The Geneva Trap

Chapter 26

Officers Sillon and Mergas had been on the European Cross Border surveillance course so they were the obvious choices to follow the target thought to be travelling into France from Switzerland. The driver, they had been told, was a Russian intelligence officer, suspected of involvement in a fatal accident in Switzerland. If he did come into France, it was thought he’d be heading for Marseilles.

They had just pulled into a layby on the A41 in their dirty Peugeot when the call came on the radio. ‘Target has just reached the border. He’s alone and driving the car we notified, dark Mercedes 500 with Swiss diplomatic plates. He’ll be with you in four minutes. Good luck.’

Mergas adjusted the radio as Sillon turned on the ignition. ‘That was a close one,’ said Mergas. ‘We nearly missed him. Pity they didn’t give us a bit more notice.’

‘And a pity we haven’t got any back-up,’ replied Sillon. ‘But it should be pretty straightforward till we get to Marseilles – if that’s where he’s going.’ He sat, tapping his fingers on the wheel, checking his side mirror for the target car. He was always happiest when the chase was on; it was the waiting he hated.

Suddenly he stiffened. ‘Here we go,’ he said, and the Peugeot started to move forward. The Mercedes flashed by, going at speed; by the time Sillon had manoeuvred the Peugeot on to the motorway the big dark saloon was receding fast ahead of them. Sillon accelerated, cursing under his breath. They should have had at least two cars to do this job properly, more ideally – but there was a big job on in Marseilles, monitoring a bunch of suspected North African terrorists who’d arrived at the weekend.

Sillon wondered why this Russian was going to Marseilles. No one had said to them anything about suspected espionage, and there seemed to be no plan for a foot-follow if he left his car. It all seemed a bit half-baked to him. If their boss knew any more about it, he hadn’t told them, but then Inspector Fézard was always tight-lipped, a believer in telling people only what they needed to know. They’d just been told to follow this guy and report back. If he went into Marseilles, as was expected, one of the cars on the North African operation would be pulled off to help follow him in the city.

Sure enough the Mercedes seemed to be heading that way, taking the clever route, avoiding Lyons and its snarled build-up of traffic, cutting down around Nîmes, then west to the A7 after skirting Chambéry. Traffic was light and the Mercedes was doing over 150 kilometres per hour, though the driver seemed to know the route well enough to slow down for the speed cameras. Sillon stayed back, closing the gap near exits in case the Mercedes left the motorway, and pulling closer when the black saloon slowed down to pay tolls at the péage stations. At Avignon the road split, and the Mercedes took the road marked Marseilles; it did it again before Aix-en-Provence. There didn’t seem much doubt about the driver’s destination, and mercifully he seemed entirely unaware that he was being followed.

They were thirty kilometres from the city when Mergas alerted control. Fifteen minutes later, as they passed a slip road, a familiar car joined the motorway at speed and, pulling ahead of Sillon, closed on the Mercedes, sitting between it and the Peugeot. The Mercedes took the second exit for the city, and the two surveillance cars followed. They moved slowly through an outlying industrial zone, heading towards the Vieux Port.

‘Merde,’ said Sillon; the harbour area was a den of small tortuous streets, where it would be easy to lose any target.

And when the A7 ended, the Mercedes drifted past the Porte d’Aix, standing isolated, like a smaller version of the Arc de Triomphe, down the Rue St Barbe with its modern concrete blocks and on to the wide Quai des Belges and the horseshoe-shaped harbour, the view studded by the unrigged masts of the hundreds of berthed sailing boats. Sillon could see the other surveillance car close behind the Mercedes, which now turned by the Air France office and swung eastwards on to La Canebière. It worked its way through the streets for five minutes, turning left and right, until it suddenly and inexplicably slowed down almost to a crawl. Sillon couldn’t understand why unless it was looking for a place to park. They’d have to follow him on foot, he guessed. But suddenly the Mercedes pulled a dramatic U-turn, right in front of the following surveillance car, which was completely unable to copy without showing its hand. And by the time Sillon managed the turn, the Mercedes had disappeared.

Sillon cursed. The uneventful 300 kilometres they had travelled had lulled him into thinking the Mercedes’s driver was completely unconscious of even the possibility of surveillance – then in the blink of an eye he was gone. As Mergas reached for the radio, Sillon said, ‘This guy’s a pro.’

‘Well, we were told. He’s a Russian intelligence officer,’ replied Mergas ruefully.