‘We’re not here for money,’ said Hammond.
‘Non?’
He shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Then …’
‘We’re here on behalf of Monir Gazi’s natural mother. She wishes to meet her son. She wishes to know the child she brought into this world.’
Delmotte wrung his hands. ‘Are you sure you would not prefer … compensation for your time and trouble, messieurs? The … reunion … you desire would be … problématique.’
‘We’re confident in your ability to arrange it. And we can’t be bought off. It’s the boy or nothing.’
‘Well, perhaps I could … make some enquiries. Naturally, I would require this … tape you speak of … before I—’
‘You get the tape when Monir meets his mother.’ The loss of one from Gazi’s collection was, Hammond reckoned, a small price to pay. ‘And she wants to meet him today.’
‘Today? Impossible.’
‘For your sake, it better hadn’t be.’
Delmotte’s brow furrowed as he engaged in an earnest assessment of just how impossible it actually was. ‘I cannot … guarantee this. But … I can …’
‘Make a few phone calls?’
‘Yes. But … if the boy’s mother thinks she can … take him away from his—’
‘Just fix a meeting for later today, OK? How it turns out isn’t our concern.’ In truth, Hammond had thought no further than bringing Zineta and Monir together. That was all she had ever said she wanted: a chance to re-enter her son’s life. ‘Once you’ve got the tape, there’s no proof we know of that you were ever involved in the matter.’
‘How can I be sure … there are no other copies of the tape?’
‘You have to trust us.’
Delmotte stared at Hammond as if he had just made a tasteless joke. ‘Trust you?’
‘What choice do you have, maître?’ Vidor asked. ‘This is your only way out of a heap of serious trouble.’
That much was undeniable, as Delmotte seemed to concede with a doleful bob of the head. ‘I will … make some calls,’ he murmured.
‘We’ll give you the rest of the morning,’ said Hammond, pressing their advantage. ‘You have until noon to set something up. Is that clear?’
‘Oui, oui. Très clair.’
‘Good. We’ll see you then.’
‘I would prefer to meet somewhere else, messieurs. It would be best for all of us, I think. I suggest … la place de la Constitution. It is not far.’
‘OK. We’ll be there. At noon. Make sure you are too.’
‘Oh, I will be. As you say, what choice do I have?’
*
‘What do you think?’ Vidor asked as they walked away from the lawyer’s office a few minutes later.
‘I think Monir’s in Luxembourg,’ Hammond replied. ‘Otherwise a meeting today really would have been impossible. As it is, I think Delmotte’s going to do whatever he feels he has to do to get the tape. And that amounts to exactly what we want him to do. Thanks to you, Stevan, I think Zineta is going to be reunited with her son.’
And at that Vidor beamed.
TWENTY-FIVE
It was a quiet morning at Luxembourg airport. Most of the passengers off the flight from Amsterdam were business travellers, for whom various limo drivers were waiting, the names of the parties they were due to chauffeur away prominently displayed on large squares of card. Edward Hammond was, in fact, the only person waiting at the arrivals gate without such a card. Stevan Vidor had insisted on staying with the car, claiming he did not want to ‘crowd’ Zineta. Hammond had not devoted much effort to wondering what exactly that meant. His priorities lay elsewhere.
Zineta was one of the last passengers to emerge and, as soon as he saw her, Hammond realized that betraying him had taken a heavy toll. She was red-eyed and pale, trembling slightly as she walked towards him. As he advanced to meet her, she raised one of the two holdalls she was carrying and offered it to him.
‘The tapes are inside,’ she said hollowly. ‘I never should have taken them. Please take them back.’
‘You haven’t seen Monir yet,’ he said, keeping his hands by his side.
‘Whether I see him or not, the tapes should go to ICTY. It was wrong of me to try and use them as bargaining chips. I knew it was wrong, of course. But still I did it. Now I …’ She shook her head in acknowledgement of her own folly. ‘Please take them.’
He accepted the bag. And after a moment’s hesitation he hugged her. ‘It’s all right, Zineta. I don’t blame you for what you did.’
‘You should do,’ she said, her voice muffled by his shoulder.
‘We can put everything right. That’s all that matters.’
‘Can we?’ She broke away and looked at him. ‘Can we really?’
‘Has Todorović been in touch since we spoke?’
‘No.’
‘Then we still have time on our side. Delmotte’s agreed to arrange for you to meet Monir.’ He took her other bag as well, which she hardly seemed to notice, and ushered her towards the escalator that led up to the exit.
‘How soon can I meet him, Edward?’
‘Later today, if Delmotte does his stuff. The fact we have a recording of his conversation with Gazi means he has a powerful incentive to make it happen.’
‘But … where is Monir?’
‘Somewhere in Luxembourg, is my guess. The city, or near by.’
‘He’s been brought up here?’
‘Looks like it.’
‘So, Luxembourg is all he’s known?’
‘I suppose so.’
They reached the foot of the escalator. But Zineta stepped smartly to one side, forcing Hammond to jump back off.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I was stupid to take the tapes and contact Todorović.’ She put her hand to her forehead. ‘Maybe I’m still being stupid.’
‘How?’
‘Monir doesn’t remember me. He probably doesn’t even know he’s been adopted. Maybe it’s better if he never does.’
‘He’ll find out eventually. They always do.’
‘You think I should see him if I can?’
Here was Hammond’s chance to talk her out of meeting her son. He had the tapes back, after all. There was nothing to be lost by calling Delmotte off and a good deal to be gained. But, oddly, he could not bring himself to attempt it. He should have been angry at Zineta for what she had done. But all he saw before him was a lonely, frightened woman who no longer trusted her emotions. ‘I think you’ll regret it if you don’t see him, Zineta. I truly do.’
She thought about that for a moment, then nodded solemnly. ‘Yes. Of course.’ She looked at him, with some of her determination restored to her gaze. ‘Let’s go.’
They saw Vidor as soon as they entered the short-stay car park. He was pacing up and down beside the Peugeot, smoking a cigarette with nervous intensity. Zineta grabbed Hammond’s elbow and drew him to one side, so that they were screened from him by the flank of a van.
‘I feel so sorry for Stevan,’ she said. ‘I’ve caused him so much trouble.’
‘I think he welcomes it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You do realize he’s in love with you, don’t you?’
Zineta’s wide-eyed reaction suggested she had realized no such thing. ‘That’s crazy.’
Hammond shrugged. ‘Sometimes love is.’
Hammond hung back while Zineta spoke to Vidor. As far as he could see through the windows of the van, their physical contact was confined at first to a brisk triple cheek-kiss. He could hear them speaking in Serbian, too softly for him to catch individual words, though Zineta’s tone suggested she was asking to be forgiven. That amounted to pushing at an open door where Vidor was concerned, who conquered his diffidence sufficiently to put an arm on her shoulder, but never managed the hug he obviously wanted to give her. Hammond felt sorry for both of them. They were clearly not at ease with each other. Whether they would ever be – whethe
r they would ever have the chance to be – he did not know.
An hour later, they were waiting for Delmotte in Constitution Square, laid out atop one of the bastions of the city’s seventeenth-century fortifications. Below them, at the foot of the rocky crag on which the Old Town perched, were the winding paths and greenery of the Pétrusse valley, with the southern suburbs stretching away beyond. Luxembourg, even in grey, wintry weather, looked an affluent, orderly, civilized place. Hammond could see the thought running through Zineta’s mind as she tugged fretfully at a cigarette and gazed up at the slender spires of the nearby cathedral: if Gazi, for whatever reason, had given their son the comfort and security of an upbringing here, should she do anything to endanger it?
They had walked to the square from the car park on Boulevard Royal, unaware that there was parking to be had in the square itself. It was into one of these spaces that a vintage Citroën saloon made a smart turn off Boulevard Roosevelt as midday approached, with Marcel Delmotte at the wheel.
He somehow looked smaller than he had in his office, perhaps due to the outsized overcoat in which he was enveloped, or else the hunch-shouldered apprehensiveness he projected. He glanced suspiciously around him as he emerged from the car, as if concerned that there might be more people waiting for him than he had been led to expect.
‘It’s just us, maître,’ said Vidor.
Delmotte cleared his throat and drew the collar of his coat tight about his neck. He looked at Zineta. ‘Is this … the mother?’
‘My name is Zineta Perović,’ she said, nettled by his tone. ‘Monir Gazi is my son.’
‘Legally, that is—’ He broke off with a sigh. ‘N’importe.’
‘Have you done as we asked?’ put in Hammond.
‘Yes, monsieur. I have … made arrangements.’
‘When does Zineta get to meet Monir?’
‘I can take you to him now.’ He allowed himself a small smile at Zineta’s gasp of surprise. After nine years of searching it was suddenly too swift and simple for her to believe. ‘But consider, madame. He has had a happy childhood. He has no idea that the people who have raised him are not his parents. Are you sure you want to see him?’
‘I’m quite sure, thank you,’ she said, mastering herself.
‘The tape?’
‘Here.’ Hammond held it up. ‘You want to hear it?’
‘There is a tape player in my car. I will listen to it as we go.’
‘And where are we going?’
‘You will find out when we arrive. Your terms, monsieur, not mine. The tape, when … Madame Perović … meets her son. Are we agreed?’
Hammond looked at Zineta. Her responding glance told him she was as ready as she would ever be. He nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Shall we go, then?’
Vidor and Zineta got into the back of the car, with Hammond riding in the front. Delmotte crossed the Pétrusse valley, then took the airport road, which also led to a motorway junction. After a few minutes, he pressed a button low on the dashboard, activating the tape player. ‘S’il vous plaît,’ he said, glancing at Hammond.
Zineta had wound the tape back to the beginning of Delmotte’s conversation with Gazi. The Serb’s guttural French sprang from the loudspeakers as soon as the cassette engaged. ‘Maître Delmotte? C’est Dragan Gazi.’ Then came Delmotte’s courteous response. ‘Bonjour, Monsieur Gazi. Comment allez-vous?’ He sounded pleased to take the call. Nine years later, he looked far from pleased to be reliving it.
And he did not relive it for long. Just after the first use of the word ‘l’adoption’, he pressed the eject button. ‘Ça suffit,’ he said flatly.
‘As you please.’ Hammond retrieved the cassette.
‘Who made this recording, monsieur?’
‘Gazi. He recorded all important telephone conversations. For his own protection, as he thought.’
At that Delmotte gave a bitter little laugh. ‘I should never have …’ But he could not bring himself to finish the sentence. He merely shook his head.
‘How much did he pay you?’ Hammond asked.
‘Too much to say no to. So I believed. It was a bad time for me. There was a divorce. I—’
‘A divorce?’
‘Yes. That amuses you?’
No. It did not. But Delmotte could hardly appreciate the irony that they had both succumbed to Gazi for the same reason.
‘You should know it was a bad time for me also,’ said Zineta. ‘I lost my son because of what you did for Gazi.’
‘If I had refused, he would have found someone else.’
‘Is that your excuse?’
‘He said nothing about you, madame. I assumed the boy had no mother and what I did, though technically illegal, gave him a better life than he would have had in Serbia. Are you rich? Are you married? Do you have a career?’
‘No,’ she answered simply.
‘Then you should be pleased by the upbringing he has had.’
‘He would have had a fine upbringing if he had stayed with his mother,’ declared Vidor.
‘Peut-être,’ Delmotte said with a sigh. And he said no more.
They joined the motorway heading north, but left at the very next junction and drove back into the outskirts of the city. Here, on the Kirchberg plateau, were massed the soaring office blocks of the European Union’s Luxembourg operations: a mountain range of gleaming steel and tinted glass, with yet more summits under construction.
‘The boy’s parents both work for the EU,’ said Delmotte as they cruised past the vast, anonymous structures. ‘They have senior positions, with high salaries and excellent conditions. They wanted a child to share their lives with, but could not have one of their own. I assisted them with a solution to their problem. They believed they were adopting an orphan of the war in Kosovo. They did not know – they still do not know – that he is Gazi’s son. Will you tell them?’
A glance at Zineta confirmed to Hammond that she had no clear idea what she would say to these people she had never met, who had become the parents of her child. ‘What have you told them so far?’ he asked, in part to mask her indecision.
‘I contacted the mother this morning and said a woman claiming to be the boy’s real mother might be planning to abduct him.’
‘Abduct him?’ gasped Zineta.
‘You take a great deal on yourself, maître,’ said Vidor tightly.
‘I said what was necessary to achieve the meeting at short notice that you demanded. The mother collected the boy from his school and took him home. She is waiting for me there. Waiting for us, though she does not know it.’
‘What about her husband?’ Hammond asked.
‘He is attending a meeting in Brussels.’
‘What are their names?’ Vidor demanded. ‘You may as well tell us now.’
‘Bartol. He is French. She is Irish. Émile and Mary. They have changed the boy’s name to Patrick.’
‘Patrick Bartol,’ said Zineta numbly.
‘He is eleven years old, madame. He has no memory of you or of Serbia. He speaks French, English and German. But not Serbian. Not a word. If he is anything, he is a Luxembourger. He has lived here for as long as he can remember.’
‘Leave him in peace? Is that what you think I should do?’ Delmotte offered no reply. In the end, Zineta answered the question herself. ‘Well, maybe I should. And maybe I will. But even so … I must see him.’
They drove on, heading north through ever greener and more scattered suburbs until they left the city behind. Then, turning off the main road, they reached a wooded, hilly district, where large, modern villas set deep in their own grounds were strung out along a gently zigzagging road.
‘This is Forêt Pré,’ said Delmotte. ‘It is considered a very desirable development.’
‘And Monir lives here?’ Zineta asked, gazing through the car window at the terracotta roofs and the manicured lawns and the carefully composed stands of conifers.
‘The Bartols live here, yes,’ said Delmotte. ‘
We are very close now. You should decide what you will say to Madame Bartol.’
‘So should you, maître,’ said Vidor. ‘After all, you’re the one who’s lied to her.’
Delmotte ignored the gibe. ‘This is their house, on the next bend,’ he said simply, slowing as they approached a pillared entrance. ‘She has left the gate open for me.’ He slowed still further and came to a halt twenty yards or so short of the turn-off. ‘Are you sure … you want to do this?’
Zineta nodded. ‘Drive on.’
TWENTY-SIX
The drive described a wide loop between a belt of trees and a shrub-edged lawn en route to a flagstoned courtyard partly enclosed by a large, low-roofed, L-shaped house that would not have looked out of place in Spain or California, but sat oddly in the dank and sunless Luxembourg countryside.
The stillness of the weather, the quietness of the neighbourhood and the tension of the moment met in a vacuum of uncertainty as they got out of the car. A tiny pebble scraping on a stone beneath Hammond’s foot was loud to his ear. And the careful closings of the car doors were like muffled gunshots.
Then, all at once, he was aware of an additional presence. A figure had appeared round the corner of the house, from the direction of the front door: a boy of about eleven, dark-haired and narrow-faced, thin, but healthily so, with sparkling brown eyes and a complexion of telltale Slavic sallowness. He was dressed in school uniform minus the blazer and tie: monogrammed sweater, white shirt and grey trousers. He smiled at them cautiously.
‘Bonjour.’
‘Bonjour, Patrick,’ said Delmotte. ‘Est-ce que ta mère est à la maison?’
Hammond glanced at Zineta. She was staring at Patrick, transfixed, trembling as if she had seen a ghost, as in a sense she had.
Patrick had opened his mouth to answer Delmotte’s question when a woman strode round the corner and grasped him protectively by the shoulders. She was short and slim, with brown, bobbed hair and a round face. Her black trouser-suit and white blouse suggested that she, like her son, had not found time to change since arriving home. Her complexion, unsurprisingly, was wholly different from his: pale, almost white, though flushed about the cheeks. She frowned anxiously at them.
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