The Geneva Trap

Chapter 51

Liz caught the first flight to Marseilles, still shaken by Edward’s phone call of the evening before. His account of the fracas when Antoine arrived unexpectedly at Cathy’s house had been chilling. He’d stressed that both Teddy and Cathy were all right, but she could read between the lines and knew he was minimising the danger they had all faced. It had clearly been a close call with Antoine, and could easily have ended in something horrendous.

René had been clever. He’d sent Antoine to Brighton three days earlier than he’d said he himself would show up there. His claim when he was arrested at Le Barbot that Antoine had gone to Marseilles had been a completely plausible red herring.

Marseilles. The place seemed to be the key to everything that had happened recently: to Cathy’s problems with the commune, to the efforts to subvert Operation Clarity; to the meetings with Sorsky; and to the Russian intelligence officer, Kubiak, who had supervised Sorsky’s expatriation and afterwards been seen in Marseilles. Liz gazed out of the window of the plane as they began to descend over the Massif Central towards the Mediterranean, and the pilot announced that in twenty minutes they would be on the ground.

It was disappointing that her interview with Park Woo-jin hadn’t provided more information. He had seemed to her, by the end, to be telling the truth, but the trouble was that he didn’t know much beyond his own story.

Bokus had rung her the previous day about the man they knew as Mr Dong. South Korean Intelligence had identified him from the photographs as a senior North Korean intelligence officer, Dong Shin-soo, which made complete sense of Park Woo-jin’s story. Searches of the flight manifests for the arrivals from Marseilles that the Singhs’ taxi firm had met indicated that he travelled on a French passport. But why he was based in Marseilles remained a mystery, and her conviction that Kubiak’s trips there were connected in some way to Park Woo-jin’s spying at the MOD was still not backed by any hard evidence. Liz knew Marseilles was a cosmopolitan port, full of immigrants from North Africa and further afield, where no doubt the answers to many mysteries could be found. But would it provide the answers she was looking for?

She caught the airport train to the centre of the city. By now it was almost eleven o’clock in the morning and the streets around the port were buzzing with activity. She had rung Martin the night before to arrange a meeting place and to tell him the news about Antoine. Now an extradition request was being sent to the British authorities.

Martin was waiting for her at the bar of a café in the old port, halfway along a cul-de-sac of small shops.

‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, kissing her on the cheek. ‘Is Cathy really all right? And how is Edward now?’

‘They’re both OK, thanks. Though pretty shaken up. Edward was very brave – he’s not exactly a spring chicken.’

‘No, but once a soldier, always a soldier.’

Liz suppressed a smile. Edward and Martin not only shared a military background but a fierce pride in it as well.

Martin said, ‘I feel very badly about Antoine.’

‘You mean that he slipped through the net? You’re not to blame. By the time René told you he’d sent him to Marseilles, Antoine was already at Cathy’s. We were supposed to stop him at the border, but he used a false passport. It must have been stolen, they think. It’s nobody’s fault – there’s not much Immigration can do when someone travels under a false name. Anyway,’ she said, ‘what are the plans for the Korean firm?’

‘We’ll go in first thing tomorrow morning. The local DCRI have had surveillance on the place for a few days now and they’ve got a pretty good idea of who goes in and out. They start work early – everyone should be in there by eight o’clock.’

‘Have there been any more sightings of Kubiak?’

‘None. So we considered waiting another day or so, to try and get him as well; he hasn’t been seen in Geneva for almost a week. But if he’s not here now, there’s no reason to think he’ll show up any time soon.’

‘Okay. The mystery for me is what the link is between him and this man Dong Shin-soo. We don’t know if Dong has anything to do with this office here – it’s a South Korean company after all, so if he were connected, it wouldn’t make much sense. And I still don’t understand the Russian involvement with the place.’ Martin looked down at his coffee. ‘Too many unanswered questions,’ he said. ‘I have to agree: it doesn’t make any sense.’

‘If you set out all the pieces in this little puzzle, you’re left with the choice of believing that there is a South Korean-North Korean-Russian plot, which is absurd, or…’ And Liz paused as she thought about the unspoken alternative.

‘Or?’ Martin asked gently.

‘One of the three isn’t who or what we think they are. Or – don’t say it isn’t complicated – they are who they say they are, but they’re also something else.’

Martin laughed. ‘Well, let’s hope we’ll know a lot more after tomorrow.’

‘What are you doing until then?’ asked Liz

‘I have to make some calls to Paris. Fézard has offered me the use of an office in the Préfecture. You’re welcome to come with me, but otherwise I thought we could meet up in an hour or so for lunch. There’s a bistro just down the street that I’m told is very good.’

Liz looked at Martin fondly, thinking how very French he was. In less than twenty-four hours they’d be going in with armed police to try and solve this mystery, but for now, his lunch was what mattered most. There was actually something very sensible in this approach, she reflected. What was the point of sitting around, tensely eating soggy sandwiches and drinking instant coffee – the usual refreshment when A4 and Special Branch were waiting for an operation to begin?

‘Actually, I may leave you to it for now. I’d like to get a feel for the neighbourhood.’

He nodded. ‘Of course. The South Korean office is very close by… just round the corner. You’ll easily recognise it – an old warehouse that’s been renovated. Be careful though, just in case Kubiak is around. We still don’t know whether he saw you in Geneva meeting Sorsky, and we don’t want to alert him.’

Martin signalled for the bill, and Liz waited while he paid. As they left the little cul-de-sac, he pointed down the street at the awning of the bistro. ‘I’ll see you there at one,’ he said, and suddenly reached for her arm. ‘I’m glad you’re here, Liz. But keep your eyes open.’

‘I will,’ she said, surprised by his sudden solemnity. It wasn’t like him to worry.