The English Girl: A Novel (Gabriel Allon) Read online

  By London standards, the traffic at that hour was only mildly catastrophic. Gabriel crossed the Chelsea Bridge at one o’clock, and by half past he had put London’s southern suburbs behind him and was speeding along the M25 motorway. At 2:00 p.m. he switched on Radio Four to listen to a news update. Little had changed since the morning; Jonathan Lancaster was still talking about curing the ills of Britain’s poor, and a Russian oil company was still planning to drill for oil in the North Sea. There was no mention of Madeline Hart, or of a man in blue jeans and a leather jacket who was about to pay ten million euros to her kidnappers. The man listened to the latest weather bulletin and learned that conditions were expected to deteriorate rapidly throughout the afternoon, with heavy rain and dangerous winds along the Channel coast. Then he switched off the radio and absently fingered the Corsican talisman around his neck. When she is dead, he heard the old woman say. Then you will know the truth.

  24

  DOVER, ENGLAND

  By the time Gabriel turned onto the M20, the skies were pouring with rain. He raced past Maidstone, Lenham Heath, and Ashford, arriving in the port of Folkestone at half past three. There he turned onto the A20 and continued east, across a seemingly endless plain of the greenest grass he had ever seen. Finally, he breasted a low hill, and the sea appeared, dark and whitecapped. It promised to be an unpleasant crossing.

  As the road descended into the Dover seafront, Gabriel glimpsed a portion of the cliffs for the first time, chalky white against a background of gunmetal-gray cloud. The way to the ferry terminal was clearly marked. Gabriel entered the ticket office and confirmed his booking, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on the Passat. Then, ticket in hand, he climbed behind the wheel again and joined the line of cars waiting in the departure queue. And don’t miss the four-forty ferry. If you do, the girl dies . . . There was only one reason to make such a demand, thought Gabriel. The kidnappers were now watching him.

  It was against regulations for passengers to remain inside their cars during the crossing. Gabriel briefly considered bringing the suitcases with him but decided the act of lugging them up and down the passageways would leave him too vulnerable. So he locked the car tightly, checking the trunk and each of the four doors twice to make sure they were secure, and headed to the passenger lounge. As the ferry eased from the terminal, he went to the snack bar and ordered tea and a scone. Outside the skies gradually darkened, and by 5:15 the sea was no longer visible. Gabriel remained in his seat for another five minutes. Then he rose and made his way to an isolated corner of the windblown observation deck. None of the other passengers followed him. Therefore no one saw him drop a mobile phone over the railing.

  Gabriel neither saw nor heard the device strike the surface of the sea. He stood at the rail for two more minutes before returning to his seat in the lounge. And there he remained, committing to memory each of the faces around him, until an announcement came over the public address system, first in English, then in French, alerting passengers it was time to return to their cars. Gabriel made certain he was the first to arrive on the vehicle deck. Opening the trunk of the Passat, he saw that the two suitcases were still in place and that both were still filled with money. Then he climbed behind the wheel and watched the other passengers filing toward their cars. In the next row a woman was unlocking the door of a small Peugeot. She had short blond hair, almost like a boy’s, and a heart-shaped face. But Gabriel noticed something else. She was the only passenger on the ferry wearing gloves.

  He stared straight ahead, both hands on the wheel.

  She was the one. He was certain of it.

  Calais was an ugly seaside town, part English, part German, scarcely French at all. The rue Richelieu was about a half mile from the ferry terminal in the quartier known as Calais-Nord, an octagonal artificial island ringed by canals and harbors. Gabriel parked outside a terrace of stucco houses and headed toward the park, watched by a trio of Afghan men in heavy coats and traditional pakul hats. The men were probably economic migrants waiting for a chance to hitch an illegal ride across the Channel to Britain. There had once been a large encampment in the sand dunes along the beach where, on a clear day, they could see the White Cliffs of Dover sparkling on the other side of the Channel. The good citizens of Calais, a stronghold of the Socialist Party, had referred to the camp as “the jungle” and had applauded the French police when they finally shut it down.

  The trash receptacle stood to the right side of a footpath leading into the park. It was four feet in height and forest green in color. Next to it was a sign asking visitors not to harm the park’s grass and flowers. It said nothing about searching for a hidden mobile phone beneath the rubbish bin, which is what Gabriel did after discarding his ferry ticket. He found it instantly; it was secured to the underside of the bin by packing tape. He tore it away and slipped it into his coat pocket before standing upright and heading back to the Passat. The phone was ringing as he started the engine. “Very good,” said the computer-generated voice. “Now listen carefully.”

  It told him to go directly to the Hotel de la Mer, in the town of Grand-Fort-Philippe. A reservation had been made there under the name Annette Ricard. Gabriel was to check into the room using his own credit card and explain that a Mademoiselle Ricard would be joining him later that evening. Gabriel had never heard of the hotel, or even of the town where it was located. He found it using the Internet browser on his personal mobile phone. Grand-Fort-Philippe was just west of Dunkirk, scene of one of the greatest military humiliations in British history. In the spring of 1940, more than three hundred thousand members of the British Expeditionary Force were evacuated from Dunkirk’s beaches as France was falling to Nazi Germany. In their haste to leave, the British forces had no choice but to abandon enough materiel to equip some ten divisions. It was possible the kidnappers hadn’t realized any of this when they had chosen the hotel, but Gabriel doubted it.

  The Hotel de la Mer was not actually by the sea. Compact, tidy, and covered with a fresh coat of white paint, it overlooked the tidal river that split the town in two. Gabriel intentionally drove past the entrance three times before finally easing into an angled parking space along the quay. No one from the hotel came to help him; it was not that kind of place. He waited for a lone car to pass before switching off the engine. Then, after burying the key deep in the front pocket of his jeans, he climbed quickly out. The two suitcases were surprisingly heavy. Indeed, had he not known the contents, he would have assumed that Jeremy Fallon had filled them with lead weights. Gulls circled slowly overhead, as if hoping he might collapse beneath the weight of his burden.

  The hotel had no proper lobby, only a cramped vestibule where a bald, thin clerk sat somnambulantly behind a desk. Despite the fact there were only eight rooms, it took a moment for him to locate the reservation. Gabriel paid in cash, violating one of the kidnappers’ demands, and left a generous deposit for incidentals.

  “Is there a second key for the room?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “May I have it, please?”

  “But what about Mademoiselle Ricard?”

  “I’ll let her in.”

  The clerk frowned disapprovingly as he slid the extra key across the desktop.

  “There are no others?” asked Gabriel. “Just this one?”

  “The maid has a master key, of course. And so do I.”

  “And you’re sure there’s no one in the room?” he asked.

  “Positive,” said the clerk. “I just finished preparing it myself.”

  For this thoughtful gesture, Gabriel placed a ten-euro note upon the desk. It was seized by a grimy hand and disappeared into the pocket of an ill-fitting blazer.

  “Do you require assistance with your luggage?” he asked, as though assisting Gabriel was the last thing on his mind that evening.

  “No, thank you,” said Gabriel cheerfully. “I think I can manage.”

  He whee
led the suitcases across the linoleum floor, then did his best to make them appear weightless as he lifted them off the ground by their grips and started up the narrow staircase. His room was on the third floor, at the end of a dimly lit hall. Gabriel inserted the key into the lock with the care of a doctor wielding a medical probe. Entering, he found the room empty and a single light burning weakly on the bedside table. He rolled the bags just across the threshold. Then, after closing the door and drawing his Beretta, he quickly searched the closet and the bathroom. Finally, certain he was alone, he chained the door, barricaded it with every piece of furniture in the room, and wedged the two suitcases beneath the bed. As he stood upright again, the phone he had collected in Calais rang for the second time. “Very good,” said the same computer-generated voice. “Now listen carefully.”

  This time, Gabriel issued several demands of his own. She had to come alone, with no backup, and no weapon. Gabriel reserved the right to search her—thoroughly and intrusively, he added, just so there were no misunderstandings. After that, she could take all the time she needed to verify that the notes were genuine and, when tallied, amounted to a sum of ten million euros. She could count the money, smell it, taste it, or make love to it—Gabriel didn’t care, so long as she made no attempt to steal it. If she did that, said Gabriel, she would get hurt, badly, and the deal would be off. “And don’t make any stupid threats about killing Madeline,” he said. “Threats insult my intelligence.”

  “One hour,” responded the voice, and the connection went dead.

  Gabriel removed a straight-backed chair from his barricade and placed it in the room’s arrow-slit of a window. And there he sat for the next sixty-seven minutes watching the street below. Forty minutes into his vigil, a man hurried past the hotel beneath an umbrella, pausing only long enough to pull at the latch of the Passat’s front passenger-side door. After that, there were no more cars or pedestrians, only the gulls circling overhead, and a gang of street cats that feasted on the rubbish from the seafood restaurant next door. The waiting, he thought. Always the waiting.

  When sixty minutes elapsed with no sign of her, Gabriel felt a stab of panic—a panic that worsened with each passing minute. Then, finally, a BMW wagon nosed into the empty space next to his. The door opened and a stylish boot emerged, followed in short order by a long, blue-jeaned leg. The leg belonged to a woman with coal-black hair that fell about her shoulders and shielded her face from Gabriel’s view. He watched as she came across the street through the rain, watched the rhythm of her stride, the bend of her knees. It was a curious thing, the gait; it was like a fingerprint or a retina scan. A face could be easily changed, but even professional intelligence officers struggled to change the way they walked. Gabriel realized he had seen the walk before. She was the woman from the ferry.

  He was certain of it.

  25

  GRAND-FORT-PHILIPPE, FRANCE

  It took her less than a minute to make her way from the street to the third floor of the hotel. Gabriel used the interval to remove the barricade of furniture from the entrance hall. Then he placed his ear against the door and listened to the tack-hammer clatter of her heels along the uncarpeted hall. It was a good door, solid and thick, enough to slow a bullet but not to stop one. The woman knocked lightly upon it, as though she suspected children were sleeping within.

  “Are you alone?” asked Gabriel in French.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “Do you have a gun?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what will happen if I find a gun on you?”

  “The deal is off.”

  Gabriel opened the door a few inches with the chain still in place. “Put your hand through,” he said.

  The woman hesitated for a moment and then obeyed. Her hand was long and pale. She wore a single ring, a band of woven silver, and there was a small tattoo of the sun on the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. Gabriel seized hold of the wrist and twisted it painfully. On the underside were the long-healed scars of a youthful suicide attempt.

  “If you ever want to use this hand again,” he said, “you’ll do exactly as I tell you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” gasped the woman.

  “Drop your handbag to the floor and push it to me with your foot.”

  Again, the woman obeyed. With his left hand still wrapped around her wrist, Gabriel reached down and emptied the contents of the handbag onto the floor. It was the usual detritus one would expect to find in the purse of a French female, with two notable exceptions: a jeweler’s loupe and a handheld infrared lamp. Gabriel removed the chain from the door and, twisting the wrist to the point of breaking, drew the woman inside. With his foot, he closed the door. Then he pushed her face-first against the wall and, as promised, searched her thoroughly, confident in the belief he was going where many men had gone before.

  “Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Gabriel said dully. “In fact, I haven’t had this much fun since the last time I had a bullet removed.”

  “I hope it hurt.”

  He removed the dark wig and ran his hand through the woman’s boyishly short blond hair.

  “Finished?” she asked.

  “Turn around.”

  She did, facing him for the first time. She was tall and thin, with the long limbs and small breasts of a Degas dancer. Her heart-shaped face was impish and innocent, and on her lips was the faintest trace of an ironic smile. The Office loved faces like hers. Gabriel wondered how many fortunes had been lost to it.

  “How are we going to do this?” she asked.

  “The usual way,” answered Gabriel. “You’re going to examine the money, and I’m going to hold a gun to your head. And if you do anything to make me nervous, I’m going to blow your brains out.”

  “Are you always this charming?”

  “Only with girls I really like.”

  “Where’s the money?”

  “Under the bed.”

  “Are you going to get it for me?”

  “Not a chance.”

  The woman exhaled heavily, knelt at the foot of the bed, and heaved the first bag into view. Opening it, she counted the number of stacks in each direction, first vertically, then horizontally. Then she pulled a stack from the center, like a climatologist drilling an ice core, and counted those, too.

  “Finished?” asked Gabriel, mocking her.

  “We’re just getting started.”

  She selected six bundles of notes from six different parts of the bag at six different depths and counted the notes, setting one note aside from each bundle. She counted quickly, like someone who had worked in a bank or a casino. Or perhaps, thought Gabriel, she simply spent a lot of time counting stolen money.

  “I need my things,” she said.

  “You don’t really think I’m going to turn my back on you?”

  She left the six hundred-euro notes on the bed and went to the entrance hall to collect her loupe and infrared lamp. Returning, she sat on the edge of the bed and used the loupe to examine each bill carefully, looking for any clue that it might be counterfeit—a poorly printed image, a missing number or character, a hologram or watermark that didn’t look genuine. The examination of each bill took more than a minute. When she was finally finished, she set down the loupe and picked up the infrared lamp.

  “I need to turn off the room lights.”

  “Turn that on first,” said Gabriel, nodding toward the infrared lamp.

  She did. Gabriel walked around the room switching off the lights until only the purplish glow of the infrared remained. She used it to examine each of the six bills. The security strips glowed lime green, proving the bills were genuine.

  “Very good,” she said.

  “I can’t tell you how happy I am you’re pleased.” Gabriel switched on the room lights. “Now I have a demand,” he said. “Tell
Paul to call me within the hour, or the deal’s off.”

  “He’s not going to like it.”

  “Tell him about the money,” said Gabriel. “He’ll get over it.”

  The woman returned the wig to her head, collected her things, and departed without another word. Gabriel watched her drive away from his outpost in the window. Then he remained there, staring into the wet street, and waited for the phone to ring. The call came through at 9:15 p.m., one hour to the minute. After enduring a computer-generated tirade, Gabriel calmly issued his demand. There was a silence, a burst of typing, and then the voice. Thin, lifeless, and stressing all the wrong words.

  “I’m in charge,” it said, “not you.”

  “I understand,” Gabriel responded, calmer still. “But this is a business transaction, nothing more. Money for merchandise. And I would be remiss if I didn’t do my due diligence before completing the sale.”

  Another pause, more typing, then the voice.

  “This call has lasted too long. Hang up and wait for us to call back.”

  Gabriel did as he was told. A minute later a call came through from a different device. The voice issued a detailed set of instructions, which Gabriel copied onto a page of Hotel de la Mer stationery.

  “When?” he asked.

  “One hour,” said the voice.

  And then it was gone. Gabriel severed the connection and reread the instructions to make certain he had written them down correctly. There was only one problem.