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Over the next few days, Mordred had confirmation that his world was defined by the château boundaries and populated only by the people inside. Its outposts were guarded by men with dogs; he was never left unattended; his movements were monitored by cameras; people with walkie-talkies watched him from afar.
Within this world, there were only eight people (the guards didn’t count). Jean-Paul Crevier was the most congenial – in the evening they drank brandy and discussed European politics - but frequently absent from home altogether; Amandine Crevier, his wife, only ever talked about her family, the burdens of managing household domestics, and food; Garnier was unknowable. The four teenagers, Brigitte, Caroline, Virginie and Sylvie, were shy and preferred each other’s company, although, after the third day, they started to open up.
His duty to Queen and Country was to escape. Which looked impossible on the surface, but probably wasn’t. They might be pretty stringent about guarding him now, but it would be difficult to keep that up for a year.
In an espionage novel, he wouldn’t even question his patriotic responsibility. He’d immediately start digging a tunnel or trying to turn the guards, and he’d practice Kung Fu in the privacy of the bathroom, where there were supposedly no cameras. And whenever he despaired, or began perversely to enjoy the life of a prisoner, he’d stab himself in the palm to focus his mind. He’d demand regular meetings with Number One and make himself as obstreperous as possible.
Somehow, none of that seemed worth it. Yes, he felt affection for the Queen and he liked being British, but so probably did Planchart. And this wasn’t supposed to end in the destruction of the UK: rather – well, what? Planchart sounded like an old fashioned socialist, primed to pull off the Trojan Horse of the century. Renationalisation of the railways sounded damn good thinking, for a start.
On the other hand, your duty was only your duty because you’d made it such. You couldn’t back out just because things didn’t look apocalyptically grim.
Luckily, none of this mattered, because he had a more urgent motive for escape.
Phyllis.
She probably thought he was dead in a shallow grave somewhere. Pretty soon, she’d forget him. Someone else would come along. Toby, probably. She’d fall back in love with Toby and they’d marry. The world you choose to re-join will be very different to the one you left. It’ll have moved on. Selfish though it might be, he couldn’t allow that. He had to escape. Queen and Country were merely a bonus.
There were eight people in his world, five of whom were members of the opposite sex. According to the spy manuals, your correct strategy in such a scenario was seduction then blackmail. Get at least one of the women to fall in love with you, promise her the earth, then take advantage of her.
That wasn’t for him. The Crevier women hadn’t done anything wrong, and he was above using them as a means to an end. Besides, he’d been warned against it in all his psych-tests, as all his colleagues were so fond of reminding him. Play to your strengths. Romantic duplicity wasn’t one of his.
The next best method was to play along with your captors and lull them into a false sense of security. Sometimes, you made a few dummy attempts to escape then a show of giving up, the idea being to fool them into thinking they’d broken you. Here, that didn’t seem appropriate – everyone was so civilised - and there probably wasn’t time. In a year, if Crevier was a good as his word, he’d be getting out anyway. A meaningful escape would be one that included the possibility of stopping Planchart, however ambiguous that might make him feel. It needed to happen soon.
And he did feel ambiguous. Because they chimed roughly with his own convictions, he could feel Crevier’s powers of persuasion working on him. There were no contrary arguments. God help him, he was becoming radicalised. In the daytime, he was more or less alone. Amandine and her daughters kept their distance as if somehow he might be a corrupting influence. He gradually found out why. They knew more about their father’s views and ambitions than Mordred had assumed, and each saw herself as integral to his success.
On the third day, the youngest daughter came up and sat next to him on the bench in the shade of an old beech. The sun shone and cloudlets peppered the sky. The only sound was of an overhead plane. Had it not been for his confinement, it would have been a perfect afternoon. He watched a group of ants in a dust-clearing in the grass. Suddenly, he became aware of a presence in front of him. He looked up to find fifteen-year old Sylvie. Jeans, plain T-shirt and sandals. Long, narrow eyes, a tiny chin, prominent cheekbones, long dark hair in two plaits.
“Is it okay to sit down?” she asked.
“I’d be glad of the company,” he replied.
“My sisters and I have a question.”
“Fire away.”
“Are you really English? Papa says you are, but you don’t sound it.”
“I’m just good at languages.”
“Say something in English.”
“Like what?”
She laughed. “Anything!”
“The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,” he replied in English.
“You could have learned that by heart,” she said, also in English. “What about ‘the zebras are body-popping in the shopping centre whilst eating chocolate’?”
“I don’t think they’d do that,” he replied, reverting to French. “Most zebras are allergic to chocolate. The body-popping bit rings true, though.”
She gave a semi-shriek and laughed. “Oh, my God! Caroline! Virginie!”
Her sisters, a year and two years older than her, emerged from behind a tree. Caroline was slightly plump with a round, pleasant face, a smock-dress and bare feet. Virginie, at sixteen, looked a little like Sylvie, but with darker, wider eyes. She wore a Chapman Hill and Morgan Smith T-shirt with There Will Always Be a Real Alternative written on. They bounded over and stopped in front of their sister without looking at Mordred.
“I said to John,” Sylvie said breathlessly, “‘say something in English’, and he said, ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’, and I said, ‘You could have learned that by heart; say something in English like “the zebras are body-popping in the mall whilst eating chocolate bars”’. And do you know what he said? He said: ‘that can’t be true because zebras are allergic to chocolate’!”
Caroline and Virginie made a demonstration of laughing heartily. They were probably pleased rather than amused. The Englishman had at least the makings of a sense of humour. They may choose not to hang out with him – they probably thought he was a bit puerile - but at least he wasn’t going to be unpleasant to them.
“So you are English?” Caroline said.
“British,” he corrected her.
“Is it true that the British are obsessed with owning houses?” she asked. “And they mainly watch programmes about property and cooking?”
“Is it true that lots of British people drink a bottle of wine each every night?” Virginie asked. “And not even with food?”
“Is it true that people in England judge each other by their cars?” Sylvie asked.
“Is it true that some of your politicians have never held real jobs?” Caroline said.
Sylvie held her hand up. Enough questions. Let him speak.
He laughed. “All true.”
Virginie turned on her sisters. “France is no better! It’s easy to laugh! We’re just as bad – and not always in different ways!”
They began to argue, not with the basic premise, but about the precise areas in which it applied. Then they moved on to the Germans, the Italians, the Belgians and finally, the Turkish government. They stood in a circle and hurled sweeping national generalisations at each other focussed on the Mayor of Molenbeek, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Angela Merkel. They seemed to have completely forgotten Mordred’s existence.
Yet on another level, it was clearly a show put on for his benefit. He could tell from their body-language that this was a discussion they hardly needed have. What they were doing was setting the ground for their future association with him. From now on, it wouldn’t involve any more chocolate-eating zebras.
The château was built on a slight slope, with a huge garden leading down to a lake which formed its boundary on one side. Beyond that, there were fields and distant farmhouses. The other borders were similar: declivities but with different features at the bottom: a fenced-off vineyard, what looked like an orchard, a complex of stables where the car was kept.
It was on the slope down to the lake that Mordred met the oldest daughter, Brigitte, the next day. She sat with a pad of cartridge paper drawing something in the distance. She either didn’t notice his approach or preferred not to acknowledge it. She was tall and thin with delicate features and suntanned skin. Her long black hair was tied behind her head with an elastic band. She wore a long paisley dress and tennis shoes. At her side there was a tin of lead pencils of various types and three charcoal sticks. She didn’t look happy with what she was doing.
They’d been introduced over dinner on his first proper day, so he didn’t feel the need to shy away. Besides, he suddenly realised she had something he might need. Paper.
“Is it okay to sit down?” he asked.
“I’d be glad of the company,” she replied as if the opposite was true. “Don’t comment on my drawing.”
“It’s good.” She’d drawn the view down to the lake, but beyond that she’d put a huge Tolkeinesque castle. The perspective was excellent, but it was clearly more of a rough sketch than a finished article.
She smiled. “I said, don’t comment.”
“When someone tells you that, and you don’t, it can come across as a criticism.”
“Not with me.”
“If you want to know what a bad drawing looks like, let me try.”
“You haven’t anything hard to lean on,” she said.
“I can get something from the house.”
“I can’t promise to be here when you get back.”
He got up. “You can promise to leave me a piece of paper,” he said as he left her.
When he returned with a large book to lean on, she’d gone, but she’d left him a sheet of paper beneath a stone. He sat down, took it up and began to sketch.
Half an hour later, she returned. She sat down next to him without saying anything and looked at what he’d done.
“Don’t comment on my drawing,” he told her.
They sat in silence for a few seconds. “It’s terrible!” she said at last, and laughed.
“It’s awful,” he agreed.
She spent the rest of the afternoon giving him a drawing lesson. They talked, in the restricted way he was getting used to here, of each other’s lives and interests. He managed to interpose the fact that he had a ‘long-term’ girlfriend, and although that was more hope than reality, at least it might prevent her developing any romantic attachment to him. He was a drawing companion and a temporary friend, that was all.
Behind him, watching both of them from one of the upstairs windows of the château, Mme Crevier stood wringing her hands.
Mordred quickly worked out that there was no wireless access in the house or anywhere within the grounds. There was a landline phone in the front hallway. There was one internet-connected computer in the living room. It was left unplugged when anyone wasn’t using it. Its plug was of the British type and inserted into the wall with an adapter which was locked away - he never discovered where - when not in use.
Whoever was responsible for guarding him had made two elementary mistakes. Firstly, all the trousers and jackets they’d provided for him had pockets, which made hiding things easier. Second, contrary to what he’d been told, he quickly discovered there weren’t cameras watching his every move. They were absent in most of the rooms where the family spent a lot of time. The reasons were obvious: as Crevier himself had said, even the most rigorous surveillance must have limits.
Although Mordred had no intention of seducing any of the Crevier girls – and no idea how successful he’d be if he tried – clearly the possibility had occurred starkly to their mother. As of course was only natural. A young man thrown together with four females in the first stages of womanhood, with no other eligible males in sight; the dangers were clear and present. After two days of relative indifference, suddenly Mme Crevier became solicitous and eager to spend time with him. He was glad to accommodate her, and quickly became her principal companion.
It took him three days to discern a pattern to her daily routine, but then he realised he could use it. She awoke at eight and breakfasted with him and her daughters (and Jean-Paul if he was at home): toast and jam, a pastry, or cereal, all served with coffee. At ten, she opened the post and pored over every item at least twice, even apparent junk mail. At eleven, she walked briskly around the château grounds for an hour, usually in company with one or more of her daughters. She read a novel at midday. At one, lunch was served: again, the whole family. At two, she sat on a chair in the entrance hall and spoke on the landline to friends in Paris, Nice and Lyons.
Between three and six was her favourite part of the day. She went into the living room, plugged the computer in and trawled the internet for bespoke food outlets, planning the meals their invisible cook would prepare in the coming days and weeks. She made lists of orders, but because there wasn’t a printer – Mordred’s chief gaoler having apparently decided that if, by some miracle, he ever did get a few unattended moments on the internet, a printout of such click-bait staples as ‘10 ways to get out of prison’, ‘You won’t believe these ways of outwitting surveillance cameras’ or ‘These four ways of digging a tunnel will make your jaw drop’, might be invaluable to him – she copied everything she needed longhand onto a scrap of paper torn from a little notepad: name of supplier, supplier’s phone number, specific ingredient to be supplied, recipe web address. Presumably, since she never cooked herself, and only ever spoke on the phone to her friends, these were passed on to someone whose job it was to take care of them. She always used a pencil, probably borrowed from Brigitte. Stationery was hard to come by here as well (presumably because also useful to spies). At five-thirty, she folded her piece of paper over and switched the computer off. She pulled the plug out, and conscientiously, but with daily increasing discomfiture, took the adapter out of the room and back to its hiding place somewhere in the house. Five minutes later, she returned and took her scrap of paper away, leaving him alone. At half past six the family ate dinner.
During all the time Mme Crevier was on the internet, Mordred sat in the chair by the window, drawing. Brigitte had bought him a pad and a tin of pencils, and gave him lessons. She arrived every day at four in the afternoon and left precisely an hour later. She seemed to regard it as an interesting responsibility with no personal ramifications.
His plan was a simple one. Every day before Brigitte arrived and after she left, he spent part of his time trying to catch a glimpse of what Mme Crevier was writing down, and trying to reproduce her script on one of the middle pages of his sketch-pad. One day, when she left the room to take the adapter away, he picked her paper up. He put it face-down on his pad and rubbed his thumbnail up and down across its reverse. That night, he kept the back of his pad to the camera in his room, and obsessively traced and re-traced the imprint while pretending to do more drawing. Good attempts, but none perfect. He knocked to be allowed out to the toilet where he tore them into bits and flushed them away. He knew someone was examining his waste-basket. The next day, he took two pieces of paper from the back of Mme Crevier’s pad.
Most of the perimeter guards checked off at about sunset. The château was in the middle of nowhere, and there probably wasn’t too much to worry about in the way of break-ins. Every evening, around about eight, he’d excuse himself to go to the bathroom. He opened the window and used the lid of his pencil-tin and the central light to flash Morse code across the fields. It was the sort of thing the manuals recommended, but it felt silly. He wasn’t remotely sure he was doing it properly. Or whether that was even possible.
All his drawing didn’t go unnoticed by the Creviers. It became obvious they thought he was infatuated with Brigitte. Which was ideal, because she was clearly a million miles from feeling anything for him. The perfect cover, and he could play it up.
Two weeks later, he was ready. That night he took one of the scraps of paper he’d stolen from the pad, and, under the pretence of drawing, compiled a list of suppliers plus phone numbers. At the bottom, he added a recipe website, all in Mme Crevier’s hand.
The numbers were MI7 emergency contacts. The next day, when Mme Crevier left to secrete the adapter, he switched papers. She picked the substitute up without noticing and he flushed the real version away an hour later.
The next day, she came into the room with the paper. He could guess from her expression what sort of a conversation she’d just come from. The cook had probably told her he’d tried to contact the various purveyors, but none had answered. He’d have given Mme Crevier the slip back so she could try for herself. Mordred was now about to discover what had gone through her head as she looked at it.
There were lots of ways the internet could go wrong. Among other things, your computer might have a bug, a website might be down, the search engine might misdirect you, the online store might change its details. If you didn’t know much about that sort of thing, you might assume the fault was yours. But you’d probably check.
Mordred sat drawing a line of trees on the far side of the lake. Mme Crevier greeted him as usual and got on her knees to plug the computer in. She stood up, brushed herself down, then looked at her slip of paper. She frowned slightly, sat down and logged on. She knew enough about the internet to go straight to her history folder.
Mordred sat waiting for the time-bomb to go off. She was shaking her head and tut-tutting. After about half an hour, Brigitte arrived with her pad and pencils. She looked at what Mordred was drawing and nodded approvingly.
“You’re getting better,” she said. “Still not there though. You need different patterns of hatching and crosshatching to map out the different planes, like I showed you.”
“I must be going senile,” Mme Crevier said.
“What’s the matter?” Brigitte asked her.
“I made one of my lists yesterday and gave it to Karl. You know my shopping lists? One of those. Anyway, he brought it back today and said he couldn’t contact any of the suppliers. And I’ve just checked it and none of the places on the list is one I wrote down!”
Brigitte shrugged. “You’re not going senile.”
“What’s your explanation then?” her mother asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Brigitte replied. “Karl either lost your original list and fished out one of your older ones to cover his tracks, or he mislaid it and got it mixed up with one of the old ones. He probably doesn’t throw them away. You might query something.”
“I’ll have to tell him to be careful.”
“Be tactful. Good chefs are hard to come by.”
“It’s never happened before,” Mme Crevier said. “Maybe I should let it go.”
“Wait and see if it happens again.”
“But he said none of the suppliers could be contacted!”
Brigitte chuckled. “But he would! Obviously he would!”
They looked at each other for a second and laughed. Mrs Crevier rolled her eyes, shook her head, and went back to surfing. Brigitte began teaching her daily lesson. Mordred resumed breathing.
That night, after he’d gone through the motions of sending his usual SOS from the bathroom, he noticed something out in the gloom.
... Flashes?
It was. My God. About half a mile away? H-O-L-D ... T-I-G-H-T.
Its significance sank in. His stomach turned over and the blood rushed to his head. He hadn’t expected it to be this quick. My God, my God.
He had to act. Now.
