by Andy McNab
He nodded.
‘And me going through every room.’
He nodded again.
‘I need to wipe the memory.’
He treated me to something very like a smile, and more words in a single sentence than he’d given me since I’d dragged him out of the Evoque. ‘You left me in charge, remember? That was my job.’
We both heard shouted orders and boots on the ground at the far end of the corridor. As we legged it across the threshold, the room was plunged into darkness and a trail of LED lights showed the way ahead. The shelving unit closed silently behind us. There was a touchpad set into the rock for a return journey, and a screen the size of an iPad, which showed an infrared image of the place we’d just left.
Apart from our footsteps, all I could hear now was the gentle whir of the ventilation system.
12
There was obviously nothing wrong with Stefan’s mind, apart from it being a pint-size replica of his dad’s, but his ankle stopped working again after another fifty. I picked him up and kept on going.
I soon lost track of how far we’d walked, but I didn’t care. It was all about making distance, and a steadily downward slope really helped. I had no idea whether we’d emerge in Bulgari Land or out in the wild. I stopped every so often and listened for any sign of pursuit. Unless the boys in blue had found their way through Frank’s secret escape hatch and changed into the world’s quietest brothel-creepers, there was none.
Eventually a shiny steel door appeared out of the gloom in front of us. A spyhole glinted at head height. I peered through it into what looked like a neon-lit lock-up. I pressed the button that opened the door and moved from a spotless designer planet into the one I was more used to – the one with dirt under its fingernails, sweat on its bollocks and oil stains on its floor.
A couple of old bicycles hung from the ceiling. The shelves that lined the walls were loaded with all sorts of shit that even real people didn’t need to keep but couldn’t bring themselves to throw away. I knew this was exactly how the place was meant to look; it wasn’t just because Frank had forgotten to bring in the cleaners. Once the door had closed, there was no hint of what lay behind it.
A dark green Volkswagen Polo stood to one side, with French plates and an up-to-date Swiss car-toll vignette in the bottom left corner of the windscreen. Nothing too flash, but solid. This wagon was designed to stay under the radar.
There was no sign of a satnav, which suited me just fine. I’d spent the last few hours wondering where the fuck I was, and still wanted to find out how I’d got here, but I was in no doubt that I’d spent the rest of my life doing my best to remain untraceable.
The only concession to high tech was the little black plastic box on the driver’s seat, which I guessed must power up the shutter that separated us from the outside world. The ignition key had been left beside it.
When I put Stefan down he made for the passenger door, but I steered him to the rear hatch and told him to curl up in the boot. ‘It’s safer. No one will give a scruffy fucker on his own a second glance in a wagon like this …’ I liked the sound of that. I hoped it was true.
He got the message and curled up without complaint on what looked and smelt like an old dog blanket, beside a folded safety triangle and a clear plastic container full of spare lightbulbs. I didn’t feel too bad about that. Despite the crocodiles crawling all over his kit, I knew he’d been in shittier places. I knew because I’d been there with him.
Before I closed the hatch I asked him who knew about this set-up.
‘Just me and my dad.’
‘Not the black guy?’
He shook his head.
I sparked up the engine, threw the Polo into gear and pressed the button on the black box. Sure enough, a green light flickered and the shutter rolled open, then closed as soon as we were through.
Immediately on my left there was a storage facility for winter grit, and a vehicle-repair yard on the right. You wouldn’t have given either a second glance as you headed up or down the mountain. And if you took the heli from Geneva to the Altiport, you’d never even know that places like this existed.
I drove fifteen metres up the rutted track between them and turned right, away from the sign pointing towards ‘Centre Village’. I needed to go back to pick up my day sack, but right now I had to make distance from this drama and work out what the next one would be.
I kept going until I reached Moriond – not too far from Courchevel 1850, but the kind of place that looked like you could still find a takeaway kebab instead of an over-priced three-course meal. I pulled into a parking lot outside a block of flats that was in need of a lick of paint, and turned off the engine.
Someone had smashed the only lamp in sight, so it was nice and dark here. I wound down the front windows a fraction to stop them misting up, and watched the comings and goings on the main.
First up, I wondered who the fuck had pressed the GIGN button. Even if someone had reported us gaining entry, those guys didn’t bother with break-ins. They were heavy-duty. National security. So who were they after? Me? Frank’s killers? Or was this only the tip of a bigger, uglier iceberg? Whatever the answer, I needed to nail it on my own terms, and not from the inside of a police interrogation room.
Now we seemed to be out of the immediate shit, I was going to focus on finding out who had leant on Mr Lover Man forcibly enough to get him to kill his boss. Because when I knew that, I’d be a step closer to neutralizing the threat to Stefan. And the threat to me.
The traffic was sporadic for the next hour or so. Family saloons, mostly, the odd tourist coach and local bus. That was OK by me. It gave me time to try to join some of the dots.
I heard Stefan give a small cough and then whisper, ‘Can I come out now?’
‘No.’ I kept eyes on the main. ‘But while you’re there, you can tell me some stuff. Question one: how long had you and your dad been at the chalet?’
A couple of boy racers with Day-glo decals on their wings roared up the hill, then stood on their brakes as a GIGN Land Cruiser sped past in the opposite direction. It was four up and without blues and twos, so I guessed the sniper team had been stood down. Three more came by at intervals.
‘Two days.’
Then a command unit, then nothing.
‘And your BG?’
‘BG?’
His voice was muffled, but it was clear he had no idea what I was talking about.
‘Yeah, you know, your bodyguard …’
‘He was always there. Except maybe once.’
‘When?’
‘Last night … While you were with my …’
‘Dad?’
He gave the smallest of whimpers.
‘Did he talk to anyone? Meet anyone? Anyone you didn’t know?’
‘Oh, Nick …’ He sounded like he was in pain. ‘He was my friend. I didn’t spy on him …’
‘My meeting with your dad, in the green room—’
‘You were in there for … ages.’
Ages … So it had been more than a heads-up and a swift espresso.
‘He was worried about something. Do you have any idea what?’
‘No …’ He let out the world’s biggest sigh. ‘I just knew he was … He thought he kept it hidden, but I knew.’
Time for a break. The whimper and the sigh told me I was pushing too hard. And it was getting cold.
I shut the windows and started the engine.
Fifteen minutes and a few hairpin bends later I was in the heart of the resort. The twin cables from the Verdons lift station stretched up the valley to my right. A female cop was directing traffic at the roundabout, but she’d gone by the time I’d repeated the circuit. I parked up in a space outside the cinema. There was no sign of any more of her Special Forces mates.
The piste map beneath the stationary line of bubbles told me where I was, and where I had to go. I got back in the Polo and wound my way through Courchevel’s answer to Rodeo Drive, past the kind of hotels whe
re they warm your toilet seats as well as your ski boots, on to the high ground.
I drove a hundred past Le Strato, pulled into the next layby and waited another half-hour before getting out of the wagon and circling back to my hiding place. I didn’t trip over anyone en route, and everything seemed to have gone quiet at Oligarch Central.
My day sack was where I’d left it. The ATV was too. I wrenched off its registration plates and chucked them into the middle of a big clump of bushes on my way to the road. It wouldn’t take for ever for someone to find and then identify Claude’s Honda, but I didn’t want to make it too easy. The more time passed without them being able to make the connection, the better.
I dumped the day sack in the passenger foot well of the Polo and tucked the Sphinx under my right thigh. Mr Lover Man would know it was fuck-all use, but it might stop anyone who didn’t getting too close. And I could always throw it at them if the shit hit the fan.
I drove on through the one-way system, avoiding the heart of the village, and took a right towards Le Praz, past a floodlit ski jump that seemed to be its social centre even when there was no snow anywhere near it. A handful of people milled around outside a bunch of all-weather tepees that lined the base of the landing strip.
I was still searching my jumbled memory for something significant Frank might have said. It didn’t get me anywhere. All I knew for sure was that I hadn’t been able to save him, and he hadn’t been able to save himself.
I pulled off the road and tugged the map book out of my day sack. A bunch of euro notes came with it, and fluttered into the foot well. I leant over to gather them up.
I paused, midway.
Money …
Mexican drug money …
Frank had laundered it, then fed my share into the bank in Zürich that had supplied me with my magic debit card.
I grabbed one of the Nokia bodies and slotted in a battery and a SIM card. ‘Mate, I’m just getting out of the car again. But I won’t be far away. Stay right where you are.’
13
I punched out what I hoped was the Swiss dialling code and my account manager’s mobile number. The key to conjuring up regularly accessed data sequences was to crack on instinctively. Interrupting the process with any kind of rational thought only fucked things up. And because I never compromised my security – or anyone else’s – by storing contact details, it had become second nature.
Whether I got through now would show me if my medium-to-long-term memory was salvageable, or as elusive as my grip on the recent past.
‘Bonsoir.’
The voice was familiar. And it didn’t give me a bollocking for calling after hours.
I rattled off a nine-figure code.
‘Oui …’
So far, so good.
‘About two years ago I received a series of payments from a Mr Frank Timis.’
‘Oui.’
‘Do you have any record of those payments?’
‘Bien sûr.’ I heard a keyboard being tapped. ‘No movement for … eight months, then another transfer yesterday evening, from the same source.’
‘What source?’
‘La Banque Privée, in Albertville.’
‘Address?’
I scribbled it on my arm as he gave it to me.
‘Who authorizes the transactions?’
‘The manager. A Monsieur Laffont.’
I was about to ring off when he asked if I’d like him to confirm the amount of the most recent payment. I said I would.
‘Five hundred thousand euros.’
Fuck me. ‘Any description?’
‘Non.’
Of course there wasn’t. Frank would have told me what it was for. He didn’t need to share the job spec with anybody else.
I dismantled the phone, trod the pieces into the earth and got back into the Polo.
My immediate objective had been to get out of the resort area. Now I knew where I was going. Albertville was less than fifty Ks away. It looked large enough for us to lose ourselves in for a day or two. And it was where I would find Mr Laffont and the Adler depot.
Before sparking up the ignition, I called back over my shoulder. ‘All right, Stefan? We’re about to go somewhere safe.’
I got a muffled grunt in response. Maybe he believed what I’d just said as little as I did. The fact was, nowhere was completely safe, for either of us. But I couldn’t just mince around. I needed to find somewhere out of the immediate firing line to hide the boy, then to track down Mr Lover Man.
The further I got down the valley, the more comfortable I began to feel, and not only because I didn’t see any flashing blue lights or overly interested Range Rovers in the rear-view. We were back in the real world, where people scraped a living, shopped at discount stores and chopped their own wood.
There were no Gucci cable cars here, just columns of electricity pylons marching along beside the Isère river, through pleated-tin prefab industrial estates, cement factories and parked-up earth-moving equipment. Lights blazed from the odd car showroom. A pillar of rock rose up from between the carriageways, topped by some kind of shrine.
A big fuck-off set of white neon horns announced the presence of a Buffalo Grill, a macho version of McDonald’s, to the right of the main. I’d emptied the contents of my gut up on the hill, and I was pretty sure Stefan hadn’t got anything down his neck since breakfast, apart from the chocolate bar I’d given him while I went and borrowed the ATV, and the one in Frank’s drawer. I pulled off at the next exit, asked him what sort of stuff he liked, and went in to order a takeaway.
The place wasn’t heaving with customers, but there were enough to stop me drawing too much attention to myself, and judging by the plates in the parking area, quite a few of them were Brits. I emerged ten minutes later with burgers and chips and a couple of bottles of Coke.
I pointed the Polo further away from the main and found a floodlit communal sports facility with an AstroTurf football pitch and a basketball game in full flow, where no one would give a second glance at a scruffy guy taking time out with his lad.
I lifted him out of the boot and told him we didn’t have to do the whole hugging thing, but from now on anyone looking in our direction had to pick up that vibe. ‘Kids with strange men always stick out like a sore thumb. Boys with their dads pass unnoticed in places like this.’
He shut and then opened his eyes a couple of times, but he managed to stop them leaking. Then, while the local dudes rocketed around the court, dreaming of stardom, Stefan sat and looked at his dinner like it was something I’d wiped off his shoe. I thought for a moment that he was going to push it away. I suddenly remembered that Frank had kept as strict an eye on his diet as he had on his education.
‘What’s the problem, mate? Not enough curly kale?’
He grimaced. ‘I hate curly kale.’
He took an experimental bite and got stuck in. I did too. I’d never been a big fan of acid reflux, and this stuff was exactly what I needed to combat it.
When we’d finished, I sat him in the front of the wagon and went in search of a cheap motel with several exits and no security cameras. I found one between the pitches and the train station that was just about perfect. I circled the area around it. My head hadn’t been straight at the chalet, and I’d fucked up. I didn’t want to make the same mistake twice.
It wasn’t long before I found what I was looking for. Beside the railway track: a wooden shed where the locals came to dump their household waste, their wine bottles and empty boxes. I pulled up alongside a pile of discarded bin bags and opened the door. Three big plastic wheelie-bins with different-coloured lids stood in front of me. There was enough space between them for a small person to squeeze through.
I gave Stefan a wave and motioned for him to join me.
His expression told me he didn’t know what the fuck I was up to. When he’d poked his head inside, he was none the wiser.
‘ERV.’
He really thought I’d lost the plot.
‘Take a good look. I’ll explain later.’
I told him to get down in the foot well as we turned through the main entrance to the motel and to stay there until I gave the signal. There were about forty parking spaces and almost as many vehicles. All good. I didn’t want to find myself somewhere with so few guests that the owner could provide a Photofit for every one of them.
The check-in desk was on the opposite side of a courtyard from the main block. The lad behind it had more zits on his face than brain cells between his ears, and was a lot more interested in what was on TV than he was in me. I gave him enough cash to cover two nights in a room on the ground floor and he handed over a key with one of those lumps of metal attached that are supposed to be heavy enough to stop you walking off with them by mistake. I waved my passport at him but he didn’t give a shit.
I left Stefan where he was while I went and checked out our accommodation, and our surroundings. The door was on one side of an archway that led straight through the building. I pushed it open and chucked both our bags on to the double bed. A ladder led to a bunk that ran across the head of it, and a small flat-screen Samsung was mounted on the opposite wall. There was a basic en-suite with shower and toilet and a small window above the cistern.
I fastened the shutters on the window overlooking the parking lot, went out and scanned the areas back and front. Once I was satisfied that they were deserted, I smuggled Stefan out of the Polo. He didn’t move a muscle when he saw where we were staying, and I gave him top marks for that. We were a long way from Louis Vuitton country.
I popped a couple of ibuprofen out of the blister pack for him, swallowed a couple myself, and replaced the makeshift bandage around his ankle with the Tubigrip. It was a bit late in the day, but would give him some support and limit the swelling. I pointed at his rucksack and told him to get ready for bed.
He removed his washbag and disappeared into the bathroom. I flicked on the TV remote and selected the news channel. There was nothing more on the body in the Range Rover or the wreckage of the Nissan, just the usual stuff about Putin trying to turn back the clock and flex his muscles in Ukraine. They showed him riding his horse, stripped to the waist, then ran through some more stock shots of the Kremlin, Red Square and St Basil’s Cathedral. That took me back. I wondered if my Russian ex still dropped by GUM to do her shopping.
