by Rachel Lynch
They stopped before the magnificent fountain.
‘It was commissioned by Napoleon’s sister herself.’ Sir Conrad gestured towards the water feature. Helen wondered, given the noblewoman’s reputation, what kind of parties were held here by the socialite.
‘Sir, just so I’m clear, on the face of it, I’m representing you in several capacities; mainly guaranteeing your safety at the summit. In reality, I’m tasked with joining Interpol’s investigation into the disappearance of Hakim Dalmani, while at the same time, gathering intelligence on Fawaz Nabil, NATO and the Afghan government.’
He laughed. ‘That’s a bit strong, Major, but yes. I can’t think of anyone better.’
They both gazed at the huge marble depiction of a carriage, pulled by five horses galloping through the water, driven by a noblewoman. No doubt Madame Borghese modelled it on herself.
‘She’s the epitome of a strong woman,’ Helen said.
‘Isn’t she? And a looker, too. Have you been to Lyon before?’ he asked as they slowly circled the fountain.
‘Yes, sir, I was seconded once before to Interpol.’
‘This isn’t a secondment – you’re offering expertise,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir.’
It was made clear that their meeting was now over and he escorted her back to the house. A quicker journey than their amble down. He stopped to face her when they reached the terrace.
‘All the details of your trip are next door with Colonel Palmer,’ he said, before disappearing inside.
She was taken next door to the chancery and led to Colonel Palmer’s office. It was a rendezvous she could do without, but he was technically her boss when she was here. But if she was working for Interpol, then she would no longer have to report to him. Colonel Ben Palmer was sitting in a large green Chesterfield office chair and looked up and nodded as she came in. He handed her an envelope before looking back down again to his desk. She thanked him and stood waiting to either be questioned, exchange chit-chat or at least be dismissed. He tapped on a keyboard and Helen knew he was enjoying the moment, taking his time and making her wait. His balding head taunted her and she had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. She’d worked with some prize bellends in her time but Ben Palmer was up there with the least memorable. It was inevitable, she supposed. Being surrounded by alpha males was bound to cause conflict. Men who only worked with men were particularly off-putting beasts. They farted, spat and told appalling jokes. Feminism hadn’t really reached the army yet, despite what the papers said. Finally he looked up.
‘The ambassador rates you, Scott.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘It wasn’t a compliment.’
‘Sir.’
‘You need to report directly back to me when you’re in Lyon,’ he announced.
‘Sir, the ambassador just told…’
‘I’m your line manager here and I want to know the military angle of what’s going on. That’s my job. Yours is to report to me. You are an officer in the armed forces, Scott, and you answer to me, is that clear?’
The ambassador hadn’t mentioned this, and she faced going over the colonel’s head should she query it. Frankly, her trip to Paris was turning into a nightmare, and she couldn’t wait to escape the city for the cool of the mountains of Lyon.
She had little choice but to confirm she would follow orders.
‘Yes, sir.’
Maybe he was just irritated by her sudden elevation to the echelons of power, like men such as him usually were. Fuck you, she thought, she’d be reporting to the ambassador. She returned his stare.
As long as she remained in Lyon, she could avoid Palmer. She’d deal with what happened when she came back for the summit. The problem was that her time in France would be reported on by him, but it would have to be signed off by the MOD in London. RMPs were never going to be best friends with the infantry. Everybody knew that. She was used to being unwelcome, abused even. None of it ever fazed her and Palmer was the last person she’d think of as she took the train to Lyon. It was the perfect time to be leaving, and she felt a sense of freedom.
She held his gaze.
‘You’re not as good as you think you are, Scott.’
‘Sorry, sir?’
‘Don’t get out of your depth. The ambassador seems to think you’re some kind of specialist because of what you did in Kabul. You got lucky. Never underestimate the experience of a real soldier.’
Helen said nothing for a moment. In other institutions this sort of bullying wouldn’t be tolerated, but not here. Some would file an official complaint, but Helen knew from experience that holding her tongue and letting her work do all the talking was always more powerful. She’d experienced it her whole career: men thinking they were better soldiers. Add to that, RMP officers were responsible for putting infantry soldiers behind bars, and it was a recipe for historic resentment.
‘Of course not, sir. The next time I see a real soldier, I’ll be sure to ask his advice.’
Her pulse quickened. He could have her disciplined for such insolence to a senior officer, but with no witnesses, her remark was as impossible to reprimand as his own had been. Tiny beads of sweat glistened on his brow and his skin went pink.
‘If that’s all, sir, I better get ready to depart. The ambassador has told me I’m leaving within the hour.’
‘So, why are you still here?’
She nodded and turned to go. She wasn’t in uniform and so didn’t have to salute. Fuck him. She left, and once out in the sunshine, gasped for air to relieve her anger. Seven years ago, the then Major Palmer had pinned her up against a wall, behind the officer’s mess, expecting a fondle. She’d kneed him in the nuts and told him to go fuck himself. She hadn’t reported him because he was drunk and a nuisance, and that was all.
He’d never forgiven her.
Chapter 9
Helen boarded the train for Lyon. She always found that travelling on a French train for a long journey was somewhat romantic; maybe it was the countryside. Trips on English trains were grubby by comparison and reminded her of late journeys home after a heavy night out in London: the smell of the takeaways being munched by inebriated commuters, the unclean toilets, the sticky air and the feeling that something unsavoury had been spilled on one’s seat.
Departing Paris allowed her to breathe a sigh of relief. Her ticket was checked upon embarking and she sat back to relax into reading the file given to her by Colonel Palmer. She started with Dalmani’s security. It was headed up by a Jean-Luc Bisset. The information collated so far had been handed over by the National Central Bureau of Interpol in Algiers to Interpol headquarters in Lyon. Jean-Luc’s employer seemed to have been more than willing to give the guard’s history in a fair amount of detail. The report was thorough.
Born to a French mother, Marie, and an Algerian father, Basem, Jean-Luc had grown up in Algeria, and the family had worked for the Dalmanis for the best part of fifty years. Basem Bisset was an anomalous name, Helen thought, and she dug a little deeper into his history. The French name Bisset had come from a colonial family and it appeared that Basem was the bastard of a French soldier.
Marie was also the daughter of a French soldier and her marriage to Basem must have raised some eyebrows during such a time of uncertainty. Helen found herself caught prying into a love story spanning generations and she fancied them running off together, like Romeo and Juliet, treacherous in their passion. She pictured the tortuous conversations that tormented their parents (if they were still alive) as the product of warring factions fell in love.
But by the time Jean-Luc was born, the war was over and Algeria was a land of opportunity for some, and their union wouldn’t have attracted questions at all. It was a country starting over, and Bisset found employment with the Dalmanis. Helen gave a slight nod of admiration at the thought of the young scrapper who’d ingratiated himself with an up-and-coming family at such a time of opportunity. Helen read with interest the positions held by Basem Bisset an
d grasped the pattern of his past: he never got beyond the rank of foreman in several Saharan mines owned by AlGaz. Which was curious because in Khalil’s statement to Interpol, he said he’d played with Jean-Luc as a child. Why would the son of the mine owner be allowed to play with a mere miner’s son?
She turned to Interpol’s notes on Khalil Dalmani.
It seemed that he’d grown up in the shadow of his formidable father, who was a war hero. A lucky punt on some scrubland in the Sahara had literally struck black gold: oil. The family was wealthy beyond Helen’s grasp. It wasn’t that she couldn’t picture the yachts, the penthouse suites and the private jets, it was just she had trouble understanding where so much wealth came from and how it was sustained. She shook her head. It would appear after all that, despite playing together as children, Khalil and Jean-Luc’s paths were very different indeed. Perhaps, after the sacrifices made by his father, loyal to the family for decades, being a bodyguard wasn’t enough for Jean-Luc.
Added to which, the fact that one might say that only Lady Luck decided who benefitted from the fallout of the war. Algiers in 1973, when Jean-Luc was born, was a place in flux. The French had fled having been resoundingly defeated. The country licked her wounds, and Helen knew that resentments ran high for families like Jean-Luc’s, whose fathers fought bravely, risking torture, murder and ruin, leaving deep scars. Jean-Luc followed in his father’s footsteps and entered the family firm from a young age. He’d worked for Khalil’s father, and then Khalil: did this demean him? Helen knew from countless colleagues in the security forces that personal entourages provided to high-profile and wealthy clients around the world were not always run by those who were most skilled, but those who were most loyal, and sometimes this led to mistakes. Jean-Luc certainly didn’t fulfil the high professional skill set required by, say, the British or American Special Forces. As far as she could tell, he’d been on no courses, attended no military-training establishments, and boasted no accolades thereof. He’d simply been promoted and assumed the top role some five years ago.
She turned to his job specification and his exact involvement in Khalil’s household, and read that Jean-Luc personally oversaw the itinerary of every flight taken by Khalil’s private fleet.
Then she came across a name that made her blood run cold.
Three years ago, a British man had been appointed head of Khalil’s company security. AlGaz’s oilfields and working perimeter boasted a footprint of thousands of square miles and Grant Tennyson was in charge of it all. All except the private security of the family, which was kept separate and headed up by Jean-Luc. The instant rush of adrenalin subsided and she calmed herself. She gazed out of the window at the blur of fields and electric cables whizzing past. Grant must have been royally pissed off about not getting to run the whole rig.
They’d met during Operation Herrick 11. Helen had been attached to an infantry battalion in Helmand, Grant was a company commander. It had been an instant attraction. She’d never figured out if her magnetic pull towards some military men was as a result of meeting no one else, or there was something about them she found genuinely alluring. Grant had personally shown her around the camp. It had been a shithole carved into rock and sand, but he made it feel like home for his men. He’d soothed her anxiety over being a female imposter in a man’s world. The gravitational force between them, apparent from the first cup of hot tea shared across an upturned ammo box, set the bar for the rest of the tour, which they spent in denial of their feelings. It was only when they returned to the UK, free from the threat of court martial for fraternising on an operational tour, that they launched into a whirlwind romance.
She continued to stare out of the window and studied the French countryside. She could already see the Alps in the distance and she wished she was skiing. With him? Not any more. Skiing was the only activity she did that allowed her to forget everything in her life. There was something magical about being on top of a mountainside, covered in snow, with bright blue sky affording the sun front-row seats, facing a red run on a wide piste flanked by pines and ferns. The heady scent was just as strong in winter. She preferred to ski in France because it offered the widest pistes, and it was drivable from anywhere in Europe. She’d skied in Germany and Austria, and they were prettier, but the French knew how to build a resort. She loved the Alps and any time she got to go adventure training with the army, it had been to go skiing. One of her more memorable postings was to Cyprus, and her trips to the Troodos Mountains, where they had about three workable runs, but she mustn’t be ungrateful. It was no Les Arcs, but it did mean they could drive to Larnaca afterwards, within an hour, and get shit-faced. She smiled at the memories, but a frown soon followed. The pattern never changed; she couldn’t think about Grant now without feeling the intense pain that accompanied it.
She tore herself from the view and tried to concentrate on the information in the file but seeing Grant’s name had affected her beyond expectation. It took several attempts for her to work out a timeline. Like a senior investigating officer in the civilian police, she applied her knowledge of crime scenes and created a chronology of Hakim’s last known movements. She studied the casefiles for the two pilots, who’d been found inside the aircraft bound and gagged, showing signs of severe dehydration. They’d sat on the tarmac in over forty-degree heat, with the sun pelting through the cockpit windows, the engines and air-con off, for close to an hour. Interviewed by French gendarmerie soon afterwards, they’d given artist’s impressions of the two men who bound them. She looked over them now and they were generic sketches of men with dark hair and darker glasses. Both pilots had stated when interviewed that they knew nothing of the impending plot. They also suspected nothing untoward between landing and taxiing until the men entered the cockpit.
In answer to the query over how the two men had been able to access the cockpit, they’d replied that they never locked the door on private flights for Mr Dalmani’s family. It seemed likely only the Dalmani family and Jean-Luc would know this. By the time the alarm was raised, any car carrying Hakim might have left the city. He could be anywhere.
Next, she turned her attention to Fawaz bin Nabil. The file, compiled before she left Paris, was huge. There was no way she’d get it read by the time she reached Lyon, and so she skimmed, using her instinct, to search for keywords and dates. She could see that Fawaz and Khalil’s fathers had gone into business together in the 1970s, around the same time Basem had begun working for the Dalmani family. Had Fawaz known the Bissets? It seemed to Helen an important, if not crucial, question, and she searched the file to see if there was a connection. Fawaz’s company, Nabil Tradings, was a relatively new set-up – registered in the 1990s, after the death of Nabil senior. This is when the two companies parted ways. The Bisset family remained loyal to the Dalmanis. Why?
Was Fawaz pissed off? Sir Conrad had said it was Fawaz’s ‘filthy’ drugs trade that put off the Dalmanis, and she needed to know if this was true.
Her detective nose was kicking in and she had to remind herself to take care when being drawn down potential rabbit holes. It had happened before. Sometimes family rifts provided red herrings that seemed perfectly suited to a particular motive: the traditional lusty greed for land, money and power. This case had it all. However, her job was to sort through the reeds and come up with solid evidence that would make the most of her time. One thing was for sure: she couldn’t interview Jean-Luc, and she couldn’t interview Fawaz Nabil. She could, however, interview Khalil Dalmani. But to do that, she was also acutely aware that she’d have to go through, or at least deal with in some capacity, Grant Tennyson.
She left Fawaz’s file for a moment and went back to Jean-Luc’s, searching for any connection between the families. She found a series of photos and flicked through them. A waiter pushing a trolley came towards her, and Helen ordered a coffee. Long train journeys made her too comfortable and thus weary; it was something to do with the gentle rhythm of the unwavering speed, as well as the hush. She stretc
hed and yawned and stirred sugar into her drink.
She went back to the photos and one caught her attention. It was a group photo taken in the 1990s, and right at the centre was Nabil senior; he’d died later that year. She squinted and got close to the photograph. Next to his father, she recognised Fawaz. He was a striking young man, and unforgettable. His most recent photo supplied by US Intelligence was of him attending an arms deal in Saudi Arabia two years ago. He hadn’t changed much, and his eyes jumped from the picture, despite its age. A small shiver ran through her when she noticed the man next to him, whom he had his arm around. They looked like brothers and beamed for the camera. The face was unmistakeable, though he’d aged like all of them. The man in Fawaz’s hold was Khalil Dalmani.
Not far away, also smiling for the camera, but off centre and not as well turned out as the two men embracing, was a face she also recognised. It was Jean-Luc. It didn’t take long for Helen to pick out his parents too. Basem looked older than his years and Marie looked proud but wary. It was a photo depicting a chilling hierarchy, and sure enough, the periphery was made up of household servants. But they too were smiling. And why wouldn’t they be? They were given a good life by these two families. By the time this photograph had been taken, the Dalmanis and the Nabils would have been filthy rich, and Helen knew they were generous.
What happened? She stared at the faces of Fawaz and Khalil, searching for answers.
She sat back, finished her coffee and took another look at the file on Fawaz, paying particular attention to the information on Nabil Tradings. It was mainly dry and technical, exacerbating Helen’s drowsiness, but she persevered. The pages covering pre-2013 detailed the investigations designed to ensnare Nabil Tradings in illegal goings-on, but never led to any indictments. However, the several cases filed by Interpol since 2013, when they’d begun Operation Lionfish, told a different story. To date, they’d seized over a billion dollars’ worth of illegal substances being transported by air, land and sea, mainly in Europe and South America. But not one shred of intelligence had led back to the big man himself: Fawaz bin Nabil. He was a local hero in Morocco, due to donating funds to various humanitarian agencies, schools and universities, and no doubt government departments, though there was no evidence of this. For Interpol to catch him, they needed him with blood, explosives or weed on his hands, and, so far, they’d got nothing. They continued picking off couriers, dealers and producers, but Fawaz remained elusive. Then there were the files on his arms trading, but all of it was legitimate. The guy was as clean as a whistle. Helen pondered the possibility of a ruse. A very intricate and complex trick to make the authorities believe that Hakim had been abducted, thus throwing them off the scent of something else? But what? And that would assume that the Nabils and Dalmanis never fell out in the first place. Her head hurt, and she needed a break. She’d been drawn into a labyrinth of intrigue and the task before her seemed more daunting than ever. However, what she did appreciate was that she was away from Paris and the politics of her job. Away from Colonel Palmer and his military dick-swinging, and on her own. It excited her.