by Ian Andrew
He lingered for an amount of time that he thought balanced the curiosity natural for a first time visitor against his need to allow Tien and Kara a chance to catch up. After a few minutes he set off south again.
A short distance later he came to a confusing intersection of eight different streets centred on a small, paved island that was a parking space for mopeds and bicycles. The brown-coloured tourist signposts showed the Moulin Rouge was to his left along the wide Boulevard de Clichy. Sure enough, the red tip of a windmill sail was visible, peeking out from behind the dozen or so buildings between him and it.
He turned around slowly, as if realising for the first time that the building dominating the corner of the intersection was a café serving breakfast. The long stretch of pavement wrapping around the semi-circular frontage would no doubt have catered to a large number of tables and chairs during the Parisian spring or summer, but in the drabness of a winter’s morning it was empty. The lack of alfresco tables afforded an unbroken view into the windows of the café. He could see a number of empty tables inside and the reflection of the busy street scene behind him. As he walked into the Café de Luna he had the first confirmation that being sent out to do shopping wasn’t all the small man wanted from today.
ɸ
Sammi had been startled when Jacob came out of the restaurant. She was in the rear of the white van parked down a small alley that ran at an obtuse angle to the main Rue Damrémont. As Kara, Tien and she had worked out the previous night, owing to the bizarre layout of the streets in this area of Paris, it afforded a view of the Restaurant’s entrance and oversight of the two streets that were the only access to the rear of the property. Its only disadvantage had been that it was packed with cars. That meant they weren’t going to be able to get a parking spot until some of the residents left for work. At six-thirty that morning, Chaz, his cardboard decidedly wet and his back cramped, reported one early riser had just driven out of the alley and there was a gap if they moved quickly. Sammi had left the hotel, recovered the van from where they had originally parked it, raced around three city blocks and managed to squeeze it in. That allowed Chaz and Kara to pull out of their respective posts and make their way, circuitously, to the Holiday Inn. Chaz especially had to take the long way round to allow him time to transform from a homeless tramp into something that could be seen walking through a hotel foyer.
The plan was to rotate the watch duties throughout the day and wait until Jacob eventually left the restaurant. What they hadn’t expected was him to walk out on his own at eight-thirty in the morning.
“Tien, you there?” Sammi called into her mic.
“It’s Toby. Tien’s gone for some kip, go ahead.”
“Get everyone up. Right now. Jacob’s out and on foot. He’s walking south on Rue Damrémont.”
“Oh fuck. It’s going to be a chunk of time before we’re fit to follow.”
“I know, but get the- Whoa!” Sammi stopped abruptly and reached for the digital SLR camera that sat next to her in the van. She manoeuvred the 800mm telephoto lens up to the glass.
“Sammi?”
“Hang on Toby, I mean, don’t hang on, make the phone calls get them up and moving but…”
“Sammi?”
“Wait a minute. Make the calls but give me a minute.”
“Okay,” Toby said, crossing to the other side of his hotel room and shaking Chaz awake at the same time as ringing Kara’s room. Tien’s was next. By the time he hung up and returned to the radio, Chaz was already half dressed and heading to the bathroom to soak his head in water.
“Sammi, they’re all moving. What’s up?”
“Tell them to standby, I’m going to come back to the hotel. Jacob is out on foot but he has company. A lot of company.”
ɸ
Sammi took five minutes to walk around to the rear of the hotel, passing between blocks of buildings whose triangular fronts looked like majestic battleships, intricately carved from the cream-grey Paris stone, and sailing headlong into narrow streets that threatened to confine them. She thought the wrought iron balconies, perched under tall windows, transformed the early rising Parisian coffee drinkers who stepped onto them into living figureheads.
As she came up a final, twisting side alley she checked to her right. The much wider and straighter Rue Damrémont allowed her a great sightline and confirmed what she thought. When she got to Kara’s room the rest of the team were already there.
“What’s the story?” Kara asked.
“Jacob left on foot and about a minute after he walked away three guys came out of the restaurant. A fourth came out from the apartment block opposite and crossed the street to join them. I got good shots of all of them,” she said handing the camera’s small Secure Digital High Capacity memory card over to Tien, who slipped it into a PC and opened up the images.
Four men, aged in their late twenties to early thirties were pictured in exquisite detail. A couple of group shots were followed by four individual head shots. “Sorry two of them are only profiles, but they wouldn’t turn around.” Sammi said. “Anyway, these two got into that Citroën,” she said pointing to the photos on the screen, “and the other two set off after Jacob.”
“That’s a surveillance team, no doubt,” Chaz said.
“Yep. The two in the car will leapfrog forward and pick Jacob up at the next intersection,” Kara agreed. “Right, how long’s it been?”
Sammi checked her watch, “Eleven minutes. Given Jacob was dawdling and to draw things out he’ll look in every window and at every interesting thing he can find, then we should be good.”
Kara turned to Chaz, “You gave him the crash course. Does he know what to do?”
“Yep. He’ll loiter, always stick to the main routes and if he hits a T-junction he’ll alternate left and right.”
“Okay. We’ll leave the car and the van where they are and use the bikes. Toby with me, Chaz with Sammi. Tien you’re on comms until we get a fix on him.”
“We’ll have to swap to open phone lines Kara. The radios won’t have the range in the urban area and we can’t take the amplifier mobile if the van’s staying put. They’re all good to go,” Tien said, pointing to the line of smartphones on the desk.
“Okay, then once we find him, I might get you to come in ahead of us. Anything else?” Kara asked.
Tien clicked a couple of buttons on the PC, opened a message program and clicked again. All the mobiles pinged at the same time. “I’ve just uploaded the photos of the men and the car to all the phones,” she said.
“Good. Anything else?” Kara asked again and this time received shakes of the head in response. “Right, let’s do this and don’t forget, we make sure we’re spotless. We stay in the background and if we need to engage with him, it’s a one-off occurrence. No repeat opportunities. We do not get seen.”
The four headed to the door, grabbing the motorcycle over leathers and helmets that had come with the bikes they’d hired.
ɸ
Jacob pulled the warm croissant apart and took a bite. Raising the cup of coffee to his lips he peered over the rim and was satisfied he had made the correct assessment. Standing on the bridge over the cemetery he had counted fourteen people pass by. The foot traffic hadn’t been considerable and he’d put it down to the fact it was almost nine in the morning and most people would already have been in, or well on their way to, work. He certainly hadn’t remembered all fourteen faces but their body shapes and clothes were much easier to log. When he had turned to continue his walk all bar two, a young mother and her child of about five, were well in front of him. By the time he reached the complicated interchange all fourteen should have been long gone. Yet when he had turned to enter the Café de Luna and saw the street scene reflected in the windows, two of the men that had passed him were still in view. One sheltered behind a strange piece of street art that was a red and green rectangular box with a large silver apple on top of it. The other was sitting at a table behind the glass front of the Palace Ca
fé directly across the road. It was perfectly reasonable for both men to be where they were, but as Jacob had his back towards them he thought they had made eye contact with one another. It was a fleeting moment, reflected in a window at distance so he hadn’t been sure, but it was worthy of further study.
Now, as he peered over his coffee cup he saw the man behind the silver apple reach up to his ear. Jacob recognised the movement. He’d done it himself when the small earpiece of a radio system either unseated itself or was suffering from poor reception. It was an instinctive reaction and one of the clearest giveaways for covert operators. When he had completed a close-protection team training course after leaving the military, the instructors had slapped the back of the student’s hands with hazel rods every time they touched their ears. It was a crude, aggressive and effective correction device. The two men he was watching obviously hadn’t taken that course. Final confirmation for Jacob was when the men once more made definite eye contact with each other from across the street.
He considered that despite the surveillance tail being badly executed, it placed him in an awkward position. His bewildered, poor-man-on-the-run persona wouldn’t notice it, bad or not. That meant he had to continue as normal. It also meant he couldn’t use active methods to shake it off. That wouldn’t be in character and what’s more, would raise the suspicions of the small man and any others in the Flight Path. Lastly, and much more worryingly for him, it meant that Tien and the rest couldn’t attempt to make contact with him. He was sure that they’d notice the tail too. It would be impossible for them to miss it, but it did mean he wouldn’t be able to tell them what he had learnt about the journey he was going to embark on. He attracted the waiter’s attention and ordered more coffee as he tried to think of a way to solve that particular puzzle. Out of the window to his right he saw a black and silver BMW motorbike glide to a stop at the pedestrian crossing, less than ten yards from where he sat. The rider and pillion passenger were both clad in black over leathers and black full face helmets. Their single distinguishing mark was the name of the helmet manufacture, ‘Yohe’ outlined in white and only visible because the visors of both helmets were fully down.
Jacob raised his hand to his mouth and coughed a couple of times, then patted himself on the chest twice with a closed fist, like he had just choked on his croissant. Reaching to take another sip of coffee, he saw the pillion passenger move their left hand from the waist of the rider to their own left thigh. Four fingers were extended. It was a fleeting movement and they gripped the rider again as the bike pulled away, turning left, towards the Moulin Rouge. He didn’t follow its path and merely continued to hold his gaze towards the crossing point. From the corner of his right eye he could see a stand of postcards that also supported a tight stack of tourist prints, made to look like Lautrec originals, but that were no doubt mass-produced in China. The shop that owned the stand had various signs above and to the sides of its doors, including the prolific ‘Tabac’ that in Paris seemed completely undeterred by the rest of Europe’s crackdown on smokers. Jacob twisted around in his seat to look more closely at one of the signs.
He stood and walked over to the waiter who was watching a repeat of a football game on a screen set high up in the corner of the room. After explaining he would be back momentarily, Jacob left the café and walked across the street. He saw, in the reflection of a passing car, the man behind the silver apple make to follow him then stop as he realised where Jacob was heading.
Inside the small newsagent and tobacconist’s Jacob selected ‘The Times’ from the stand of English newspapers that he had seen advertised. He bought it, a pen and pencil set and ‘The Bumper Book of Puzzles’ also in English, then returned to the café. Retaking his seat and moving his freshly arrived coffee to one side, he opened the paper at the crossword puzzle and sucked the end of his pen in quiet contemplation.
An hour later, with another croissant and yet another coffee under his belt, he paid the bill, received his change and made to leave. The waiter called him back and pointed to the table. Jacob, with an overly expressive gesture of thanks went back and picked up the paper and his puzzle book. Exiting the café he turned left, walked across to the wide, tree-lined median of the Boulevard de Clichy and headed towards the Blanche Métro station. Walking within ten metres of the silver apple he stifled a laugh at the way the man manoeuvred to keep the statue between them.
Jacob sauntered, allowing his tailing pair to sort themselves out. He noticed a strange and eclectic mix of adult shops off to the right side of the wide street, balanced by a procession of bars and clubs to the left. He thought it odd that there were four Irish bars within touching distance of each other. He wondered if they were the stereotypical plastic-Irish versions of that old pub in Dublin.
A few minutes later he stopped and looked up at the famous red windmill. Having never been in this part of Paris before, he was genuinely surprised that the whole building wasn’t bigger. The entrance foyer to the right was just the width of a normal townhouse, although the row of gilt-handled entrance doors to the left gave some clue that the home of the can-can was bigger inside than out. He decided that a closer look was warranted, not least because those gilt-handled doors were also full-height black glass that made perfect mirrors. As he pretended to gaze up at the billboard advertisement, with its real Lautrec inspired drawings, he saw a matt black Z800e Kawasaki motorbike turn up the next street to the right. In the reflection of the door furthest to his left, he saw the original silver apple man cross to a grey Citroën that had pulled up on the far side of the boulevard. As he got into the front of the car, a new man got out of the rear. Jacob committed his shape, size and clothes to memory, then turned and continued on his way.
Just across from the Moulin Rouge, set in an island in the middle of the boulevard, an ornate metal sign with the word ‘Métropolitain’ artistically depicted on it, arched over a flight of steps that disappeared below ground. There was a steady stream of people going down and a small knot of newly ascended people loitering at the top, getting their bearings. Jacob navigated his way around most, but stepped back to allow an elderly woman, and a much younger Asian woman, to gain the steps first.
When he descended he found himself in a circular ticket hall, similar to a London Tube station but different enough to be confusing. He didn’t have to fake an unfamiliarity with the Métro system. In the few times he’d been in Paris before, he’d never used it. Attempting to comprehend the ticket machines set into the white brick walls, he struggled to find a language button that would transform the instructions to English. Eventually he gave up and took his place in the queue for the ticket booth behind the Asian woman he had allowed to go down the steps before him. As he stood behind her he moved his puzzle book and the copy of ‘The Times’ to under his left arm. He patted the paper as if to ensure its safekeeping.
When the woman reached the ticket window, Jacob listened with pleasure to her melodically beautiful French. Peering over her shoulder he watched her place a €20 note on one side of a circular plate. The formidable looking lady behind the partition rotated the plate, took the note and in its place put a stack of white tickets. The plate spun again and the tickets were presented, ready to be taken. As the woman made to move away from the window one of the tickets fluttered down to the ground. Jacob nearly stooped to help her, but she had already knelt to the side and retrieved it, so he straightened back up. Stepping forward he bent his head so that his mouth was in front of the serrated plastic insert of the speech grill. The already stern looking ticket-lady adopted an even more severe countenance.
“Hi, can you help me please? I’d like to get to the Champs Élysées.”
Even Jacob knew that his pronunciation had managed to butcher the words. To his ears it had sounded more like ‘Sean’s duh lease ee’ and to the ticket-lady it obviously sounded like someone was attacking the heart of the Republic. She glared at him and Jacob got the distinct impression that had the plastic grill not been in place she ma
y have reached through and punched him. As it was she just glared at him before saying something in French with the delivery of a barking dog.
Jacob tried again, “I’m sorry but I don’t speak French. Can you tell me how much it is and how I get there?”
The ticket-lady heaved her shoulders and gave an audible sigh before saying in heavily accented English, “One Euro eighty. Get off at Champs Élysées Clemenceau. There is a map on the wall.”
Jacob felt annoyed, but he remembered the barman’s advice on keeping a low profile. He put a €5 note on the turntable and in return received a single cardboard ticket, his change and another glare from the charming ticket-lady.
“Mercy buckets,” he muttered. ‘The French Tourist board called, they said you’ve missed your calling,’ he thought, but didn’t say as he walked over to the Métro map. A few minutes of looking at the coloured, numbered lines identified the station and how to reach it with only one change of train. He slowly traced the route with his finger, then retraced it to make sure. Finally he headed for the westbound Line-2.
The wide, double-sided space was much brighter than its London counterparts. It also had opposing direction trains running side-by-side which Jacob found an interesting twist on what he was used to. The eastbound train was just pulling away as he stepped onto the westbound platform. He looked about him, once more the interested tourist. Various international advertisements, similar in style to those on the London Tube decorated the walls, but beneath them, at irregular intervals, little outcrops of strangely shaped orange seats sprouted in groups of five. None of the relatively few passengers who stood waiting for the arrival of the next train used the seats. Jacob elected to stand as well. The information board suspended from the ceiling said the next train was due in three minutes. He clamped the puzzle book upright between his feet and unfurled his copy of ‘The Times’. On the third turn of a page he glimpsed the man who had replaced silver apple standing at the far end of the platform. The diner from the Palace Café was further along. Jacob thought these guys were amateurish, then stopped himself mid-thought. ‘That type of thinking is what caused the problems in Amsterdam. You switch on to these people or it all goes wrong again,’ he told himself. However, he did admit that they could have learned a few things form the masterful way Tien had managed to establish where he was going next.