A Foreign Country

74

Kell did not bother to call Amelia in London to get clearance for what he was about to do. He told Vigors to look for a security camera blind spot near the fifth-floor elevator and to wait for any sign of the Arab or other members of the DGSE team entering or leaving Vincent’s room. He instructed Aldrich to wait in the car outside and told Elsa to go to the room that Vigors had booked at the Lutetia.

‘There’s nothing more you can do,’ he told her. ‘Get some sleep. I may need you in the morning.’

Then he waited outside the hotel. He smoked a cigarette and paced the pavement. It was past one o’clock on a Monday morning in Paris, still warm and humid. A man in his mid-fifties came past Kell and walked up the steps of the hotel. Everybody a stranger, everybody a threat. Kell turned and looked at Aldrich, still as alert and as reliable as he had been all day long. The best of the best. They nodded at one another. A police car with yellowed headlights moved disinterestedly north along Raspail.

The Arab had been inside for less than ten minutes when Kell’s phone began to pulse in his pocket. It was Vigors.

‘He’s already leaving. Just took the stairs. I’m in the lift.’

‘You sure it was him?’

‘Same guy. Red-and-white motorcycle jacket, heading down. He’ll be there …’

The signal cut out. Kell motioned to Aldrich who started the engine on the Peugeot. He looked up the steps of the hotel and in the glass of the revolving door caught the movement of someone walking towards the entrance. He knew that Vigors would be ten seconds behind him. Eye contact with Aldrich. This was it.

The Arab came down the steps of the hotel, saw Kell to his right, did not appear to recognize him from Marseille but moved left, as if to avoid contact. This took him towards the Peugeot. Vigors had got out of the lift, run across the lobby and was already through the revolving doors. Kell waited until the Arab was two metres from the car, then ran at his back, driving his right hand into the upper section of his skull and steering him with his left as Vigors came past them, opened the rear door of the Peugeot and turned to help. Kell remembered the Arab’s weight, his wiry cunning, but Vigors was far stronger and with the element of surprise had forced him into the back seat of the car within seconds. Aldrich lurched out on to Boulevard Raspail as the door slammed shut behind him. Vigors pushed the boy’s head back as Kell encircled his body, trapping his arms against his chest. The Arab was shouting, struggling to get free, spit hitting Kell’s neck and face.

‘Shut the fuck up or I will break your arm,’ he hissed in Arabic, and then was pushed against the door as Aldrich made a fast-right down Rue Saint-Sulpice. Kell had no idea where they could take him, no idea what they would do with him afterwards. He was not even sure that the kidnapping had passed unnoticed on a quiet Paris thoroughfare in the small hours of the morning.

‘Head south-west,’ he said. ‘Pantheon. Place d’Italie.’

Beneath the thick leather of the motorcycle jacket Kell could feel the hard outline of a weapon.

‘Kev, take his arms.’

Kell loosened his grip on the Arab and Vigors wrenched the arms backwards so that they were pinned behind the Arab’s back. He had stopped struggling, but there was thick white spittle, like wet chalk, in the grooves of his mouth. Kell reached for the zip on the jacket and the Arab tried to bite at his hand, lowering his chin. Kell said: ‘Don’t be a baby’ and tugged his head back. He lowered the zip, reached inside the jacket and immediately felt the butt of the gun. He pulled it out.

‘Why are you carrying a silenced automatic?’ he asked in French. All of them could smell the cordite. ‘More to the point, why have you just fired it?’

Vigors recognized the gun as a SIG Sauer 9mm. Kell removed the silencer. There were eight rounds still in the magazine. He leaned forward and placed the gun in the footwell of the passenger seat, then continued searching the jacket. He pulled out a wallet, a mobile phone, a packet of cigarettes. He told the Arab to pitch forward so that he could search his back pockets. Aldrich, a block east of the Pantheon, removed his own belt and passed it to Vigors, who fashioned a basic wrist restraint around the Arab’s hands. Kell then took out his phone and sent a text to Amelia.

Going to need a safe house ASAP. CUCKOO probably down. Suspect in car. One of two from Marseille attack.