Present Danger

49

She loved window shopping, so Mireille Vitrin was perfectly happy strolling along the rue d’Alger, looking in the shop windows, admiring the clothes and scrutinising the antiques. And because she was enjoying herself, she looked quite unremarkable. But Mireille wasn’t going to buy anything; her window shopping was cover. She was waiting for the little device in her hand to vibrate, signalling that the target was on the move ten miles away.

‘She’s coming out.’ The gardener, cutting the grass verge at the top of the hill in Bandol, spoke into a tiny microphone fastened to his collar. He wasn’t the usual gardener and anyone who’d watched him closely might have wondered how he got the job. But he wasn’t staying. As soon as the white Lexus convertible passed him, he put his mower on the back of his truck and drove away. In Toulon, Mireille’s hand vibrated.

Down the hill in Bandol two women sat in a dusty-looking Renault consulting a map. As the Lexus passed, they seemed to make up their minds on the route and drove on, slotting in behind it. The woman at the wheel of the Lexus, wearing a bright Hermès silk scarf wrapped round her head, was Annette Milraud.

‘On our way,’ the passenger in the Renault announced, as they followed the Lexus in the direction of Toulon. At the bottom of the hill the traffic lights turned amber just as the Lexus approached, but Annette speeded up and flashed through as they changed to red. The Renault stopped and waited, watching as the Lexus purred off onto the motorway. But a Volvo was already on the motorway, driving cautiously in the slow lane but speeding up as Annette went by. When the Lexus left at the exit for Toulon, the Volvo stayed on the motorway, leaving the job to another team already waiting outside the Musée de la Marine.

Under their watchful eye, Annette drove into the centre of town and parked on the quayside. She crossed the rue de la République and turned down the rue d’Alger. As she approached her husband’s shop, she may have noticed the woman with strawberry-blonde hair just coming out of the pharmacy opposite, because she didn’t stop and go into the shop, but continued along the street at a fast clip. Behind her the blonde woman, apparently muttering to herself, passed the target on to colleagues at the end of the street.

Walking briskly, Annette turned into the street where the market was in full swing and went into a cafe. She sat down at a table in the corner and ordered a café crème. She was smartly dressed, still wearing the Hermès scarf, and she carried a fashionably large designer handbag, like a small Gladstone bag. A man in a beret came in and sat two tables away, holding a sketch pad. He looked at Annette appreciatively, but she ignored him and concentrated on her mobile phone. When her coffee arrived she paid the waiter, left the change on the saucer, and taking her handbag got up and retired to the ladies’ toilet.

Several minutes later, when she hadn’t reappeared, the man in the beret lifted his hand to his mouth and Mireille Vitrin, who had circled around from the Milraud shop, came into the cafe and went directly to the ladies’ room.

Inside, she found one of the cubicles occupied, and quietly went into the next one. When she heard the door of the neighbouring cubicle open she waited several seconds, then opened her own door and emerged in time to glimpse a woman leaving – she wore blue jeans, trainers and a T-shirt, with her hair tied back in a pony tail. She was carrying Annette’s large handbag. Mireille turned around and went into the vacated cubicle. Nothing. She radioed Annette’s new description to all colleagues as she went swiftly to the door of the cafe and looked out to see the woman in trainers striding swiftly back to the quayside and into the range of two more colleagues.

About noon a small dinghy, no more than two inflated rubber pontoons, came meandering along the rocky south coast of the island. It was sailed by a solitary fisherman. But the outboard motor was 110 horsepower and Henri Comptoire of the surveillance division of the DGSE felt confident he could out-race any threat that came his way.

Henri had spent the morning inspecting the satellite photographs of the island from the Ministry of Defence records – photographs taken about ten years ago. He had been comparing them with photographs taken just hours earlier, at daybreak, by the small helicopter that was normally used to chauffeur visiting dignitaries but which also provided low-key reconnaissance.

The shots had been captured by a camera mounted on the helicopter’s forward strut and the images were crystal clear. Both sets of photographs showed an isolated farmhouse, perched near the rock cliff that rose dramatically from the sea. It sat with woods on either side fronting onto what in the older photographs was clearly a vineyard but now looked more like a meadow, though you could just discern the rows of overgrown grapevines. In the satellite pictures a person could be seen in the yard, along with what looked like a tractor. The new pictures showed no signs that the house was occupied – no smoke from the chimney, no washing on the line, no cars in the yard. In both, the little cove looked deserted. But the older pictures showed what seemed to be a line of buoys moored across it, just out to sea. They were not there in the recent photographs.

Comptoire had also been talking to the customs officer whose long grey patrol boat was moored in the little harbour in the village. Porquerolles was part of his beat though he didn’t visit much in the winter, he’d explained. Comptoire had told him that he was doing a recce for a possible Naval Special Forces training exercise. They were looking for somewhere new for trainees to practise rapid assault from the sea. He was intending to look at the south side of the island, he’d said. The officer told him, ‘If you’re looking for something difficult you’ll find plenty to choose from round there. Mostly the rocks come down to the sea. There’s only one landing place, a tiny cove called Osteau de Dieu and we’ve got a boom across that to prevent tourists landing. It can be moved, but you’ve got to know the trick.’

So where was the boom? wondered Comptoire, as he puttered through the still waters, calm beneath the high noon sun. It hadn’t been there in the helicopter photographs this morning and it wasn’t there now. As he approached he glanced only casually towards the shore.

Then the outboard motor suddenly spluttered, coughed and died. While Comptoire tried to restart it, his dinghy began to float on the tide closer and closer to the cove’s sandy beach. As he pulled at the starter cord, he also managed to survey the beach. There was no one there, and no sign of a boat, but what he saw confirmed what the helicopter photographs had shown. The little beach was very disturbed. You could see where a boat had been pulled up and there were footprints in the sand and up towards the muddy path that led away into the undergrowth. People had landed on the beach; the only question remaining was whether they were still there. It was someone else’s job to try and discover that.

Starting the engine at last, he sailed out to deeper water, before turning west, speeding up and returning to Toulon.

‘Charmant,’ said the old woman to her husband, and it was true that the couple disembarking from the ferry this afternoon and setting off across the Ile de Porquerolles on foot looked madly in love.

The man, Alain, wore a knapsack from which protruded a baguette. Françoise, his companion, had a pair of binoculars on a strap around her neck – the island was not famous for its bird life, but there was a large population of waders on the south side, which justified both the binoculars and the two-mile walk.

The couple were heading for the walking trail that crossed the island and led to a promontory on its rocky southern shore. They took their time, holding hands, and every now and then stopping to exchange a kiss. But once they’d passed the first bend in the trail and could no longer be seen from the village they picked up pace, walking briskly with their eyes alert, no longer holding hands. They were not lovers, but they had worked together many times before. Alain was cautious, thorough; Françoise was wily and inventive; the combination seemed to suit their kind of work.

Now they stayed on the tree-lined path, passing a small hotel and some deserted holiday homes. Suddenly, as if on cue, they moved off the path and into the woods. Here they walked quickly but carefully through pines and acacia trees, stopping often to check their bearings as they neared the island’s rugged south coast. There were no tourists here, no signs of habitation; at one point Alain stopped to consult his compass, then slightly adjusted the angle of their advance.

When they heard the sound of waves ahead of them they split up, and taking the binoculars Alain moved towards the seaside cliffs in search of the narrow path that went down to the beach. Françoise stayed on the higher ground looking for a way to approach the fermette they couldn’t see but knew was there.

Locating the path down to the beach at last, Alain decided to avoid it and instead to work his way down the steep bank through the lush vegetation. At one point he thought he heard someone on the trail, which was less than twenty metres away, and he ducked down behind the shrubs. Tourists? There were said to be a million visitors a year to Ile de Porquerolles but very few at this time of the year and anyway this was well away from their usual haunts.

He waited until he was sure no one was nearby, then continued his descent. The cove was exceptional on this side of the island, with its strip of white sand. Alain could see no one on the beach, although his colleague Comptoire was certain someone had been there and it was true the sand looked disturbed. Any boat that had landed here would have to be small – small enough to be lugged out of sight.

Alain was still above the beach, and from behind three eucalyptus saplings he used his binoculars to scan the bushes that started where the sand of the beach stopped. For ten minutes he moved them inch by inch over the dense undergrowth, but saw nothing unusual. Eventually, when his eyes were tired with the effort, he let the binoculars hang from the strap around his neck, wondering whether he was missing something. It was then that a reflection of the sun, now straight ahead of him, briefly blinded him. He blinked and realised the flash was coming from the bushes directly below him – the one place he had not examined with the binoculars. Peering down, he moved his head slowly back and forth, until again a dazzling flash hit his eyes.

There it was. The boat had been tucked deep underneath a large myrtle bush, but a steel corner of its outboard engine was exposed – just enough to catch a glint of sun.

Got you, thought Alain.

Twenty minutes later he was back in the woods above the cliffs, a quarter of a mile now from the sea, at the place where he had arranged to meet Françoise. He waited impatiently, and then suddenly, soundlessly, she was standing next to him.

‘Christ, you startled me,’ he said.

‘Good. If you’d heard me coming they might have heard me as well.’

‘They? You’ve found people?’

She nodded. ‘I discovered the farmhouse. Very run down; I was sure no one could be living in it. But then two men came out; one of them was walking in the yard. He didn’t look too good. I’ll radio in when we get a bit further away and tell them we’ve found them.’

Alain hesitated. Always cautious, he did not share Françoise’s certainty. He said, ‘We shouldn’t jump to conclusions. I found a boat – a little dinghy, well hidden. But that could just be to keep it from getting stolen. And the two people you saw might be perfectly innocent visitors to the farmhouse.’

‘Trust you,’ said Françoise with a deprecating laugh.

Alain looked at her, slightly offended. ‘What’s so amusing?’

‘You and your caution. The man I saw walking in front of the house was being guarded by the other fellow.’

‘How could you tell?’ Alain demanded.

‘Because the man on the porch was covering his prisoner with a gun. I don’t think that’s how innocent visitors usually behave.’