Текст книги "A Foreign Country"

Автор книги: Charles Cumming

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

61

Barbara saw CUCKOO as she reached the dustbins. He had stopped jogging and was walking towards her, passing the Shand house and frowning in surprise at the sight of Amelia’s cleaning lady struggling down the lane under the weight of a bin bag.

‘You are OK?’ he called out.

Barbara, tilting to one side for maximum visual impact, nodded her head in a demonstration of unbuckled stoicism and moved forward towards the dustbins.

‘What are you doing back here, love?’ she asked, resting the sack in the centre of the road so that CUCKOO’s path was partially blocked.

‘Smoke,’ he said, miming a cigarette going in and out of his mouth. ‘I help you?’

At least he’s got some manners, Barbara thought, breaking into an effusive speech of gratitude as CUCKOO lifted the bag from the lane and carried it the short distance to the large black dustbins at the edge of the road.

‘C’est lourd,’ he said. It’s heavy. As if to confirm this, the Frenchman held his bicep as though he had suffered a sprain. For a split second, Barbara was about to reply in fluent French, the language of her life in Menton, but she checked herself and instead continued in her role.

‘That’s so kind of you, François,’ she said, slowing her words down, as though talking to a child. ‘Thank goodness I ran into you.’ She was aware that, no more than ten metres away, behind the windows on the first floor of the house, Kell, Elsa and Harold were most probably in a perfect storm of panic, clearing out of the bedroom as fast as possible. She drew CUCKOO’s eyes down towards the ground with a stern warning: ‘Now, I don’t want you going into the house with those muddy boots on.’

It was to the Service’s advantage that CUCKOO was obliged to pretend that he did not understand what she had said.

‘What, please?’ he said. ‘I not follow.’

Barbara repeated the warning, buying yet more precious time as she slowly explained, in nursery-level English, that she would not allow dirty footwear in Mrs Levene’s home.

‘Come with me,’ she said eventually, channelling all of the charm and the mischief of her brief encounter with the receptionist at the Hotel Gillespie. She took CUCKOO’s arm and walked him slowly up the lane towards the front of the house. When they had reached the kitchen door, which was still ajar, she again gestured to his feet.

‘Your cigarettes are on the table, aren’t they, love?’

CUCKOO pointed at the packet of Lucky Strike, which were indeed on the kitchen table, partially concealed from view by a peppermill and a bowl of sugar.

‘I’ll get them for you,’ she said, squeezing through the door. ‘That way you won’t have to come in.’

‘And the lighter,’ he said. ‘I must have my lighter.’

She passed the cigarettes through the door and asked for its whereabouts.

‘In my room,’ CUCKOO replied. ‘But I can get this.’

‘No, no, you stay there, love,’ and Barbara climbed the stairs to the first floor, which was now a ghost town of inactivity. She walked into CUCKOO’s bedroom, spotted the gold cigarette lighter on top of the chest of drawers, slipped it into the front pocket of her smock and returned to the kitchen.

‘Voila!’ she said with an air of triumph, handing the lighter across the threshold. It sounded as though it was the only word of French that she knew. ‘Now you get back to Mrs Levene. She’ll be wondering what’s become of you. And if I don’t see you again, it’s been lovely meeting you. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Safe trip back to Paris.’

62

Lying flat on the floor of Amelia’s en-suite bathroom, so that their silhouettes would not show in the windows, Kell, Elsa and Harold could pick out only the mumble of Barbara and CUCKOO’s conversation. Taking slow, near-silent breaths, side by side like campers sleeping in a three-man tent, they listened as Barbara closed the kitchen door, then heard what sounded like the footsteps of CUCKOO returning to the lane and walking back past the house, heading in the direction of the meadow. About a minute later, Kell received two low-volume clicks on his radio, then a pause before Vigors confirmed, with three further clicks, that CUCKOO was passing through the gate on his way back towards Amelia.

It was another minute before Kell dared to break the spell of their silence. Standing up, he swore quietly and looked down at Elsa and Harold. Slowly, like survivors from an earthquake, they clambered to their feet.

‘Cazzo,’ she whispered.

‘Squeaky bum time,’ said Harold and Elsa said: ‘Shhhhh!’ as though CUCKOO was still in the next room.

‘It’s all right,’ Kell replied, opening the bathroom door. ‘He’s in the meadow. Gone.’

Barbara appeared at the top of the stairs.

‘Do mind my language,’ she said, ‘but bloody hell, how did that happen?’

‘What did he want?’ Elsa asked.

‘Cigarettes,’ she replied. ‘He wanted bloody cigarettes. Imagine if he’d come upstairs.’

‘I’d have smoked one with him,’ Harold muttered, and everybody went back to work.

63

Akim was woken the next morning by the sound of Luc and Valerie fucking in the next room. Always the same routine: Luc increasingly struggling for breath as he chugged against the headboard; Valerie smothering her moans with what was probably a sheet or the edge of one of the pillows. She was like a teenager or newlywed bride: wanting it every morning, wanting it every night. A cast-off from Internal Security, Valerie was the one random element in the operation, brought in by the boss because he could not function without her, but kept secret – as far as Akim knew – from Luc’s masters in the DGSE. Even Vincent himself had only met her for the first time a few days’ earlier. Luc had sworn him to secrecy, knowing that Paris would pull the plug if they so much as suspected that Valerie was so intimately involved in the HOLST operation.

Akim looked at the clock beside his bed. It was just after six on a Sunday morning; he could have done with the extra hour’s sleep. Now he was just thinking about pussy, about how much longer it was going to be before he could go back to Marseille.

‘Arseholes,’ he muttered and hoped that his voice would carry into the next room and stop the scrape of the bed against the floorboards, the soft muffled squeak of the springs. Eventually there was a groan from Luc, louder than most mornings, and the bed stopped moving, like a car coming to a halt in a lay-by. Moments later Valerie was padding barefoot next door and running the tap on the bidet. Akim heard Luc cough a couple of times, then the radio, the volume turned down low. Always the same routine.

Akim was due on duty at seven fifteen, relieving Slimane from the night shift. Three days earlier, he had gone down to find Slimane and the prisoner talking, HOLST’s door wide open, his eyes filled with rage and tears. Later on, walking in the countryside near the house, Akim had asked for an explanation and Slimane had told him – laughing about it, like it was the funniest thing in the world – that he’d been taunting François about Egypt, about what they’d done to his ‘fake mum and dad’. Akim, who had grown to like François, to respect him for the way he’d handled himself since the grab in Paris, had launched at his friend, a lot of the stress and the tension of their long confinement suddenly coming out in a frenzy of rage. The two men had fallen to the ground and scrapped like kids in the street, only to stop after a minute or two and look at one another, laughing at the dust on their clothes and trainers, flicking away the flies that buzzed around their heads.

‘Who gives a fuck about him anyway?’ Slimane had said, and then they’d ducked behind a tree and lain close to the ground because somebody had come past on a tractor.

Who gives a fuck about him anyway? Akim had given a lot of thought to that question. Do I give a fuck about François? Should I give a fuck about François? He’d hurt his dad, sure. He knew that. But it was Slimane who’d had the blade in Egypt, just like it was Slimane who’d wanted to finish off the spy at Cité Radieuse. Akim didn’t want anyone, especially François, thinking he and Slimane were similar. Akim was a soldier, he did what he was told to do; he stayed true to whoever was paying him. With Slimane, you never knew where his loyalties lay, what he was thinking, what wildness was going to spring from him next.

Who gives a fuck about him anyway? Akim had gone to bed the previous night knowing that he might have to kill HOLST. Maybe that was what was bothering him. He didn’t want to have to do it but he knew that Luc or Valerie were crazy enough to give him the order, just to test his loyalty. At about seven o’clock, after he had finished his nightly swim, Luc had received a document from Paris that effectively ended the first phase of the operation. It was a transcript of a conversation at Christophe Delestre’s apartment in Montmartre, recorded by DGSE microphones five days earlier but only now, thanks to a typical Paris fuck-up, making its way to Luc. The conversation was between Delestre, his wife, and an MI6 officer calling himself ‘Thomas Kell’. Kell, Luc had realized instantly, was Stephen Uniacke, the same man who had talked to Vincent on the ferry, the same man Akim and Slimane had been instructed to rough up at Cité Radieuse. Kell had run Delestre to ground, shown him a photograph of Vincent and worked out that HOLST had been switched. Luc, running downstairs, a dressing-gown tied slackly around his belly, wet legs still dripping water on the floor, had shouted for Valerie.

‘Fucking MI6,’ he said. ‘Fucking Amelia Levene. I was right. She worked it out. She knows about the second funeral.’

There’d been an argument between the two of them, then Luc had dressed and driven north to Castelnaudary, where he’d bought himself half an hour at the Internet café and sent an email to Vincent’s dedicated server.

They know about the second funeral. Stephen Uniacke is an MI6 officer named Thomas Kell. He found Delestre in Paris. Levene must know and is playing you. Abort immediately. Crash meeting, Sunday midnight.

When he got back, at around nine, it had looked as though they were going to abort and go home. Then Valerie had done what she always did. She had talked Luc round.

‘Look, nothing has changed,’ she said, smiling the whole time like she knew everybody was going to agree with her in the end. ‘This operation was always top secret. Only six or seven of your colleagues in Paris knew the full extent of what you were trying to do. Even the Elysée was in the dark. Am I right?’

‘You’re right,’ Luc had said quietly.

‘Good. So you just close it down. You tell them François will be taken care of. Paris will be disappointed that they didn’t get their leverage against Levene and they’ll want to question you when you go back. But you don’t go back. Fuck Paris. We keep François alive for a few more days and send a ransom to Levene. He’s priceless to her.’

‘MI6 doesn’t pay kidnappers,’ Luc had replied, which was when Valerie had snapped.

‘Don’t give me that shit.’ Akim had looked across the room at Slimane who was grinning like it was all just a game. His face was still marked from the fight in Marseille, a blue-black stain under his injured eye. ‘Her husband is a millionaire. She has access to tens of millions of dollars in offshore MI6 accounts. She’ll pay up. She’ll pay because we make her pay. She knows that if she doesn’t, the boys will kill her son. That’s a motivation, wouldn’t you say?’ There had been all that sarcasm in the room, like a test of their courage, Luc looking defeated and uncomfortable and Slimane almost laughing in his face. ‘And when she finally pays’ – Valerie was lighting up a cigarette – ‘we give the guys their share, we take the money, we kill this prick’ – a flick of her blonde hair in the direction of HOLST’s cell – ‘and then you finally get to quit the job I’ve been trying to get you to quit for the last three years. Or are you scared about that? Are you worried your bosses will catch you out?’ It was a deliberate provocation in front of the team. Even Slimane looked at the ground.

‘I’m not scared, Valerie,’ Luc had replied, like he wanted to take the conversation next door. ‘I just want to be sure we know what we’re getting into.’

Akim could still picture what she did next. She stood up, walked across the room, and buried her tongue in Luc’s mouth, at the same time grinding her hand into his cock so that Akim felt himself grow hard.

‘I’ve always known what I’m doing,’ she had said. ‘All you guys have to do is follow me.’

Soon after that, Luc agreed to everything: the timing of the ransom; the date when they would kill HOLST; the sweetness of his revenge against Levene. Like Slimane always said, Luc was weak around Valerie, prepared to do whatever she wanted. There was a kind of flaw in his character that kept him permanently under her spell. Unlike with everybody else, he never argued back, never stood up for himself, never questioned her decisions. This tough guy of the DGSE seemed to be under a kind of hypnosis. It was embarrassing to watch a man behave like that. Slimane called him ‘the carpet’.

The toilet flushed next door and Akim heard Valerie padding back to the bedroom. He wanted to fuck her – he’d felt that way since they’d met – and lit a cigarette, pulling on his tracksuit and shoes. Then he opened the curtains. That amazing view down to the Pyrenees. Akim always liked looking at it first thing in the morning. Like a new country, a heaven. Then he went to work.

Slimane was asleep in the armchair at the bottom of the stairs, his hand down the front of his trousers, spittle coming out of one side of his mouth. Akim looked through the spyglass and saw that HOLST was lying on his bunk, eyes fixed on the ceiling. He woke Slimane, was sworn at for his efforts, then went into the kitchen to fix a cup of coffee. Moments later, Luc appeared, naked except for a pair of white cotton boxer shorts. There were tattoos on his biceps, flakes of sunburn on his shoulder blades. Akim caught the funk of their sex, like Luc wanted him to know that he’d just nailed Valerie. He opened the door out on to the back porch.

‘Big day.’ The boss went to the fridge. He took a long swig of orange juice direct from the carton. When he had finished, he put the carton on the kitchen table and fixed Akim with one of his lazy stares.

‘Vincent still isn’t responding,’ he said. ‘We’ve only had two emails from him since he got to St Pancras, one on Friday night, one yesterday morning when the housekeeper arrived. The message we sent to abort has gone from the server, so he must have seen it. Valerie has left a voicemail telling him to go to Paris, but there’s no reception for mobiles at the house.’

Slimane strolled into the kitchen, spotted the carton of orange juice and went to pick it up. Luc grabbed his forearm, holding it above the table like there was a flame underneath.

‘You two not listening to me?’ he said. He was stronger than Slimane, who had a look on his face like spilled acid. ‘We have a problem. Vincent was lured into a trap and we don’t know if he’s been arrested, if he’s still at the house or if he got the message to abort.’

‘Fine,’ said Slimane. ‘So you can tell him when he gets back to Paris.’

‘No.’ It was Valerie, coming in behind him in jeans and a T-shirt. ‘I want you to tell him, Akim.’

‘Me?’

Luc released Slimane. Valerie spread her arms to embrace the two Arabs, holding them around the neck. ‘We want you to talk to him.’ Akim enjoyed the feeling of her skin against his neck. ‘Find Vincent when he gets back to Paris. He’ll be holed up at the Lutetia. Find him and then do what you do best. Smartest thing we can do now is clear the trail.’

64

Luc’s email to Vincent had been seen almost instantaneously by Elsa Cassani in the Shand library, where she had saturation coverage of CUCKOO’s lines of communication. The message appeared on the dedicated DGSE server, where it would be encrypted the moment CUCKOO logged on.

They know about the second funeral. Stephen Uniacke is an MI6 officer named Thomas Kell. He found Delestre in Paris. Levene must know and is playing you. Abort immediately. Crash meeting, Sunday midnight.

‘Tom,’ she said. ‘Christ. You need to see this.’

Kell was in the kitchen. By now, Barbara had gone to Gatwick, en route home to Menton. Harold was upstairs in the Shand house watching 3:10 to Yuma.

‘What is it?’

Kell came into the library carrying a mug of tea. Elsa pointed at the third laptop, on the right-hand side of the oak table. The pressure of her index finger blurred the screen.

‘This just came through?’

‘Less than a minute ago. How do they know about you?’

Kell put the tea down on the table.

‘They must have bugged Delestre’s apartment,’ he said. It was the only possible solution he could think of.

‘But you were there on Monday. How can it have taken them so long?’

‘Manpower,’ Kell replied, knowing that, when it came to following up every lead, listening to every conversation, the French were just as stretched as the Security Service or SIS. ‘They probably have microphones all over Paris, checking Malot’s friends and colleagues. Could have taken them several days to work out I was there.’

‘I’m finding the name Vincent Cévennes all over CUCKOO’s files,’ said Elsa, drinking from a bottle of Evian. ‘Also Valerie de Serres, probable girlfriend of Luc Javeau. You think that’s an alias for Madeleine Brive?’

‘Almost certainly.’ Kell scribbled down the names on a piece of paper. ‘Where’s CUCKOO now?’

They looked up at the bookshelves, nine screens in rows of three, like a game of noughts and crosses. It was just after eight o’clock on Saturday evening, Amelia preparing a fish stew in the kitchen, CUCKOO reading Michael Dibdin in the sitting room.

‘Can you hold the message on the server?’ Kell asked.

‘I don’t think so.’ Elsa typed something into the lines of code on the second laptop. ‘I could delete it. That way he won’t find out until he leaves tomorrow. I guess they’ll be trying to call him on the phone.’

‘Harold!’

Kell shouted upstairs. There was a grunting noise through the floor, then the sound of Harold scraping away from his western and thumping downstairs.

‘Yes, guv?’

‘Can you take another look at CUCKOO’s mobile phone activity? Chances are there’s a text message or voicemail waiting for him, instructing him to abort.’

‘To what?’

‘They know about us. They know their operation is blown. They’re trying to tell him to go back to Paris.’

Kell made the decision to buy time and to delete the email from the DGSE server. He then sent a message across to Amelia telling her that the operation was blown. At breakfast, she was to tell CUCKOO that there was an SIS emergency in London and that a car was coming to pick her up. For security reasons, she could not offer ‘François’ a lift to St Pancras, but a pre-paid taxi had been booked to take him back to London. Kell knew that as soon as CUCKOO was a mile outside Chalke Bissett, he would come within range of a mobile phone signal and hear any of three messages left for him by Valerie de Serres. The first was explicit enough:

François, it’s Madeleine. I don’t know why you haven’t responded to your email but you must abort, OK? Call me immediately please. We will crash meet Sunday midnight. We can explain everything. I need to know that you have received this message and that you will be there.

Harold had hacked into CUCKOO’s voicemail, allowing Kell to re-acquaint himself with the tense, petulant voice of his ferry seductress, Madeleine Brive. CUCKOO, having heard the message, would then make every effort to evaporate into the English countryside, shaking off SIS surveillance as he did so. The trail to Amelia’s son would be lost.

65

Vincent realized there was a problem when he heard Amelia knocking rapidly on the door of his bedroom shortly before eight o’clock on Sunday morning. He had been awake for almost an hour, finishing the Dibdin and listening to the bleating of the lambs on the steep hill behind the house.

‘Are you awake, darling?’

She came into his bedroom. She was already dressed, in the uniform she wore for Vauxhall Cross: a navy-blue skirt with matching jacket; a cream blouse; black shoes with kitten heels; the gold necklace given to her by her brother as a present on her thirtieth birthday.

‘You look like you’re going to church,’ he said.

He was shirtless in bed, propped up against the headboard, deliberately provoking her with his physique. He knew that Amelia felt an overpowering love for him, but also a physical desire that conflicted with her duties as a mother. He could sense it in her; he could always tell with women.

‘I’m afraid there’s an emergency in London. I have to leave. There’s a car coming for me at half-past nine.’

‘I see.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ She sat on the end of the bed, imploring forgiveness with her eyes. Vincent remembered his first sight of her pale skin beside the pool, the swell of her breasts. He had often thought about the taste of her, the transgression of a sexual relationship. ‘The worst of it is I can’t offer you a lift back to London. The Office doesn’t know about you and my driver would cotton on. But I’ve arranged for a taxi to pick you up at nine fifteen. Is that all right? Does that give you enough time to pack?’

It seemed as though he had no choice. Vincent pulled back the duvet, climbed out of bed and put on his dressing-gown.

‘It’s a real pity.’ Was Amelia being honest or had she somehow discovered the truth about him? ‘I was looking forward to spending the rest of the day together. I wanted to talk about the move to London.’

‘Me too.’ She stood up and put her arms around him, and it was all that Vincent could do not to press his body against hers and to kiss her. He was convinced that he could possess her, that she would offer no resistance. ‘I can’t even let you stay, I’m afraid. Too many people would start asking awkward questions if …’

‘Don’t worry.’ He broke free. ‘I understand.’ He began pulling out clothes from the chest of drawers and placing them in his suitcase. ‘Just give me five minutes to take a shower and pack. I’ll come downstairs. We can have breakfast. Then I can go back to Paris.’