The Hit List (31 page)

by the standards of the Cadre it was a curious lent. Leon was walking home from the jm office in Sloane Street to his flat in i. It was a five-minute journey by bus, but he I) to clear his head after the overheated fug of the L It had been a long and dizzyingly dull day -- he

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had been compiling a report on the security needs of a! private hospital in Marylebone blessed with ^ 'upscale, high-profile clientele'.

A woman fell into step beside him - a dark-haired woman in a leather jacket, jeans and Doc Marten boots i

- and invited him to join her for a drink in the Grosvenor Hotel at Victoria Station. At first he assumed she was a prostitute, but when she asked after i a couple of Nordstrom employees - former MI5 officers whose names were very far from being in the i public domain - he started to pay attention.

'Ellis?' asked Slater.

'Ellas,' Leon confirmed. 'You've heard the stories,* then?' v

'I've heard how she died.'

Leon nodded, and was silent for a moment.

Ellis had led him to the hotel's Travellers Bar.j ordered them a gin and tonic each without botherir to ask what he wanted, and set out her stall. She] represented a co-ordinating wing of the Foreignj Office, she told him in rapid and fluent French, andl she had been empowered to offer him a job. Her! department needed someone with specialist military! skills, the ability to plan and execute covert operations! overseas, and an intimate knowledge of the French! underworld. The last was perhaps the most importantl

-- the service had assets on French soil, of course, butf they were not. . .

Not bien cabUs? Leon had suggested. Not connected?

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, she had admitted. They weren't. The complex linked the French military, mercenary and underworlds was not one that the service she ited had been able to negotiate with ease. They jdy found themselves beholden to the DGSE -- ich secret service -- for entrees to that world, fte way things were, frankly, they were

;ly reluctant to do so. | Slater said. Right.

sturn for joining her department, Ellis had sd - peremptorily draining her gin and tonic -- 3wn was offering him British citizenship, a jltial drop in salary, and the guarantee of acute id physical danger. And that was about it. had agreed almost immediately. At twenty was not ready to grow stale in an office - ?r the material benefits of his position. He to deploy his old skills. He wanted the excitements and terrors of operational life. : that he had not been born French and was free pentional French loyalties and prejudices, he had probably encouraged them to approach

|$o, for the second time in his life, he told Slater, assumed new citizenship. He had joined the

Ijseven years ago, become a British national, and egretted his decision. He even liked British j - it was next to impossible, he claimed, to find : kebab or vindaloo in France, st the deciding factor, however, had been the

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charismatic personality of his recruiter. Something about the lean, leather-jacketed figure, some wild and fundamental nonconformity, had told him that this was the organisation he had been looking for all his life.

'Supposing you'd been approached by Eve?' Slater asked him. 'Or by Andreas or someone else? Would you still have joined?'

'It's academic, man. I did join -- that's all that matters. As you'll have realised there are some very good sides to this job and some very weird and freaky ones. But I am what I am, just as you are what you are. If you're good enough to be offered the job and mad enough to accept it, then by definition, brother, you, are rightifor it.'

Slater laughed. 'I guess so.'

A few minutes before two o'clock they swungj northwards off the motorway towards Bonnieres-sur-1 Seine, and Slater saw the river to their left - deep, grey ] and forbidding. At that point the Seine looked about a I hundred metres across, and Slater understood instantly 1 what Leon had meant when he said that swimming thai corpse out was very much a last resort.

Pulling off the N13, the two cars followed the sig for Freneuse and Joigny. The minor road led them pa a paper-mill and cement-works, both of them wit gates padlocked for the weekend. Soon they wer driving between stands of pine-forest, with the su splashing the road only sporadically. Outside the ca after the background roar of the motorway, all oppressively silent.

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ae temperature's dropped,' said Leon. 'I'm glad jught all that outdoor clothing. It could be a cold

the next fifteen minutes they barely saw car. From time to time, parallel to the road, aught sight of the steely, baleful glint of the f, as Leon had suspected, proved to be sre than a collection of farm buildings. There church and a small village shop, but both ed untenanted. The only sign of life was a new Renault Espace parked outside one of the ises.

i plates,' said Leon. 'Well-off Parisians like their watch TV and play computer games in the side at weekends. They'll assume we're ; around for property too -- that or we're a pair ic dealers looking for agricultural scrap to flog -theme restaurants.'

sed-race gay couple, perhaps,' suggested ^Intent on perverting their children?'

laughed. 'They'd probably rather the truth ptt. Did you catch the National Front posters on (motorway bridge?'

map had indicated, the track petered out a or so beyond the village. Leon and Andreas he cars, and the four of them climbed out and 1 They were all wearing jeans, gumboots and |. jackets. Leon was carrying a knapsack (ing biscuits, a flask of coffee and other bits and ^Andreas was smoking. In a group, as Leon had

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intended, they looked like a bunch of* Parisians intent on local exploration.

A damp path between saw-edged ahead of them. Locking the cars, Andreas and his cigarette. The path ktjjj weeded towpath and the broad sweep oft

'We'll need a bit of weight,' observed j the remorseless flow of the water and the/i

'We've got a bit of weight,' said going to discover tonight when we try up here from the car.'

Six or seven minutes later the path led*! from the river, between two dark stands j back to the bank. Here the river wuj bend to almost twice its normal breadth,^ a locked boat-house, with a peeling door, and beyond it, as the map had jetty extended a clear fifty metres into | the distance, a couple of kilomet steeple of the church at Thieux was visit the trees.

'It looks good,' breathed Eve. 'It looks"

Several wooden and fibreglass boats alongside the jetty, and deep grey water s\ its heavy supporting piles.

'It looks deep,' said Andreas. 'That's the I

They spent an hour there, working details. With a ball of fishing line and a Leon took a series of depth soundings alol of the jetty. The deepest point, which he)

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f before the end. The river was

* -~ they all agreed - to fall more f jibe near future. And that would

4 f \ s

g* murmured Leon, and took a s from the knapsack. ^Anrfreas.

sfcnd learn,' said Leon quietly, steak from the plastic bag. cube of meat and tied it to the {then lowered it into the water, took it straight to the bottom. f slowly drew it back through i?v&nd the others were amazed to er crayfish clinging by one

: on our man being pretty un i,' said Leon. 'There's nothing ( more than a side of meat.' 6d Eve.

llessly removed a pair of blunt |f$�0cket.

wanted to come,' Leon said remains of the steak into the ead fingers, anyone?'

ti

they had thoroughly rehearsed ?the night ahead, they discussed id attract more attention by

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remaining in the vicinity or by pulling back into a local town and returning after dark.

The final decision was to pull back. Cars obviously came and went along the Joigny road, Leon argued but few remained until dark. They would disappear until llpm.

Returning to the cars, they made their way to Vernon, twenty-five kilometres away. According to Leon's research the town was always full of tourists at weekends due to the presence, at nearby Giverny, of the house and gardens of the impressionist artist Monet.

His research was accurate. The place was very busy, with American, British and Japanese accents much in evidence. 'At Eve's suggestion the four of them behaved like conventional tourists, booking themselves dinner at a small restaurant in town and attending a guided tour of the artist's house and gardens.

They stayed there until the house closed at 5.30. At the museum shop Eve bought two tea-towels showing details of Monet's famous Waterlily paintings, which Andreas described as 'a nice role-playing touch'.

'We need them for the office,' Eve said severely. 'That area round the kettle gets really disgusting at times.'

Returning to Vernon they walked idly through the town and alongside the river for a couple of kilometres. Returning as the light began to fade, they installed themselves in a cafe. The minutes crawled

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fNone of them was able to dispel fully the thought

night's work lying ahead of them, and in juence they found that they did not have a great

say to each other. Slater found that he was aus, and suspected that the others were too.

ily it was nine o'clock and they presented elves at the restaurant. They lingered over the

which featured local speciality dishes of rater crayfish and braised pork, and shared a large of red wine. For four adults on holiday in the

countryside to have gone without alcohol pther, they agreed, would only have drawn ion to themselves. As the designated non-drivers,

and Andreas also ordered Calvados to apany their coffees.

it,' said Leon, as they stepped out into the night et's do it.'

Ding back into the cars, they drove back the

:y had come. Once they were in the Roche

forest, Leon dipped the headlights of the edes and dropped the speed to forty kilometres an damping the engine-noise down to a faint hum. proceeded in near-silence along the pine led track, and as they approached Joigny, Leon

the speed again.

ic house with the Renault Espace outside,

lights were showing. 'They might wonder we are,' said Slater, 'but they won't come out and igate. They'll just make sure the front door's e-locked.'

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'You saying that because you think it's true?' asked Leon. 'Or because you want it to be true?'

'Bit of both,' admitted Slater. 'But what are they going to do? Ring the police and say two cars have driven past their house and could someone come and investigate?'

Soon they were at the end of the track. The temperature had dropped considerably in the course of the half-hour drive, and as they quietly climbed from the cars they were glad of the warm outdoor clothing they had brought. The interior lights of both cars had been switched off, so there were no sudden bursts of yellow light when the doors opened. Instead, a clear star-filled sky and a nail-paring moon provided a faint illumination of the desolate waterside scene.

Unhurriedly, taking it in turns to keep lookout through a pair of night-vision goggles, they fitted and tested the Motorola comms kits. Leon then filled a long zip-up holdall with the various items of kit they were going to need, and called them together. For the purposes of this particular exercise, Slater noted, he seemed to have taken charge.

'OK, listen in,' he whispered. 'I'll do the actual disposal with Neil, as we planned. Andreas, you go first,; and do a quick recce of the location - Neil and I will j follow with the trunk on your all-clear. Eve, you stay here and watch our backs.'

Five minutes later, hearing Andreas's all-clear inj their earpieces, Slater and Leon lifted the trunk;] Neither was wearing the night-vision goggles; i

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lough they were the best Leon had been able to find were still fairly cumbersome. Instead they were sting their night-vision. Slowly, they carried the avy trunk along the mud path between walls of reeds ich sighed in the faint night breeze. After a couple lutes the carrying handle was biting painfully into er's fingers, but if the slighter-built Leon could age it, then so could he. Eventually though, they trered the trunk by mutual agreement and swapped

leavy fucker, isn't he?' Leon murmured, shaking

; fingers. Jot for long,' answered Slater, took them more than ten minutes to reach the I where Andreas was waiting for them. Carefully, in e-agreed position among the trees and well back I the track, they lowered the trunk to the ground. : the cars, Eve reported the all-clear. ;ep watching,' Leon ordered Andreas. 'Neil, you ck to the Merc and get the other hag down here.' lickly, his senses alert and his night-vision at full :, Slater jogged back along the path. When he �the cars he couldn't see Eve, but knew that she ag up in the reeds, watching him. Unlocking fercedes he pulled out a heavy 1.5 metre zip-up ad swung the carrying strap over his shoulder, ig the bag at his side, he jogged back. As he I Leon he felt sweat running down his back and : to control the heavy rasp of his breathing, lying himself, he put on his night-vision

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goggles, heard the faint whir as they started up. Leon he saw, had unlocked the trunk. He had removed the body and pulled off the two sleeping-bags, and was cutting off the clothes with a knife. As he hacked and sawed, a dank smell rose from beneath his hands.

Slater, who had had to undertake similarly unpleasant exercises in the past, unzipped the bag and removed a roll of wide-mesh chicken wire. When this was unrolled and flattened on the ground it made up a rectangle of one metre by five. When Leon had cut most of the clothing from the front of the body, the two men manhandled it on to the wire lengthways.

'Pliers,' murmured Leon.

Slater^ removed them from the bag. The former legionnaire,-he mused, seemed as familiar as he himself was with the grim routine. To make the job easier he forced the dead man's jaws apart with his hands. Slowly, with a sighing exhalation, the mouth eased open.