by Chris Ryan
Finally Leon was content, or as content as he was ever likely to be. ‘Just remember,’ he told Pasquale. ‘I’m going to understand every word you say. One nuance, one inflexion that you are being coerced, and my colleague here will blow your brains through that window into the Rue de Lappe. So don’t get clever.’
Pasquale hesitated for a moment, and then used his good hand to dial a seven-figure number, which Slater memorised.
The phone rang for thirty seconds.
‘Branca? Chérie? Oui, c’est moi, Miko . . .’
Branca Nikolic was clearly very pissed off indeed at being woken before 7am, and in no mood to listen to the rantings of Miko Pasquale. Finally, however, the drug-dealer’s urgency and fear communicated itself, and she listened. Thirty seconds later he clicked off the phone.
‘She wouldn’t let me come to her. She said to be at the Café Metz just outside Strasbourg St Denis metro station in half an hour.’
Leon nodded. Slater pulled out a metro map. ‘What’s the nearest station to here?’ he asked Pasquale.
‘Bastille.’
‘Look,’ Slater said to Leon. ‘You can get to Strasbourg St Denis station direct from Bastille. No changes. And it’s exactly the same—’
‘. . . from Barbès,’ Leon nodded. ‘I know. I noticed that too. So, here’s what we’re going to do.’
Two minutes later Leon had gone, leaving Slater and Andreas to guard Pasquale. The plan, Leon had decided, was that Terry should go ahead to Strasbourg St Denis by metro, locate Branca at the café, and be ready to follow her back to wherever she was staying. Given that it was approaching rush hour, and that Branca had nominated a café next to a metro station, it was reasonable to assume that she would be arriving and departing by metro.
Given also that there were reasonable grounds for supposing that Branca was staying in Barbès, Leon would go straight to Barbès-Rochechouart metro station. If their calculations were correct, Branca would return from the Strasbourg St Denis rendezvous to Barbès, a journey of only four stops, and lead Leon and Terry to wherever she was staying. Of the three of them bumped by Branca and her RDB team in the Roche-Guyon forest, Leon insisted, he was the least likely to be recognised. There were always a handful of black guys in and around Barbès station handing out cards advertising the local marabouts, or West African witch-doctors. He wouldn’t stick out. In case Branca arrived by car, Chris would be standing by in the Peugeot.
Slater and Andreas stayed with Pasquale. The smell of freshly baked bread and freshly ground coffee was rising up enticingly from the Rue de Lappe below, but the two ex-SAS men dared not allow Pasquale to make them all breakfast, as he had offered to do. The shaven-headed dealer had not got to carve out an important slice of the Parisian hard drugs market by being amenable, Slater reflected. Only abject fear would keep him in line, and then not for long.
At eight o’clock precisely, Slater recocked the Sig Sauer and Pasquale dialled Branca’s number and said what Leon had earlier ordered him to say. He had been sick since speaking to her, the dealer complained. He was feeling terrible. He could no longer make it to the rendezvous. Would she forgive him?
Slater and Andreas smiled at each other. They couldn’t understand all the French, but Pasquale’s Nokia was practically jumping out of his hands, so violent was Branca’s fury at having been woken up and had her time wasted.
‘The problem?’ Pasquale mumbled in response to a particularly vitriolic squawk. ‘The problem’s to do with one of the English models. The UK press are on to her habit and there’s a danger that names are going to be named . . . Yes I did ask you to get out of bed to hear that, damn right . . . Well, it’s important to me, and . . . No, you can’t just pay off British tabloid journalists, no. But . . . Of course I’ll deal with it, but you should be aware that . . .’
He held the phone away from his ear, shaking his head. He had clearly been cut off mid-sentence. Andreas reached over to confirm that the mobile was switched off and then nodded to Pasquale.
‘That was good, man. I have to say that you were good there.’
What he did not say was that neither his nor Slater’s French was good enough for them to have known if he had attempted to warn Branca. Luckily, this possibility did not seem to have occurred to Pasquale.
‘How about a drink, Miko?’ Slater asked.
Pasquale stared at him. ‘A drink? You mean . . .’
‘A whisky, yeah. Or a vodka. What’ve you got?’
‘I have whisky,’ Pasquale gasped, screwing up his eyes as a wave of pain overtook him.
‘Where?’ asked Slater.
Pasquale pointed feebly to a cabinet, from which Slater took out a sealed bottle of twelve-year-old Islay and a glass.
Half-filling the glass, he placed it in front of Pasquale. ‘Cheers!’
The dealer stared from Slater to Andreas and back again. ‘Non’, he said, disbelievingly.
‘Oui!’ smiled Slater and Andreas together.
Slowly, hesitantly, Pasquale sipped at the drink, his face creasing as the alcohol reached his throat.
‘Come on, mate, drink up,’ said Andreas. ‘You’ve got a whole bottle to go.’
Still Pasquale hesitated. Pensively, Slater levelled the Sig Sauer and blew the screen out of the television. The gesture had the required effect. With a shaking hand, Pasquale lifted the glass and took a deep swallow.
‘There’s a boy!’ said Andreas. ‘That wasn’t so bad, was it?’
Five minutes later half the bottle was gone. Pasquale was muttering to himself, his words slurring into incomprehensibility.
‘Come on, mate, down the hatch!’ said Andreas encouragingly, pinching the drunk man’s nose, pulling back his head, and pouring in another neat glassful.
‘Empty stomach,’ said Slater. ‘Always speeds it up. He isn’t half going to feel like shit when he comes around. Not that it’ll be anything to compare with what he puts smack and crack addicts through.’ He looked at the dealer contemptuously. ‘Will it? Eh, fuckface?’
Pasquale groaned and closed his eyes. Two thirds of the bottle was now washing around in his stomach.
‘See if you can find a funnel in the kitchen,’ Slater suggested to Andreas.
Ten minutes later the bottle lay empty on the floor. Laying him on a carpet, Slater and Andreas dragged the by now helpless Pasquale into the furthest bedroom, hauled him on to the bed, plasticuffed him with his arms behind his back, and pulled a duvet over him. He started to snore almost immediately. In order to be forewarned if Branca attempted to make contact, Slater also pocketed the dealer’s mobile phone.
‘How long’s he going to be under for, do you reckon?’ asked Andreas.
‘At a guess, until this evening,’ replied Slater. ‘We’ll probably have to make a return visit at some point and top him up.’
‘Well I looked in the cupboard and there’s another five bottles of this stuff, so he can carry on his bender without switching brands.’
‘He’ll be glad of that,’ said Slater.
They closed the bedroom door on the unconscious Pasquale and placed the empty whisky bottle inside the shattered television, as if it had been hurled there in a fit of drunken rage. Anyone searching further — for the next few hours at least – would find the sleeping figure beneath the duvet. Should the searcher go further still, discover the plasticuffs and attempt to wake him, it was unlikely that a coherent explanation of his condition would be forthcoming. The rapid consumption of high-proof alcohol induces short-term memory loss, and it would be some days before Pasquale would be able to piece together what had happened to him.
But just to be on the safe side, Slater and Andreas locked themselves into the flat. ‘How about some breakfast?’ asked Andreas. ‘The kitchen’s pretty well stocked and I’m bloody starving.’
‘Full English, then,’ said Slater.
Slater’s mobile rang shortly after 8am. It was Chris. ‘Is your man immobilised?’ she asked.
‘He’s down,’ Slater ans
wered.
‘Get back here ASAP. Terry and Leon have a result.’
Slater punched the air. ‘That’s brilliant!’
‘Fingers crossed. See you soonest.’
At the hotel, the mood was optimistic. Terry had stayed to stake out the location, so Leon told them what had happened since the two of them left Pasquale’s flat an hour and a half earlier.
‘When Pasquale rang to say he wasn’t coming to the R.V at the Café Metz, Branca got seriously, seriously pissed off. She shouted at the waiter, banged down some change, and headed straight back to the Strasbourg St Denis metro. Four stops up the line to Barbès and she charges out again with Terry in tow. I’m hanging out at the station exit with the Africans when she comes screaming through – still far too angry to think about counter-surveillance – and starts moving up the Boulevard Barbès at high speed. I lock on behind Terry and we tail her up the boulevard and into the Rue de la Goutte d’Or. A few more twists and turns through the souk and she goes into this narrow little place called the Rue de Coude.
‘Terry and I wait until she’s inside, make a couple of passes past the building, and then pull back. The place is a brick-built warehouse block, previously containing garment-industry sweatshops. Most of the units now look vacant, but the security’s recently been reinforced on the top-floor windows – and I mean very recently, because the wood shavings, iron-filings and spare bolts are still lying out on the roadside beneath the windows – so our best guess is that that’s where they’ve got her. Terry’s still over there, anyway, so he’ll let us know as soon as he’s got confirmation.’
‘Did you get a look at the roof?’ asked Slater.
‘I knew you were going to ask that!’ said Leon. ‘And the answer is not really. Terry’ll certainly give it a good recce, but I didn’t have time. All I can tell you is that it’s tiled, and not flat.’
‘Our main advantage,’ said Chris, ‘seems to be that they don’t know that we’ve sussed the place. They’re not going to be expecting any kind of assault.’
‘I agree with that,’ said Leon. ‘My guess is that the bars on the windows were put there specifically to keep Eve in. They’re not anticipating having to keep us or anyone else out.’
‘So how do we play it?’ asked Slater. ‘If we go in mob-handed with automatic weapons and try and shoot it out, we’ll have the place crawling with armed police within minutes. Can we do it on an official level, get the Regiment in, or at a pinch the French GIGN?’
‘I’ve had a word with the boss,’ said Chris. ‘And we’re on our own. No Regiment, no GIGN, nothing – not even the police. Politically the whole thing’s just too touchy. The basic message is that Eve’s ours, we’ve got to extract her on our own, and if anyone gets nicked they can expect no help from HMG. Hostile territory, remember?’
‘Brilliant,’ said Slater.
The others looked at him. ‘That’s how it usually is, mate,’ said Andreas. ‘That’s the price we pay for our no-questions-asked status.’
Slater nodded. He didn’t want the others to think that he had an emotional involvement in the situation – an involvement that might compromise his operational efficiency. If Leon or Chris suspected that there was something between him and Eve, they’d relegate him to the background immediately. He was the most recent recruit to the Cadre, he reminded himself, and as such the most disposable.
‘It’s when situations like this come up,’ Andreas continued, ‘that you realise how dependent you were in the Regiment. On the MOD, the police, the Home Office, whoever. If you wanted something — kit, money, back-up, firepower – you just had to ask and it was there.’ He hooked his thumbs fatalistically into the belt-loops of his jeans. ‘Here it’s different. Here it’s just us.’
Slater nodded. ‘The RDB aren’t going to want to attract the police’s attention either, though, are they?’
‘If there’s unsilenced shooting, the police will be there within five minutes,’ said Leon. ‘Ten, max.’
‘Look,’ said Chris. ‘Until Terry makes his report, we can’t make any plans. Why don’t you guys go and get some sleep? Whatever’s going to happen is going to happen tonight, so you’re going to need to be sharp. Paris has bad associations for us, we don’t want to lose anyone else here.’
She turned to Leon. ‘What arrangements did you make about weapons?’
‘The best I could manage for definite was three ex-military FAMAS rifles with silencers. They’re quite reliable, in fact – we had them in the Legion.’
‘Ammunition?’
‘Comes with. The guy’s waiting for my call to arrange an exchange. The price is thirty thousand francs, cash.’
‘Why don’t you make the call now?’ Chris suggested. ‘Arrange the pick-up for tonight, so you don’t have to bring them back here. Do you trust this guy?’
‘I’ve done business with him before,’ said Leon. ‘That’s where I got the Glock and the Sig Sauer. And FAMAS rifles are never a problem – all the French armed services have them.’
Chris nodded. ‘OK. Get some sleep.’
At 1 pm, showered and changed, Slater rejoined the others. He had not slept well; fractured images of Fanon-Khayat’s disembowelled body slipping into the rushing darkness of the Seine had alternated with the sensation that he himself was drowning. And Eve. What was happening to her, locked up with Branca Nikolic and her RDB footsoldiers? They would have questioned her, at the very least, about the Fanon-Khayat assassination. They would have wanted to find out if MI6 knew about the Ondine deal, or whether they just wanted to recover the disc.
Tactical questioning, as the Regiment had called it, was a refined science. Eve was trained to resist interrogation and would hold out for as long as she could, but everyone broke sooner or later. Training exercises at Pontrilas or Imber, however harsh, came to an end. Fingernails were not ripped out with pliers, electrodes were not taped to the genitals, prisoners were not anally raped with cattle-prods. In the field, however, it was a different story. In the field it went on and on, and got worse and worse, until you fell – or were pulled – apart.
If the disc was not delivered intact, that would certainly be Eve’s fate. Slater had no illusions about that. She would be tortured until she had given up all that she knew, and then killed and disposed of.
But the orders from Manderson were that the disc was not to be sacrificed for Eve. They would have to go in and pull her out: to assault what would probably turn out to be a near-impregnable position defended by a numerically superior, better-armed force. Tactically, it made no sense at all.
But then, Slater had mused as he drifted into sleep, what the fuck did?
In the room that had been the OP he found Terry, who had handed over watcher duties to Chris. Slater congratulated him on the success of his knackering surveillance marathon.
‘Well, you know what they say,’ said Terry, swigging on a can of Fanta from the minibar. ‘When all else fails, bring in a fat lad from Essex!’
‘I’ll remember that,’ smiled Slater, buoyed up by Terry’s cheerful manner.
A large steak and French fries was waiting for him on a trolley, and he devoured it at the glass-topped dressing-table. Around him the others were making similar arrangements. Slater watched them covertly. Basically the unit divided into the brains, the eyes and the muscle. Eve and Leon were the brains, the planners; Chris and Terry were the eyes, and he and Andreas were the muscle. But it was more complex than that, because according to Eve the others were all pretty good with firearms, too – excepting Terry, of course. Terry’s job, like Chris’s, was to bind the team together. The two of them seemed to have almost limitless patience and steady good humour. Of course all of these roles overlapped – at a pinch they could all do each other’s jobs. He himself, Slater reckoned, was no bad planner, and there wasn’t much Andreas didn’t know about surveillance, and so on.
They were a good team, Slater concluded. He’d had his doubts to begin with, but having seen them in operation he wouldn’
t have changed any of them. And now the team was to be put to the ultimate test — an urban hostage-rescue.
With coffee poured, cigarettes lit, and the loaded trolley returned to the corridor, Terry belched meaningfully into a paper tissue. ‘All right lads, listen in. The position, as far as we can calculate, is that Eve is being held on the fifth floor of a warehouse in the Rue de Coude. We have no hard proof of that, but I found this’ – he held up a scrap of paper – ‘just outside. As you can see it’s a receipt for a cappuccino from the Bar Mocha at the Waterloo Eurostar terminus. The date is last Friday, the day we came over. Like I said it doesn’t prove anything, but if this wasn’t Eve trying to leave us a sign, then it’s one hell of a coincidence.’
The others nodded. ‘It would have been dark when they brought her in,’ said Andreas. ‘She’d have been able to drop it without being spotted.’
‘Now I’ve had a close look at the building through these’ – Terry held up a small pair of Zeiss binoculars – ‘and I’ve done a few drawings.’
From the pocket of his coat, which was lying on the bed next to him, he took out a French schoolboy’s notebook.
‘This is of the front, which is in glazed brick, and this is of the back, which is the same. The roof is the mansard type. It’s steeply pitched and covered in very old, very insecure-looking slates. The roofs to either side are the same. The only way up there that I could see is through the building itself and out through a skylight. There’s a fire escape, but it’s very old and narrow, and I doubt whether it would take the weight of an armed man. And even if it did you’d be spotted the moment you left the ground. They’ve got a pretty effective security rota going, with at least one guy patrolling the area at all times. As we already know, these guys aren’t the usual brandy-swigging, shell-suit-wearing Serbian paramilitary bullies, they’re well-trained RDB agents. They’re going to notice if a mountaineering team armed with assault rifles starts making its way up the front of their building.
