I was feeling more lively after some sleep and a sandwich and ready to face whatever the day was about to throw at me. Following Callahan’s last text message I was heading for Épernon, a small commuter town in the Loire region about an hour’s drive from Paris. I stopped once at a pull-in service area near Janvry and took a stroll, eyes on the approach road to see if anyone came in after me.
It didn’t amount to much: a Dutch-registered transporter loaded with caravans, a small Citroën with a family of five on board all shouting at each other and looking as if they’d like to indulge in group murder, and a coach from Manchester, England, full of old folk who appeared to be having an early karaoke session.
None of the above looked like the kind of cover anybody would use for tracking me. The other traffic was fairly light and kept on going by, so I gave it thirty minutes before getting back on the road. I stopped again near the forest of Rambouillet and went through the exercise once more before continuing.
The road skirted the southern quarter of the forest, and I headed north at Abli. I’d never been to Épernon before so I was stepping into the unknown. But what else was new?
Callahan’s last text had stated the town as a meeting point but with no specific location. It was a wise move. If someone was tracking me it would be insane to allow the CIA’s local source to be pinpointed, too. All I knew was that her name was Marie-Josée Chesnais and Callahan said she would meet me at a pre-arranged spot and time of my choosing. From there I was to get her on a flight out from the nearest big airport, which would be Orly.
As a precaution I scouted out a hotel tucked away in a quiet street and checked the keyboard behind reception. It looked like there were plenty of spare rooms but I didn’t want to book one yet unless I had to.
It was an indie establishment which was a plus point. If someone with sophisticated hacking capabilities was trying to find me and knew I was in France, their first logical move would be to plug into the French chain hotels and use their corporate reservations intranet to check names, arrival times and length of stay – all details which would lead a cautious team to check out single travellers as worthy of a look. The downside of using a small private hotel was you were more easily remembered.
I went back out and scouted the town on foot to familiarize myself with the surroundings. It had a pleasant atmosphere and was built partly on the side of a hill, with narrow, twisting thoroughfares and ancient houses leaning over some of the older streets. Apart from a cluster of retail shops in the centre, the community’s advertised pride and joy was a park catering for the well-being of its citizens and visitors. This facility included a fitness trail for the jog-and-exercise enthusiasts, and a park for dogs. So cool, the French.
I returned to my rental car in a quiet side street and sent a text to Callahan stating that I’d arrived in the town and was ready to go. He came back within a few minutes.
Confirm RV.
I still wasn’t sure I trusted the system he was using, or the fact that I was being put out like a sacrificial goat to flush out a hit team. But since I’d agreed to go ahead with it, there was no point getting cold feet now.
In any case, I didn’t do cold feet.
I’d already chosen a spot where we could meet, so I sent him the general locators for the park, then took my backpack and made sure the Beretta was good to go. I didn’t like walking around a friendly country with a gun on me, but I’d have felt half naked going without one. Unless Mademoiselle Chesnais was going to turn out to be a secret psycho I figured I should be fine for the time being.
Callahan’s response came quickly.
RV 1 hour. Sending help.
One hour wasn’t long. It meant Chesnais must be fairly close by. But what was the help he’d mentioned? Had he got some Special Activities guys ready to swoop in on a helicopter? Somehow I doubted it.
I walked back down through the town, stopping at a bakery on the way for a baguette which I tucked under my arm. Then I took a different route to the park, taking my time and checking my back trail.
There were more trees than I would have liked, which was both good and bad. It made good cover for me and I could keep an eye out for any arrivals, but if they were a class act and came in numbers I’d have my work cut out to spot them all. I’d avoided choosing the dog park, since anyone walking there who didn’t have a mutt in tow or chasing a Frisbee would stand out too much.
I circled the area slowly, giving the pretence of scrolling through messages on my cellphone while looking for cars or people who looked as if they didn’t belong. People like me, essentially. Hopefully the baguette would help dispel that suspicion, and I chewed on one end, which my mother always referred to as the butt-end, because that’s what you do with such an appealing piece of bread when in France.
As I chewed and strolled along a path towards a strand of trees where I’d decided to sit and wait for Chesnais, a figure in jeans and a light jacket, and carrying a shoulder bag stepped off the grass ahead of me and walked towards me. She was young and pretty, and had honey-brown hair cut in a short bob, and I was about as surprised as I could be at seeing her.
It was Lindsay Citera, and she was smiling.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Before I could say anything Lindsay raised a hand and tapped her wrist, mime-speak for ‘do you have the time?’ which I took to be in case anyone was watching. I obliged and went through the motions of checking my watch and telling her, all the time wondering if the Langley-based comms operative I’d worked with before had turned into a CIA field asset without me knowing.
She thanked me with a graceful dip of her head, blushing slightly and pointing at the half-eaten end of the baguette.
‘Sorry,’ she said, keeping her voice down. ‘Callahan sent me to help you out. He said a couple would be more of a cover than a squad of special ops types … even if he could send them. I hope he’s right. Can I have the other end? Only that bread looks great and I haven’t eaten in hours.’
I passed over the baguette and she gave a girlish laugh in a perfect imitation of being taken by surprise, and snapped off the other butt-end. She nibbled at it with grace and waved a hand around us as if discussing the area, the way you do in these awkward social situations. When in France …
‘You’re good at this,’ I told her, and meant it. ‘How’s your field awareness?’
‘Not up to yours. I just got here so everything’s a bit strange, but I haven’t seen anyone who doesn’t appear to fit … apart from some strange guy chewing on a baguette. But he looks like he might be a local, so what do I know?’ She grinned, her nose wrinkling, which made me feel nothing could possibly go wrong from here on in.
‘When did you get here?’ It had been a while since we’d last spoken and although we’d never traded personal details because you don’t in our business, for all I knew she’d got herself a posting to Europe and was now a fixture working out of the US embassy in Paris. Of course I was wrong.
‘Callahan got me on a red-eye from Washington. He got me to book some down-time and said Paris would be ideal for a short vacation.’
‘Big of him. What are your instructions?’ I was pretty sure the CIA wasn’t given to handing out occasional rest breaks to its personnel, and Callahan had to have had some plan in mind involving me and possibly Chesnais.
‘To pick up a package from the airport and meet you here. He sent me the locators a few minutes ago. He said there’s another party due here, too.’ She looked at me. ‘I’m not sure how much of a help he thought I could be.’
‘The cover thing is a good idea. A couple can skate by more easily, especially when the other team is looking for a single traveller. Would there be another reason he sent you?’
She didn’t say anything for a moment, then said, ‘I got the impression he thought it would be good to get me out of the way for a while. There’s stuff going on back in Langley; he most likely figured he could deal with it more easily if I wasn’t part of the same frame as him.’
‘That’s a good explanation.’ I gestured openly in the direction I was going, continuing the play-acting, and we fell in side by side, two people who’d met, spoken and formed a sort of bond. It happens all the time, all over the world, albeit not to me when I’m working. I just hoped if anyone was watching it looked innocent enough to pass off unnoticed and we could get out of here. ‘What else did he say?’
The downside to his idea was that he’d placed Lindsay in potential danger by aligning her with me. Operational personnel are trained for these kinds of games with plans for routes in and out and well-rehearsed scenarios of what to do if things should go wrong. We all know the risks and how to respond to threats. But telling someone what they should do if they should encounter a difficult situation and expecting them to react positively is a million miles away from live experience and field training. Lindsay seemed pretty relaxed, though, and I guessed she must have undergone some training on the quiet.
‘He said you were to meet the asset here. He wanted me to come along because she’s highly nervous about meeting anyone, so I can take point on that if you wish.’ She gestured ahead of us towards a small path veering off through some trees. ‘Can we go this way? I have something to give you.’
We followed the path and after fifty yards or so Lindsay stopped in the shade of a large beech tree and opened her shoulder bag. Inside was what appeared to be a leather washbag. She unzipped it and revealed the black steel shape of a semi-automatic pistol.
‘Is there any point me asking where you got this?’ I said. I lifted the gun out. It was a SIG Sauer P229. I tucked it into my waistband under my jacket. Now, at least, I felt even better dressed than I already was, with two guns to choose from.
‘A man from our Paris embassy met me off the plane. He handed it over and disappeared. I didn’t even get to thank him; I got the impression he was actually nervous of being seen with me.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ I was willing to bet the man wasn’t from the embassy at all. Diplomatic personnel don’t get involved in passing weapons around like petit fours at a cocktail party. The risk of a diplomatic incident if they got caught is far too high. So-called allies and friendly countries take a dim view of that kind of stuff. He’d probably been a local contractor, the kind I’d used myself on several occasions; non-aligned, independent and trustworthy up to a point as long as they were paid well for their services.
‘Callahan said he thought you’d be able to source something yourself but this is a just-in-case.’
‘Yeah, Callahan would.’ He’d been a field operative himself so he knew the problems of supply and demand, especially when a situation went hot.
We continued walking while I mulled over the situation and kept one eye on our back trail and the open area of the park to our right. Callahan must need his head seeing to doing this but I couldn’t fault his wanting to provide support.
‘What are you supposed to do after this?’ It was a long way to come just to hand over a gun and provide a friendly face for a nervous asset.
‘I’m to stick around and help. He said it would be good experience for me.’
‘Only if you want to go out in the field, it might. I wouldn’t recommend it.’
She stopped. ‘Why not?’ She was looking at me with a sharp glint in her eyes, which was quite nice to look at but told me I’d taken a step too far. ‘Last time I looked fieldwork wasn’t the exclusive preserve of men any more.’ She said it with a show of heat. ‘Or are you saying you wouldn’t trust a female operative?’
‘Last time I looked,’ I said calmly, scoping the trees around us as a couple of dogs began tearing into each other, ‘there are plenty of women who do the job extremely well. In fact the last one I met was in Lebanon a few days ago.’
‘You mean Isobel Hunt – the MI6 officer.’
‘That’s the one.’
She was smiling now and I realized she’d been pushing my buttons.
‘Are you saying she was a hottie in tights and jump boots … or have I got a skewed take on reality?’
I debated letting it go but Callahan had put her in a difficult situation. Seeing what I normally did through a long-range camera feed from a drone, or hearing what I did on the end of a comms line might have given her a whole wrong impression about what really went on out here. I couldn’t let it lie and said, ‘Her reality is she had to shoot a man dead to save our lives. That’s what I’m saying.’
The smile vanished and her mouth dropped open. She went pale. ‘Oh. God, I’m so sorry—’
I realized I’d been too harsh on her. None of this was her fault. I took her arm and steered her forward. Up close she smelled of something soapy and citrusy, and suddenly I was enjoying the closeness. It was a sensation I wasn’t used to.
‘Doesn’t matter. It worked out fine. I didn’t mean to be rough. Tell me what’s been happening in Langley.’
‘Like what?’
‘Come on. I can read between the lines. Callahan’s acting weird, I can tell. He told you I’m being targeted, right?’
‘Yes.’ She nodded and said, ‘And apparently the State Department isn’t happy with what happened in Lebanon. They’re trying to forge closer relationships with Moscow and their allies, and something like the Lebanon operation blowing up gets in the way. That’s their words, not ours. Callahan didn’t tell me everything but I know he was ordered to drop you and that as a contractor you were on your own.’
‘Just like that?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. But Callahan’s hugely upset. I get the feeling he’s close to telling them what they can do with their job.’
‘He shouldn’t,’ I said. ‘There are times when tough decisions have to be made and they don’t always make sense.’ Especially, I thought, when they had a dimension that was driven by outside or political influences and ignored the situation of people on the ground a long way away with potentially no easy way to react quickly enough.
Quite how much of a shit-storm, to use Isobel’s expression, that would kick up among other contractors when they found out remained to be seen. Nobody wants to work for an employer who drops the ball purely because politicians say their agenda trumps anything going on in the field.
Then my phone buzzed. I checked the screen. Surprise, surprise – it was Callahan.
‘You’ve got some nerve,’ I told him. ‘So what now – is this the end of the road?’
‘Not as far as I’m concerned,’ he replied briskly. ‘I take it you’ve met up with Lindsay?’
‘I have. About what she told me, I have to admit to being a little pissed.’ I leaned close to Lindsay so she could hear our conversation. If things turned bad here it was only fair that she knew what the situation was.
‘I figured you should know how things stand, that’s all. It’s political and stupid and will cause a lot of people in your position to jump ship. Maybe even some of our own field staff, too. But there’s nothing I can do about it until someone at the top sees sense.’
‘Is that why you’re calling?’
‘I wish it was. But no. Chesnais got careless before she went to the embassy and blabbed about her situation to a friend. The friend said she wanted to cover her back and put the story out on a news website saying an unnamed French citizen “journalist” was being threatened by right-wing extremists who’ve already killed another journalist. It’s gone viral.’
‘How does that affect us?’ I could think of only one answer to that and it wasn’t long in coming. Trouble rarely travels alone.
‘She won’t be coming. She lost her nerve and bolted to our embassy in Paris where she thought she’d be safe. Luckily for us and her they called me instead of kicking her onto the street. The security guys over there put her on a flight out; she’s probably midway over the Atlantic by now.’
‘But that’s not all?’
‘I’m afraid not. She also told the friend about the plan to meet up with an American representative in your location who was going to help get h
er out of the country. They don’t have the precise location but I’m guessing Épernon is a small place.’
‘Small enough.’
‘Right. In that case they’ll be scouring the town for her.’
Jesus. Moscow killers and now right-wing terrorists converging on my ass. Correction: mine and Lindsay’s. It was getting to be a crowded field.
‘Wait one.’
Lindsay was tapping me urgently on the arm and pointing towards the open section of the park. Two men with shaved heads and neck tattoos were kicking at a bouncy Labrador that had got a little too friendly. The elderly woman owner was screaming at them in outrage and dragging the dog away as fast as she could.
The men were dressed in tight jeans with head-kicker turn-ups, jump boots and leather jackets, the go-to fashion statement for hard-nosed, right-wing street punks with a bent for aggression. Right here and now, though, after what Callahan had just told me, I knew they were worse than that; they had come looking for Marie-Josée Chesnais.
And they both had their eyes firmly on Lindsay.
‘Portman, what’s going on?’ Callahan’s voice came out of the phone.
‘What does Chesnais look like?’ I asked him.
He gave me a rough description. It matched Lindsay plus fifteen years or so.
‘Stand here and don’t move,’ I told Lindsay, and pushed her against a tree with her back to the men. I gave her the cellphone with Callahan’s voice still squawking out of it, then took the Sig out from my waist and held it down by my leg. The gun felt instantly comfortable, the grip almost moulding itself to my hand. I’d used Sigs a lot over the years and trusted them implicitly.
‘What are you going to do?’ Lindsay asked. ‘There are two of them. You can’t face them both down.’
‘I can’t walk away, either.’ The men had seen Lindsay and drawn an obvious conclusion – that she must be Chesnais. Visual on target. ‘Stay here until I move, then head into town. Don’t look back and don’t stop for anyone. I’ll find you there.’
A Hostile State Page 16