‘Well, we’ve got the description from McManus of the type of lorry we’re looking for, its colour and the name on the side. So if it’s the same as usual, we should get warning from the port when it arrives. I’m hoping we might hear from across the Channel – I’ve alerted all the likely ports in Holland, Belgium and France.’
‘It’s possible we may hear something on Jackson’s phone, but it’s been very quiet,’ Liz added. ‘They’re too cunning to risk phone chatter.’
‘You seem to have that side of things pretty well covered,’ said Martin. ‘Well done.’
Peggy smiled, looking pleased.
Then they’d moved on to what Thibault and GCHQ had discovered about the jihadis. Martin said, ‘It seems fairly clear that a group of Yemeni-based, English-born terrorists are heading towards England, stopping in Paris to rendezvous.’ He explained that the flat of the Parisian radical Ramdani, which was going to be the meeting place, was already under surveillance by Isabelle Florian’s people.
Martin went on to say that they hadn’t been able to get eavesdropping inside the flat because it was in a tenement building occupied by a mixture of immigrant families and old people who had been there for years. No one was going to be able to enter or leave the flat without being observed.
At this point he paused and looked at Liz. ‘We need to settle the key issue.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Liz.
‘Are we going to arrest these people when they arrive at this flat in Paris, or are we going to keep them under surveillance and let them come on to you?’
‘I’ve discussed this with DG and he’s talked it through with the Home Secretary and the Chief Constable in Manchester. The Home Secretary wanted us to ask your colleagues to make arrests. She said that we couldn’t take the risk of allowing a gang of jihadis into the country when we might not be able to keep them under our control. But DG pointed out that there may be nothing for your colleagues to hold them on, particularly if they carry no weapons. They may well have perfectly valid documents. So she’s agreed that you should just follow and watch and hand them on to us. We need to know what they’re planning to do before we act.’
Martin nodded. ‘I was hoping you’d say that. That is the view of Isabelle and the Interior Ministry, and my own Service agrees. But we do have to remember that there’s always the chance, however good the surveillance, that they could give us the slip between Paris and Britain.’
‘We just have to take that chance. If we detain them now, we have nothing to charge them with – even in France, they’ll be out within days. Besides, there’s every chance that others are joining them in the UK – not just Zara. If we grab this bunch the others may find out, and then we’ll never locate them.’
Martin was smiling now. ‘Clear, as ever. Let’s hope the others think so too.’
‘Frankly,’ said Liz, ‘it doesn’t much matter if they don’t, now we have the Home Secretary’s agreement.’
‘The others’ had been Geoffrey Fane and the CIA Head of Station Andy Bokus. Bokus was already in Fane’s office when Liz and Seurat arrived, and judging from the chilly silence they were not enjoying each other’s company.
When Liz introduced Seurat, Bokus merely grunted and looked grumpily out of the window, as if he wished he were somewhere else.
‘Cheer up, Andy,’ said Fane. ‘You’ll find life south of the river isn’t all that bad’ – a reference to the impending move of the US Embassy from Grosvenor Square to a new, more isolated but thought to be safer, location in Wandsworth.
Liz noticed that the CIA man was losing weight, though not much – his suit was a little looser at the shoulders than it once would have been, but his buttoned-up jacket did his bulging midriff no favours.
They’d all sat down and waited awkwardly while Daisy brought in a tray of coffee.
‘Don’t bother, Daisy,’ said Liz. ‘I’ll pour it out.’ As she reached forward to pour out the coffee, she’d noticed that Bokus was already drumming his thumbs on the arms of his chair impatiently.
When the coffee was poured, Fane said, ‘Elizabeth, why don’t you bring us all up to date?’
Liz had been startled by how rude the two men were being to Martin. Bokus hadn’t even acknowledged his presence when she’d introduced him and now Fane was behaving as if he wasn’t there. But she made no comment and proceeded to summarise the situation. When she finished there was a heavy silence.
Bokus said gruffly, ‘You mean to tell me, you got five bad guys – I mean really bad guys – right within your sights, and you want to let them come on here to do God knows what?’ He was staring at Liz and sounded incredulous.
‘We don’t have any intention of letting them do anything. Nor do the French.’
‘No. We certainly do not,’ said Martin Seurat.
Bokus ignored him – it was Liz he was going for. He said in the folksy voice Liz had always been wary of, ‘Listen, I’m just a country boy from Ohio. Sometimes I get a little lost if anything gets too complicated. But we used to say back home that a bird in the hand beats two birds in the bush any old day.’
‘Did you really say that?’ Seurat asked with feigned innocence, and Liz just managed not to laugh. She noted that Fane was staying quiet.
For a brief moment Bokus’s eyes flashed, but he stuck to his Huck Finn persona. ‘We sure did,’ he said, still looking only at Liz. ‘And I’m thinking it applies here pretty well. Why risk losing these guys if we can pick ’em up easier than a bird dog grabs a grouse?’
‘Why indeed?’ muttered Fane.
Liz was about to reply when Seurat broke in. He said simply, ‘Here is why.’ He looked at Bokus with a steeliness Liz had never seen before. ‘The initial information in this case came from you, the Americans. Believe me, we are all grateful for that. And then, the focus shifted to here in the United Kingdom – this man Jackson appeared, and we learned that these British Yemenis are on their way to this country, almost certainly to commit an atrocity.
‘But the fact remains, they are meeting first in Paris. And we believe they were originally considering Paris as the target of their operation – whatever this operation is.’
‘Not any more—’ Bokus started to say. Seurat held up a hand and the American stopped.
‘Hear me out, Monsieur. My point is that Paris has already featured in this case – this is where Zara and the arms dealer Milraud met, and where I fear the other side first suspected they had been observed.’
‘Whose fault was that?’ Bokus demanded.
‘Ours. Not all of us share the American infallibility. In any case, Paris is now again the focal point of this operation and of our cooperation.’ He looked around at them all. ‘Naturally, we need to respect each other’s point of view and to take dissenting opinions into account. But you will appreciate that since this part of the operation is taking place on French soil, then we – the French – must make the final decisions about it. So, since you are asking’ – which, thought Liz, no one was – ‘I must tell you that I agree with our colleagues here. We will not arrest the jihadis who are meeting in this apartment, and instead we will follow them to their exit point which we all believe will be the UK border.’
Seurat took a deep breath. ‘I am sorry if you are not in accord with this, Mr Bokus. And I know that you think this will be the weak decision of another one of those cheese-eating surrender monkeys. But it is the monkeys’ decision nonetheless.’
This speech had produced a startled silence in the room. Even Bokus had looked embarrassed in the face of Martin’s eloquence. When Liz seized the opportunity to say that the Home Secretary, the DG and the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester police had all agreed to let the operation run to the UK, no one had anything more to say and the meeting had broken up in a chilly atmosphere of recrimination.
Now the waiter arrived and Liz said, ‘So what do you want to eat, my cheese-eating friend?’
Seurat laughed. ‘I’ll just have a starter, I think. They will feed m
e on the train.’
‘Somehow after an hour with Andy Bokus, I don’t feel very hungry either – just a starter will do me too. But I need a glass of wine.’
When the waiter had left, Seurat sat back and sighed. ‘You OK?’ asked Liz.
He smiled. ‘Yes. That was just a sigh of relief. A day I am glad is over. Though I will be happier when tomorrow is over as well.’
‘Are you worried about it?’
Seurat shrugged. ‘No more than I would be normally. Isabelle and her people are in charge, and I have every confidence in them. Thibault seems quite sure that what GCHQ have told him is right. He says it all makes perfect sense. It should be fine, and with any luck they will all be in the UK the day after tomorrow. Then it’s your problem,’ he said, with a smile.
‘Thanks a lot,’ said Liz with an affectionate grin. Martin seemed more like his old self now, and she was relieved to see it. His put-down of Bokus hadn’t bothered her one bit – in fact, she’d loved it. It was such a change from the catlike way Geoffrey Fane danced around their American colleague. Though it had been direct, it had also been controlled, with no sign of the irritability Martin had been showing recently about Milraud.
Their food arrived, and they ate quickly, talking now of anything but work. Liz told him how her mother, whom he had met several times, had thought about giving up work at the nursery garden she ran, and how her partner Edward had dissuaded her since he rightly sensed she’d go mad if she didn’t have enough to do. And Martin talked about his daughter; he was worried about what she’d do after she graduated from the Sorbonne.
It was funny, thought Liz, that when things had been tense between them they had not talked about personal affairs at all; now she felt they were back on their old intimate footing again and it made her happy.
She said, a little reluctantly, ‘Tomorrow, will you be there?’
Seurat raised his eyebrows. ‘At Ramdani’s flat? No. Only the surveillance will be there. I will be with Isabelle and we’ll be sitting safe and sound in the DCRI HQ. Nothing to worry about.’
‘Good,’ she said, forcing a smile. She wished she felt less worried about this operation. She was used to the mix of apprehension and excitement that came just before the action, but somehow this time it felt different. She reached across the table and held Martin’s hand. ‘There’s a train at the crack of dawn, you know.’
He tilted his head back and smiled. ‘And how tempting it is. But I should go back tonight.’ He shook his head. ‘I’d never forgive myself if something went wrong tomorrow and I wasn’t there.’
‘But you said there was nothing to worry about.’ Liz kicked herself for letting her concern show.
Martin put one of his hands on top of hers and looked into her eyes. ‘There isn’t. But I just feel I need to be there. You’d feel the same, wouldn’t you?’
‘Of course I would. You’re quite right.’
Martin looked at her. ‘It’ll soon be over.’
‘I hope so.’
‘And when it is, I was thinking …’
‘Yes?’ asked Liz.
Martin was smiling. ‘You remember the hotel in the hills near Toulon?’
‘How could I forget?’ They had begun their affair there. She remembered the flowers in the garden of the small auberge where they had stayed as spring arrived.
‘I thought a few days there would not go amiss.’
‘D’accord,’ said Liz. ‘I’d like that very much.’
‘Good,’ said Martin. ‘I’d like it too. Because I love you very much, Miss Liz Carlyle.’ And then, as if embarrassed by his display of emotion, he signalled furiously to the waiter for the bill.
Chapter 46
‘It’s at moments like this,’ Isabelle Florian declared, ‘that I miss cigarettes the most.’
She gave Seurat a wry smile, and he nodded. ‘I know. Anything is better than the waiting.’
Not for the first time, Seurat thought how fortunate he was to have Isabelle as his counterpart at the domestic intelligence Service. Relations between the DGSE and the DCRI were almost always tense, fuelled by the same kind of competition that seemed to affect domestic and external intelligence services the world over. But whereas Liz had to put up with the know-it-all patronising of Geoffrey Fane, Seurat had long ago established an excellent relationship with Isabelle, one based on mutual respect and by now a genuine liking for each other.
They sat in the operations room in the building that housed the DCRI. It was a windowless and low-ceilinged space, with a series of desk consoles ranged in a half-circle at one end to face a row of large screens that hung from the wall. At the moment just two of them were active. One screen showed a distant shot of the entrance to a tall grim-looking tower block, and the other, its picture obviously coming from a concealed fixed camera, showed the length of a passageway with one open side. You could clearly see the doors of individual flats that ran off the passage; the one in the centre of the picture belonged to the flat of the suspect, Ramdani. But there was no sign of anyone moving in either of these camera views.
At the centre console Alex Carnier, a veteran DCRI Operations control officer, struggled to suppress a yawn. He had a headphone set dangling loosely around his neck, and on the desk in front of him a microphone sat on its stand. He was directing the surveillance operation, but seemed happy enough to have Isabelle and Martin Seurat watching him work.
He turned his head to Isabelle and said, ‘They’re late.’
She shrugged. ‘You said that five minutes ago. They could turn up at any time. What do you want me to do? Ask them to hurry up?’
Carnier gave a grin full of yellow teeth; unlike Isabelle, he pretty clearly hadn’t given up cigarettes. The new regulations banning smoking in public buildings applied here too; Seurat thought it must have been hell for a twenty-a-day man.
‘It’s only been half an hour,’ said Seurat mildly. ‘There may be some reason for the delay.’ Though Thibault had been very specific: the latest decoded email had said four o’clock sharp for the rendezvous at the flat.
Carnier brushed his greying hair back with one hand, then leaned forward and spoke into the microphone. ‘Team Three, anything alive out there?’ he asked, more in hope than expectation.
There was the crackle of a car radio, then a voice replied dully, ‘Rien.’
Isabelle had explained to Martin that there were six teams, each of three people, on the operation. Most of them were in cars, parked safely out of sight, though there would also be a few surveillance officers on foot around Ramdani’s tower block, which along with half a dozen other relics of some bright city planner’s ‘vision’ in the 1970s sat on the edge of Seine-Saint-Denis, one of the constellation towns just north-east of Paris. It was all public housing, now inhabited overwhelmingly by first-and second-generation immigrants. Seurat often wondered whose idea it had been to create these hellholes so far away from the rest of the city’s life. Or perhaps that had been the rationale: to deposit the North Africans who’d flocked to France in the aftermath of the Algerian war out of sight of the public face of the city, known the world over for its elegance.
Isabelle said, ‘Martin, if you want some coffee there’s a machine down the hall.’
‘It’s broken,’ said Carnier. ‘But there’s a café on the corner.’
‘I’m fine,’ said Martin. Sod’s law said that if he went out now the jihadis would show up.
But three hours later there was still no sign of them. Not that there had been any sign of Ramdani either. The surveillance had begun the day before, with only one team, but Ramdani hadn’t left his flat in that time. A light in the front room suggested that he was there, but it had stayed on all night and that, taken with the failure of the others to arrive, meant that his presence in the flat was now open to question. Seurat said as much to Isabelle.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘That’s worrying me too. What if they changed plans and are meeting somewhere else?’
‘It doesn’t seem l
ikely or we’d have seen Ramdani leave his flat. Thibault says GCHQ will notify him immediately if there’s any change of plan.’
‘Still, I’d like to make sure. Alex,’ she said, turning to Carnier, ‘I’d like to establish if Ramdani is actually in the flat. Any ideas?’
Twenty minutes later they watched on the screen a young man walking along the corridor of the tower block. He wore a parka and trainers, and carried a sheaf of flyers advertising a local takeaway pizza joint. Carnier said his name was Philippe, and that he had been with the DCRI for less than a year. ‘But he’s good,’ Carnier said. ‘He wanted to be an actor but he got tired of waiting at tables to pay his rent.’
They watched as Philippe began at the far end, ringing the buzzer of each flat one by one. Most of the doors were answered, sometimes by small children, always with the chain on, and Philippe would give them one of the pamphlets, then move on to the next apartment.
When he got to Ramdani’s door he paused, and looked around. The corridor was empty as he rang the buzzer. He waited a good thirty seconds but no one answered, so he buzzed again. Still nothing. Philippe knelt down and looked through the letter box, then he stood up and moved over to peer through the small window to the side of the door of the flat. His voice came over the speaker on Carnier’s desk, saying quietly, ‘Nothing doing. And no sign of him through the window. I can see into the living room.’
Carnier said, ‘Are you sure the buzzer’s working? Maybe you should knock.’
‘I can hear the buzzer from outside. The walls of this place are paper-thin.’
‘Maybe he’s in the shower – or asleep. Try knocking.’
So this time Philippe knocked on the door as well as pushing the buzzer again. ‘That’s enough,’ said Isabelle. ‘He’ll alert the neighbours and they’ll think it strange he’s so persistent.’
But it was too late, the door to the next apartment opened and an old lady with a walking stick came out, remonstrating furiously. As Philippe beat a hasty retreat, Carnier gave a laugh. The old lady was still shouting at him as he reached the far exit of the corridor by the lifts.
Close Call Page 20
