A Foreign Country

31

Spying is waiting.

Kell went back to his cabin, retrieved The Scramble for Africa, got lost in the switchback corridors on the sleeping level, eventually found his way to the restaurant and ate a decent lunch. The ferry, now pulling out into the open sea, appeared to be only half-full; no queue had formed outside the restaurant and there were enough spare tables to accommodate the mostly French passengers who had materialized en masse from the lower decks after parking their cars. There were no Africans in sight; the food was French, the prices in euros and the clientele exclusively white. Kell waited for François to make an appearance, lingering over his book and coffee, but by two thirty he had still not shown and Kell gave up, on the assumption that the Frenchman must have eaten in the self-service canteen. He paid his bill and walked upstairs, passing through the canteen as the low, whitewashed houses of Carthage narrowed to a chalk strip on the horizon. The entire area was deserted save for a young British couple on a damage-limitation exercise with two screaming toddlers and a new-born baby. The mother was spooning puréed food into the baby’s mouth, the toddlers bombing the linoleum with plastic toys. A section of the floor was soaked with seawater. All of them looked exhausted.

Eventually, like stumbling on the right street without the aid of a map, Kell found François standing at the stern railings on the sun deck, gazing down at the churning wake of the sea, the distant Tunisian coast now obscured by a vapour of mist. Beside him was a taller man, bearded and dressed in jeans, wearing a button-down blue shirt. The man, who had lustrous black hair, almost certainly dyed, looked about fifty-five and was smoking a filterless cigarette, which he eventually flicked out over the stern; the wind failed to catch it and it dropped on to a lower deck. The conversation between them seemed relaxed and matter-of-fact, yet something in their physical proximity spoke of an established familiarity. Perhaps they had been talking for some time; perhaps they had met before. Kell positioned himself a few metres along the railing, caught the man’s name — Luc — and heard a snatch of dialogue about ‘hotels in Marseille’. But any hopes he had of overhearing more of the conversation were snuffed out by the low, perpetual roar of the ship’s funnel.

He lit a cigarette of his own. He always carried a packet in environments that might require him to make contact with an agent or member of the public. A lighter could trigger a conversation; a cigarette was something to occupy nervous hands. Kell turned and looked at the plastic chairs on the deck, at the scattering of passengers taking siestas under the unrelenting Mediterranean sun. They were held in the suspended animation of travel, the no-man’s-land of waiting to cross from one place to another. Nothing to do but read and sleep and eat. The wind was buffeting Kell’s face and cracking a French flag at the stern of the ship. Still the two men kept talking, their voices low, their conversation a rumble of French unpunctuated by laughter. Eventually Kell took a flight of sea-greased steps to a lower deck and waited directly beneath them, hoping that the breeze might push more of their words towards him. But it was no good: the roar of the engine muffled every sound. At a loose end, he powered up his London phone, only to watch the last bar of reception flicker and vanish as the ship moved steadily north.

He did not see the bearded Luc again until dinner. François’ companion was eating alone at a corner table not four feet from where Kell was seated. He had his back to the room and was hunched over a lengthy document that he read, with great concentration, between mouthfuls of rice and chicken chasseur. Kell had a glorious sunset and a copy of Time magazine for company and was beginning to wonder why he had bothered following François back to Marseille. Better, surely, to have tailed Amelia to Nice, to liaise with the Knights, send a full report to London and then invoice Truscott for his trouble.

He was mid-pudding when Luc stood up and walked towards a salad bar close to the entrance of the restaurant. He appeared to scan the selection: cucumbers in yoghurt; piles of shredded carrot; drained, tinned sweetcorn. As Luc was helping himself to a triangle of processed cheese, François walked into the restaurant, directly in his line of sight. Kell saw the two men make eye contact, plainly aware of the other’s presence, but there was no further acknowledgment between them. Luc looked down at his plate; François immediately switched his gaze to a waiter, who led him to a table on the starboard side of the restaurant. Kell wondered what he had just seen. Were they ignoring one another? Was it a case of avoiding a fellow passenger for fear that they would be obliged to sit together. Or was there more to it?

François sat down. He flapped a napkin into his lap and picked up the menu. He was seated directly opposite Kell but paid no attention to him, nor to any of the other diners in the restaurant. The light of the sunset was pouring through the windows and coating the walls of the salon in a deep orange glow. It was curious to watch him in his solitude. Much of François’ swagger and arrogance had diminished; he was somehow less striking, less self-confident than the man he had photographed at the hotels. Perhaps grief was upon him; Kell knew all too well how the loss of a parent could snatch at you for months, sometimes years afterwards. His own mother had died from breast cancer in the second year of his career at SIS, a loss with which he felt he had only recently come to terms. François had no book for company, no newspaper, and seemed content simply to eat his food, to sip his wine, and to allow his thoughts and gaze to wander. Once, sensing that Kell was staring at him, he caught his eye and nodded, in a way that reminded Kell so completely of Amelia that he was almost tempted to rise from his chair, to introduce himself as an old friend of the family and to share memories of his mother’s life and career. Luc, meanwhile, had finished his meal and was gesturing im- patiently at a waiter for the bill. Kell did the same, put the food and wine on a Uniacke debit card, and followed Luc out of the restaurant.

It was not easy to track him. One switchback, one curious turn of the head, and Luc would have seen him all too easily. The stairs were short and narrow, the corridors of the ship all but empty. Kell tried to maintain his distance, but had to be close enough to spot a sudden turn or a move to a lower deck. In due course it became apparent that Luc was heading for the sleeping cabins, descending four floors to the deck immediately below Kell’s room. He was soon into the criss-cross corridors, all sense of direction lost. Halfway along one of the narrow, yellow-lit passages, Luc came to a halt outside his room. At a distance of perhaps fifty metres, Kell observed him punching a four-digit pin into the lock. The Frenchman went inside, securing a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the outer handle, then closed the door. Kell waited several seconds, walked past the cabin and made a note of the room number: 4571. He then went back to his own room and read again a Heaney poem that he had enjoyed in Tunis, in order to give François time to finish dinner. The name of the poem was ‘Postscript’, and on the inside back page of The Spirit Level Kell scribbled down a phrase — the earthed lightning of a flock of swans — that struck him as particularly beautiful. He left the book open on the bed, face down, then headed upstairs with no larger ambition than to sit among the passengers in the entertainment lounge, hoping that François would stop by for a drink. If he did so, he would make conversation; if he did not, he would try to speak to him in the morning, perhaps on deck as the ship closed in on Marseille. There was no future in tracking François from the restaurant, in trying to break the code to his room. All that he needed was the chance to talk to him and to make an assessment of his character. He wondered if Amelia had told him about her work for SIS. Though it was beyond the remit of the task Marquand had set, Kell wanted to be sure that François wasn’t going to blow her cover, either by talking to random strangers on ships, or when he reached mainland France. If he was satisfied that her son was capable of keeping a secret, he would leave both of them in peace.