Close Call

Chapter 11

Three hours later Isabelle was still in the office, Liz having long gone. Isabelle would have liked her to stay longer, though she knew that there was nothing she could do by sticking around. She liked her English colleague, not least because she was a woman who seemed comfortable with herself. She was intelligent and very focused but she was also attractive and easy to get on with. Too many of Isabelle’s female colleagues seemed so intent on proving to their male colleagues that they were their equals that they lost all femininity.

It also pleased her to see Liz so happy in her relationship with Martin Seurat, even if inevitably it made her a little jealous. Isabelle was divorced. Her former husband was a diplomat; their two careers just hadn’t fitted together and Isabelle had not been prepared to give up hers for her marriage. And nowadays she worked such long and irregular hours that there didn’t seem much prospect that she’d find a successor to him.

She was married to her work, she thought to herself, imagining her own obituary. How ghoulish – she decided to stop feeling sorry for herself and get on with finding Milraud.

Ten minutes later, as she was wishing for the hundredth time she hadn’t given up her beloved Gitanes Blondes, there was a knock on her door.

‘Entrez,’ said Isabelle mildly, thinking it was time she went home. Her young son was at her mother’s apartment; he often spent the night there when Isabelle was working late. So often in fact that Isabelle sometimes wondered guiltily if he would grow up thinking he had two mothers. But it wasn’t too late to collect him now.

Her assistant Madeline came in, looking unusually excited. ‘I think we’ve found something. They have been checking the hotels of the inner arrondissements and they’ve discovered where Milraud was staying.’

‘Was?’

‘Yes. He checked out two hours ago. A place on the Rue Jacob. He must have gone back there when we lost him. He got the receptionist to call him a taxi.’

‘Where was he going?’

‘The taxi company can’t reach the driver.’ She saw the disappointment on Isabelle’s face. ‘There’s more. We know the alias he’s using. It’s Pigot.’

‘Pigot?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t believe it.’ It was almost the exact name of Milraud’s Irish Republican customer – who had been gunned down attempting to escape from their hideout off the south coast of France. Calling himself after his dead colleague seemed a bad joke, unless Milraud was thumbing his nose at his pursuers.

Isabelle shook her head, trying to focus on what needed to be done. ‘I want the airlines contacted, and we need to check car rental agencies and the train stations.’

Madeline said mildly, ‘It’s all under way.’

‘Good,’ said Isabelle. ‘Could you ring my mother please? Ask her if she’ll keep Jean-Claude tonight. I’ll be here a while yet.’

Five minutes later Madeline came in again. ‘A Monsieur Pigot made a reservation on an Air France flight to Berlin. Business Class.’

‘That’s him all right,’ said Isabelle. Milraud had always liked the best; Seurat had once told her that his expenses had been legendary in the DGSE. ‘I want him arrested at the gate, and held at the airport until I get out there.’

‘Too late. The flight took off from Charles De Gaulle twenty minutes ago.’

Damn. Another tantalisingly close miss. But this time she knew exactly where Milraud was. ‘Get me the BfV on the phone – I want the Germans to be waiting for the plane when Milraud lands.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Yes. Book me on the first flight to Berlin in the morning.’ She paused for a moment, thinking of something. ‘Book two seats while you’re at it.’

She examined her options. What should she ask the Germans to do? Arrest Milraud? Martin Seurat would be delighted to lay hands on him but Liz would be worried that the trail to her case would go cold as a result. Milraud would be sure to have some plausible story about his meeting in the Luxembourg Gardens. So put him under surveillance instead? But did she dare risk losing him again?

Minutes later she was on the phone to her opposite number in the BfV, Germany’s security service, asking him to set up surveillance on an international arms dealer travelling under the name Pigot, who would land at Tegel in one hour. Photographs of the man were on their way. He was a former intelligence officer and highly surveillance-conscious.

Then she rang Martin Seurat.