years after he was hired. Having thus lost his job, he got taken on at the SEITA tobacco factory where he worked until he retired. His father followed in his footsteps and it was obvious that Dio would also work in the cigarette factory. But a different destiny awaited him. After normal schooling at the Bernard Cadenat school, a vestige of the Popular Front of 1936, he signed up for a car mechanic apprenticeship. His curiosity and seriousness quickly ensured him a sound reputation as an expert mechanic. Things could well have stopped there if a chance encounter had not led him off along different, rather murkier paths: those of crime. It was another son of an immigrant family, a Belgian, who had also grown up in the Belle-de-Mai district, who heard of his mechanical talents and suggested he should take part in armed robberies with him, as the driver. Francis the Belgian was a few years Dio’s senior and in this way set him on a path which many families feared: too many former neighbourhood youngsters were rotting away in the local Baumettes prison because the money to be got from drugs, w****s or robberies was easier to come by than the pittance they could earn at the factory. In 1974, when Dio came back from his military service, battle was raging in the Belle-de-Mai districy; a few months earlier, a number of Francis’s men had been murdered by rival bullets. There followed the Tanagra m******e, which ended in four more deaths, including that of a man who had conned the Belgian. From this g**g war, Dio emerged unscathed. That did not last very long though, and at twenty-four, the prison sentences started to rain down: for forgery and the use of forged documents in '78, for violation of the arms laws in '81, for counterfeit money, and so on. After learning the trade with the veterans of the "French Connection", Dio decided to give up drugs and set up on his own. He started researching famous break-ins, to work out how different gangs operated and thus acquire additional expertise in what was to become his specialty: logistics. But to fully understand the mechanics of a case, he asked one of his contacts to put him in touch with a particular member of the “Lyons g**g”, a '70s crime legend who had succeeded in robbing the General Post-Office in Strasbourg. The team was looked up to as being true masters in the organisation of robberies, having walked off with the equivalent of € 7,120,000 in just a few minutes without a drop of blood being shed. Following his "appeal for witnesses", he was "summoned" to Lyons to meet a member of the team who was still alive: Chaïn. After a few random movements around the town just to lose any possible policemen, Dio was to go to an old bistro in the suburbs of Lyons where Chaïn was expecting him. The taxi-driver had hesitated to take him into the heart of this ill-reputed industrial estate. The seedy bar was located on the corner of two streets, one of them providing a view of oil refinery vats and the other overlooking a scrap yard. The low sky shed a gloomy light over the scene. When Dio pushed the bistro door open, it creaked from lack of oil; the inside was lit by greenish neon strip-lighting. Some curtains which looked more grey than white hung over the glass frontage which itself was opaque rather than transparent. The cleaning scraper had long lain unused in the broom cupboard. Two men at the counter were intent on their dice-game, busy playing for money. In the corner opposite the door, a man of around forty was calmly studying form in his copy of Paris Turf. Dio walked over to the bar on his right, behind which a barman who distinctly lacked style, a Gauloise drooping from the corner of his mouth, was nonchalantly drying a slightly chipped glass of dubious cleanliness. His blotchy red complexion gave away his penchant for lifting the elbow, as confirmed by his half-full glass, hidden discreetly beside the till. On the walls, faded advertisements projected the same dismal image as the paint peeling from the ceiling. Dio walked up to the counter. ‘A coffee, please.’ The barman set his smoldering cigarette down in the ashtray and turned to start up the espresso machine. While the coffee dribbled slowly out, he placed a saucer with a spoon on the counter and pushed towards it the shiny metal sugar-bowl. Mechanically, he took the cup and placed it in the centre of the saucer. ‘There you are.’ ‘Thanks.’ The bartender picked up his cigarette and resumed drying. Dio lifted the scalding beverage to his mouth. A grimace twisted his lips, and he put the cup down and added two extra lumps of sugar to neutralise the bitterness of the black liquid. The minutes ticked slowly by on the dial of the clock, a free gift from a famous brand of Pastis. Dio showed no sign of impatience, he knew he was being watched, but by who? The bartender, the players, the man with the newspaper? What was for sure, though, was that at the slightest suspicion, he really wouldn’t be feeling that comfortable on this foreign turf, and there was nothing his size would be able to do for him. At one minute to three, the bartender turned on the radio, just as the end of a song gave way to the news. Heads lifted when it came to the items of general news: the journalist was describing an attack on a bank in Paris. Dio felt mounting tension as the journalist made his comments. Dio had often experienced this in Marseilles, in the bar where he was a regular; whenever an attack took place, ears pricked up imperceptibly to listen out for the names of any friends who might have had the bad luck of falling on the "battlefield". But this time the robbers had escaped and nobody yet knew who they were, except that there were four of them. Then came the racing results and the barman turned off the radio. End of the "musical" interlude. Ten past three: he’d been waiting for nearly three quarters of an hour. At a quarter past three, he heard a voice from behind him: ‘With that accent of yours, you’ve got to be from Marseilles, right?’ Dio turned around abruptly, not having heard the man coming: it was the one with the newspaper. He looked into the cold eyes of a man who was being hunted by all the police forces in France. The very one who was to tell him the story of the break-in at the General Post-Office in Strasbourg. ‘Sure, I’m Dio, I’m a friend of the Belgian’s.’ ‘I know. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here and neither would you. Come on, let's sit down.’ After shaking hands energetically, the two men settled at the table the racing paper was lying on, set slightly apart from the others. ‘What’ll you have?’ ‘A coffee, please.’ ‘Georges, bring us a coffee and a beer please!’ ‘So, it seems you want to know certain details the fuzz would love to know about too, to be able to send us down. So what’s the deal? They looked each other in the eyes. ‘It’s because I want to retrain.’ ‘Retrain? Come on, out with it!’ ‘Well, as you know, I started out in armed robbery, I got caught and like everyone else I don’t want to go back in clink!’ ‘Yeah, just like the rest of us. Carry on!’ ‘So, my idea is to become a logistics expert as it were, like there are experts for explosives.’ Dio fell silent while the barman set down the drinks. ‘Go on, you’ve aroused my curiosity!’ ‘So the idea would be for me to hire out my skills to prepare a job, you know, casing the joint, then organising everything, the cars, the guns, and so on’. ‘That sounds pretty smart. And how do you take your share?’ ‘Firstly, I’m not on the job myself. Once I’ve finished preparing the game plan, I submit it to a team that then pays me an amount to be agreed on and if the job works out OK, I take a 10% cut of the proceeds!’ Chaïn scratched his chin, looking out of the window. A man entered the bistro. ‘Hi there everyone! A beer please, Georges!’ Sitting at the table, Dio suddenly felt ill-at-ease; a deafening silence fell. Chaïn remained a while without speaking. Dio knew he mustn’t rush things: without him, there would be no project left. The man’s experience was pure gold and would be a stepping-stone for his future. Because it was always better to start out from a successful robbery than from a lousy plan. This obvious truth, when forgotten, had led certain crooks at best to gaol, and at worst to the cemetery. The gangster looked at him coldly, before a grudging smile played at the corner of his lips; Dio felt all his muscles suddenly relax. ‘Okay, I'll give you the general outline. But no real details, to avoid any trouble and loose talk, in case you ever get caught, right?’ ‘Right!’ ‘You know that if you ever betrayed us by blabbing, you won’t stay around for very long!’ Dio felt the threat was very real – the guy sitting opposite him was certainly no joker, but for now what he was interested in was the straight narrative. ‘The first thing you should know is that we did a life-size rehearsal of the real job with the post office in Chambery, in December 1970. We were a commando of five, dressed in blue overalls. We held up the security guards and grabbed the cash. For the getaway, we used a van, then a waiting backup car, and to finish with, we just got on a train. ‘How much did you get?’ ‘2.2 million francs; not bad, eh?’ ‘Not bad at all!’ ‘That was the first step.’ ‘Was it so important?’ ‘It certainly was, because that way we sussed out the flaws in the system!’ ‘Meaning?’ ‘I’ll leave that one for you to work out, kid!’ ‘Okay.’ ‘Before attacking the General Post-Office in Strasbourg, we worked for a year and a half on reconnaissance: the movements of the security guards, the number of bags, the fallback routes, the routines of the postal workers, and so forth. ‘It takes quite a bit of dough to do all that, though?’ ‘It sure does, mate! It’s like being on the run, if you haven’t got something stashed away, you're dead.’ ‘How much did it cost you?’ Chaïn smiled. Dio understood that he would only be told what was deemed necessary. ‘Then came the inside of the post office; we dressed up as postmen to be able to draw up an accurate plan of the premises. We’d spotted a locked door at the back of the building. So, a few days before the job, we showed up in overalls and to justify our presence with the director, we said we’d come to check the locks. ‘And he believed you?’ asked Dio. Chaïn burst out laughing. ‘Why shouldn’t he have believed us? Don’t we look like workmen?’ ‘That’s not what I meant, but wasn’t that a tad naïve of him? ‘A tad stupid of him, you mean! Anyway, we made the most of it and changed the lock on that door. Then on June 30th, 1971, at 9 am, we went into action. We went in through the door we’d got the keys to, wearing grey overalls, and then we waited. ‘And nobody asked you anything?’ ‘No. We were hiding behind the door! Then the piggy-bank of the Banque de France arrived. The cops escorting it couldn’t go inside, so they stayed put. ‘Why was that? ‘Because at that time, they weren’t allowed to go inside. Then the security guards headed for the vault. And we came up on them, and Bob’s your uncle!’ ‘Were you armed?’ ‘Yeah, we had machine guns. But the main thing was that we started talking with a Marseilles accent!’ ‘What?’ ‘What do you think? The idea was to put the cops on the wrong track. Then the security guards, completely surprised, handed over the bags. We backtracked and took off in the van.’ ‘And that was all?’ ‘No, before we left, we slid a piece of paper into the lock, just to try to hold up any pursuers. And that was it – we’d pulled off the biggest robbery in history: nearly 11 million francs.’ ‘And you went back to Lyons?’ ‘Yes, but not as the crow flies. We used several backup cars, driving into Germany then down through the Vosges region, on a real sight-seeing tour! And here I am.’ ‘Well f**k me, it sounds so simple on paper!’ ‘Sure, the principle’s dead simple, but you have to work everything out in advance!’ ‘So I see!’ Chaïn looked him full in the face. ‘That’s why your idea’s so brilliant, because there are loads of guys who are ready to do the job itself, but the number of guys in the business who can actually use their brains is very small. ‘Thanks!’ ‘That's all I can tell you, kid, now I’ve got to go.’ They stood up and shook hands. ‘We’ve never met, okay?’ ‘I lost my way coming to this place.’ ‘No problem, just walk three hundred metres down the street and you’ll see a bus stop that’ll take you to the station. See yer!’ Chaïn turned on his heel and walked out. Dio was never to see him again: he learned some time after their meeting that he had been found dead, slumped over the wheel of his car with two large-calibre projectiles in his head. From the day of this meeting, Dio set out to work for some of the most seasoned crooks in the business and he was not to set foot in any of the state's prisons before quite some time...