by Alex Shaw
Eight Years Ago
Central Paris
It was mid-afternoon and the café was empty, as it had been on her first time there with her boss – Maurice Jacob. They sat at the same table, with two glasses and a bottle of red wine between them as the owner, Francois, busied himself polishing glasses behind the bar. Jazz music wafted quietly from an unseen radio.
Jacob held up his glass. ‘This is to you, Racine, the newest member of The Department.’
Racine was still getting used to not being called by her first name, but it was the way Jacob operated. ‘Thank you.’
Both intelligence operatives drank. Jacob closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the music, his head swaying slightly. When he opened his eyes, Racine noticed that they seemed misty.
‘There is something I need to tell you.’
She said nothing, as an uneasy feeling started to wash over her. She sipped her wine.
‘You are not the first member of your family I have had the privilege to work with.’
Racine’s mind quickly processed the statement. Her father had been a Legionnaire.
Jacob spoke again before she could, as if reading her thoughts. ‘It was not your father, although I’m sure his skills would have been useful to us.’
Racine’s eyes narrowed as fragments of information and newly remembered memories started to join and form a truth she had never expected to see. ‘Celine?’
‘Yes.’
The words flew from her mouth, the question desperate to find an answer. ‘Do you know who murdered my aunt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who killed Celine?’
Jacob raised his glass. There was a tremor in his hand, as he drank the contents. Putting the empty glass down he met her gaze. ‘His name is Sasha Vasilev, and he was a traitor.’
‘But, he was her boyfriend …’ She shivered, as though a sudden icy draught had crept into the room. She saw him standing at the restaurant, like a film star, the first time she had met him, and she saw the love Celine had for him.
‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell you before, not until you were officially part of the service.’
Racine felt the room start to sway. Her head shook, as though subconsciously she was trying to deny it. Her words poured out, like a fountain. ‘Celine’s death pushed my mother over the edge. It made her go mad, it made her run away, it made her leave me. Celine was a sister to me; I didn’t think I could go on. The police said there was nothing they could do, no leads, no suspects …’ She fixed him with cold eyes. ‘You knew who had done that to her, and you said and did nothing?’
Jacob refilled his glass before he replied. ‘Legally I was not able to say a single word. Celine Durand was an outstanding intelligence officer. She had a magnificent brain, remembered a myriad of details and was a great mission planner. But her greatest asset was her possession of a sixth sense for picking up on anything that was out of the ordinary or didn’t feel right. One could call it a threat radar. It saved several operations. Tragically that is why she died. She realised what Vasilev was doing, and he murdered her. She was about to expose him for the creature he really was.’
‘But you let him go. France let him go!’ Racine’s voice was loud, accusative.
‘He escaped. The Russians got him out. Immediately afterwards, a number of our agents and operatives overseas went silent. His actions, his betrayal of the Republic of France, sentenced them all to death. He was my protégé and recruiting him, training him, and affording him the opportunity to betray us was my mistake. I was guilty of it all. There is nothing I can do to change the past. There is everything we can do together to change the future. This is why I want you in my department. I want you to find him and kill him.’
‘I will.’ There was no millisecond of pause or doubt. It was unthinkable that she would not agree. ‘Where is he now?’
‘We do not know.’
Racine emptied her glass and let her boss refill it.
‘I am sorry.’ Jacob reached down for his attaché case. From it he pulled out a document folder. He placed it on the table between them. ‘There are two files in there. One is on Vasilev. The other is a summary of the pathologist’s report on Celine.’
Racine took the folder, and her hand shook. A pair of A4 pages stapled together – photocopies of an official document – made up the top document. The notes on her aunt. Her mouth became dry, and a sudden lump appeared in her throat. Racine took her glass, knocked back its entire contents and then started to read.
The body of Celine Durand had been discovered at the Paris apartment of fellow DGSE officer Sasha Vasilev. It was believed, the author noted, that at her time of death Durand had been in a relationship with Vasilev. She had suffered cuts and contusions on both her arms, which the pathologist recorded as defensive injuries. Blood loss had been determined as the cause of her death brought on by a severing of the carotid artery. A jagged wound that ran the width of her neck had all but decapitated her. The murder weapon was deemed to be a serrated kitchen knife found by her side. Further away from the body, but also on the floor in the hallway, was a broken vodka bottle. It was smeared with both the tissue and blood of Sasha Vasilev. The pathologist surmised this had been used either to attack or to defend against Vasilev.
Racine looked up at Jacob. He met her eyes and nodded slowly.
‘Six of our colleagues are dead because of him.’
Chapter 21
Present Day
Central Donetsk
Hidden in her spot on the floor below, Racine heard the penthouse door open. She remained still and waited for the lift doors to open and close. It descended, at an arthritic pace, towards the ground floor. Racine looked down the lift shaft and caught a glimpse of Strelkov and two soldiers exiting through the cage at the bottom. Did this mean Vasilev was at home, and if it did, was he alone? Did the man know he was in danger or did he presume that Iqbal had been the sole target? Racine assessed her options. The safest course of action would be to wait until he exited the apartment, but that could be hours, and that he would expect, if he expected anything. In the meantime, the dragnet would draw ever tighter as the DNR and the Russians searched for her, Snow and Iqbal.
She had no choice.
She could risk waiting no longer.
She had to act.
And then the door to her target’s flat opened.
Racine moved back away from the railings and into cover. Below her the lift began to rise. It stopped, on her target’s floor. The doors opened, a passenger – she couldn’t see who – stepped inside and then it descended once again. Racine waited until it reached the ground floor then peered down. She saw the top of a man’s head, and then part of his face. Her target. He crossed the foyer towards the door to the street beyond. Racine raced down a flight of stairs until she was level with a window that faced the street. She looked out. Sasha Vasilev was crossing the road and heading towards a shop of some sort. An unexpected anger abruptly engulfed Racine as the absurd normality of the scene struck her. Her target was sauntering away without a care, relaxing after a usual day at the office.
Racine’s eyes twitched and her vision became blurred as she remembered the full pathologist’s report. It had shocked, saddened and disgusted her, but it had driven her ever since. And her boss had used it as a perfect, if perniciously blunt recruitment tool.
As a teenager she had mourned the loss of Celine and as an adult she dreamt darkly of confronting her killer and executing him. The scene had played over in her head, on a loop as she slept, the build-up, details and dialogue rewritten innumerable times. But she knew there would be no grandstanding. She would not tower over him giving an account of his crimes and letting him beg for his life or plead for forgiveness. When the time came, she intended to act in a clinical, decisive manner. Sasha Vasilev would immediately cease to exist, and Celine Durand’s legacy would live on.
Racine blinked, her eyes unexpectedly moist. A hard determination now replaced any softer emoti
on she may have felt. There was a noise from above – the door of an apartment opening and then the shuffling of feet. She readied herself for action, but then she heard the door close again and there was silence. Had it been perhaps one neighbour checking on another? The lift was not called and there was no further footfall. As she listened other sounds now drifted into her ears – the movements and words of the many residents carrying on in the war zone.
Outside her target reappeared. She tracked Vasilev as he retraced his route. He was carrying a gaudy-looking plastic bag. Vasilev disappeared from Racine’s field of view and she moved back to her original hide. The lift started to ascend. She waited until it was one floor below her before she moved upwards with it. Hidden by the side of the lift and standing several steps below the level of the floor, she waited as the doors opened and her target exited. He headed directly to his door. He transported his bag into his left hand and using his right reached into his pocket. Pulling out a set of keys, he set about clumsily unlocking the door.
Ramped up on adrenalin and rage, Racine sprang forward, crossing the space to Vasilev’s door in rapid strides. She slammed the sole of her right boot squarely into the middle of his back, transferring her weight through it and forcing Vasilev to crash past the door and into his entrance hall. Vasilev landed on his face and slid forward on the polished parquet floor as his shopping bag shot sideways, smashing a mirror on the side wall. Racine drew her Makarov with her right hand, grabbed the side of the door with her left and swung it shut.
This was it.
The time to pull the trigger.
Time to end Vasilev’s life.
Time to complete her mission.
Yet this was the first time she was killing as much for herself as she was for France. She felt her pulse rise as she gazed at her aunt’s killer, the man who had murdered Celine, as he started to groan and regain his senses. The liquid contents of his bag began to trickle towards him, following the edges of the wooden tiles like the first waves of a tide reclaiming the shore.
Racine’s finger was on the trigger.
Her finger felt the pressure.
Vasilev started to push himself up from the floor. His back was towards her.
Racine said, in French, ‘Hello, Sasha.’
Vasilev twisted around. Racine’s finger tightened on the trigger, but she let him stand. They were the same height. Their eyes met. Bewilderment momentarily flashed across a face Racine had not seen for fourteen years.
There was a tremor on Vasilev’s lips before he spoke. ‘Celine?’
‘No.’
In her mind the past and the present collided. She was both with Celine meeting Vasilev for the first time and now alone and grown, meeting him again. She was the teenager, whose life he had irrevocably damaged and she was the woman wreaking revenge.
‘I am Sophie Racine!’
A noise. A metallic rasp.
A weapon.
A shrill, sharp sound, rubber slipping wood.
The bottom of a tactical boot moving …
Racine threw herself to the floor as a barking, burst of rounds from a Kalashnikov slammed high into the door behind her. Prone, gun outstretched, on the floor, in the entrance hall Racine was an easy target. To her right there was a wall, to her left Vasilev and the shattered mirror, and behind her the door. No cover, nothing at all, and nowhere to go. Immediately in front of her, large wood and glass ornate double doors marked the entrance of the living space. They were open and from inside she could see four men in military fatigues had now taken up positions. Two were at the rear of the space, standing, part-obscured by structural pillars; two others were nearer and crouched behind heavy-looking pieces of wooden furniture.
Racine’s Makarov roared twice, the sound echoing off the wooden floor and all but bare walls. Her shots hit the nearest crouching gunman in the shoulder, making him spin backwards and his rifle clatter to the floor. The three others didn’t return fire. Their rifles were trained on her, three assault weapons at near point-blank range.
Racine sensed movement to her left … Vasilev. His boot collided with the side of her head. The impact lifted her up and sideways. She slid into the wall, her Makarov spinning from her hands and her vision greying out at the edges.
‘Pick her up!’ Vasilev ordered.
Two pairs of tactical gloved hands grabbed her under the arms and hauled her to her feet. Her knife, liberated from Vadim, fell from her jacket pocket onto the floor.
‘That was very impressive,’ Vasilev said, in French with an amused tone in his words.
‘Shall we search her?’ a gruff voice asked, in Russian.
‘What else will she be carrying – ballet tickets? Take her into the living room,’ Vasilev snapped back.
Racine’s head dropped as the two gunmen dragged her – her open jacket flapping – through the doors and into the next room. Her vision started to clear as she scanned the space. Against the far corner next to the balcony doors was the largest and longest L-shaped leather settee she had ever seen. The two gunmen pushed her onto it whilst a third kept his Kalashnikov trained at her head. The gunmen moved away. Two of them now had their AKs aimed at her, whilst through an arch the third attended to the fourth’s shoulder in the open-plan kitchen. The injured man moaned and cursed her in guttural Russian.
Vasilev sat on the other side of the L, his back to the balcony. Sunlight streamed in around him. He was cast into semi-shade in contre-jour effect. ‘I hoped we would meet again. I did so much enjoy the time we spent together, before I had to leave France. You accepted me like an uncle.’
Racine didn’t reply. There was a rushing in her ears. Every part of her wanted to leap at him, destroy him. Her hands were by her sides, palms flat against the seat, ready to spring up.
Vasilev leant forward slightly and studied her face. ‘Looking at you, I feel like I am a time traveller. You have not merely inherited her looks but in addition her tenacity.’ He paused, then leant back lazily against the plush leather. ‘I loved Celine. Is that what you expected me to say? It is the truth. I was in love with your aunt – Celine Durand. I always will be. Which is why it tore me apart when I was forced to leave her.’
‘You murdered her.’ Racine struggled to control her raging emotions.
‘Three months ago, my Tunisian operation was thwarted by a lone female operative. Imagine my surprise, and I shall be honest, my joy, when the only member of the team to escape sent me a photograph he had taken of this “Wonder Woman”. It was you, little Sophie Racine all grown up.’
Racine made no move to reply. Something told her if she listened to Vasilev’s diatribe she may learn something, and he had already told her there had been a fourth man.
‘How could this be, that the French had such a woman working for them in a unit that I knew nothing about? I was once the expert on all matters DGSE, but that was over fourteen years ago and, as I am sure you are aware, intelligence is so time-sensitive.’
Something started to connect in Racine’s mind. A small frown appeared on her brow.
‘That!’ Vasilev pointed at her, a quick smile flashing on his face. ‘That is the same “tell” Celine had. You’ve made the connection, haven’t you?’
Racine managed to bite back her reply.
‘I knew you would come for me. I engineered it. Even that pompous Strelkov knew nothing about it.’
Despite herself she said, ‘How?’
‘Ah.’ A grin appeared on Vasilev’s face. ‘Think about it, Sophie, a Jewish lawyer, no less, from Donetsk appears at the offices of the mighty DGSE stating he has been interrogated by one of France’s most wanted men – me. Yet this walk-in happens a day after the DNR post a photograph of me on their official VKontakte page? Implausible but compelling and verifiable, and I calculated it all. Both events were real; both events happened. I was concerned you might not make it to me, but I had no other choice. Your journey had to be real, and here you are.’
‘I am not a traitor,’ Racine stated.
‘I knew you would understand. Imagine what an advantage Russian intelligence will have by gaining the very latest intel on the inner workings of the DGSE, especially their hitherto unknown clandestine operation team – ‘The Department’. Imagine how the Russian President will reward me. You see, there were rumours about a female assassin carrying out daring, impossible, deadly missions – but the thinking in Moscow was this must be Mossad. How wrong we all were. Tell me, Racine, does Maurice Jacob still drink at that awful, dingy little café by the Seine? How is his drinking problem now? Does he still carry around that awful hip flask?’
‘I am not a traitor,’ Racine repeated, raising her right hand to point at Vasilev, an act that made the twin Kalashnikovs twitch, before she let it drop into her lap.
‘There are many methods to elicit your secrets without your consent. Some physical, others pharmaceutical, although these can also – I must warn you – exact a toll.’
Vasilev paused again. An expression crossed his face that was hard to read. Racine remained silent. It was now clear that he had no intention of killing her immediately, but this did not give her any hope.
There was a banging at the front door. The barrels of both rifles jerked towards it. Vasilev’s head turned. ‘Let them in!’
Racine’s right hand speedily snaked inside her jacket, into her concealed pocket. Her fingers grabbed the grenade.
The two gunmen moved.
‘Not you!’ Vasilev roared. ‘Fools. You, in the kitchen, answer that.’
Racine sprang to her feet. She removed the pin and began to count down from five, the longest five seconds of her life. The gunman from the kitchen came through the arch and froze, the two gunmen in front of her started to swing their aim back to her and Vasilev, head turning, eyes widening, started to shout.
She tossed the grenade at him. His hands shot up in a reflex action to stop it from hitting his face. Panicked, the soldiers began to shoot and rounds tore into the floor. Racine leapt over the back of the settee, took two steps and threw herself through the glass and wood of the balcony doors. She hit the concrete and spun to one side, forcing her back against the exterior wall. The grenade detonated. Eyes closed, she felt the shock wave through the wall.