by Rob Sinclair
‘Where are we going now?’ Grainger said. ‘Jesus, listen to me. Where are we going. I should be taking you to the nearest police station. I should be calling my team to tell them why I just ran away from the police after a shootout – the police, who we’re actually supposed to be assisting.’
‘Then why aren’t you?’
She didn’t answer the question. She couldn’t. All she knew was that she had to do whatever it took to get to Modena. And if Logan really could help her to do that, then she would let him.
‘What’s your name?’ Logan said. ‘You haven’t told me your name.’
‘Special Agent Grainger.’
‘Special Agent? That’s a funny name.’
‘Angela. My name’s Angela Grainger.’
‘Nice to meet you, Angela Grainger.’
‘So come on then, Carl, who do you work for?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It matters a lot. I’m an FBI agent. Fraternising with criminals isn’t exactly a key part of our instruction manual.’
‘You have an instruction manual?’ Logan said, smiling.
Grainger tried her best not to, but she couldn’t help but reciprocate the smile. Inside she cursed herself for letting her guard down so easily. But she knew why it was. His confidence and embattled appearance gave it away – Logan was an alpha male. Just like her father. Just like Tom, her ex-husband. She couldn’t help but feel at ease with men like that. Even though she knew it rarely worked out in her favour.
‘And anyway, I’m not a criminal,’ Logan added.
‘The police obviously think you are.’
‘And they’re always right? So how did the FBI get involved in this?’
‘You avoided my question about who you work for,’ she said. ‘Again.’
Although she was pretty sure she knew the answer. She guessed he was an intelligence agent of some sort. What she didn’t know was who he worked for or what his brief was. He said he was trying to find Modena. But there really wasn’t any way yet to know whether she could trust him on that.
‘And you avoided mine,’ Logan said.
She’d had enough of this. If this was going to work, one of them had to start doing the talking.
‘Fine. I’m an agent for the FBI. I’m working here in Paris on the authority of the French police – the Police nationale. Quite simple really. I’m here to help them find Frank Modena. I have full jurisdiction for carrying out law enforcement duties with identical powers to the local police. So I could actually just arrest you myself if I wanted to.’
‘Well, you obviously don’t want to then.’
‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t.’
‘You don’t want to because you know that I can help you just as much as you can help me.’
‘Well, so far it seems I’m helping you. I’m still waiting for you to explain how you can help me.’
‘You’ll see.’
‘Well come on then, I’ve told you about me. So what about you? What are you doing here?’
‘I’m here to help the local police as well. It’s just that they don’t know it yet. Like I said, we’re on the same team.’
‘So you keep saying. Except apparently you think it’s okay to shoot at people from your own team.’
Logan ignored her dig. Grainger glanced over at him then back at the road ahead. He was looking down at his hands, which were trembling. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him hold his hands up, turning them over, examining them, as though the answer to what was making it happen would suddenly appear to him.
‘What’s wrong?’ Grainger asked, unconcerned about prying, her eyes still focused on the road.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Logan snapped.
‘Anxiety?’ Grainger said.
‘What?’
‘Is it anxiety? Is that what’s making your hands do that? I’ve seen it before. Used to happen to my dad all the time.’
‘I’m not anxious,’ Logan said defensively.
Grainger glanced back and forth at Logan as she drove, her intrigue growing. She watched as he pressed his hands down onto his thighs. The trembling stopped. But as soon as he lifted them up again it came back.
‘How did he stop it?’ Logan asked.
‘My dad? Never did. Got worse and worse his whole life. Wasn’t just the hands, though. It affected him in all sorts of ways. But the hands were always a tell-tale sign for me.’
She knew on the outside her face was calm. But even talking about her father briefly brought all of the painful emotions flooding back. Her dad. The one truly good thing she’d had in her life. And he’d been taken away from her so cruelly.
‘Yeah, well,’ Logan said, ‘I’m not anxious. I’ve just had a rough day.’
‘That’s what he used to say.’
Logan turned away from her, looking out of the passenger window. She got the point. Something had happened to him, but despite her curiosity, she wasn’t going push it. Even if she did, why would he tell her anything? She had plenty of her own baggage that she had no intention of going into with a man she’d just met.
But his face now, the worry and pain in his eyes, was so different to the action man she’d met in the garage. And she couldn’t help but feel empathy at his unexpected vulnerability. Perhaps she’d been wrong about him. Perhaps there was more to him than met the eye.
‘So just how do you think you can help me, Carl?’
‘I’m going to help you find Frank Modena.’
‘And what makes you think I can’t do that myself?’
‘Maybe you could. But I’ll get there first. Because I’m trying to find him using whatever means I can because that’s what I do: the dirty work that you and the police can’t do or won’t do.’
She knew exactly what he meant by that. She’d come across his type before. And in a way his words made her feel more at ease. Because help from a man who wasn’t constrained by the same rules, regulations and laws as the FBI was exactly what she needed. But his bravado on its own wasn’t going to be enough.
‘If you want me to trust you,’ she said, taking her eyes off the road and looking over at him again for just a second, ‘you’re going to have to give me more than that. You need to tell me what you know. And what it is you’re going to do next.’
He paused again but she could see he was mulling it over. And eventually he obliged.
‘I’ve been in Paris for two days,’ he said, looking out of his side window. ‘This morning I went to see an African by the name of Thierry Djourou. When I asked him questions he didn’t like, he and his men tried to kill me. They failed.’
Grainger noticed Logan turn to face her again.
‘But I got a name,’ he said. ‘Richard Blakemore.’
Grainger held her breath, not wanting to show any reaction to the name.
‘I got back to my hotel some time after that,’ Logan carried on, ‘and then two guys followed me to that car park. One English, called Johnny; the other Eastern European, I think, and called Lorik. They both pulled guns on me. Johnny ended up dead. Lorik drove off.
‘Oh, and add into the mix a pretty well-known terrorist called Youssef Selim. Some way or other, this all links back to Modena. At least I think it does, but I’m not sure how yet.
‘How does all that sound to you?’
‘Djourou’s dead,’ Grainger said almost immediately after he’d finished his monologue. ‘Don’t worry,’ she added, seeing the perplexed look on his face. ‘I know you didn’t do it. The man who is now lying dead in that car park paid a visit to Djourou not long after you left. It was pretty nasty, from what I’ve heard. He and his friend were both hacked up with a machete. The police weren’t even sure which body parts belonged to which man. It was a bloodbath.’
‘So you were keeping tabs on Djourou?’ Logan said.
‘Maybe. Maybe we were keeping tabs on you.’
‘So what else do you know?’ Logan asked. ‘What do you k
now about Blakemore?’
Her brain whirred as she thought about how to answer the question. In the end she lied. ‘I know his name because you just told me it. That’s it.’
She could tell by the glare on his face that he didn’t believe her answer, but he didn’t press her on it.
‘So who is he?’ Grainger asked.
‘I think Blakemore’s either behind this or has a good idea who is,’ Logan said.
‘And why do you think that? There’s a pretty convincing video that suggests otherwise.’
‘It wasn’t convincing to me.’
‘Well, don’t forget about Youssef Selim. You said yourself that he’s involved in this. The video, Selim, a known terrorist – they all seem to point to the same thing to me.’
‘You don’t need to tell me about Selim,’ Logan said.
The tone in his voice was enough to ward Grainger off asking why. And she didn’t understand why she was arguing the point. She knew Blakemore was involved. What she didn’t know was how or why Selim fitted into it. And that was what worried her most.
‘So where exactly are you taking us?’ Grainger asked.
‘We’re going to pay a visit to Richard Blakemore,’ Logan said.
Chapter 26
The rain clouds that had covered Paris earlier in the day had now all but cleared, leaving behind a deep blue sky. Dusk would soon be upon them and the low autumn sun was casting long shadows over the buildings that they passed.
They had left the A86 motorway ten minutes ago, moving onto narrower, more rural roads as they moved further away from the city. The further they drove, the more Grainger seemed to loosen up. But Logan wasn’t yet sure how this was all going to work. He wasn’t used to pairing up with people. And he didn’t know that their agendas were even compatible. At least for now, though, they were in this together.
‘I didn’t know the FBI worked overseas,’ Logan said, breaking the silence.
Grainger looked at him, her left eyebrow raised as though surprised at what he’d said.
‘We do,’ she said. ‘More than you’d think.’
‘Because you’re asked to or because you force your way into things?’ Logan said, being deliberately contentious. Though he’d said it with a smile on his face.
‘Do you mean me personally or the FBI?’
‘The FBI.’
‘You think that’s what we do? Force our way into things? What, because we’re American?’
‘Something like that.’
She shook her head and gave a tut but didn’t rise to the bait.
‘So do you buy the whole terrorist thing?’ Logan said.
‘Why wouldn’t I? It’s pretty cut and dry, isn’t it?’
‘If you say so.’
‘Why are you so cynical?’
‘It’s just the way I am.’
‘Modena was here talking about Gitmo, you know. You shouldn’t underestimate just how much ill feeling there is towards America over that.’
‘I thought he was one of those trying to get it closed down,’ Logan said.
‘Well, that’s what he was saying, but it’s not like they’ve been making much progress. It wouldn’t surprise me if it took another five or ten years before the final prisoners leave that place.’
‘Now who’s the cynic?’
‘It’s hard not to be cynical,’ Grainger retorted. ‘Modena isn’t that much different to any other politician really.’
The tone of her voice suggested this was a subject she had some strong feelings about. Logan wanted to probe that, whether to play devil’s advocate or because he had strong feelings himself he wasn’t sure.
‘So you’d rather they just released all of those prisoners today?’ Logan questioned. ‘So they can go on their way and bomb the hell out of whatever they want?’
‘Who says any of them are bombers? People are being held there without trial, without legal representation. No-one in the public knows why most of them are even there.’
‘That’s because most of them are there as a result of pretty top-secret intelligence,’ Logan said. ‘Intelligence that would cost lives if it were made public.’
‘So who gets to decide whether that intelligence was good enough?’ Grainger said, animated now. Logan had touched on something here. ‘You? Me? The whole point about democracy, about a free society, is that everyone should be treated as equal. Everyone has the same rights. How would you like it if you were locked up for days, months, years without anyone ever telling you why you were there? Without there being any way for you to get out?’
‘If I was a terrorist, then that would be nothing more than I deserved.’
‘I don’t think we’re going to see eye to eye on this one,’ she said, exasperated. ‘How could someone like you understand? It’s people like you who put those prisoners in there. You’re probably used to taking actions just because you’re told to. And without any kind of forethought as to why you’re being asked to do it, or any kind of due process.’
‘You seem to think you know a lot about me,’ Logan said.
‘Not you. But I know how these things work.’
‘People like me, as you put it, serve a purpose,’ Logan said. The emotion in his voice was clear now. He had been trying to hit a nerve with her, but she had turned this round onto him in expert fashion.
‘And what purpose is that?’ she asked.
‘In your rose-tinted world of due process, you think everyone gets a fair crack at the whip. But you ask me, not everyone in this world is equal. Some people don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else. And that’s their choice to have ended up like that. For those people I’m happy to do whatever I think is necessary to make them pay.’
‘But where do you draw the line on who falls into that camp? And who gets to decide their fate? I don’t see how there can be one set of rules for some and another for others.’
‘I’ve never done anything that I didn’t feel was justified,’ Logan said. ‘And for me, that’s good enough.’
Though that wasn’t strictly true. There was one incident where he wasn’t sure he had done the right thing. The one that he still had nightmares about.
‘Look, why don’t we lighten the conversation a bit?’ he suggested. ‘This is all getting a bit heavy.’
She tutted again. But this time she was smiling.
‘What a copout,’ she said. ‘How about the weather? We could talk about that. Isn’t that what you British love to do?’
‘You’d understand if you ever lived there,’ Logan said, reciprocating the smile.
Despite their differing views, the debate seemed to have lifted the mood further. Logan wouldn’t admit it, but he actually agreed with many of her points. But in the real world, things would never be as clear cut as she wanted them to be.
Logan looked over at Grainger, only turning his head slightly so as not to be too obvious. Without the anger that had clouded her earlier, there was a real softness to her features. And she was very pretty. He couldn’t help but notice the white band of skin at the base of her wedding finger. She turned and saw him looking, reflexively covered it up and rubbed it with her other hand.
Neither of them said anything.
He got the idea. Whatever the story was, it was obviously a painful one and not one to be broached today.
‘Why don’t we stop in this next town?’ Logan said. ‘It’s only a few minutes away. Let’s see if we can get another car. We need to dump this one anyway. And I could do with some food. I’m famished.’
She laughed. ‘Man, you guys are always the same.’
The town they stopped at was on the edge of the Paris commuter belt. It didn’t seem to have anything to it other than dense housing and a few shops. It was now just after four in the afternoon and was still relatively quiet. Within a half hour or so the roads would probably be heaving as the commuters poured home.
They parked up outside a cafe at the end of a small row of shops and went inside, ordering their foo
d and drink separately before taking it back to the car.
‘I think it’s funny you picked an American car,’ Logan said, getting back into the Ford.
‘Something wrong with that?’
‘Just as well we didn’t have to try too hard to outrun the police earlier.’
‘Actually I didn’t choose this, it was all they had. So you don’t like American cars?’
‘Some are all right. But in general I find them to be just like American people.’
She sat and waited for him to expand. When he didn’t, she said, ‘No, I’m lost. You’re going to have to explain that one to me.’
‘Overweight, slow, inefficient, unforgiving.’
‘Wow, way to go, negatively stereotyping three hundred million people. And I’m not too happy you put me in that bracket.’
He could tell from the look on her face that she knew he was joking.
‘Yeah, but tell me it’s not true,’ he quipped. ‘Most of the time at least. Present company excluded, of course.’
‘How about well-built, powerful, beautiful?’ she said.
‘Nah, I can’t think of any like that. Are you sure you’re not talking about the Germans?’
‘Are we still talking about cars, or people?’
‘Good question,’ he said.
She gave him that smile again. What a smile.
‘So, you got any other pearls of wisdom? Any other countries or races you want to insult today?’
‘No. I’m good.’
They began to tuck into their food. Logan was still making his way through his sandwich and strong black coffee when his mobile rang. He put his food on the dashboard and took the phone out of his pocket. When he saw it was Mackie calling, he hesitated. The call rang out with Logan still staring at the screen. He couldn’t face Mackie. Not yet. He knew he would be in a whole heap of shit for what had happened in the car park, not to mention the police chase afterwards. If Mackie had been unimpressed with Logan’s antics at the hospital yesterday then he really was going to hit the roof now. But Logan was getting close. He could feel it.