Close Call

Chapter 46

‘It’s at moments like this,’ Isabelle Florian declared, ‘that I miss cigarettes the most.’

She gave Seurat a wry smile, and he nodded. ‘I know. Anything is better than the waiting.’

Not for the first time, Seurat thought how fortunate he was to have Isabelle as his counterpart at the domestic intelligence Service. Relations between the DGSE and the DCRI were almost always tense, fuelled by the same kind of competition that seemed to affect domestic and external intelligence services the world over. But whereas Liz had to put up with the know-it-all patronising of Geoffrey Fane, Seurat had long ago established an excellent relationship with Isabelle, one based on mutual respect and by now a genuine liking for each other.

They sat in the operations room in the building that housed the DCRI. It was a windowless and low-ceilinged space, with a series of desk consoles ranged in a half-circle at one end to face a row of large screens that hung from the wall. At the moment just two of them were active. One screen showed a distant shot of the entrance to a tall grim-looking tower block, and the other, its picture obviously coming from a concealed fixed camera, showed the length of a passageway with one open side. You could clearly see the doors of individual flats that ran off the passage; the one in the centre of the picture belonged to the flat of the suspect, Ramdani. But there was no sign of anyone moving in either of these camera views.

At the centre console Alex Carnier, a veteran DCRI Operations control officer, struggled to suppress a yawn. He had a headphone set dangling loosely around his neck, and on the desk in front of him a microphone sat on its stand. He was directing the surveillance operation, but seemed happy enough to have Isabelle and Martin Seurat watching him work.

He turned his head to Isabelle and said, ‘They’re late.’

She shrugged. ‘You said that five minutes ago. They could turn up at any time. What do you want me to do? Ask them to hurry up?’

Carnier gave a grin full of yellow teeth; unlike Isabelle, he pretty clearly hadn’t given up cigarettes. The new regulations banning smoking in public buildings applied here too; Seurat thought it must have been hell for a twenty-a-day man.

‘It’s only been half an hour,’ said Seurat mildly. ‘There may be some reason for the delay.’ Though Thibault had been very specific: the latest decoded email had said four o’clock sharp for the rendezvous at the flat.

Carnier brushed his greying hair back with one hand, then leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. ‘Team Three, anything alive out there?’ he asked, more in hope than expectation.

There was the crackle of a car radio, then a voice replied dully, ‘Rien.’

Isabelle had explained to Martin that there were six teams, each of three people, on the operation. Most of them were in cars, parked safely out of sight, though there would also be a few surveillance officers on foot around Ramdani’s tower block, which along with half a dozen other relics of some bright city planner’s ‘vision’ in the 1970s sat on the edge of Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the constellation towns just north-east of Paris. It was all public housing, now inhabited overwhelmingly by first- and second-generation immigrants. Seurat often wondered whose idea it had been to create these hellholes so far away from the rest of the city’s life. Or perhaps that had been the rationale: to deposit the North Africans who’d flocked to France in the aftermath of the Algerian war out of sight of the public face of the city, known the world over for its elegance.

Isabelle said, ‘Martin, if you want some coffee there’s a machine down the hall.’

‘It’s broken,’ said Carnier. ‘But there’s a café on the corner.’

‘I’m fine,’ said Martin. Sod’s law said that if he went out now the jihadis would show up.

But three hours later there was still no sign of them. Not that there had been any sign of Ramdani either. The surveillance had begun the day before, with only one team, but Ramdani hadn’t left his flat in that time. A light in the front room suggested that he was there, but it had stayed on all night and that, taken with the failure of the others to arrive, meant that his presence in the flat was now open to question. Seurat said as much to Isabelle.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘That’s worrying me too. What if they changed plans and are meeting somewhere else?’

‘It doesn’t seem likely or we’d have seen Ramdani leave his flat. Thibault says GCHQ will notify him immediately if there’s any change of plan.’

‘Still, I’d like to make sure. Alex,’ she said, turning to Carnier, ‘I’d like to establish if Ramdani is actually in the flat. Any ideas?’

Twenty minutes later they watched on the screen a young man walking along the corridor of the tower block. He wore a parka and trainers, and carried a sheaf of flyers advertising a local takeaway pizza joint. Carnier said his name was Philippe, and that he had been with the DCRI for less than a year. ‘But he’s good,’ Carnier said. ‘He wanted to be an actor but he got tired of waiting at tables to pay his rent.’

They watched as Philippe began at the far end, ringing the buzzer of each flat one by one. Most of the doors were answered, sometimes by small children, always with the chain on, and Philippe would give them one of the pamphlets, then move on to the next apartment.

When he got to Ramdani’s door he paused, and looked around. The corridor was empty as he rang the buzzer. He waited a good thirty seconds but no one answered, so he buzzed again. Still nothing. Philippe knelt down and looked through the letter box, then he stood up and moved over to peer through the small window to the side of the door of the flat. His voice came over the speaker on Carnier’s desk, saying quietly, ‘Nothing doing. And no sign of him through the window. I can see into the living room.’

Carnier said, ‘Are you sure the buzzer’s working? Maybe you should knock.’

‘I can hear the buzzer from outside. The walls of this place are paper-thin.’

‘Maybe he’s in the shower – or asleep. Try knocking.’

So this time Philippe knocked on the door as well as pushing the buzzer again. ‘That’s enough,’ said Isabelle. ‘He’ll alert the neighbours and they’ll think it strange he’s so persistent.’

But it was too late, the door to the next apartment opened and an old lady with a walking stick came out, remonstrating furiously. As Philippe beat a hasty retreat, Carnier gave a laugh. The old lady was still shouting at him as he reached the far exit of the corridor by the lifts.

‘Well,’ said Isabelle. ‘At least we’ve learned his neighbour’s nosy. Could be useful.’

‘She was as mad as a hornet,’ Philippe said when he got downstairs and left the building. ‘She told me that if her neighbour wanted a pizza he would have answered the door. I asked if she’d seen him recently.’

‘And?’

‘She said…’ and he hesitated.

Seurat and Isabelle leaned forward to hear. Carnier snapped impatiently, ‘What did she say?’

‘She said I should piss off.’

Carnier looked at Isabelle. ‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t think he’s in there.’

She looked at Seurat. He thought she was probably right. He knew what he wanted to happen next, but it was risky. Liz would never forgive them if they blew the whole operation. He waited for Isabelle to speak – this was her operation after all, even if it came at his instigation. In one sense he was only a privileged guest here.

Isabelle said, ‘I think we should go in and have a look.’

Carnier said, ‘You sure? What happens if Ramdani comes back while we’re in there?’

‘We’ll put people outside to stop him coming in. We tell him that a smell of gas has been reported and we’re required to check it out for safety reasons. So no one is allowed into the building while we do that. If he goes away your people will follow him, Alex.’

‘And if the others turn up?’

‘We tell them the same thing. They have to wait till the all-clear is given. I hope none of that happens, but I think it’s a chance we have to take. It doesn’t make any sense that the meet didn’t take place. Ramdani wouldn’t have had much time to change the plans, so it would have to have been a change from the other end. But whatever’s happened, we’re now out of touch with the jihadis – that’s worrying, to say the least. I’m hoping there may be something in the flat that indicates what they’re up to.’

As Carnier digested this, he looked at Seurat, who stayed silent – Isabelle had just decided to do what he’d been hoping she would, but it was certainly risky and he wondered what Liz would have done.

Finally, Carnier shrugged. ‘OK. I’ll set it up.’

Isabelle nodded. ‘We’ll need the locksmith – I don’t want any doors broken down. The idea of this is to keep it as quiet as possible. A discreet entry, a quick search by officers with concealed weapons to make sure he’s not there, then I’ll go in.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Seurat immediately. Carnier looked at him dubiously. Isabelle said quickly, ‘It’s all right, Alex. Martin knows more than anyone else what we’re looking for.’