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

  “Go to the A16 and head toward Calais,” said the voice. “And whatever you do, don’t hang up. If the connection dies, the girl dies.”

  “What if I lose cell service?”

  “Don’t,” said the voice.

  It was a four-lane motorway with light towers down the center median and tabletop-flat farmland on either side. Gabriel kept to the posted speed limit of ninety kilometers per hour, despite the fact the road was nearly empty of any other traffic. He drove with one hand and held the phone with the other, watching the signal strength meter carefully. For the most part it remained at five bars, but for a few anxious seconds it fell to only three.

  “Where are you?” the voice asked finally.

  “Approaching the exit for the D219.”

  “Keep going.”

  He did. It was more of the same: farmland and lights, a bit of traffic, a power transmission line that stepped on the cell service. The next time the voice spoke, it was through a hailstorm of static.

  “Where are you?”

  “Coming up on the D940.”

  “Keep going.”

  The transmission lines fell away, the signal cleared.

  “Where are you?”

  “Approaching the A216 interchange.”

  “Keep going.”

  When the lights of Calais appeared, Gabriel stopped waiting for questions. Instead, he offered a running commentary of his whereabouts, if only to break the monotony of the call-and-response rhythm of the instructions. There was silence at the other end until Gabriel announced he was nearing the turnoff for the D243.

  “Take it,” said the voice, though it sounded more like a question than an order.

  “Which direction?”

  The answer came a few seconds later. They wanted him to head north, toward the sea.

  The next town was Sangatte, a wind-whipped cluster of flint cottages that looked as though they had been plucked from the English countryside and plopped down in France. From there, they sent him farther west along the Channel coast, through the villages of Escalles, Wissant, and Tardinghen. There were periods lasting several minutes when there were no instructions. Gabriel could hear nothing at the other end of the call, but he had a sense he was nearing the end. He decided it was time to force the issue.

  “How much farther?” he asked.

  “You’re getting close.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s safe.”

  “This has gone on long enough,” Gabriel snapped. “You’ve seen the money, you know I’m not being followed. Let’s get this over with so she can come home.”

  There was silence on the line. Then the voice asked, “Where are you?”

  “I’m passing through Audinghen.”

  “Can you see the traffic circle yet?”

  “Wait,” said Gabriel as he rounded a bend in the road. “Yes, I can see it now.”

  “Enter the circle, take the second exit, and go fifty meters.”

  “What then?”

  “Stop.”

  “Is that where she is?”

  “Just do as we say.”

  Gabriel obeyed the instructions. There was no shoulder along the road, leaving him no choice but to drive over a low concrete curb and park on the asphalt pedestrian walkway. Directly before him stood a commercial building of some sort, long and low, with chimneys at either end of the red tile roof. On his right a field of grain swirled in the wind and rain. And beyond the field was the sea.

  “Where are you?” asked the voice.

  “Fifty meters past the traffic circle.”

  “Very good. Now turn off the engine and listen carefully.”

  The instructions had obviously been preloaded into the computer, for they spewed forth in a disjointed but steady stream. Gabriel was to open the trunk of the car and throw the key into the field on his right. Madeline was approximately three kilometers down the road, in the rear storage compartment of a dark blue Citroën C4. The key to the Citroën was hidden in a magnetic box in the left-front wheel well. Gabriel was to keep the phone in his hand until he arrived at the car, with the connection left open so they could hear him. No police, no backup, no traps.

  “It’s not good enough,” he said.

  “You have fifteen minutes.”

  “Or what?”

  “You’re wasting time.”

  An image flashed in Gabriel’s mind. Madeline in her cell, clawing herself bloody.

  “I can’t take much more of this.”

  “I know.”

  “You have to get me out of here.”

  “I will.”

  Gabriel climbed out of the car and hurled the key so hard that, for all he knew, it splashed into the Channel. Then he marked the time on the mobile phone and started running.

  “Are we on?” asked the voice.

  “We’re on,” said Gabriel.

  “Hurry,” said the voice. “Fifteen minutes, or the girl dies.”

  28

  PAS-DE-CALAIS, FRANCE

  Three kilometers was slightly less than two miles, or seven and a half laps on a four-hundred-meter oval track. A world-class distance runner could be expected to complete the distance in under eight minutes; a fit athlete who jogged regularly, in about twelve. But for a middle-aged man who was wearing jeans and street shoes, and who had twice been shot in the chest, fifteen minutes was more than a fair test. And that was if the distance was truly three kilometers, he thought. If it was a few hundred meters longer, the time limit might be beyond his physical limits.

  Mercifully, the road was flat. In fact, because Gabriel was moving toward the sea, it had a slight downhill pitch in places, though the wind blew hard and steady into his face. Fueled by a rush of adrenaline and anger, he set off at a maniacal sprint, but after a hundred meters or so he settled into what he assumed to be roughly a seven-minute-mile pace. He clutched the phone in his right hand but kept his left hand loose and relaxed. His breath was smooth at first, but it soon grew ragged and the back of his throat tasted like rust. It was Shamron’s fault, he thought resentfully, as he pounded along the pavement with the rain stinging his face. Shamron and his damn cigarettes.

  Beyond the commercial building there was nothing at all—no cottages or streetlamps, only black fields and hedgerows and the broken white line at the edge of the road that guided Gabriel through the dark. The gaps between the lengths of white line were equidistant to the lines themselves, two strides per line, two strides per gap. Gabriel used the lines to keep his motion rhythmic and even. Two strides per line, two strides per gap. Fifteen minutes to cover three kilometers.

  “Or what?”

  “You’re wasting time.”

  After five minutes his calves felt like granite and he was sweating beneath the weight of his leather jacket. He tried to shed the coat while running but couldn’t, so he paused long enough to remove it and hurl it into a farmer’s field. When he started running again, he saw a faint dome of yellow light on the horizon. Then two lamps, the parking lamps of a vehicle, peaked over the crest of a small rise and headed toward him at high speed. The vehicle was a small paneled van, pale gray in color, well worn. As it shot past in a blur, Gabriel noticed that the driver and his passenger were both wearing balaclava masks. The bagmen, he thought, coming to collect their prize. He didn’t bother turning to watch. Instead, he tried to ignore the burning in his calves and the sting of the rain on his face. Two strides per line, two strides per gap. Fifteen minutes to cover three kilometers.

  When she is dead. Then you will know the truth . . .

  Gabriel cleared the small rise and immediately saw a chain of lights glowing in the distance. They were the lights of Audresselles, he thought, the small coastal village just south of the lighthouse at Cap Gris Nez. He checked the time on the mobile phone. Eight minutes elapsed, seven remaining. His stride
was beginning to falter, and the back of his neck felt numb. He lamented the fact he had not taken better care of his body, but mainly his thoughts were of Vienna. Of a car parked at the edge of a snowy square. Of an engine that wouldn’t start right away because of a bomb drawing power from the battery. He looked at the phone. Nine minutes elapsed, six remaining. Two strides per line, two strides per gap.

  He lifted the phone to his mouth. “Did you get the money?”

  The voice responded a few seconds later.

  “We got it. Thank you very much.”

  Thin, lifeless, stressing all the wrong words. Even so, Gabriel swore it was filled with mirth.

  “You have to give me more time,” he shouted.

  “That’s not possible.”

  “I can’t make it.”

  “You have to try harder.”

  He looked at the clock. Ten minutes elapsed, five remaining. Three strides per line, three strides per gap.

  “I’m coming for you, Leah,” he shouted into the wind. “Don’t turn the key again. Don’t turn the key.”

  He sprinted past a sprawling manor house, new but built to look old, and immediately felt the pull of the sea. The road sank toward it, and the smell of it tasted of fish and salt on Gabriel’s tongue. A sign materialized from the dark indicating there was beach access two hundred meters ahead. And then Gabriel saw the Citroën. It was waiting in a small sandy car park, its headlamps staring him straight in the face, seemingly watching him as he hurtled toward it like a madman. He glanced at the clock on the phone. Thirteen minutes elapsed, two remaining. He would make it with time to spare. Still, he forced himself to see the race to its end, pounding his feet on the asphalt, flailing his arms, until he thought his heart would burst. Starved of oxygen, his brain started to play tricks on him. He saw a Citroën parked by the beach one instant, but the next it was a dark blue Mercedes sedan in a snowy Vienna square. He swore he heard an engine struggling to start, and later he would remember shouting something incoherent before being blinded by the flash of an explosion. The blast wave hit him with the force of a speeding car and blew him off his feet. He lay on the cold asphalt for several minutes, gasping for breath, wondering whether it was real or only a dream.

  PART TWO

  THE

  SPY

  29

  AUDRESSELLES, PAS-DE-CALAIS

  The hour was early, the location remote, and therefore the response was slow. Much later, a commission of inquiry would reprimand the chief of the local gendarmerie and issue a lofty set of recommendations that went largely ignored, for in the quaint little fishing village of Audresselles, recriminations were the last thing on anyone’s mind. For many months afterward, its shocked residents would speak of that morning in the most somber of tones. One woman, an octogenarian whose family had lived in the village when it was ruled by an English king, would describe the incident on the beach as the worst thing she had seen since the Nazis hoisted a swastika over the Hôtel de Ville. No one took issue with her claim, though a few found it hyperbolic. Surely, they said, Audresselles had seen worse than this, though, when pressed, none could provide an example.

  The commune of Audresselles is only two thousand acres in size, and the blast wave from the explosion rattled windows the length and breadth of it. Several startled residents immediately called the gendarmes, though twenty long minutes would elapse before the first mobile unit arrived at the little sand car park adjacent to the beach. There they discovered a Citroën C4 engulfed in a fire so hot no one could get within thirty meters of it. Another ten minutes would pass before the firefighters arrived. By the time they managed to smother the flames, the Citroën was little more than a blackened shell. For reasons that were never made clear, one of the firefighters took it upon himself to pry open the rear hatch. Instantly, he fell to his knees and was violently sick. The first gendarme to look inside fared no better. But the second, a veteran of some twenty years, managed to maintain his composure as he confirmed that the blackened contents of the car were indeed the remains of a human being. He then radioed the desk officer for the Pas-de-Calais region and reported that the exploding car on the beach at Audresselles was now a murder case—and a grisly one at that.

  By daybreak more than a dozen detectives and forensic experts were working the crime scene, watched over by what seemed like half the town. Only one resident of Audresselles had anything useful to tell them: Léon Banville, owner of a recently built manor house on the edge of town. As it happened, Monsieur Banville had been awake at 5:09 a.m., when a man in street clothes had come running past his window shouting in a language he didn’t recognize. Police immediately undertook a search of the road and found a leather jacket that looked as though it would fit a man of moderate height and build. Nothing else of interest was ever found—not the key that the running man had hurled into the field of grain, nor the Volkswagen car that it operated. The car vanished without a trace, along with the ten million euros hidden inside two suitcases in its trunk.

  The intense heat of the fire did significant damage to the remains of the body in the back of the Citroën but did not destroy them completely. As a result, forensic examiners were able to determine that the victim had been a young woman, probably in her late twenties or early thirties, approximately five-foot-eight inches in height. The description was a rough match for Madeline Hart, the English girl who had gone missing on Corsica in late August. The French police quietly reestablished contact with their brethren across the Channel and within forty-eight hours had in their possession a DNA sample taken from Ms. Hart’s London flat. An expedited comparison test showed that the sample matched DNA taken from the car. The French interior minister immediately sent word to the Home Office in London before making the findings public at a hastily called news conference in Paris. Madeline Hart was dead. But who had killed her? And why?

  They held the funeral at St. Andrew’s Church in Basildon, just down the road from the little council house where she had been raised. Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster was not in attendance—his schedule would not permit it, or so said his press spokesman, Simon Hewitt. Nearly the entire staff of party headquarters was there, as was Jeremy Fallon. He wept openly at the graveside, which inspired one reporter to remark that perhaps he had a heart after all. Afterward, he spoke briefly to Madeline’s mother and brother, who looked curiously out of place amid the well-dressed London crowd. “I’m so sorry,” he was overheard telling them. “I’m so very sorry.”

  Once again, the Party’s political team noticed a spike in Lancaster’s approval ratings, though this time they had the decency not to invoke Madeline’s name. With his popularity at an all-time high, the prime minister announced a sweeping program to make government more efficient and then jetted off on a high-profile trip to Moscow, where he promised a new era in Russian-British relations, especially in the arenas of counterterrorism, finance, and energy. A handful of conservative commentators gently criticized Lancaster for not meeting with the leaders of Russia’s pro-democracy movement while in Moscow, but most of the British press applauded his restraint. With the domestic economy still on life support, they wrote, the last thing Britain needed was another cold war with the Russians.

  Upon returning to London, Lancaster was questioned at every turn as to whether he intended to call an election. For ten days he toyed with the press while Simon Hewitt orchestrated a steady stream of leaks that made it clear an announcement was imminent. Therefore, when Lancaster finally rose in the Commons to declare his intention to seek a new mandate, it was an anticlimax. In fact, the most surprising news concerned the future of Jeremy Fallon, who planned to leave his powerful post at Downing Street to run for a safe seat in Parliament. There were numerous press reports, all unconfirmed, that if Lancaster were to win a second term as prime minister, Fallon would be appointed the next chancellor of the exchequer. Fallon denied the reports categorically, going so far as to claim that he and the prime minister
had held no substantive discussions about his future. Not a single member of the Whitehall press corps believed him.

  As October turned to November, and the campaign commenced in earnest, Madeline Hart again faded from the public consciousness. This proved to be a blessing for the French police, for it allowed them to conduct their investigation without the British press peering over their shoulders. Among the most promising developments was the discovery of four bodies at an isolated villa in the Lubéron. All four were known members of a violent Marseilles criminal gang. Three had been killed with professional-looking shots to the head; the fourth, a woman, had been hit twice in the upper torso. More important, however, was the discovery of a purpose-built holding cell in the lower level of the villa. It was clear to the police that Madeline had been held in the room after her abduction in Corsica, probably for a lengthy period of time. It was possible she was the victim of sexual enslavement, but it was unlikely, given the pedigrees of the four people who had been staying in the house with her. These people were not sexual predators; they were professional criminals interested only in money. All of which led the police to conclude that Madeline Hart had been held as part of a kidnap-for-ransom scheme—a scheme that, for some reason, was never reported to the authorities.

  But why kidnap a girl from a working-class family who had been raised in a council house in Essex? And who had killed the four Marseilles criminals at the villa in the Lubéron? Those were just two of the questions the French police still could not answer a month after Madeline’s terrible death on the beach at Audresselles. Nor did they have any clue about the identity of the man who had been spotted running past Monsieur Banville’s house at 5:09 a.m., minutes before the car exploded. One veteran detective who had worked numerous kidnapping cases had a theory, though. “The poor devil was the bagman,” he told his colleagues assuredly. “Somewhere along the line, he made a mistake, and the girl died for his sins.” But where was he now? They assumed he was lying low somewhere, licking his wounds and trying to figure out what had gone wrong. And though the French police would never know it, they were entirely correct.