For Lilli, April and Pete
with all my love
CHAPTER ONE
Paris, France, 1953
It started right here. In Paris. In the Eighth Arrondissement. The night that ripped my life apart. It was a night when the wind was sharp and the scent of the river strong. I was seated in the dark in my cranky old Renault on a dull street outside a dreary five-storey building you wouldn’t look at twice. But I knew that behind its ordinary black door and beneath its innocuous grey zinc roof it was anything but dull. I wanted to be inside that building so bad it choked me.
It was late evening. I had been waiting for three hours, hands clamped on the steering wheel, sweat crawling between my shoulder blades, and every ten minutes I wiped my palms on my coat. Cars droned past. Headlights chased each other through the night down towards Boulevard de Clichy, where I could hear heavy traffic grinding past, ignoring me. An old lady, black as a cockroach in her widow’s weeds, leaned out of a brightly lit upper window and studied me with suspicion. I swore, sank down in my seat and burrowed into my scarf. I’d swept my long dark hair up out of sight under an unmemorable felt hat and my navy coat collar was pulled up around my ears. I was well trained.
When the black door finally jerked open, the overhead fanlight showed me a man who flew down the three front steps in one stride. I studied his face, seeking signs. He was tall, alert, fast. He moved with authority and focus as he hurried to my car. His name was André Caussade and he was my brother.
‘Drive,’ he ordered.
I prodded the engine into life. He threw himself into the front passenger seat and slammed the door with such force I felt its old bones grind against each other. He smelled of polished boot leather.
‘Drive, Eloïse.’
Not a shout. No panic. But the urgency of his words left me in no doubt. I threw the gear lever into first and the car skidded away from the kerb. I forced a path through the darkness into the incessant flow of Paris traffic, elbowing my way in behind a wheezing truck. This was why I was here – to help my brother. The Caussades together. But Parisian drivers are like Stalin’s army – they take no prisoners. Horns blared. My mother’s moral status was loudly called into question by a driver who nearly took my bumper home with him. It was ten o’clock at night, and no Frenchman in his right mind thinks of anything after that hour except a glass in front of him and a warm thigh under his hand.
André offered no explanation. He was a man who used words sparsely and those he did use were often shaped into lies. To distract. To make you look in the wrong direction. He was good at that.
*
My brother worked for the CIA, the American Intelligence agency. I don’t say that lightly. I say it with reverence. It was the job I yearned for, in vain. To follow in my brother’s footsteps. I wanted to be part of those who help keep France safe in these dangerous times, and yes, I know it sounds over-dramatic, but the life of a field agent can be dangerous, André kept assuring me. I was learning the truth of that myself right now.
André had spent his whole childhood being both mother and father to me – far more than Papa had ever been. So when the telephone rang this evening and it was André’s voice telling me to be in my car outside a certain house on a certain street, I was there within a heartbeat.
Whoever was chasing André’s tail didn’t stand a chance. He was too quick, too smart. André was . . . I want to say invincible. But it is the wrong word. My brother was the kind of man who, if you were hanging by a slippery thread, dangling over a raging pit of hellfire, you’d want him there.
Believe me, you would. You’d want him and his cool certainty that he could outwit all the hard-eyed bastards that the Kremlin could throw at him. As children growing up in the wide marsh delta of the Camargue, he taught me the delights of creating codes and the thrills of the dead letter drop, and later in Paris he took me to secret meetings in places my father would skin the hide off me for setting foot in. Paris, you must understand, was not a city in 1953. It was a cesspit. It rotted the soul. It was the devil’s own vile hairy arsehole, according to Papa. I’d learned from him already that bulls and horses mattered more than motherless children, and that up in the towering mountains God rumbled his disapproval each time I went skinny-dipping in the sweet pools of the River Rhône.
My father looked like Abraham in my children’s Bible. Long beard. Ebony staff. And like Abraham, my father performed a sacrifice to God once a year up among the rugged sun-bleached cliffs of Les Beaux de Provence. Not of his son; of course not. No, even Abraham was spared that.
But every Easter my father led one of his beloved black bull calves up into the wilds of nowhere and slit the poor creature’s throat. I always watched for his return, clinging to the top rail of our fence and to the desperate hope that this Joseph – or whatever Old Testament name I had bestowed on the condemned animal – would return this time. But no. My father stumbled down the mountain alone, hands steeped in blood.
I never knew what he was atoning for and I never asked. He had named his younger son Isaac, though we were not Jewish. It meant something. Like the blood meant something.
But I didn’t know what.
But even with Papa’s curses ringing in my ears I’d come to Paris and now I could smell danger on André. Sour as cat’s piss, and I was frightened for him. Beside me he swivelled in his seat to study the traffic behind us, but all that was visible was a blur of headlights. The darkness curled around us and white fingers of fog rose up from the River Seine, ready to snatch away familiar landmarks.
Soviet Intelligence had a liking for the use of black cars and there were plenty of those in the city. Hairs prickled on the back of my neck as I drove. André glanced across at me – did he sense my nerves? – and in the flicker of the sulphur-yellow light from a streetlamp, I caught one of his rare smiles, his long jaw softening. His skin and his hair were the colour of sand, his jacket too. He claimed it made him harder to pick out in a crowd. But I could spot him anywhere.
‘Lose them,’ he whispered.
Who them were, I didn’t know. But I knew Paris and its secret places. I had learned every one of them. I swung the wheel hard and my car mounted the pavement, scattering pedestrians like confetti, narrowly missing a domed pissoir with an alarmed occupant. On Rue de Richelieu with its coin shops and formal grey façades I squeezed the car between the narrow walls of a side alleyway meant for nothing more ambitious than a cat and my offside wing squealed in protest as a layer of its skin was peeled off. I knew the city’s byways the way a spider knows its own web. From the grand thoroughfares of the Champs-Élysées to the cobbled mean streets of Montmartre up on its hill and the nooks and crannies of the Latin Quarter’s bars and cafés on the Left Bank, I had walked them all in my sleep.
I spotted the tail the moment I hit Boulevard de Sébastopol. The boulevard was a broad four-lane highway flanked by large five-storey buildings and bare-limbed trees that threw spiky black shadows across our path. It sliced through the Second and Third Arrondissements, and I was weaving between lanes, dodging in and out. It took only seconds to pick out the car swerving behind me – a dark sleek Renault Frégate. Faster than mine, but my 4CV could corner on a centime. I watched the glare of its headlamps draw closer.
Who were they?
What were they after?
They must be working a three-car net around me to still be in touch. The buildings were grander here, the roads wider, and beside me André held a small but silent High Standard HDM/S pistol on his knee, his hand rock-steady. My heart was hammering, my own fingers ice-cold but I concentrated on the road ahead. I waited till the last moment, then flipped off to the right. Zipped past the dark looming arches of Les Halles market, and immediately sharp
left. The Renault behind me reacted too late and overshot. I released my breath. André uttered a grunt of approval and I made a dash for the Pont Neuf.
We shot across the oldest bridge in Paris, its ranks of tall lampposts throwing a shroud of amber over the fog that was rising from the Seine and swirling around us like layers of old lace. The wide stone bridge was not busy at this late hour, though a ramshackle lorry trundling along ahead of me slowed me down, so I was trapped when a motorbike suddenly roared out of nowhere. I was acutely aware of its single eye fixed on us in the darkness, its rider hidden inside his balaclava. It was swerving up on my passenger side, its engine roaring in my ears when I saw André raise his pistol. Instantly I twitched the steering wheel. Just enough so that my rear wheel clipped the bike. We felt the impact judder through the car, and heard a screech of metal but I didn’t look back. I didn’t care to see the rider sprawled across the pavement or hear the Russian curses he was throwing after me.
I rolled down my window a crack, I needed more air but the fog crept in, carrying the stink of the river with it. I glanced across at André and saw a smile spreading across his face.
‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Turn left here.’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I know a place, a safe place.’
I veered right and plunged us into the maze of narrow roads that riddled the Left Bank district, turning and twisting past brightly lit bars and brothels until I was absolutely certain no headlights were following us. Finally, in a mean passageway with only two streetlamps still functioning, the beam of my headlights picked out a small brick archway and I drove through it with relief. It opened into a courtyard, cobwebbed with iron staircases and a row of lock-up garages. I cut the lights, jumped out of the car and unlocked one of the garage doors. Before André could blink, I’d reversed the car in and locked the doors behind us.
At last my head grew quiet. The grind and growl inside it ceased, and the blood flowed back to my fingertips.
*
We sat in the car, André and I, in silence, just the ticking of the engine as it cooled. The darkness was solid and smothering, sticking to my skin.
‘What is this place?’ André asked. ‘How do you know about it?’
‘It belongs to the father of a friend of mine whom I met while I’ve been working in the detective agency here. You know that I know Paris streets backwards, all the alleyways and backstreets that my work takes me to. Normally he stores bicycles here, probably stolen ones, I suspect. But he let me borrow it because he’s in prison at the moment.’
‘Why would you want to borrow it?’ He shifted round to peer at me in the gloomy interior.
‘In case I ever need a safe place.’
He smiled. ‘That’s good thinking, Eloïse.’
His praise mattered to me more than I let him see. ‘And what were those chasers after?’ I asked.
‘Me, of course.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, Eloïse, the less you know, the safer it is for you. You know that’s how it is. I’m sorry.’ He squeezed my hand hard. ‘Thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For protecting me in your safe hideout.’
‘I don’t want thanks. I want information.’
‘My little sister, will you never give up?’ But he laughed.
No, I don’t give up. When you are raised in a family of tough men and tougher bulls, you learn not to give up. I’m not that kind of person.
I had kept him safe, hadn’t I?
How was I to know what waited outside?
CHAPTER TWO
I heard André’s breath in the darkness, slipping in and out of his broad chest. Slow. Unhurried. As if we were not cooped up in this garage, rank with rat droppings. As if we were not hiding from men with thick necks and names like Volkov and Zazlavsky.
‘These men kill,’ he’d once said to me. At the time it had sent a shudder through me and I thought I’d understood. I’d worked with wild bulls on my father’s farm, hadn’t I? And I’d seen them kill a man, so I knew what that meant. That’s what I thought in my innocence. But I was wrong. Only now did I understand what those three words really meant: These men kill. And it sent a streak of fear through me that chilled the blood in my veins.
I released my grip on the steering wheel and peeled my fingers off one at a time. I didn’t want André to see my fear, but nevertheless he put out a hand and briefly touched mine. He possessed long square-tipped fingers and the hands of a man accustomed to years of hard physical labour in his boyhood, but now his skin had grown smooth. His nails were groomed Parisian-style, instead of cracked and grimy. Sometimes it worried me. I felt as though the brother I’d known and loved all my life was abandoning me.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked lightly.
‘I’m okay.’
His smile by the faint gleam of the streetlamp that crept under the door was slow in coming, but it was worth the wait. In repose his face was long and serious, his eyes watchful. Years ago he used to have the wild looks of a pirate with long unruly golden locks, riding bareback through the Camargue on a vile-tempered white horse called Charlemagne. But these days you would mistake him for a lawyer. The suit sharp-edged. Hair clipped. Mouth tight. Briefcase under his arm.
My disguise, he called it.
Your tamed soul, I teased him.
‘You’ve done well,’ he told me. ‘Really well. I couldn’t have driven better myself. We are secure here. I’m lucky you found it.’ He uttered a soft laugh that caught me unawares. ‘What have you got planned next?’ he asked. ‘We stay locked up here in this garage for a week?’
‘Sit back,’ I said. ‘Trust me.’
My brother stared hard at me through the gloom. ‘I trust you,’ he said.
I jumped out of the car, threw open the garage doors, eager to get out of there, and let the lamplight invade the blackness. Sometimes I lost my bearings in the shadows of André’s dark world and couldn’t tell which way was up and which way was down. I saw André frown as I slid back into the driving seat and started the engine.
‘Is that wise?’ he asked.
‘They will be long gone,’ I assured him, so bright and so sure of myself. ‘We’ve been here well over an hour and they’ll have scuttled away back to the holes they came from. You’ll see.’
The noise of the engine resounded off the old brick walls, shaking apart the silence of the last hour in the grubby lockup. I flicked into gear and eased the car out into the cobbled courtyard. A one-eared greyhound on the end of a chain sat up on its haunches and barked at us, but no one else took a blind bit of notice.
‘Trust me, André.’
*
I drove slowly, cautiously, through the archway that led out on to the road. Headlights flared, carving holes in the dark streets. Cars rushed past. Even at night Paris traffic gave no quarter. Beside me I could sense André alert, his eyes scanning the dim corners of the street, checking the shadowy doorways and the glowing cigarette ends that peppered the darkness, his mind assessing the danger points.
I whispered, ‘It looks all clear.’
André nodded.
I spotted a gap and swung the big steering wheel, slotting into the flow. That was when the massive grey truck reared up off the pavement, its huge headlights blinding me. I wrenched hard at the wheel, muscles tearing. Too late. The truck slammed its steel bumper into the passenger side of my car and tossed us, spinning us through the air.
Oddly, I heard nothing. No sound. No impact. No noise of any kind. Silence swelled inside my head.
Was I already dead?
No, I could taste blood as my teeth clamped through my tongue. I was hurtling upside-down in a trembling bubble of steel that was not built to fly. Splinters of glass sliced into my skin. The engine was racing, the wheels spinning frantically as they whirled above me in the Paris night, but I heard no scream, though my mouth was open and I felt air rushing out of my lungs.
No pain.
I felt, rather than saw, the
blood. Scarlet streamers of it. Twisting and turning through the air, sweeping into my face. Was it my blood? Or André’s?
I didn’t know.
I saw his hand. Reaching for me through the red veil within the car. Or was the veil inside my eyes? Reaching to hold me. To keep me safe.
Then my car smashed down on to the ground and my world broke into a million pieces.
CHAPTER THREE
I woke in a strange bed.
Whiteness was filling my head. At first I thought it was still the shapeless fog from the Pont Neuf, but this was more solid, much heavier. And it was crushing me.
I opened my eyes a crack and took a squint at a thin slice of a hospital ward with a woman in the bed opposite mine reading a letter and chuckling to herself. My eyes travelled from her bandaged head to the white plaster on my left arm. I blinked with surprise and belatedly became aware of pain punching on every heartbeat. But alongside the pain came memory. It slunk back in like a thief and I was gripped by an overwhelming terror for my brother.
I had turned right, when André said, ‘Turn left.’
I had opened the garage door when André asked, ‘Is that wise?’
The whiteness in my head was not fog. It was guilt.
*
I forced myself out of my hospital bed.
I shuffled and I stared at my feet in slippers I’d never seen before. Every ten paces I leaned against the wall and I couldn’t work out whether the swaying was the wall or me. The hospital corridor stretched ahead, shiny and impossibly long. Too full of light. My eyes hurt. I pushed myself off the wall and jerked one foot forward. The strange slipper came with it.
‘What on earth are you doing here, mademoiselle?’
‘I’m looking for my brother.’ My words stuck to each other.
‘You should be in bed, my dear.’
The voice sounded kind. She was a blur of white, one of the nursing nuns, and I forced my gaze into focus on her. She was looking at me with soft grey eyes, creased with concern. ‘What is your brother’s name?’
The Guardian of Lies Page 1