A Foreign Country

by Charles Cumming

  ‘You think he’ll take the train?’ Amelia asked.

  ‘Let’s wait and see.’

  On the outskirts of Salisbury, the cathedral spire drifting right-to-left across the windscreen as Harold negotiated a roundabout, Vincent announced that he needed to find an ATM. Three minutes later, Harold had pulled into a lay-by opposite a branch of Santander in the centre of town.

  ‘Can you wait here, please?’ Vincent asked him, leaving his suitcase and laptop on the back seat as he opened the door.

  ‘It’s a double yellow line, mate,’ Harold replied. ‘How long are you gonna be?’

  There was no answer. Harold could only watch as the Frenchman crossed the road, stepped around an elderly couple, and joined a short queue at the ATM.

  ‘I’m parked outside a cinema,’ he announced. ‘Mock Tudor, branch of Black’s beside it.’ Harold was talking into the void of an empty car, and hoped that the commlink was working. He put in an earpiece and twisted in his seat, trying to get his bearings. ‘I’m in a parking bay at the side of the one-way system, looks like the street is called New Canal. Got a branch of Fat Face behind me, Whittard’s coffee next door.’

  Amelia’s voice came through with a burst of static. ‘We have you, Harold. Tom’s coming around the corner. I know exactly where you are. Confirm CUCKOO’s position?’

  ‘Across the road, taking some cash out at Santander. He’s left everything on the back seat. Suitcase, laptop. Only thing he took was his wallet.’

  ‘What about a passport?’ Kell asked.

  ‘I’ll have to look.’

  ‘Is he wearing the leather jacket?’

  This from Aldrich, who was parked with Vigors in the market square only three hundred metres away.

  ‘Affirmative,’ Harold replied. The leather jacket contained a tracking device that he had sewn into the lining the previous morning.

  ‘He’ll take it off,’ Amelia muttered.

  And so it proved.

  Think, Vincent told himself. Think.

  He put three successive cards into the ATM, taking out four hundred pounds on each. His heart had pounded him into a sweat of fear. He felt the distilled anger of a shamed man and wanted to find Amelia, to destroy her as she had destroyed him. How long had she known? How long had they all been playing him?

  Think.

  Stuffing the last of the money into the hip pocket of his jeans, he looked to the right. Past the local cinema, just a few doors down, was a branch of Marks & Spencer. It would be open on a Sunday and he could perhaps find an exit through the back. The cab was behind him and he turned towards the driver, who wound down his window and peered out.

  ‘What’s that mate?’

  Was he one of them? One of a team of ten or twelve surveillance officers now scattered around central Salisbury? Vincent had to assume that everybody was a threat.

  ‘I want to buy a sandwich in Marks & Spencer,’ he shouted across the road, gesturing towards the store. ‘Can you wait two more minutes please?’

  He heard the driver’s response: ‘Mate, I told you. I’m not allowed to stop here,’ and, for a moment, Vincent wondered if Amelia was the only one in town, the only one following him. There were so many questions in his mind, so many variables to contend with. He recalled what Luc had told him on the phone. ‘Assume that they know everything.’ It was all so degrading, so hopeless and sudden. Vincent tried to remember what he had been taught at the Academy, but that was long ago and he found it difficult to think clearly. They did not prepare me for this, he told himself and began to blame Luc, to blame Valerie, because the whole operation had been crazy right from the start. How did they ever think they were going to get away with it? Was he going to be the fall guy? Would they wash their hands of him now?

  Think. The doors of Marks & Spencer were automated and Vincent found himself in a long, strip-lit room of nightdresses and skirts, of Salisbury housewives, bored kids and trudging husbands. He followed signs upstairs to the men’s department, turning around on the escalator so that he could look back at the shop floor in the hope of spotting a tail. Was Thomas Kell here? Vincent had warned Luc on the ferry, warned him about the threat from Stephen Uniacke. That was what was now so infuriating. All of his hard work, all of his talent and emotional investment in the operation wasted because Luc had been slack. How had they allowed themselves to be duped like that? He’s just a boring little consultant, Valerie had said. You’re getting paranoid. We’ve been through his phones. We’ve looked at his computer. The Englishman is clean.

  Vincent reached the top of the escalator, wondering how long it would take the taxi driver to come after him. They could just arrest him for not paying his fare. He found socks, a pair of underpants, some deck shoes, a pair of denim jeans, a red polo shirt, a black V-neck sweater and a checked sports jacket. Cheaply made, ugly clothes, he would look bad in them, not his style or even the style of François. He bought a small leather shoulder bag, paying for everything in cash. There was a food section downstairs and Vincent bought a sandwich, because he did not know when he would next be able to eat, and also a litre bottle of water, swallowing at least a fifth of it before he reached the counter. He was so thirsty. The constant sense of apprehension was like a sickness stretching his skin. The staff kept smiling at him, even a young mother tried to catch his eye. Nothing could have been further from Vincent’s mind. He knew that he hated women again, despised them, because you could never trust the way a woman talked to you, what she said with her face. Their words meant nothing. Even mothers lied. He told himself: I am no longer François Malot, but it was like sloughing off a skin that was still caught up in his soul. I am Vincent Cévennes and the game is up. They are coming for me.

  He walked through the lingerie section, tanned models on posters lying with their eyes, and found an exit that brought him out into a narrow passage with a bakery directly ahead. To the left, a car park, with shoppers milling around automated ticket machines; to the right, an uncovered, pedestrianized shopping zone with branches of Top Man, HMV, Ann Summers. Think. Vincent slung the leather bag over his shoulder and walked west, looking for a café or hotel, somewhere to conceal himself. He came out under a walkway into another section of street closed to traffic. Ahead of him, beside a boarded-up branch of Woolworth’s, there was a busy café with tables out on the street, plenty of customers inside and out. The Boston Tea Party. He walked through the door, found the eyes of a bottle-blonde waitress with a bob and asked if he could use the toilet.

  ‘No problem,’ she said. She had an Eastern European accent, probably Polish. She waved him upstairs.

  Vincent moved quickly now, because he was cornered and they could come for him at any time. He went into the toilet, locked the door and began to take off his clothes. He took the new outfit from the leather bag and put on the underpants, the jeans, the deck shoes, the polo shirt and the tweed jacket. He left his wallet and his phone in his black leather jacket and hooked the jacket on the back of the door. There was a half-empty box in the corner of the toilet filled with bottles of washing-up fluid and he stuffed the clothes on top of them. He must leave no trace of himself. At the start of the operation, three passports had been left for him at locations across London for just this sort of emergency. At least that was one bit of forward-planning that Luc had got right. One of the passports was at Heathrow Terminal Five. As long as nobody had moved it, he would be free to leave. All he had to do was get to the airport.

  Amelia Levene had been buying tights and ready-meals at that particular branch of Marks & Spencer for over ten years. She knew the layout of the store, knew that CUCKOO would find the car park exit and vanish within minutes if they didn’t get close to him. So she had sent Aldrich round the back while Kevin Vigors, leaving his car in the market square, kept an eye on the New Canal entrance.

  Kell and Amelia had parked alongside Harold’s taxi and were trying to raise Aldrich on the radio. Vigors, twenty metres across the street, had already sat down in a bus stop, lookin
g, for all the world, as though he waited there in the same seat, at the same time, every day of the week. Meanwhile, Kell had telephoned Elsa and told her to make her way to Charles de Gaulle on the first available flight. He was gambling that the crash meeting would take place in Paris and knew that CUCKOO had to be there by midnight. There was no point in Elsa continuing to monitor email and telephone traffic when the French knew they were compromised. Better that she get over to the French side so that she was in a position to tail CUCKOO from the airport or from Gare du Nord.

  Six minutes went by. Still no word from Aldrich, still no sign of CUCKOO. Amelia told Vigors to go into the store. Seconds later, Kell’s mobile vibrated on the seat beside him. Amelia looked down at the read-out.

  ‘It’s Danny,’ she said, putting the phone on loudspeaker.

  ‘I have a visual. CUCKOO just came out the back. Passing HMV. Everything’s closed, not that many people about.’ There was a momentary loss of contact, as though Aldrich had lowered his phone. Then: ‘He’s carrying a new bag. You saw that, right?’

  ‘We haven’t seen anything,’ Amelia replied. ‘He probably bought a new set of clothes in M&S. He’ll assume we’ve wired whatever he’s wearing.’

  ‘He’ll assume correctly.’ Aldrich coughed like a smoker. ‘Hang on. CUCKOO just went into a café. The Boston Tea Party. Can you get Kev outside? There’s an old Woolworth’s opposite, Waterstones on the corner to my right. I’ll go round the back, make sure there’s no exit.’

  Within two minutes Vigors had left the bus stop and jogged three hundred metres along New Canal, turning beside the branch of Waterstones. Aldrich saw him and nodded, confirming to Kell by phone that there was no back exit. Vigors sat down on a bench next to a teenager wolfing an onion-oozing, mid-morning hamburger. They saw CUCKOO coming out wearing a red polo shirt, a tweed jacket, blue deck shoes and denim jeans.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Aldrich muttered into the phone. ‘If anyone wants four hundred quid’s worth of vintage leather jacket, looks like CUCKOO left his in the gents.’

  ‘He’s changed clothes?’ Amelia asked.

  ‘Just like you said he would.’ Making eye contact with Vigors, Aldrich set off in pursuit, one man on one side of the street, one man on the other. ‘Not sure the look really suits him. Confirm, Kev and I are tailing.’

  ‘Watch yourselves,’ Kell said. ‘He’ll use windows, he’ll stop and let you come past him. Go one at a time and keep some distance.’

  ‘We’ve done this before,’ Aldrich replied, though without reprimand.

  ‘He’ll almost certainly try for a taxi,’ Amelia added, catching Kell’s eye. ‘Whatever you do, boys, don’t lose him. Without the jacket, we don’t have a fix on his position. If Vincent disappears, everything disappears with him.’

  67

  Vigors and Aldrich tailed CUCKOO to a branch of Waitrose on the outskirts of town, Vigors guiding Kell towards them so that there were three sets of eyes on the Frenchman, staggered along the route. Having spent ten minutes in the store, CUCKOO found a taxi outside, just as Amelia had predicted. She had brought the Audi to a petrol station within two hundred metres of the Waitrose car park and picked up Kell as CUCKOO’s cab passed them, heading out on to the Salisbury ring-road. A minute later, Harold scooped up Vigors and Aldrich and the two vehicles followed Vincent’s taxi in parallels as far as Grateley, a small village fifteen miles east of Salisbury.

  CUCKOO pulled into Grateley station shortly before eleven o’clock. He paid the driver and bought a train ticket from an automated machine. The station was deserted and Kell knew that he could not afford to risk putting one of the team on to the platform. Instead, he sent Aldrich, Vigors and Harold ahead to Andover, the next stop on the line and told Elsa, who was driving past Stonehenge, to divert to Salisbury station, in case CUCKOO doubled-back.

  In the end, he boarded a London train. For eight minutes, Kell lost CUCKOO in a surveillance black hole until Vigors, whom Harold had driven to Andover at a steady 85 mph, joined the train. As he passed through Whitchurch and Overton, Vigors was able to assure Kell and Amelia, by text, that he was in visual contact with CUCKOO. Harold and Aldrich then effectively chased the train on parallel roads while Kell and Amelia remained behind in Andover. Basingstoke was the first major intersection on the London route and Kell anticipated that CUCKOO might attempt to leave the train and to switch to another service. Aldrich, arriving on the Reading platform just thirty seconds before CUCKOO’s train pulled in, was informed by Vigors that he had decided to remain on board. So Aldrich and Harold continued east towards Woking, where CUCKOO did indeed switch routes, stepping off the London service at the last moment and joining a Reading train, leaving Vigors stranded on board. His sleight of hand, however, was observed by Aldrich, who managed to catch the Reading service, albeit three carriages down, while Harold looked on from an opposite platform.

  Kell had never known a more complex and operationally challenging period. The Audi was a mess of road maps, sat-navs and communications equipment. By the time CUCKOO was on his way to Reading, with Aldrich trying to find him by walking down the carriages, Vigors was out of the game and Kell effectively down to two pairs of eyes. He rang Vigors and told him to go to London and to wait at Waterloo station, on the off chance that CUCKOO would try to head into the city. If he did so, Vigors might have an opportunity to follow him out to Gatwick or Luton, or even on to a Eurostar service from St Pancras. Meanwhile, Elsa had been sent ahead to Heathrow.

  In the end, the Frenchman kept things simple. At Reading, he again switched services. Aldrich had more than enough time to follow him off the train, even to wait alongside him on the platform, and to travel back towards Woking, where he called Kell to tell him that CUCKOO had boarded a RailAir bus to Heathrow. Harold was more than twenty miles away, snagged in traffic on the outskirts of Reading with one bar of power on his mobile, but Aldrich was still able to follow the bus in a cab while Kell and Amelia went ahead to the airport.

  They were sitting in the car park of a Holiday Inn, at the edge of the M4, when Amelia’s mobile phone rang. The number was unknown, an echo-delay on the line as she put the call on speaker.

  ‘Is this Amelia Levene?’

  Kell knew immediately who was calling. A Frenchwoman, fluent English with a strong American accent.

  ‘Who am I speaking to, please?’

  ‘You can call me Madeleine Brive. I met your friend, Stephen Uniacke, on a ferry to Marseille.’

  Amelia locked on to Kell’s eyes. ‘I know who you are.’

  The voice became both louder and clearer. ‘I want you to listen very carefully to me, Mrs Levene. As you are aware, the primary operation against your service has failed. You will never know who was behind it. You will never find the people responsible.’

  Kell frowned, wondering what Valerie’s remarks revealed about her state of mind. Was she concerned that they knew her location?

  ‘I doubt that,’ Amelia replied.

  ‘You may be interested to know the whereabouts of your son.’

  Kell felt a coil of blind anger and could only imagine what Amelia was faced with.

  ‘Mrs Levene?’

  ‘Please go on,’ she said.

  A young couple, trailing suitcases and jet lag, walked past the Audi on their way towards the Holiday Inn.

  ‘You speak French, am I correct?’

  ‘You are correct.’

  ‘Then I will speak in French to you, Mrs Levene, because I want you to understand every … every nuance of what I am about to tell you.’ She switched to her native tongue. ‘This is now a private operation. François Malot is being held at a location in France. In order to secure his release, five million euros should be paid into a Turks and Caicos trust within three days. The details of the account will be sent to you in a separate way. Do I have your cooperation?’

  Kell could have no bearing on the decision. He looked quickly at Amelia, sensing that she would capitulate.

  ‘You have my coopera
tion,’ she said.

  ‘Within the next twenty-four hours, we will send you proof that your son is alive. If I do not receive the sum of money requested by Wednesday at 1800 hours, he will be executed.’

  The mobile phone began to beep. A second call was coming in. Kell looked down at the read-out and saw that Aldrich was trying to reach them.

  ‘Hang up,’ he mouthed, gesturing to Amelia, who had reached the same conclusion. They were at war with these people; everything was now about power and control.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, ‘you’ll have your money,’ and shut off the call. Amelia allowed herself only a moment’s reflection before connecting Aldrich to the car.

  ‘Go ahead, Danny,’ she said.

  ‘Terminal Five. CUCKOO just got off the bus. Must be looking to fly BA to France.’

  68

  Within ten minutes, Elsa Cassani, sitting patiently in a Terminal Three branch of Starbucks with only a laptop and an iPhone for company, had scribbled down every flight leaving for France from Heathrow airport in the next five hours.

  ‘CUCKOO has a lot of choice,’ she told Kell, who was en route with Amelia to Terminal Five. ‘There are flights to Nice, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Paris Orly, Toulouse Blagnac and Lyon. They go all the time.’

  Kell dismissed Lyon and Nice, but Toulouse remained a possibility, because the city was within an hour of Salles-sur-l’Hers. Yet Paris still seemed the most likely destination. He called Aldrich inside the terminal building for an update. CUCKOO had sat down at a table in Café Nero, a stone’s throw from passport control.

  ‘He went straight there, guv.’

  ‘Didn’t buy a ticket? Didn’t go to the BA desk?’

  ‘No. Hasn’t bought a coffee, either. Just sitting there.’

  Kell explained the situation to Amelia, who hazarded what turned out to be an accurate guess.