Rogue Elements (33 page)

Simon Arkell had assumed those words –
You’re not going to tell them anything
– were intended as an order. Now, he realized they were a statement of fact. Apart from the non-commissioned gendarmes who escorted him back to his cell, no one came near him. He had planned to speak to the next officer who looked in, but none did. His cell lay at the end of a long corridor, and no one came within speaking distance.

So much for Wraye’s clever plan.

He tried reaching them. Through the bars, he called to anyone who ventured into the corridor. He spoke in French – there was no need to hide it now. He even yelled the essence of his confession. But it seemed the gendarmes had been told not to hear anything. His food was brought by a North African woman in cleaning overalls who spoke no French at all. He tried what was left of his Arabic on her, but she scurried away without meeting his eye.

It was beginning to dawn on Arkell that he might actually be handed over to Watchman without any further contact with the gendarmes: without once getting the chance to use that Get Out of Jail Free card.

So he started singing.

Au Tonkin, la Légion immortelle

A Tuyen Quang illustra notre drapeau,

Héros de Camerone et frères modèles

Dormez en paix dans vos tombeaux.

Au cours de nos campagnes lointaines,

Affrontant la fièvre et le feu,

Oublions avec nos peines,

La mort qui nous oublie si peu.

Nous, la Légion

The French Foreign Legion has many cherished songs, but ‘Le Boudin’ is its official march. And any legionnaire not engaged in marching – at eighty-eight steps per minute – always stands to attention on hearing it.

Arkell stood thus now. He remembered every word. More than that he remembered, in a flood of nostalgia, the intense pride those lyrics engendered in every man who sang them. He repeated it over and over again, watching the faces of those gendarmes who passed through the corridor. He watched them pause, and then hurry on. Until one man – a desk sergeant, perhaps fifty years old – entered the corridor and stopped still.

It wasn’t quite standing to attention, but Arkell knew he’d found his man. He put all he had into the second verse, the spirit of Indochina, the triumph of defeat in Mexico, everything the Legion stood for. It was true: he had been commended for his singing by the NCOs. Such things are taken very seriously in the Legion.

The desk sergeant was mouthing the words. His back had straightened. His legs had edged together. As Arkell drew the song to a heartfelt close, the man’s voice joined his for the last bars.

Silence in the corridor.

The man was struggling with himself. Trying to decide what to do. He started forward two paces, stopped still. Then, perhaps remembering his former courage, his younger self’s bravado in the field, he cleared his throat and said, ‘We are forbidden to talk to you. But I will do what I can for you, my friend.’

He turned to go.

‘Wait!’ shouted Arkell, in French. ‘My Legion name is Jonathan Reeves. I served only three years.’ He paused while the other man frowned, then spelt it out: ‘I am a
deserter
.’

They came for him three hours later. Arkell was impressed: he had expected a great deal of official wrangling to be necessary, and then a five-hour drive from Aubagne. He vaguely remembered there was a recruiting centre in Toulouse; perhaps these legionnaires were stationed there.

A gendarme unlocked his cell. He stood back respectfully as the four legionnaires seized Arkell and led him out. They wore green berets and standard duty fatigues – no white kepis or green and red epaulettes for the deserter. A sous-lieutenant, by his looks the only Frenchman among them, watched disdainfully from the corridor.

A scattering of Gendarmerie officers and deputies turned out to watch the procession. It is not every day that the Foreign Legion comes calling. The gendarmes must have been persuaded he was no cop killer, Arkell realized, to be letting him go. Perhaps new evidence had come to light. Perhaps Watchman had fabricated some alibi, some story as to his role and activities in Rosary Square.

But the Gendarmerie is a branch of the French armed forces, just like the Legion. They knew where their loyalties lay. Called upon to choose between the arrogant demands of British spies or the strict honour code of French brothers-in-arms, the gendarmes had no difficulty deciding to whom they should release their prisoner.

Outside, it was dark. Arkell had only a rough idea of the time. As the legionnaires led him to an army truck, he held up his manacled wrists and asked, ‘Are these still necessary?’

The sous-lieutenant nodded to a gendarme, who summoned the key. Arkell thanked the man who removed the handcuffs. He was shoved into the rear of the truck and his four escorts climbed in after him. The sous-lieutenant barked quick, superfluous orders –
Le regarde!
Silence!
– before stepping into the cab.

It is a long way from Toulouse to the Legion’s headquarters in Aubagne, near Marseille. The route passes the medieval town of Carcassonne and the Roman town of Nîmes. It passes Arles, where van Gogh painted, and the Rhône delta, and the Camargue wetlands. Arkell saw none of it. What he did see, by the feeble light of a single bulb on the roof of the truck, were the faces of the men guarding him.

They were bored. Moreover, they were very young, two of them perhaps just eighteen. The age he had been when he joined. They held their weapons with the attention he would expect – and they would be ready to use them if necessary. They were well spaced around him, with enough distance to ensure he couldn’t try anything underhand. But the boredom was getting the better of them. And he noticed something else: they were all surprisingly interested in him, more so than he would expect for a deserter. The sergeant was hiding it well, but the two youngest privates were openly staring at him whenever they believed him to be looking elsewhere.

Arkell had become very good at sensing when he was being watched.

Had the gendarmes recounted his exploits in the Pyrenees? Had they suggested that he might be implicated in the death of President Andrade? That he was a British secret agent? It didn’t matter; their unguarded curiosity was an opportunity.

Around three hours out of Toulouse, he leaned forward and spoke to the youngest. ‘Why am I so interesting to you?’

The boy flushed, and looked to the sergeant for guidance. The older legionnaire shrugged, a permissive gesture. Gazing wonderingly at Arkell, the private asked, ‘Is it true, after you deserted, you walked through a camp of two hundred men to return your clarion?’

Arkell smiled. The opportunity had just broadened considerably. These men were green – the private still needed to work on his French, and even the sergeant looked more practised in parade drill than live-fire situations. Arkell had a pretty good idea what might distract them.

‘Oh, I didn’t
walk
.’

‘How? How did you do it?’ The admiration was laid bare now. He might be a deserter, but he was also a legend.

‘You know,’ sighed Arkell, with his best Legion gruffness, ‘I can’t even remember. I couldn’t do it now. Too old, weak. And with these bullet wounds . . .’ He gestured vaguely at his thigh and right arm.

There was a pause. They looked from one to another. It was the second youngest private who took the bait.

‘
Bullet wounds?
’

This time, Arkell’s smile was on the inside. For the watching legionnaires, he adopted an air of desolate gloom as he rolled up the sleeve of his stained shirt. ‘They didn’t tell you? I was shot here . . . and here . . . just yesterday. I can hardly walk. This arm, the doctors say I will never use it again.’ By now he was unrolling the stiff, blood-caked bandage around his forearm. For effect, he tore the last section away, ignoring the twang of pain as a scab was ripped off and fresh blood started to flow.

Mournfully, he dabbed the blood away with the handful of bandages.

It didn’t take long. These were professional fighting men who had yet to see for themselves what a bullet could do to human flesh. For any young soldier, there is a gruesome fascination in studying that first battle injury, the ragged exit wound and lacerated meat. Arkell remembered his own induction into the realities of weaponized ballistics. The victim, a Croatian recruit, took a stray round in the gut during a training exercise. Arkell, still a boy really, had been close enough to feel very, very lucky.

The youngest private moved first. He edged a little closer to stare with naked fascination at the bleeding gash in the prisoner’s arm. Two of the stitches still held; the others had ripped free. Arkell, apparently lost in thought, looked up as if surprised by their interest. ‘Oh!’ he muttered. ‘It’s not much to see. A little blood. The hole in my leg is bigger . . .’

That was all they needed. The four men gathered around, three of them standing, clutching the side of the truck for support, peering in the dim light at the hole left by Yadin’s first round.

And that was all Arkell needed. He hit the sergeant first, a massive punch from his left fist that sent the man sprawling back across the truck. In the same moment he kicked the legs of the corporal from under him, then seized his rifle and used it to club first one private in the face and then the other in the side of the head. Standing swiftly, he stomped on the corporal’s chest, winding him, and swung the butt of the rifle against the rising sergeant’s head. The brutality, in the context of the Legion, did not seem unreasonable. There might be a broken jaw or cracked rib among them, but nothing that they would not risk in the normal course of training. It would be good experience for them.

Smiling almost fondly, Arkell stepped over the groaning soldiers and gazed out at the dark autoroute. Thankfully there were few other vehicles around. Still, this was going to hurt. Grabbing a flask of water, Arkell balanced on the tailgate and leapt into the night.

The impact was severe. The forward momentum got the better of his parachute roll, and he struck his injured arm, and then his head, on the ground. Lying dazed in the slow lane of the autoroute, he knew he had to move. Headlights were approaching. Any second now, one of the legionnaires would raise the alarm and the truck would double back.

In fresh agony, disoriented, elated, he grabbed the water flask and stumbled off the carriageway into dark wasteland.

The call came as Madeleine Wraye was just waking up, refreshed and well rested at last.

‘Hello London.’

She sat up straight, instantly alert.

‘It’s Watchman,’ said Arkell. ‘ASH is Watchman.’

She breathed out long and hard. ‘Where are you?’

‘Not in France.’

‘Well done. I knew you’d make it. Do you need anything?’

‘About two weeks to recuperate, then another crack at Yadin.’

‘You’ve got ten days. Recuperate fast.’

‘What’s happened?’ He sounded tired, but newly excited.

‘I know where Yadin is going to target Mayhew.’

‘A public event?’

‘Andrade’s funeral in Brasilia. Mayhew is giving the eulogy. Outdoors.’

There was silence on the line. Then he surprised her by asking, ‘Where’s Klara?’

‘We don’t know. She was still in Strasbourg yesterday. My people observed her eating a lonely dinner in the restaurant next door to your pension. She looked “troubled”, they said. By this morning she was gone. I have someone watching her apartment in Hamburg in case she turns up there. Simon, she’s not becoming a distraction, is she?’

‘I’ll see you in Brazil.’

Madeleine Wraye repacked her suitcase and filled her handbag with sealed envelopes of US dollars. She added four passports in different names. She checked the locks on the filing cabinets and activated the detonators concealed within each one. It was time to abandon Markham Square, at least until Tony Watchman was behind bars or in his grave. Once word reached him of Arkell’s escape, not even the discreet pair of ex-soldiers downstairs would be enough to protect her.

Wraye did not intend to wait around for a visit from either SO15 or Gavriel Yadin.

It made no sense at all to stop off in Tobago on the way to Brasilia. From Milan, Arkell had to fly to New York, and then on to Trinidad for a local connection to the smaller island; for the second leg of the journey, he would need to return to the US, transiting Miami before heading south again. The total journey time was close to sixty hours and the six flights would together cost over three times the price of a direct route. Uncomfortable at the best of times, it would be particularly unpleasant with two very recent gunshot wounds. But Arkell was a romantic when it came to geography, just as much as history, and in geographic terms Tobago was only a little bit out of the way.

He did not expect to discover anything that Chief Inspector Bleeck and the many other law-enforcement and security-service officers investigating Anneke van der Velde’s death had not already unearthed. He was not, anyway, much interested in the DNA traces and partial fingerprints that might still linger at Belvedere House. He didn’t need forensic proof to confirm the facts they already knew. He wanted only to experience the place where Yadin had started it all.

Perhaps, too, he was drawn to see where Klara had lived for a week with the man he was on his way to kill.

To that end, he checked into Emerald Sea Resort. It was the kind of sprawling complex he would usually have avoided, but it offered all the amenities he needed to begin to rebuild his damaged body. The sea was warm, the grilled fish were plentiful and delicious, and the fitness centre had all the kit necessary to isolate each damaged muscle. A teenage guest watched, entertained, as Arkell lifted a full six kilos with his right arm. After two days, he was up to eight kilos. By the end of his short stay, he could manage ten.

Running was still a challenge. The beach at Emerald Sea was a kilometre-long stretch of firm sand – ideal for exercise. Any other time he would have pounded up and down it with boyish exhilaration; now it was a trial to make it from one end to the other, at a slow jog, leaning heavily to spare his left leg. Most of his exercise he took in the sea. For once he paid attention to local warnings about Atlantic currents and undertow, and did not venture out of his depth.

In the downtime, he made good use of the resort’s hammocks to rest his aching arm and leg, though his abstemious orders of fresh lime juice, coconut water or raw egg were a disappointment to the terrace barman, and his solitary habits a regret to one or two female guests. He held occasional conversations, but only with the staff and only on one topic.

None of them minded talking about the guest who had later drawn such interest from the foreigners in suits. Yes, they remembered the girlfriend. No, she hadn’t said much. Neither was a big talker. At dinner, they sat opposite each other – some couples preferred to be side-by-side. No one remembered them holding hands. Did she seem to love him?

Well . . .

Some said yes; some said no. She was loyal, they could agree on that. She obeyed him without question. And when he looked at her with that hungry stare, she looked back the same way. But sometimes, when he wasn’t looking . . . It was as if she didn’t even want to know him.

Every morning, Arkell phoned Carlo and Danny. Both were searching, in their different ways, for Klara. Carlo’s expertise lay in the informal contact, the casual acquaintance encouraged with a dose of Arkell’s money to pass on police reports, interrogate municipal databases, reveal information, share gossip. Beyond the immediate circle of her Hamburg colleagues and friends, however, he had uncovered no trace of Klara Richter. And Danny, with his cyber fingers in a million online pies, was faring no better. She had not booked an airline ticket, or crossed a controlled border, or used a credit card – at least not in her own name. There had been no further calls on her monitored mobile since Strasbourg. And if a fugitive had travelled from, say, Spain, for a rendezvous with Klara in, say, west Germany, Simon Arkell simply had no way of knowing.

On his penultimate day in Tobago, Arkell rented a car and visited Belvedere House. He made no appointment. Technically, the site was still a crime scene, but the two Trinidadian cops on duty were so bored that they welcomed his authoritative manner, flashed Interpol ID and polite questioning. He had bought bananas at a roadside stall in Les Coteaux and he shared them with the policemen while complimenting them on the shine of their boots. After that, they were ready to show him everything.

The house itself was locked up. The policemen led him through the gardens to the outhouse, where they described in animated detail the suitcase of hiking clothes that had been discovered beneath a pile of roof tiles.

‘Mind if I have a look around?’ said Arkell in his most assured commanding-officer voice. ‘No need to accompany me. I know you have to guard the house.’

The men seemed disappointed, but they nodded their assent and watched him limp into the forest.

For Arkell, the policemen were already forgotten. He was thinking only of Yadin. The Israeli had trod this ground, passed these trees, his mind set on one of the most audacious political assassinations ever devised. Was there a trace of that strangely detached, almost regretful man still lingering in the air?

He walked a zigzag path, not bothering to search for spoor that the almost daily rains would have obliterated. His concentration was fierce, so much so that he did not notice his limp had disappeared. What ache was left in his thigh made no impression on his consciousness. The half-light penetrating the canopy seemed luminous to him. Yet there was no Yadin. No scent, no sensation of the man he had faced on a high Pyrenean meadow.

Birds unknown to him flashed through the upper foliage. Towering bamboo dripped memories of that morning’s rain down his neck. The terrain was awkward, with exposed roots and thick red mud that required careful navigation to protect his healing limbs from a fall. By the time he reached the great tree with the branch overhanging the fence, the back of his shirt was damp with sweat. A couple of heavy lianas would have provided an easy way up that trunk. A cluster of rotting bromeliads on the ground might have been dislodged from the branch. Arkell stood a short distance back, imagining the assassin balanced up there. Sitting? Lying. A good vantage point to remain for a while, hidden among the parasitic greenery, listening for possible threats.

Arkell studied the ground beneath the branch. A few broken twigs and seed pods were pressed into the damp earth. A parachute roll would do that. And there, two slight indentations, edges softened by many rains, barely still visible. Heel marks? It could be fantasy; those blurred holes might be nothing more than the remnants of some small animal’s excavations. An agouti hunting for roots. Nevertheless, Arkell crouched and pressed the fingertips of both hands into those two dents in the forest floor, and he closed his eyes and felt Yadin.

A man like the grave. Eaten away by his own remarkable ability. A dark void at the heart of his being. Intense weariness. Was that what a lifetime of killing did to a human being?

Arkell remained like that, unmoving, long enough to bring one of the policemen looking for him. At the man’s uncertain cough, he opened his eyes and rose. They walked back to the driveway without exchanging more than a dozen words.

Afterwards the cop wondered aloud to his colleague whether the man from Interpol had smoked something in the rainforest.

He was different. He was . . . bigger somehow.

A little frightening.