Flight Path: A Wright & Tran Novel (18 page)

“No. No you probably can’t. Like I said, I don’t know what you did and I don’t want to know. But, if you’ve had to pay to get to a country with no extradition, then no lad, you won’t be going home.” The small man gave Jacob another friendly pat on the shoulder. Jacob imagined standing up and putting his fist through the bespectacled face. Instead he breathed deeply and brought his temper back under control. He straightened in the chair and looked towards the camera, “Okay then. Let’s do it.”

The small man took a series of photos, checking the digital display after each one.

“How come so many photos?” Jacob asked.

“Just me being overly pedantic with the composition. It’s the OCD coming out in me,” he grinned. “One would do, even for the four passports.”

“Four?”

“Oh yes. You’ll have one for the first flight. Then someone will meet you when you get off it and look after you until the next one. They’ll give you your ticket and a second passport. Same for the next one. Given what I said about this damn state of emergency, it’s the best we can do to confuse your trail.”

“What’s the fourth one for?”

The small man was looking down at the camera display, raising his glasses from his nose and concentrating on the images, “Oh that’s for your new identity when you get to where you’re going.”

Jacob decided now was the right time to push things, “And where will that be?”

The small man straightened up and looked back at Jacob, “You’ll find out when you get your final ticket. You understand, it’s just safer that way.”

“Oh. Of course, sorry.”

“Nope. No need to apologise, it’s fine. Perfectly natural to be curious. Right. They’re okay, I can use them. Very photogenic.”

Jacob gave him a pathetic smile.

“That’s better, chin up.” He moved across to the bed and began to pack the camera away in the briefcase. When finished he lifted the envelopes with the money in them. “Now, a few things you need to do tomorrow. Okay?”

Jacob tried to convey a sense of attentiveness and a keenness to please.

“Travelling light is great but people with absolutely no luggage get noticed. I need you to buy a small suitcase and a carryon back pack. Outfit yourself for what you would expect to take on holiday to somewhere warm. Make sure you don’t pack anything that’s going to cause any problems. Just normal holiday clothes, shorts, tops, underwear, sandals, toiletries. That sort of thing, but get one light jumper and a light jacket. Especially for the flights. For your carryon think about what will make you fit in and not raise any suspicions. Maybe some sweets or a pack of cards, a book, or some of those puzzle magazines. There’s places round here will sell them in English. It just needs to look normal. Only nothing that’s electronic. We don’t want something, no matter how remote, that might be traceable. I know you wouldn’t, but on a stopover, you might be tempted to check Facebook, or look at emails or something that would give you away. Okay? So no electronics. Very important. For security. It’s just saf-”

“Safer that way,” Jacob finished for him.

“Yes. Exactly. Got it?”

“Yes,” Jacob said.

“Well then. Keep your chin up. Good luck Jacob.”

The small man made to leave but turned back, “Oh, almost forgot. What year were you born?”

“Umm, sorry?”

“The year of your birth, what is it?”

“Nineteen eighty-nine. Why?”

“It’s for the passports, that’s all. Now I don’t want to know the day or month but I do need to know if it was in July?”

“No.”

“Great. Right. Get some rest. Big few days ahead.”

When the small man had left, Jacob went back to lying on the bed. He shut his eyes but couldn’t sleep.

His anger at both the man’s pride in helping people escape and the resistance remark was bleeding off, but his underlying anger, present since he had looked through the farmhouse window, hadn’t so much dissipated as refined itself into a purpose and been channelled for effect. Purposeful anger provided him a focus but wasn’t the reason for his restlessness. It was the gnawing guilt that weighed heavy in his chest and was much more difficult to ease. It caused his thoughts to replay the events of the past few days. He saw so clearly the mistakes he’d made in allowing Tien and Kara to approach the waterfront alone. He should have been aware of the risks and he knew it was because of his oversight he’d almost lost Tien. Almost lost both of them.

It rankled so deeply within him because that was his job; now and before in the military. He was a Force Protection specialist. His whole reason for being anywhere was to protect the main assets of an operation and he’d always done it. From Basra to the Battle of Bastion, when he had fought alongside his older brother, that had been his mission. The Bastion raid had caused its own guilt and regret, but it hadn’t been as personal as this. Tien was his main concern. She was what had to be protected at all costs and he’d let her down. And Kara, he reminded himself.

That’s why, when they had discovered there was a chance to infiltrate the network, to perhaps discover how Swift had disappeared, maybe even find him, he had instantly volunteered to take on the role of the scared fugitive. He saw it as an opportunity to make it up to her; them. Even when Sammi & Chaz both suggested that Chaz should do it because of his experience and capabilities, Jacob had held firm. They all knew Chaz was way beyond all of them when it came to skills in unarmed combat. The guy was a force of nature at fighting and given that the mission would be solo, with no communications and no chance to call for help, it had almost swayed the argument in Chaz’s favour.

But it had eventually come down to Kara and Tien. They’d both agreed that Jacob, being from Essex and knowing Swift from television, might have the advantage over Chaz if he ever found himself close enough to the target. Kara told him later, in private, that Tien really appreciated him volunteering. A calming sense of contentment washed over him as he remembered the conversation.

“Dark hearts,” he said softly and concentrated on slowing his breathing and quietening his thoughts.

“Dark hearts,” he repeated, closed his eyes and eventually drifted off to sleep.

ɸ

It was Paris on a cold, overcast November night so Tien had no difficulty securing three rooms. Dinger and Eloise had accommodation already and it was important that they stayed separate from the rest. Sammi, Tien and Kara checked-in together and while the receptionist completed the paperwork the three women laughed and talked about their day. By the time they were being handed the room cards, the receptionist, had she been interested, would have known that the three English couples had had a change of heart and instead of rushing back to catch the London train, had decided to stay in Paris for another night. Their husbands would be along later, they’d just gone to extend the rental on the minibus they’d hired for the day. Once upstairs they quickly met in Kara’s room and were joined by Dinger via phone.

“Any difficulties getting the bug back out?” Kara asked Dinger.

“Nope,” he said. “It went under the counter when we ordered and came off when we paid the bill. Easy as.”

“And Eloise, she was okay with all this?” Sammi asked.

“Happy? No,” Dinger said and waited until he heard at least one concerned ‘Oh’ in response. “She was delighted. Thrilled in fact. When I explained what you wanted us to do she was completely up for it. Thought it was ‘incredibly exciting’, and the fact she got to come to Paris was a bonus. Lanzarote’s lovely, but I think booking for three weeks was a mistake, so yeah, cutting early was good. To be fair, I’m not sure she’s in the right job. She took to tonight really well.”

“I just thought, with you and her speaking German, it gave us good cover and a chance to have some on-site presence when Jacob made the first contact,” Kara said. “Just in case.”

“And it worked. She was cool. Given she’s never met Jacob also helped. She didn’t react at all to him when he came in, just stayed completely relaxed. Like I said, maybe the law isn’t her calling,” Dinger laughed, more than a little proud of his fiancée’s performance in the restaurant.

“Yeah, but a lawyer’s going to be good for you to have Dinger,” Sammi said. “You never know when you’re going to need bailing out.”

“Yeah, fair enough,” Dinger laughed in agreement.

“Right, what next?” Kara asked, bringing them back on topic.

“Well, Eloise heads home tomorrow morning and then I can be wherever you need me to be,” Dinger said.

“Afraid not on this one Dinger,” Kara said. “We’re going to assume these guys are top-notch on their counter-surveillance. When I say good, I mean equal to us. That’s why I wanted you in there tonight as a couple, but given you’ve been visible to them, then that’s the last you can play close-quarter-reconnaissance on this. It’ll also be better if you travel to the airport and depart together. That’s what they would expect to see and we’re going to assume they’ll have put assets on you. It’s what we would do if an unknown couple turned up at a site we had set for a high-value meet.”

“Yep, understood. No problem,” Dinger said and Kara again thanked her good fortune at being able to work with the best professionals she knew. There was no dissent or ego getting in the way of the job.

“What we would like you to do is head to the Camden office and be our coordination if we need it?” Tien asked.

“Too easy. How do I get in?”

“I’ll text you my brother’s number. He has spare keys,” Kara said.

“You mean David? The cop?”

“Yeah,” Kara hesitated, “Is that a problem?”

“Nah,” Dinger laughed. “Just thought the last time the cops came to your office they didn’t need spare keys, did they?”

“Funny bugger aren’t you?” Kara said. “Just you be careful going in. That paint job in the foyer was expensive,” she added with a chuckle, thinking about the new doorframes, doors and paint that the Cambridgeshire Constabulary had had to foot the bill for after a raid in July.

“Okay, no worries. Do you need me anymore then?”

“Nope. Thanks again and thank Eloise,” Kara said.

“No problem. I’ll talk to you when I’m in Camden. Bye.” The call cut-off. Sammi, Tien and Kara gathered round the room’s coffee table and poured over a map of Paris for the next hour.

ɸ

At two in the morning, Kara went on a one kilometre walk to end up less than fifty metres from her hotel. She entered a darkened alley that, halfway along, was lined with a deep hedgerow. Penetrating through it, she crossed a clearing of grass to a pitch black tree line that separated two blocks of buildings, the western most of which housed the restaurant Jacob had entered five hours before. She knelt on the ground and waited until she attuned to her immediate surroundings. Taking a set of binocular night sights from her small hip pouch, she turned the black to a deep green haze. Despite the clarity of vision they provided, the tree line still revealed nothing of note.

“Toby,” she whispered into the night.

Her voice-activated mic transmitted and less than ten steps from where she knelt, a hand appeared from the darkness.

“Here Kara.”

“Jesus, that’s impressive camouflage,” she said.

“You know how it is. Once a sniper…” Toby said as he manoeuvred out from his observation post.

“Anything?” she asked as she moved to take his place.

“Nope. Chaz reports all quiet too. If nothing bad has happened then he’s still in there.”

Kara could hear the slightest of tonal changes in Toby’s voice as he spoke about his younger brother’s safety.

“It’s okay Toby. He can look after himself and we’ll be in there in minutes if anything looks wrong. Now, go get something to eat and drink. Room 428,” she said and handed over the hotel room card.

“Thanks. Have we figured out what we’ll do at dawn?”

Kara knew the tree line afforded a great observation post during the night, but in the daylight the trees in the small inter-building park were much too thin to provide any cover.

“Yep, all sorted. Even if they come out the rear door they only have two streets that they can exit onto. We have plans in place. Talk to Tien back at the hotel. Dawn’s at eight so I’ll withdraw from here by seven and catch up with you then.”

“Chaz’ll be knackered by then,” Toby said, stifling a yawn of his own.

“Yeah, but he’ll cope. It’s not like we can change homeless bums in the middle of the night. He’s in his doorway and he’s happy.”

Chaz, forty metres on the opposite side of the trees, in a direct line through the building and across the road, turned over under his cardboard blanket, feigning restless sleep. “Happy is one word for it, I suppose.”

Tien, back in the hotel and listening in to all the communications through a base station that also amplified the signals to prevent interference from the tightly packed Parisian buildings, said, “Come on back Toby. I have hot chocolate and marshmallows waiting for you.”

“You’re a cruel woman,” Kara said, settling down to watch the back of the restaurant as Toby disappeared into the night.

Wednesday 25
th
November.

The door t
o
Apartment Two was opened by the barman. “You are going out now?”

Jacob nodded.

“Back by five. No later. Better if you can stay out most of the day. Keep a low profile. Don’t draw attention to yourself and don’t act suspiciously. Whoever you are running from does not know you are here. You can relax. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Go down the stairs and through the hallway. It will bring you out to the rear of the restaurant. When you come back, come in that way. There is a bell. Yes?”

“Yes.”

The barman shut the door and Jacob turned for the stairs. Once outside he walked back around the building to the street in front of the restaurant. The sun had only been up for half an hour and the damp of the night still clung to a morning that was overcast, grey and cold. He swept his gaze up and down like he was completely unaware of his surroundings. In reality he had committed most of the 18
th
Arrondissement, and the neighbouring 9
th
, 10
th
and 17
th
to memory while travelling across in the van from London. That van, a non-descript white transit, had been parked in a town an hour’s distance from Paris and swapped for an equally non-descript hire van that boasted French plates and right-hand drive configuration. Without dwelling on them, Jacob’s sweep of the street registered at least four similar vans parked within one-hundred metres of where he stood. Given the strange and extremely close nature of Parisian parking he couldn’t see any of the registration plates, but he was fairly sure one of them would be theirs. Likewise, although he couldn’t see the other car and motorbikes that Kara and the rest of the team had hired, he knew they’d be close by.

He also noted that the homeless man who had been sleeping in the doorway opposite the restaurant had moved on, or been moved on, as daylight had dawned. He turned left, heading south for the centre of the city. The nearest Métro station was about a kilometre away, but he wanted to stay above ground and on foot for longer than that. He figured his appearance on the street would have surprised Tien and Kara but they would be mobilising to follow him and he had to give them a chance to make contact.

It took him seven minutes of browsing store fronts and walking casually, yet not too slowly, to reach the end of Rue Damrémont. Doglegging right he joined Rue Caulaincourt and walked along the narrow footpath of a wrought iron bridge. He paused to look down through the high-sided blue metal lattice that was a favourite canvas for the local graffiti artists. From studying the maps of the area he knew what to expect but was still surprised at the view in reality. Broad tree-lined avenues ran between clumps of majestic tombs and grand mausoleums. The great and the good of 19
th
Century Montmartre had been buried in a secluded town of the dead, then forced to endure the domination of a strange metal viaduct that town planners of later years thought a necessary improvement for progress.

He lingered for an amount of time that he thought balanced the curiosity natural for a first time visitor against his need to allow Tien and Kara a chance to catch up. After a few minutes he set off south again.

A short distance later he came to a confusing intersection of eight different streets centred on a small, paved island that was a parking space for mopeds and bicycles. The brown-coloured tourist signposts showed the Moulin Rouge was to his left along the wide Boulevard de Clichy. Sure enough, the red tip of a windmill sail was visible, peeking out from behind the dozen or so buildings between him and it.

He turned around slowly, as if realising for the first time that the building dominating the corner of the intersection was a café serving breakfast. The long stretch of pavement wrapping around the semi-circular frontage would no doubt have catered to a large number of tables and chairs during the Parisian spring or summer, but in the drabness of a winter’s morning it was empty. The lack of alfresco tables afforded an unbroken view into the windows of the café. He could see a number of empty tables inside and the reflection of the busy street scene behind him. As he walked into the Café de Luna he had the first confirmation that being sent out to do shopping wasn’t all the small man wanted from today.

ɸ

Sammi had been startled when Jacob came out of the restaurant. She was in the rear of the white van parked down a small alley that ran at an obtuse angle to the main Rue Damrémont. As Kara, Tien and she had worked out the previous night, owing to the bizarre layout of the streets in this area of Paris, it afforded a view of the Restaurant’s entrance and oversight of the two streets that were the only access to the rear of the property. Its only disadvantage had been that it was packed with cars. That meant they weren’t going to be able to get a parking spot until some of the residents left for work. At six-thirty that morning, Chaz, his cardboard decidedly wet and his back cramped, reported one early riser had just driven out of the alley and there was a gap if they moved quickly. Sammi had left the hotel, recovered the van from where they had originally parked it, raced around three city blocks and managed to squeeze it in. That allowed Chaz and Kara to pull out of their respective posts and make their way, circuitously, to the Holiday Inn. Chaz especially had to take the long way round to allow him time to transform from a homeless tramp into something that could be seen walking through a hotel foyer.

The plan was to rotate the watch duties throughout the day and wait until Jacob eventually left the restaurant. What they hadn’t expected was him to walk out on his own at eight-thirty in the morning.

“Tien, you there?” Sammi called into her mic.

“It’s Toby. Tien’s gone for some kip, go ahead.”

“Get everyone up. Right now. Jacob’s out and on foot. He’s walking south on Rue Damrémont.”

“Oh fuck. It’s going to be a chunk of time before we’re fit to follow.”

“I know, but get the- Whoa!” Sammi stopped abruptly and reached for the digital SLR camera that sat next to her in the van. She manoeuvred the 800mm telephoto lens up to the glass.

“Sammi?”

“Hang on Toby, I mean, don’t hang on, make the phone calls get them up and moving but…”

“Sammi?”

“Wait a minute. Make the calls but give me a minute.”

“Okay,” Toby said, crossing to the other side of his hotel room and shaking Chaz awake at the same time as ringing Kara’s room. Tien’s was next. By the time he hung up and returned to the radio, Chaz was already half dressed and heading to the bathroom to soak his head in water.

“Sammi, they’re all moving. What’s up?”

“Tell them to standby, I’m going to come back to the hotel. Jacob is out on foot but he has company. A lot of company.”

ɸ

Sammi took five minutes to walk around to the rear of the hotel, passing between blocks of buildings whose triangular fronts looked like majestic battleships, intricately carved from the cream-grey Paris stone, and sailing headlong into narrow streets that threatened to confine them. She thought the wrought iron balconies, perched under tall windows, transformed the early rising Parisian coffee drinkers who stepped onto them into living figureheads.

As she came up a final, twisting side alley she checked to her right. The much wider and straighter Rue Damrémont allowed her a great sightline and confirmed what she thought. When she got to Kara’s room the rest of the team were already there.

“What’s the story?” Kara asked.

“Jacob left on foot and about a minute after he walked away three guys came out of the restaurant. A fourth came out from the apartment block opposite and crossed the street to join them. I got good shots of all of them,” she said handing the camera’s small Secure Digital High Capacity memory card over to Tien, who slipped it into a PC and opened up the images.

Four men, aged in their late twenties to early thirties were pictured in exquisite detail. A couple of group shots were followed by four individual head shots. “Sorry two of them are only profiles, but they wouldn’t turn around.” Sammi said. “Anyway, these two got into that Citroën,” she said pointing to the photos on the screen, “and the other two set off after Jacob.”

“That’s a surveillance team, no doubt,” Chaz said.

“Yep. The two in the car will leapfrog forward and pick Jacob up at the next intersection,” Kara agreed. “Right, how long’s it been?”

Sammi checked her watch, “Eleven minutes. Given Jacob was dawdling and to draw things out he’ll look in every window and at every interesting thing he can find, then we should be good.”

Kara turned to Chaz, “You gave him the crash course. Does he know what to do?”

“Yep. He’ll loiter, always stick to the main routes and if he hits a T-junction he’ll alternate left and right.”

“Okay. We’ll leave the car and the van where they are and use the bikes. Toby with me, Chaz with Sammi. Tien you’re on comms until we get a fix on him.”

“We’ll have to swap to open phone lines Kara. The radios won’t have the range in the urban area and we can’t take the amplifier mobile if the van’s staying put. They’re all good to go,” Tien said, pointing to the line of smartphones on the desk.

“Okay, then once we find him, I might get you to come in ahead of us. Anything else?” Kara asked.

Tien clicked a couple of buttons on the PC, opened a message program and clicked again. All the mobiles pinged at the same time. “I’ve just uploaded the photos of the men and the car to all the phones,” she said.

“Good. Anything else?” Kara asked again and this time received shakes of the head in response. “Right, let’s do this and don’t forget, we make sure we’re spotless. We stay in the background and if we need to engage with him, it’s a one-off occurrence. No repeat opportunities. We do not get seen.”

The four headed to the door, grabbing the motorcycle over leathers and helmets that had come with the bikes they’d hired.

ɸ

Jacob pulled the warm croissant apart and took a bite. Raising the cup of coffee to his lips he peered over the rim and was satisfied he had made the correct assessment. Standing on the bridge over the cemetery he had counted fourteen people pass by. The foot traffic hadn’t been considerable and he’d put it down to the fact it was almost nine in the morning and most people would already have been in, or well on their way to, work. He certainly hadn’t remembered all fourteen faces but their body shapes and clothes were much easier to log. When he had turned to continue his walk all bar two, a young mother and her child of about five, were well in front of him. By the time he reached the complicated interchange all fourteen should have been long gone. Yet when he had turned to enter the Café de Luna and saw the street scene reflected in the windows, two of the men that had passed him were still in view. One sheltered behind a strange piece of street art that was a red and green rectangular box with a large silver apple on top of it. The other was sitting at a table behind the glass front of the Palace Café directly across the road. It was perfectly reasonable for both men to be where they were, but as Jacob had his back towards them he thought they had made eye contact with one another. It was a fleeting moment, reflected in a window at distance so he hadn’t been sure, but it was worthy of further study.

Now, as he peered over his coffee cup he saw the man behind the silver apple reach up to his ear. Jacob recognised the movement. He’d done it himself when the small earpiece of a radio system either unseated itself or was suffering from poor reception. It was an instinctive reaction and one of the clearest giveaways for covert operators. When he had completed a close-protection team training course after leaving the military, the instructors had slapped the back of the student’s hands with hazel rods every time they touched their ears. It was a crude, aggressive and effective correction device. The two men he was watching obviously hadn’t taken that course. Final confirmation for Jacob was when the men once more made definite eye contact with each other from across the street.

He considered that despite the surveillance tail being badly executed, it placed him in an awkward position. His bewildered, poor-man-on-the-run persona wouldn’t notice it, bad or not. That meant he had to continue as normal. It also meant he couldn’t use active methods to shake it off. That wouldn’t be in character and what’s more, would raise the suspicions of the small man and any others in the Flight Path. Lastly, and much more worryingly for him, it meant that Tien and the rest couldn’t attempt to make contact with him. He was sure that they’d notice the tail too. It would be impossible for them to miss it, but it did mean he wouldn’t be able to tell them what he had learnt about the journey he was going to embark on. He attracted the waiter’s attention and ordered more coffee as he tried to think of a way to solve that particular puzzle. Out of the window to his right he saw a black and silver BMW motorbike glide to a stop at the pedestrian crossing, less than ten yards from where he sat. The rider and pillion passenger were both clad in black over leathers and black full face helmets. Their single distinguishing mark was the name of the helmet manufacture, ‘
Yohe
’ outlined in white and only visible because the visors of both helmets were fully down.