He stood up and went to the window, looking down on to Boulevard Raspail. The curtains were open, the window ajar. He poured himself a whisky from the mini-bar, opened the carton of cigarettes he had purchased at Heathrow and raised a silent toast to François Malot, blowing smoke out into the damp Paris night. It was the wrong thing to think – he knew that – but he missed Amelia, he missed their talks and the meals they had enjoyed together, the time they had spent at the pool and the beach. He no longer wanted her; she had betrayed him and had ceased to exist as a woman. But he missed her as François might have missed her, because she was his mother, because she had cared for him and would have gone to the ends of the earth to protect her son. A woman that powerful, a woman that strong. Imagine possessing a mother like that. François was so lucky to have her.

Vincent drained the whisky, poured another from the mini-bar, even though Luc and Valerie might arrive at any moment and smell the alcohol on his breath. He began to dread what they were going to do. It was the sense of isolation he couldn’t stand; everything he had known about himself, everything he had trusted and believed, had been stripped away from him in just a few hours. Like the bullying at school: one minute he had been one person, the next he was somebody else. A rat. A traitor. Their bitch. He had been right never to trust anybody after that. It was what he had thought going into the first interviews with the Directorate, what they must have seen in him, what they must have liked.

My solitude is my talent, he thought. My self-sufficiency is my strength.

There was a knock at the door.

71

By midnight, Kevin Vigors had arrived in Paris, picked up a Peugeot hire car at Gare du Nord and driven south to Boulevard Saint-Germain where he found Kell, Elsa and Aldrich at a table in Brasserie Lipp, nursing their sorrows with four plates of choucroute and a couple of bottles of Chinon.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Elsa whispered as Vigors slipped on to the banquette beside her. ‘I did not have the experience that Danny has, that you have. I am so sorry that …’

Kell interrupted her. ‘Elsa, if you apologize one more time, I’ll get you a job fixing computers in Albania for the rest of your life. There was nothing you could have done. One of us should have got on the train with you. It’s impossible to follow a trained target without back-up.’ He looked up at the three faces gathered around him and raised his glass of wine. ‘All of you were fantastic today in extremely difficult circumstances. It was a miracle we got as far as we did. There’s still every chance that we can find François once Luc and Valerie make contact with Amelia tomorrow night.’

He had already given the bad news to Amelia, who had been obliged to stay in the UK so that she could put in an honest day’s work on Monday for the benefit of Truscott, Marquand and Haynes. To avoid spending the night with Giles in Chelsea, she had taken a room at the Holiday Inn, where she was gradually making her way through the various items that CUCKOO had left on the back seat of Aldrich’s cab. She kept the gold lighter, engraved with the initials P.M., but put everything else back into Vincent’s suitcase and the black leather holdall, wondering what she would do with them. Sitting alone on the sixth floor of the hotel, looking out over a gridlocked M4, her sense of frustration was akin to the powerlessness she had felt in the face of her late brother’s cancer. Despite all the resources at her disposal, all of her experience and expertise, she could do nothing to influence the events unfolding in France. Her trust in Thomas Kell was absolute, but she could hardly believe that she had left François’ safety in the hands of only three men and an Italian computer specialist with non-existent experience in the field. Amelia had managed to organize a three-man team of ‘security experts’ – an Office euphemism for ex-SAS soldiers moonlighting in the private sector – who would leave for Carcassone in the morning. But she could only afford to have them on stand-by for forty-eight hours, not least because she had drained one of her bank accounts to pay for them. Unless Kell discovered François’ whereabouts in that time, there would be no military option for seizing her son. And how were they going to find François without CUCKOO? The trail had gone cold.

Amelia was checking her emails at regular intervals, staying in touch with Kell and confirming arrangements with Anthony White, the commander of the security team. At twenty past eleven, she heard the ping of a message coming through on her laptop.

It was from GCHQ, with the subject heading ‘Amex’.

You requested live trace on American Express card 3759 876543 21001 / 06/14 / GERARD TAINE

Card use (abbreviated):

British Airways (Sales) / LHR T5 / 16.23 GMT£584.00

World Duty Free / LHR T5/ 17.04 GMT£43.79

Hotel Lutetia / Paris / 00.05 GMT+1€267.00

She picked up the phone and dialled Kell.

72

The Hotel Lutetia was a five-star Parisian landmark known to Kell from his brief tenure in the city a decade earlier; he had held meetings with SIS and DGSE colleagues in the lobby and knew something of the hotel’s history as a base for the occupying German army during World War II. It was less than a mile from Brasserie Lipp and would logically make a safe, discreet location for CUCKOO’s crash meeting with Luc and Valerie.

Within four minutes of receiving the call from Amelia, Kell had paid the bill at Lipp, walked south-west with Elsa down Rue de Sèvres and told Danny Aldrich and Kevin Vigors to park as close to the hotel as possible.

Aldrich found a space for the Peugeot on the eastern side of Boulevard Raspail and kept an eye on the entrance. Vigors went straight to the reception desk and booked a double room in his own name before settling into an armchair with clear sight of the main bank of lifts. Kell and Elsa walked into the hotel arm in arm, like lovers returning from a midnight stroll.

‘We’re staying here,’ he told her as they ambled past reception. ‘Dirty weekend. We’re going to have a drink in the bar before we go up to bed.’

‘Promises, promises,’ she replied, and squeezed his arm tight against her chest.

The bar was in a large rectangular lobby the size of a real tennis court. About ten guests were seated in scattered groups on armchairs upholstered in scarlet and black, digestifs and cups of coffee on low wooden tables between them. A lone waiter moved briskly among the art deco sculptures, the tinkle and cough of polite conversation accompanied by a bald pianist covering show tunes at a grand piano in the corner. Kell sat in an armchair facing out towards the main entrance; Elsa was opposite him, watching the bar. For half an hour they conversed in English about Elsa’s childhood in Italy, while Kell sent and received occasional text messages to Amelia, Vigors and Aldrich.

‘If you were my lover and you spent this much time on your phone, I would leave you,’ she said.

Kell looked up and smiled. ‘Sounds like I’ve been warned.’

Seconds later, pushing through the revolving doors of the hotel, a young Arab man came in from the street wearing denim jeans and a leather motorcycling jacket emblazoned with the Marlboro logo. Kell could not at first make out his face, but as he passed the reception desk, he saw to his astonishment that it was one of the two men who had attacked him in Marseille.

‘Jesus Christ.’

Elsa, reclining sleepily in her chair, leaned forward. ‘What?’

‘It’s the guy from the …’ He had to think quickly. There was no time to alert Vigors. ‘Go to the lifts. Don’t hesitate.’ Elsa was out of her seat, her consternation plain for anyone to see. Kell lowered his voice. ‘There’s a young French Arab heading there now. He’s part of their team. Follow him. Try to find out which floor he’s going to.’