Gabby Castigan used two train lines and emerged from the Bastille Metro station shortly before 8 a.m. She walked north-east, into the secondary streets, and used her training to ensure there were no followers. She found the Red Lion, which still functioned as a hotel, although some of the rooms doubled as safe houses for the CIA. She climbed the two-hundred-year-old wraparound staircase to the second floor and walked to suite 208—chosen, she surmised, because it had ready access to two internal stairwells, and was connected to the rear fire escape. Taking a deep breath she rapped out the agreed knock—three shorts and a long—and waited.
The woman who opened the door smiled and waved her in.
‘Hi, stranger,’ said the woman whom Castigan knew only as Brenda. ‘I got coffee and pains au chocolat. You hungry?’
Castigan nodded and took a seat in one of the expensive armchairs. She could see the Gare de Lyon from where she sat and it gave her a flash of nostalgia as she remembered tumultuous but unforgettable times with Dominic Briffaut, stealing away on a train to Marseille, drinking all the way and staggering into their hotel at the other end. She felt terrible about what she was doing, but in her world very few decisions were regret-free.
‘What’s up?’ asked Brenda, pouring coffees from a French press.
‘I was contacted by Dominic Briffaut last night,’ Castigan said.
Brenda’s eyebrows rose as she lifted her coffee to her lips. ‘I see. How do you know him?’
‘Damascus,’ Castigan said, with a pang at the memory. ‘And Paris.’
‘What did he want?’
‘They’re on to Christine.’
‘How?’
‘They have a photo of her in a hotel lobby—Bucharest, they think—where she apparently dropped something into another service’s pouch.’
Brenda’s face remained impassive. ‘Are they guessing, or do they know?’
‘They know it’s her. They’re certain she’s inserting prod into Occidental intelligence—information that doesn’t come from official sources.’
‘What do they conclude?’
‘That someone is steering the Western services to focus on Russian wrongdoing.’
They looked at each other for a beat, and Castigan marvelled at the stillness of the woman in front of her. So beautiful, so smart, and yet something so suburban and stable about her. If Castigan was running her, she’d have paired her with a military or diplomatic ‘husband’ and let her draw the details out of her social interactions.
‘And where do they think she is operating?’ asked Brenda.
‘Briffaut contacted me to see if I knew,’ said Castigan. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Dominic Briffaut wouldn’t ask a BND officer a question like that unless he knew more than the person he was asking,’ said the CIA woman. ‘But you’re aware of that.’
‘He wanted to know why Germany held back at the Maypole, and I said that as far as I knew we didn’t; it’s just that we didn’t have much to give. And he admitted that the British supplied the picture, not the DGSE. He wouldn’t let me keep the photo.’
‘So, he was fishing?’ asked Brenda.
‘Yes, but he said he had another photo of her, and in that image he hadn’t recognised her.’
Brenda nodded. ‘You’re courageous, turning up here and just teasing me with this.’
‘I’m not teasing.’
‘Well, let me remind you that Christine Zeitz lost her job and narrowly avoided prison, and here you are walking around Paris, a free woman.’
Castigan shook off the memories of Damascus, a crazy period in which stress and alcohol had marred her judgement. ‘Chris was hardly blameless …’
‘Yet it was you who allowed the Hezbollah agent into the file room, and then threw Christine under the bus to save your own career.’
‘It wasn’t exactly like that,’ said Castigan, flustered.
‘The video I have tells a different story,’ said Brenda. ‘Now let’s go back to the beginning. What does Briffaut want from the Germans?’
‘He wants to know what we got from Azzam.’
‘And you said?’
‘I said we couldn’t get on to Azzam, but I gather that the French and British succeeded.’
‘That’s it?’
‘All he’s got is a photograph from Bucharest, and one from somewhere else.’
‘Any idea of the somewhere else?’ she asked.
‘No, he didn’t say,’ said Castigan, feeling nauseous from her betrayal.
Brenda produced a movie-star beam. ‘You think perhaps the Company is at a loose end?’
Castigan nodded in agreement, but she was thinking that Dominic Briffaut was at his most dangerous when the answers were no longer easy.
■
Jéjé read his L’Équipe magazine and kept his eye off the target while also monitoring her. He had let her get well ahead of him after she left the hotel and kept an eye on her as she descended into the halls of Gare de Lyon. It wasn’t a hard job given her height and head of dark blonde hair, held in place with tortoiseshell clips. Now he rode in her carriage, curious about why this person was a target.
After thirteen minutes and ten stops, the woman stood in anticipation as the train squealed and slowed at Porte Maillot. She was well-dressed and sexy, if not a little mature for Jéjé’s tastes. She walked to the doors at the other end of the car and Jéjé keyed his radio. ‘From Jéjé—alert. Target alighting at Porte Maillot.’
‘Aline copy, I’m standing by,’ came the response, and Jéjé could see his colleague standing in front of a snack vending machine in the concourse, dressed like a university student.
The doors shut and the train accelerated towards Les Sablons, with Jéjé still in the carriage.
‘Aline to all,’ said his colleague. ‘Visual on target.’
Jéjé relaxed, knowing that the primary following had been handed to Aline. Halfway to the Sablons station, the radio crackled again, its reception becoming weak.
‘Aline to all,’ said his teammate. ‘I’ve lost visual—target is in the nest.’
The train stopped at Sablons, and Jéjé stepped onto the platform, waiting for the train to come the other way. He texted a secure update message that would be relayed to the boss. It was a strange gig, thought Jéjé, following this woman from a sordid Vietnamese restaurant to her apartment building, then to a private hotel and on to the German embassy. There was now a sub at the Red Lion hotel, waiting to take photographs of whoever exited. He checked the arrival board for the next train and wondered what the hell Dominic Briffaut was up to.