a health insurance company, providing physiotherapy and rehab training for older clients, and later moving to a gym, where he proved very popular with the female clientele. I believe that is how you met, in fact, when he took you for a complimentary training session at a women-only gym in Berlin. When you were in the city eight months ago.’
Monique now looked physically ill, but Caitlin gave her no respite.
‘Bilal took up beach volleyball after a trip to Sardinia in 1995 and became a German regional champion with his partner Jurgen Mьller. Their run to the Olympics was cut short by Mьller’s acceptance into the Deutsche Marine.’
They had stopped walking again, and now stood on the edge of the gutter while Caitlin quickly checked up and down the street for any signs that they were being followed. It seemed clear. She spoke without emotion, simply recalling the facts from the dossier she had committed to memory as soon as her case controller had handed her the file on the al-Qaeda recruiter known as al Banna.
‘He grew up in Neukцlln, in south-east Berlin, where migrants form just under half of the total population. Three generations of Turks are mixed in with Eastern Europeans and some North Africans. Most of the Turks don’t speak German or even go to school. Unemployment is at eighty per cent and the city spends three-quarters of its budget on welfare. Baumer has German citizenship because of his father. His mother retains hers because they are not lawfully divorced. Most of the migrants in Neukцlln live in fear of immigration raids, which are hugely violent events.’
‘Stop it, please. Just stop,’ begged Monique. ‘What is the point of all this?’
‘The point, Monique, is that Bilal Baumer is not your boyfriend. Do you know why he has never agreed to move to be closer to you?’
‘His work, he…’
Caitlin smiled gently. ‘His work, or at least the job he uses as a cover, his personal training, could follow him anywhere. He’s good at his job, his cover job, and has EU citizenship. The health funds who employ him would do so anywhere. You know all this. You’ve always known.’
Caitlin stepped closer, moving into Monique’s personal space. Her voice, which she had kept flat and free of emotion while reciting from her memory of the target file, now grew softer, more understanding. ‘Like a lot of women, you don’t have perfect self-esteem. You could not believe that such a good-looking, intelligent, caring man, a good man, would be attracted to you. Part of you always believed you didn’t really deserve somebody like
Monique’s eyes had filled with tears and she was shaking her head in jerky little spasms. ‘No.’
‘So you wore all his bullshit excuses about work and his mother and needing to stay in contact with his community. You were pathetically grateful when he travelled to see you, but
A nod this time, just the smallest movement, but a crucial acknowledgement that Caitlin wasn’t entirely wrong. She could have said something about how Monique was also drawn to Bilal because he was simultaneously dangerous and safe. A young man from a Muslim background, politically aware if not active, but fiercely secular in his outlook. Not at all like the bearded wingnuts whose medieval views on women would’ve made it impossible for an enlightened feminist like Monique Duroc to have had anything to do with them. But of course, to lay it out as brutally as that would break the tenuous connection she had established.
‘Monique, you were right,’ the American continued. ‘You were not his only one.’
A small groan escaped the throat of the distressed young woman.
Judging the time to be right, Caitlin reached into her jacket and produced the envelope she’d removed from the folder hidden under the floorboards back at the apartment. She shook out a handful of surveillance shots, good- quality hi-def colour photos of Baumer entwined with two separate women. The date stamps marked them as having been taken in the last six months.
‘He also successfully targeted a Belgian student,’ said Caitlin as Monique took the photographs with a shaking hand. ‘Anya Delvaux, a part-time canvasser for Greenpeace in Brussels, and Sofia Calderon, an activist documentary-maker from Barcelona.’
Monique had started to sway on her feet and her face grew blotchy, with irregular patches of high colour fading quickly into bloodlessness. ‘An auteur?’ she asked.
‘Well, a would-be auteur. Sofia’s posted a few vids on the net, entered a competition or two, but she stills pays the bills as a waitress.’
The first photograph showed Baumer and the Spaniard, a tall, rather extravagant beauty, dry-humping each other in a park. Monique’s tears were flowing freely now, but silently, as she attempted to control her free-falling emotions. ‘You… you seem to know them well, these women.’ She leafed through the other photographs with an unsteady hand, blinking large tears onto them and gasping at some of the more intimate encounters.
‘Oh my god,’ she said in a tiny voice. ‘You must have similar photographs of…’
‘Of you,’ Caitlin finished for her. ‘I’m sorry, but yes, I do. Or I did. When I selected you as my objective, my target, I filed them.’
The effort to dam up her feelings failed at last, and with a series of hitching sobs, Monique came apart, wailing and crying like a child who suddenly realises she is lost and alone. Caitlin placed a hand on her elbow and steered her through the carpet of twitching birds towards a side street, which was still deserted. The avenue on which they stood was beginning to come to life. It was nowhere near as busy as it would have been on a normal day, but here and there individuals were venturing out.
The photos spilled from Monique’s fingers, falling into the contaminated mud and refuse of the street. Caitlin was forced to bend over and pick them up. It saved her life.
22
