Authors: Hector Macdonald
He was relieved to find Klara still at the pension. She had been out: there was a copy of
Le Figaro
open on her knees, and a half-eaten pain au chocolat on the side table. Her bruises had been artfully veiled with foundation and concealer.
She met him with a shy smile and a kiss. He held up a white straw trilby; its narrow brim was curled at the back, and a cornflower blue sash girded the crown. ‘Just in case you feel like making a concession to the summer weather.’
Staring at the hat in silence, she seemed frozen with indecision. Then a broad smile broke out and she snatched it from his hands with girlish delight. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, whipping off the black fedora and replacing it with the trilby. She looked up at him, face perfectly, powerfully symmetrical for once. ‘Thank you.’
He allowed himself to enjoy the moment a heartbeat longer, then said, ‘I have to ask you to do something. You know Gavriel is in Strasbourg. You know why he is in Strasbourg. The two men he has been ordered to kill are in town today, leaving tonight. He will have the opportunity to kill only one of them. I need to know which one.’
She blinked in amazement. ‘You think he told me?’
He shook his head. ‘I think he gave you a way to contact him.’
‘And you want me to ring him and say, “Hey Gavriel, please excuse me but who are you thinking to kill tonight?”’ She laughed tonelessly. ‘Sure, I’d be happy to ask. We could all three of us video chat.’
Arkell accepted the sarcasm. ‘It would be enough to know where he’ll be.’
‘So you can murder him!’ she blazed.
‘So I can stop him murdering.’
‘And help a million more people get hooked on drugs.’
‘Klara . . . you don’t really want to be responsible for the death of an elected premier, do you? Whatever his politics?’
She stood up, wrapped her arms around her taut body. In a quieter voice, she said, ‘Without a phone number . . .’
‘All I’m asking you to do is say you’ll meet him. Say that you’re sorry, that you’re confused by all the lies I’ve fed you. That you want to meet him tonight.’
She shrugged helplessly. ‘How can I? You want me to climb on the roof and shout it?’
‘Listen to me, Klara. He is very, very good at what he does. If I’m not there to stop him, he
will
kill one of these men. Andrade, Mayhew – they’re both reasonable politicians with loving families, trying to do the right thing. If Gavriel kills either one, the damage to their country, their children, will be catastrophic.’
Klara sat back down. Without seeming to realize it, she picked up the newspaper and returned it to her knees, spreading it carefully with flattened palms. ‘He didn’t give me a phone number,’ she whispered.
Arkell waited.
‘He didn’t.’ She pressed her right hand to her forehead, began rubbing with slow, unthinking strokes. ‘But there is an email address.’
The email that dropped into Yadin’s phone mailbox had been re-routed through three different cyber-laundering services, nominally located in Austria, Jordan and Malaysia. Yadin ignored the slight vibration signalling the new message. He was busy shopping – or at least giving the appearance of shopping – in the mall across from the BNP Paribas offices. Another caterer’s van – it wasn’t the same one; he’d checked the plates – was parked outside. He’d watched two men and three women in matching uniforms ferry platters of salads and cold meats between van and bank. Neither of the men, regrettably, looked anything like Yadin. One, however, was approximately the right size.
The woman stepping at that same moment off a TGV from Paris was known to her parents and brothers as Julia Hanbury. There was also a Facebook account in that name, through which she kept in touch with Melbourne friends. No one in Europe called her that. Not any more. Not since a British guy whom she knew probably wasn’t named Andrew Meredith had charmed her into sharing some confidential client numbers at the job she once had. Andrew – it was just easier to think of him as Andrew – had taught her the thrill of living with a range of names. She’d never used Jane before, and she doubted she would again. It didn’t fit her. It was the British woman who’d inspired it, the one with the thighs: she looked like a Jane.
Occasionally Facebook’s Julia Hanbury remembered to post details of the dull accountancy job that had taken her via Sydney and New York to Utrecht. She also posted about the lovely Dutch boy who kept her there. From time to time, one of the Melbourne gang would float the idea of a visit. She always found ways to put them off. Just too complicated to navigate around the no-longer-existent job and fictional boyfriend, not to mention the fact that she hadn’t set foot in Holland in four years. Andrew had generously offered to pay for an apartment in Utrecht so she could maintain her ‘story’, as he called it. But it was just as easy to have her parents’ letters and seasonal gifts forwarded from the Utrecht PO Box and have calls to her Dutch number redirected to whatever network she was currently using.
Andrew paid her way too much as it was.
That was why she didn’t sleep with him. It would be weird when he was paying her so well for all the fun stuff she got to do. That, and also he’d never asked.
She’d reckoned he would when he kind of married her. That was fun, seeing his name in her new passport. But he was all business about it. And when they shared a hotel room as a honeymoon couple in Dubrovnik, he slept on the floor despite her not-so-subtle hints. She’d woken in the middle of the night and found him gone.
She felt oddly jealous that time. Like it really was their honeymoon and he was sneaking off to some local girl. She knew perfectly well he wasn’t: he had been very explicit about the kind of work he did and the danger it might put her in. But still, it hadn’t felt great.
She had married him a few more times since then. He liked going on honeymoon. She actually couldn’t remember all the names she’d been given. She’d learned to get comfortable with her own company in fancy hotel suites. And she quite enjoyed messing up the sheets to keep the staff from wondering.
When they weren’t on a job, he called her Siren. He’d asked her right at the beginning of it all, over those fateful cocktails in Utrecht, as the envelope of client numbers lay smouldering on the table between them, what name she wished she’d been given. ‘Siren’ just popped out of nowhere. A ridiculous name, but she loved hearing it on his lips. It made her feel capable of anything.
She walked out of the station into the Strasbourg sun and there he was, the same tentative smile he’d worn when he first approached her in that Utrecht street. Kissing her on one cheek, he took her bag and the zipped carrier containing three evening dresses of different cuts and lengths. He wouldn’t know which one to choose, but he would tell her the kind of event and she would take it from there. They were well rehearsed at this – almost like a married couple.
She smiled, to herself as much as to him. ‘Hello, Andrew.’
‘Siren. Thank you for coming.’
‘Did I have a choice? I think it’s in my contract.’
‘What are you missing? Any hot dates?’
‘I’m in retreat, as you well know. The only men in the village are well over seventy, and they drink far too much cheap cognac to be any use to me.’ Her Australian accent only really emerged these days when she was messing around. ‘But there’s at least one masterpiece I’ll never finish now, that’s for sure.’
‘I promise it’s worth the sacrifice.’
‘So do I get to shoot anyone tonight? Seduce a sleazy Euro politician? Plant a bug in a defence minister’s bathroom?’
‘Just polite conversation and looking beautiful, I’m afraid. The guy I’m after will be watching the lone men more carefully than the couples.’
She sighed as she threw an arm around his back. ‘One day, Mr Meredith, you will finally appreciate my talents. Come on, let’s get a cab. You don’t know it yet, but you’ve treated me to a seriously nice room at the Hyatt, and it looks like I’ve got time to make good use of their spa.’
‘Sounds like a reasonable incidental expense. Especially as there’s a risk you might spend tonight in a police cell.’
‘Ah, sweetie, you always say that. One of these days it’d better happen.’
The bankers’ lunch did not last long. Times had changed, it seemed, even in France. The catering staff loaded stacked platters and crates of dirty crockery into the van, and were then dismissed. Yadin tracked the two men to a tram station. Through the glass pane of the carriage behind theirs he watched the lanky guy get off at Homme de Fer. The two waiters did not shake hands or give any other sign of friendship as they parted. Not that it made any difference, but Yadin always noted such things. The other man stayed on the tram for five more stops, then walked four blocks to an apartment building. Yadin kept his distance, but the waiter never looked round. As they approached the building, he accelerated his pace, perfectly timing his arrival to catch the swinging door.
The waiter, standing at the elevators, glanced round but made no comment. Yadin gave him a silent nod. They stood unmoving, side by side, watching the glowing number above the steel door. His target began to look uneasy only when Yadin got out on the same floor and chose to walk in the same direction along the empty corridor. He stopped to let him go past, and Yadin stepped neatly alongside him and seized his windpipe between finger and thumb. The important thing was not to get blood on the clothes.
The waiter gasped hoarsely, rigid with fright. ‘You can still breathe and you can still move,’ Yadin assured him in whispered French. ‘Is there anyone in your apartment? Answer quietly.’
‘No,’ he wheezed.
‘Open the door. Nothing will happen to you if you cooperate.’ It interested Yadin, who had long studied human psychology for its practical applications, that most people chose to believe such statements, even when they came from strangers who had just assaulted them.
With some difficulty, the waiter extracted a set of keys from his pocket and stumbled towards one of the doors. Yadin maintained his precise grip on the man’s throat as he unlocked the door and edged inside. The tired flat was empty, but the mess in the kitchen suggested multiple dwellers.
Yadin closed the door with his heel, showed the man the automatic and then released his throat.
‘Take off your clothes.’
‘What?’ The fear in the man’s eyes intensified.
‘I told you, nothing will happen to you. I want your clothes, not your body.’
Hurriedly, the waiter stripped. Yadin glanced into the three bedrooms. ‘Which is yours?’
‘On the left.’ There was a growing tremor in his voice.
‘Share it with anyone? Girlfriend? Boyfriend? Anyone going to go in there today?’
‘No.’
He was fully undressed now. Even his socks and underpants lay in the pile beside him. A line of tattooed fish swam their way up his left leg. Love handles that had not been visible under his shirt spoilt the otherwise trim outline of a young body.
‘Thank you,’ said Yadin, gripping his thick chestnut hair and jerking his head back so that the neck snapped.
Yadin found the catering firm’s identity card in the trousers. It would not be difficult to replace the photograph. He carried the body into the bedroom and shut it in the wardrobe. He decided against closing the bedroom door in case it was not the waiter’s habit.
Such little things, he had been taught a long time ago, can make all the difference.
Klara Richter looked up from her crossword as Arkell opened the door. The black fedora was back, the straw trilby nowhere to be seen. She gave him a bright smile. Too bright. ‘Hi,’ she said.
‘Hi.’
‘So . . .’ She went back to studying the paper. ‘You have a girlfriend.’
Arkell swung round to face the mirror. Had Siren left a smudge of lipstick on his cheek? But there was nothing. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘At least one, I should say. One in France perhaps. A few more in England. Any in Germany?’
‘Klara, what are you talking about?’
She looked back up at him. Still that bright, over-cheerful smile. ‘It’s no big deal.’
‘Good to know.’
‘She’s cute. Young for you, isn’t she?’
He sat down on the bed, facing her. ‘Did you follow me?’
‘Isn’t that what spies do? Seems like I’m not bad, yes? Maybe I should get a job with one of your fascist bureaux.’ She filled in a clue. Arkell would have bet money it was not the right word. ‘You should look round more. I think maybe Gavriel followed you too. Maybe he also followed you in that taxi. I didn’t need to. I know that story.’
‘Klara, what is this about?’
‘Nothing. I’m happy for you.’
‘She’s not my girlfriend.’
‘OK. Good.’
‘We work together.’
‘Sure. Fine.’
He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘When you got bored of following me, did you check your email?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And?’
She shrugged. ‘We’re meeting.’
‘Where?’
‘He said 9 p.m.’ She hesitated, and for a moment Arkell seemed to see straight into her tortured soul. ‘Café des Greques.’
Arkell grabbed a city map. ‘Show me.’
She did her best to look uninterested, as if she could barely be bothered to cooperate. But her finger came down with precision on a street to the south-west of the old city.
Arkell stared at the bright new copper nail varnish on her neatly trimmed fingernail. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’
Both events were due to start at 8 p.m. Standing alone at 7.35 on a street corner midway between the two venues, her face turned away from passing cars, Wraye felt more than a little tense. Watching Arkell approach in a dark suit with a sylph-like figure in grey silk on his arm did not help. This woman had seen her naked, remembered Wraye with irritation. Knowing that she would be writing the cheque for that expensive couture only heightened her annoyance.
‘You still don’t know?’
‘I’m still not sure,’ he corrected her. He did not try to introduce Siren.
‘What did Richter say?’
‘She said Yadin would meet her exactly one hour after the start of the events, one block from the Centre de la Paix.’
‘So it’s Andrade.’
‘Maybe.’
‘A block away!’
‘Exactly. One block from a presidential murder scene? One block from the centre of police attention for the next month?’
‘You think it’s a misdirect?’
‘Klara was . . . There was something wrong.’
‘Could he have called her?’
Arkell shook his head. ‘I’ve still got her mobile cloned.’
‘You wrote the email for her, didn’t you? Was there anything in it that might have tipped him off?’
‘Nothing. But she may have sent a second email explaining what we want to know.’
‘So he steers you to the wrong venue, leaving him free to take Mayhew.’
‘Unless he’s double bluffing,’ interjected Siren.
‘Thank you,’ said Wraye icily.
‘It is a possibility,’ acknowledged Arkell. ‘The misdirect is a little obvious when you think about it.’
Wraye looked at her watch. ‘You’re on both guest lists,’ she told Arkell, ‘which I can assure you was no small feat.’ She held up two pairs of tickets, one in stiff white card, the other in the style of a black-and-white news story. ‘It’s 19:42. Make the call.’
Yadin had been inside the building for close to three hours before he revealed himself. The venue was part of a larger property, incorporating offices, an EU member-state delegation and an independent art-house cinema that still received EU funding only because one of the commissioners had a weakness for meaningful movies shot on grainy celluloid. The cinema was closed for the day, but the business tenants had protested vigorously at the idea of an enforced holiday, and no one had dared suggest kicking the member-state delegation out.
Nevertheless, DCRI officers had swept the entire building the night before, and all day had been checking the identities of anyone entering.
Yadin had taken no satisfaction from the ease with which he’d passed through the security cordon. There were any number of ways he could have done it unaided, but Kartouche had offered a simple convenience and he had accepted it because to do otherwise would have been proud and unprofessional. Kartouche’s organization possessed capabilities and contacts beyond even those of the Mossad. And although Yadin liked to work alone, to depend on his own judgement and competence, it was, he recognized, foolish to refuse genuinely useful assistance. It usually took the form of intelligence: security arrangements for the Tobago broadcast; the premiers’ French schedules; the structural plans of this building; possible profiles of the man who was hunting him. But in this case, Kartouche had pulled a different kind of string, and at 17:09 the Police nationale officer guarding the entrance to those business offices had looked at his watch, looked again a minute later, and then had very deliberately walked around the corner of the building. He was back at his post twenty-five seconds later.
Yadin had accepted that convenience. For the rest – talking his way past the shared reception, breezing in smart grey suit through the offices of three different enterprises, disabling the alarm on the emergency exit into the stairwell that connected with the venue – these things he did for himself.
At 20:03, now dressed in the waiter’s black trousers and white shirt, Yadin removed the cork from a wine bottle. The bottle was from the same vineyard and of the same vintage as the cases he had seen unloaded that morning. Strapping one further object carefully to his wrist, he checked its mechanism before buttoning his sleeve.
For some time he had been listening to the noises coming from the other side of the uppermost emergency exit door: shuffling, throat clearing, heel tapping, the occasional acknowledgement of a radio call. The top storey held the venue’s administrative offices and storage rooms, and aside from the man guarding the emergency exit it seemed to be empty. Mentally sliding into the necessary language and accent, Yadin rapped on the door and uttered the lone sentinel’s call sign: ‘Sierra Four’.
The shuffling and heel tapping stopped. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Tango Whisky. Open up, Sierra Four.’
A pause. It was possible the man would do what he ought to do – radio for instructions. But no one likes to look stupid. ‘Tango Whisky? Which unit is –’
‘Will you open the damn door? It’s a furnace in here.’
Sierra Four hesitated just a few more seconds. At least he had his weapon out, reflected Yadin as he hurtled through the opening door and drove his rigid knuckles into the man’s throat. Even if he hadn’t flicked the safety lever.
Yadin pocketed the officer’s radio and concealed the body in a cupboard full of flipchart easels. Retrieving the bottle of wine, he closed the emergency door and made his way to the elevators.
Now that he was inside, the danger lay not with the security team but with the staff of the catering firm. The workforce might be casual, made up of students and other passing bodies, but they would know who else was working the job. And there would be supervisors keeping a close eye on anyone in a logo-stamped white shirt. For an event like this, it would be a particularly close eye.
So Yadin did not hurry into the main reception space. Instead, he waited in a darkened adjoining room full of stacked chairs and folded conference tables. Twice the radio, set to a low volume, called for Sierra Four. Twice he mimicked the dead officer’s intonation and accent to give the all-clear code. When the lights next door dimmed, and the premier began speaking, Yadin switched off the radio, picked up the bottle of wine and eased open the door.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen,
muitos obrigados
, thank you for coming,’ said Murilo Andrade, larger than life in a bulging dinner suit. ‘I hope you will find this evening interesting, thought-provoking, even profitable.’ He smiled at the polite laughter from the assembled pharmaceutical leaders. He knew their industry well, having helped set up a very successful Brazilian manufacturer of generic medicines – pharmacologically almost identical to the branded compounds that had made these global corporations rich, but on sale, once the relevant patents had expired, for a fraction of the cost. These people didn’t like him very much back then. Perhaps they would warm to him tonight.
‘Your business,’ he began, ‘is about making people better. But increasingly, in this age of statins and beta-blockers, it is also about preventing them getting ill. If you need justification – to your shareholders, your employees, your families, your god – for developing, manufacturing and selling safe, taxed narcotics, that is it. Your participation in, and your eventual control of, the recreational drugs business will stop people getting ill. More, it will stop them dying.
‘There is no more regulated industry on earth than yours, and there is none that better understands the mechanisms of human biology and the tolerances of our bodies. With your expertise in pharmacodynamics, toxicology and neuropharmacology, you have the ability to create patentable formulations rich in neuroprotectors and stripped of the molecules that aggravate addiction. If anyone can make these substances safe for those many millions who insist on consuming them, it is you.’
Looking around the darkened room, Madeleine Wraye scanned every face near the president. Three or four might almost have been Yadin – with make-up, with a wig, with a false nose. She edged a little closer to one likely candidate.
‘Your industry has been repeatedly, sometimes unfairly, vilified – for excessive profits, for unethical marketing practices, for compromised clinical tests. Through years of hard work, you have put most of that behind you. And now you are thinking: why in God’s name would we expose ourselves to all that shit again? Marketing
heroin
? Selling crack to the daughters of congressmen and senators? Is he
louco
?!’
One of the Yadin lookalikes, a waiter, drifted discreetly amongst the laughing, charmed directors, topping up glasses of red wine. Wraye watched his progress until he disappeared from view.
President Andrade had moved on to talk about dosage and labelling.
She prayed Arkell had made the right choice.