Read Chapter 8: The Dockworker's Concern

The morning shift at Quai de la Joliette smelled of diesel and brine, the cranes already groaning overhead as the first lighters came in. Étienne stood at the warehouse entrance with his clipboard, ticking off crates against the morning's manifest, when a shadow fell across the page.

"Morel."

The voice was familiar, but not in the way of customs house colleagues or the men who came to collect debts. Étienne looked up to find Vidal—a dockworker he knew by face but not by name, one of the shift supervisors who ran the stevedores on Berth Four. A big man, fiftyish, with Forearms like mooring ropes and the worn cap of a man who had spent twenty years lifting other people's cargo.

"Vidal," Étienne said, keeping his voice neutral. "Problem with the loading schedule?"

Vidal glanced around—left, right, over his shoulder, the way men did when they were about to say something that could get them hurt. "Not the schedule."

Étienne felt the familiar coldness settle in his stomach. He had learned to recognize that look. It was the expression of a man carrying information he didn't know what to do with.

"Walk with me," Vidal said.

They moved along the quay, past stacked pallets of Tunisian olive oil and crates of Algerian wine. Vidal kept his hands in his pockets, eyes fixed ahead. When they reached the far end of the dock, out of earshot of the crane crews, he stopped.

"I saw something," Vidal said. "Two nights ago. The late shift, Berth Six."

Berth Six. Étienne's mind clicked through the port schedule. The *Regina della Notte* had docked there Tuesday evening. Paoli's ship.

"I was checking the chocks on the starboard side," Vidal continued. "It was past midnight, quiet. And I saw a man come down the gangway with a leather case. Not a sailor—wore a suit, looked like a government man. He walked to the end of the pier where another man was waiting. They shook hands."

Vidal turned to face him. "The man in the suit passed a fat envelope to the other. I saw it clear as day under the floodlights."

Étienne's throat tightened. "That could be anything. A payment, a delivery—"

"It was Inspector Moreau." Vidal's voice was flat. "I recognized him from the papers. And the man he was taking money from was Marcel Bartoli."

The name hit Étienne like a physical blow. Bartoli—Vasseur's lieutenant, the man who handled the heroin end of things. A name Éttienne had heard whispered in the customs house, always in connection with the Corsican gangs who ran the port's shadow economy.

"I don't know what you think you saw," Étienne said carefully, "but this isn't something you want to be involved in."

Vidal laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Involved? I'm already involved. I saw it. And I can't unsee it."

He stepped closer. "You know the paperwork, Morel. You know what comes through here. If a police inspector is taking bribes from smugglers, that means the whole system is rotten. Someone needs to report it."

"Report it to whom?" Étienne heard his own voice rise, and pulled it back down. "The police? The same police force that inspector belongs to? You think his superiors will believe a dockworker over one of their own?"

"The port authority—"

"Answers to the same men." Étienne shook his head. "Listen to me, Vidal. I've worked here thirteen years. I've seen men try to do the right thing. I've seen where that gets them."

"You've seen men try to report corruption?"

Étienne hesitated. He thought of the 1958 warehouse fire, the insurance forgery that had cost him his innocence, the chains of favors that had bound him deeper and deeper since. He thought of Paoli's quiet threat, the mention of Luc's name.

"I've seen men disappear," he said. "Not get transferred. Not retire. Disappear."

Vidal studied him with hard eyes. "So you know something."

"I know that the smartest thing you can do is forget what you saw. Go back to your shift. Finish your shift, collect your pay, go home to your family."

"And let them keep doing it?" Vidal gestured toward the port, toward the ships and the cranes and the men unloading cargo that would never appear in any official ledger. "I have two sons. One of them wants to work the docks. You want me to tell him that this is what it means to work the docks? That you look the other way while the men who run this city get rich off poison?"

Étienne felt the weight of the words pressing on him. He knew what the cargo on those ships was. Knew what it did to the young men who bought it, the families it tore apart. He had told himself a hundred different lies to justify his work—that it was just paper, just signatures, just a way to keep his family fed. But standing here, facing a man who had seen the truth and refused to look away, the lies felt thin.

"You have children," Vidal said. "I've seen you with your son, at the games. Luc, isn't it?"

The name on another man's lips made Étienne's blood run cold. First Paoli. Now Vidal. Everyone in this city seemed to know his family's names, his pressure points.

"Do you want Luc to grow up in a port where the police are bought and paid for?" Vidal asked. "Where the men who run the docks answer to criminals?"

"My son's future is none of your concern." Étienne's voice came out harder than he intended.

Vidal took a step back, raising his hands. "Fine. You want to stay out of it. I understand. You've got a position to protect, a family to look after. I respect that."

He turned to walk away, then stopped. "But I can't stay silent. I saw what I saw. And I'm going to do something about it."

"You'll get yourself killed."

Vidal looked back at him. "Maybe. But at least I'll die knowing I tried."

He walked away, his heavy footsteps echoing on the concrete. Étienne stood at the edge of the quay, watching him go, the clipboard useless in his hand.

A police inspector taking bribes. Moreau—the man who had offered him immunity, who had promised to protect him in exchange for information. If Moreau was corrupt, if Moreau was taking money from Bartoli, then the offer of immunity was never more than a trap with a different kind of bait.

Étienne thought of his secret ledger, hidden in the false bottom of his desk drawer. Every forge, every signature, every manifest he had corrupted. The evidence that could destroy him—or, he had hoped, protect him.

When Vidal disappeared around the warehouse corner, Étienne pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it, hands trembling.

Forget what you saw. That was what he had told Vidal. But Étienne couldn't forget what he had just learned. If Moreau was on the Corsicans' payroll, then the safest play—the one he had been holding in reserve—had just vanished.

He smoked the cigarette down to the filter and crushed it under his heel. Far across the water, the ferry to Algiers was pulling away from the old port, trailing a wake of white foam.

Three weeks until the big shipment. Three weeks to find a way out that didn't involve trusting a corrupt inspector or a mob that knew his son's name.

And now a dockworker with a conscience was about to go poking at a hornet's nest, threatening to bring down the very men Étienne was counting to play against each other.

Vidal might die. Or worse, Vidal might succeed—and when the investigation started, it wouldn't stop at Moreau. It would trace the corrupt papers back to the man who wrote them: Étienne Morel, customs clerk.

The morning sun climbed higher over the Mediterranean, but Étienne felt only cold.