In fact, Pleven was back in Bordeaux, at the main operations room with its better communications. He listened to Bruno’s report and did not seem too impressed until Isabelle seized the phone, introduced herself, gave her rank, and said she happened to be on the dune with Bruno and confirmed everything he had said.

“That boat I saw was behaving oddly,” she insisted. “Have you checked the numbers and possible owners?”

“My dear colleague, the information was somewhat vague,” he replied smoothly.

“It usually is,” she said crisply. “That’s the nature of intelligence. But I’m confident you have access to a list of all the boat registrations and will be able to narrow down the owner and make the appropriate inquiries. If somebody knows about your new technology, your entire operation could collapse.”

“I understand, but I’m not clear what standing you have in this operation,” he replied.

“Why not call the Minister of the Interior and find out?” she snapped. “In the meantime, I suggest you arrange a car to bring me to your operations room, or I’ll be drafting my report on what seems a cavalier attitude to fresh intelligence from a high-ranking source.”

The car was arranged, Isabelle disappeared, and Bruno reported for duty. At least the commissaire had thought through the assembly points for all the cops. The local police station at Arcachon was too small and too visible for thirty men to arrive and sort out the various patrol routes they would take. Bruno had been told to arrive at a local parking lot by 6:00 p.m., where an unmarked car would take him and two other cops to their patrol points near Cap Ferret. Other cops were to be picked up in parking lots of shopping malls or at the bus and rail stations. They had each been told to wear civilian overcoats on top of their police uniforms. Bruno’s old army coat would have to do.

The colder Bruno got out on the deserted beach, the more he wondered if he was on a useless mission. The lights of the nearby town had already faded and disappeared in a thickening mist. The only buildings he’d seen nearby was one beach restaurant, little more than a shack and now closed, and a small cottage set back from the beach that seemed dark and lifeless when Bruno had prowled around it. Like the rest of the rural cops, Bruno did not know the area and was not entirely sure what he was supposed to do if a boat full of stolen oysters and a truck turned up. There would be three or four nervous and probably aggressive men facing a lone and frozen policeman with a gun he had been warned not to use. He removed the thick woolen scarf from around his neck and wrapped it around his head and ears.