His phone rang again. Wearing his thick gloves, he had trouble pressing the right button to receive the call. He pulled off a glove with his teeth, pressed the button with fingers clumsy from the cold, and dropped the glove.

“It’s me,” Isabelle said. “The navy patrol boat is stuck, but their radar shows a boat heading your way. Are the gendarmes there yet?”

“No sign of them.” He crouched down and groped for the glove. No luck.

“Merde, Bruno.”

“Merde to you, too.” He was about to end the call but then paused. “Hang on, I see lights on the road. It could be them.”

“Keep the line open. Put your phone in your pocket, and let me know if it’s the gendarmes.”

“I don’t think it’s them. It’s a truck with lights far apart, so it could be a big one, moving slowly. Still no sign of anything out to sea. Phone going into my pocket now.”

“I’ll stay on the line,” he heard her say as he fumbled the phone into his pocket.

The truck lights seemed to be wavering, but then he realized a man was in front of them with a flashlight, guiding the vehicle to the parking lot. He heard the wheeze of compressed air brakes, which meant a very big truck, and the two main lights stopped moving. Bruno tucked his scarf down over his brow to prevent it from reflecting the headlamps and then ducked down behind the dune.

It was good that he did. Somebody in the truck lit a strobe, flashes of brilliant blue light one after the other, and then Bruno was startled by the deep blare of a klaxon, three loud bursts. Ah, thought Bruno, sailors know about foghorns, and that sound travels better than light in thick mist. The sound and the glow from the strobe must mean the boat was nearby. They’d probably be staying in touch by phone.

The truck was twenty or thirty meters from him. He turned to look out to the bay and heard the boat’s motor before he saw it. His gloveless hand was almost numb, and he tucked it inside his coat and into his armpit. He might need that hand to be warm enough to hold his gun. He had a sudden, utterly irrelevant and distracting thought about Napoleon’s Grande Armée on the frozen retreat from Moscow. Those poor bastards, he thought, understanding better what a misery it must have been trying to reload a musket with freezing fingers.

The boat kept coming and seemed to be on the beach, or even crossing it. He suddenly realized it had wheels and a flat bottom. As it rolled slowly past him, Bruno remembered seeing something like it in the army—a DUKW, an amphibious vehicle.