by Rachel Lynch
‘They had a van too,’ she said. The officer took the details.
‘Can you describe the men?’
‘Of course! They were both ugly with bad manners.’
‘We can start with that.’
But it was what the old lady added to her story that caught the attention of Helen and Sylvia, listening from their air-conditioned office at Interpol.
‘Les Beurs.’
Helen had heard the term hundreds of times before. It was the standard derogatory French saying for second-generation immigrants from North Africa.
Chapter 16
Grant sat in a ten-year-old Renault, bought in cash, on the corner of an intersection joining two tiny Parisian streets busy with gossip and coffee drinkers. Cigarette smoke lingered on the air. He watched an internet cafe and took photos of people coming and going. He had a photograph on his front passenger seat and waited for one face in particular to emerge. The man was of Moroccan descent and was in the city illegally, understandably without the permission of the authorities. But Grant wasn’t here to dob him in to immigration officers. The man had come to his attention, via a contact of his in the desert. There’d been a recent scuffle on one of AlGaz’s perimeters involving Moroccan nationals. It was frequent enough not to attract major interest, but the man’s brother worked for Khalil, as one of his gardeners, and hadn’t been seen since Sunday.
Grant’s camera was the size of his palm, but it could take detailed enlarged images from a kilometre away: the perks of working for a rich guy. The lead had come from a bad-tempered employee possibly looking for more cash, but there might be something in it. And here he was. Employees that worked the perimeters of AlGaz land were casually vetted and paid on zero-hour contracts: that made them difficult to trace. He’d last seen him fixing a generator, and when Grant had asked questions, he’d tutted arrogantly, giving him vague answers. Most of them had one thing on their minds, feeding their families, but others might be ripe for turning to the opposition, be it to hand over technical information, or perhaps something more sinister.
Khalil was a decent man, and he tended towards seeing the good in his employees – Jean-Luc was a perfect example. Random employees failing to turn up to jobs was a normal part of running any company which paid them in cash, but it was Grant’s job to make sure they then didn’t sell out to the competition – namely Nabil Tradings. The ex-employee had used his own passport to fly to France: his first mistake. Second: where did he get the airfare?
Being ex-military, Grant had a network of old pals willing to feed him handy information from time to time, such as passenger lists on aircraft; people will do significant favours for comrades who save their lives. His contact in Algiers was a retired major who’d been injured in Iraq. He’d side-stepped to the Foreign Office and now worked in the British Embassy there. He met Levi occasionally for the odd pint in the Marriot, in the twenty-fifth-floor members’ lounge.
The man was here. Grant sat up in his seat and held up his camera. A figure in sports clothes, wearing a baseball cap and looking about vigilantly, sauntered towards the doorway. He was inconspicuous and fitted in with all the other mixed nationalities typical of any Parisian street. Grant had parked underneath the shade of a leafy tree and took the photos through his closed window. The man slipped in through the door, and Grant saw him pay for something at the counter and take a seat.
Grant got out of the car and slammed the door shut behind him, locking it with the key fob. He walked across the road, avoiding the traffic, which was light. He went into the cafe and paid five euros for half an hour’s internet access; he also ordered a coffee. His French was good enough for the man behind the counter not to answer back in English. He took a seat close to the stranger and listened intently. The man was speaking into an earpiece and Grant strained his hearing. It was sophisticated equipment for a man scrimping and saving to feed his family in the desert. He could make out the odd word but nothing that made sense. He logged on and switched his phone to camera. It was linked to a tiny recorder fixed to his jacket, which he pointed towards the man, and plugged a mouse to it, which he used to take images. It was kit only dreamt about in the army. This was one reason he’d left. Rich guys like Khalil could afford the surveillance equipment necessary to make life easy for those who knew how to use it. In the army, they’d had to put up with outdated gadgetry, often frustrating their efforts to track targets.
Grant nonchalantly browsed a few sites to give the impression that he was regular punter surfing the internet on a day off, sipping coffee, until suddenly, the man got up and left. Grant waited a few seconds and followed him, ignoring the stares from the waiter about his unused time. He looked both ways and spotted the man disappearing around a corner, and he set off after him on foot. He followed him for six or seven blocks, watching as the man spoke on a mobile phone; when he’d finished his call, he threw it into a rubbish bin. Grant searched the bin and fished out the mobile. Sloppy work, he thought. He put it into his pocket. He continued to follow for a couple more blocks, and Grant noticed the street signs told him they were in the eighteenth arrondissement, heading towards Gare du Nord. Finally, the man turned in to a parking area, and Grant fell back a little, not wanting to raise suspicion. He watched as the man entered a Haussmann-style block of flats and disappeared. Grant waited until he thought it was prudent to proceed and went to the entrance himself. The door had no lock and, as Grant entered carefully, he heard a door bang just above him. Otherwise the place was deserted. He jogged up a flight of stairs to where he thought he heard the bang and peered along the landing. The building was a far cry from the fancy boulevards of the tourist spots. The concrete stairwells smelled of piss and the walls were covered in graffiti. He tentatively progressed along the hallway, which had lots of residential doors leading off it, and stopped short of one, where he heard a single loud, unmistakeable voice, indicating that someone was on the phone. It was the man. Grant took a note of the address and disappeared the way he’d come.
He called Khalil and updated him as he retraced his route back to the car. ‘I’ll find an opportunity to get in there,’ Grant said.
‘Make one,’ Khalil said and hung up.
Back at his hotel, a far cry from the Ritz, he removed the SIM from the mobile phone he’d rescued from the rubbish bin. It was fairly simple to remotely access the server from the SIM card. Stupidly the Moroccan man hadn’t thought to dismantle the phone first: a rookie error, thought Grant. He attached the phone to his computer and watched as the data from the handset downloaded.
There wasn’t much on it, but Grant wasn’t surprised. Burner phones were designed for single use, else why would people use them to achieve anonymity? That was the whole point. But what he did have was two phone numbers. The man had called each number twice and Grant made a note of the times: all were from today. There was also a text exchange. It gave an address in Lyon.
Chapter 17
‘I wish all of my missing persons got this much interest,’ Sylvia said.
Helen looked up from her screen and gave her attention to her new colleague. She had a point, and it sat in the air between them. She couldn’t imagine the pain being suffered every day across the globe by thousands of parents unable to reach loved ones, never knowing what had happened to them.
‘I’m sure you do, Sylvia,’ she replied. She got the impression that Sylvia wanted to chat. The office was large and Helen guessed that it was usually only occupied by the head of Missing Persons. The subject of the crimes made the loneliness of the task more unbearable. Helen knew that a sizeable portion of missing people, mainly children, were trafficked for the sex trade, and the database at Interpol HQ was enormous. The part of Sylvia’s job that most repulsed Helen was the way in which some of those children were tracked down: by flicking through images on hardcore porn sites on the dark web. She wondered whether, as a parent, it would be worse being told that your child had appeared on the grainy images, or not. She’d come close enough to being a par
ent to appreciate the vulnerability of children, and the stats were brazenly shocking. Children went missing all the time; snatched from streets, play areas and babysitters, eventually ending up as exhibits among Interpol files.
Hakim Dalmani was twenty-one years old, fit, athletic and bright. He wasn’t the kind of target for paedo porn: he was too clever, old and strong. He could fight back.
So where was he? And why?
‘We had a case in the army, oh, years ago, when a group of Artillery soldiers was eventually found guilty of providing street kids to suppliers in Germany. This was before the British barracks over there were handed back to German authorities. It was kept out of the news, in case you were wondering – that’s how long ago it was. Christ, it’d be online in minutes now. I’d just started in the RMP, a rookie officer – all hope and glory, but no idea what people were truly capable of. That’s why I’m still doing it,’ Helen said. She surprised herself with her openness, but Sylvia listened.
‘That makes it all worthwhile, doesn’t it?’ Sylvia said. ‘Catching the perverted feckers red-handed. It makes me sick to my stomach. But the good news is that Hakim isn’t your likely candidate for selling on.’
‘Exactly. It’s something to do with the father, I’ve got no doubt,’ Helen said. ‘He’s worth something, but there’s been no communication between the captors and the father, or at least that’s what he’s told us so far. I haven’t spoken to him myself yet. He’s flown in to Paris – I know that much.’
‘What would he gain from being less than transparent with us?’ Sylvia asked.
‘Either he’s been asked to do something politically sensitive, or he doesn’t trust us to do the job,’ Helen replied.
‘So why would he cooperate at all?’
‘To hedge his bets while he pays his own team to investigate,’ Helen replied.
‘He’ll be hard-pushed to do that with his chief of security missing,’ Sylvia said.
Helen didn’t reply. She knew very well that Grant Tennyson was perfectly capable of running such an operation, she just had to prove it, and find out what he was up to. But she wasn’t ready to share this with Sylvia just yet.
She turned their attention back to the information supplied by the old woman and it was a priority to track down the two men, as well as the van from the address they’d raided. She went over the information they had, going back to Hakim’s journey to Paris.
‘We’ve got Jean-Luc’s phone records here. Look, his phone goes dead somewhere between Algiers and Paris, and is never switched back on.’
‘He turned it off over the Mediterranean somewhere,’ Sylvia said.
Helen nodded.
‘Why would he do that?’ Sylvia asked. It was rhetorical. They were both thinking aloud.
‘He was expecting to be able to communicate in another way once they landed. And he knew he wouldn’t need his phone again,’ Helen said.
‘You think this is evidence he’s involved?’ Sylvia asked her.
Helen sighed and sat back in her seat. ‘In my opinion, when you’re tasked with the security of a principal, communication is vital. He should have been in touch with the chauffeur on the ground, his accommodation in Paris, traffic checks and his boss in Algiers to at least assure him after take-off and confirm timings, etc.’ Helen paused ‘Do we know why Hakim was returning to Paris early? He usually spends the whole summer with his family, but term doesn’t start for another month or so. What was he coming back for?’
‘I don’t know the answer to that. Have you tried the Ritz yet?’ Sylvia asked.
Helen shook her head. She knew that she was putting it off. Part of her didn’t want to speak to anyone who employed Grant Tennyson. Part of her wanted nothing else.
A junior police officer came into the incident room and informed them that CCTV from the La Croix-Rousse neighbourhood had picked up a van, travelling east along a one-way street, away from the address they’d raided. Helen opened the link the officer has sent across, and they watched the footage together.
‘Can we enlarge this?’ Helen asked.
‘It’s been done,’ the officer handed Helen an envelope. Inside were two photos of the occupants of the front seats of the van. Both men appeared to be of North African descent and both pictures were clear.
‘Fantastic, well done. Thank you.’
‘A notice has been handed to all borders in the Schengen area, ma’am. They won’t have left the EU by now unless they flew. We’re working on tracking the vehicle and mapping its progress now. I’ll notify you as soon as we have a trace.’
The officer left.
‘I was working on what else there was on Jean-Luc’s phone before he switched it off. No close-protection officer allows his phone to run out of juice, so I’m working with the theory that it was switched off on purpose. Hakim called his mother mid-air around two p.m. before he landed. She said he called to remind her to take his brother Farid to his water-polo practice, because over the summer, he’d been doing it,’ said Helen.
‘And?’ Sylvia asked.
‘That was after Jean-Luc switched his phone off, so my deduction is that Hakim wasn’t overpowered in the air. The pilots didn’t report a ruckus either, and they’re adamant that no one else was on the flight. They had no cabin crew. Besides, security is usually tight around passenger lists on aircraft coming into Europe. Private jets used to get away with all sorts before 9/11, but now they can’t, and it needs to be logged in advance.’
‘Ok, so we’ve got Jean-Luc switching his phone off without Hakim’s knowledge, and then what?’ Sylvia asked.
‘I’m more interested in before that. Jean-Luc’s phone was highly active in the period before going to the airport in Algiers, which is what you might expect when preparing to transport your principal. But there’s a series of short exchanges to mobile phone numbers that pinged off towers in Paris, and none of them are the registered numbers for the security Khalil was using here in France for his son. None of them are registered to a person, only remote servers. Also, all the lines are now dead, indicating they were single-use burner phones, not something anybody working legitimately for Khalil would be using.’
It was Sylvia’s turn to sigh. ‘Good work. Any phone activity on those numbers after Hakim’s plane landed on Sunday?’
‘One, this one here.’ Helen brought up the information on her screen. ‘It pinged off several masts between Paris and Lyon and then went dead. Look at the times.’
Sylvia looked at the screen. ‘Jesus,’ said Sylvia. ‘That’s pretty concrete – the timing coincided perfectly with the transportation of Hakim out of Paris, right here to Lyon. How is the forensic search of Jean-Luc’s mother’s house going?’
‘She’s been moved to a hotel, and the gendarmerie are preparing a second interview with her,’ Helen said.
‘Keep it up, Scott. Good work. I heard they call you “the Wrench” in the army. I’m beginning to see why.’
She left the room and Helen stared after her. That bombshell was a bolt out of the blue and a sure sign to Helen that Sylvia Drogan had spent a bit of time on her record. She cringed. She hated the name, not because it was derogatory – the opposite was true – but because it gave the impression of some gung-ho soldier swaggering about, showing everybody else up, which simply was not true. In this game, you couldn’t get anywhere alone; it had to be a team effort.
With that thought, she realised it was time to speak to Khalil Dalmani. She needed to ask him why he trusted one man alone to accompany Hakim back to college. It was crazy. She’d never come across a high-profile and wealthy family such as this one who’d ever considered taking such a risk. It wasn’t a matter of trust, but one of logistics and prudence. Drills and skills were the number one weapons of choice for close protection. Stick to the procedures or pay for it. With close protection, one couldn’t wing it and hope for the best. Jean-Luc was just a man; but he’d been treated like some kind of super-guard, immune to the pitfalls that the other mere mortals migh
t encounter. He’d been given far too much credit.
She called the Ritz in Paris to see if she could speak with Khalil. Sylvia had tried a few times but was told that the man was always busy. She waited patiently. Over the last forty-eight hours, Sylvia had tried to set up a Zoom meeting with him three times already and it left them reliant upon what had been obtained by the team from Algiers. It wasn’t ideal.
The voice came back on the phone and agreed a time for her to use a secure video call, encrypted by Interpol, to have a meeting with him in ten minutes.
As well as the information supplied by Khalil to Interpol Algiers, she’d received his classified file from MI6, who kept a log of all persons of interest. Khalil had qualified for British intelligence attention when he was born, but now it might come in handy. She’d familiarised herself with it over the last day or so and absorbed everything she could about Khalil and his family. Shortly she’d come face to face with him, albeit electronically, but she was still undecided about who she trusted. Sir Conrad wanted to know if Khalil’s old associate was up to something, to put his mind at rest about the summit in Paris. They both knew that even if he did know something, Khalil wouldn’t simply deliver it to Interpol. She had to find an angle, and she reckoned it was Hakim himself. She looked at her watch and realised that her time was up, and she logged into the call, half expecting to see Grant in the background.
‘Major Scott, I expected a man. I do apologise for my assumption, though I expect it’s happened before?’
‘Not really, no,’ Helen replied.
Their call began, and Helen took in the image of the man in front of her. She’d seen his photograph several times now, but the man in person was warm, charming and alluring somehow. His skin was mahogany brown and his face was immaculately groomed: she’d grown accustomed to such good looks when she worked in close protection in Afghanistan. In the Middle East, a man’s skin was the sure-fire way of distinguishing class. His was pure silk. She could almost smell his success through the computer screen. He stank of it.