A Foreign Country

68

Within ten minutes, Elsa Cassani, sitting patiently in a Terminal Three branch of Starbucks with only a laptop and an iPhone for company, had scribbled down every flight leaving for France from Heathrow airport in the next five hours.

‘CUCKOO has a lot of choice,’ she told Kell, who was en route with Amelia to Terminal Five. ‘There are flights to Nice, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Paris Orly, Toulouse Blagnac and Lyon. They go all the time.’

Kell dismissed Lyon and Nice, but Toulouse remained a possibility, because the city was within an hour of Salles-sur-l’Hers. Yet Paris still seemed the most likely destination. He called Aldrich inside the terminal building for an update. CUCKOO had sat down at a table in Café Nero, a stone’s throw from passport control.

‘He went straight there, guv.’

‘Didn’t buy a ticket? Didn’t go to the BA desk?’

‘No. Hasn’t bought a coffee, either. Just sitting there.’

Kell explained the situation to Amelia, who hazarded what turned out to be an accurate guess.

‘He’s either meeting somebody or picking up a package. They may have cached a passport for him. Tell Danny to sit tight.’

Needing the jolt of a cup of coffee, Vincent stood up, queued at the counter and bought a double espresso. His table was still free by the time he returned to his seat. For hours he had felt an almost fatalistic sense of imminent capture; everything he’d done in Salisbury, every move he’d made on the trains, wouldn’t have been enough to throw off a decent British team. There were cameras at the airport, police in plain clothes, customs officials, security personnel. What if his photograph had been circulated among them? How was he going to get on to a plane? If he could just get through passport control, he might throw off MI6 on the Paris Metro. They wouldn’t be able to operate as effectively on French soil. But even that loophole seemed to close in front of Vincent’s eyes; there was an MI6 station in Paris and Amelia had had more than enough time to arrange blanket surveillance across the capital.

Think.

Try to see it from her perspective. She doesn’t want her secret to get out. If it does, her career is over. Only a handful of her most trusted colleagues will know about François Malot. Maybe she’s just as confused, just as rattled, as I am. Bouyed by this thought, Vincent sank his double espresso and did what he had come to do.

The Multi-Faith Prayer Room was a few paces away. He walked through the door from the main terminal and came into a short narrow corridor with prayer rooms on either side. To his left, a bearded Muslim was kneeling on a mat, in the act of praying. To the right, three veiled African women were seated on plastic chairs. They watched Vincent as he passed. The bathroom door was open. He went inside and locked it.

The bathroom stank of urine and patchouli oil. Vincent waved his hand under the automatic drier to create a covering noise and stood on the toilet, pushing one of the ceiling tiles above his head. It came free and jammed at an angle as small particles of dried paint and dust fell into his hair. Vincent looked down to protect his eyes while feeling blindly with his right hand, pushing through what felt like tiny nests or cobwebs, little piles of dust. His arm began to ache and he switched hands, turning around on the toilet seat so that he could search in the opposite direction. The handdrier cut out and he flushed the toilet with his foot, hearing voices outside in the corridor. Was it the police? Had they followed him into the prayer rooms so that they could make a discreet arrest?

Then, something. The crisp edge of a large envelope. Vincent went up on tiptoes and pushed the loose ceiling tile further back, stretching to reach what he had come for. It felt like his first piece of luck in hours. It was the cached package, covered in a scattering of dust. He flushed the toilet with his foot a second time, replaced the tile, sat down and opened the seal. Five hundred euros in cash, a French driving licence, a clean phone, a passport, Visa and American Express cards. Everything in the name ‘Gerard Taine’. Vincent flicked the dust from his hair and clothes, left the bathroom and carried the package out into the terminal.

Time to go home. Time to get a plane to France.

‘So that was interesting.’

Danny Aldrich had watched the scene unfold from a queue at one of the automated check-in machines.

‘What happened?’ Kell asked.

‘CUCKOO went into the multi-faith rooms, came out five minutes later carrying something. Now he’s fifth in the queue at the BA ticket desk.’

Kell looked at Amelia. They were both thinking the same thing.

‘He must have had a passport cached in there,’ she said. ‘We need to know where he’s flying to. Can you get into the queue behind him?’

‘No chance,’ Aldrich replied. ‘Not a good idea to get that close after Reading. He’ll make me.’

‘You carrying any ID?’ Kell asked.

‘Sure.’

‘Then find a member of airport staff on the security side, preferably somebody high up the food chain. Tell them that they need to talk to whoever serves Vincent at the BA counter. Be discreet about it. Make sure he doesn’t see what’s going on. Get the flight number, get the name on the passport, credit-card details if he doesn’t pay cash. Can you manage that?’

‘No problem.’

Amelia nodded in mute agreement. ‘Nice idea,’ she said as Kell hung up. The Audi was parked on the second floor of a multi-storey short-term car park, less than a minute’s walk from where Aldrich was standing. Against the grinding roar of an aeroplane passing low overhead, Amelia adjusted her position in the passenger seat so that she was facing Kell at an angle. ‘Something has occurred to me,’ she said. Kell was reminded of a gesture Amelia had made at the office in Redan Place, a quiet resignation in her features. It was uncharacteristic of her to be so shaken. ‘I should go to Number 10. We should try to set up a line to the French, cut some sort of deal. Falling on my sword may be the only way to save François.’

Falling on my sword. Kell disliked the phrase for its pointless grandeur. Amelia was better than that.

‘That won’t save him,’ he said. ‘Whoever these people are, Paris will tip them off. Even if it’s a rogue operation, which I suspect it now is, there will be factions within the DGSE loyal to the perpetrators. There’ll be an internal leak, François will be killed, Luc and Valerie will catch the next boat to Guyana.’ When he saw that he was making no progress with his argument, Kell took a risk. ‘Besides, if you go, my career is finished. The minute Truscott gets his hands on the tiller, he’ll throw me to the wolves over Yassin Gharani. If you don’t survive, I’m looking at growing tomatoes for the next thirty years.’

To his surprise, Amelia smiled.

‘Then we’d better make sure nobody finds out what we’re up to,’ she said, reaching for his hand. It was as though she had been testing him and was now assured of his loyalty. ‘I’ll talk to some military friends, put a unit together in France. And get Kevin on the phone. We ought to send him up to St Pancras.’