He walked through the lingerie section, tanned models on posters lying with their eyes, and found an exit that brought him out into a narrow passage with a bakery directly ahead. To the left, a car park, with shoppers milling around automated ticket machines; to the right, an uncovered, pedestrianized shopping zone with branches of Top Man, HMV, Ann Summers. Think. Vincent slung the leather bag over his shoulder and walked west, looking for a café or hotel, somewhere to conceal himself. He came out under a walkway into another section of street closed to traffic. Ahead of him, beside a boarded-up branch of Woolworth’s, there was a busy café with tables out on the street, plenty of customers inside and out. The Boston Tea Party. He walked through the door, found the eyes of a bottle-blonde waitress with a bob and asked if he could use the toilet.

‘No problem,’ she said. She had an Eastern European accent, probably Polish. She waved him upstairs.

Vincent moved quickly now, because he was cornered and they could come for him at any time. He went into the toilet, locked the door and began to take off his clothes. He took the new outfit from the leather bag and put on the underpants, the jeans, the deck shoes, the polo shirt and the tweed jacket. He left his wallet and his phone in his black leather jacket and hooked the jacket on the back of the door. There was a half-empty box in the corner of the toilet filled with bottles of washing-up fluid and he stuffed the clothes on top of them. He must leave no trace of himself. At the start of the operation, three passports had been left for him at locations across London for just this sort of emergency. At least that was one bit of forward-planning that Luc had got right. One of the passports was at Heathrow Terminal Five. As long as nobody had moved it, he would be free to leave. All he had to do was get to the airport.

Amelia Levene had been buying tights and ready-meals at that particular branch of Marks & Spencer for over ten years. She knew the layout of the store, knew that CUCKOO would find the car park exit and vanish within minutes if they didn’t get close to him. So she had sent Aldrich round the back while Kevin Vigors, leaving his car in the market square, kept an eye on the New Canal entrance.

Kell and Amelia had parked alongside Harold’s taxi and were trying to raise Aldrich on the radio. Vigors, twenty metres across the street, had already sat down in a bus stop, looking, for all the world, as though he waited there in the same seat, at the same time, every day of the week. Meanwhile, Kell had telephoned Elsa and told her to make her way to Charles de Gaulle on the first available flight. He was gambling that the crash meeting would take place in Paris and knew that CUCKOO had to be there by midnight. There was no point in Elsa continuing to monitor email and telephone traffic when the French knew they were compromised. Better that she get over to the French side so that she was in a position to tail CUCKOO from the airport or from Gare du Nord.

Six minutes went by. Still no word from Aldrich, still no sign of CUCKOO. Amelia told Vigors to go into the store. Seconds later, Kell’s mobile vibrated on the seat beside him. Amelia looked down at the read-out.

‘It’s Danny,’ she said, putting the phone on loudspeaker.

‘I have a visual. CUCKOO just came out the back. Passing HMV. Everything’s closed, not that many people about.’ There was a momentary loss of contact, as though Aldrich had lowered his phone. Then: ‘He’s carrying a new bag. You saw that, right?’

‘We haven’t seen anything,’ Amelia replied. ‘He probably bought a new set of clothes in M&S. He’ll assume we’ve wired whatever he’s wearing.’

‘He’ll assume correctly.’ Aldrich coughed like a smoker. ‘Hang on. CUCKOO just went into a café. The Boston Tea Party. Can you get Kev outside? There’s an old Woolworth’s opposite, Waterstones on the corner to my right. I’ll go round the back, make sure there’s no exit.’

Within two minutes Vigors had left the bus stop and jogged three hundred metres along New Canal, turning beside the branch of Waterstones. Aldrich saw him and nodded, confirming to Kell by phone that there was no back exit. Vigors sat down on a bench next to a teenager wolfing an onion-oozing, mid-morning hamburger. They saw CUCKOO coming out wearing a red polo shirt, a tweed jacket, blue deck shoes and denim jeans.

‘Well, well, well,’ Aldrich muttered into the phone. ‘If anyone wants four hundred quid’s worth of vintage leather jacket, looks like CUCKOO left his in the gents.’

‘He’s changed clothes?’ Amelia asked.

‘Just like you said he would.’ Making eye contact with Vigors, Aldrich set off in pursuit, one man on one side of the street, one man on the other. ‘Not sure the look really suits him. Confirm, Kev and I are tailing.’

‘Watch yourselves,’ Kell said. ‘He’ll use windows, he’ll stop and let you come past him. Go one at a time and keep some distance.’

‘We’ve done this before,’ Aldrich replied, though without reprimand.

‘He’ll almost certainly try for a taxi,’ Amelia added, catching Kell’s eye. ‘Whatever you do, boys, don’t lose him. Without the jacket, we don’t have a fix on his position. If Vincent disappears, everything disappears with him.’

67

Vigors and Aldrich tailed CUCKOO to a branch of Waitrose on the outskirts of town, Vigors guiding Kell towards them so that there were three sets of eyes on the Frenchman, staggered along the route. Having spent ten minutes in the store, CUCKOO found a taxi outside, just as Amelia had predicted. She had brought the Audi to a petrol station within two hundred metres of the Waitrose car park and picked up Kell as CUCKOO’s cab passed them, heading out on to the Salisbury ring-road. A minute later, Harold scooped up Vigors and Aldrich and the two vehicles followed Vincent’s taxi in parallels as far as Grateley, a small village fifteen miles east of Salisbury.

CUCKOO pulled into Grateley station shortly before eleven o’clock. He paid the driver and bought a train ticket from an automated machine. The station was deserted and Kell knew that he could not afford to risk putting one of the team on to the platform. Instead, he sent Aldrich, Vigors and Harold ahead to Andover, the next stop on the line and told Elsa, who was driving past Stonehenge, to divert to Salisbury station, in case CUCKOO doubled-back.

In the end, he boarded a London train. For eight minutes, Kell lost CUCKOO in a surveillance black hole until Vigors, whom Harold had driven to Andover at a steady 85 mph, joined the train. As he passed through Whitchurch and Overton, Vigors was able to assure Kell and Amelia, by text, that he was in visual contact with CUCKOO. Harold and Aldrich then effectively chased the train on parallel roads while Kell and Amelia remained behind in Andover. Basingstoke was the first major intersection on the London route and Kell anticipated that CUCKOO might attempt to leave the train and to switch to another service. Aldrich, arriving on the Reading platform just thirty seconds before CUCKOO’s train pulled in, was informed by Vigors that he had decided to remain on board. So Aldrich and Harold continued east towards Woking, where CUCKOO did indeed switch routes, stepping off the London service at the last moment and joining a Reading train, leaving Vigors stranded on board. His sleight of hand, however, was observed by Aldrich, who managed to catch the Reading service, albeit three carriages down, while Harold looked on from an opposite platform.

Kell had never known a more complex and operationally challenging period. The Audi was a mess of road maps, sat-navs and communications equipment. By the time CUCKOO was on his way to Reading, with Aldrich trying to find him by walking down the carriages, Vigors was out of the game and Kell effectively down to two pairs of eyes. He rang Vigors and told him to go to London and to wait at Waterloo station, on the off chance that CUCKOO would try to head into the city. If he did so, Vigors might have an opportunity to follow him out to Gatwick or Luton, or even on to a Eurostar service from St Pancras. Meanwhile, Elsa had been sent ahead to Heathrow.