Born to a French mother, Marie, and an Algerian father, Basem, Jean-Luc had grown up in Algeria, and the family had worked for the Dalmanis for the best part of fifty years. Basem Bisset was an anomalous name, Helen thought, and she dug a little deeper into his history. The French name Bisset had come from a colonial family and it appeared that Basem was the bastard of a French soldier.
Marie was also the daughter of a French soldier and her marriage to Basem must have raised some eyebrows during such a time of uncertainty. Helen found herself caught prying into a love story spanning generations and she fancied them running off together, like Romeo and Juliet, treacherous in their passion. She pictured the tortuous conversations that tormented their parents (if they were still alive) as the product of warring factions fell in love.
But by the time Jean-Luc was born, the war was over and Algeria was a land of opportunity for some, and their union wouldn’t have attracted questions at all. It was a country starting over, and Bisset found employment with the Dalmanis. Helen gave a slight nod of admiration at the thought of the young scrapper who’d ingratiated himself with an up-and-coming family at such a time of opportunity. Helen read with interest the positions held by Basem Bisset and grasped the pattern of his past: he never got beyond the rank of foreman in several Saharan mines owned by AlGaz. Which was curious because in Khalil’s statement to Interpol, he said he’d played with Jean-Luc as a child. Why would the son of the mine owner be allowed to play with a mere miner’s son?
She turned to Interpol’s notes on Khalil Dalmani.
It seemed that he’d grown up in the shadow of his formidable father, who was a war hero. A lucky punt on some scrubland in the Sahara had literally struck black gold: oil. The family was wealthy beyond Helen’s grasp. It wasn’t that she couldn’t picture the yachts, the penthouse suites and the private jets, it was just she had trouble understanding where so much wealth came from and how it was sustained. She shook her head. It would appear after all that, despite playing together as children, Khalil and Jean-Luc’s paths were very different indeed. Perhaps, after the sacrifices made by his father, loyal to the family for decades, being a bodyguard wasn’t enough for Jean-Luc.
Added to which, the fact that one might say that only Lady Luck decided who benefitted from the fallout of the war. Algiers in 1973, when Jean-Luc was born, was a place in flux. The French had fled having been resoundingly defeated. The country licked her wounds, and Helen knew that resentments ran high for families like Jean-Luc’s, whose fathers fought bravely, risking torture, murder and ruin, leaving deep scars. Jean-Luc followed in his father’s footsteps and entered the family firm from a young age. He’d worked for Khalil’s father, and then Khalil: did this demean him? Helen knew from countless colleagues in the security forces that personal entourages provided to high-profile and wealthy clients around the world were not always run by those who were most skilled, but those who were most loyal, and sometimes this led to mistakes. Jean-Luc certainly didn’t fulfil the high professional skill set required by, say, the British or American Special Forces. As far as she could tell, he’d been on no courses, attended no military-training establishments, and boasted no accolades thereof. He’d simply been promoted and assumed the top role some five years ago.
She turned to his job specification and his exact involvement in Khalil’s household, and read that Jean-Luc personally oversaw the itinerary of every flight taken by Khalil’s private fleet.
Then she came across a name that made her blood run cold.
Three years ago, a British man had been appointed head of Khalil’s company security. AlGaz’s oilfields and working perimeter boasted a footprint of thousands of square miles and Grant Tennyson was in charge of it all. All except the private security of the family, which was kept separate and headed up by Jean-Luc. The instant rush of adrenalin subsided and she calmed herself. She gazed out of the window at the blur of fields and electric cables whizzing past. Grant must have been royally pissed off about not getting to run the whole rig.
They’d met during Operation Herrick 11. Helen had been attached to an infantry battalion in Helmand, Grant was a company commander. It had been an instant attraction. She’d never figured out if her magnetic pull towards some military men was as a result of meeting no one else, or there was something about them she found genuinely alluring. Grant had personally shown her around the camp. It had been a shithole carved into rock and sand, but he made it feel like home for his men. He’d soothed her anxiety over being a female imposter in a man’s world. The gravitational force between them, apparent from the first cup of hot tea shared across an upturned ammo box, set the bar for the rest of the tour, which they spent in denial of their feelings. It was only when they returned to the UK, free from the threat of court martial for fraternising on an operational tour, that they launched into a whirlwind romance.
She continued to stare out of the window and studied the French countryside. She could already see the Alps in the distance and she wished she was skiing. With him? Not any more. Skiing was the only activity she did that allowed her to forget everything in her life. There was something magical about being on top of a mountainside, covered in snow, with bright blue sky affording the sun front-row seats, facing a red run on a wide piste flanked by pines and
