The Martyr’s Curse

Chapter Twenty-Nine

DGSI was the acronym for Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure. The French government agency responsible for counter-intelligence, counterterrorism and surveillance of threats against French territory and national security. As spook agencies went, it wasn’t one of the best known. Back in the day, Ben and his team at the Le Val tactical training centre had run a few of them through their paces in advanced pistol-craft and hostage rescue skills, and not found them to be too badly lacking. They were a tough, well-drilled and intensively selected bunch. If Silvie Valois was telling the truth, it explained to Ben why she hadn’t freaked out on being spattered with the blood of the man who’d accompanied her. But he still had more questions than answers.

‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘You don’t believe me.’

‘Some verification would be nice,’ Ben said.

‘Like I told you, I haven’t exactly been in a position to carry my agency ID card around. For the last four months I’ve been Michelle Faban, posing undercover inside Streicher’s organisation as part of an agency investigation.’

‘Who’s Streicher?’

‘Udo Streicher. Their leader.’

‘Leader of what? A criminal gang?’

‘You could call them that. They call themselves the Parati. It’s Latin.’

‘I know what it is,’ Ben said. ‘It means the prepared ones. Prepared for what?’

She shrugged. ‘Well, that’s a very good question, isn’t it?’

Ben’s mind was spinning as he stared at the woman telling him this wild story. The mystery was deepening faster than he could make sense of it. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘What colour’s your agency HQ building in Neuilly-sur-Seine?’

‘None,’ Silvie replied, straight off the cuff. ‘It’s in Levallois-Perret.’

‘How many departments is the agency divided into?’

‘Eight.’ She rattled them off. ‘Economic, Terrorism, Intelligence Technology, Violent Subversion, General Admin, Support, Counter-espionage and Internal Affairs.’

‘There’s a senior agent there. Big guy, six-three, scar on his cheek, bushy moustache. What’s his name?’

‘Jean-Loup l’Hermite,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘He took early retirement a couple of years ago.’

‘Tattoo on his arm. Left or right?’

‘Left arm, high up.’

‘What was it of?’

‘It was a mermaid,’ she replied.

‘What was his wife’s name?’

‘Didn’t have one. She’d already been dead for five years when I met him. He’s never looked at another woman since.’

Ben stared at her, long and hard and penetratingly. She might be telling the truth. Then again, she might just be a genius at preparation. It was still too early to say for sure, but he let the rifle muzzle droop towards the ground and clicked on the safety.

‘You haven’t told me who you are yet,’ she said. ‘Someone who seems to know a lot about my agency, that’s for sure. And someone who can get hold of a military-issue rifle. You know as well as I do that thing’s off-limits to civilians.’

‘I told you, I’m not a monk,’ he replied. ‘And I’m asking the questions here. Who was Dexter?’

‘Dexter Nicholls,’ she said. ‘You mean, apart from being the dead man you impersonated tonight to get me here?’

‘You seemed especially anxious about him. Why?’

‘Dexter was one of ours, too,’ she replied after a beat.

‘He wasn’t French.’

‘English,’ she said. ‘Like you. Am I right?’

‘Just keep talking.’

‘I never knew his real name, only that he was with British Intelligence. It’s a joint investigation.’

‘Bullshit. He was one of the hit team.’

‘He didn’t harm anyone,’ Silvie protested. ‘You can be one hundred per cent certain of that. He had no choice but to be there. And now Dexter’s body is among the dead, for the cops to find. If they haven’t already. That could cause a lot of trouble for the agency, if they identify who he was.’

‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ Ben said. ‘Because Dexter was properly cremated. There’ll be no trace left of him on the mountain, or anywhere else.’

‘Cremated? What the hell are you talking about? Where?’

‘Right there,’ Ben said, pointing at the dark shell of the Belphégor. ‘The tool locker. I had to fold him up a little to get him in.’

She turned to stare at the truck, then back to gaze in horror at Ben. ‘Jesus Christ. Who are you?’

‘Someone who doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for anyone who was present at the scene of the crime with a gun in their hand.’ He looked her up and down. ‘What’s your height?’

‘One seventy-one,’ she said, taken aback by the question.

He shone the torch down at her feet. She was wearing high-leg combat boots. They were small. ‘Shoe size?’

She frowned. ‘Thirty-seven. Why the hell do you need to know that?’

‘I found footprints at the scene. Combat boots, just like the ones you’re wearing. One set of prints was smaller than the others. As if they belonged to a teenager. Or a woman with small feet.’ He stared at her questioningly.

‘Those weren’t my prints you saw. They must have been Hannah’s.’

‘Who the hell’s Hannah?’

‘Hannah Gissel. Streicher’s girlfriend. She was part of the team. She hardly leaves his side, and she’s as dangerous as he is.’

Ben looked into her eyes. There was a truthfulness in them that would have been hard to fake. Hard, if not impossible.

‘You have a lot more explaining to do,’ he said. ‘But not here.’

He walked her at gunpoint through the trees, shining the torch ahead towards the concealed Hummer. Twigs crackled underfoot. The night birds had returned to their roosts after the gunshot and were calling nervously in the darkness. Ben marched the woman up to the passenger door and held the gun on her while he yanked it open.

‘Get inside,’ he said.

She put one boot on the high sill of the door, found a purchase and hauled herself inside. Ben leaned the rifle against the Hummer’s dull metal flank and took out the switchblade and the roll of tape. The blade flicked out with a click and glimmered in the moonlight. Ben pulled a length of tape off the roll and sliced it off. He used it to bind her right wrist to the tubular frame of the seat, another length to tie her ankles together and a third to connect them to her bound wrist. Then he slammed her door, walked around to the driver’s side, stashed the rifle behind his seat and climbed in and used a fourth length of tape to attach her left wrist.

When he was satisfied she wasn’t going anywhere, he climbed back out of the Hummer, locked it and walked over to Breslin’s body. He grasped the dead man by both limp wrists and dragged him into the bushes. Then he strode fast across the clearing to the SUV his two visitors had arrived in and left blocking the mouth of the track.

It was a Nissan hardtop pickup truck, black and filmed with road dirt, the legend OUTLAW splashed in big letters down its flanks as if to proclaim the bad-boy virility of its driver. The keys were in it. Ben climbed up behind the wheel. The car smelled new. Nothing of interest in the glove compartment. He fired up the engine and lights, engaged gear and drove the big car across the clearing. He parked over Breslin’s body, straddling it with a chunky off-road tyre either side. Not perfect, but better than nothing. Ben didn’t have time for burials.

He returned to the Hummer and clambered in next to his prisoner. The engine growled into life and the lights glared back at them against the close cover of the trees. He let it idle for a moment as he took the woman’s compact Glock from his trouser pocket and laid it in his lap.

‘A gorilla couldn’t break free from this tape,’ she said, eyeing the gun. ‘You don’t take a lot of chances, do you, mister whoever-you-are?’

‘That’s why I’m still here,’ he replied. ‘And the name’s Ben.’

He put the Hummer in gear and they lurched away over the uneven ground, crushing a semicircular path through the bushes until the lights washed over the space of the clearing. He drove past the Belphégor for the last time. Down the rutted track, he reached the junction with the lonely, winding dark road, and hesitated. Right would take him back in the direction of the monastery, left in the direction of the old rural filling station. He swung out left and gunned the throttle, the Hummer’s headlamps carving a channel down the empty night road like the beam of a lighthouse.