A Foreign Country

77

Kell finished the vodka and wondered if he had read Akim wrong. Drummond had reacted as the Arab said: ‘Slimane, he wants to do it’, coughing in surprise and then pretending to clear his throat. Aldrich, suddenly tired and edgy, took a step forward, closing up the space as if to make sure that Akim never said anything like that again.

‘You think it’s funny?’ Kell asked in English.

To his surprise, Akim replied in the same language: ‘No.’

Kell paused. He looked up at Drummond, glanced across at Aldrich. There was a tiny gap in the curtains and it was becoming light outside. I am the Americans with Yassin, he told himself. I can ask what I like, I can do what I like. None of it will ever leave this room. He wanted suddenly to strike at Akim, to land one good, jaw-smashing punch to his face. But he stuck to his principles. He knew that everything he wanted to learn from the Arab would come if only he took his time.

‘Do you have children, Mike?’

At first, Drummond didn’t react, but then, in his surprise at being addressed, said: ‘No, no I don’t’ so quickly that he almost tripped on the words.

‘Danny?’

‘Two, guv,’ said Aldrich.

‘Boys? Girls? One of each?’

‘A boy and a girl. Ashley’s eight, Kelley’s eleven.’ He stretched out a hand and indicated the difference in their heights. Kell turned to Akim.

‘How about you?’

‘Children? Me?’ It was as though Kell had asked if Akim believed in Father Christmas. ‘No.’

‘I’m a great evangelist for children,’ Kell continued. ‘I have two of my own. Changed my life.’ Neither Drummond nor Aldrich would know that this was not true. ‘Before I had them, I did not understand what it was to love selflessly. I had loved women, I love my wife, but with girls you always expect something in return, don’t you?’

Akim frowned, and Kell wondered if his French was being fully understood. But then the Arab nodded in tacit agreement.

‘When I go home, after a long trip like this, if it’s late at night, the first thing I’ll do is go into their bedrooms and see that they are safe. Sometimes I’ll sit there and just watch them for five or ten minutes. It calms me. I find it reassuring that there is something in my life that is larger than my own greed, my own petty concerns. The gift of my son, the gift of my daughter renews me.’ He used an Arabic word to emphasize this last phrase: tajdid. ‘It’s a very difficult thing to convey to people who don’t have a young family. Children complete you. Not a wife, not a husband, not a lover. Children save you from yourself.’

Akim pulled a tissue from the pocket of his jeans and wiped his mouth. He had been offered a chocolate biscuit from a packet in the kitchen and eaten three in the space of a few minutes. Kell wondered if his strategy was having any effect.

‘Are your parents still alive, Akim?’

‘My mother died,’ he said. Before Kell had a chance to ask, he added: ‘I never met my father.’

It was a gift that Kell seized upon.

‘He abandoned your mother?’

Again, Akim’s sustained silence provided an answer.

‘And I guess you wouldn’t have much interest in meeting him now?’

A quick surge of pride forced its way through Akim’s body like a movement in dance and he said: ‘No way,’ even as his eyes, in a moment that passed in an instant, seemed to pray that Kell would somehow produce him.

‘But you have other family here in France? Brothers, sisters, cousins?’

‘Yes.’

He wanted him to be thinking about them. He wanted Akim to be picturing the laughing niece in the photograph on the phone, the sick grandfather in the hospital in Toulon.

‘The mother of François Malot, my friend, my colleague, gave him up for adoption when she was just twenty years old. She never saw her baby again. That’s difficult even for me, a father, to imagine. Things are altogether more complicated between a mother and her child. That’s a bond that never leaves you, a cord going right back into the womb. What your organization did was to taunt her with the most basic feeling we possess, the most elemental and decent thing about us. A mother’s love for her children. Did you understand that when you agreed to help them?’

Akim wiped a crumb from his mouth and looked down at the floor. The moment had come.

‘I’m going to make you an offer,’ Kell said. ‘In two hours’ time, a chambermaid is going to knock on Vincent Cévennes’ door at the Hotel Lutetia. She’ll think he’s sleeping so she’ll leave him in peace. She’ll come back a couple of hours later and she’ll find his body. You were seen by three of my colleagues entering the hotel shortly before Mr Cévennes was killed. It’s almost certain that the French authorities will seize CCTV footage of your presence in the hotel. The last thing they’ll want is a scandal. But if, by some chance, they need to blame somebody for the shooting, if — say — the heat builds up from the British side about the kidnapping and murder of François Malot, say Paris needs to throw somebody to the wolves, we might be able to persuade them to release that footage. We also might be in the mood to show them audio and visual recordings of the conversation you and I have been enjoying for the last couple of hours.’ Akim looked up at the ceiling, then quickly to the door and window, as if he might see the very cameras and the microphones to which Kell was referring. ‘So you see where you stand? This man’ — he indicated Drummond — ‘works at the British Embassy in Paris. Within twelve hours, he can have you in a hotel room at Gatwick airport. Within twenty-four, he can issue you with a new EU identity and offer you permanent residence in the United Kingdom. Give me what I need to know and we will look after you. I see you as a victim in this, Akim. I don’t see you as the enemy.’

There was a long silence. Watching Akim’s face, his eyes distant and still, Kell began to wonder if he would ever speak again. He craved the answers to his questions. He craved success not only for Amelia, but for himself, as a salve against all the wretchedness and disappointment of the last dozen months.

Akim’s shaved head lolled to one side, then came up at Kell, like a boxer recovering in slow-motion.

‘Salles-sur-l’Hers,’ he said quietly. ‘The woman’s son is being held in a house near Salles-sur-l’Hers.’