Liz Carlyle - 07 - The Geneva Trap (35 page)

He turned back to the policeman. ‘The CCTV caught the van we’re looking for as it was turning in. So why didn’t it catch it leaving as well?’

The officer looked at him, with the respectful contempt a local policeman shows to higher-ups from outside. ‘The camera was only facing one way, sir. If the driver left this estate and turned right on to the main road, the camera wouldn’t show it.’

Martin said, ‘What else is being blown up?’

‘A multi-storey car park.’

‘Really?’ There was so much space in this ghastly estate that another car park seemed entirely unnecessary – all the buildings had outdoor parking for visitors and employees, with spaces marked out in white paint.

‘It’s next to what used to be the hypermarket. That didn’t last long; it turned out people working here would rather do their shopping where they lived than where they worked. They tore down the store last year.’

‘But the car park is still there?’ persisted Martin.

‘Yes,’ the policeman conceded. ‘But not for long. They’re going to blow it up in about ten minutes.’ He looked pointedly at his watch. ‘They’ve prepared it for the charges already. The place is strictly no-entry. There are barriers all over. Believe me, no car could get in.’

‘Let me see it anyway.’

The policeman looked at him with undisguised annoyance, then shrugged resignedly. ‘This way, sir. But we shouldn’t get too close. You never know, they may set the charges off a little early.’

They walked past the remains of what had a few minutes before been an office block, and the officer pointed fifty yards further down the road. Martin saw it then – a three-storey edifice of grey concrete, the same cheap monotonous cladding worn by multi-storey car parks the world over. ‘We probably shouldn’t go any further,’ the policeman said.

‘You said we had ten minutes,’ said Martin sharply. He hurried ahead, and Isobel and Fézard followed behind.

Nearing the building, they saw that the entrance had been blocked by large concrete tubs – the kind used around public buildings in large cities to deter suicide bombers. Fifty yards away a few foundations were all that was left of the ambitious hypermarket which had once stood next door, and for which the car park had been built.

The policeman caught them up and pointed to the tubs. ‘No one could’ve got through those,’ he said. ‘And they checked the building for vehicles before they put those in the other day. The place is clean. But we need to get out of here.’ He pointed at the stuffed holsters wrapped with ropes around the columns of the car park. ‘The charges have been inserted. They’re going to push the button in about eight minutes from now.’ He looked nervously at his watch.

‘Get them to delay it.’

‘The man pressing the button is half a mile away. I can try and reach him on his mobile but—’

Martin wasn’t listening. ‘Where’s the exit?’

‘Down there, around the corner. But listen— ’

He was already running. When he got to the corner he turned and saw the exit, blocked by a wooden barrier with a ticket-machine alongside. Here too concrete tubs had been placed, but they were smaller than those at the entrance. He noticed there were scrapes on the concrete floor around one of them, and when he looked more closely at the tub he saw that one side had been badly chipped as if a careless driver had backed into it. Some traces of paint seemed to confirm this.

‘What is it?’ asked Isobel behind him.

‘Look,’ said Martin, pointing down at the concrete tub. ‘That’s blue paint, and the van we’re looking for is blue. Come on!’ he said, running past the barrier towards the central staircase.

They raced up the stairs, stopping at each level only long enough to look for a vehicle. The first two floors were empty, and Martin’s spirits sagged again. There was nothing on the third floor either, and he was about to give up in despair when Isobel gasped ‘Look!’ and pointed to a ramp leading to the roof.

He ran on, up the ramp, to the open top floor of the car park. And there at the far end was something large and blue. A van.

Or what was left of a van. Its back end had been badly crushed and the bonnet was squashed like a concertina. Martin ran towards it, sprinting the final yards, with Isobel and Fézard just behind him. He peered into the cab; there was no one inside. He ran round to the crumpled rear doors and pulled on the handle, but it didn’t give. Locked.

‘Let me,’ said Fézard, pulling his weapon from the holster inside his jacket. ‘Stand back,’ he ordered, as he tilted the gun under the handle of the rear doors, so that the bullet would go upwards into the roof of the van. Then he fired.

The handle seemed to explode, leaving a small hole in the steel door. Martin put his hand in and pulled; the door gave way and swung open. And then they heard it – a muffled groan.

‘Liz?’ he shouted, his voice breaking. He reached into the van and pulled at two trussed legs until he could see part of a face beyond. The familiar eyes opened above a grotesque mask of white tape, and he saw her blink at the sudden light. He pulled off the tape wrapped around her lower face, guessing how much it must hurt but knowing that there was no time to spare. And he had to be certain she could breathe.

‘Ready?’ he said, and she nodded. Then he dragged her out far enough to put his arms round her waist and sling her over his shoulder.

‘Run for it!’ he said to the others, and in an awkward jog he carried Liz to the ramp and down to the third floor. Isobel and Fézard waited for him at the stairwell, holding the door open. Fézard tried to help him with Liz, but Martin shook his head. ‘You go on,’ he shouted as he started down the stairs. He prayed that the local policeman had reached the man pushing the button; otherwise it was going to be a close-run thing. He tried not to think of what the explosion would do to them all, caught in this claustrophobic stairwell.

He moved as quickly as he could, trying not to stumble on the steps. He reached the second floor, ran across the landing, then started down again. It seemed to take for ever to reach the first floor, focusing on each step, telling himself not to think of how far he still had to go or of the imminent detonation of the charges all around him. He was acutely alert. He could hear the sound of each step Isobel and Fézard took further down the stairwell. He could feel each breath Liz took as she lay over his shoulder.

And then there was only one flight left, and then just half a flight, and he concentrated on keeping his balance, ignoring the weight of the woman he was carrying, the woman he loved. Eight steps, seven, six, and Fézard was waiting, holding the door open, and there were three steps left, then two, then one, and he was out of the door, across the floor and through the exit into the fresh air. He didn’t stop running until he was well clear of the building, at least a hundred yards away, and then he put his burden down gently on the soft verge of uncut grass. Isobel came over and began working at the knots of the ropes that were binding Liz’s legs, while the police officer tasked with delaying the explosion came over and used a key to remove the plastic handcuffs from her wrists.

‘It’s okay, Liz,’ said Martin, crouching down beside her. ‘You’re safe now,’ and she managed a weak smile but didn’t speak. In the distance he could hear an ambulance wail.

He looked at the police officer. ‘Thanks for telling them to hold off.’

The man’s eyes widened in surprise, just as a loud rumble came from the car park. Turning, Martin saw the roof collapse first, on the side where the blue van was parked, then in a slow one-two-three motion each floor of the building pancaked like a collapsing deck of cards. Dust filled the air, and set them all coughing. But the engineers had done an excellent job, and within thirty seconds the air cleared enough to show a bright blue sky where once the car park had stood.

Martin turned and stared at the policeman. Looking absolutely mortified, the man held up his mobile phone. ‘I couldn’t get a signal, sir.’

Chapter 58

Liz spent two days in hospital in Marseilles, but except for bruises and abrasions she was remarkably unscathed – physically. She didn’t tell anyone at the hospital about the fear she felt every time she closed her eyes and imagined she was back in the van. But a nurse had noticed the terror in her eyes when she’d woken her up to take her blood pressure and had mentioned it to the doctor. He had discussed it with Martin, who visited every day, but at his request they had not told Liz that they knew how frightened she was feeling.

‘She is proud and strong and wants to conquer it herself. If she can’t, she’ll tell me when she’s ready,’ Martin had said. The doctor had shaken his head, but knowing that this patient would soon be returning to England, he had done as he was asked.

Now, back in London and at work, the terrors were gradually fading. Peggy had offered to come and stay but Liz had turned her down. ‘Thanks, Peggy. That’s really kind but I’ll be fine,’ she’d said. And she thought she would be, though she knew she’d only be truly better when Kubiak had been caught.

She spoke on the phone every evening to Martin in Paris. He was in close touch with Isobel and Fézard in Marseilles, but though there was a general alert out, there had as yet been no sign of Kubiak or his car. Unbeknown to Liz, Martin was also in touch with DG. He had told him what the doctor at the hospital in Marseilles had said about the trauma she had suffered, and DG had put a very discreet protective ring of trusted colleagues around Liz.

Geoffrey Fane, who seemed to find reasons for frequent visits to Thames House, reported that the Russians persisted in denying any involvement in the infiltration of the Ministry of Defence and had gone completely quiet on the subject of Anatole Kubiak.

In the shallow waters at the edge of Lake Geneva the police frogman missed twice with his hook, thrashing against the water in vain. Third time lucky, he caught the collar of the jacket and drew the thing gingerly towards his two colleagues standing on the shore. When the body reached the gravel, they each grabbed an arm and dragged it up a ramp, where they laid it on its back.

It had first been noticed at about six in the morning by an early dog walker, but by the look of it, it had been in the lake for many hours. The policemen gazing down at it now were used to corpses – fishing them out of the water was almost routine. But this one was more repellant than most. Its jaw sagged open and the skin round its Adam’s apple was shrivelled and hanging loose. But above that was only a hideous, sodden mass of bone and flesh. There was no face at all. It looked as though something had smashed it to pulp, and the fish had completed what someone else had begun.

Something odd had happened to the jacket too – both sleeves had been slit from the cuffs up to the elbows. The reason soon became clear: the shirt sleeves were shredded and blood had soaked into them. When they pulled the fabric away from the arms, they could see a series of deep cuts, made with a knife or a razor. There was dried blood on the crotch of the body’s trousers as well.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ said one of the policemen, his face screwed up with disgust. ‘The guy’s been tortured.’

Geoffrey Fane’s face appeared round Liz’s office door.

Oh, God. Not again, she thought. But he said, ‘I have news from Switzerland that you’ll want to hear.’

‘You’d better come in and sit down. What is it?’

Fane was smiling, clearly enjoying himself. ‘Russell White phoned from Geneva an hour ago. The Swiss police pulled a body out of the lake this morning. They’re fairly sure it’s Kubiak. It wasn’t pretty. Apparently he’d been tortured and then shot in the face with a soft-nosed bullet. You know what that means, I suppose.’

‘I do,’ she replied with a shudder. ‘It’s classic KGB.’

‘Some things never change with our Russian friends. But you see the implication. He was a traitor. Whatever he was doing with the Koreans was unauthorised. He must have killed them all in a panic when he thought he’d been discovered.’

Liz sighed. ‘It must have started to go wrong for him when he blurted out to Sorsky that there was an informant in the MOD. After that he knew he could never be safe, and neither was Sorsky.’ She added, ‘Nor was I – if Kubiak saw me meeting him, that is, which I think he must have done.’ She paused, thinking of the stocky man she had seen before her first meeting with Sorsky. ‘I wonder if we’ll ever know what this was really all about.’

‘Let’s see what our friend Kirov says,’ said Fane. ‘He’ll know the Swiss have found the body. In fact, it was clearly left for them to find, so he’s sure to have some explanation.’

‘If only Kubiak had kept his mouth shut, nothing would have happened to Alexander Sorsky.’

‘Then we wouldn’t have learned about Park Woo-jin and the threat to the Clarity programme.’

Liz knew he was right. In the greater scheme of things, Sorsky was simply the price that had to be paid for detecting a real threat to UK and US security. But it didn’t make her feel any better about it.

Chapter 59

On Friday evening Martin Seurat flew into Heathrow from Charles de Gaulle airport. Liz was there to pick him up. They were spending the weekend with her mother and Edward in Wiltshire.

‘It’s nice not to have to drive down in the dark,’ she said as they rejoined the M4. Even now at eight o’clock there was still over an hour until sunset. For the next half-hour her attention was focused on negotiating the heavy Friday evening traffic on the motorway, but as it thinned out after Reading, she noticed that Martin was quieter than usual.