Helen was careful with her answer.
‘What I mean is, I’m better at chasing people rather than money. What we need is a nerd who loves digging around in the dark looking for invisible numbers,’ Helen said.
‘I’ve got just the person. Go and see Hilda in Fraud on the fourth floor. Give her everything, she’ll find a nerd for you. The Americans have never asked for our help with pinning criminal activity on Fawaz so far.’
‘They rarely would,’ Helen said.
‘So, why now?’ Sylvia said.
‘They have? Specifically?’ Helen asked.
‘Via the British ambassador to Paris.’
‘Sir Conrad?’ Helen asked.
Sylvia nodded.
Chapter 21
Grant watched as the man he’d followed left his Paris apartment. The plan had worked. He’d posted a pay-as-you-go mobile through the man’s door in a brown envelope, a universal tactic to contact sources, and called it after a few hours. The man had fallen for it and agreed to go to an address at four p.m. Now, he watched as the man left the stairwell and Grant calculated that he had well over an hour. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves.
It wasn’t difficult to get in – a simple credit card down the door frame and a bit of physical strength did the trick. Grant shook his head: it shouldn’t be this easy – the man was an amateur. He clicked the door closed quietly behind him and left the lights switched off. Instead, he let his eyes become accustomed and began to get to know the layout of the flat. It was sparsely decorated, with nothing indicative of a personal life. It was like a sniper’s pad, indicating that the occupant was ready to move at short notice. Grant had lived embedded with two professionals in Iraq for six months, so he knew the signs. But he saw no obvious weapons on display. The bathroom was clear of the man’s objects, as was the bedroom. A single camp bed lay in there with one chest of drawers, which Grant searched. He found several mobile phones and connected each one to the device he’d brought with him, telling him of their recent usage, and storing any information from texts. He placed them back where they’d been. Next he searched the living area, which was darker than the rest of the flat because it only had a window facing the stairwell. There was one armchair, a radio, a small TV set and a coffee table.
On the coffee table, he found an A4 pad and flicked through it. It read like the erratic note taking of a busy mother: lists, dates, phone numbers and addresses. All in Arabic. Grant’s proficiency in the language was patchy but he recognised a few characters. One thing did stand out, however, and that was a crudely drawn map of what looked like a dock. He turned it every which way and read the labels – this time in French, a language he was more comfortable with. It gave directions to a storage facility, with the docks numbered so it was easier to find. The drawing was angular and uniform, making Grant think that it was a modern dockyard. There were two main points that were highlighted: a landing point and a meeting point. The drawing wasn’t to scale but it did say that it would take twenty minutes to get between the two, but was that driving or walking? Scribbled along the port side of one of the arrows was ‘Q d.p. Wilson’ and Grant knew that it was the name of a huge Quay in Marseilles.
He took photographs with his phone before he closed the pad, leaving it as it was before, and went to check the kitchen cupboards. In the first he found electrical equipment. In the second were circuit boards in various stages of completion. He found antennae in the third, and in the last were radios. The guy was a nerd, but who for? And what was he making?
Grant left the flat and hurried down the stairwell, walking all the way to the metro at Gare du Nord, where he’d left the trusty battered Renault he’d bought with Khalil’s money. When he arrived in Lyon, he’d buy another cheap French banger. He called Khalil and told him of the map of Marseilles docks, and the stash of electronics.
‘Bomb making?’ Khalil asked.
‘It seemed a lot more sophisticated than that,’ Grant told him. ‘To make a bomb all you need is a few cables and some explosive, plus a vessel. It’s child’s play. I don’t think the plan is to blow up your ships, if that’s what you’re thinking. They don’t need you to get bomb-making equipment out of Africa – it’s something else.’
‘You know a lot about it. Where are you?’ Khalil asked.
‘On my way to Lyon to find Madame Bisset,’ he replied. He picked his way through the Paris traffic, itching to get to the southern city as fast as he could.
They hung up. Grant rubbed his eyes. He’d never struggled with sleep – learning to doze off over an army-issue Bergen backpack stuffed with a hundred pounds of kit in the middle of the Iraqi desert with two hours’ notice to move did that for you. He could sleep anywhere, and he did. But he was weary tonight, although he couldn’t afford to rest. He knew that the authorities would have contacted Madame Bisset already. In fact, one of the first things Khalil did was call the mother of his trusty guard and warn her, giving her a cover story should she need it. That did two things: it made her feel as though her son’s boss was in the dark over the whereabouts of Jean-Luc (which they were), and it also gave her the impression that Khalil was looking out for her (which they weren’t, quite). It had worked, and Marie Bisset had been charmed by a promise of a new life, funded by Khalil, regardless of if Jean-Luc had anything to do with Hakim’s disappearance
