A Foreign Country (26 page)

That was perhaps the worst night, the one that François always remembered. But Slimane’s constant taunts were debilitating to his spirit. Whenever he brought food, for example, whenever he emptied the bucket, whenever he thought Akim was getting too close or too friendly to ‘the little boy’, Slimane would make a remark, put the gun in François’ groin, come up behind him and rip at the hairs on the nape of his neck or slap him hard around the head. François wondered if a braver man would have fought back or tried harder to escape. It made sense to try to run. If they had killed Philippe and Jeannine, they were surely going to kill him.

Often, at night, when he was on shift, Slimane would wake François as a kind of sleep deprivation for kicks, a way of passing the time through the boredom of a nightwatch. So François would sleep during the days, resting on his bed listening to the frogs and birds in the garden, dreaming of Paris, of his parents brought back to life and protecting him from what had happened. Then, in time, he began to dream of his real mother, of Amelia Levene, but had no picture of her in his mind’s eye, nor of the man who was his father. Did he look like either of them? Perhaps François was now too old for any family resemblance to have lasted. He had never wanted to find them, not since Philippe and Jeannine had given him the news of his adoption, but towards the third week of his captivity François began to pray that he would be rescued by them, that his real parents would somehow pay the ransom and return him to his life in Paris. At times, François would sob like a child for the mother he had never seen, for the father he had never known, but not so that his captors would hear him or see his face, never so that Slimane could enjoy the pleasure of his distress. François at least kept that dignity. But everything was complicated by Vincent. Everything was made worse by the knowledge that another man had replaced him, stolen his life, and was already making a relationship with Amelia.

‘Vincent’s living in your house,’ Slimane told him, day after day, night after night. ‘He’s wearing your clothes, he’s fucking your girls. He even went on holiday with your mother. Did you know that? Luc says she
loves
him, they can’t get enough of each other. He’s going to go and live with her in England. How do you feel about that, François? Amelia’s got the son she always wanted. So why would she ever think about cashing him in for a dumb prick like you?’

Amelia rang the man who was no longer her son, the man who had so humiliated her, less than an hour after meeting Kell in Queensway. She had made the call from the kitchen of the open-plan office using her private mobile. Kell, standing a few feet away, watched her intently, amazed by Amelia’s ability to continue with the masquerade of maternal affection.

‘François? It’s Amelia. I’ve missed you, darling. How are you? How are things in Paris?’

They had talked for almost ten minutes, ‘François’ relating the story of his journey home via Marseille, the narrative of his lies still watertight, his facility for deceit as accomplished as any Amelia could recall. She wondered if the man Kell had identified as ‘Luc’ was seated alongside CUCKOO in Paris, listening to his conversation, just as Kell was listening to hers: two sets of spies, in London and Paris, both working under the assumption that they held the upper hand.

‘What are you doing this weekend?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ CUCKOO replied. ‘Why?’

‘It’s just that I wondered if you would be free to come and stay at my house in Wiltshire?’

‘Oh …’

‘Perhaps it’s too soon?’

‘No, no.’ CUCKOO sounded enthused, as well he might; the invitation would be welcomed by his masters in Paris. ‘Will Giles be there?’

‘No.’ She glanced at Kell, who frowned, as though confused by CUCKOO’s interest in Amelia’s husband. ‘I think he’s away this weekend. Why, do you want to meet him?’

‘At this moment I prefer if it’s just the two of us, you know?’ CUCKOO replied. ‘Is that OK?’

‘Of course, darling.’ She generated a perfectly timed pause. ‘Does that mean you’ll come?’

‘I would love to.’

‘That’s wonderful news. I can’t wait.’ Amelia recalled CUCKOO’s insistence on taking the ferry to Marseille, rather than a flight direct to Paris and decided on a quick test of his cover. ‘Can I send you a ticket for the plane?’

‘I prefer not to fly, remember?’ he replied instantly, and she could only marvel at the speed of his lies. What a fool she had been, what a dupe. And now she would have to live a lie of her own, to ensure that there was no difference between her behaviour in Tunis and her behaviour in Wiltshire. She would have to play the part of a caring mother, embracing him, smiling at his conversation, taking an interest in his affairs. Amelia dreaded that and yet she longed for the moment when she would have her revenge. From the great joy of the reunion in Tunis she had been cruelly returned to the tunnel of her working life, a place of ambition, of dedication to a cause, but a place without personal fulfilment. Perhaps it was where she belonged.

‘I’m starving,’ she told Kell after she had hung up. She saw her hand lingering on the sleeve of his coat, one of her habitual ways of controlling men. ‘Take me somewhere to eat?’

‘Of course.’

They had walked a few hundred metres to a Lebanese restaurant on Westbourne Grove and set about formulating the plan to find François. Sitting over open menus, waiting for a bottle of wine in the bustle of the dining room, it was decided that, in order to keep the operation secret from Truscott, Haynes and Marquand, Kell would assemble a small team of trusted contacts off the books at Vauxhall Cross. He suggested bringing Barbara Knight over from Nice and told Amelia that he would call her in the morning to arrange the trip. Having ordered their food, he sent a text to Elsa Cassani, asking if it would be possible for her to take the next available flight to London. Elsa responded within fifteen minutes (‘For you, Tom, anything!’) and Kell smiled. He knew a former MI5 Tech-Ops officer named Harold Mowbray, now private sector, who would be able to work in tandem with Elsa on CUCKOO’s email servers and mobile phone networks. They would also need a surveillance man to tail CUCKOO once he had left Amelia’s house in the country. Kell had an old contact from his days working a desk in London, a former Royal Marine named Kevin Vigors, who would work in return for cash-in-hand.

‘I’ll need money,’ he told Amelia. ‘A lot of it. These are good people and they’ll all need paying.’

‘It can be arranged.’ He wondered if she would lean on Giles for the cash. ‘I’ll see what I can dig up on Luc Javeau, but I can’t be away from the Office this week. You’ll be on your own until I get down to Wiltshire on Friday. The next few days are wall-to-wall with meetings, then the PM on Wednesday. Is that all right?’

Kell nodded. ‘It’s fine.’ It was better that she should remain out of the picture once CUCKOO had returned to Paris. If anything went wrong, Amelia needed to be deniable. ‘What about our military options?’ he asked.

‘What about them?’

He tried to plant the idea as delicately as he could. ‘If we find François, it may be necessary to go in with force. If it goes to ransom, they will almost certainly attempt to kill him, whether or not you pay.’

‘I understand that.’ By now, they were halfway through their meal. Amelia pushed what remained of her food to the side of her plate. Kell mistook the silence as she wiped her mouth for disquiet.

‘All I’m saying is, we need to get to them before it gets to that stage. We will need to enjoy an element of surprise …’

‘I know what you meant, Tom.’ She looked across the room, a clatter of plates and glasses being cleared from a nearby table. ‘We have people in France, in northern Spain, who could do a job like that. But I don’t know how to get it past Simon. To use SAS would require … finesse.’

‘Forget SAS. We’d have to go private sector.’

Amelia touched the simple gold chain around her neck, tugging at it for ideas. ‘As long as they’re not gung-ho. Those guys sit around for weeks on end, cleaning their bloody rifles, dreaming of the good old days at Hereford. I don’t want them going in all guns blazing. I want people with experience, people who know their way around France.’

‘Of course.’

‘I’d want you to go in with them, Tom. Can you promise me that? Keep an eye on them?’

It was an astonishing request, not least because, throughout his long career, Kell had never so much as fired a shot in anger. Nevertheless, he was in no mood to deny Amelia what she wanted.

‘I promise,’ he said. ‘Of course, if it comes to that, I’ll go with them.’ He found a half-smile that seemed to reassure her. ‘We will get to François,’ he said. ‘Whatever happens, we will bring him home.’

Vincent Cévennes arrived at St Pancras station at 19.28 on Friday evening, his appearance noted by an ex-Special Branch associate of Kevin Vigors named Daniel Aldrich, who sent an email via BlackBerry to Kell with photo confirmation of the target passing the statue of Sir John Betjeman on the station concourse. Amelia, reluctant to spend any more time in CUCKOO’s company than was absolutely necessary, had arranged for a taxi to collect him from St Pancras and to drive him south-west to Wiltshire. Standing in a crowd of pedestrians at the edge of Euston Road, Aldrich watched as the driver held out a sheet of A4 card on which he had written ‘Mr Francis Mallot’ in black marker pen. CUCKOO, spotting the message, handed him his bags, which were placed in the boot of the car.

The taxi was soon pulling out into the pell-mell of Friday evening traffic. Aldrich did not attempt to follow the vehicle from London, nor had Kell’s team wired it for sound; it was extremely unlikely that Vincent would risk making a telephone call to his controllers in the presence of a driver whom he would surely assume was employed by Amelia. Instead, Aldrich sent a second email to Kell.

Confirm CUCKOO has two bags. Black leather computer shoulder holdall + black moulded plastic suitcase, wheeled. Carrying m/phone, also Hermes gift bag. Vehicle leaving StP now, 19.46, navy blue Renault Espace n/plate X164 AEO. Driver heading west along Euston Road.

Kell received the email on a laptop in the kitchen of Amelia’s house and announced to the assembled team that CUCKOO would likely arrive in Chalke Bissett at around nine-thirty. Harold Mowbray, with Kell’s assistance, had spent the previous twenty-four hours equipping the house, top to bottom, with surveillance cameras and voice-activated microphones. Amelia had come direct from Vauxhall Cross at lunchtime and suggested that Vincent should sleep in the larger of two spare bedrooms. On the assumption that he might ask to move to a different room, the bedroom to the left of the landing had also been fitted with cameras and microphones, the first in a gilt mirror fixed to the north wall, the second in the frame of an oil painting hanging to the left of the bed.

There were two bathrooms on the first floor of the house. The first was en suite in Amelia’s bedroom, the second located between CUCKOO’s room and a short, wallpapered corridor that connected it to the landing. This was the bathroom Vincent would use and it had also been rigged by Mowbray.

‘My experience, people do all sorts of strange things in toilets,’ he muttered, installing a miniature camera in the socket of a towel rail about six inches above the floor. ‘CUCKOO comes in here, thinking he’s got some privacy, he might drop his guard as well as his trousers. If he makes a call, we can catch it on the microphone. If he’s got stuff in his bags, we might see him go through it. Unless your frog goes looking for this shit, he’s not going to have a clue we’re watching him.’

There was a risk of French surveillance on the house, so Kell remained in the property as much as possible, to avoid being recognized as Stephen Uniacke. Susie Shand, Amelia’s literary-agent neighbour, had given permission for her house to be used as a base by Kell’s team. Shand herself was on holiday in Croatia, a signed copy of The Official Secrets Act tucked into her suitcase. The owners of the third house in this isolated corner of Chalke Bissett, Paul and Susan Hamilton, were used to strangers from London staying at Shand’s home and did not approach any member of Kell’s team to enquire what they were doing in the village. In the event of a conversation in the neighbourhood, the team had been briefed to pretend that they were members of the family visiting for the long weekend.

Shand’s house was a run-down cottage with low, worm-eaten beams about a minute’s walk from Amelia’s front door. Both houses looked out over a lush valley on the northern side and a steep hill to the south. Shand’s garden backed on to the western perimeter of Amelia’s property. The rooms in which the team had installed themselves were damp but comfortable and Kell found that he enjoyed the relative peace and tranquillity of the countryside after days of travel and cities. Their main operational centre was a large library lined with books given to Shand by the cream of London literary society. Barbara Knight, a lifelong bibliophile, found first editions of works by William Golding, Iris Murdoch and Julian Barnes, as well as a signed copy of
The Satanic Verses
.

It was in this room that Elsa Cassani set up shop, placing three laptop computers on a large oak dining table and nine separate surveillance screens on bookshelves that she dusted and cleared of books. The screens showed live feeds from each of the rooms in Amelia’s house; during a brief rain shower on Friday morning, the images blurred and flickered, but Kell was satisfied that they would have complete coverage of CUCKOO at all times. The only ‘black hole’ was a utility room in the northern corner of the house that he was unlikely to use.

Underneath the main window in the Shand library, Elsa had placed a mattress on which she slept at intermittent hours of the day beneath a duvet without a cover. She kept a bottle of Volvic beside this makeshift bed, some night creams and perfume, and an iPod that screamed and grunted whenever she plugged it into her ears. Harold was billeted upstairs in the smaller of two spare rooms. Kell was across the hall on a mattress that sagged like a hammock. Barbara, on account of her advanced years, was given the master bedroom.