‘We’re staying here,’ he told her as they ambled past reception. ‘Dirty weekend. We’re going to have a drink in the bar before we go up to bed.’
‘Promises, promises,’ she replied, and squeezed his arm tight against her chest.
The bar was in a large rectangular lobby the size of a real tennis court. About ten guests were seated in scattered groups on armchairs upholstered in scarlet and black, digestifs and cups of coffee on low wooden tables between them. A lone waiter moved briskly among the art deco sculptures, the tinkle and cough of polite conversation accompanied by a bald pianist covering show tunes at a grand piano in the corner. Kell sat in an armchair facing out towards the main entrance; Elsa was opposite him, watching the bar. For half an hour they conversed in English about Elsa’s childhood in Italy, while Kell sent and received occasional text messages to Amelia, Vigors and Aldrich.
‘If you were my lover and you spent this much time on your phone, I would leave you,’ she said.
Kell looked up and smiled. ‘Sounds like I’ve been warned.’
Seconds later, pushing through the revolving doors of the hotel, a young Arab man came in from the street wearing denim jeans and a leather motorcycling jacket emblazoned with the Marlboro logo. Kell could not at first make out his face, but as he passed the reception desk, he saw to his astonishment that it was one of the two men who had attacked him in Marseille.
‘Jesus Christ.’
Elsa, reclining sleepily in her chair, leaned forward. ‘What?’
‘It’s the guy from the …’ He had to think quickly. There was no time to alert Vigors. ‘Go to the lifts. Don’t hesitate.’ Elsa was out of her seat, her consternation plain for anyone to see. Kell lowered his voice. ‘There’s a young French Arab heading there now. He’s part of their team. Follow him. Try to find out which floor he’s going to.’
The waiter paused beside Kell’s table as Elsa walked away.
‘Is everything all right, monsieur?’ he asked.
‘Just my girlfriend,’ he replied. ‘She thinks she saw her cousin going past.’
‘I see.’ The waiter glanced after Elsa, noticing that a guest in the corner of the lobby was trying to seek his attention. ‘Would you like anything else before I close the bar?’
Kell saw Elsa arriving at the lifts.
‘No, no thanks,’ he said, turning back to the waiter. ‘Could I please just have our bill?’
73
As Akim stepped into the lift, sweating beneath the heat and weight of the leather jacket, he heard a woman’s voice behind him and turned to find a dark-haired girl, speaking in Italian, running towards the lifts. If she had not been young he would have allowed the doors to close, but he pressed the button at the base of the panel and they parted just in time to allow her to squeeze into the cabin.
‘Grazie,’ she said, breathless and gratefully catching his eye, then corrected herself, remembering that she was in Paris: ‘Merci.’
He liked the naturalness of her, a raw girl from nothing who had made it to a place of money. She wasn’t a whore; maybe somebody’s mistress or a guest at a family reunion. Looked like she knew how to be around a man; looked like a woman of experience. He breathed in the smell of her, the way he sometimes walked into a woman’s perfume a second after she had passed him in the street.
‘Prego,’ he said, a little late, but he wanted to make a connection with her. Akim switched to French and said: ‘My pleasure.’
She was not exactly beautiful, but pretty enough and with that glint in her eye that made everything come together. He wished he could have more time to be with her. He had pressed the button for the fifth storey and she now pushed six.
‘We are almost going to the same floor,’ he said.
The lift climbed through the building. The Italian girl did not respond. Maybe the adrenalin of the job was making him seem pushy. As the doors opened on the fifth floor, Akim muttered ‘Bonsoir’ and this time she did respond, saying ‘Oui’ as he walked outside. He waited until the lift had closed, then turned left towards 508.
The corridor was deserted. He came to Vincent’s door and knocked quietly. He heard the soft padding of approaching footsteps, then the slight contact of Vincent’s head as it touched the door, staring through the fish-eye lens. The latch came off and he was invited inside.
‘Where’s Luc?’
Not: How are you, Akim? Not: What a nice surprise. Just: Where’s Luc? Like Akim was a third-class citizen. Vincent had always made him feel like that.
‘They’re coming later,’ he said.
The room was large and smelled of cigarettes with a breeze blowing through it. There was a window open, a plastic pole on the curtain tapping against the glass. Vincent was wearing a white Lutetia dressing-gown over blue denim jeans with bare feet and looked, for the first time in Akim’s memory, like he had lost control of himself.
‘What do you mean “coming later”?’
Akim sat in a chair facing the double bed. Vincent’s head had made a neat dent in one of the pillows on the left-hand side, like a kid had done a karate chop. There was a remote control on the bedcover, two miniature bottles of whisky beside the TV.
‘Are you going to answer me?’ Vincent placed himself between the bed and the chair, like it was Akim’s duty to tell him whatever he needed to know. ‘How did the British find out about me? Who told them? What’s happening with François?’
‘I thought you were François, Vincent?’ Akim replied, because he couldn’t resist it. They’d all laughed about how seriously Vincent had taken the job. ‘Brando’, Slimane called him, even to his face, because at the house he’d never once dropped out of character.
‘You making fun of me?’ Vincent said. He possessed some physical strength and his temper was quick, but he had no guts. Akim knew that about him. Nothing to respect.
‘Nobody would ever make fun of you, Vincent.’
Akim watched as Cévennes moved to the side of the bed and sat down. The Academy pin-up, the DGSE golden boy. Vincent had always had a high opinion of himself.
‘Where’s Luc?’ Vincent asked again.
Akim was already bored by the questions and decided to have more fun. ‘What about Valerie? Don’t you care about her, too?’
‘Luc’s the boss,’ Vincent replied quickly.
‘You reckon?’
There was silence between them now, time in which Vincent seemed to come to terms with the anomaly of Akim’s presence in his room.
‘What’s this about?’ he said. ‘You got a message for me?’
‘I do,’ Akim replied.
It was simple after that. Just a question of commitment. He unzipped the motorbike jacket, reached inside for the gun, moved it level with Vincent’s chest and fired a single silenced shot that lifted him back towards the wall. Akim stood up and stepped forward. Vincent’s eyes were drowning in the shock of what had been done to him; there were tears in his eyes. His face was white, blood gargling in his throat. Akim fired two further shots into his skull and heart; the first of them shutting Vincent down like a doll. He then picked up the spent cartridges, secured the gun inside the jacket and moved towards the door, checking that nothing had fallen out of his pockets when he had sat on the chair. He looked through the fish-eye lens, saw that the area outside was clear, and walked into the corridor.
74
Kell did not bother to call Amelia in London to get clearance for what he was about to do. He told Vigors to look for a security camera blind spot near the fifth-floor elevator and to wait for any sign of the Arab or other members of the DGSE team entering or leaving Vincent’s room. He instructed Aldrich to wait in the car outside and told Elsa to go to the room that Vigors had booked at the Lutetia.
‘There’s nothing more you can do,’ he told her. ‘Get some sleep. I may need you in the morning.’
Then he waited outside the hotel. He smoked a cigarette and paced the pavement. It was past one o’clock on a Monday morning in Paris, still warm and
humid. A man in his mid-fifties came past Kell and walked up the steps of the hotel. Everybody a stranger, everybody a threat. Kell turned and looked at Aldrich, still as alert and as reliable as he had been all day long. The best of the best. They nodded at one another. A police car with yellowed headlights moved disinterestedly north along Raspail.
The Arab had been inside for less than ten minutes when Kell’s phone began to pulse in his pocket. It was Vigors.
‘He’s already leaving. Just took the stairs. I’m in the lift.’
‘You sure it was him?’
‘Same guy. Red-and-white motorcycle jacket, heading down. He’ll be there …’
The signal cut out. Kell motioned to Aldrich who started the engine on the Peugeot. He looked up the steps of the hotel and in the glass of the revolving door caught the movement of someone walking towards the entrance. He knew that Vigors would be ten seconds behind him. Eye contact with Aldrich. This was it.
The Arab came down the steps of the hotel, saw Kell to his right, did not appear to recognize him from Marseille but moved left, as if to avoid contact. This took him towards the Peugeot. Vigors had got out of the lift, run across the lobby and was already through the revolving doors. Kell waited until the Arab was two metres from the car, then ran at his back, driving his right hand into the upper section of his skull and steering him with his left as Vigors came past them, opened the rear door of the Peugeot and turned to help. Kell remembered the Arab’s weight, his wiry cunning, but Vigors was far stronger and with the element of surprise had forced him into the back seat of the car within seconds. Aldrich lurched out on to Boulevard Raspail as the door slammed shut behind him. Vigors pushed the boy’s head back as Kell encircled his body, trapping his arms against his chest. The Arab was shouting, struggling to get free, spit hitting Kell’s neck and face.
‘Shut the fuck up or I will break your arm,’ he hissed in Arabic, and then was pushed against the door as Aldrich made a fast-right down Rue Saint-Sulpice. Kell had no idea where they could take him, no idea what they would do with him afterwards. He was not even sure that the kidnapping had passed unnoticed on a quiet Paris thoroughfare in the small hours of the morning.
‘Head south-west,’ he said. ‘Pantheon. Place d’Italie.’
Beneath the thick leather of the motorcycle jacket Kell could feel the hard outline of a weapon.
‘Kev, take his arms.’
Kell loosened his grip on the Arab and Vigors wrenched the arms backwards so that they were pinned behind the Arab’s back. He had stopped struggling, but there was thick white spittle, like wet chalk, in the grooves of his mouth. Kell reached for the zip on the jacket and the Arab tried to bite at his hand, lowering his chin. Kell said: ‘Don’t be a baby’ and tugged his head back. He lowered the zip, reached inside the jacket and immediately felt the butt of the gun. He pulled it out.
‘Why are you carrying a silenced automatic?’ he asked in French. All of them could smell the cordite. ‘More to the point, why have you just fired it?’
Vigors recognized the gun as a SIG Sauer 9mm. Kell removed the silencer. There were eight rounds still in the magazine. He leaned forward and placed the gun in the footwell of the passenger seat, then continued searching the jacket. He pulled out a wallet, a mobile phone, a packet of cigarettes. He told the Arab to pitch forward so that he could search his back pockets. Aldrich, a block east of the Pantheon, removed his own belt and passed it to Vigors, who fashioned a basic wrist restraint around the Arab’s hands. Kell then took out his phone and sent a text to Amelia.
Going to need a safe house ASAP. CUCKOO probably down. Suspect in car. One of two from Marseille attack.
75
The message forced Amelia to involve SIS Station in Paris, a move that she had always been reluctant to make. Widening the circle of knowledge, even in a secret organization, increased the chances that word of the DGSE operation would spread through the Service. So she chose somebody young and ambitious, a fast-stream bachelor of twenty-seven who would be only too happy to help out the Chief-designate in the hope of seeing his skill and discretion rewarded further along the line.
Mike Drummond was woken from his bed just before three o’clock. By four, he had dressed and driven twenty-five minutes south of Invalides to Orsay, a commuter town where SIS rented a detached, two-bedroom house in a quiet suburban neighbourhood a few minutes from the railway station. Kell waited until Drummond confirmed that he was inside the property, then asked Aldrich to proceed to the address. By four fifteen, he was showing Akim into a modestly furnished living room with a small, flat-screen television in front of the window, vases of dried flowers above a gas fireplace, a half-finished bottle of Stolichnaya standing alone on a tray near the door.
‘Drink?’ he said.
‘Water,’ Akim replied.
In the car, things had calmed down between them. Akim had told them his name, denied killing CUCKOO, denied any involvement in the kidnapping of François Malot and issued a threat that his ‘friends’ in Paris would come looking for him if he didn’t get home by noon. But the rage and physical aggression in his behaviour had subsided. It had been replaced by a more sanguine attitude that Kell believed he could exploit.
‘What about food? Are you hungry?’ He looked at Drummond, a ginger-haired Brummie with freckles and a snub nose who seemed to have taken a decision only to speak when spoken to. ‘There’s food in the fridge, right?’
‘’Course,’ Drummond replied.
Vigors had been to the bathroom, fixed three cups of instant coffee and taken one of them out to Aldrich in the car. The street was black and still, not a twitch of curtain, not a stray cat or dog. Vigors offered to switch places with Aldrich, who had been driving for the better part of two hours. He sat in the vehicle on watch while Aldrich went inside.
‘Here’s the situation,’ Kell said, welcoming him into the room as he directed his words at Akim. ‘We are all of us officers with the Secret Intelligence Service, better known to you, I suppose, as MI6. We have a twelve-man team in Paris on standby and a larger operation in London monitoring this conversation from our headquarters on the Thames. You are perfectly safe. We used force against you at the Lutetia because we had no choice, but our discussion now is not going to be as uncomfortable as you think. As I said in the car, I remember you from Marseille, I know that you were just doing your job. I am not in the business of revenge, Akim. I’m not interested in seeing that justice is done for the murder of Vincent Cévennes.’
The young Arab looked up, confused by his interrogator’s strategy. Drummond had been into the kitchen and now wordlessly passed the prisoner a glass of water before retreating into a chair. Akim’s hand shook as he drank it.
‘I looked through your phone in the car,’ Kell continued. It occurred to him that Drummond would be taking mental notes, both with a view to improving his own interview technique and to see how far the infamous Witness X would pursue the softer lines of enquiry before resorting to threat and malice.
‘I need to make a call,’ Akim replied. They were speaking in French. ‘Like I told you, if I don’t tell them I am coming back, they will take action.’
‘What kind of action? Who are the people you want us to contact?’
Kell was gambling everything on a calculation he had made about Akim’s personality. He was a thug, yes, a man who would kill on orders, but he was not without decency. His phone had been full of photographs: of smiling girlfriends, of family members, children, even landscapes and buildings that had caught the young Arab’s eye. There were text messages full of humour; messages of concern for a sick grandparent in Toulon; expressions of devotion to a benevolent God. Kell was certain that Akim was just a street kid who had been plucked from prison by French Intelligence and turned into what a long-ago colleague in Ireland had described as ‘a useful idiot of violence’. He possessed the self-improving drive of a survivor born into no money, no education, no hope. But there was something sentimental about him, as though he had p
romised himself better things.
‘I can’t tell you that,’ Akim replied, but Kell had not expected an answer without sugaring the pill.
‘Then maybe I should tell you,’ he said. He went towards the door and opened the bottle of vodka, wanting a couple of fingers to jolt his senses and carry him into the morning. ‘I think their names are Luc Javeau and Valerie de Serres. I think they hired you to kill Phillippe and Jeannine Malot in Egypt earlier this year.’ To Kell’s surprise, Akim did not rebut the accusation. ‘We know that François Malot was kidnapped shortly after his parents’ funeral and that a DGSE officer named Vincent Cévennes impersonated him in an influence operation against a senior figure within our organization.’
Drummond crossed and uncrossed his legs, realizing that Kell was referring to Amelia Levene. Aldrich flashed him a cold, appraising glance, an experienced old hand quietly telling the young pup to take that secret to his grave.
‘I don’t know,’ Akim replied, shaking his head. ‘Maybe this is true, maybe it isn’t.’ He had been wearing a tight black vest under the motorcycle jacket and raised his hands in defence, the nylon fabric accentuating the long muscles in his arms.
‘We know it’s true,’ Kell said firmly. There was a sofa in the room and two armchairs. He rose from the sofa and crouched in front of Akim, glass of vodka in hand. ‘When Vincent was exposed by MI6, I think Luc and Valerie panicked, yes? The operation was now a failure and they told you to kill him. But what should they do about François? Kill him, too, or ransom the boy to his mother?’ Akim looked away, but Aldrich and Drummond offered no solace. ‘Did you know that Valerie telephoned my boss this morning requesting five million euros for the safe return of her son?’ The sum brought Akim’s gaze directly back to Kell, as though something had stuck in his throat. ‘How much of that money have you been promised? Five per cent? Ten? What about your other friend, the one who did this to my eye?’ Kell pointed to the scar on his face and smiled. ‘Does he get more than you or the same?’
A Foreign Country Page 28