The Cut-Out

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The Cut-Out Page 7

by Jon King


  “Jon. Why the hell didn’t you phone earlier?” Lacey demanded to know.

  “Busy day. Sorry.”

  “I take it you’ve seen the news?”

  The TV was on in the background as we spoke, images of shocked and grieving crowds gathered outside Kensington Palace amid an ever-expanding sea of flowers filling the screen. I’d never seen anything quite like it. “I’ve seen the news,” I said.

  “Then you won’t be surprised to learn that all hell’s broken loose up here. The security sector’s on meltdown.”

  “Well maybe you shouldn’t go around bumping off princesses.”

  “Careful what you say, Jon. I don’t know who you’ve been mixing with but you’re on file as a tap. Have been for some while.”

  “What? Well thanks for letting me know.”

  “I’ve only just found out.”

  “Jesus.”

  This was getting stranger – and more terrifying – by the minute. On file as a tap, Lacey had just said, meaning my phone was bugged—meaning some sleazy agent holed up in a government listening post somewhere was probably eavesdropping my call right now. Did they know who I was talking to? Wasn’t Lacey being a little cavalier talking to me on the phone when he knew it was a tap?

  Or was he too part of the plot?

  What the hell was happening?

  I glanced over at Katie, curled up snugly on the sofa with our black cat as she watched the images playing on the screen. I would do harm to anyone who dared lift a finger against her, I silently vowed. If I only I knew who they were.

  “I spoke to someone,” I said, my voice now a paranoid whisper. “About a week ago.”

  “A week ago…?”

  “He told me something.”

  “Well whatever he said you can rest assured our people heard it, too.”

  “So what am I supposed to do? Go to the police?” Even before I said it I knew it was a stupid thing to say. But it did provoke an interesting response from Lacey.

  “Do that and you’ll find yourself in more trouble than you’re already in.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We need to talk. Thursday—”

  Thursday? But today’s only Tuesday. That’s two more days. What might happen in the meantime? To Katie? The kids…?

  “—Usual place. Protocols apply.”

  “But…”

  Too late. The phone clicked dead. As I replaced the receiver Katie looked up from watching the TV, her eyes heavy with concern, even though she didn’t know who I’d just spoken to or what the content of our conversation had been. Still she knew all was not well.

  “Be careful, Jon,” was all she said. She looked so vulnerable.

  Without words I crossed the room and cuddled in beside her on the sofa.

  CHAPTER 18

  Lignières, France—September 1997

  Jean-Paul led a secret life. On the face of it he was a man at the pinnacle of his career—an annual income in excess of £500,000, a sought-after chateau in the Loire Valley, a luxury apartment in Paris. He owned two BMW saloons, a white Fiat Uno and a sparkling red classic BMW 650 motorbike. He dined at the best restaurants and smoked the finest Havana cigars, and was respected among his peers as France’s leading photojournalist.

  Simply put, Jean-Paul was a successful man.

  He was also well-connected, unusually so for a man of his social standing, it has to be said. Brushing shoulders with prime ministers and other high-ranking politicians, as well as Europe’s most powerful corporate czars, was all in a day’s work for Jean-Paul. Influential friends. Powerful contacts. Exclusive access—access to people and places out of reach to most other press photographers. And it was this more than anything that had set the rumour mill turning. While some maintained his success was down to good fortune, that Jean-Paul had been blessed with a rare intuition that enabled him to ‘be there’ – right place, right time – to capture that elusive photograph for which every press agency, every magazine and newspaper editor would offer top dollar, others suspected a more sinister explanation. There were even those who suspected Jean-Paul had made a pact with the devil.

  Or rather, if the rumours were to be believed, with MI6.

  And the rumours were certainly persuasive.

  The life of a paparazzo could be tough, after all, anyone who’d ever run with the pack in pursuit of that elusive photograph would tell you the same. Ambition and ruthlessness drove that pack, no doubt about it, each to a man jealous for the photograph that would make tomorrow’s front page, inside cover, page three, four: any page. The pressure was immense, the success rate subzero, with many aspiring paparazzo falling by the wayside within the first six months. To make it past twelve required real self will. Either that, or a helping hand. And by all accounts Jean-Paul had received the latter. For years he’d struggled to be the first man there, to receive that vital tip-off that would leap-frog him instantly to the front of the pack, but with little or no success. And then one day, seemingly at random, everything changed. Suddenly Jean-Paul was Paparazzo Uno, no longer struggling to sell his photographs but able now to negotiate substantial rewards for his work as the very same agencies that had once shunned him now began to seek him out. Clients, too. Overnight Jean-Paul’s name rose to the top of the pile. His income quadrupled. His beat-up old Fiat Uno became a shiny new BMW. The struggling press photographer he’d always been became a glittering, frontline paparazzo. And the reason, they say, was that Jean-Paul had been recruited.

  It was a simple enough assignment that had first introduced him to the life of a part-time intelligence asset. All he’d been asked to do was glean what information he could from a certain left-wing politician he’d been hired to photograph and to pass the information back to his handler. Simple for a man of Jean-Paul’s social reach. And well paid. From that moment on success was assured. In exchange for information gleaned from his high-ranking friends, Jean-Paul’s intelligence handlers would in future provide him with all the tip-offs he needed – where to be for that sought-after photograph, and when – as well as ‘arrange’ exclusive access whenever exclusive access was required. This made Jean-Paul untouchable as a paparazzo, always one step ahead of his peers, and because of this, the most successful among them. The now famous image of Prince Charles kissing royal nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke, while on a skiing holiday at Klosters, had been taken by Jean-Paul, and had scooped him a reputed £100,000. The tip-off that Charles and Tiggy would be sharing an intimate moment, of course, the precise time and location, had come not from good fortune, nor even from that honed intuition some maintained he possessed. Rather it came from his MI6 handler—the same MI6 handler who would later ‘arrange’ exclusive access to Princess Diana aboard the Al Fayed yacht, The Jonikal, just a few days before her death. The same MI6 handler who would, in exchange for up-to-the-minute information on the princess’s movements, arrange for Jean-Paul to be in Paris on the night of the crash, and remain undetected. Little wonder, then, that Jean-Paul had become a successful man.

  Problem was, he wanted more—more fame, more wealth: more success. And the photographs he was developing now, this minute, in the darkroom at his chateau in central France, would be the currency he would use to get it.

  Just then, there was a knock at the door.

  “James?” It was Jean-Paul’s wife, Elisabeth, calling him from the hallway. A self-professed anglophile – a lover of all things English: the people, the culture, even the weather – Jean-Paul had long since adopted the quintessentially English name of ‘James’. It was the name he preferred everyone to call him by—even his wife. “Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.”

  “Be there in five.”

  James Andanson started to peel the last of the photographs he was developing from the tray containing the photographic liquid. The image on this last photograph was perhaps the most telling of all the photographs he’d developed that day. Indeed, it was the most telling photograph he’d ever taken, period.

&n
bsp; As he removed the print from the liquid and hung it up to dry he studied the image it displayed with some satisfaction. It had been taken inside the Alma Tunnel on the night of Diana’s fatal crash, and showed the immediate aftermath—a crumpled black Mercedes S280, the tail lights of a white Fiat Uno escaping the scene, a high-powered motorbike parked up alongside the crumpled Mercedes. A second Mercedes was also parked in the tunnel, next to the motorbike, a man in city suit and Oxford brogues standing imperiously beside its open rear door. The man was looking grimly into camera, as though this was a photograph he didn’t want taken. It was of course the face of MI6 Head of Special Operations Europe, Richard Mason—Andanson’s personal handler.

  Smiling smugly to himself, James Andanson switched off the light and headed downstairs for dinner, leaving the scowling face of Richard Mason hung audaciously out to dry.

  The black diplomatic limo with smoked-out windows carved a path through the dense Parisian traffic as it cruised past Élysées Palace and swung right on Rue du Faubourg Saint Honorè. It was headed for l’Ambassade de Grande Bretagne, where Mason’s new office was located. Though he’d been here at the British Embassy in Paris barely two weeks, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office log would later declare he’d been on station for eighteen months. Later still, the log would be expunged.

  In the back seat of the limo Mason was thumbing through a file he’d received earlier that day. It read: Jean-Paul ‘James’ Andanson. Formerly Jean-Paul Gonin. French celebrity paparazzo. Anglophile. MI6 contact—4 years.

  Mason turned the page to reveal a mug shot of Andanson smoking a Havana cigar. “We’ll need to wait until the French inquiry clears his name,” he said into the car phone as he studied the image in detail, like he was searching for clues. “If anything happens to him while he’s under investigation it’ll look too suspicious.”

  “What makes you think the inquiry will want to question him?” The voice on the end of the line was English. Cultured.

  “His name will come up,” Mason assured. “Until then we’ll watch and wait.”

  “As you say, Richard. But if the photographs are leaked in the meantime…”

  “They won’t be.”

  “They’d better not be. The operation isn’t over yet. Far from it.”

  The limo turned right and disappeared into the embassy compound, the little piece of Britain in the heart of the French capital. Mason closed the file and snap-shut the folder containing it.

  “This operation may never be over,” he said with some irony. “I’ll be in touch.”

  He terminated the call.

  CHAPTER 19

  The journey to my agreed meeting place with Lacey had been fraught. Not to mention circuitous. “You’re on file as a tap,” Lacey had said the last time I’d spoken to him, and I felt sure that whoever was listening in on my phone calls would be monitoring my movements, as well. Especially my meeting with Lacey. So instead of taking a direct route to our rendezvous point I’d made several deliberate detours across London via bus and tube train in an attempt to throw my pursuers, imagined or otherwise, off scent. At one point I’d even stopped off at the British Museum, deliberately wandering through the less populated areas to see who, if anyone, might be treading my coat tails. So far as I could tell, no one was. But just to make certain I took one last bus ride to Oxford Circus—bus rides were perfect for exposing a tail, Lacey had always said, for noting who boarded the bus when you did; whether they made a mobile call or texted during the journey; whether they alighted at the same stop as you. But again, so far as I could tell, no one did. So next I caught the tube to Lancaster Gate. From there the Pump House in Hyde Park, where I was scheduled to meet Lacey, was just across the road.

  Paranoid? I don’t think so. I was still shaken up by what the American had told me, even more so now that it had actually come to pass. Had he been acting alone? I didn’t know. Did his masters know about our meeting? I didn’t know. Did they know he’d told me about what I now believed was Diana’s assassination?

  Was my life in danger?

  What I did know was that my mind was still fractured, its thoughts running riot in my head, crashing around in there like a pinball out of control. Diana had only been dead a few days, after all, and I still hadn’t had time to process things—still hadn’t had time to get a marshalled grip on my senses and think in straight lines. So when Lacey had said to me on the phone that ‘protocols apply’ – his way of telling me to use an SDR, a ‘surveillance detection route’, when travelling to the meeting – I’d simply followed his instruction, best I could. He knew I hadn’t been properly trained in surveillance detection but he knew I’d been around those who had, and that I was capable of at least a rudimentary attempt at what in truth requires highly skilled training. I followed instruction regardless. Hence the detours, the bus rides, the visit to the British Museum. Not that I stood a realistic chance of exposing my highly trained pursuers, I knew that. But at least they would know by my erratic movements that I was deploying an SDR, and that would tell them that I knew I was under surveillance: that I knew they were following me.

  If nothing else, Lacey had always said, it kept the buggers on their toes.

  Momentarily lost in these thoughts I gazed out from the Pump House in Hyde Park, where I now stood, taking in views of the Italian Gardens and the expanse of Hyde Park beyond as I waited for Lacey to show. It was a glorious September morning. Sunlight was arcing across the garden’s five pools and casting miniature rainbows in the spray thrown up by the pools’ sculpted fountains. People were coming and going in every direction, some with purpose, others perhaps not so. Still others appeared distracted by the garden’s anaesthetizing stimulus, and were wandering quite aimlessly, it seemed, back and forth, one fountain to the next. The scene was a meditation.

  And then suddenly the meditation was interrupted.

  Seated alone on a bench beside one of the fountains I spied a casually dressed man in dark blue denims and linen blazer. He’d just ended a call on his mobile phone and was now unfolding a newspaper, preparing to read it. Unremarkable in appearance—perhaps thirty-five, average build, short dark hair greased to one side and clean shaven. But for some reason he’d caught my attention, tugged my mind from its more contemplative thoughts and screamed at me to notice him. Who was he? I suddenly found myself asking, furtively studying the man now with my peripheral sight. Who had he been speaking to on his mobile phone? Had he followed me here? Had he just reported my location to other members of his surveillance team?

  It was the sound of Lacey’s voice that plucked me from these fretful thoughts.

  “Charming view,” he said, standing suddenly beside me, the two of us now staring out across the gardens, the expanse of Hyde park beyond. “Shall we walk?”

  A few minutes later we were strolling together through the park, the Pump House and Surveillance Man some distance behind us, Serpentine Bridge and the lake some way ahead. Even though it was a weekday morning the park was nonetheless busy with its customary quota of tourists, joggers, skaters, people hotfooting it from A to B. Others simply chilling on the grass. I wondered which ones – if any – might be Surveillance Man’s covert accomplices.

  “So how are you keeping?” Lacey enquired. It had been a year or more since I’d last seen him, since I’d made the trip to London to pick his brains for my article on Angola. It seemed like a lifetime ago. “I don’t get to see so much of you these days, not since you moved out of London. How’s Katie?

  “She’s good, thanks.” Katie and I had moved a few years earlier in a bid to escape the city rat race, something we’d happily achieved, or so we’d thought. Now, it seemed, our quiet life in the country was in danger of becoming a living nightmare. “We’re really happy where we are, or at least we were until this happened. It’s hard to know how this might affect our lives.”

  “Have you told Katie about your American friend?”

  “Not yet. I wanted to speak to you first, talk things through,
make sure I wasn’t losing the plot.”

  “Yes, well, speaking of plots, I suggest we cut to the gristle. There’s a lot to talk about.” Self-contained and quietly spoken, Lacey was a man of few words. But when he did make utterance it was generally to the point. “Let’s start with your man, the American—who is he?”

  I shrugged. “I can’t say for certain. He claims he’s CIA.”

  “Well if he is he’ll know about UDS.”

  “UDS?”

  “United Defence Systems, one of America’s largest defence contractors. Committed substantial funds to a certain general election campaign recently. Even more to a certain cabinet minister’s personal portfolio.”

  “And MI5 knew about it?”

  “Of course. But if we prosecuted every politician guilty of accepting inducements there’d be no one left to run the country.” He cleared his throat. “In any case, UDS were only a small part of a much larger investigation the industrial ops boys were running. If they’d hit on any one single beneficiary it would have compromised the entire operation. Sacrifice the worm to catch the bird, as they say.”

  “Meanwhile the worm grows fat on tax-free bungs.”

  “That’s usually the way of it, I’m afraid, yes.”

  We headed up past the war memorial towards Serpentine Bridge. As we did so a green 4x4 pulled over to the side of the road a small distance ahead of us, its driver talking on a mobile phone. I couldn’t help wondering who the driver was, and who he might be talking to. My paranoia was running amok.

  “What does this have to do with Diana, anyway?” I said, eyeing the green 4x4 with some distrust.

  “Landmines,” Lacey came back. “UDS-built landmines, to be precise. Diana caught wind that some of Britain’s high and mighty were involved in trade-offs with UDS—trade-offs that implicated the government. She was compiling a dossier, threatening to name names.”

 

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