‘A Decathlon,’ Julie answered. ‘Sells sporting equipment. Why?’
‘Why are you here on a weekday?’
‘I took the day off because I’m having furniture delivered this afternoon. I only moved into my new place last week,’ Julie said.
‘What have you heard from the office?’ Jonathan asked, moving his face closer to hers.
‘Jonathan,’ she said, looking stern. ‘You’re acting very strangely. I’m not sure I like this.’
‘Please, it’s really important,’ he said.
‘Nothing. Had no contact. Everything was fine when I left yesterday. Why? What’s going on? What are you doing here?’ Julie asked.
Jonathan looked around again.
Everything was a picture of shopping normality.
‘I have one final question. Then I’ll explain. Just bear with me, please! How many people at the office know where you live?’
‘Not many. Just my friends. I moved last week, and haven’t updated my details. So technically no one on the company side.’ Jonathan’s shoulders went down slightly, and he exhaled deeply.
I can’t be paranoid in thinking that everyone in the company is in on this, he thought.
As he looked into her eyes again, he decided to take the biggest chance he had ever taken in his life.
‘Sorry I was acting strangely,’ he said, thinking quickly. ‘A lot has happened over the last few days. Someone tried to kill me last night, so I’m understandably a little on edge.’
‘No!’ Julie exclaimed. ‘Kill you?’
‘Yes. Now, I may need your help. Julie, will you help me?’
‘Uh, sure,’ Julie responded, looking confused again.
During the ten-minute walk back to Julie’s flat, Jonathan attempted to tell her as much as he dared.
What he ended up doing was unburdening his soul in case he died and his entire life was in vain. He tried not to panic her by continually looking over his shoulder, but she seemed oblivious to any apparent danger as her warm brown eyes stayed fixed on him, wide with incredulity.
He would tell her something, she would exclaim ‘No! No!’ in her cute French voice, and he would fire back, ‘Yes! Yes!’
He managed to condense everything that had happened to him in the last few days since the report had been submitted. It was when they got to her front door and she inserted her key that her eyes opened even wider.
‘But Jonathan,’ she said, almost breathless. ‘If all this is true, then we are in great danger. Even now.’
‘Yes, Julie, yes. Before you turn that key, you still have a choice whether to help me or not. If you don’t – I understand. I’ll turn away right now, and disappear. All I ask is that you don’t speak of this to anyone until it has come out in the media.’
Julie hesitated, with her hand on the key in the door. She released the key and let her arm drop to her side.
She’s going to say no! he thought.
She turned to fully face him.
‘Come inside,’ she said, ‘and I’ll help you where I can for now.’
Jonathan breathed a sigh of relief as he followed her in.
Neither of them knew that as they had approached Julie’s door, they walked through a sensor beam hidden in a bush on the path to the door. Walking through the beam had triggered a signal on a laptop in a room in central Paris; the operator of the laptop was looking at multiple video feeds and continually switching to feeds with activity – like people walking through sensors.
Once it had become clear that Jonathan was not killed in the hotel explosion, the people charged with killing him had set up an operations room to find him and complete their task. Using the considerable resources at their disposable, they had managed to hack into many of the city’s CCTV systems to try to pick Jonathan up again. They were also counting on him potentially contacting someone he knew from the French office of his company. On the off-chance that this would happen, they had in the last twenty-four hours surreptitiously installed a sensor and small camera near the entrance of the home of all 120 company employees of the Paris office. The operator of the laptop turned on a small camera, no bigger than a lipstick tube, that was attached to the security light outside Julie’s flat. The picture was in black and white, and grainy, but the operator could easily see Julie and a man fitting Jonathan’s description.
The operator typed a text message containing a code and Julie’s address into a mobile phone, and hit the send button. The phone beeped almost immediately with a reply, and the screen flashed: 20 mins.
Julie’s flat was tiny, even by Parisian standards. There was a short corridor off the front door, which led into the main living area. The main area consisted of a small kitchen and lounge. French doors at the back of the property overlooked a tiny, unkempt garden. On the other side of the lounge were stairs, which went up to the single bedroom and bathroom. Julie directed Jonathan to the couch in the lounge.
‘I’ll make us some coffee,’ Julie said, filling a shiny silver kettle and switching it on to boil. ‘You must be hungry. Would you like some fruit?’
Jonathan was hungry. He had been eating mostly processed snacks recently. Fruit sounded great. He nodded and smiled.
Julie handed him an apple and a small knife on a plate as he sat on the couch.
It was a scene of normality, and Jonathan was savouring every moment of it. He felt he could almost relax, but dare not. Julie would ask him soon enough how she could help, or what the plan was.
The truth was, he didn’t know and didn’t have one.
‘It all sounds so crazy,’ Julie said as she made coffee. ‘Stuff like this actually happens.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s probably too dangerous asking you to help me. I’ll have a drink and go. I don’t want to make any trouble for you.’
Julie brought two steaming cups of coffee from the kitchen and sat beside him on the sofa.
‘Well, you’re not so far,’ she said with a smile. ‘We’re just having coffee.’
Jonathan smiled back and felt himself relax a little.
‘Tell you what,’ Julie said, ‘while we’re having this drink, let’s not talk about it, then afterwards we can figure out where you should go next. Did you know the bones of six million Parisians are stacked in the old quarry tunnels under the city?’
‘What?’ Jonathan asked, surprised. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Just changing the subject,’ she said with a smile as she held her cup in both hands. ‘Better than talking about the usual tourist things like the Eiffel Tower – so boring.’
Jonathan laughed and asked further about the mysterious bones.
Over the next twenty minutes their conversation was wide-ranging: from the joys and perils of living in Paris and French cuisine to hobbies, holidays and home furnishings.
There were never any awkward silences and they were comfortable in each other’s company. Jonathan could feel himself really starting to like her.
‘Look,’ he said, turning serious again, ‘I really don’t want anything to happen to you. I somehow got myself into this mess, and I don’t want to drag you down with me.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘If I do want to help you then it’s my decision. I’ve been thinking about it since we got here and I’m going to help you, and I’ll tell you why. Jonathan, my grandfather was in the resistance in the war. While he was very scared and had friends who were killed, always for the rest of his life he also said it was the time he felt most alive. He really enjoyed his retirement because he could look back and know, really know, that he had made a difference in this world. He’d stood up to the presence of evil and was part of overthrowing it. How many opportunities do we really get like that these days? To be honest, my life is boring. I hate it. I get up, do admin for a bloody oil company, and come home to cook dinner. I don’t believe this type of existence is what we’re here on this planet for.’ She grabbed his arm with excitement. ‘Of course I’ll help you!’ she exclaimed. ‘We ma
y die, but we may also get to live, really live – more than anyone else in this time that we have. This is what life is about.’
Jonathan was stunned.
‘Wow, I never realized you were so philosophical,’ he said.
‘I am French,’ she said with a shrug as she stood up and headed for the kitchen. ‘I’ll make us another coffee, and then we decide what to do.’
Jonathan couldn’t stop smiling.
Across the road from the flat, an unmarked car pulled up, driven by a man in a black coat. He cut the engine and pulled a nine-millimetre Glock pistol from within his jacket. From underneath the driver’s seat, he pulled out a black zip-up bag. He took out a gun silencer and a door entry kit containing lock-picking tools. The man carried on watching the door as he screwed the silencer onto the Glock. Once it was fixed tightly, he put the gun into his jacket, smoothly got out of the car, and headed towards Julie’s front door.
As Jonathan went back to slicing an apple, he looked up to see how Julie was doing. His eye was caught by a disappearing shard of white from a closing door, followed by a growing black reflection in the silver kettle on the kitchen counter.
It was someone coming up the hallway!
Jonathan was on his feet and lunging before he could even think about what he was doing.
A hand holding a gun was rising from behind the hallway wall, to point at Julie’s back in the kitchen. Jonathan still held his knife as he moved towards the disembodied hand. He thrust forward with his right arm, stabbing the knife into the back of the hand till it made contact with the hard surface of the gun handle.
There was a grunt from behind the wall as the gun dropped. A split second later, a left fist came flying out of the gloom to hit Jonathan squarely in the chest.
The air was knocked out of Jonathan’s lungs and he staggered backwards till the backs of his legs were up against the coffee table. The burly attacker was around the corner now, and advancing on Jonathan quickly. Jonathan feebly tried throwing a punch. The man parried with ease and counter-attacked by punching him in the stomach, then elbowing him in the face as he dropped forward.
Jonathan’s eyesight exploded in fireworks of multi-coloured light. The man took one step back and launched a full sidekick into Jonathan’s torso. The impact sent Jonathan flying over the coffee table and crashing into the television in the corner. As he sailed through the air he was vaguely aware of Julie screaming in the background.
The assassin bent over and grunted again as he jerked the knife out of his hand. He spun around toward the kitchen to throw the knife at Julie, but he froze halfway through his movement.
‘Stop!’ Julie screamed, pointing the gun that he had dropped straight at his chest.
The attacker’s lips parted in an evil sneer.
‘You have not killed before,’ he said in a thick Eastern European accent.
‘True,’ Julie said calmly. ‘But I have fired a gun before.’ She lowered the weapon and pulled the trigger – discharging a round into the assassin’s right leg.
The man cried out and hit the floor, whereupon Julie took a step forward and shot him in the left leg.
He cried out in pain again and writhed as he held his legs.
Jonathan was getting up onto his knees in the corner.
As Julie kept the gun trained on the assassin, Jonathan picked up a stone sculpture of what seemed to be two people hugging that was next to the television. He shuffled forward on his knees around the coffee table and hit the attacker over the head with it. The man grunted and turned to look at Jonathan – pure venom in his eyes.
Jonathan countered by belting him even harder with the stone sculpture on the temple at the side of his head, knocking him unconscious.
The assassin’s body collapsed in a crumpled heap.
Jonathan put his hands on his chest and face where he had been hit, and looked up at Julie in amazement as she lowered the gun.
‘You were incredible!’ he exclaimed. ‘How? How?’
‘It was premeditated,’ she shrugged, nonchalantly flicking on the safety switch of the weapon before placing it on the kitchen counter.
She tossed her hair back with her right hand. ‘I wouldn’t kill him,’ she said, ‘but you always see those situations in the movies, where they don’t use the gun and then the villain gets the upper hand again. I’m always screaming at the screen ‘Just shoot him in the legs!’ It’s obvious – so that’s what I did.’
‘But where did you learn to shoot like that? Jonathan asked, still astounded by the entire scene. ‘I mean, you live in suburban Paris.’
‘Ah, yes. But my uncle, he doesn’t. He has a huge farm in central France, and an arsenal of weaponry. We spent some summers as kids, shooting cans off walls. It was great fun.’
‘Not to mention life-savingly handy!’ Jonathan affirmed.
‘You’re welcome.’ She gave a little curtsey.
Jonathan was still holding his head where he had been elbowed. As the adrenalin ebbed away, the volume of his pain was rapidly being turned up.
They both stood for a few seconds, contemplating the unconscious killer in the lounge.
‘We have to get out of here,’ Jonathan said.
‘Agreed, we leave in one minute – out of the rear door. My car is parked one street away from here. He probably has friends on the way.’
Jonathan used the edge of the kitchen counter for support as he stood up unsteadily. Julie came forward and supported his arms. He leant against her. The pain subsided slightly.
‘Julie, I have to get away from you,’ Jonathan said. ‘Look what happened, and you were only with me for fifteen minutes.’
‘And go where? My usual haunts? This goon here would’ve let someone know you were with me. They’ll be looking for me too with the same intensity. Probably easier if we run together.’
‘I’m sorry I got you into this. Really.’
‘Don’t give me that,’ she said as she released his arms. She picked up the gun and began wiping it down for fingerprints before putting it into her handbag. ‘I made the decision on my own. Right now we have to get out of here. Then get out of Paris. Just let me grab another bag, some toiletries, and we’re off.’
‘What do we do about this guy?’ Jonathan asked, as he nudged the unconscious man with his shoe.
Julie was moving round the room, quickly wiping down the gun and anything that Jonathan had touched.
‘We’ll be out in thirty seconds. I’ll call the police from the car pretending to be a neighbour, and say I heard gunshots from the apartment. They’ll pick him up for burglary, and whatever else they decide was going on from this scene.’
Jonathan moved to wait by the back door.
‘Any suggestions for where to go once we’re in the car?’ he asked.
Julie was halfway up the stairs. ‘Let’s decide once we’re driving,’ she yelled down over her shoulder.
Jonathan looked through the French doors onto the small patio. He was dumbfounded on two counts. Firstly, at the scale of what an amazing woman Julie was, and secondly, reflecting on how many resources his enemies had – if they were able to watch every apartment of everyone he may have known in Paris.
16
London
Deep within the confines of the MI6 building on the South Bank of the Thames, Harry Shaftsbury felt his bowels shift within the windowless, soundproofed meeting room. Across the expansive meeting table the cold tungsten eyes of the head of MI6, Sir William Gladstone, bored into him.
He was desperately trying to stop himself from twitching, but could just feel his left eyebrow starting to go. With the rest of his willpower he tried to prevent himself from sweating. No use.
‘So,’ Gladstone said flatly. ‘This contact is your roommate, eh?’ He raised a perfect eyebrow of suspicion. ‘Aren’t you just a bloody analyst? Sounds like a hell of a coincidence to me.’
Harry desperately grabbed the edge of his eye to abate the twitching.
‘Uh, yes, sir,’ H
arry said awkwardly. ‘But … but the coincidence is not as great as you may think. Neither of us are at the stage in our careers where we can afford to live in central London on our salaries, as well as eat, sir.’
Gladstone cocked his head to one side as though listening for a far off sound.
‘Is that impudence I hear?’
‘Oh, no, sir,’ Harry said quickly.
‘Better not be. Or you’ll be analysing somewhere quite … nasty. We still have a few nasty places left on earth where we can send those who don’t cut the mustard.’
Around the table, the other men shifted uncomfortably. Three of the senior intelligence chiefs had come through their careers being pummelled with workplace political correctness and recurrent programmes on ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusiveness of working styles’, which reinforced the message that you must never yell at anyone or fire them for brazen ineptitude. Not Gladstone though: he was completely immune to political correctness. While he was in charge, he did things his way.
One of the intelligence chiefs was Harry’s boss, in whom Harry had initially confided about Jonathan. The current meeting had quickly been convened as a result, since it was their first break in the case.
After confiding in his boss that morning, before Harry knew it, he was before the head of the service, whose ruthless reputation preceded him.
Harry gave up on the eye and just closed it. He knew he had about five minutes till sweat patches would start showing on his arms.
‘So, say it’s a coincidence,’ Gladstone intoned. ‘Bloody good break for us, then. A man with credible information actually calls one of our analysts. Still, I’ve seen stranger things happen in this job, that’s for certain. We’re confident the source is credible?’
One of the other men leaned inwards. ‘Yes sir, we’ve checked the source out. He’s a consultant within the company. His record is perfect, never even had a parking ticket. So the hypothesis is that he’s seen something he shouldn’t have, and is marked for elimination.’
‘Good,’ said Gladstone in approval. ‘So we take the break. Purpose of this meeting is to ascertain if this Marshall character contacting us is credible, and if it has any bearing on our mole in the oil company. In summary, he does seem a credible source, and in no way affects the status of our existing operative. So now we have this new man as well as our mole in the company to move the case forward. You, analyst ...’ Gladstone directed his cool ire towards Harry again. ‘Did your man mention anyone else trying to get information out of the oil company, or word of anyone leaking company secrets?’
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