This is the Night They Come For You, page 31
‘What’s obvious is that if we surrender the tape to you you’ll be free to come after us. And if we release it to the media, you’ll also come after us. So, the only way we can guarantee our safety is to keep the tape. And our safety guarantees your safety. It’s win-win, Erica.’
Ménard offers no immediate response. She’s evidently taking Hidouchi’s argument seriously. Eventually, she says, ‘I have conditions.’
‘Yes?’ Hidouchi raises her eyebrows as she looks down at Ménard. This is the crux of the negotiation. This is the moment of truth.
‘Laloul has become a liability. Your possession of the tape makes him a potential threat. If he ever told all that he knows …’
‘He was the water-measurer, wasn’t he?’ Taleb intervenes on cue. ‘He paid for all the subversive actions commissioned by your government.’
‘He played a crucial – a central – role, yes.’
‘The madness and the mayhem we endured. The assassinations and the massacres. That was all your department’s doing, Erica?’
‘The destabilization programme had its own logic. My superiors – and their predecessors – were satisfied it served its purpose. As for individual actions, the programme was managed indirectly, at second and third hand. Inevitably, once you give … sub-contractors … discretion about how to achieve their objectives … excesses occur.’
‘Excesses?’ Taleb is genuinely riled now. ‘You mean the death squads, the militias, the insurgents, the pseudo-insurgents, the “false flag” mercenaries, the gangsters, the crazies? You mean all of the killings they carried out? How many died to serve your “destabilization programme”? A thousand? More?’
‘Once set in motion, such events become self-replicating. No one controls them.’
‘Yet the oil and gas industry remained magically untouched by the violence. You managed to control that. The well heads and the refineries and the pipelines kept pumping unmolested, despite being easy targets. And the money kept flowing. Thanks to Laloul.’
Ménard stares hard at him. ‘What is your point, Superintendent?’
‘I just want you to understand that I understand the scale of what we’re offering to conceal.’
‘And how does that—’
‘Be careful what you say next, Erica,’ Hidouchi interrupts. ‘Taleb lost his wife and daughter to one of those “self-replicating events”. You might be wise to be a little … humbler.’
Ménard gives this revelation a few moments’ thought. She eyes Taleb warily. ‘It’s obvious now things went too far – far too far – in the nineteen nineties. That was … deeply regrettable. But I wasn’t with DGSE then. Since I joined, we’ve done our best to clean up the programme.’
‘But there still is a programme?’ Hidouchi asks.
‘Yes, but low-key, non-violent, discreet.’
‘So, if Laloul were exposed, media investigations could prove highly embarrassing – to say the least – for your government.’
‘Yes. Yes, they could.’
‘And a problem for you. A big problem. How would you solve it?’
Ménard looks up at her. ‘Why don’t you solve it for me? Laloul can’t die at our hands. It would alarm too many other people who rely on our protection. But if he was believed to be the victim of a DRS operation on French soil, carried out without our knowledge or consent …’
‘You want us to kill him for you?’
‘Your department wants him dead. In the light of this’ – she gestures to the laptop – ‘so will mine. Arrange it … and you can have your guaranteed safety.’
‘We’ll need to be able to get to him without encountering serious resistance.’
‘As it happens …’ Taleb can almost see the pieces falling into place in her mind. ‘… I can arrange for you to “get to him” without leaving Paris. He’s due to visit the Paris office of Coqblin and Baudouin tomorrow afternoon. I’ll give you the place and time and instruct his bodyguards to let you grab him when he arrives. After that … dispose of him as you please.’
‘Do you want his body found?’
‘Preferably not. The ambiguity of disappearance has many advantages. But his abduction, in a public place, is important. It must be clear he’s been seized by a hostile party.’
Hidouchi glances at Taleb, as if checking he’s willing to accept Ménard’s proposal. In truth, however, they foresaw this conclusion before they even entered the apartment. ‘What about Zarbi?’
‘He’s less important. If you still want to go after him, I’d suggest you let us find him and deport him back to Algeria. It shouldn’t be difficult.’
‘All right.’ Hidouchi gives Taleb another glance and takes a slow prowl round the table. ‘We’ll need an up-to-date photograph of Laloul.’
‘Do we have one on file, Gilles?’ Ménard asks.
‘It should be … in your dormant assets folder, Assistant Director,’ Réau replies, his voice thick with accumulated anxiety. ‘Laloul’s code number is zero one nine one.’
Ménard taps at her laptop, then swings it round for Taleb and Hidouchi to see. ‘One of several taken a few months ago,’ she tells them matter-of-factly.
So, there he is. Taleb squints at the grainy image of their quarry: Nadir Laloul, now in his mid-eighties, a shrunken, balder, greyer version of the corpulent, sleek-suited power broker who fled his homeland in 1999 and never changed or aged in the photographs the police were left to work with. His skin has sagged since, his eyes have lost their intensity, his bearing has collapsed in on itself. But his arrogance remains, his sense of entitlement to special treatment, his assumption that he cannot be touched.
‘You need to manage this neatly and efficiently,’ says Ménard. ‘That will give me confidence that our … agreement … is sustainable for the long term.’
‘Neat and efficient?’ Hidouchi looks at Ménard without smiling. ‘We will be those things, won’t we, Taleb?’
He nods. ‘Oh yes.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
STEPHEN GRAY IS CONTENT TO BE DRIVEN TO HIS HOTEL IN VERSAILLES after leaving Les Fringillidés. On one level he should feel satisfied, since the blackmail plot against Laloul he concocted with Zarbi will come to fruition after all. But he isn’t going to share in the proceeds. Kermadec told him as they sped away from Suzette’s home that his bungling had so nearly wrecked the whole scheme he’d forfeited his cut. ‘I’m taking your percentage, Stephen,’ the Corsican informed him, ‘as the man who’s repaired the damage you caused.’
Gray had neither the energy nor the will to argue. His ribs are sore where Storza hit him. He suddenly feels old – and altogether outmatched. He was never motivated by the money anyway, hard though Zarbi found that to believe. The sum they demanded was so vast as to seem unreal. He was determined to make Laloul suffer for what he’d done to Harriet. Zarbi had suffered – a twenty-year stretch in jail that had ruined his health. And without Zarbi, he couldn’t get to Laloul. Also, according to Zarbi, it was Laloul who actually killed Harriet. But that could have been a self-serving lie, of course, which it suited Gray not to challenge. Zarbi wanted money as well as revenge. And Gray supplied him with Nigel Dalby’s doctored confession as the means to achieve their shared objective: hurting Laloul.
And that’s still going to happen, even though Gray has so conclusively lost the trust and respect of both his sister and Suzette Fontaine that he feels bruised and defeated by the turn of events. He’s spent years looking forward to the moment when he could turn the tables on Laloul and now that moment is imminent. But he isn’t going to be able to savour it. He can already taste the despondency that lies in wait for him once the struggle is truly over and he has nothing to show for it beyond the knowledge that Nadir Laloul has ceased to be a rich man and Wassim Zarbi has become one instead – along with Kermadec. As consolations go, it’s not much.
His mind drifts into a memory of the last time he saw Harriet, in late December 1964, when their father drove her and Nigel Dalby to the station at the end of their Christmas visit. Stephen ran down the road as they set off, waving to Harriet, who smiled and waved back through the rear window. He stopped at the corner and watched the car pull away from him. He couldn’t see Harriet by then. She was gone.
He’s spent much of his life since that day pursuing his lost sister. But he can never bring her back, can never reverse time and force the car to stop. Harriet never steps out and walks back towards him. She was gone then. And she’s still gone now.
Night has fallen in the present. Gray glances out into the deepening darkness. He glimpses a road sign: Chartres 47km. It takes a few seconds for it to register with him that they’re not going in the right direction for Versailles. Then, before he can say anything, the car slows and they turn off the main road.
‘Where are we going?’ he asks.
‘We’re taking a diversion,’ Kermadec replies from the front seat without turning round.
‘Why?’
‘There’s been a change of plan.’
‘What do you mean? I want to go to my hotel in Versailles.’
‘I’ll explain when we arrive.’
‘Arrive where?’
Now Kermadec does look round at him, though there are no street lamps on the road they’ve turned on to and Gray can’t see the expression on his face. ‘Shut up, Stephen. I don’t want to hear anything from you, OK? Not a word.’
‘You can’t—’
‘Whatever you think I can’t do I can. You nearly wrecked everything. I’m not going to let you interfere any more.’
‘I told you I—’
‘Shut up!’
The car slows as it takes another turn. Impulsively, Gray tries to open the door, but it’s locked on some central control. Then the car speeds up again. The going’s rougher. The tyres thud and thump over ruts and through potholes. Ahead is a track winding through thick woodland. Beyond the glare of the headlamps the darkness is total. Gray is suddenly fearful. Where in God’s name are they taking him?
‘Listen, I—’
Kermadec swings his arm. In his hand he’s holding something heavy and metallic. It strikes Gray on his jaw, just as he’s jolted to one side by the motion of the car. He’s thrown flat across the back seat. As the car jolts again, he slides down off the seat on to the floor, stunned by the force of the blow.
He thinks he may have blacked out briefly, because when he’s able to reassemble his thoughts and scramble back up on to the seat, the car has stopped. He hears one of the front doors slam. Then the rear door on the driver’s side is yanked open. Everything’s a jumble of shadows, with no light beyond the beams of the headlamps. A figure looms in front of him. Storza, he senses. He’s grabbed by the shoulders and hauled out of the car.
He smells the cool woodiness of forest air. His jaw aches and his head’s spinning. Storza swings him round and slams him against the side of the car. His arms are twisted behind his back. He feels a narrow cord being wound round his wrists, then tied off with a sharp jerk. Before he can even summon the breath to protest, Storza slaps a strip of duct tape across his mouth and pulls his head back by his hair.
‘We go.’ The words – the first Gray’s actually heard from Storza – rasp in his ear. He’s turned back round. Storza switches his grasp to the collar of Gray’s shirt and presses what has to be the barrel of a gun against the back of his neck. He kicks Gray’s heels and marches him forward, switching on a head torch he’s wearing as they start off along a rough trail that leads away from the track into the woods.
The light moves unsteadily between tree trunks as they advance. Gray tries to speak, but can’t move his lips enough to form any words. Storza’s grip is strong and any attempt by Gray to slow his pace is met with a shove that would carry him off his feet if Storza weren’t there to hold him upright. ‘Keep walking,’ comes the instruction.
Hope has drained out of Gray. He isn’t going to survive the night. This is Kermadec’s way of ensuring he doesn’t interfere in the handover of the confession. A walk deeper into the woods. Then a single shot to the head. And a burial, like Harriet, in an unknown spot far from home, never found, never located.
But for the moment they just keep walking. Gray has lost all sense of how far they’ve come when Storza swings him away from the trail and into the tussocky, thorn-tangled undergrowth beneath the trees. Then he tells him to stop.
They’re standing beneath the low canopy of a tree. The gun barrel is pressed harder against Gray’s neck. ‘You run, I shoot,’ says Storza. He releases the cord binding Gray’s wrists. ‘Sit down and put your arms behind you … round the tree.’
Gray does as he’s told. The cord is wound round his wrists again and tied off. He can’t move now, with his back hard against the trunk of the tree.
The gun’s no longer pressing against Gray’s neck. He braces himself for the shot he truly expects will end his life within the next few seconds. There doesn’t seem to be space in his head for all the regrets that should be there. He isn’t even frightened any more. He’s moved beyond fear, into a place of fatalistic acceptance of the inevitable.
Then Storza switches off the torch.
And Gray waits to be swallowed by the darkness that follows.
Taleb and Hidouchi sit facing one another on the two beds that have been crammed into a small room of a seedy hotel in the Goutte d’Or district of Paris. The primary attraction for them of Le Trèfle is that it operates on a cash basis, with no requests made for passports or credit cards. They’ve struck a deal with Erica Ménard, but they don’t trust her. The Tournier tape is not in some obscure place of safety, but in Taleb’s bag, and the possibility that Ménard might send some people to take it from them can’t be ruled out. This she can’t do, however, if she doesn’t know where they are. And the Goutte d’Or is an area where two Algerians among so many other Algerians are wholly inconspicuous.
Taleb has just finished a call on his emergency phone to Director Bouras, which Bouras has left him in no doubt he would have preferred to be spared in the middle of what he hoped would be a peaceful evening. But the call has gone well from Taleb’s point of view. His proposals have not been dismissed out of hand. Bouras sounded reluctantly convinced, indeed, that they should proceed as Taleb suggested. His instructions to Taleb before he left Algiers to avoid doing anything that would offend the French have been overborne by the implications of the Tournier tape. The evidence that hizb fransa is real has stirred patriotic outrage in his soul and he has agreed to do all he can to help Taleb bring about a successful outcome.
‘I want Laloul here, answering questions on the record, whatever those DGSE shits think,’ Bouras went so far as to say, sounding riled by the prospect of the French covering their tracks at his expense. ‘Are you sure you can rely on Agent Hidouchi, Taleb? Ménard has more friends in the DSS than I do and they may include most of Hidouchi’s bosses.’
‘We’re both out of patience with the back-scratchers, Director. It would be good to get something out of this.’
‘All right. But this can only work if I’m able to arrange transport. I’ll call you tomorrow with a yes or no.’
‘Thank you, Director.’
‘And if it’s no, Taleb …’
‘Then we’ll do what has to be done.’
The call ended there, leaving Taleb to grimace at Hidouchi, whose presence in the room he judged it best not to mention to Bouras. ‘I think we’re on,’ he says, wishing he could sound a little more confident.
‘We’re banking a lot on your boss, Taleb,’ says Hidouchi.
Taleb shrugs. ‘We have to.’
‘If you’ve misread him and he’s already on the phone to Kadri …’
‘There are risks whatever we do.’
‘The risks are fewer if I simply execute Laloul.’
‘But you don’t want to do that, do you?’
‘No.’ The faint suspicion of a smile hovers on Hidouchi’s lips. ‘I don’t.’
The darkness is unbroken. The sky clouded over as night fell, so there’s no moonlight. Gray is effectively blindfolded as well as gagged. As his wait to be killed stretches on, minute by minute, he wonders why Storza is delaying the coup de grâce. What game is he playing? Is he even still there?
More time passes, unmeasurable to Gray. An owl hoots somewhere. A fox barks. The owl hoots again. A small animal – a shrew, a mouse? – scurries through the undergrowth close by. Where is Storza? What is he doing?
Then Gray sees a distant light: the glimmer of a torch. And he hears Kermadec’s voice. ‘Franco,’ he calls. ‘Dove sei?’
There’s no response from Storza. Kermadec calls again. ‘Franco!’
Still nothing. Gray tries to scrabble his way round the trunk of the tree he’s tied to, to make it less likely Kermadec will see him. But all he succeeds in doing is scratching his arms on the rough bark without moving very far at all.
Then the torchbeam flashes in his eyes. And Kermadec closes in.
He stops a few yards from Gray. ‘Where’s Franco?’ he demands suspiciously, forgetting, apparently, that Gray can’t reply even if he wants to.
The fact eventually registers with him. He bends over Gray and pulls the tape away, leaving the skin around Gray’s mouth burning. ‘Where’s Franco?’ he repeats, clearly as baffled as Gray by the turn of events.
‘How should I know?’ Gray manages to reply.
‘This is crazy. Where—’
The crack of a gunshot splits the darkness. And Kermadec goes straight down, crashing to the ground at Gray’s feet. The torch lands a little way off. Its beam silhouettes Kermadec’s prone figure. He doesn’t move or make a sound.
There’s movement behind Gray, though: cautious footsteps through the undergrowth. Torchlight gleams over Gray’s shoulder. Storza glides past him and stoops over the fallen man. He trains his torch on the back of Kermadec’s head. Gray can see a neat round hole, from which blood is oozing. ‘Morto,’ Storza murmurs in a neutral tone.
‘I … I don’t understand …’ Gray begins.
Storza looks at him. ‘Sta’ zitto,’ he responds. Then it occurs to him that Gray probably doesn’t speak Italian. ‘Quiet,’ he adds. ‘Stay quiet.’
