by Chris Ryan
‘So we’re going to have to look and behave right. Debbie’s done some research on this and is acting as our wardrobe expert – in fact she’s buying the stuff as we speak. We’re leaving this afternoon and we’re booked into two hotels: the forward team are staying a kilometre to the north of Fanon-Khayat’s apartment, at the Hotel Montmorency at Ranelagh; the back-up team on the Rue Molitor itself at the Hotel Grand Exelmans.
‘The Grand Exelmans overlooks Fanon-Khayat’s apartment,’ Eve continued. ‘And tomorrow morning Terry, Chris and Leon will set up an OP there. From 11.30 Andreas and myself will occupy a table at the Café Molitor, which is opposite the Grand Exelmans and next door to the block containing Fanon-Khayat’s apartment. The apartment occupies the whole of the fourth floor. At midday Fanon-Khayat is expecting an MI6 representative to arrive there to discuss the Karadjic business and negotiate the handover of the pictures.’
To Slater, knowing what she was going to say next, the moment seemed to go into slow motion. The faces of his new colleagues, polite and solicitous, blurred. They were throwing him in at the deep end.
‘That MI6 representative,’ Eve continued, ‘will in reality be Neil. Neil will enter the apartment, disable the two bodyguards, and take out Fanon-Khayat.’
NINE
Slater woke shortly before 7am, showered, dressed and left the Hotel Montmorency. The deserted streets shone with the night’s rain, and the morning smell of the city – wet grass, fresh bread, petrol – rose from the pavement to meet him.
He walked for ten minutes through the streets before he found a café that was open, and installed himself at an outside table. Beside him, a woman was setting up a stall selling chrysanthemums, tulips and roses, and the scent of flowers drifted towards him on the damp air. Slater’s French had never been up to much but he could manage ‘café crème’, and when the steaming tray was laid before him it occurred to him that he could not remember a more perfect beginning to a day.
A pity, really, that he had to spoil it.
The day before had been knackering. After the briefing, in the course of which he and the team had covered every possible eventuality and factored in every possible fuck-up, they had been dispatched to the Nine Elms safe house for outfitting. Slater had walked home with a battered Louis Vuitton suitcase containing several changes of clothes, all of them strictly conforming to the dictates of Paris weekend fashion. There was no question of his pretending to be French — merely of blending in, of looking unmemorably prosperous. In truth, he thought, as he raised his heavy coffee-cup and looked at his reflection in the café window, he had rarely felt more comfortable.
He and Andreas had travelled together on the Eurostar. Sitting in the first-class compartment with Andreas’s laptop computer on the table between them, they had looked like a couple of well-off businessmen travelling to a weekend seminar. The train was crowded, and they had discussed neither the hit nor the department’s business as a whole. Instead they reminisced about old times and Slater asked Andreas if he had a girlfriend.
Andreas looked uncomfortable, and then self-consciously admitted that he had been ‘seeing’ – as he put it – Debbie.
Slater absorbed this information. ‘Do you know her name?’
‘Debbie’s her real name. I don’t know the other. And I’ve never asked.’
‘No envelopes around? No name on her flat?’
‘Nope.’
‘What about Eve? What do you know about her?’
‘Nothing. Why, are you harbouring ambitions in that direction, by any chance?’
Slater pictured the wry smile, the sea-grey eyes and the feminine curves that no amount of nondescript dressing could quite disguise. ‘I’m not stupid,’ he said.
‘And what exactly does that mean?’
‘It means that we’ve got to work together. Plus she’s not my type. Plus she certainly doesn’t fancy me. She’s probably got some guy who works in the city and thinks she’s got a job in PR. They probably go on holiday together in . . . where’s that place all the Sloanes go?’
‘Tuscany,’ said Andreas morosely.
‘That’s right. Fucking Tuscany. And they probably go to that restaurant, what’s it called?’
‘River Café.’
‘Right. River Fucking Café. And they probably go to the opera together, and shooting in Scotland with people called Piers and Annabel.’
‘Well, look at us,’ said Andreas. ‘We’re not doing so badly. We’re going shooting in Paris with people called Terry and Chris.’
Slater ordered a second cup of the café’s high-voltage coffee. The morning sunshine was lifting the moisture from the streets and pavements, patching them with paler grey. A faint haze still hung over the Bois de Boulogne.
He had been chosen as the trigger-man, Andreas had told him, because of his known expertise in CQB – close-quarter battle. Fanon-Khayat would almost certainly have his bodyguards around, and one way and another they would have to be dealt with.
Slater doubted the truth of this flattering analysis. They were sending him in because it was bloody dangerous, and as the newest member of the team he was the most expendable. He hoped he’d get the weapon he had asked for – a silenced Sig Sauer P239G.
Leon had been given the job of arming the team. In his twenties, according to Andreas, the Mauritian had spent five years as a Foreign Legion paratrooper and a further three in a French jail for acting as a driver in an armed robbery. Since that time he had made a point of retaining his contacts in the Paris underworld. All being well, he would be providing the team with a principal and a back-up weapon when they RVed at the Hotel Grand Exelmans at 9.30.
Under other circumstances the Cadre would have smuggled their own weapons into France with them. Eve had told them that she had considered driving them in. Given that Firewall was a sealed operation, however, and an operation to which elements of the French security forces might well be hostile, the very slight risk of detection had been thought too great. The advantage of a local weapon was that it might well confuse things, especially if it had been used before for criminal purposes. On the grounds that they were much cheaper than ‘clean’ firearms, Leon would be actively soliciting such weapons.
Regretfully savouring the last of his morning’s solitude, Slater climbed to his feet and placed sixty francs in the saucer holding the bill. The pavements were no longer empty – the sixteenth arrondissement’s dog-walkers seemed to have mobilised en masse, and large Citroëns and Peugeots were hissing past on the Boulevard Montmorency.
Slater found the other two in the dining room. Eve had hired a Peugeot 406 the day before in case a quick getaway was needed, and she and Andreas had just returned from a practice drive around the Bois de Boulogne.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked Slater hesitantly.
‘Starving,’ he answered truthfully. He always ate well before an operation. The nerves would kick in soon, but for the time being he was content to fill his stomach.
After breakfast, they packed their bags, took the lift down to the underground car-park, and locked them in the boot of the car. They were booked into the Montmorency for the coming night, but were taking no chances — if something went wrong they might be unable to return.
In order to get the feel of the Peugeot, Slater took the car out of the park, tooled around the local streets for ten minutes, and then ran the other two south to the Rue Molitor. The car was a dream and the journey short – Slater had memorised the route from a Paris-Eclair guide-book the night before.
They parked in front of the hotel. Chris was in the lobby. Shaking hands with each of them as if this were a meeting of old friends, she led them to the lift. On the third floor she gave a light double knock at a door half-way along the corridor. ‘Terry’s room gives the best sight-line on the apartment,’ she explained. ‘But we’ve had all three made up already. We aren’t going to be interrupted by any chambermaids.’
Leon and Terry were in their shirtsleeves, and welcomed the rest
of the team with quick smiles. The room was a good size, with tall net-curtained windows, but felt crowded with all six of them in there.
‘Did you get a car?’ Eve asked Terry almost immediately.
He nodded. ‘Silver Mercedes Cabriolet. I’ve got it at the side of the hotel.’
‘Good. We’re the Peugeot you can see down there.’
‘Right. Are you ready to go through the rest of the kit?’
On the queen-size bed lay a combination-lock briefcase and six covert-fit Motorola transmitters and receivers.
‘We’ve tested it,’ said Terry. ‘It all seems to be in working order. And we’ve got the briefcase Neil asked for. The combination is 1471 and it’s a button-push electronic system – none of that old wheel-spinning. Do you want to give it a go?’
He handed the aluminium briefcase to Slater, who tapped in the code. The case sprung open – empty except for its foam lining.
Leon reached beneath the bed and pulled out a battered duffel-bag. From this he withdrew several heavy-looking bubble-wrapped objects which he placed on the bed. ‘One Sig Sauer P239G plus silencer, one Glock 17, two boxes nine-millimetre ammunition,’ he announced. ‘Both weapons almost certainly known to the police.’
Slater unwrapped the handguns and checked their actions. Both appeared to be in good working order. He attached the silencer to the Sig Sauer, then loaded the magazine and snapped it home.
‘That’s great,’ he told Leon. ‘Thanks.’
‘No problem, man.’
The feel and smell of the weapons started Slater’s heart pounding and he stood there motionless for a moment. He was aware, at the edges of his vision, of Eve and Chris watching him. The nerves would stay with him now – right up to the moment when he pressed the bell of Fanon-Khayat’s apartment.
‘Have you got a bathroom I can use?’ he asked quietly.
Leon smiled and handed him a room-key.
When he returned, Chris called him to the window. ‘The big gateway opposite,’ she said, ‘leads into a courtyard. You click open the gate by pressing that button on its right. There’s no combination because it’s right on the street and people are going in and out of the courtyard all day.’
Slater nodded. Even dressed by Yves St Laurent, he thought, she looked dowdy to the point of invisibility.
‘Fanon-Khayat’s instructions, as you know, are that the Firm’s representative should enter the courtyard at midday and take the left-hand entrance. There you’ll find a lift marked Ascenseur B – which you take to the fourth floor. Make sure you end up on the right floor because they number them differently from us. Our ground floor is their first floor, and so on.’
Slater nodded again. ‘Into the courtyard, left-hand entrance, Ascenseur B, number four floor rather than English-style fourth floor. Do we know if the courtyard’s monitored by CCTV?’
‘No, but we have to assume that it is. If it was raining you could hold an umbrella in front of you, but looking at the sky I wouldn’t say there’s much chance of rain. A basic disguise like a wig and a fake moustache would do it as far as the CCTV is concerned, but then you’d look like a freak in the street and you’d certainly be remembered by anyone else in the courtyard or the lift. My thoughts are that you should wear a hat and dark glasses — it’s just about bright enough — and that when you’re crossing the courtyard you should appear to be lighting a cigarette. If you keep your head down and your hands in front of your face you should prove unrecognisable on the CCTV tape.’ She pointed to the dressing table. ‘Would you like to just try these?’
There were two hats — a trilby and a conservative number in dark brown straw – and three pairs of sunglasses. The straw hat and a pair of gold-framed, brown-lensed glasses made the most difference, and in conjunction with the clothes lent him a subtly Mediterranean appearence. Later, he would learn from Leon that Chris had been sent on a theatrical make-up and prosthetics course. Disguise was one of her specialities.
‘That’s good,’ agreed Eve. ‘It knocks out his most distinctive feature, which is those pale blue Anglo-Saxon eyes. I’d like to darken the skin tone a few shades too.’
‘Hey!’ said Leon. ‘Why not just send me?’
They all laughed, and Chris handed Slater a tube of cosmetic cream. ‘Face, neck, ears, chest, hands and forearms please. There should be enough in there.’
In the bathroom Slater stripped to the waist and rubbed in the cream as directed. ‘Careful round the hair-line,’ Chris called out.
The cream was greasy, and had a cloying, perfumed smell. Looking in the mirror as he rubbed it into his forehead, Slater saw that Eve was watching him through the open door. When he caught her eye she did not look away but continued to watch him with something that might have been amusement, might have been concern, might have been pure professional interest.
When he had finished, his appearance seemed unchanged. His blue Lanvin shirt felt tacky on his body.
‘It takes an hour or so to take effect,’ said Chris. ‘But it should just make that difference. Your hair’s perfect – half-way between dark blond and brown. Ask ten people what colour it is and they’ll all come up with different answers.’
She pulled her cardigan-sleeves an inch or two up her arms and examined Slater critically.
‘Two more accessories. Gloves, close-fitting, leather, for inside the apartment. And I’ve got you a new belt. Something I had at home.’
He placed the gloves with the weapons and the aluminium briefcase, and stared doubtfully down at the belt. It was heavy, of plain brown leather and with a discreet silver buckle. Half-way along its length, on the inside, a narrow pocket had been let into the leather and from this Chris drew a flat, dagger-shaped sliver of transparent plastic compound. The knife was weightless and no more than five inches long, but its blade and point were sharp.
‘Something you had at home?’ said Slater, running his finger up a razor-toothed serrated edge.
‘It’ll do the business,’ said Chris. ‘Punch through steel if necessary. And it won’t show up on any scanner.’
‘Thanks,’ said Slater appreciatively, slipping his St Laurent crocodile belt out of its loops and replacing it with Chris’s. ‘It’s a nice piece of kit.’
‘A present,’ said Chris with an oblique smile. ‘Welcome to the parallel universe.’
By 11am the tension was mounting. Slater’s skin had browned to a pale cocoa colour, and the steady drip-feed of adrenaline was producing a familiar churning in his stomach.
‘On the wire, mate?’ Andreas had asked him sympathetically, and he had nodded. There were only so many times that plans and back-up plans could be mentally rehearsed. A decade earlier they had taken their places together in the belly of the helicopter which was to chopper them behind Iraqi lines, and the question in their minds had been the same: how does the story end? With cheers, laughter and backslapping in a bar? With discovery, terror and humiliation? With a bullet through the head? Each and every option was on the menu.
In the Regiment they’d crank themselves up with blokeish chat and a series of private rituals. Slater’s included endless weapon-checking, and it irked him that he had not been able to test-fire the Sig Sauer. Although you never talked about fear the one thing you could be sure of was that everyone was feeling pretty much the same as you were. Here, though, in this overheated hotel bedroom, it was different. He had no idea what was going through Chris’s mind, or Terry’s, or Eve’s.
Leon he found easier to read, as of course he did Andreas. Leon had started life like himself – as a good old green-eyed boy, hungry for trouble. Only a nutter would join the Legion, and only a maniacally switched-on nutter would make it into their para regiment, as Leon had. He’d been based in Corsica, he told Slater, and had done tours of duty in Africa, French Guyana and the Middle East.
When Slater had asked him how he came to be attached to the Department, however, he had clammed up. ‘Later, man,’ he’d said, and taken his place behind the binoculars focused on
Fanon-Khayat’s flat.
Although there was no confirmation that Fanon-Khayat was actually in the flat, the lights had been switched on at 6pm the evening before, then switched off shortly after 11pm, and no one approximating to Fanon-Khayat’s description had left. An e-mail had also arrived from P4 at Vauxhall Cross confirming the rendezvous.
Fanon-Khayat would be expecting Neil Clissold at noon, local time.
At 11.20 Eve and Andreas fitted themselves up with their Motorola comms kits. These involved miniature throat mikes and earpieces with micro-antennae. A wire ran down one arm to a transmit-receive switch.
Slater watched them dubiously. Like many soldiers, he distrusted high-tech comms systems. They were great when they worked but they too often quite simply didn’t. They weren’t soldier-proof. You couldn’t sit on them or drop them in a river.
Having checked each other, they departed for the Bar Michelange. Eve gave him a nod as she went, Andreas a quick thumbs-up. The other three continued their surveillance of the flat.
‘I think the reason we’re not seeing anyone is that the room facing us is unused,’ Terry was saying, ‘or a spare room, perhaps. That would be logical, given that it’s the one overlooking the road.’
‘Perhaps he’s afraid of being sniped,’ suggested Chris. ‘We could get a fairly easy shot from here, wouldn’t you say, Neil?’
‘I guess you could,’ said Slater. ‘Although it would be pretty obvious where the shot had come from. And hotel staff often have good memories for faces.’
‘Yes, but you wouldn’t look at it like that if you were in his position . . . Hang on, isn’t that someone now?’
Terry smoothly retracted the binoculars and their stand. ‘Look, there’s one of the bodyguards eyeballing us.’
Slater saw what Chris meant. A heavy-set type in a suit had parted the curtains opposite and was peering at the hotel.
