by James Becker
‘And what’s there?’
‘An airfield,’ she continued, ‘and it’s a popular destination for private flyers taking day trips from Kent. A friend of a friend of mine – his accountant, actually – quite often flies down there for lunch in his own aircraft. If we turn up there this afternoon with some sob story about needing to get back to Britain as quickly as possible, I think we might find somebody with a couple of spare seats in his Cessna or whatever. And if we can’t talk our way onto a private aircraft, there’s a regular daily service to Le Touquet, operated from Lydd Airport in Britain, so we could buy seats on one of those aircraft as our last resort. Anyway, that’s what I thought.’
Bronson was silent for a moment, looking for flaws in her proposal. Then he glanced across at her.
‘That’s a bloody good idea,’ he said.
By five o’clock that afternoon they were on a back road near Abbeville, and the satnav was steadily counting off the kilometres to go to the Côte d’Opale Airport at Le Touquet.
Bronson hadn’t been quite sure what to expect. Some small airfields he’d visited in the past had been little more than rights of way in a ploughed field, but Le Touquet had a proper tarmac runway, taxiways, hard-standings and even a control tower. And there were a lot of light aircraft parked on those hard-standings, most with registration numbers beginning with ‘F’ – meaning they were of French registry – but quite a lot with a ‘G’ for Great Britain. The terminal building wasn’t all that big, but it was certainly busy, and Bronson and Angela heard a mix of accents and languages as they moved around inside.
Bronson had suggested that Angela waited in the car outside while he tried to thumb a lift from some home-going Brit, but she’d pointed out very sweetly that most private pilots were men and she was far more likely to be able to persuade one of them to accept a couple of passengers than he was, as a bulky, menacing and hairy-arsed middle-aged man – a description he wasn’t entirely happy with – so they had both gone inside the building, Bronson weighed down with their bags. Angela quickly homed in on a couple of likely men, standing talking together on one side of the lounge. They were unmistakably English, casually but expensively dressed and probably in their late thirties.
‘I’ll try them first,’ she said. ‘Try not to get into any trouble while I’m away.’
‘Trouble? Me?’
Bronson watched as Angela made her way over to the two men and held a brief conversation with them. After a minute or so, she turned and walked back to him.
‘They can’t help,’ she said, ‘because they only arrived a short while ago and they’re staying in the area overnight. But they did suggest that another friend might be able to do something. He should be landing any time now with a couple of passengers who are also overnighting in Le Touquet, and they’re pretty certain he’ll be going back empty. They gave me the registration number of his aircraft – I think they said it was a four-seat Piper PA28 Cherokee – and his name, Gary Burnside.’
‘That sounds ideal,’ Bronson said. ‘I’ll get you a drink while we wait. Non-alcoholic, just in case.’
‘Just in case what?’ Angela’s normally cheerful disposition was almost restored, probably because nobody had shot at her so far that day.
103
François was beside his desk in his house in Saint-Cyrl’École, just west of Versailles, looking down at a map of northern France. As he stood there trying to anticipate every possible move his targets might make, he received a telephone call that was entirely unexpected.
‘It’s me,’ the voice said, and François immediately recognized the man as a contact he had in the banking system.
‘You have something for me?’
‘I thought you might like to know that a short time ago a person named C. Bronson bought a ticket on the 19.55 Calais-to-Dover ferry using a credit card in that name. I checked the transaction, and the booking was made by phone, from a British-registered mobile. The registered address of the cardholder is in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, and that ties in with the information you gave me earlier. It’s almost certainly him.’
François was surprised by the news, to say the least.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Let me know if you hear anything else.’
He put the mobile down on his desk and stared again at the map. The more he thought about the information he’d just been given, the more suspicious he was about what it meant. As far as he could tell, there was no good reason why the fugitives would need to pre-book a ferry ticket.
He shook his head. The only reason why the man he was looking for should have purchased a ticket in advance was because he had devised some other means of crossing the Channel, and the one place he wouldn’t be was at the Calais ferry port at five minutes to eight that evening.
He would have to look very carefully at all the other possible routes over to England. The Eurostar terminal in Paris was covered by his men. His eyes roamed down the ports, all of which he knew were already under surveillance. Another possibility, he supposed, was that they might try going to a fishing port or marina and hire a boat and captain to take them across the Channel. But that seemed unlikely, unless they offered a huge sum for such an illegal smuggling operation, or were really persuasive, the kind of persuasion, in short, likely to be backed up by a couple of firearms. That was just about possible, perhaps, but the Channel had blanket radar coverage, and he was quite sure that if any unauthorized vessel made the journey between the French and the British coastlines it would probably be intercepted long before it reached port on the English side.
The more he looked, the more certain François became that the purchase of the ferry ticket was simply a ruse, something to distract him and his men from working out what was actually going on. He ran his eyes down the almost straight coastline shown on the map from Outreau down to Le Crotoy, where the coast of the country bent gently around to the west. And as he scanned the names and symbols on the map, one tiny mark almost leapt out at him, and he suddenly realized what he’d been missing. He’d covered the ports, and the railway stations and the airports, but there was another way that the two fugitives could leave France that had not until that moment occurred to him.
Immediately, he snatched up his mobile phone and dialled a number from memory. The moment the call was answered, he issued his instructions.
104
They didn’t have long to wait. Only about fifteen minutes after Bronson had bought a couple of cups of coffee at the bar, a Piper landed smoothly on the runway and taxied across to the hard-standing close to the terminal building. Angela looked through the window at the aircraft as the pilot turned off the engine, checking the registration.
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Keep your eye on him when he comes in, and then I’ll see if I can work my magic on him.’
Three figures, two men and a woman, emerged from the aircraft, one of the male figures with a bulky carryon bag in each hand, the woman carrying a slim handbag and wearing an attitude, and the other man holding a clipboard. It wasn’t difficult to work out the dynamics of the trio. Inside the terminal, the man carrying the bags escorted the woman through the building and they walked through to the other side to where a taxi was waiting. The pilot completed whatever paperwork he had to do at one of the desks manned by officials, and then strode over to the bar and ordered a coffee.
The moment he was settled at a table, Angela squeezed Bronson’s hand and then walked over to him.
A couple of minutes after she’d introduced herself and sat down beside him, she beckoned to Bronson, who walked over to the table and joined them.
‘This is Gary Burnside,’ she said, ‘and this is my husband Chris. Gary,’ she went on, turning to face Bronson, ‘has kindly agreed that we can hop a ride with him back to England, for the remarkably modest sum of one hundred pounds.’
‘Each, that is, and it’ll be cash, please,’ Burnside emphasized, looking Bronson slowly up and down.
Bronson nodded.
‘T
hat shouldn’t be a problem, though some of it might have to be in euros, if that’s OK with you.’
‘Anything negotiable suits me, squire. And I gather you’re in a bit of a hurry, so as soon as I’ve put myself on the outside of this cup of hot brown, we’ll kick the tyres, light the fires and get going.’
‘You’re ex-military, aren’t you?’ Bronson asked.
‘How did you know?’
‘I was in the army,’ Bronson said, ‘and I’ve only ever heard people in the military refer to coffee as “hot brown”. And “kick the tyres” sounds like an RAF expression.’
‘It is. “Kick the tyres, light the fires, check in on Guard, last one airborne’s a sissy” is the full unexpurgated version. But you’re right. I did a short-service commission in the Crabs, went through Cranwell, learned to fly a Hawk and then had a slight difference of opinion with my lords and masters, which is why I’m now tooling around the sky in a red and white Piper, offering lifts to people I don’t know.’
‘Well, we’re both very grateful, and we are in a hurry, that’s true.’
Burnside drank the last of his coffee and stood up.
‘Then let’s get moving,’ he said, and led the way towards the doors.
‘Do you need to file a flight plan or anything?’ Bronson asked.
‘Yes, but I’ve already filed for both legs, because you have to give four hours’ notice of the return journey, which is irritating for such a short trip,’ he replied. ‘I do this flight on a regular basis, ferrying people backwards and forwards, and I’d only planned to be here at Le Touquet for about fifteen minutes.’
‘But you were planning on flying back empty,’ Angela pointed out. ‘Will it be a problem having us in the aircraft as well?’
‘Only if you want it to be,’ Burnside replied, ‘and if we tell them. I’ve never been met by any British Customs officers when I’ve landed after one of these trips, and if we keep quiet about the fact that you’re in the aircraft, the chances are nobody will ever find out. The Frogs aren’t bothered, and probably won’t even notice you climbing into the aircraft. I’ll just bend the rules slightly. Unless, that is, you’re especially keen to answer a lot of stupid questions from a man in a peaked cap and take the risk of a full body cavity search?’
Bronson grinned at him.
‘I think we can probably forgo that particular pleasure,’ he said.
Within twenty minutes, Burnside had taxied the Piper to the end of the runway, paused to allow another aircraft to land, then obtained take-off clearance from the local controller in the tower, swung the Cherokee onto the runway and pushed the throttle fully forward.
The ribbon of tarmac unrolled surprisingly quickly in front of them, and within a matter of seconds, he was able to ease back on the control column and lift the aircraft into the air. Burnside continued the climb to a westbound semi-circular flight level, then leaned back in his seat, his eyes never still as his gaze swept across the controls and instruments, then the view outside the cockpit, and then repeated the same sequence again.
Bronson and Angela were sitting in the seats behind the pilot. They’d tried as far as possible to remain out of sight.
‘It’s very noisy,’ Angela almost shouted.
Burnside half turned in his seat and smiled at her.
‘An inevitable consequence of sitting about three feet away from an unsilenced engine running at almost full power, my dear,’ he said. ‘It’s when it all goes quiet up here that you need to start worrying.’
‘I completely forgot to ask you,’ Bronson said, ‘where will we be landing?’
‘My home base is Redhill Aerodrome. That’s only a couple miles or so outside Reigate. You can pick up a taxi easily enough and there are plenty of railway stations if you need to go further.’
‘Excellent. That should do us nicely.’
As the Piper had taxied away from the hard-standing, a French registered car drove quickly down the approach road to the Le Touquet airfield and stopped in the car park outside with a brief squeal of its tyres. The driver got out and scanned the other vehicles that were parked there, clearly looking for one car in particular.
After a few moments, a grim smile appeared on his face, and he strode across the car park to where a Renault Megane was standing. He took a small piece of card out of his pocket and compared the registration number of the vehicle in front of him with the details he had written down several hours earlier. Immediately, he took out his mobile phone and dialled a number, and while he was waiting for the call to be answered he looked all around the car, noting the track of the bullet which began in the bonnet in front of the passenger’s seat and ended with a jagged tear in the right-hand front wing.
‘I’m at Le Touquet now,’ he said, as he turned and walked steadily towards the terminal building. ‘The car is in the parking area here. I’ve checked the number and it’s the same as we were told by our friends in Spain, and there’s a bullet hole just in front of the windscreen, passenger side. What do you want me to do?’
His steps slowed as he listened to the instructions he was being given, and he came to a complete halt a few moments later.
‘Done,’ he said, and ended the call.
Inside the terminal, the man checked every single person, looking for anyone who resembled the descriptions he had been given. It was soon obvious that his quarry was nowhere in the building, so they must have already left. But no matter, there was still a second part to the plan.
He strode across to the other side of the room, stopped a man wearing light blue trousers, a short-sleeved white shirt and a badge that identified him as a local official. The searcher produced his own documentation and asked a couple of questions, with the result that less than five minutes later he was studying the ATC logbook, which recorded details of all take-offs and landings and, more importantly, listed the destination airfields of every plane that had taken off from Le Touquet.
Three minutes after that, he had the information he needed, though he wasn’t certain there was enough time left to do much with it. The records showed that the two fugitives could have been passengers on any one of six aircraft, and they were landing at four different airfields in Britain, probably too many to cover at such short notice.
But as he left the air-conditioned interior of the terminal building, he was already passing the information up the line by text message.
105
‘Thank God for that,’ Angela muttered as Gary Burnside set the parking brake and switched off the engine of the Piper, and they watched the propeller spin somewhat jerkily to a stop.
It had been an uneventful, if bumpy, flight from Le Touquet, and there had been an intermittent crosswind at Redhill, so the landing had also been somewhat bouncy. Angela really hadn’t enjoyed it at all. But now they were down on the ground again, and back in England, and for that Angela was supremely grateful.
The three of them climbed out of the aircraft and walked over to the terminal building, where they were completely ignored by everybody, and Burnside led them through to the main entrance, where two taxis were parked outside.
‘There you go, my friend,’ Burnside said. ‘Not a Customs officer in sight, only a couple of licensed bandits in taxis. England awaits you, as indeed do I, or at least I await a certain amount of folding money, as we agreed.’
Bronson handed over the slim wad of notes that he had prepared.
‘There’s one hundred in sterling and another hundred and fifty euros, which means you’ve made a bit on the deal. Have a drink on us. We really owe you, probably more than you’ll ever know.’
Burnside slid the money smoothly into his trouser pocket and nodded his thanks.
‘I really didn’t believe the inventive story your good lady span for me, but I thought she seemed like a decent person, and you’re not so bad yourself. One word of warning, though. I know the weather’s quite warm at the moment, but if I were you I’d try and make sure that you keep your jacket buttoned up. In that leather
shoulder holster under your left armpit is what looks suspiciously like a Glock 17, and carrying one of those around this green and pleasant land is strictly forbidden. As in: “do not collect two hundred pounds and go straight to jail” kind of forbidden. So take care.’
Bronson nodded, smiling ruefully.
‘It’s a long story,’ he said, ‘and you really don’t need to hear it, but thanks again.’
After Burnside had walked away, Bronson paused, looking pensive.
‘What’s wrong?’ Angela asked.
‘We’re here, but I’m not sure we’re going to have it that easy. I don’t want to climb into a taxi out there only to find that the driver is a hitman from P2 waiting for us with a sawn-off shotgun.’
‘You really think they could know we’re here?’
‘I have no idea, but we’ve come so far I really don’t want to take any chances.’
Bronson turned away and strode across to a general noticeboard. Pinned along the edges of the board were a number of business cards from companies offering various services, including taxis. He picked one of the cards at random, took out his mobile, dialled the number and held a short conversation.
‘The car’ll be driving down Kings Mill Lane in about five minutes,’ he said, ending the call. ‘We’ll go out of the other entrance, just in case.’
Moments later, they slipped out of the building, behind the waiting taxis, and made their way through the car park. Nobody appeared to be taking any notice of them, but they still moved cautiously, trying to keep out of sight.
They’d almost reached the road when they heard the sound of a car, accelerating hard, approaching the aerodrome and getting closer by the second.
‘Our taxi?’ Angela suggested.
‘Probably not,’ Bronson replied. ‘This way.’
106
Bronson quickly led her behind a white van which offered a place of concealment and also a vantage point from which they could see the entrance to the terminal, and the two taxis still waiting outside.
