For some reason we were cut off. What I was trying to say, what I was about to say, is that it’s what I want. A clean break, Tom.

She had probably been into her second bottle of red, a couple of gins, too, if history was anything to go by. There was another pause in the message, a gathering of thoughts. Kell knew what was coming. Claire had a standard game plan whenever she sensed that her husband was drawing away from her.

Look, Richard has invited me to go to California. He has a series of meetings in Napa and San Francisco and it only seems fair to tell you that I’ve booked my flight and intend to go. Or rather, Richard has booked my flight. He’s paid for the ticket. I’ll probably be gone by the time you get back, wherever you are, whatever’s going on. It’s your business, so …

Another cut-off. There was no further message. Kell, winded by shock and jealousy, put the phone in his back pocket as he was ushered forward by a moustachioed passport inspector with blond highlights in his hair. A quick glance at the passport and Stephen Uniacke was waved through. A consultant. A married father of two. Not a soon-to-be-divorced husband with a wife jetting off to California in the arms of another man. Not a childless spy on the trail of a friend’s secret son. Not Thomas Kell.

He was soon outside, into the heat and thrash of Marseille. At the perimeter of a congested traffic area – a temporary roundabout taking vehicles in and out of the docks – Kell looked around, knowing that invisible eyes, in cars, in windows, would be watching Stephen Uniacke. ‘There is no such thing as paranoia,’ an SIS elder had once told him, many years earlier, ‘there are only facts.’ It had sounded like a clever thing to say, but in practice it was meaningless. In counter-surveillance, there were no facts; there was only experience and intuition. Kell merely had to put himself in the shoes of the DGSE to know that they would tail him for his first few hours in Marseille. If his cabin had merited a break-in, his movements on the mainland would be more than worthy of attention.

Marseille. He took in the high blue sky, the distant cathedral of Notre-Dame de la Garde, the blaze of sunlight on slate and terracotta roofs. Then, directly in his line of sight as he lowered his gaze, François Malot. The Frenchman was standing with insouciant cool on the far side of the roundabout, climbing into a taxi driven by a man in his fifties who was almost certainly of West African origin. A seagull swooped low over the roof as Malot ducked into the back seat. Kell had a clear sight of the number plate and committed it to memory. There was a phone number on the side of the taxi and he tapped it into his mobile, just as a vacant cab swung into view. He raised his free hand to hail it, but two elderly foot passengers stepped in front of him and attempted simultaneously to flag it down.

‘My cab,’ he shouted out, in French, and to his surprise they turned and conceded the point. The vehicle was a Renault Espace, more than large enough to accommodate three passengers, and Kell offered to share the ride. It was a decision taken solely for the benefit of the DGSE; he wanted Uniacke to look like a nice, considerate rosbif heading into town, not a suspicious British spy with instructions to follow François Malot wherever he went.

The couple turned out to be Americans – Harry and Penny Curtis – both retired former air traffic control officers out of St Louis who had glimpsed the chaos in the skies and vowed never again to travel anywhere by aeroplane.

‘We spent a coupla weeks down in Tunisia, came back over with SNCM,’ said the husband, who had the quick eyes and broad, fattened build of a former soldier. ‘Visited the Star Wars locations, checked out the Roman ruins. You staying a while in Marseille, Steve?’

Kell concocted a story for the benefit of the driver, who might later be questioned by the DGSE. He had long since lost sight of Malot’s vehicle.

‘I think I’m going to stay in town for a night. Need to find a hotel. I met someone on the boat who promised to show me around and take me for bouillabaisse. I don’t have to be home for a couple of days, so I’m hoping we’ll spend some time together.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Harry. ‘You mean some kind of a lady friend?’

‘I mean a lady friend,’ Kell replied, and flourished a knowing smile.

He was thinking, of course, of Madeleine, whose napkin-scrawled number was still nestled at the bottom of his suitcase. With Malot evaporated into the Marseille traffic, she was now his best lead. He wondered if she would call. If Madeleine hadn’t made contact by the evening, he would try the number on the napkin. Most probably there would be no answer, in which case he would head out to the airport and try to run Malot to ground in Paris.

‘We got a train leaving Marseille at five,’ said Harry, scratching what looked like an infected mosquito bite on his forearm. ‘TGV up to Gare Lyon.’

‘Lee-on,’ said Penny, because her husband had rhymed ‘Lyon’ with ‘lion’. Kell smiled and she returned his grin with a wink. ‘Then a whole week in Paris, can you believe it? The Louvre. Musée d’Orsay. All those shops …’

‘… all that food,’ Harry added, and Kell had a sudden, sentimental desire to join them on the five o’clock, to hear their stories of St Louis, to share in their joy at being in Paris.

‘I hope you both have a wonderful time,’ he said.

37

It did not take long for Amelia Levene to clean up the loose ends of her truncated visit to France. There was a chambermaid at the Hotel Gillespie who had agreed, for the sum of two thousand euros, to say nothing about Madame Levene’s prolonged absence from her room. Amelia had paid her half in advance on the morning of her flight to Tunis and now settled the debt as she packed her belongings, the chambermaid having made a special visit to her place of work in mid-afternoon from her home in the suburbs of Nice.

Next, Amelia put a call through to the Austrian divorcee who had organized the painting classes. Brigitta Wettig accepted Amelia’s effusive apologies for abandoning the course after less than two days, but assumed that she had been ‘sick or something’ and seemed concerned only that Mrs Levene would now demand a refund.

‘Of course not, Brigitta. And one day I hope to be able to return. You really do have the most wonderful set-up here.’

Three hours after landing in Nice, Amelia was on her way back to the airport, having retrieved her personal effects from the boot of the hire car in Rue Lamartine. By eight o’clock she was in London, en route by cab to Giles’s house in Chelsea. They had arranged to eat supper together. Amelia had told her husband that she had something ‘important’ that she wished to discuss with him.

They picked a favourite Thai restaurant at the western end of King’s Road. Giles ordered a green curry, Amelia a chicken and basil stir-fry. It was late on a Saturday evening and there were perhaps a dozen other customers in the restaurant, none within earshot and most on the point of asking for the bill.

‘So you had something you wanted to say,’ Giles began, hoping to get the more awkward part of the evening out of the way so that he could enjoy his curry in relative peace. Whenever Amelia called a summit meeting of this kind, it was usually to confess that she had ‘slipped up again’ with Paul Wallinger, her long-term lover. Giles was long past caring and, frankly, would have preferred not to know. It irritated him that his wife always chose one of their favourite restaurants in which to vouchsafe her indiscretions, thereby preventing him from giving expression to his rage with a full-scale row.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you about something in my childhood.’