The Dossier (Ben Lewis Thriller Book 1)

by David N Robinson

  That particular train was due to arrive in Calais in approximately ten minutes.

  Time enough for Zeltinger to be able to make for an urgent phone call.

  97

  Near Calais

  The train rattles over points and begins slowing down. Lewis is instantly awake, the change in sound acting like an alarm clock. He checks his watch. It is five minutes to seven in the evening, French time, one hour ahead of the UK. Sure enough, as the train emerges from the tunnel, the light is already fading. Heavy clouds are gathering over the French coast making the landscape dark and inhospitable. Lewis nudges Holly next to him.

  “Time to wake up. We’ll be arriving in a few minutes. It’s my turn to drive.”

  They open their doors, get out and stretch, both moving to the front of the car in order to swap over.

  “How will that other van know how and where to follow us?” Holly asks.

  “Is your phone well and truly turned off?”

  She takes it out and checks.

  “Yes.”

  “Then, hopefully, with difficulty.”

  “What’s the plan? Are we going to go to ground or try and drive like a bat out of hell to get away?”

  “Good question. And if the latter, do we take the minor roads without any traffic cameras, or risk the motorways but with the possibility of being spotted? What do you think?”

  “God knows, this is your show, not mine. Just don’t get us both killed, if it’s all the same to you.” She says this with humour, but Lewis detects an element of nervousness creeping in.

  “Last chance for you to bottle out and eject,” he says as the train slows to a halt, the long Calais station platform already visible through the window.

  “You don’t get rid of me that easily.”

  “Well, you did say that you wanted a date,” Lewis says with a mischievous grin.

  “Remember, sunshine, the location of our date is of my choosing not yours. That’s the deal.”

  “You win. So, back to your question: I’ve been thinking about that. Going to ground has its appeal.” He looks across at Holly. “You know, we find ourselves this remote little hotel, off the beaten track, probably on the coast somewhere. Then we lock ourselves away for a few days, just you and me, until all this blows over. That could be fun, don’t you think?” The train has stopped and the fire shutters at the end of each carriage are being raised. Holly is not sure whether he is being serious or joking.

  “Could be rushing things a bit for a first date.”

  “Point taken. Which only leaves the bat-out-of-hell option.” The side door at the end of the train is sliding open and Lewis sees a gendarme on the outside platform, holding what looks from this distance to be a shoulder-mounted video camera.

  “Damn!” Lewis quickly swivels around and picks up the baseball cap from off the back seat. At the same time he reaches into his jacket pocket for his sunglasses. “It looks like we have a French reception committee,” he mutters more to himself than Holly. His hasty disguise is unlikely to fool the French police for long. “All bets look like being off, I’m afraid.” He starts the car engine and waits for the side ramp to descend to the platform. “I think, Mercedes van or not, it’s time to put pedal to the metal. We’ll have to go to ground another time.”

  He drives forward towards the exit, as he does so a bright light starts to shine at the front of the policeman’s video recorder. It is the moment that Lewis knows for certain that their faces are being captured on camera. They move away quickly, Lewis heading up the exit ramp and then around in a big U-shaped loop towards the open dual carriageway that is the coastal road around Calais. The presence of the camera means only one thing: it can only be a matter of time before Zeltinger will know where they are and how to find them.

  98

  Near Calais

  The crossing had been smooth an uneventful, the ferry ploughing through the twenty-one miles of open water across the English Channel at just over fifteen knots. Earlier, she had timed her arrival at Dover Harbour to perfection. Still wearing her trusty wig, she had had her passport checked, tickets issued and been marshalled into the bowels of the ferry all within five minutes of her arrival at the port. By the time she had locked her car and made her way to a cafeteria on the upper decks, the boat was already underway.

  She had spoken with Cheng about twenty-five minutes after they had left Dover. There had been no news from the police on Lewis’s whereabouts. Now with the harbour at Calais fast approaching it was nearly time to head back to her car. Cheng should be calling again soon with the latest update from the policewoman.

  As if on cue, her phone started to ring.

  “Any news?”

  “You made a good decision. They think he may be about to arrive in Calais by train. We’ll have confirmation within the hour.”

  Sui-Lee was elated. “That’s perfect. I’ll be disembarking in less than ten minutes. He’ll be fifteen, perhaps only twenty minutes ahead of me at most. Do we know where he is headed?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “I’m guessing Paris. That’s where the journalist was from.”

  “I’ll call you once we have any news.”

  The call had been monitored by GCHQ, the UK Government’s communications headquarters based in Cheltenham. They had also intercepted the earlier call with Meilin at eighteen hundred hours.

  GCHQ made their initial estimation of Cheng’s location as being somewhere two blocks north of Wigmore Street in central London. They had then passed this and other information to a specialist Chinese operative in MI5’s London headquarters. The man, known only as The Scorpion, was something of a legend in the service. Jake Sullivan had specially selected him earlier that evening as someone ideally suited to take the lead. The Scorpion’s sole priority now was locating the whereabouts of the young baby and her grandmother. Jake was quietly optimistic that before midnight not only would the location of the kidnapper be known but also that the two hostages would be freed.

  99

  Pas de Calais

  They have been driving south on the A26 motorway. Initially the road is flat then gradually it begins undulating as they move further inland. The route passes through large tracts of agricultural land. Periodic clumps of newly planted wind turbines festoon an otherwise empty landscape. Dark heavy clouds around the coast slowly begin to disperse as they head inland. The fast-approaching night sky looks increasingly clear the further south they go.

  With everyone’s headlights on, it becomes easier to spot other traffic on the road. Despite an initial flurry of activity around Calais, the volume of vehicles has been light. Lewis has been checking his mirrors constantly. The Mercedes van does not appear to be following.

  After twenty minutes of driving, they pass through their first motorway tollbooth. Lewis is anxious about tollbooths since they are some of the few places on French motorways where movements of cars are recorded. This first one, located southbound between Saint Omar and Béthune, is for collecting a ticket only. This simple procedure gives Holly something to do since the machine is on her side of the vehicle. It takes ten seconds at most, the car barely coming to rest before Lewis is once more accelerating away. He takes note of the two surveillance cameras positioned on the overhead gantry pointing down at them as they pass beneath.

  The maximum speed permitted is one hundred and thirty kilometres and hour. Lewis has been driving fifteen to twenty kilometres an hour above this. It is a toss up whether to risk being stopped by the French police or else get caught by Panich in the Mercedes van. Neither is immediately attractive, but the former feels less life-threatening than the latter.

  Holly remains in denial about the reality of the threat facing them both.

  “The thing is, Ben, I’ve been wondering. There is no Panich or Chinese girl, nor a German det
ective called Zeltinger is there? Tell me that you’ve just made this story up? Go on, admit it?”

  Lewis shakes his head, thinking about an appropriate response. “I wish. You may be right of course, Holly. But if so, why do I have the journalist’s phone? How do you explain the dead body in Hanover Square yesterday afternoon complete with bullet wound? Do you think I made that up as well?”

  “You could have taken the phone off anybody, and I never saw anything on the news about someone being shot in Hanover Square yesterday. The whole story still feels as if it could be Ben Lewis fiction, designed to scare me into running away with you.”

  “Now there’s a thought. You’re not bored already, are you?” he laughed.

  “Actually, I’m hungry to tell the truth. Could we stop and get something to eat?”

  “Not until we are the other side of Reims. We have to crack on.”

  She tucks her feet under her and swivels around to face him as he is driving. “Are we really in danger, Ben? It doesn’t feel like it to me at the moment.”

  He doesn’t answer for a moment, checking his mirror, concentrating on the road. “I did offer to drop you off in Calais. I would be much happier for your own personal safety if I left you in Reims.”

  “You’re serious about all this, aren’t you?”

  “Deadly. Be thankful that so far we haven’t run into any Russians. They won’t be far away. We simply have to stay smarter than them.”

  “Well, if they can’t trace where we are, why don’t we ditch the car and take a train to wherever we are going? That would fool them, surely?”

  “I have been thinking about that. It might be how we cross the border into Switzerland later. It depends on how much trouble we find along the way.”

  He sees a police car speeding toward them in his rear view mirror, its blue lights flashing. It causes Lewis momentarily to take his foot off the accelerator, allowing the Ford Focus to reduced its speed gradually to the one hundred and thirty kilometres per hour maximum. He holds his breath, only exhaling once the police car has sped past them and on into the night.

  “You haven’t told me yet, what’s been going on in your life, Holly? Are you seeing anyone, anything serious on the horizon?”

  “Not much to tell. Just the same old, same old. Lots of wild nurses’ parties and the like, a few one-night stands, nothing to fill the gossip columns with. How about you?”

  “Me? Well, as you know, I’ve been drifting here and there.”

  “Not any more, apparently.”

  “True. No, well, as a drifter up until now my life’s been a bit like yours, the occasional one-night stand, nothing to write home about.”

  “How about this Mel Allen from the Foreign Office who lured you into her bed? What was that all about?”

  “Mel? She was a bit out of my league. She was classy, though. She had this seriously nice pad near Paddington.”

  “Will you be seeing her again when this is over, do you think?”

  He glances across at Holly briefly. “I’m not sure. It depends on whether I get a better offer.” Holly thumps him playfully on the arm. “I couldn’t make her out, to tell the truth.”

  “Perhaps she is a spy? You know, one of those undercover spooks you read about in thrillers.”

  Lewis thinks about it for a moment. “You might be right. She was certainly mysterious enough to be one. Do you want me to introduce you?”

  “No thank you. If I have too much excitement I might just drop off to sleep.” She gives a big yawn and stretches out on her seat to doze. Lewis looks at the clock on the dash. If the road stays as clear as this, they should make Reims by nine-thirty.

  100

  Eurotunnel Terminal, Folkestone

  There was a subtle difference, in Saul Zeltinger’s mind, between on the one hand arrogance and on the other having enough confidence in one’s own judgements and abilities to know when you were right. It was not in this particular Detective Inspector’s make-up, he sincerely hoped, to be arrogant. However, during his short time on the planet as a policeman he had built up enough self-awareness to be able him to predict with reasonable accuracy when his hunches were likely to be correct.

  Which was why he of all people was not the least bit surprised when reviewing the video-camera footage of vehicles disembarking the 17.20 departing train from Folkestone arriving Calais forty minutes later. The very first car, no less, was none other than a white Ford Focus. Behind the wheel was what looked very much like a poorly disguised Ben Lewis. Sitting next to him was an even less-well disguised young woman of indeterminate age. The footage was jerky, the light not terrific, the clarity leaving something to be desired. Nonetheless, it was enough to convince Zeltinger that Lewis had finally left the UK and was now on French soil.

  With the car, came a number plate, although this was not England. France was a country much less invested in the camera technology that enabled criminals on the roads to be so easily tracked.

  Criminals. Was that the class of human that Ben Lewis had become part of? Hardly, Zeltinger thought. Lewis was simply a young man on a mission, someone who had broken a few laws to defend himself. Exactly what that mission was, Zeltinger now had a fair idea about but perhaps didn’t yet know all the pieces of the puzzle. The Russians and the Chinese woman, they were criminals in his eyes. These were people who went around his city murdering people. Even if their puppet masters were foreign governments and politicians, they were still criminals.

  So what now? This was no longer an MI5 case, the jurisdiction had moved abroad. Whose case was it? Did Zeltinger care? Well, he cared enough to want to find those responsible for killing the Iranian woman in Hanover Square the previous afternoon and bring them to justice. And he cared enough to want to try to keep Ben Lewis alive and out of harm’s way from those intent on killing him.

  So, what was Zeltinger going to do next?

  That depended a little on where Lewis was going. Logic might lead him to believe that the ex-Marine was heading to the journalist’s home in Paris. However, on that score, Zeltinger was already one step ahead. Earlier that day he had received a verbal report from a French detective and her team who had been despatched early in the morning to search Leyla Zamani’s Parisian apartment. They had found no information relevant to the case. Nothing on her computer, nothing hidden under the floorboards, not even anything in the toilet cistern. The place was clean, no nuclear secrets, no hidden dossiers, nothing that appeared of interest whatsoever.

  Lewis might still be heading to Paris. Perhaps the dying Iranian had told him to go somewhere, possibly to retrieve or find something? That was possible. But if she had made the journey to London for the nuclear symposium, why hadn’t she brought whatever was so valuable with her? Perhaps she had, and maybe Lewis now had it. So where would he be heading with it by travelling across France by car? The other possibility could be Switzerland. The Iranian was an investigative journalist specialising in nuclear matters; the Russians and Chinese, both serious nuclear powers, were seemingly desperate to get their hands on something that she appeared either to have or had known. What was the connection between them all? Could it be the Iranian nuclear talks currently underway in Geneva? Wasn’t Geneva also where Zamani’s family and relatives had been based? It was a long shot, but it also had certain logic to it that Zeltinger liked. So, Paris or possibly Geneva? It was toss a coin time. If he were a betting man, he would have chosen Geneva. Only time would tell if he were right.

  101

  Pas de Calais

  The motorway junction looked like all the others. The signpost didn’t even look anything exceptional, simply indicating to all passing motorists, as most signposts in France are want to do, the distance from their present location to the illustrious capital. In this instance, it read: ‘A1 Paris 185’ with an arrow pointing to an upcoming slip road on the right.
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  Five hundred metres beyond the junction, shortly after the adjoining on-ramp had filtered its traffic in from behind, there was a tiny recessed slip road off to the right. It was an easy-to-miss hiding place, much used by French police waiting to catch speeding motorists. Lewis was doing one hundred and forty three kilometres an hour when it passed the waiting policeman, exactly ten per cent over the limit and borderline for a prosecution.

  However, the driver of this particular police car was on another mission. It had already overtaken the white Ford Focus once that evening. Then, like now, it could easily have pulled it in. The officer behind the wheel instead watched the white Ford speed past and reached for his telephone.

  His call was answered before its second ring.

  “Bonsoir, la voiture est en route à Reims. Elle m’a juste passé maintenant. J’estime qu’ils atteindront Reims en environ quatre-vingt-dix minutes.”

  He listened for a short while longer, before adding, “Merci monsieur, c’était mon plaisir. Adieu et bonne soirée à vous aussi.”

  102

  Savile Row Police Station

  The voice on the other end of the phone was harsh and demanding.

  “Where the fuck is Ben Lewis? I am losing patience, woman, and ready to kill someone.”

  Meilin swallowed hard, struggling to find her voice. She prayed that Saul Zeltinger’s promise to have the security services work behind the scenes to locate her mother and child was actually happening.