A Foreign Country

71

By midnight, Kevin Vigors had arrived in Paris, picked up a Peugeot hire car at Gare du Nord and driven south to Boulevard Saint-Germain where he found Kell, Elsa and Aldrich at a table in Brasserie Lipp, nursing their sorrows with four plates of choucroute and a couple of bottles of Chinon.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Elsa whispered as Vigors slipped on to the banquette beside her. ‘I did not have the experience that Danny has, that you have. I am so sorry that …’

Kell interrupted her. ‘Elsa, if you apologize one more time, I’ll get you a job fixing computers in Albania for the rest of your life. There was nothing you could have done. One of us should have got on the train with you. It’s impossible to follow a trained target without back-up.’ He looked up at the three faces gathered around him and raised his glass of wine. ‘All of you were fantastic today in extremely difficult circumstances. It was a miracle we got as far as we did. There’s still every chance that we can find François once Luc and Valerie make contact with Amelia tomorrow night.’

He had already given the bad news to Amelia, who had been obliged to stay in the UK so that she could put in an honest day’s work on Monday for the benefit of Truscott, Marquand and Haynes. To avoid spending the night with Giles in Chelsea, she had taken a room at the Holiday Inn, where she was gradually making her way through the various items that CUCKOO had left on the back seat of Aldrich’s cab. She kept the gold lighter, engraved with the initials P.M., but put everything else back into Vincent’s suitcase and the black leather holdall, wondering what she would do with them. Sitting alone on the sixth floor of the hotel, looking out over a gridlocked M4, her sense of frustration was akin to the powerlessness she had felt in the face of her late brother’s cancer. Despite all the resources at her disposal, all of her experience and expertise, she could do nothing to influence the events unfolding in France. Her trust in Thomas Kell was absolute, but she could hardly believe that she had left François’ safety in the hands of only three men and an Italian computer specialist with non-existent experience in the field. Amelia had managed to organize a three-man team of ‘security experts’ — an Office euphemism for ex-SAS soldiers moonlighting in the private sector — who would leave for Carcassone in the morning. But she could only afford to have them on stand-by for forty-eight hours, not least because she had drained one of her bank accounts to pay for them. Unless Kell discovered François’ whereabouts in that time, there would be no military option for seizing her son. And how were they going to find François without CUCKOO? The trail had gone cold.

Amelia was checking her emails at regular intervals, staying in touch with Kell and confirming arrangements with Anthony White, the commander of the security team. At twenty past eleven, she heard the ping of a message coming through on her laptop.

It was from GCHQ, with the subject heading ‘Amex’.

She picked up the phone and dialled Kell.