| |
It took them twenty minutes to find all their clothes again, and, as Phyllis pointed out, that was probably because they didn’t want to find them. Not because they desired another round of sex – they were too exhausted for that – but because they couldn’t face getting back into the same downmarket kit without at least washing it or themselves. “Still,” she said as she retrieved one of her trainers from the grass, “C’est la spying vie.”
“What now?” he said. “We can’t just keep on driving. We’re going to need fuel soon too. They’ll know that. They’ll have passed our details to all petrol stations within a fifty-mile radius. It’s not like they won’t take it personally. We escaped from under their noses. They’re probably furious, and they’ll want revenge.”
She laughed. “John Mordred: this time it’s personal.”
“Not quite what Alec had in mind.”
“I trained for this sort of situation at Sandhurst. First of all, we’re going to get some sleep, then at four in the morning, we’re going to find somewhere to hide the car. A screen somewhere: probably behind trees or a disused barn; or last resort, cover it with brushwood. Then we’re going to don whatever disguises we can cobble together. Probably not much: swapping one or two items of clothing, pulling our hats down. Then we’re going to split up and make our way cross country back to Calais. We’ll be much harder to identify separately, and they’ll already have CCTV of us leaving the city. They probably think we’re heading for Boulogne, or possibly Dieppe or Le Havre. I’ve got Euros in the car. We’ll buy new clothes in Calais, improve our disguises a bit, get a room and plot our next move. Our services are probably no longer required at Thames House.”
“Remember, these sorts of organisations tend to think, They’ll suppose we expect them to go south, so they’ll come north to wrong-foot us.”
“Maybe, but what if they’re even cleverer? What if they think, They’ll imagine we think they can pull off the double-bluff by coming back to Calais, so they’ll probably go south to wrong-foot us! Or a quadruple bluff, where we end up going north again? Don’t forget they probably haven’t much imagination. They’re angry. They’ll be using the reptilian part of their brains. Let’s keep things simple.”
They got back in the car and drove further down the track they’d been following. It was a cloudy moonless night and the dark was complete enough to feel tangible. They could be anywhere except civilisation. Phyllis had 4G, but it wasn’t working. Ideally, they’d have dumped the car now and headed off for Calais before sunrise, only there was no way of telling which way was north. They’d end up going round in circles.
“I think it would be a good idea for one of us to keep watch while the other sleeps,” Mordred said. “The moment the sun comes up and we can get our bearings, we can hide the car.”
“Maybe we should drive some of the way back to Calais,” Phyllis said. “It could be a hell of a distance.”
“This is the first place we’ve come to where there are no lights at all. It must be pretty out of the way. The trouble is, the further we go back, the more civilisation there’s going to be, and the harder we’ll find it to conceal the vehicle.”
She shrugged. “So?”
“As soon as they find it, they’ll know we can’t be far. They’ll get the sniffer dogs out, and even if we make it to the city, they’ll have redoubled their efforts.”
She pulled into the side of the track and turned the engine off. “What if we drive to a railway station? They’ll think we’ve taken the train.”
“CCTV will tell them we haven’t.”
She nodded and sighed. “Sorry, John, I’m not thinking. I’m very tired.”
“I’ll take the first watch.”
“It’s cold, and you probably need rest as much as I do. If we take it in turns, that probably means about two hours each. Less, because you can’t nod off when you’re icing over. No, we’ll sleep together. Our body clocks will tell us when four o’clock comes.”
They both awoke together at 3.50, but there was no sign of the sun. The sky had cleared and the stars were out, and their night vision allowed them to make a limited assessment of their surroundings. They were surrounded by fields. There were a few trees, but so far apart as to make screening a car impossible. They climbed off the back seats and got in the front. Phyllis started the engine.
“Wherever this road goes, it has to lead somewhere,” she said.
“We’re looking for a glint.”
“Going to be difficult with no moon.”
He meant a lake, preferably a large one. Putting a car underwater wasn’t very eco-friendly, but it was the most effective means of concealment. After about a mile, when the sun still showed no signs of showing its head, Phyllis pulled into the side, and they climbed into the back for more sleep. They weren’t overly tired now, but trundling along a bumpy road with no end in sight and hardly anything to see seemed a waste of petrol. The gauge said almost empty.
They next awoke at seven. The sun was on its way up now, and it looked like the beginnings of a beautiful day. No clouds anywhere. Also, an ideal time for sun glinting on water.
“There!” Mordred said.
She started the engine. It was more or less straight ahead, and after a mile, the road met the lakeside and began to follow its outline. The car spluttered and died. Phyllis put her foot on the clutch, and they freewheeled for ten yards and stopped.
“I think it’s made its choice,” she said. “I just hope it’s deep enough here.”
Getting a car to submerge in a lake wasn’t as easy as the movies sometimes made it look. The water needed to be deep enough, for a start. Then you needed a really good run-up. Anything less than 100% wouldn’t do. Once you got stuck in the shallows, you were probably stuck for good. Your initial momentum had to be great enough to overcome that. But, well, Phyllis had been in the army.
They got out and wheeled the car through a three-point turn so the bonnet was facing the water. Phyllis took a wad of Euro notes from the glove compartment and put it in her pocket. Then they cleared a runway to the lake, about five metres away. The ramp down to the water was quite steep, but maybe too much so. What if the car somehow caught on something and somersaulted?
“What do you think?” he asked.
She grinned. “I think God’s on our side. We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
It was the sort of thing she obviously thought would win him over. Or maybe she was actually coming to think like him. Either way, touching.
“Okay, push as hard as you can, as far as you can,” she said. “I’ll steer.”
“No, I’ll steer,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because if it goes wrong, you could get run over.”
She smiled. “What you actually mean is, you think you’re stronger than me.”
“I think we should at least put it to the test.”
She gave a ‘we don’t have time for this’ sigh.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t want you getting run over. Lie down. We’ll decide it with an arm-wrestle.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m being rational. Afraid you’ll lose?”
She rolled her eyes and got down reluctantly on her stomach. He lay down opposite her and they locked grips.
“Ready?” he said.
“One, two, three.”
The epic battle of grips and muscles began. Their elbows bit into the road, their veins bulged, the sky darkened, thunder and lightning blasted the earth, the ancient gods of war put their hands over their eyes, the foundations of Valhalla trembled, civilisations rose and fell. Phyllis railed as the back of her right hand hit the dust.
“You win,” she said simply.
That was the great thing about her. She didn’t hold grudges.
Although, if she was anything like his sisters, he’d probably hear about it later.
“Let’s have a re-match,” she said. “Left hand.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Okay, you grab the steering wheel. I’ll wind the windows down to let the air out, then I’ll push from behind. But be careful. It’s not just about muscles.”
They counted to three again and charged the car down the slight hill and in through the water. It didn’t seem happy about what was happening to it, but went under better than either of them expected, before apparently stopping at roof level. But that was just the air bubbling out. Ten seconds later, it gave up the ghost and disappeared from sight.
“As someone who habitually recycles,” Phyllis said, “I can’t begin to tell you how ambiguous I feel right now.”
Mordred dusted his palms together. “Me too.”
“I guess this is where we go our separate ways.”
“What time is it?”
She looked at her phone. “Five past eight.”
“Aren’t you worried someone might trace that thing? I mean if Tariq could find Marcie - ”
“It’s not mine, dummy. It’s a posh pay-and-go. I simply transferred my address book. Where shall we rendezvous?”
“How about the Musee de la Guerre in the Parc Saint Pierre?”
She looked impressed. “I take it you know Calais quite well.”
“We once went on a family excursion, years ago.”
“I’ll find it. It would help if we knew where we were now. I still haven’t any 4G and my battery’s almost dead. How about yours?”
“It conked out straight after my conversation with Alec.”
“There’s a moral somewhere in that statement.”
“The Musee de la Guerre at eleven o’clock tonight. Wait twenty minutes, and if I don’t turn up, return to the same spot at nine tomorrow morning.”
She divided her wad of Euros and gave him half. “Going by the sun, north is that way. I reckon we were travelling for just over forty minutes last night. The speed we were going probably makes Calais between forty and sixty miles away. Beyond reasonable hiking distance. We’re going to have to get public transport. The bus rather than the train.”
He looked at what she’d given him. “Bloody hell, how much did you bring?”
“Two thousand. You?”
“A thousand pounds. But I didn’t get time to convert it.”
She sighed. “It’s finally beginning to sink in.”
“What is?”
“My little MI7 job, spying for the Queen and Britannia. I loved coming into Thames House every day, the adventures, and I loved all my friends: I mean you and Annabel and Alec and Edna and ... Sorry, I’m going to start crying soon.”
“And after that, you’re going to realise it’s all actually my fault. I’m sorry. I know that isn’t - ”
“If we could go back in time, I’d make the same choice. It’s about being able to live with yourself. We’ll fall on our feet, don’t worry. True, we’re redundant, but I doubt they’ll be able to charge us with anything, even under the Official Secrets Act. Annabel’s villa’s probably out of the question now, though. Unless she’s in as much trouble as we are, which seems unlikely.”
“We don’t need Capri,” he said.
“Which is what I told you in The Counting House, remember? That was never what this was about. I mean, you and me.”
“I’m an optimist.”
She looked at him and half-laughed, half-cried. “... And?”
“Something will turn up.”
She seemed to forgive him for talking bullshit, and they kissed.
“Good luck,” she whispered, “and be careful.” She disengaged herself gently, smiled and walked away without looking back.
When she was out of sight, he began to walk back the way they’d come. He’d wheel north in about twenty minutes, minimise the chances of bumping into her.
He felt horribly guilty. But not despairing. He’d think of something.
He avoided the roads north without losing sight of them. He crossed meadows and skirted the sides of fields and followed streams to where a bridge let him cross. The sun rose and became overpowering and he was forced to rest beneath a tree for thirty minutes. He thought about Phyllis, how old she’d once looked, and how young now. The first time he’d really talked to her was on that mission to Siberia, two years back. She’d sat on the flat roof of a Russian hotel in a bearskin hat and a fur coat talking airily about global politics; and she’d seemed somehow the archetypal Tory ice-queen, full of pontifical aphorisms, faintly intolerant of difference, insufferably English County. As he’d got to know her, she’d somehow grown younger and more vulnerable, until today, as they’d parted, she could have been eighteen and desperate for help. He shouldn’t have let her go alone. They should have stayed together.
But that wasn’t right. How he saw her didn’t mean much. Somehow, she was all those things, and God help him if he forgot it.
He’d landed her in deep trouble, and now he had to get her out of it. Why would anyone like Durand need piles of clothes? That was where the solution lay. In finding the answer to that question. Perhaps.
Why would anyone need piles of clothes? You wanted to dress people up, presumably. You were going to disguise them.
As what? Well, there couldn’t have been any common theme to what was in the warehouse, or Robillard would have mentioned it. So – just dress people up in second-hand clothes? What possible purpose could that serve?
Maybe they weren’t being used as clothes. Maybe they were padding for something. Or insulation.
Or maybe they meant nothing at all. Maybe Durand had realised Mordred would sooner or later come looking for something, and he’d left a pile of clothes. Something to throw the authorities off the scent.
Just after noon, a village came into view, dominated by the tall flèche of a country church. With clothes so much on Mordred’s mind, he realised it would be better to get a change here – while he was still relatively far from Calais – than anywhere further along the route. A new outfit would open new possibilities. Once he no longer looked like a tramp, he could spend his cash freely without arousing suspicion. It was that first significant purchase that might raise eyebrows.
Accent and manners would help him through. The village turned out to be well stocked with shops, nearly all surrounding a cobbled square with a statue of Chateaubriand at the centre. He walked into a tailor’s, and adopted a Parisian accent.
“Excuse me,” he told the assistant, a little man with grey eyes and a receding chin, “I’d like to buy a ready-made suit. I’m here from Paris and I’ve just been invited to a friend’s daughter’s first communion. I didn’t bring anything appropriate with me, but I’ve a budget of five hundred Euros and I can pay in cash.”
Within a few moments, the assistant was his happy collaborator, charmed by his perfect diction and courtesy. A suit was provided and paid for, and a matching hat was acquired to go with it. Mordred left the shop with his old clothes in a bag. He wandered out of the square and flagged down a taxi.
“Ardres,” he said, remembering one of the signposts they’d passed last night.
The driver didn’t bat an eyelid. “Very good, Monsieur,” he replied.
Fifteen minutes later, he stepped out of the car a stone’s throw away from the town’s Chapelle des Carmes, and went to find the shops. He dumped his old clothes in a bin, bought a bottle of dark brown hair-dye, a pair of sunglasses, a newspaper and a new mobile phone. He checked into an anonymous-looking inn on the town outskirts for one night, and went upstairs to his room, a small, square space with a washbasin, bed, mini flat-screen TV on the wall, and a dressing table. The toilets and showers were communal and at the end of the corridor.
On the bedside table, which doubled as a kind of brochures cupboard, there were maps of the area and public transport timetables. Calais was sixteen kilometres away: about twenty-five minutes by taxi; an hour by bus. He showered, then dyed his hair, tying a plastic bag round his head and sitting on the bed watching TV while it set. He could get a bus in an hour’s time and arrive in Calais in good time to book a five-star hotel room and meet Phyllis at eleven. It was her money, but he’d pay her back. No point in trying to scrimp and save. All the spy manuals agreed parsimony was bad tactics. Invisibility lay in the highest echelons of society. That was always where state surveillance was least intense.
He hoped she was okay. He’d kept his old phone and the charger, and there was a plug adapter in the drawer. He plugged it in, looked up her number and called. It went straight to voicemail.
He sat with the phone in his hand for a moment and his head suddenly emptied of all thoughts, like someone had pulled out a bathplug at the bottom of his brain. Then there was an equally abrupt rushing in of fresh thoughts from above, and he had what felt like the beginnings of an epiphany. Alec! Alec, when he’d phoned last night!
My God, maybe he could get through to him now. On one reading, it was risky, but on another, not at all. He went to ‘recall last number’. It rang three times.
“Hello?” Alec said suspiciously.
“Mordred here. Just thought I’d ring to tell you I’m okay.”
“John. Good God, you scared me. You probably shouldn’t - ”
“I just wanted to know how you were.”
“Me?”
“And Annabel, and Tariq, of course.”
“We’re fine, idiot. Look, we can’t afford to make courtesy calls. Only call me when you’ve something important to say.”
He hung up.
That was it then. Suddenly, the whole thing made sense. Of course. The bits of the jigsaw puzzle arranged themselves in his mind.
But that five star hotel was out of the question now. He’d have to grab Phyllis as soon as she showed up and bring her back to Ardres. They were probably in even more serious danger than they’d imagined.
