Close Call

by Stella Rimington

  ‘It’s too late for that, Antoine. As for evidence, don’t worry: we have a strong case – for starters, just travelling on a false passport will get her behind bars. You should have thought of that before you had her fly from Caracas.’

  Annette had moved away from her husband’s embrace and sat down on the bed, where she began to rock backwards and forwards, still sobbing heavily. When Milraud moved towards her she pushed him away, and Milraud’s face fell.

  He turned to Seurat angrily. ‘What would it take for you to drop charges against her?’

  ‘The truth. All of it. Let’s start with why you came to Berlin.’

  Chapter 18

  Back in Thames House in London Liz Carlyle was feeling out of sorts. An investigation with which she was vitally concerned was unravelling without her and she didn’t like it. She was happiest when she was at the centre of events; watching other people take the decisions and viewing the action from far away was not how she liked things to be.

  She had been unimpressed by the surveillance efforts of the French, and from what she had heard of the Berlin operation it hadn’t been much better. ‘A4 could knock that lot into a cocked hat,’ she’d said to Peggy Kinsolving.

  Geoffrey Fane had been unusually quiet too, and there had been no response from Bruno Mackay in Sana’a, after she’d sent him the French surveillance pictures of the young Arab in the Luxembourg Gardens. She wondered if MI6 were doing something they were not telling her about.

  To make matters worse, she was anxious about Martin Seurat. She knew how obsessed he was with Antoine Milraud. She knew how personally he had taken the betrayal, and she was worried that he might not be able to keep his cool when faced with Milraud again.

  In spite of all her frustration, some progress had been made in London. Peggy had managed to put together details of the route taken by the private jet boarded by Milraud’s contact, the elegant black man, at Tegel airport in Berlin. The Germans had not asked for any special monitoring of the flight as they had no case against the passenger, so Peggy had worked from the records, something she loved doing.

  ‘Smart plane,’ she observed. ‘Pilatus PC-12, registered in Russia. Even hiring that costs a bomb. We’re dealing with real money here.’

  The plane had landed in Rotterdam to refuel and taken off straight away, heading for Prestwick Airport. No one had disembarked at Rotterdam. Twenty minutes into the flight, the pilot had requested permission to divert to a small private airfield in North Wales. Inquiries at the airfield afterwards by the local Special Branch had established that the plane had indeed landed there; that one passenger had got out and had been picked up by a private car. No one had asked to see his passport. The duty desk clerk had been confused and had thought that the plane had flown from Prestwick, and yes, the manager of the airport thought that the passenger might have been a tall black man, and no, nobody had noted the registration number of the car.

  ‘I can’t believe the sloppiness at that airport,’ said Peggy. ‘Special Branch is reporting them to the Civil Aviation Authority. I hope they lose their licence.’

  ‘If they’ve got one,’ observed Liz.

  Peggy had also circulated the photographs taken in the Schweiber Museum to Special Branches across the UK, with a request for any information about the black man. No replies had been received so far.

  The arrival of a detailed report from Martin Seurat of his interview with the Milrauds in the Berlin hotel room gave Liz something to focus on. It was clear that her concerns that Martin might be hindered by his personal animosity towards Milraud had not been realised. In fact, it had probably helped him in being quite ruthless in using Annette’s fear of prison to get Milraud to agree to cooperate.

  The report was followed by a phone call from Martin, who reported that the Germans had agreed to release the Milrauds into his custody and he was about to leave Berlin for Paris in the company of a small posse of French and German police and security officers.

  ‘Where are you going to take them?’

  ‘I’ve arranged a safe house in Montreuil.’

  ‘Montreuil? I thought that was a fashionable holiday resort. Why so posh?’

  ‘Not that one. This one’s a suburb of Paris. Not posh at all.’

  ‘Good. I wouldn’t like to think of the Milrauds living it up at your taxpayers’ expense.’

  ‘Can you come over tomorrow? I think we should hook him in firmly to what you want him to do without giving him too much time to think about it.’

  ‘All right. I’ll let you know if there’s any problem; otherwise you can expect me by lunchtime.’

  Liz put the phone down thoughtfully. She and Martin had been close now for more than two years. So close that he had made it very clear the previous year that he would have liked her to give up her job and come to Paris to live with him. From her reaction he had realised that that had been a mistake. Her job was an essential part of Liz’s being and without it she could never be happy, even with him. Since then he had been talking about leaving his own job in the DGSE and looking for some other form of work. Liz wondered whether, now that he had finally caught Antoine Milraud, the man who had obsessed him for so long, he might actually decide to do it. She wasn’t sure that would be a good idea for him or, she had to admit, for her either.

  She was sometimes concerned that there could be a conflict of interest when they found themselves working closely together on a case, as now, but so far they had managed to keep their personal relationship and their work in separate compartments. She knew that her bosses had their eye on the situation and that she needed to be scrupulously professional if she were not to be moved onto other work. Yet now here she was, going to Paris to take over the handling of Milraud. She planned to use him to flush out whatever was going on, and she had to take the lead, because the intelligence so far, such as it was, was pointing to the UK.

  Martin met her at the Gare du Nord and they drove to Montreuil, where they found Antoine Milraud waiting in the living room of a nondescript stucco bungalow. He had a young DGSE officer called Thibault and a couple of tough-looking guards for company. Little had been spent on the décor of the bungalow – a few battered-looking chairs, a much-used coffee table and a frayed sofa furnished the sitting room and the walls were enlivened by gaudy reproductions of Impressionist paintings. I wonder who buys this sort of stuff in the first place thought Liz, hoping that the kitchen was equipped rather more expansively – with perhaps a pâté and a bottle of Chablis in the fridge.

  Milraud had dressed up for the occasion. In his smart wool jacket, open-necked shirt and polished loafers, he looked more like a successful film director or the owner of a trendy gallery than a renegade intelligence officer.

  Liz gazed coldly at the elegant figure who stood up to greet her. She ignored the hand he held out and did not respond to his ‘Good morning, Madame’. This was a man who had not only destroyed the peace of mind of the man she loved but had worked alongside a psychopathic killer to kidnap her colleague Dave Armstrong and hold him for days in a damp cellar; a man she had last seen as a shadowy figure in the darkness on a French holiday island, escaping capture and leaving his partner to die in a hail of bullets. She was glad to see him confined in this charmless room, but she would rather have seen him in prison. In the present circumstances she had no option but to work with him, but she certainly wasn’t going to treat him with any warmth.

  The young officer came in with a cafetière of coffee and three small cups, then quickly withdrew. Milraud fidgeted nervously on the sofa. As soon as Martin had handed out the cups, Liz said abruptly, ‘Let’s get started. As you know I’m from MI5 and I’m going to ask you some questions about your recent activities. Firstly I’d like to know why you were in Berlin.’

  She knew from Martin that Milraud’s English was excellent, almost idiomatic, yet she wondered whether he would pretend not to understand her, and he was giving her a questioning look. But then he said, ‘Has Martin not told you what I’ve said al
ready? I’m surprised; I thought you two were close,’ he added.

  Liz ignored this. ‘Of course he has. But I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth.’

  He nodded. ‘As you wish. As I told Martin, I was in Berlin to act as a liaison – the venue was not of my own choosing. I know you are aware of my earlier meeting in the Luxembourg Gardens – this was to follow up my instructions from that.’

  ‘Whose instructions?’

  Milraud put both hands up and shrugged, in the universal sign for who knows? He said, ‘He is Arab, he is young, he is anti-establishment. To me that means the rebels of the Arab Spring. Other than that, I have no idea.’

  ‘Do you often do business with anonymous contacts?’

  Milraud gave her a patronising smile. ‘Of course. I doubt I know the real name of any of my customers, Madame.’

  ‘Why did this mysterious person send you to Berlin?’

  Milraud looked at her as if checking to see that she was minimally intelligent.

  ‘To meet the black man in the Schweiber Museum?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what is his name?’

  ‘Smith,’ said Milraud without batting an eye. Then he added, ‘Perhaps it was Jones.’

  Liz sighed. ‘All right, let’s forget about names for the moment. What was he going to do for you?’

  Milraud was silent. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last.

  Liz looked at Milraud, waiting. Then he said, ‘I’ve never seen him before. I don’t know him.’

  ‘Then what were you talking about?’

  ‘He was setting up another meeting. For tomorrow. He wanted to make sure we weren’t being watched yesterday. I didn’t think I was, then I went back to the hotel and found Martin talking with my wife. So I was wrong and the black man was right to be suspicious.’

  Liz sat back in her chair. This didn’t make any sense. Milraud seemed to be claiming that all these meetings were only to set up further meetings.

  He saw her scepticism. ‘I could still go to the next meeting tomorrow,’ he offered. ‘Then I might find out what it’s all about.’

  Not a big help, thought Liz, since the black man had left Germany and was presumably now somewhere in Britain. She wondered if Milraud knew this and was lying – if she accepted his offer, he would simply invent another rendezvous point, dutifully go there, then profess regretful surprise when the black man didn’t show up.

  Liz switched tack. ‘What about the man from the Arab Spring? How were things left with him?’

  Milraud looked at her blandly. ‘He was not forthcoming. He only wanted assurance I could supply the weapons he wanted.’

  ‘What kind of weapons?’

  ‘Automatic rifles. In time he said they’d want more sophisticated armoury – RPGs, SAM missiles, you name it. But you have to walk before you can run, and at the moment it’s basic infantry armaments he’s looking for. Rifles, ammunition.’

  ‘So what was agreed?’

  ‘Nothing. I named a price, and he made a counter-proposal. As is usually the case, we settled somewhere in between. Then we aborted the meeting because we were being watched. The next step is for him to confirm the order – which in practice means a down payment of twenty-five per cent. Not unreasonable,’ Milraud said with a hint of pride, and Liz realised he was enjoying talking about his trade. He wouldn’t have had many opportunities to do so in recent years.

  ‘How is he going to contact you?’

  ‘If he contacts me at all, after that clumsy surveillance in Paris, it will be by email. Third party – a dummy box I’ve created. He’ll ask for a meeting, though it won’t read that way – on the surface, it will look like a misplaced request for a booking at a restaurant. The name of the restaurant will contain a link to another site – that site will contain coordinates which when I apply them to a pre-existing grid will give me the location, time and date of the meeting.’

  ‘You told Martin this will be in the UK.’

  ‘Yes. That is what the man told me in Paris before we aborted our meeting.’

  ‘He didn’t give you any sense of where in the UK?’

  ‘No.’ Milraud looked at her impatiently. ‘I have already told Martin all this.’

  She ignored him. ‘When are you expecting an email?’

  Milraud shrugged. ‘I am working to my client’s schedule, not my own. When it arrives, it arrives.’

  Martin interjected. ‘My colleague Thibault has taken charge of his laptop and will monitor all emails.’

  ‘This better be right, Antoine,’ said Liz, ‘or any reassurance you have received, about how Annette will be treated will no longer be valid.’

  Milraud looked at her wide-eyed. ‘Do I take it you are in charge then?’ He seemed surprised.

  ‘As far as you’re concerned I am.’

  Milraud turned to Seurat, as if expecting him to dissent, but Seurat said simply, ‘She’s right, Antoine. She will be directing what you are to do.’

  Milraud looked confused as he tried to take this in. At last he nodded again, and gave an ironic shrug. ‘I am accustomed to it. Annette wears the trousers in my family too.’

  Chapter 19

  ‘Donation will see us this evening,’ said Miles Brookhaven, putting down the phone. ‘I told his son I was bringing a colleague from the British Embassy and he didn’t ask any questions. His son seems to be a sort of secretary for this so-called charity he runs. Well, he calls it a charity, but as far as I can see it’s a kind of private fund-raising operation. God knows what shady deals they’re doing. Anyway, we’re to go out to his farm this evening.’

  ‘A farm?’ Bruno Mackay raised his eyebrows. ‘How far away is it? I don’t fancy a long drive in the dark in this place. I won’t be at all popular with Geoffrey Fane if I end up as a kidnap victim.’

  ‘It’s not that far. About ten miles or so along a fairly decent road. It’ll be dark when we come back, but Donation seems to have some sort of security operation set up to control who goes along that road, so it should be OK.’

  Bruno Mackay was sitting in Miles Brookhaven’s office in the American Embassy in Sana’a. The surveillance pictures from Paris were spread out on the table in front of them.

  ‘I hope it’s worth the journey,’ said Bruno. ‘I can’t imagine they’ll make much out of these photographs. I don’t know why Liz Carlyle bothered sending them. The guy looks like thousands of young men you might meet anywhere from Algiers to Afghanistan.’

  ‘Maybe he does, to you, but Donation or his son may recognise him – or know someone who will.’

  ‘Let’s hope so. Our French colleagues certainly seem to have messed up thoroughly in Paris. First they blew the surveillance and then they lost both of their targets.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a complete disaster. I’ve heard from Andy Bokus that they know the European who met this guy in Paris. He’s called Milraud, a DGSE officer who left the Service and turned rogue.’

  ‘Oh him. The French have been looking for him for years. He stole a lot of cash and set himself up as an arms dealer. If he’s reappeared it will have set the cat among the pigeons. He used to work with Liz Carlyle’s boyfriend Martin Seurat; Seurat’s sworn to get him.’

  ‘Well, apparently they have got him. They pinned him down in a hotel in Berlin and they’re hoping to find out why he was meeting this guy in Paris’ – he waved at the photograph of the young Arab – ‘and what he went to Berlin for.’

  Five hours later Miles Brookhaven was driving the Embassy SUV along the road through fields and small apple orchards. The sun was setting over the line of hills in a clear pink and red sky.

  ‘No clouds tonight, thank God,’ remarked Miles. ‘Last time I came along here there was a downpour. I couldn’t see a thing. Had to stop dead in the middle of the road.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Bruno, who was sitting uneasily sideways in his seat, keeping an eye on the road behind them and looking from side to side.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Miles. ‘I
’m sure it’s OK. I told you, he’s got this road monitored. It feels safe to me.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Bruno again.

  Miles drove on another few miles and then Bruno, who was peering out of the front windscreen, said, ‘I thought you said there were no clouds tonight. What’s that then?’ He pointed to what looked like a small black cloud low in the sky ahead of them.

  ‘It looks like smoke. It’s just about where Donation’s compound is. Perhaps they’re burning rubbish.’ But as they got nearer the cloud seemed to separate itself and gradually it became a moving mass of birds.

  ‘Vultures,’ said Bruno. ‘Something’s died.’

  ‘Probably a cow or a buffalo. We’ll soon find out. We’re less than a mile away from the farm now.’

  As they came up to the walls of the compound, another cloud of flapping vultures rose up to join those circling in the sky. Miles turned the car to go under the arch and then slammed on the brakes.

  ‘My God,’ shouted Bruno. ‘What the hell’s that?’ A body clad in what had been white robes was swinging in the arch, dangling from a rope round its neck. Its face was a raw mass of bloodied flesh and its eyes had been pecked out. The legs, swinging in mid-air, ended in shiny black leather shoes.

  ‘It’s Donation’s son.’ Miles’s voice shook.

  ‘Turn round,’ yelled Bruno. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Donation may be inside. He may need our help.’

  ‘If he’s in there,’ said Bruno, ‘he’s long past our help. Can’t you see? It’s a warning. Go on, get out or we’ll be next.’

  Suddenly Miles jerked into action. With squealing tyres throwing up sand and stones he turned the car and drove off, back down the road they had come along.

  Bruno was leaning forward now, holding on to the dashboard. ‘I thought you said they had security on this road.’

  ‘That’s what Donation told me and I believed him. I thought they knew what they were doing. It all seemed very casual but I figured they were the best judge of what was safe. I bet it’s that bloody French surveillance operation that’s blown it. The guy in Paris knew he was being followed, so he knew there’d been a leak and they’ve traced it back to Donation and his son.’