by R J Bailey
The PPO world not only loves an acronym, it loves a euphemism, too. A ‘situation’ in this case meant some bastard opens fire on us. With real bullets. ‘I have control of all transportation? Right? No arguments?’
‘I’ll make it clear to him.’ You might think that two professionals assigned to look after a Principal would agree on most things. It was rarely the case. Even deciding which road to take could cause arguments. It was much better if tasks and responsibilities were assigned beforehand. Compartmentalisation was the key to the harmonious and safe transport of a client.
‘Where is the client now?’
‘Somewhere in the Atlantic aboard a private yacht. They’ll be dropped off in France in a couple of days.’
‘Where in France?’
‘Do you want the job?’ he asked.
I was intrigued, but I gave a noncommittal shrug. ‘I assume a landing as close to Luxembourg as possible?’
‘Well, no. Don’t assume that. The coast towards Belgium is still very tightly patrolled, thanks to the refugee problem.’
A few tumblers clicked into place in my still-addled brain. I found a little cubicle for Jess and parked her there. There was something else he wasn’t telling me. It made no sense not to land close to the destination. Unless . . .
‘What’s the PoFU?’ Potential for Fuck Up.
‘A Red Notice.’ Colonel d’Arcy said this as if it were a golf handicap. But his eyes were darting about. I’d never seen him look properly shifty before. He usually stopped at mildly evasive.
I found myself wanting it spelled out. ‘An Interpol Red Notice?’
‘Yes.’
‘Anything else?’
He cleared his throat. ‘The client is also carrying an outstanding EAW.’
‘A Europol Arrest Warrant?’
‘Yes,’ he snapped. ‘So it will all have to be under the radar.’
It would be best under the fucking ground – tunnelling to Luxembourg. A Red Notice was only a request to detain a suspect. The EAW was trickier. That required the police force of a member state to arrest the suspect. So if we came up against a cop with a computer, there would be an instruction to detain. And then what have I got – a Hungarian willing to shoot his way out?
‘What’s Konrad’s OD when it comes to the police?’ The Operational Directive established any ground rules. I just hoped there were some.
‘I’ll make sure he knows it’s the same OD that applies to all my people. To put his hands up and go quietly. He’s not there for cops. He’s there for . . . any others.’
That was something at least. A gunfight with cops was never a good idea.
‘And before you ask, we don’t know who the said “any others” are.’
Not so good. ‘You had time to prepare any fake documents?’
‘No, but that will be the first port of call after landing.’ He knew what my next question would be. What was the EAW for? Rape? Murder? There are some things that are beyond the pale even for a PPO.
‘The warrant is for bribing a trader at Deutsche Bank to rig the Euribor rate.’
The needle barely gave a jerk. Insider trading and market manipulation was the norm with many clients. Few of them got extremely rich and kept clean hands. Every yacht in Monaco harbour was built with somebody’s tears. Or somebody else’s money. I didn’t know much about finance, but knew the Euribor as some sort of exchange rate set between European banks. Like the better-known Libor, it could be manipulated to give traders an edge. And a big profit. ‘How serious is it? The offence?’
He tried to sound dismissive, as if it were nothing. ‘It’s an unsubstantiated historical allegation.’
‘How long ago?’
‘Four years.’
‘How seriously will the cops take it?’
The Colonel shrugged. ‘You can never tell. At the moment, as you know, bankers and investors are pariahs to some sections of the press. But on the scale of banking offences that have been committed in Europe? Small beer. However, there is always a risk of running across a policeman who thinks he is Eliot Ness reborn.’
‘Did he do it?’
The Colonel’s wrinkled visage gained a few more crevices as he frowned. ‘Who?’
‘The client. The man we’ve just been talking about for fifteen minutes. Did he bribe someone four years ago?’
The glint in the Colonel’s eyes illuminated the garden path I had been led up. ‘Didn’t I say? Why you are perfect for the job? The client isn’t a “he”. It’s a “she”.’
ELEVEN
London
‘I don’t have long. I’m meant to be shivering on a beach somewhere in Normandy sometime tomorrow night.’
‘You only call when you want something.’
‘I know. Today I wanted lunch. With you.’
Nina narrowed her eyes suspiciously. We were sitting in a restaurant in east London, surrounded by fellow customers on MacBooks and iPads and being ignored by tatted-up waiters and waitresses. We were so much older and less hip than the rest of the clientele, they had probably decided we’d just come in to find somewhere warm to curl up and die, like cats who know that their time has come.
It was my idea to meet for lunch, Nina’s choice to dine at Hogget. She had decided to move east, declaring the rest of London a dead zone for decent restaurants and bars. Sclerotic, she called it. Whereas, young fresh blood flowed through E1 and E8. You couldn’t book at Hogget, and it was so popular – having been open for all of three weeks and with a positive Jay Rayner review under its belt – you had to turn up immediately after breakfast to be sure of a lunch spot. So we sat on our rickety mismatched chairs and tried to ignore the giant steel ducting that was hanging over our heads.
‘So, can you do some digging for me about this client? Elizabeth Irwin. I trawled the internet. Very little out there. Rich, lives in New York. It’d really help. Help get Jess back too.’
That was a low blow. I knew Nina felt guilty because Laura and Matt had abducted – or more likely enticed, prior to abduction – Jess from Nina’s house while she was in her care. For the longest time she couldn’t understand why I didn’t blame her. Because it wasn’t her job to stop my fuckwit ex-husband taking Jess. That was my job. I’d failed, not her. But sometimes, you can play on guilt like one of those twiddly jazz guitarists Paul, my husband, used to like. Paddy McTheny or something like that.
‘And this client of yours, she bribed someone to make a shitload of money?’ There was something about Nina’s Scottish accent that could cut through a restaurant’s hubbub like a laser through steel and a few heads turned.
‘I think it’s called capitalism.’
‘Ach, it’s a modern form of rape and pillage.’
‘Has someone explained our concept?’
I looked up at a hirsute server whose eyebrows had so many rings in them you could run a curtain pole through and make a set of drapes for his eyes. ‘Yes. But give us a minute.’
When he’d gone, Nina asked: ‘Why didn’t you let him explain the concept?’
‘I thought you were the trencherman Londoner, fearlessly patrolling the cutting edge of cosmopolitan dining. The concept is that they take some food, preferably mixed with ingredients foraged from railway sidings nearby, fix it up as small, sharing portions and then charge you the same as if they were full-sized plates. Then the moment I’ve started eating they’ll keep coming round and asking how everything is so you can’t actually enjoy it.’
‘Cynic.’
‘You’ve done this to me too many times. I hate sharing. I want my own food, please.’
‘It has bigger plates.’ She waved the coarse paper menu at me. ‘Look. Left-hand side. Under “For the Pig-Faced”. You can have a great slab of meat all to yourself. Just don’t ask for any of mine.’
It wasn’t under any such thing. And they had fish.
‘Are you OK, Sam?’ she asked.
‘As well as can be expected. Why?’
‘It’s just that . . . eve
rything makes you so angry. Out of all proportion. They do small plates. It’s not a tragedy. Syria is a tragedy.’
I knew she was right. It didn’t take much for the stopcock on the well of fury somewhere around my stomach to open up. Sometimes it gushed pure bile.
‘Losing Jess, that was a tragedy,’ I said.
‘Yes. I’ll accept that. But Sam, this anger will eat you hollow.’
‘I know, I know. And before you suggest it, I am not seeing a shrink. I’m trying to channel the anger. Hence this job in France. I can justify it as part of getting her back.’
Nina reached across and squeezed my hand. ‘OK, but we are here now and you have work to do. So you have to babysit this woman in France. Can you tell me more?’ she asked.
So I did, or at least the edited highlights. I even managed to avoid biting her head off for using the word ‘babysit’.
‘You’ll drive over to meet this woman?’ Nina asked when I had finished. ‘Mrs Irwin?’
‘No. I’ll fly. I want to be using a car with French plates and a non-hire number. There’ll be one waiting for me not far from the pick-up spot. Then it’s off to have a new passport made. That’s probably a few hours’ delay. Then off to jolly old Luxembourg on a route of my say-so.’
‘You alone?’
I wasn’t certain what she meant by that. ‘The decision is mine alone, yes. But I’ve got some muscle with me. Name of George Konrad.’
‘Muscle?’ Her voice was laced with suspicion. Or was it excitement? ‘What kind of muscle?’
‘The kind designed to keep us out of trouble, not get into it.’ At least I hoped so.
‘How long do you think it’ll take, this little jaunt?’
‘Depends where she comes ashore. If I used main roads, five, six hours. Seven tops. Plus however long it takes for the Colonel’s man to do the passport. But I probably won’t be using the autoroutes.’
‘Why not?’
‘With both an EAW and a Red Notice out on her? Why do you think?’
‘But it isn’t that serious a crime, is it? Aren’t they all at it? Bankers and traders?’
‘It might not be, but we think it might be designed to tangle her in red tape. An arrest is an arrest. It tends to make things complicated, no matter what the charge.’
We ordered from the be-ringed server, who was disappointed that I didn’t want to have fun with their sharing concept and asked for a sea bass to myself and a bottle of Godello for us both. I wasn’t on duty yet.
‘Look, Sam . . .’ Nina played with her cutlery and her face set itself into ‘deadly serious’.
‘Listen, I know what you are going to say. Smuggling a wealthy fugitive across France, wanted by the law and God knows who else. It’s stupid. I should get another job. But the money is good. And, as I said, if it helps bring Jess back—’
‘What I was going to say,’ she interrupted, ‘was that it’ll make a great story. Fantastic copy for the magazine. Bodyguarding a fugitive across Europe. I’ll change the names, of course.’
My jaw must have dropped because I found it was almost brushing the ‘repurposed’ wood that constituted the tabletop. ‘You are not coming. Understand? Jesus, what do you think this is? The British Army? That you can embed in my unit? I’m only telling you so that someone knows where I am should anything happen.’ In fact, I’d briefed Freddie too, but it was better each felt they were the sole repository of this information. ‘No, forget it—’
‘All right, hold those bloody horses. I didn’t mean that. I was just thinking I could interview it out of you when it’s all over. Maybe you could just take some notes as an aide-memoire. And as I said, we’d change all the names. Including yours.’
‘Nina, this isn’t your sort of piece. I thought you were at the sharp end of journalism.’
‘Yes, well, things change, don’t they? Most of what I used to do, the comment and analysis, you can get for free on the web now. Bloody newspapers are into “citizen journalism”. Which means let any Tom, Dick or Mary have a go, and look – we don’t have to pay them! Bonus. Another couple of years, it’ll be robots doing it. I’m not kidding – bots do most of the stats compilations for the papers now. And after nobody outside the KKK predicted a Trump presidency, political punditry is seen as something like casting the runes. You might as well go back to haruspicy. Reading entrails,’ she added helpfully. ‘So, I’m trying to move across to the mag. Colour pieces. Interviews. The soft end, as you’d probably say.’
‘I see.’
‘It was just a thought . . .’
‘Sorry. No.’ I made it sound as final as possible, the way a belligerent Frenchman might. ‘I can’t do it. Even with names changed. Too risky.’
Nina huffed. ‘I thought you wanted some background on this woman.’
‘Not that badly.’
‘Well, if I do some digging, what do I get in return?’
We were interrupted by the arrival of the wine and subsequent fuss, which was probably just as well, because I’d calmed down a little by the time we resumed. ‘I can see what you are thinking. But let me tell you – my job is to make this trip as dull as possible. To make sure nobody gets hurt. Not so much as a splinter. A few days of tedium is a very acceptable outcome. If there’s even a whiff of “good copy” I’ve fucked up.’
I held up my glass and after a brief hesitation Nina clinked hers against mine. ‘Then here’s wishing for the most boring trip, ever.’
I think it is called tempting fate.
‘You are like an armadillo!’
I smiled at the familiar complaint. After the buzz of lunchtime wine had worn off, I had gone to see Elsa who, during my peak PPO days, would give me a massage twice a week to help keep me supple. She reckoned I had a tendency for my skin to glue itself to the underlying tissues whenever I was tense. Hence the jibe that I had a covering like an armadillo.
Elsa was no normal masseuse. She wasn’t blonde or pretty or young. She didn’t try to push expensive exfoliants or miracle creams on her clients. Her ‘studio’ was the front room of her house in Finsbury Park, bare but for the table I was lying face down on, a rack of towels and a corner sink. Not so much as a scented candle. There was no new-age piano or flutes or pan pipes and, thank Christ, no bloody humpback whales. Just the sound of Elsa grunting as she dug her fingers deep and the occasional whimper from me.
Elsa was Dutch, and I am not sure what kind of masseuse she trained to be. I know she had a lot of professional dancers and musicians as clients, helping them get over the inevitable strain their careers put on their bodies. Her approach was certainly novel. I often found myself folded like a pretzel with my face between the two great pillows of her breasts while she coaxed my muscles in her heavily accented English.
‘Come on, come on. You know you’re not meant to be there. Float away like a balloon. That’s it, that’s it. Goooood. Thank you.’
I just kept my eyes closed and let her get on with it, because when she had finished – after an hour and a half – I always felt springier and far less armadillo-like.
This time she worked away for close to the two-hour mark, a lot of it seeming to involve excavating under my shoulder blades. When she had finished she let out her usual ‘Soooooooo,’ that signalled she had done all she could.
‘Thank you,’ I said, savouring the cessation of pummelling and stretching and prodding by lying there for a few moments.
‘You were very tight.’
‘I did relax for about five minutes a few nights ago.’
‘Well, you are as ready as I can make you for another of your trips. Then I suppose I have to put you back together.’
‘I’ll try not to fall apart too much.’
She walked over and rinsed the oil off her hands in the corner sink. ‘Your muscles feel good. Now I can get to them through your skin. Well toned.’
‘I’ve been training,’ I said.
‘But, I am a little worried. From what you say.’
We had spoken for
about ten minutes at the start of the session. I couldn’t even recall what I had said. ‘Worried about what?’
‘I am not sure you are fully ready.’
I raised my face from the hole in the massage table and looked at her. ‘I don’t think I can get much fitter at my age.’
‘Not in the body.’ She pointed at her temple. ‘But in here.’
‘Mentally?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘I think so. I think you need to work on up here as well.’
‘Fucking hell, Elsa,’ I said. I sat up and swung my legs off. ‘Not you as well. Why does everyone want me to get my head tested?’
‘I am just saying. I know how focused you used to be when you came here before. I don’t get that now. I get the sense you are not as sharp as you could be. In the mind.’
I dismissed her with a shake of the head. It wasn’t what I wanted – or needed – to hear. I was, in fact, annoyed at her for expressing thoughts that, were I a weaker person, might dent my confidence. But, sadly, time would prove her right. I just wasn’t ready for what was coming my way.
PART THREE
TWELVE
Normandy, France
There was a knock at my door before seven in the evening. I looked at the kit laid out on the bed and made sure there was nothing incriminating before I said, ‘Enter.’
George Konrad had the shaven-headed look of the typical East European hardman, a goatee and some serious jowls that made his face look pear-shaped. His cheeks were pitted with the evidence of a bad case of acne or chickenpox. He had, though, a pair of clear green eyes that sparkled with a self-aware humour. They suggested he knew that he was a walking cliché. My job is always to blend in the background. Maybe people like him think it’s better to play your trump card right away. I’m dangerous. Don’t fuck with me.
He had on smart black trousers and a matching polo shirt with the Lacoste crocodile on it. It was pretty loose on him, but I could see he kept himself in shape by the tightness of the sleeves around his biceps.
