The Hit List (30 page)

She closed her eyes and snuggled against him. 'Until you ask me properly,' she said demurely, 'you'll never know.'

In room 933, as Eve quickly undressed and climbed into bed, Slater examined the packaging of his purchase. 'My French isn't that brilliant,' he said, 'but these look as if they might be quite weird shapes and colours. Still, I guess they'll match my balls.'

'Don't worry,' said Eve gently. 'I'd say that one way and another we've pretty much broken the ice today, wouldn't you?'

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and Eve checked into the OP at the Hotel Grand ins at 10.00am, after an extended breakfast in inny dining-room of the Inter-Lux. The Peugeot le trunk, as Leon had suggested, went into the ; car-park on the Rue Jouvenet. the OP the mood was cautiously upbeat main objective was achieved; all that led now was the disposal of the body. And in ; hands, that shouldn't be a problem. This was his all. If anyone could make a dead arms-dealer i in northern France, Leon could.

now sleeping off his night's work, had also good result. He had identified the drug-dealer irfie party as one Miko Pasquale, and confirmed Jranca Nikolic -- now unknowingly a widow -- sent the night at his apartment close to the At 8.30 she had emerged from the building ten a taxi back to her late husband's apartment. : now she was less than 100 metres away. 10.30 Andreas joined them. To his relief his ^nation of Antoine Fanon-Khayat had been without question. The check-out desk had

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been at its busiest in the mid-morning, as they had calculated, and the clerk had barely glanced at him as he had handed over the dead man's platinum Amex card. 'I might just go on a little shopping spree with that piece of plastic,' he suggested, and feigned indignation when Chris held out her hand for all the dead man's effects. 'I think these are being withdrawn from circulation,' she said firmly, taking the overnight bag from Andreas and stowing it next to the trunk.

Slater noticed that Chris was making a particular point of observing Eve and himself, and concentrated on giving the impression that a breezily normal professional relationship existed between them. The giveaway, he knew, was not too much closeness and eye contact but too little. People enjoying a passionate covert affair tended to avoid each other's gaze in case any lingering intensity communicated itself to others. And they never made jokes.

So he did all those things, even making a point of saying that next time he and Eve posed as lovers it would be her turn to roll up in the duvet on the floor.

Would the night ever be repeated? He doubted it. It had come about as a result of a unique and very extreme set of circumstances. In the course of the preceding day both of them had looked violent death in the face more than once, and the experience had isolated them. They had found themselves in a world without rules, a dark and surreal place to which no outsider was permitted access. Their coming together had been inevitable, and it had been highly charged. They had reached for each

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|;$everal times in the course of the night and it had |as if they were making love in an electric storm, le air smouldering and crackling around them, led to himself as he remembered the feel and rher body, and how she had suddenly looked so : to the person he had known up that moment, this was what Chris had meant when she wel him to the 'parallel universe'. I look pleased with yourself/ Andreas remarked. Iwas thinking of those poor hotel porters ig out to the car with the trunk. I gave the aggers fifty francs each but it should really have ignore: there was a notice in the room saying that ^was a fifteen hundred franc surcharge for supple guests.' lat did you say was in the trunk?' asked Chris.

didn't,' said Eve. 'But we were going to say it x>ks.'

iiday reading?'

Cond-hand books. Which we collected.' e,' said Chris drily. 'How many for coffee?'

j arrived ten minutes later, carrying maps, and

atulated the forward team on the success of the

^d of their smooth extraction from the hotel.

t,' he said briskly, pouring himself a cup from the

ig cafetiere, 'this is the plan. Four of us will go 5 to be heavy work so I'd suggest the four i Any objections to that idea?'

come,' said Eve.

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Leon nodded expressionlessly. As the team leader< she had final say.

'OK. Eve, Neil, Andreas and myself. Terry can grab a few more Zs, Chris'11 stay and run the OP.'

Everyone nodded. Chris examined her nails.

Leon spread out one of the maps. 'The location is here - about seventy or eighty clicks outside Paris in a place called the Foret de La Roche-Guyon. What we do is drive out of Paris at midday via the Porte d'Auteuil and then, keeping more or less parallel to the river, take the A13 motorway north-west to Bonnieres-sur-Seine. We'll take both cars -- if we take one and it blows up with that trunk in it we're in i serious shit. At Bonnieres we swing up northwards on this minor-road via Freneuse, and then follow this ... i track, it must be, into the forest.

'Switching to the local map you can see that the! track continues for five or six clicks past Joigny, which j looks as if it consists of a few farm buildings and not� much else, and then peters out in the middle of j nowhere. The nearest place apart from Joigny is] Thieux, which is a good two clicks away and served by I a different track. Thieux's no Las Vegas, either.

'What I think we should do is park up at the end < the track so that we're in the empty countryside! between between Joigny and Thieux. It looks as if you 1 can get down to the river quite easily from there, and 1 according to the map this is one of the widest and j deepest parts for miles in either direction. There's also \ this jetty going out, perhaps for barges to tie up to, and^

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money that's where we want to drop our friend U the only way -- short of stealing a boat with an and waking everyone up within miles - of him out to deep water. I'd suggest swimming ;g him out, but I know that area and it's one er of a river up there. It's deep, it's dirty and ent is very strong.'

t about weights and so on?' asked Andreas. got all the kit we'll need in the car.' by item, he went through this with them until ilwere all certain that nothing had been iked. 'I've also bought four pairs of night-vision . The moon's on the wane, but there should be ient light. The routine is going to have to be us on the dump-and-splash detail, two on stag, going to need the comms kits, warm clothing, footwear, rations and a cover-story in case iped by the local police. There's no reason to that's going to happen, but just in case it does icone saw us, for example, and thought we ars -1 think we should leave all the weapons laming away a midnight walk by the river is explaining away the fact that we're armed th is quite another.' looked around questioningly. The others

lly we get to the place about three this Son, park up, and have a recce. Then we finalise and wait till dark. I've included a couple of bags and biwies in the kit so that if we're

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challenged we can say that we're looking for somewhere to camp. The first thing we've got to do though - and do fast -- is buy ourselves some sensible outdoor clothing. It's Sunday, so it's going to have to be supermarket stuff. There's a place on the Peripherique about fifteen minutes away.'

On the journey, Slater made a point of sharing the lead car with Leon. Not to avoid Eve, but to try and get to know a fellow team-member with whom, indirectly, he felt he had much in common. Leon drove, having devised the route to the disposal location. He ran the Mercedes fast but with care, ensuring that the Peugeot was no more than a car or two behind them at any time. ~ .

At the same time both he and Slater scanned the traffic at intervals for signs that they were being followed. Their fear -- expressed by neither of them but felt by both - was that the French DGSE might be on to them. Had the DGSE been watching FanonKhayat too? Was there an anti-Serbian element in the French secret services - there was certainly an anti British element.

At this moment, carrying the body with them as they were, the team were acutely vulnerable, and they knew it. One nosy traffic-cop asking them to unlock the trunk and they were finished. To Slater even the flat suburban countryside was spooked territory. The sooner Fanon-Khayat's body was deep beneath the mud-brown surface of the Seine, the better.

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To distract himself, and to pass the time, Slater asked about his life.

an's story was an unusual one. After leaving school ic Indian Ocean island of Mauritius he had found elfin some sort of'trouble' -- upon which he chose i elaborate - and had worked his passage to Europe kitchens of a cruise liner. Poorly paid domestic 'protection' work had followed in France, and the Marseilles pimp who had hired him was :d and imprisoned on charges of corrupting minors had hitchhiked to Castelnaudary and offered his ces to the Foreign Legion. After a short, sharp ini period at Aubagne which he described as sting', Leon had been dispatched to Canjuers and to undergo basic training and selection. Six and several violent beatings later he had passed up of his cadre, and had chosen to join the Legion's fchute regiment at Calvi in Corsica, lere, in counterpoint to the chronic drunkenness twhoring enjoyed by his fellow Legionaries, Leon contemporary European history by jondence course. To make his studies more ig, and to improve his English, he signed up i the Open University.

ic Deuxieme Regiment Etranger de Parachutistes lot discourage Leon in these academic activities. Sin two years he had been promoted, and as a NCO accompanied the 2nd REP to Rwanda they were involved in the covert training of forces.

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Repelled by the future implications of this policy Leon transferred to the Legion's 3rd Infantry Regiment in French Guyana, whose nominal task was to guard the Ariane Rocket launch site at Kourou. There, having qualified as a jungle warfare instructor, he earned French citizenship by serving out his five year contract with the Legion. At about the same time he was awarded a BA by the Open University. His plan on leaving the Legion was to train as a schoolteacher, but things did not quite work out that way.

'I went back to France . . .' he began, but Slater silenced him with a gesture.

'I may just be paranoid,' he said, 'but I think we might have picked up a tail. There's a large grey or blue car I've'just seen which I'm pretty sure was there about fifteen minutes back.'

'Well, this is a motorway,' said Leon. 'What kind of car?'

'Looks like some big German thing. An Opel or something - it was too far away to get a make on.'

'And it was . . .'

'It was just at the extreme of visibility. I might be imagining things, but it just seemed to me that it was tucked in perfectly for a long-range tail.' He shrugged.

'Let's pull off at the next exit,' said Leon. 'See if we can get a fix on it. Why don't you ring the others, warn them that's what we're going to do?'

Slater did so, and five minutes later they left the motorway by a slip-road. As they waited at traffic lights on the exit roundabout. Slater watched the

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sing motorway traffic. There was no sign of the car 1 thought he had seen. The lights turned green and ' progressed a kilometre up a country road to a lay where they drew to a halt. Behind them the j)geot did the same.

>t's give it five minutes,' said Leon. 'After that I'm to get nervous. The last thing we need is for bored cop to dnve past and start asking long .'

ae two cars sat motionless in the afternoon heat, i drove past at intervals, but none resembled a grey iue Opel, and Slater began to wonder if his senses been overtuned to danger. When on enemy tory, as they undoubtedly were now, the mind t habit of conjuring up enemies. At the same time isregarded your instincts at your peril. The line , fine one. 7e should move,' said Leon eventually. 'We're

ig to push our luck.'

ter agreed. They returned to the motorway and . for five minutes in silence, you decided to train as a teacher,' he began jally, still watching the wing-mirror. ; the wheel Leon nodded. 'Yeah,' he said. 'That plan . . .'

ling to France and hooking up with a former | colleague in a bar in the Rue St Denis in Paris, f allowed himself to be talked into driving the ay car for an armed robbery. The attempt to a wages delivery-van went badly wrong, with a

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security guard and a gang-member both fatally wounded in the firefight which ensued. As the unarmed driver, Leon got off comparatively lightly and ended up serving less than three years.

It seemed long enough at the time, however. The twenty-three-year-old ex-Legionary served his sentence at Clairvaux prison, some 250 kilometres east of Paris. The former monastery, a notorious dumping ground for hard cases, is often described as the French Alcatraz, and the regime was brutal. To make matters worse Leon realised that with better planning planning he himself would have been happy to undertake - the robbery attempt would have worked perfectly and no one would have got hurt.

In between reading books of political theory in his cell, Leon passed the time by planning -- and mentally executing -- increasingly complex and ingenious crimes. Or, as he himself prefered it, 'events'. Packed into the jail were experts in fraud, larceny, embezzlement, kidnapping, drug-smuggling and every other field of illegal activity. Leon consulted them all. He would submit imaginary scenarios to these criminal tutors - scenarios detailing companies to be defrauded, banks to be robbed, officials to be kidnapped, and rivals-j to be executed - and invite them to pick holes in his plans.

For the first six months the experts were able to suggest better solutions than Leon, but not thereafter. When interviewed by the prison rehabilitation board at the end of his second year, he informed his

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Miers that he intended to retrain as a risk assessor private security sector. One of the board must ad connections in the field, for a month later he guested by the prison governor to undertake a 'exercise'. On the basis of given data, he was assess the vulnerability to armed assault of a processor fabrication plant in Bordeaux. He was cils, paper and the use of an office, forty-eight hours he had produced a fully ted plan which, if put into execution, would the company in question relieved of 30 francs' worth of stock for an outlay of less than ?,000. Although he had not been asked to do so, fcalso produced a detailed proposal for the sellings'the stolen microprocessors, was thanked for his efforts, and heard no more. : later, however, he found himself on one of the 's coveted computer-training courses, and on Jetion of his sentence was passed the name of a icl officer employed by the Paris branch of a ational security group named Nordstrom. A training in their offices at La Defense was red by a two-year posting to London, where he gad-hunted.