A Foreign Country

69

It took Vincent Cévennes seven minutes to reach the front of the queue at the British Airways ticket desk, where he was observed looking at a flight schedule on the teller’s computer screen before handing over a French passport and a credit card, in return for a ticket. With CUCKOO’s attention fully occupied, Aldrich had taken the opportunity to flag down two patrolling police officers and to inform them that he was a surveillance officer with the Secret Intelligence Service. One of the officers agreed to approach the BA desk and to interview the female member of staff who had just sold CUCKOO a ticket. Aldrich made it clear that any conversation must take place out of sight of other passengers in the terminal.

They waited until CUCKOO had taken a lift upstairs to the duty-free shopping level. The more senior of the two policemen then approached the BA desk, indicated to the teller that he would like a discreet word, and managed to hold a brief conversation with her in a small staffroom secluded behind the ticket desks. The entire exchange took less than five minutes.

Aldrich called Kell with the news.

‘Right. Got a pen? CUCKOO is travelling under the name Gerard Taine. Just paid five hundred and eighty-four pounds on an American Express card for a business-class seat on the BA flight to Charles de Gaulle, leaving Terminal Five at eighteen fifteen.’

Kell, who was still in the car park, looked at his watch.

‘That’s in less than two hours. Get two tickets on the same plane. One for you, one for Elsa. Travel separately. When CUCKOO comes out the other side, I’ll try to be there.’

‘How are you going to manage that?’

Kell had looked at the list of flights leaving Heathrow for Paris before six.

‘There’s an Air France to Charles de Gaulle leaving Terminal Four fifteen minutes before you take off. We’re going there now, I’ll try to get on board.’ Kell had already started the engine and was pulling out of the parking bay. ‘Kevin is en route to St Pancras. Amelia will stay here and organize hire cars at Gare du Nord and Charles de Gaulle. If we’re delayed or you don’t hear from me, try to stay on CUCKOO’s tail as long as you can. He’ll probably take the Metro, try to shake you off in Paris. If we get lucky, he’ll hail a cab.’

Fifteen minutes later, Kell was barging the queue at the Air France desk in Terminal Four and hustling himself on to a packed Sunday-night flight to Paris, shelling out more than seven hundred euros for the last seat on the plane. By eight fifteen local time he had touched down at Charles de Gaulle, only to be told that CUCKOO’s BA flight was delayed by half an hour. That gave him time to pick up the hire car and to drive it in loops around the airport, waiting for a call from Aldrich with the number plate of whatever taxi CUCKOO hailed outside the terminal. In the end, CUCKOO caught an RER train to the city, standing for the duration of the journey just three rows from Elsa Cassani, looking, for all the world, like any other washed-out twenty-something Italian returning from a hedonistic weekend in London. Danny Aldrich boarded an Air France bus to Etoile. Kell took the A3 autoroute south-west into Paris, but his Renault became snarled in peripherique traffic and he lost contact with the RER. By the time Elsa had pulled into Chatelet ten minutes later, she was the only member of the team within two miles of the target.

CUCKOO lost her in less than fifteen minutes. Emerging from Chatelet, he crossed the Seine and boarded a metro at St Michel, heading south towards Porte d’Orleans. At Denfert-Rochereau station, having spotted Elsa three times since Charles de Gaulle — once on the RER, once while crossing the Pont Notre Dame and once in his carriage between Saint-Sulpice and St-Placide — CUCKOO forced open the doors as they were closing and jumped out on to the platform, watching Elsa glide past him in a state of mute obliviousness.

Five minutes later she had surfaced at Mouton Duvernet and called Kell with the news.

‘Tom, I am so, so sorry,’ she said. ‘I lost him. I lost CUCKOO.’