‘You are OK?’ he called out.

Barbara, tilting to one side for maximum visual impact, nodded her head in a demonstration of unbuckled stoicism and moved forward towards the dustbins.

‘What are you doing back here, love?’ she asked, resting the sack in the centre of the road so that CUCKOO’s path was partially blocked.

‘Smoke,’ he said, miming a cigarette going in and out of his mouth. ‘I help you?’

At least he’s got some manners, Barbara thought, breaking into an effusive speech of gratitude as CUCKOO lifted the bag from the lane and carried it the short distance to the large black dustbins at the edge of the road.

‘C’est lourd,’ he said. It’s heavy. As if to confirm this, the Frenchman held his bicep as though he had suffered a sprain. For a split second, Barbara was about to reply in fluent French, the language of her life in Menton, but she checked herself and instead continued in her role.

‘That’s so kind of you, François,’ she said, slowing her words down, as though talking to a child. ‘Thank goodness I ran into you.’ She was aware that, no more than ten metres away, behind the windows on the first floor of the house, Kell, Elsa and Harold were most probably in a perfect storm of panic, clearing out of the bedroom as fast as possible. She drew CUCKOO’s eyes down towards the ground with a stern warning: ‘Now, I don’t want you going into the house with those muddy boots on.’

It was to the Service’s advantage that CUCKOO was obliged to pretend that he did not understand what she had said.

‘What, please?’ he said. ‘I not follow.’

Barbara repeated the warning, buying yet more precious time as she slowly explained, in nursery-level English, that she would not allow dirty footwear in Mrs Levene’s home.

‘Come with me,’ she said eventually, channelling all of the charm and the mischief of her brief encounter with the receptionist at the Hotel Gillespie. She took CUCKOO’s arm and walked him slowly up the lane towards the front of the house. When they had reached the kitchen door, which was still ajar, she again gestured to his feet.

‘Your cigarettes are on the table, aren’t they, love?’

CUCKOO pointed at the packet of Lucky Strike, which were indeed on the kitchen table, partially concealed from view by a peppermill and a bowl of sugar.

‘I’ll get them for you,’ she said, squeezing through the door. ‘That way you won’t have to come in.’

‘And the lighter,’ he said. ‘I must have my lighter.’

She passed the cigarettes through the door and asked for its whereabouts.

‘In my room,’ CUCKOO replied. ‘But I can get this.’

‘No, no, you stay there, love,’ and Barbara climbed the stairs to the first floor, which was now a ghost town of inactivity. She walked into CUCKOO’s bedroom, spotted the gold cigarette lighter on top of the chest of drawers, slipped it into the front pocket of her smock and returned to the kitchen.

‘Voila!’ she said with an air of triumph, handing the lighter across the threshold. It sounded as though it was the only word of French that she knew. ‘Now you get back to Mrs Levene. She’ll be wondering what’s become of you. And if I don’t see you again, it’s been lovely meeting you. Enjoy the rest of your weekend. Safe trip back to Paris.’

62

Lying flat on the floor of Amelia’s en-suite bathroom, so that their silhouettes would not show in the windows, Kell, Elsa and Harold could pick out only the mumble of Barbara and CUCKOO’s conversation. Taking slow, near-silent breaths, side by side like campers sleeping in a three-man tent, they listened as Barbara closed the kitchen door, then heard what sounded like the footsteps of CUCKOO returning to the lane and walking back past the house, heading in the direction of the meadow. About a minute later, Kell received two low-volume clicks on his radio, then a pause before Vigors confirmed, with three further clicks, that CUCKOO was passing through the gate on his way back towards Amelia.

It was another minute before Kell dared to break the spell of their silence. Standing up, he swore quietly and looked down at Elsa and Harold. Slowly, like survivors from an earthquake, they clambered to their feet.

‘Cazzo,’ she whispered.

‘Squeaky bum time,’ said Harold and Elsa said: ‘Shhhhh!’ as though CUCKOO was still in the next room.

‘It’s all right,’ Kell replied, opening the bathroom door. ‘He’s in the meadow. Gone.’

Barbara appeared at the top of the stairs.

‘Do mind my language,’ she said, ‘but bloody hell, how did that happen?’

‘What did he want?’ Elsa asked.

‘Cigarettes,’ she replied. ‘He wanted bloody cigarettes. Imagine if he’d come upstairs.’

‘I’d have smoked one with him,’ Harold muttered, and everybody went back to work.

63

Akim was woken the next morning by the sound of Luc and Valerie fucking in the next room. Always the same routine: Luc increasingly struggling for breath as he chugged against the headboard; Valerie smothering her moans with what was probably a sheet or the edge of one of the pillows. She was like a teenager or newlywed bride: wanting it every morning, wanting it every night. A cast-off from Internal Security, Valerie was the one random element in the operation, brought in by the boss because he could not function without her, but kept secret – as far as Akim knew – from Luc’s masters in the DGSE. Even Vincent himself had only met her for the first time a few days’ earlier. Luc had sworn him to secrecy, knowing that Paris would pull the plug if they so much as suspected that Valerie was so intimately involved in the HOLST operation.

Akim looked at the clock beside his bed. It was just after six on a Sunday morning; he could have done with the extra hour’s sleep. Now he was just thinking about pussy, about how much longer it was going to be before he could go back to Marseille.

‘Arseholes,’ he muttered and hoped that his voice would carry into the next room and stop the scrape of the bed against the floorboards, the soft muffled squeak of the springs. Eventually there was a groan from Luc, louder than most mornings, and the bed stopped moving, like a car coming to a halt in a lay-by. Moments later Valerie was padding barefoot next door and running the tap on the bidet. Akim heard Luc cough a couple of times, then the radio, the volume turned down low. Always the same routine.

Akim was due on duty at seven fifteen, relieving Slimane from the night shift. Three days earlier, he had gone down to find Slimane and the prisoner talking, HOLST’s door wide open, his eyes filled with rage and tears. Later on, walking in the countryside near the house, Akim had asked for an explanation and Slimane had told him – laughing about it, like it was the funniest thing in the world – that he’d been taunting François about Egypt, about what they’d done to his ‘fake mum and dad’. Akim, who had grown to like François, to respect him for the way he’d handled himself since the grab in Paris, had launched at his friend, a lot of the stress and the tension of their long confinement suddenly coming out in a frenzy of rage. The two men had fallen to the ground and scrapped like kids in the street, only to stop after a minute or two and look at one another, laughing at the dust on their clothes and trainers, flicking away the flies that buzzed around their heads.

‘Who gives a fuck about him anyway?’ Slimane had said, and then they’d ducked behind a tree and lain close to the ground because somebody had come past on a tractor.

Who gives a fuck about him anyway? Akim had given a lot of thought to that question. Do I give a fuck about François? Should I give a fuck about François? He’d hurt his dad, sure. He knew that. But it was Slimane who’d had the blade in Egypt, just like it was Slimane who’d wanted to finish off the spy at Cité Radieuse. Akim didn’t want anyone, especially François, thinking he and Slimane were similar. Akim was a soldier, he did what he was told to do; he stayed true to whoever was paying him. With Slimane, you never knew where his loyalties lay, what he was thinking, what wildness was going to spring from him next.