ESCAPE UNTO DEATH

Princess #1

by

Lee Edgar

1

For me, that particular Spring day began just like any other. In fact, as it progressed, most of it was quite boring. I did some leisurely writing in the morning followed by a light lunch at the Bluebell Inn overlooking the 14th century bridge over the Tees; then, after an hour in the reference section of nearby Yarm library, it was time for a brisk walk along the muddy bank of the river.
Bruce padded along beside me, his long pink tongue hanging out, as the sun started to descend towards the tall trees lining the bank upstream. In an hour or so, fishermen would be home from work and would start to congregate in the warmth of this fine Spring evening. The town had been famous for its fishing since the Romans built a staging post here a while ago.
The Winter had not been a bad one, as Winters go, and I was now looking forward to the Summer which now lay, seemingly, just around the corner. It was the time of year in which to contemplate some on-the-spot research for my new book and I smiled at the thought as Bruce nuzzled against my leg on the narrow footpath.
When I first heard the sound, I ignored it. The children of the town would likely be out of school by now and, no doubt, a few of them were playing in the trees which stretched almost down to the river’s edge. However, I stopped when it came again, the hackles rising on my neck as Bruce stopped beside me, his own ears erect, our eyes staring in the direction from which the muffled cry had come. I could see nothing through the dense undergrowth, and all became silent again as I strained to ascertain the source of the disturbance. I clicked my fingers and pointed. Bruce sat, his eyes still wary.
Pushing aside the branches, I stepped into the trees. Had I imagined it? Was I about to make a complete fool of myself by disturbing some courting couple or the like? It was so unlike me to be even interested, let alone concerned. A few steps further and I froze as a group of four youths came into sight. Three of them were young men in their early twenties; rough-looking types with big boots, tattooes and earrings. Each of them wore faded blue denims and jackets emblazoned with studs and various emblems proving their loyalty to one of the most outrageous heavy metal groups of the decade.
I know for a fact that I did not make a sound as I approached but, instinctively, one of the youths turned and saw me. In doing so, he permitted me to catch a glimpse the final member of the quartet who was not dressed in the same manner as the others. In fact, she was hardly dressed at all. Virtually naked as she was, there were plenty of places I could have looked at and admired, but it was her eyes which caught my attention; they were brown, wide and staring, begging for help.
I suspect the leader expected me to run away in similar fright just at the sight of his scowling face. It was so ugly I’m sure it would have that kind of effect on most people. However, alone I might be, but frightened I was not, even when, as if by magic, the long-bladed knife appeared in his hand.
Neither of us said a word, the only sound being the faint whimpering from the girl on the ground, held down firmly by the other two, her pale blue dress rolled right up to her neck, her virgin white undies stuffed into her mouth to stifle her cries.
It seemed unreal, like some part of a strange dream and not one of us moved again for quite some time until, suddenly, all three males were on their feet and facing me, friendship being the last thing on their minds. I spoke but one word quietly and evenly - a name - and, within seconds, the dark shape was beside me, his teeth bared, his tail still, his eyes alert.
The young men were clearly undecided until I slowly undid my lightweight anorak and started to unfasten my belt. It came free from its loops easily and I wrapped the punched end around my hand, the heavy brass buckle hanging loose. They might have knives, but I had a Doberman called Bruce and a weapon which I knew from experience could break bones.
‘Get out of here!’ I said quietly to the girl without looking at her. She didn’t move, so great was her fear which had rendered her paralysed so I repeated my instruction in a sharper tone. ‘Go!’
My eyes watched the youths in case they tried to prevent her leaving but they didn’t move as the terrified teenager slipped quietly away and all became still once more.
‘We’ll get you for this,’ one of the youths muttered without moving.
I smiled. ‘You’re welcome to try. Who’s to be the first? You?’ At the last sharply-spoken word, I stepped forward and Bruce moved with me. Total panic broke out among their ranks and in no time at all they had gone and I relaxed once more. It had been a long time since I had been in such a situation and it was about then that I remembered I was now much older, and youth had been on their side. If they had attacked together...???
My car was precisely where I had left it and alongside it, her hands clasped together in front of her, the girl. Without speaking nor acknowledging her presence, I lifted the tailgate and Bruce jumped in and lay on his grey blanket.
‘I wanted to thank you,’ she murmured, nervously pushing her shoulder-length dark hair from her face as I unlocked the driver’s door and started to climb in behind the wheel.
I paused for a moment. ‘I suppose you want a lift.’
She nodded enthusiastically so I opened the passenger door from the inside. Neither of us spoke as I drove through town. Why I had offered her a ride, I didn’t know, it was most unlike me - pity, I suppose.
I noticed, as I drove, that she had lost her shoes in the process of either the struggle or the escaping and her feet looked swollen and bloodied from running on sharp stones, while her long, suntanned legs were scratched by the brambles. During one, brief, sidelong glance, I could also see that her dress was torn at the shoulder and her hair still looked a mess.
‘Where do you live?’ I asked with necessary but casual interest.
She told me and I turned onto the quiet council estate and stopped where she indicated. For some time, she made no move to get out of the car, just sitting there and watching me while I stared out of the windscreen at the children playing football against the garage doors until the sun finally gave up the ghost and fell behind the tall trees which lined the top of Worsall Bank.
‘Thank you,’ she eventually said and, leaning over, kissed my cheek.
A sudden, uncontrollable tremor ran through my whole body. I hated it! I hated her! I hated all women and what they had done to me over the years and, most of all, I detested such ridiculous shows of emotion. However, for her sake, I said nothing as she got out of the car, thanked me again, and waved before walking quickly up the path of the dirty-grey pebble-dashed semi with the broken gate.
I couldn’t blame the girl - it wasn’t her fault. After all, I doubted if she was more than seventeen or eighteen and couldn’t possibly have remembered the war. Mind you, neither could I, but I had suffered because of it like so many others of my age.
Putting the car in gear, I drove off with a screech of tyres. I had to put the episode far behind me, to forget quickly before the feeling of revulsion came back again. My hands were still sweating when I arrived outside my rambling thatched cottage in Egglescliffe and turned off the engine, my head resting on the padded steering wheel.
What was wrong with me? I had faced three youths complete with weapons and a fairly obvious intent to commit serious assault of one form or another and had felt no fear at all but my decorum had then dissolved in the presence of the girl.
Gynæphobia, the army doctor had called it all those years ago when I had received my forces discharge—total and absolute fear of women. It was Bruce who finally brought me back to reality by moving and I forced myself to get out of the car and let us both into the house.
‘Is that you, Dad?’ greeted the voice from upstairs as I closed the door.
‘Yes, Jonathan,’ I replied. ‘Is dinner ready?’
‘In the oven. I’ll be down in a minute.’
After hanging up my anorak on the hook behind the heavy wooden back door, I lifted the lids and sniffed in the pots on the Aga and glanced at the casserole that was simmering gently to itself. Jonathan and I always took it in turns to provide meals for each other when he was at home from University. Since Mary left, it was one of those little things that had kept us together and sane.
I put on the kettle to make a pot of tea and found my hands were still shaking as I poured the brown liquid into two mugs and announced the fact to my son who stumbled down the stairs to eat and drink with me.
‘Can I borrow the car this evening?’ he asked later as we finished the stew he had prepared.
‘Of course,’ I said pleasantly. ‘Are you planning on going somewhere nice?’
‘I thought I’d pop over to see Jenny and Bob at Darlington.’
I instinctively tensed at the name of my daughter but Jonathan pretended not to notice the fact that I had suddenly lost my appetite.
‘Have a nice time,’ I forced out from between clenched teeth.
‘Why don’t you come, Dad?’ he said as he wiped his plate with a piece of bread - something his mother would never have allowed. ‘Jenny has changed, you know. She no longer blames you for what happened to Mum.’
‘I’ve got some work to catch up on,’ I lied. ‘I must stay home.’
Jonathan shrugged and got to his feet. ‘I’m only trying to help. Nothing will ever bring Mum back, but you and Jenny should not bear grudges any longer.’
I forced a smile. ‘One day, Jonathan. I promise, one day.’
My son went upstairs while I cleared the dishes from the table and began to load the dishwasher. As I sat down again and picked up the yet-unread newspaper, he gathered my car keys from the table and waved his farewell. In less than a minute, he was back; a wry smile upon his face.
‘I thought you might want these,’ he said, placing something on the table and then leaving again before I could answer.
I found myself rooted to the spot, unable to move a muscle as my eyes focussed on what he had discovered in my car. They seemed to grow and fill the whole kitchen as I stared in horror, my whole body trembling at what they represented. In the middle of the dining room table, precisely half way between the salt pot and the water jug, were a pair of girls’ panties.

IT was a long time before I could bring myself to move, to sit down at the table, to touch them. They were somewhat on the skimpy side and the last time I had seen them they had been stuffed into the girl’s mouth, presumably removed from a more appropriate part of her anatomy by the youths in their lust for whatever pleasure they had intended get from her. Jonathan didn’t know this, of course. As far as he was aware, I had finally overcome my phobia and had removed them myself from some fancy woman.
But I could never have done that. Mary had been the only woman in my life and, when she had left that rainy Thursday afternoon, my heart had gone with her. My own daughter, who I had loved dearly, blamed me entirely for the incident and had run away at the tender age of sixteen and had shacked up with the first fellow who came along. Fortunately for her, Bob Norris had loved her for what she was and they were now happily married with two small children.
Gently, I held the underwear in my hands and, for the first time, wondered if and how many of the lads had succeeded with the girl before I got there. In my own self-centred emotion, I had never even thought to enquire. I really ought to, I convinced myself. But how would I go about it?
I could simply walk up to her front door and hand her underwear to her father saying: ‘By the way, your daughter left these in my car last night.’ No! Perhaps not.
Maybe I would wait for her at the bottom of the street where she lived and then give them to her personally. No way. One more contact like the last one and I would be like a jelly once more. I was not prepared to take the chance. So what would I do? Suddenly, I had the answer and put myself to bed with a smile on my face.

IT was misty the following morning as I let Bruce out of the shed and we jumped into the car together and drove down the lane. Parking the car in the same place as before, I started walking. Along the river bank we strolled until I found the spot. A lonely fisherman sat on the opposite bank and I waved a brief greeting before plunging once more into the dense undergrowth.
In my mind’s eye, I could see it all over again as I stopped at the place where I had been the previous day. Glancing around to make sure I was alone, I searched and, eventually found one and, after a few minutes, the other. She had run away barefoot but, I had correctly surmised, had not arrived that way.
As far as I could tell, there was nothing in any way remarkable about her shoes but I now had an excuse for returning all her property and, albeit somewhat belatedly, enquire as to her state of health and mind. At least then my troubled conscience would be appeased.
I smiled and whistled as I strolled back towards the car, Bruce by my side, and the sun finally broke through the mist along the river. After starting the car, I turned right and drove through the High Street, up Worsall Road and onto the estate. At the end of the road, I paused to push her intimate clothing right to the toe end of one of the shoes. I had some story ready in case I met one of her parents and then pulled up outside the unremarkable-looking, semi-detached council house with its unhinged gate. Several children were just off to school, along with mothers with toddlers and shopping bags, as I stepped from the car with the shoes in a supermarket carrier bag and walked up the garden path.
One thing was certain, I noticed as I approached the house, her father was no gardener. The rough grass was a foot high in places and wisps of it even sprouted from the many cracks in the concrete path. I also had to lean sideways in places to escape the thorns of the briar hedge which was in need of urgent attention. However, it was not my problem so I shrugged and knocked on the poorly-painted front door.
Empty houses have a special sound about them. I don’t know what it is but this one had that special sound. But just in case this was the exception to the rule, I knocked again, louder this time. Still no answer. I stood back and surveyed the house. The windows were dirty, the obscuring net curtains grey with age. In fact, the whole place had an unloved look about it. Determined to be sure, I went through the narrow passageway between the houses and into the overgrown garden behind. After knocking on the back door a couple of times, I stepped up on an upturned metal bucket and struggled to peer in at the kitchen window.
‘Can I help you?’ asked a voice behind me and I turned to find an elderly gentleman from next door leaning over the adjoining gate.
I smiled with relief and walked towards him. ‘I was looking for the people who live here.’
‘Gone,’ he said with a shake of his wrinkled face.
‘Gone where?’ I asked, suddenly concerned that the girl may have been more badly hurt than I had imagined. Inwardly, I cursed myself for not having taken her directly to a doctor or hospital.
‘Gone.’ He pointed downward.
My heart skipped a beat. ‘Dead?’
‘Last night,’ he affirmed. ‘Twas the cancer as got her in the end.’
I frowned. ‘Cancer? The girl?’
‘Twain’t no girl,’ he laughed through his gums. ‘Old Ada was eighty if she were a day.’
My confusion must have been obvious. ‘Eighty? Then her daughter? Granddaughter?’
‘Weren’t no relatives as I know of, young sir. At least, not local.’
It seemed odd to be called young, but I suppose he rivalled the deceased Ada for age and, even at my forty years, I could conceivably have been his son or even, at a pinch, his grandson.
‘B..b..but,’ I stammered, ‘There was a girl here last night. Late teens with dark hair and brown eyes.’ Yes, I remembered the eyes. I will never forget those eyes as long as I live.
‘Last night?’ he said, becoming suspicious as to the real reason for my presence. ‘Ada went at midday and the place was empty after that. Ain’t never been no young girl has lived here, son. Not ever.’

I went home in a daze to find Jonathan getting ready to return to Newcastle for the Post-Witsun Term at University.
‘You were up early,’ he acknowledged as I walked into the kitchen. ‘I took you up a cup of tea in bed and found it empty.’
‘I had a job to do,’ I said, sitting down as my son put the kettle on once more. ‘Jonathan, can I confide in you?’
He looked at me in an old-fashioned way. ‘Dad. Have I ever let you down?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said defensively. ‘I didn’t mean to suggest you had. It’s just that I’ve got a rather delicate problem I need to talk to someone about.’
My son sat down opposite me and grinned wickedly. ‘Something to do with a pair of knickers?’
I recoiled at his outspokenness but then sighed. ‘In a way.’
Slowly and deliberately, I told him of my walk by the river, the girl, the house, the panties, the shoes, the old man.
‘Are you sure you went to the right place?’ he asked when I had finished. ‘Most of those houses on Willey Flatts tend to look the same to me.’
I nodded. ‘Positive. I remembered the broken gate and the post box on the corner. I went to the right house all right.’
‘Then was the old man lying, do you think?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. He wouldn’t have had any reason to. In fact, he got quite shirty when he thought I didn’t believe him.’
‘Have you been to the police yet? If someone was attacked or assaulted, it might have been reported to the local police station.’
I leant back in my chair. ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’
Jonathan smiled. ‘It’s your training, dad. After having to think alone for so long, it makes you independent.’ He gestured. ‘Ring them up.’
As I picked up the phone, I thought about what he had said. Yes, if only he knew the whole story about my early life. Then he would have real reason for concern.
‘Cleveland Police,’ came the eventual reply to my telephone call.
‘Could I talk to Inspector Parker, please?’
‘The Inspector is off-duty this morning sir. Will Sergeant Henderson suffice?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Duty officer,’ came the response to the frantic clicking on the line.
‘Good morning, Sergeant. It’s Mike Blackman from Egglescliffe. Tell me, have you had any reports of young women being assaulted lately?’
‘Are you serious, sir?’
‘Of course.’
‘Thirteen this month, so far.’
‘Thirteen?’ I swallowed. Had the whole world gone mad? ‘How about yesterday?’
‘Why would you be interested, Mr Blackman? Is this for another one of your story books?’
The note of disapproval was clear, even down the phone line, and I hurriedly reassured him. ‘Not at all. I just thought I heard something down by the river last evening.’
‘What kind of a something?’ the Sergeant asked carefully.
‘A struggle in the trees,’ I replied, equally as carefully.
‘Did you actually see anything, Mr Blackman?’
‘Not really,’ I lied, not wanting to get too involved.
‘Nevertheless, would you mind stopping in at the station as soon as possible?’
‘Is there a problem?’ I asked with more than a little trepidation.
‘Yes, I think that you could say that, sir. There was a teenage girl brutally raped and then hacked to death down by the river last night. I would like you to try and identify what’s left of the body.’

2

I sat down heavily after concluding the call. What on earth had happened? The girl had been alive when I had taken her home, of that I was absolutely certain. Also, there had been no body in the woods when I collected her shoes nor any sign of police activity as there surely would have been if a murder had been committed. On the other hand, where had the girl disappeared to? How did she manage to end up by the river again? Why did the youths kill her? And, most important of all, was I going completely bonkers?
Jonathan came with me to Stockton Police Station and then to North Tees Hospital where the body had been taken. My mind raced all the way but could not come up with a solution to the puzzle. However, within a few moments of arriving at the hospital, I knew at least some of the answers. Upon arrival, I was shown into a waiting room and, eventually, taken to where the body was. I followed the now-recalled Detective Inspector James Parker down the corridor and he held open the door for me as I stepped inside while Jonathan waited in the passageway.
‘I have brought someone to identify the body,’ Inspector Parker announced as the door closed.
‘This way,’ said the doctor. ‘She’s in here.’ He led the way to where a sheet-covered form lay on the table.
‘It’s not a pleasant sight,’ warned the policeman I had consulted several times on police matters in connection with material for my novels.
I smiled at him. ‘I was in the army, Jim. I know what death looks like.’
The doctor briefly held back the sheet and, despite what I had just said, I felt sick. During my life, I really had seen death in many guises. As a raw recruit, I had seen many a gory death in Northern Ireland and, later in life, in the Falklands Conflict. None of that prepared me for what someone had done to the poor girl who lay on the table before me. Her neck was swollen and purple from the strangulation, but whoever had killed her had not stopped there.
Of the additional injuries, I saw very little. What I was interested in more than anything was the colour of her hair and eyes. The hair, I could see. Dark, almost black and shoulder-length. In its final moments, the face had become distorted by the pain of her inhumane treatment. It could have been the girl I had rescued or any one of a thousand others.
‘What colour are her eyes?’ I heard myself ask and Jim Parker looked at me sharply while the doctor consulted his notes.
‘Blue,’ he replied without thinking and I breathed again.
The Inspector faced me. ‘I thought you told my Sergeant that it was too dark for positive recognition.’
How was I going to get out of this without being held here for hours on a case I had just discovered I knew nothing about?
‘It was dark,’ I said carefully. ‘But I thought I caught a glimpse of a girl running through the trees. I’m sure she had lighter hair.’
He frowned. ‘Where was this, Mr Blackman?’
‘Along the river bank near the Bluebell Inn.’
The doctor replaced the sheet with a sigh. ‘This poor girl was found not far from the Parish Church. I calculate she died at about eight o’clock.’
Good grief! Less than an hour after I had rescued my girl and barely half a mile away. Was this hideous crime committed by the same youths, perhaps in some kind of fury after their initial attack had been frustrated? Had I inadvertently caused this other girl’s death by my unscheduled intervention?
After returning to the Police Station for some further questioning and, upon making a statement, I was allowed to go. Jonathan drove the car out of town, onto the A66, and we were half-way to Darlington before I realised his route. ‘Where are we going?’
‘To see Jenny.’
I started to panic. ‘But Jonathan...’
‘Dad, it has to be done. Something is going on which is causing you considerable distress and it is at times like these that bygones must be bygones.’
‘But it’s too soon,’ I argued lamely.
‘Dad. I have always done what I have been told. However, this time, you are going to do what I say. I know I’m right.’
I relaxed in resignation. ‘As you wish. I don’t think I care any more.’
‘Dad. There has to be an answer. A girl just doesn’t disappear like that. This whole thing can’t be all just a set of coincidences.’
‘I...’
‘Listen to me. Either someone is trying to drive you crazy or that girl is in real trouble, whoever and wherever she is.’
‘Are we imagining all this?’
‘I’m not. I saw the look on your face when you heard of the murder and that was for real. And so are the panties she inadvertently left in your car and the shoes you found in the trees.’
‘But why will seeing Jennifer help now?’
‘We are dealing with females, Dad. To find one, we must use one. Jenny might just think of something we men-folk have missed.’
On the outskirts of Darlington, we turned off the main road and finally arrived outside the little terraced house where my daughter lived. As Jonathan opened the car door for me, I could feel my emotions rising even before he knocked on the front door of the house. I felt sick as it opened and almost passed out as Jenny’s soft arms wrapped themselves around my neck and her lips were warm on my face.
Tears streamed down my daughter’s face as she led me inside and sat me on the sofa, holding tightly to my hands. ‘Dad, what can I say? I’m so glad you’ve finally come to see me.’
‘Jennifer,’ I said quietly, ‘I’ve been so very stupid.’
‘Haven’t we all?’ she said with a smile through her tears. ‘But now it’s all over.’
‘It might be just starting,’ interjected Jonathan soberly.
My daughter turned to face him. ‘What do you mean?’
Jonathan explained as Jennifer watched my face, her mouth open, until he finished. She asked me several questions, always very practical, like her mother, and, eventually, Jonathan produced the carrier bag.
She examined the contents. ‘Have you ever seen the girl before?’
‘Of course not,’ I replied defensively. ‘I don’t go around looking at young girls.’
‘No you don’t, do you?’ She smiled. ‘You really loved mother, didn’t you?’
I nodded with tears in my eyes and she changed the subject tactfully. ‘The panties are fairly ordinary, though they are not English.’
I sat up straight and so did my son.
‘The label,’ she explained, showing us. ‘These came from Printemps.’
‘A present from a visitor, perhaps?’
‘Possibly. But the shoes are not English either.’
‘Paris again?’
She shook her head. ‘Toulouse,’ she said with certainty, peering at the imprint inside. ‘And very expensive.’
‘How expensive?’
‘Hand made,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘Real leather with soft-grip soles. Whoever it was who bought these was not short of a bob or two.’
‘But the girl had no accent to speak of,’ I protested. ‘I could have sworn she was local.’
Jennifer burst out laughing. ‘How would you know, Dad? You never could tell a Geordie from a Scouse.’ We all laughed together and what atmosphere had been, gradually dissipated.
Nothing more was discovered as we reviewed everything we knew and, eventually, it was time to go. Jenny’s husband would soon be home for his dinner and we had to get back to Egglescliffe so that Jonathan could finish his packing. Jennifer came with us to the door and, suddenly, she was in my arms once more.
‘Dad, I do love you,’ said my daughter and I held her tightly for the first time in ten years.

THAT afternoon, I took Jonathan to Newcastle and dropped him at his college. Waving goodbye, I left as the sun began to set and drove towards home. The traffic was its usual congested self in Yarm Road so I stopped briefly at the off-license to collect a four-pack of lager and turned into the village as darkness finally enveloped the County of Cleveland. As I got out of the car, my old instincts warned me that something was wrong but it took me several minutes to identify the source of my concern—Bruce was silent.
Without moving, I waited beside the car until my eyes were completely accustomed to the darkness before crouching against the house wall and carefully pushing open the door to the shed where he usually slept. At waist height, I peered inside. It was empty. Where on earth was he?
I looked at the outside of the cottage and everything looked quite normal, in darkness as it should have been, but I was not happy. Cautiously, I made my way to the back of the outhouse where I quietly pushed aside Bruce’s basket and felt around for the small trapdoor recessed into the solid concrete floor. Lifting the hidden lid that an untrained eye would never have seen in a million years, I carefully unlocked the inner compartment and lifted out a flattish package wrapped in oilskin. Then, removing the protective outer layer, I wiped the object with my handkerchief, quietly opened the other packet and took out a full clip which I inserted into the butt of the automatic. Taking off the safety-catch, I stood up, my old non-standard army hand-gun at the ready. My brain told me that I might be making a complete and utter fool of myself. However, my instincts assured me that I was not.
As quietly as I could, I shrugged out of my anorak in case it rustled as I moved and laid it on the back seat of the car before kicking off my shoes and creeping towards the door of the cottage. The hinges creaked slightly as I pushed it open. Up to now, we had rarely locked doors in this somewhat secluded village. Perhaps tonight was a good time to start.
No strange shadows leapt at me in the kitchen nor, for that matter, in the living room or hall. However, as I headed across the hallway, I froze as a slight sound from the stairs reached my ears and I went into a crouch as the dark shape padded towards me.
‘Bruce,’ I whispered as I reached out and touched his head. ‘How on earth did you get in?’
I would have felt pretty stupid if he had answered me but, instead, he nuzzled up to me with silent affection. One thing was certain, if an intruder was in the cottage, he would be far more frightened than I was right now.
Suddenly, Bruce turned and padded back up the stairs and I followed a little more cautiously. At the top step, I fell onto my hands and peered around the edge of the landing at skirting height. Empty. Bruce went into my bedroom without hesitation and, to my amazement, no-one screamed or attempted to get away from him. I came to the conclusion that my imagination had to be working overtime so, getting to my stockinged feet, I sauntered over to the doorway and clicked on the dim bedroom light. I must be getting old.
Bruce lay down so, relaxing slowly, I tossed the gun onto the bed. It moved. The covers fell back and I nearly had a heart attack at what I saw. No wonder Jonathan and I hadn’t been able to find the girl. We had been looking in all the wrong places.

The tremors started in my knees and gradually worked their way up my body until the sweat poured from my face and she could have done anything just then and I would have been totally helpless. I struggled to gain control so as to be able to deal with the situation but she did nothing but lay back, her dark hair contrasting the starched, white pillow.
‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said in a husky voice and I felt what little control I had regained disappear again as she threw the sheets off altogether and slipped her long legs to the floor.
A wave of relief flooded over me when I saw she was still wearing her dress. For one terrible moment, I’d thought... No, things like that only ever happen to James Bond.
I eventually pulled myself together. ‘How did you get in?’
‘Easy,’ she replied, patting my dog affectionately. ‘Bruce is an old softy at heart.’
I’d heard Bruce called lots of things in my time but Softy...? Never. I knew that to try to get past my army-trained Doberman, she had taken a very considerable risk.
There were a lot of questions which clamoured to be answered but some would have to wait. Just in time, I remembered that she had, only a few hours ago, been assaulted and possibly raped and I was not so insensitive as to remind her now of that terrifying ordeal. Rape is a horrible thing; not just because of the physical damage done, often permanent in the case of a young girl, but also the mental anguish caused and the deep, emotional scars that would be left for a long time, perhaps forever.
Instead, I took a different tack. ‘Comment vous appellez vous?’
‘Je m’appelle Simone,’ she replied without thinking and then, looking up at me with big, innocent eyes, ‘How did you know?’
‘The underclothes,’ I said, holding them up. ‘And the shoes.’
‘You are clever,’ she said taking her things from my hand. ‘No wonder everyone buys your detective books.’
‘Not really,’ I admitted. ‘My daughter read the labels.’
She looked surprised. ‘You have a daughter?’
I nodded. ‘And a son at University.’
‘I hope you don’t mind my borrowing your bed. I didn’t get much sleep last night.’
I sighed. ‘If this was just some kind of a story, it would be about now you started to tell me what this is all about.’
She sat on the edge of my bed and looked down at her fingers for some time. ‘I need your help.’
I sat beside her, not too close. ‘Where do you live?’
‘At Foix, just south of Toulouse.’
‘Your parents....?’
‘My mother died some years ago and my father lives in Paris.’
‘And you are in England on your own?’
She nodded. ‘It is necessary.’
‘Necessary for what?’
‘Necessary to get help. As soon as I saw you, I knew you were the one. You were so brave in facing those three punks and yet...I saw kindness and...mercy in your eyes.’
Tentatively, I touched her small hand. She was so very like Jennifer at that age. ‘How can I help you?’
‘By coming back to France with me.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because there is no-one else.’
I frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I told the French police that threats had been made against my father but they would not believe me. They said I was mad and should be locked away. Even my friends laughed at me.’
‘But why come to England?’
‘During the war, my family was helped considerably by the brave British men who came to help us. I thought that, maybe....’
‘We would help you again?’
She nodded. ‘I have tried everything else.’
What she said only partly made sense but I felt she was in no fit state for serious interrogation. ‘But why here? And how did you find out where I lived?’
She beamed. ‘Easy. Everyone in Yarm knows the famous writer of spy books and detective novels.’
‘But how did you know it was me when we...er...met?’
She tapped the side of her turned-up nose. ‘Elementary, my dear Watson.’ She laughed. ‘You see, I am reading the detective stories, too.’
I smiled. ‘Not one of mine, I’m afraid. Come on, tell me.’
She reached over and picked up a copy of “Plot” from the small bookcase beside my bed and there, on the fly-leaf for all to see, was a photograph of me with a smiling Mary. Not a very good one, taken several years ago, but a near-enough likeness. ‘I’m sorry, Monsieur Blackman, but...’
‘Michael.’
She glanced at me and then pronounced my name the French way. ‘Michael... Just take it from me that you are now the only one who can help me to save my father.’
I stopped breathing yet again. ‘Save him? From what? From whom?’
‘From Le Consortium.’
‘Who... who or what is Le Consortium?’
‘A group of big businessmen who plan to rule the world.’
Her face went bright scarlet. I could hardly blame it when her only companion - me - was lying on the bed convulsed with laughter.
She stood up. ‘They said I was wrong to come here.’
I gripped her arm. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that what you just said is the sort of thing I write in my books.’
‘Monsieur,’ she said, still angry, her head held high. ‘This is not a story.’
‘Convince me.’
‘How can I?’ she spat at me. ‘You’re like the others. You won’t believe me if I do tell you.’
I sat up. ‘I’ll try.’
She looked at me for a long time, her suntanned face streaked with tears, her brown eyes sad, her shoulders slouching. In her pony tail and pleated dress, she was no longer the almost-woman who had set out on what must have seemed at the time a vain quest but simply a lonely, unhappy child in need of a friend. I patted the bed and she sat down again a little nervously.
‘Now tell me,’ I said and she did.

An hour later, I wished I hadn’t asked.
While I contemplated the implications, she fell asleep. Carefully, I lay her onto my bed and tucked the duvet around her before turning off the light. I pointed for Bruce to stay and guard, went and recovered my shoes and anorak, firmly locked all the doors and windows and finally went to Jonathan’s room and lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling.
I could not sleep. What she had told me was fantastic and yet...
In my mind, I ran over the details and related them to what I already knew about the situation from a long time ago. She had been very fortunate to accidentally stumble upon me. No wonder no-one believed her, I wouldn’t if I didn’t know the things I had learnt over the years.
After hours of lying awake, I began to doze off but images kept coming and going like ghosts from the distant past. Paris... Toulouse... death... Geneva... Laroque-des-Albères... death... John... Princess... death... Roger... Star Wars Project... death... death... death...
I woke up sweating again, this time with real fear, and tiptoed back into my room to check that I was not dreaming the whole affair and I saw the ever-vigilant Bruce’s head move slightly as he watched me. The moonlight shone in through the window and illuminated Simone’s sleeping form. She must have woken at some point, for her dress was now neatly folded over the back of the chair. The duvet had slipped a down to her waist and one long bare leg was hanging off the side of the bed. I stood and watched for some time, listening to her steady breathing, wondering if anyone would ever replace my lost Mary. For a second, I even debated with myself as to whether Simone could be the one who could do that and whether or not I should be under that duvet with her.
Half of me said that it would be taking advantage of a young woman whilst in a disturbed mental state while the other half argued that a girl who deliberately removed all her clothing when she knew she was alone in the house with a man was asking for it. I reached out to touch her but then hesitated. Instead, I carefully pulled up the duvet to cover her back and gently tucked the leg back inside.
There was no time to consider such fantasies. I had no idea as to how on earth Simone had come by the information she had given me but one thing was certain—I had to act and act very quickly. On the other hand; if only half of what she had told me was true, the two of us might just as well eat, drink and be merry together, for tomorrow we were all going to die.

3

I awoke as if from a drugged sleep. I had a splitting headache and my tongue tasted as if it had spent the night inside an unripe grapefruit. Slowly, I opened my eyes and realised where I was and, for a moment, wondered why I was in my son’s bed instead of my own. Then I remembered. At the same time, I heard sounds from below in the kitchen and relaxed again. A few moments later, there was the double set of footsteps on the stairs and Simone entered preceded by the faithful Bruce who laid his head on the bed and looked at me with sad eyes.
A night’s rest had transformed Simone’s appearance. Her eyes were bright and lively, her hair brushed and shiny, her skin looking smooth and flawless. The discord was her torn dress now modestly held together with a couple of safety pins. The sight started me trembling and I struggled to master it.
‘Coffee?’ the unknowing girl asked over a pair of mugs on a tray.
‘Yes, please,’ I managed to say fairly evenly. ‘You are very domesticated.’
‘Only when I want to be,’ she said with a voice which sounded like the tinkling of sheep bells against the background of a mountain stream. ‘Usually, I have other people do this for me.’
Suddenly, I remembered what Jenny had noticed about her shoes. Someone not short of a bob or two, she had said. It seems my clever little daughter was right after all.
Simone put the tray on the bed then knelt down beside Bruce, her arm around his shoulders, and looked at me with her big eyes. I felt the feeling coming again and strove to suppress it but failed miserably.
‘What is it?’ Simone asked with concern, her hand on my arm.
‘It’s nothing,’ I said, not explaining that she was the cause. ‘It will soon pass.’
She sat back against the radiator, hugging her legs, and I couldn’t help noticing that her panties were back in their correct place. She smiled. ‘I must look a mess.’
It would have been far from gallant for me to agree with her so I simply smiled. ‘We must get you some clothes.’
Her eyes lit up again. ‘Are you going to help me?’
‘Perhaps.’
She smiled. ‘Thank you.’
‘I haven’t agreed yet,’ I pointed out.
‘Then, thank you for thinking about it.’
‘We will need a cover,’ I said thoughtfully.
‘A cover?’
‘A story to explain what we are doing. If what you have told me is true. Someone will try to stop us.’
‘They already have,’ she admitted sadly; ‘In Paris last year. My friend, Marie-Ange Le Touzel, and I were up for the ballet festival and she was captured in mistake for me. David and I had to rescue her from a Paris warehouse.’
I felt thick and must have sounded it. ‘David?’
‘David Thomas. An Englishman who lives and works with Marie-Ange in Argèles.’
Twang! Now there was a name from the past. So John had been right all along - something was going on in France. My older brother had died when an Exocet had struck his ship in the Falklands but very few knew why he was there. Like myself, he had been temporarily seconded to the SAS for a very special mission and that one missile had put an end to the very secret plans and thus the war was prolonged needlessly. After John had done so much to help France, it was ironic that the missile which had caused his death should have been designed and manufactured by the French.
I reflected for a moment on the stories he had told me when I was a youth and he was at home on leave. I remembered how he had been unloaded into France from an allied submarine right at the end of the war and how he had fought to prevent the Germans from changing their identities and fleeing into Spain as supposed refugees. Maybe it was partly his death which had triggered off my own feelings. That, in turn, had made me feel I needed to make up for him, causing me to neglect both a loving wife and devoted family without recognising the signs which had been so obvious to everyone else.
I had treated Mary very badly, I knew afterwards, and when she had finally left me and later committed suicide during the spy trials, my only daughter had turned on me with a vengeance. In turn, guilt had overwhelmed me and all I had accomplished had dissolved in a matter of months. The nervous breakdown, the feeling of utter rejection, the enquiries due to the secret nature of my work, they all fused together to make me what I am today - an out-of-work, poorly-pensioned ex-army intelligence officer trying to put some butter on the bread and keep his son at college by writing pathetic stories about people who have never existed. Perhaps if I wrote about what was currently happening, it would make a story worth reading, assuming of course it was allowed to be published and that there was anyone around to read it afterwards.
Simone was looking at me oddly, as if weighing me up. She had an unusual way of holding her head at an angle sometimes and it looked very childlike, innocent. I picked up the bedside phone and dialled a number.
‘Jenny,’ I eventually said into the instrument. ‘Do you know Roger’s number in London?’
‘Sorry, Dad. He moved recently and we lost touch. I have his work number so maybe they can help.’ She gave it to me.
‘By the way,’ I said. ‘I found what I was looking for.’
My daughter sounded excited. ‘You’ve found the girl? Is she all right?’
I looked at Simone and smiled. ‘Yes. She’s perfectly all right. In fact, she’s going to become my assistant for a while. I need to do some research for a new book I’m writing, so Simone is going to help me.’
‘Simone? Is that her name?’ Jenny was silent for a moment. ‘Dad. Is there something you’re not telling me?’
‘Certainly not! And now you go wash your mouth out, Jennifer Norris.’
‘Whoops!’ She laughed. ‘You must be angry, you used both my names.’
I quickly changed the subject. ‘Will you look after Bruce for me?’
‘Aren’t you going to take him with you?’
‘I would love to but they would put him in quarantine when I tried to bring him back into the country.’
‘Just how far are you going?’
‘Only to France.’
‘With this young bit of crumpet?’
‘Jenny, behave yourself.’
‘Yes, Dad. Have a good time.’
‘I doubt it,’ I said, not daring to reveal what might happen. ‘But I’ll certainly try.’

I daren’t take Simone into Yarm, people would definitely talk, so we went into Stockton instead to get her some replacement clothes. She settled on denims and tee-shirts and a pair of trainers so I was hardly out of pocket as she hung onto my arm while we walked back to the multi-story car-park. Suddenly, I grabbed her around the waist, my hand over her mouth, and ducked behind a car near the entrance. Fifty feet away was my pale blue Volvo estate and, sitting on the bonnet, were the three punks from Yarm.
I looked at Simone and her eyes were wide and staring, not understanding. I whispered in her ear and she nodded and relaxed. Fortunately, they hadn’t seen us enter the car park but the problem was, how would we get out again?
Before I could stop her, Simone was on her feet and walking towards them, casually, her hands pushed deep into the front pockets of her denims, a broad smile upon her face.
‘Bonjour, mes amis,’ she said cheekily and they gaped at her in disbelief.
I’ll give her one thing, she moved very fast, ducking under the leader’s outstretched arm like a dodging rugby player. Her new trainers squealed on the tarmac surface as she twisted and turned while I surreptitiously crept from car to car until I was just ten feet from my car. It was as I reached out to unlock the door that one of them saw me. I glanced towards Simone as the leader turned towards me. She was leaning on the bonnet of a Vauxhall Cavalier with two of them facing her. Distracted by the call of the leader, one turned and the other grunted.
He couldn’t help it really. Simone leant back and her foot came up like a whiplash, catching him in the place where it brought the greatest pain. Before he hit the ground, she had skidded around the other one and was running, full-tilt, towards the slipway to the car park. United they were a formidable enemy. Divided, they were pathetic.
The leader turned at the fall of his colleague and, before he knew it, I was in the car and the engine was running. It’s only in very predictable stories where the car refuses to start under such circumstances. The leader leapt for his life as I gunned the engine and the back end came round with a scream of tortured rubber. The whole car shook as I hit the ramp at speed, bursting out into daylight and gathering traffic. I saw Simone straight away, running hell-for-leather along Bridge Road.
It was about then that I first wondered how it was they had caught her in the first place. Right now, she seemed like a girl who was quite capable of taking care of herself and making a very good job of it in the process.
Roaring down the bus lane on the wrong side of the road, I picked her up just before the traffic lights and then turned across the oncoming cars just as her pursuer came alongside.
Caught off balance, he ran straight into the car and then rolled over the bonnet to the dismay of passers-by and fell in a heap in the road. Before he could recover his senses, we were halfway down Yarm Lane and he was a dot on the rear window.
All the way home, I kept glancing in the mirror but nothing suspicious appeared. Just to make sure, I went past my usual turning and drove around the block, approaching from the opposite direction but I had wasted time and petrol. No-one was following us.
‘Get whatever you think we might need quickly,’ I said as I screeched to a halt outside my cottage. ‘I’ll leave Bruce here on guard for a while and my daughter and her husband can collect him from here tomorrow.’
‘Do you mean those men might know where you live?’
‘I don’t know. But I’m not taking any chances. You found me, didn’t you?’
Simone grabbed a few items and loaded them into the car while I made some calls. After letting Jennifer know that we were going and warning her not to come to the cottage alone (in case of burglars, I told her), I rang a London Number.
‘Good afternoon, Technic,’ came the distant reply.
‘Could I speak to Mr Roger Blackman, please?’
‘Certainly, sir,’ said the voice. ‘Hold the line.’
I waited for a long time, my nerves getting worse by the second, until a strange man’s voice reached my ears. ‘Electronics.’
‘Is Roger there, please? Roger Blackman.’
‘I’m sorry. Mr Blackman is away.’
‘Away? Do you know where he went?’
‘No, sir. He just left suddenly a few days ago.’
My grip tightened on the phone as the line disconnected and I stabbed at the dial once more.
‘Cambridge Weather Centre,’ came the response.
‘Data Evaluation, please.’
‘One moment. Putting you through.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Computer section,’ said the pleasant voice.
‘Suzette? It’s me.’
‘Uncle Mike? How nice to hear from you. Are you well?’
‘I’m fine. Tell me, where’s your brother, Roger?’
‘I don’t know. Why do you ask?’
‘Bear with me, Suzette. What was he working on before he disappeared?’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t tell you that.’
‘Suzette, I have signed the Official Secrets Act. I am not an Iraqi spy.’
‘But.. your illness...’
‘I’m fine now. What was he working on?’
Her answer was the one I least wanted to hear. ‘Missile guidance systems.’
Good God!
‘Are you still there, Uncle Mike?’
‘Yes, I’m here. What are you working at? Is that a secret, too?’
‘Oh, no,’ she laughed pleasantly. ‘I’m just a weather girl.’
‘Tell me,’ I asked carefully. ‘What are you using to gather the data?’
‘Why, Princess, of course.’
Bang! went my stomach. ‘How long has she been in orbit?’
‘Nine months. Is everything all right?’
‘Of course,’ I reassured her. ‘And are the heat sensors working correctly?’
‘So you know about those? Yes, they are. They measure the temperature of air currents in the upper atmosphere so that we can get a better idea of the weather.’
So it was already too late! ‘Nothing else?’
‘What else did you expect?’ She laughed again. ‘There’s nothing secret going on here.’
Sweet Suzette, if only you knew. I must have sounded very brusque as I said: ‘Thanks for your help. I’ll be in touch,’ and rang off.
‘Who is this Princess?’ asked Simone from behind me. I jumped. How much had she heard?
‘P.R.N.C.S. Photoconductive Radiation Network Communications Satellite. She is in geostationary orbit over the Sahara with heat sensors scanning the whole of Europe.’
‘Is that what this is all about? A space satellite?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said.
Perhaps indeed! So they had finally done it. No wonder Le Consortium wanted me in France. Now I knew I had no choice but to go. If I didn’t, Suzette would be next and I couldn’t take that chance with my own niece.
While Simone finished loading the car, I strapped on my shoulder holster. Even after ten years, it felt right. I should never have left the department and, even now, it might be too late. Picking up the spare clips of ammunition, I felt a little more secure, but not much. How Simone had really found me, I still wasn’t sure but, one-by-one, the pieces were beginning to fit together and I knew for an absolute certainty that I had very little time in which to finish the whole jig-saw.

I stopped briefly at the service station in Yarm Road to fill up and took little notice of the passing traffic. If I had been more alert, I would have seen the red Volkswagon pause at the corner and then roar off down Butts Lane.
I paid my bill and bought a few extra items for the journey and then remembered my camera. Perhaps if I was to get some kind of photographic evidence of what I might find, someone, somewhere, might just believe us.
I was half-way back down the lane when I saw it, high above the trees. Somebody must be having a good bonfire with all that smoke. The VW passed us going the other way and I caught a fleeting glimpse of three laughing faces. I suddenly knew what I would find when I turned the last bend onto the village green.
It hadn’t taken them much - a gallon of petrol poured liberally over the dry thatch and woodwork, one lighted match and it was already too late. Even during the few seconds I hesitated, the raging flames spread up the side of the outhouse and along the front porch. Everything would be gone - my home; all my work over the last ten years; my son’s things; and for what?
I glanced at Simone who looked as if she had been hit with a poleaxe and then I recoiled at the single word she uttered.
‘Bruce,’ she whispered and I was out of the car in a flash.
I was wasting my time. There was no way anyone could have got within twenty feet of that raging inferno and all I could see through the kitchen window was his head as he tried to avoid the heat. I unzipped my anorak, heavy in heart, and slowly drew out the silenced automatic. I had no choice.
As I walked back to the car, Simone launched herself into my arms, tears streaming down her face, in obvious distress, and yet another piece of the puzzle dropped into place as she cried out in anguish; ‘Oh Michael, what have I done to you? What have I done?’

4

I didn’t move for some time as Simone buried her face in my chest and wept like a child. Already, the usual feeling was building up inside me as I struggled to try to keep calm and rational. It didn’t work, but at least I now had something on which to unleash my hatred. My arms hung by my side as the flames warmed my back and the siren of a fire engine in the distance reached my ears. I didn’t have much time.
Slowly, I raised my arm and looked at the heavy object in my right hand. The barrel was a little longer than normal and it had been reamed out internally so as to take an oddball eleven-millimetre projectile. Because of the increased size, the clip would now only hold six shots instead of the normal eight. However, with the power this weapon had, one shot was usually quite enough to stop anything smaller than a charging bull elephant. To compensate, a greater charge had been added to the cartridge which made the recoil something wicked but, in the right hands, it was a fearsome weapon. The bullets were hand-made of course, especially for the department, and each of the highly-illegal soft-nosed bullets had been deliberately hollowed out at the tip so that they would flatten on impact.
I placed the business end against Simone’s left temple, just in front of her ear, and she winced from the still-warm silencer. The safety catch was already off as I eased back the hammer. A very slight pressure on the three-ounce hair trigger was all that it would take to finish her. Just one touch and the hammer would fall onto the percussion cap, setting off the full charge which would send the capsule of lead hurtling down the barrel. After six inches of travel, it would hit her skull with a blow similar to that of a ten-ton lorry hitting a solid stone wall. Flattened to the size of a fifty-pence piece, it would tear through her head, scrambling her brain until it burst out the other side to cause an exit wound the size of a saucer. Yes, just one slight squeeze and her face would be all over my drive.
Could I do it? Yes I could. That’s what had finished my wife. Mary and I had split up because I was away so often and was unable to tell her where I was or what I was doing. That in itself had been bad enough, but what had pushed her right over the edge was to find out what I really did for a living. The kindly father-figure, Captain Michael Blackman, was a British Government assassin.
I won’t try to defend my actions nor to moralise. I was trained and paid to do a job and I knew for a fact that the world was a far better place for the dozen or so men that I had “taken out of circulation.” Simone would be my first female but that mattered little to me, even after ten years of retirement.
Carefully, she drew back her head and looked me in the face, her eyes pleading. At first, I thought she wanted me to spare her life but her expression clearly showed that it was not mercy she wanted but forgiveness. I longed to kill her, I had to kill her and then I would be free, never again to feel the indignity of gynæphobia.I would not just be shooting a young woman who had made a complete fool of me, I would be killing my own fear - forever.
A movement caught my eye and the front wing of a red Volkswagon peered around the boundary wall of Egglescliffe Hall. I looked back to Simone’s face. ‘From this moment on, you will do exactly as I tell you, do you understand?’
She vertically moved her head slightly.
‘Don’t look round. When I take my gun away, casually turn and get into the car. Let me down now and, I swear to God, I will kill you.’
‘I’ll do anything you say,’ she said and did.
As casually as I could, I got in beside her and started the engine, deliberately keeping my eyes away from the lane.
The wailing fire engine finally arrived just as I pulled slowly away from the Village Green at the end of which the Volkswagon was stopped. As we approached, the leader threw open the door and started to get out. At the last possible moment, I slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel. He screamed in pain as my reinforced front bumper hit his driver’s door and he was trapped between the door and the car itself.
I heard a sharp intake of breath from beside me as I pressed slightly on the throttle and the terrorist leader cried out in agony. I only had to move forward another few inches and his body would be minus an arm and a head. The other youths tried to get out of the other side of car but it was too close to the wall. I applied the handbrake and leaned out of my window, gun in hand.
Bedlam broke out in the other car as they struggled to get away from certain death and I raised my gun. I fired once and there was a loud bang followed by a brief rushing noise as the nearside front tyre was almost ripped from its rim by the force of the impact.
Carefully, I got back in the car and, still covering the leader, backed up a little to free his arm and head. Then, with foot flat down, I roared down Butts Lane and turned left at the bottom. As I drove across the stone bridge over the Tees, I pushed buttons on my mobile phone.
‘Cleveland Police,’ came the reply.
‘Inspector Parker, please.’
‘Parker,’ came the eventual reply.
‘Mike Blackman here, Jim. You’ve probably heard by now that my cottage is on fire. If you look sharp, you will catch the arsonists in Butts Lane.’
‘Won’t they be gone by the time we get there?’
‘Not if you arrive quietly, without those noisy sirens blaring to announce your arrival from miles away. There are three of them and they’re changing the wheel on their red Volkswagen car.’
‘A puncture?’
‘Precisely. And if you examine the knives they will be carrying, you might also solve a certain riverside murder in one foul swoop. But whatever you do, be careful. These people are not your run-of-the-mill yobos.’
I could almost see him sticking his chest out. ‘I think that you can safely leave the matter to me, Mr Blackman. This is, after all, routine police business.’
Routine police business be damned. I tried to tell him so but he ignored me. ‘Where are you now?’ he asked instead.
‘Nearby. I’ll be in touch.’
‘But, Mr Blackm....’
I cut him off and drove right through Yarm High Street and up Spital Hill. We were on the A19, heading south, before Simone spoke.
‘What murder?’ she said quietly.
‘Apparently, just after I dropped you off at where you told me you lived, a girl very like you was killed down by the river.’
She looked around sharply. ‘But what has that got to do...?’
‘Everything. It achieved two things. Firstly, it confused me for a while and, secondly, it has kept me on the run ever since. If I hadn’t known Jim Parker personally, I would have either been in jail by now or on the run from the police. Your friends were very clever.’
‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this,’ she said softly.
‘Then you admit that this is all one big confidence trick?’
‘Not entirely. My father really is in danger.’
‘Who are those yobos?’
‘They work for Guillemot Internationale.’
‘Part of Le Consortium?’
She nodded. ‘My father is one of the directors. He is the - what you say? - the forward man?’
‘Front man. Near enough,’ I admitted.
I drove a long way before either of us spoke again. My mind was racing faster than my car as, piece-by-piece, the whole thing started to fall together. I had been conned, well and truly had, and I pulled into a lay by near Thirsk and told her so with barely-controlled temper.
‘You were never really assaulted, were you?’
She looked down into her lap. ‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘Nor even attacked.’
She paused. ‘Not really.’
Instinctively, my hands went to her throat and I wanted to throttle her and repeatedly slam her head against the passenger window at the same time until all my frustrations had died away. She would most probably die away with them but, right then, I couldn’t have given a toss. It was all her fault. By her involving me in her scheming, she had killed my dog, she had burnt down my home, she had got me on the run from a bunch of raving loonies who wanted to rule the world. She had to die.
For a long time, I held her neck in my hands. Somehow this way was going to be more meaningful than a bullet through the brain. I thought that she would struggle, fight back in some way, but she didn’t. She just relaxed, closed her eyes and waited for death to come.
‘I’m sorry,’ was all she could get out as her face began to turn red and then purple.
Suddenly, I let go of her and a look of complete surprise came over her face as she opened her eyes and stared at me as she fought for her breath.
I got out of the car and walked off a little, still fuming but more controlled. I heard the car door open and she staggered rather than walked towards me until she fell into my arms and cried for a long time. As the sobbing got less, I gently stroked her hair and held her close, suppressing my own anger and frustrations.
‘Well, you sure fooled me, young lady,’ I said eventually. ‘When I first saw you, you looked frightened enough for both of us.’
She looked up. ‘I was terrified.’
I looked up quickly. ‘But why, if it was all just a trick?’
‘We were all supposed to go into the woods close to where we were informed you regularly exercised Bruce and I was told to scream so that you were sure to come running.’
‘Then what happened? You didn’t scream, did you?’
‘No. At the last minute, I got cold feet and felt sorry for what we were going to do to you, so I refused. Then Marcel, he’s the one in charge, he told the others to grab me and he started to tear my clothes off. Suddenly, it was all going wrong and I saw the look in their eyes. The three of them had been teasing me all the way from France about what they would like to do to me given half the chance. Now, it seemed, I had given them that chance they needed. They were going to rape me for their own enjoyment and then kill me for not obeying instructions.’
‘And all along I was to be the patsy. Was I supposed to fall in love with you? Was that it?’
She looked down and then nodded. ‘Possibly. At least it was hoped that you would feel sorry for me and take me home with you to protect me.’
‘But then you didn’t know about my hatred for women and that I would dump you as soon as I possibly could.’
‘Not at all. Beside the car, I thought for one terrible moment you were going to leave me there by the river and they would catch me again. If they had, I couldn’t bear to think of what they might do to me. I was desperate.’
‘And the house on the estate?’
She shrugged. ‘Just any house. When you didn’t take me home with you, I just did the first thing that came into my head. I then spent the night wandering around, looking for somewhere to sleep. I caught a bus into town but everyone simply stared at me. I nearly got assaulted three times just walking down Stockton High Street.’
‘I can believe it. What did you do then?’
‘In desperation, I went to your cottage. I’d hoped to try to get you to help me and maybe just like me a little.’
‘And, just supposing, I had fallen for you. How far were you to go in ensuring my assistance?’
She looked straight into my eyes. ‘As far as was necessary.’
‘With someone like me? Someone you didn’t even know?’ I was disgusted, especially when I remembered just how close I had come to sleeping with her.
She turned on me then. ‘I am not some kind of a whore, Michael. But I would have done anything to save my father, anything at all.’
‘Even kill?’
‘Yes. Hurt, kill, seduce, whatever it took.’ She looked down again. ‘I still will.’
‘And what were you supposed to do with me when you had got me hooked on your pretty little body?’
‘Take you to Paris.’
‘And then?’
‘I don’t know. It would not be up to me.’
‘But why me? That’s what I can’t understand.’
She looked a little confused. ‘Because you are Michael Blackman, of course.’
In spite of it all, I couldn’t help laughing. ‘What is so special about me?’
‘You are John Blackman’s brother.’
So that was it. We were both silent for some time before we got back in the car and continued south.
‘I spoke earlier of an Englishman who had helped the people of the valleys during the war,’ she continued eventually. ‘That man was your older brother.’
‘He married a French girl,’ I muttered, more to myself than to anyone else as we approached the outskirts of York.
‘Juliette de Bosvile was my aunt,’ Simone announced.
‘You are a de Bosvile?’ I said, shocked.
She nodded again. ‘Simone de Bosvile, La Comtesse de Ramsden.’
Holy cow! ‘That being so, your father is one of the richest men in France.’
‘Was,’ she said; ‘Until the Consortium got their claws into him. Just a few months ago, they tried to have us killed but we escaped and I transferred my own company away from them.’
I frowned. ‘Your own company?’
She nodded. ‘Guillemot Toulouse. It was clean, you see, no involvement with the Consortium, or so I thought.’
‘What happened?’
She shrugged. ‘They tried to vote me off the Board of Directors.’
‘But why?’
‘To pool the money centrally. The Consortium want total control of Europe.’
Normally, I would have laughed. But, in view of recent events, she had to be telling me the truth. John had been my brother and he had married Juliette de Bosvile. My niece, Suzette, was their second child which meant that Simone was Suzette’s niece although there couldn’t have been much of a difference in their ages.
The York by-pass was almost empty of traffic though, in an hour or so, the story would have been quite different. I didn’t know how many would be keeping tabs for us, nor how great the scope of Le Consortium was, but I was taking no chances. I kept a very sharp look-out in the rear-view mirror but I could have sworn we were not being followed. I didn’t know whether they would watch all the ports but I was going for the least likely - Hull.
‘Have you got your passport?’ I asked her as we belted towards Beverley.
Simone nodded and turned to recover her torn dress from the bag I had bought her in Stockton. In the top pocket was a small wallet I had not seen before. It contained her passport and several credit cards.
‘How did you come by so many credit cards at your age?’
She smiled wryly. ‘When you have money, there are ways.’
‘That sounds like Consortium talk.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said genuinely.
I stared out of the windscreen at the oncoming traffic. So they wanted me in Paris. Simone wouldn’t know why, of course, but I did and, by setting fire to my cottage, they had burnt my last boat. It seemed that for Simone’s sake, I would have to go but, in doing so, was going to have to play right into the hands of the worst kind of terrorists in Europe.

HULL in the rush-hour is not the best place in the world to be but, by half past five, we were heading along Hedon Road towards King George’s Dock. I had rung through en route and clarified that there was a spare space on the car deck. At this time of year, holiday traffic was fairly light but berths proved to be a different matter because, due to some International Festival, several coach-loads of musicians were on board, hogging most of the cabins. Nevertheless, we managed to book the last one on Green Deck and tossed for the bottom bunk.
One of the advantages of this longer sea-crossing is that you get chance of some sleep on the way, thus reducing the number of overnight stops. Once the ship sails, you also get access to as much food as you can eat, all thrown in the price, if you should feel peckish. Unfortunately, I was not peckish, I was starving so, after freshening up and checking to see what time the restaurant opened, we strolled down to the ship’s rail to watch the final casting-off and the laborious business with lock gates.
The ferry was scheduled to leave at six, British Summer Time, but due to some minor inconvenience called tides, it was over an hour later that the big blue and white boat left the safety of the dock and, soon, we were in the muddy Humber Estuary and dinner was being served.
Many people miss watching the departure. If I had been one of them, I would not have seen the arrival of a certain red Volkswagon nor the occupants who, abandoning their vehicle, climbed up the embarkation ladder just as the ship was leaving. I don’t know how they had slipped away from the police, but they had managed somehow.
Simone had not seen them so I let her remain in ignorance to save her worrying.
Perhaps if I had taken her into my confidence, she would still be alive.

5

Dinner on board was great and we both ate heartily before watching a movie in the on-board cinema and then retiring to our double cabin. I had won the toss for bottom bunk so I slipped off my shirt and shoes and lay staring at the boards above my head. I could not see her undressing but, nevertheless, heard the rustling which accompanies such behaviour and quietly wondered just how far she really would have been prepared to go to save her father. I smiled. One day, if any of us were to come out of this alive, I might even try to get to know her better. I doubted it would be too unpleasant an experience in spite of the fact that I was old enough to be her father. If she would still have me, I guess it is something I could learn to live with.

THE steady throb of the engines below me soon had me asleep. I suppose that I should have stayed awake and kept watch but I didn’t. Once upon a time, I could have gone without rest for days on end but now I was getting old and I slept like a log. It was the faint scratching at the door that woke me. Instantly awake, I rolled from the bed, my hand gripping the butt of the automatic beneath the pillow. I stood behind the cabin door as, slowly and carefully, it opened inch by inch, until a foot-wide strip of diffused light cast a beam across the floor.
I took off the safety catch and placed the silencer against the door panel knowing that the bullet wouldn’t even hesitate as it passed through the flimsy hardboard on its way towards the intruder.
‘Michael?’ came the faint whisper and I relaxed, my thumb letting the hammer down slowly as she stepped into the cabin.
I grabbed her arm dragged her roughly inside. ‘Where the hell have you been?’
‘Down the corridor to the toilet,’ she said, standing barefoot in the doorway in her long tee-shirt. Had she really been on so innocent a journey? Or had she been to meet someone?
I still wasn’t sure if she could be completely trusted so I poked my head out into the corridor and looked both ways but there was nothing to see. After closing the door, I slipped a sweater on over my head as Simone watched me carefully.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Just taking a stroll,’ I lied. ‘I can’t sleep.’
‘Then I’m coming,’ she said, reaching for her denims.
‘I think you’d better stay,’ I recommended. ‘You need the sleep.’
‘I’m not staying here on my own.’
‘But you went for a walk down the corridor alone.’
‘That was different.’ The perverseness of women.
She stepped into her jeans as I opened the door and peered out again. Still nothing. Somehow, the youths had evaded the police in Yarm. Somehow, they had found out which ferry we were on. They had arrived at Hull too late to embark their car so that could mean only one of two things. Either they meant to do whatever they had to do right here on the boat, or arrangements had been made for them to be met at Rotterdam. I had to know which.
Half-way along the central corridor were the stairs to the car deck. My Volvo was on the lower level, port side, so I followed the arrowed instructions until I came to the bulkhead door leading to the vehicles. We had passed no-one on the stairs and the ship was rolling gently so I guessed the wind had intensified since we left the Humber Estuary. I looked at my watch - three fifteen. In another couple of hours, lights along the Dutch coastline would be in sight.
The car deck was empty of people as I opened the bulkhead and crept along the catwalk towards my car. After making sure we were completely alone, I began to search the car while Simone held my pocket torch. It took nearly half an hour but, finally, I found it.
They had been very novel. It had not been in any of the usual places like under the wheel-arch or behind the bumper. Instead, the minute radio direction beacon was jammed behind the windscreen wiper, right in front of my nose.
Carefully prising it loose, I carried it and placed it inside the bumper of a coach that was, if its nameboard was to be believed, headed for Vienna; the musicians, I guessed. Now all I had to do was to follow the coach for a mile or two, inevitable as there was only one route in and out of Europoort, and then try to lose them in the Maas Tunnel or on the Autobann.
I got to my feet and Simone looked nervous so I took the torch from her shaking hand and held the aforementioned appendage briefly until she smiled. ‘Let’s go up on deck.’
‘I’d like that,’ she said and we reversed our direction along the catwalk and up the stairs until we reached Blue Deck and then stepped out into the open.
It’s funny, even in the dead of night, it is never quite black at sea. All around us there were lights - ships, marker buoys, and the many oil and gas platforms spread out over the North Sea. I had been right about the wind which had veered to starboard and was gusting a little as our ship bore down upon the coast of Holland. The outer port deck was empty as we strolled along it under a cloudy sky that glowed with reflected light. If for nothing else, I would always remember Simone for that night.
She shivered slightly in the wind which whipped around her Tee-shirt and bare arms and I made to take off my sweater to give to her.
‘Non,’ she said, her hand on my arm and, before I could move, she had stuck her head up inside my floppy jumper, her arms around my bare midriff and her face mere inches from mine. It’s a good job that wool stretches.
Somehow, her action seemed quite innocent and childlike and I remembered when Jennifer had done the same thing once when she was about eleven or twelve. Unfortunately, or fortunately - whichever way you want to look at it - Simone was neither eleven nor twelve and her closeness had a certain effect on me. I suddenly realised that something was different, something wrong, and it took me a moment to work it out. For the first time in ten years, I had a woman very close to me and I was not terrified. In fact, I think I could go as far as to say that I was even relaxed as she lay her head on my chest, listening to my heart beat, as I wrapped my arms gently around her.
‘That’s nice,’ she said with feeling, her eyes sparkling in the reflected lights from across the water.
‘It’s what friends are for,’ I softly murmured in her ear. It was indeed very nice and any animosity that I had previously felt towards her slowly vanished.
For a long time, we stood like that, swaying to the motion of the ship, staring out over the water at the multitude of lights.
‘Would you do something for me?’ she asked quietly.
‘That depends on what it is,’ I remarked with reservation.
‘Would you make love to me, Michael?’
For a second, I was shocked but I recovered quickly and said, ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea at all.’
‘Don’t worry. I have not slept with anyone else if that’s what you are thinking. In fact, I have only ever met one person I really liked but he never touched me.’
‘One of the boys at school?’ I remarked, barely hiding the sarcasm.
‘No,’ she said without taking offense. ‘A real grown man, like you.’
‘Did he just go away and leave you?’ I then asked kindly. Eighteen-year-old virgins are about as common as two-headed dodos.
‘No, I left him. He was in love with my best friend, you see, and her happiness was more important than mine.’
I smiled in the darkness. ‘That was very noble of you.’
‘It was, wasn’t it?’ she said quietly and I could feel a tear dribbling down my chest.
‘Wait until we get to Paris,’ I said, simply to satisfy her. ‘If we free your father, we’ll see what happens then.’
She looked up at me. ‘Promise?’
I kissed her forehead. ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
All the way back down to the cabin, I kept my eyes peeled but I saw no-one I recognised and not one of the few people around seemed to notice us as Simone hung on my arm like a devoted daughter. Even the cabin was still empty when we got back and I lay on the bottom bunk and watched Simone step out of her denims and climb up onto her bed.
When settled, she spoke from above. ‘Michael, other than my father, you are the only real gentleman I have ever met in all my life.’
I smiled. ‘If you say so, my pet.’
‘Tell me,’ she called softly. ‘If I told you that I loved you, would you say I was being silly?’
‘Simone, go to sleep.’ I then said the words I had not used in a very long time. ‘I love you too.’

TWO hours later, the loudspeakers announced, in three languages, that breakfast was being served but I ignored them. For one, I was not especially hungry. For another, I did not particularly want to meet our “friends.” In the corridor outside, I could hear passengers moving about, going to breakfast, to the showers, to the ship’s rail to watch the docking. I did none of those things for the next half-hour. I knew Simone was awake, I could hear her moving.
‘If you want anything to eat,’ I called out. ‘You had better say so now.’
‘No, I’m not hungry,’ came from the top bunk.
I rolled out of bed and started to put on my shirt as Simone watched me carefully, her head on her hands like a child. I smiled. We could make what arrangements we liked about what we would do or not do in Paris but I, for one, was certain that whatever it was we would find there, it would not be pleasant. We had escaped from England but I had very good reason to believe that it had been an escape unto death.

WHILE everyone else finished stuffing themselves with free food, Simone and I made our way surreptitiously down the back stairs to the car deck and waited inside the car as other vehicles were shuffled around ready for disembarkation. As I kept a careful weather-eye open, Simone rummaged through my meagre selection of pre-recorded tapes, chose one of my favourite Fleetwood Mac albums and pushed it into the slot.
It didn’t work. She fiddled with the knobs for several minutes but it made no difference. Mystified, I peered under the dashboard to look for the fault. My heart almost stopped at what I discovered.
‘Simone,’ I said quietly. ‘Get out of the car.’
‘What?’
‘Get out,’ I said in a harsher tone and she looked puzzled but unlocked the passenger door and tried to get out.
‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘This other car has parked too close. The door won’t open.’
I opened the driver’s door and got out. ‘Come out this side; slowly and carefully.’
I cursed myself for not having checked the car again before we got in. With my mind on more pleasant things, I had become careless.
With the puzzled look still on her face, Simone shuffled across to my side and, at that moment, I saw him. Still dressed in denims but now with a more respectable jacket and a crash-helmet, the leader of the terrible trio from Yarm stood on the upper catwalk about thirty feet away from us.
Instinctively, my hand reached inside my anorak but then stopped when I saw the small box in his hand. Standing up straight, I stared him in the eyes, watching for any movement. Simone had also seen him and stood behind me, trembling with fear. He smiled. I turned to shield her but it was too late.
The charge was not a big one as explosives go and the main force had been directed inside the car. I was outside, in the clear to some extent, but poor Simone was still beside the door and the full force of the blast picked her up bodily and slammed her against the rivetted bulkhead with a bang which made the steelwork ring.
I was flung across the aisle and ended up against the wheel of the coach with the electronic bug. The pain was considerable as I rolled over and drew the automatic in one swift movement. My bullet caught the youth just below the neck and his headless body fell six feet onto the roof of the car below and then rolled to the deck with a sickening thud.
In agony from every part of my body, I crawled across the car deck as people began to gather around me. I ignored their questions and offers of help as I clambered up the step to where Simone lay in a heap, her arms and face blackened by the explosion, her dark hair frizzled and scorched.
Gently, I touched her hand and she moved slightly, opening her brown eyes a little. I was no doctor but it was obvious from the way she lay that there would not be a single bone in her body which would not have been shattered by the force of that impact with the bulkhead.
‘Michael,’ she murmured softly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I lied. ‘I’ll look after you.’
‘I love you,’ she said and coughed, the arterial blood that signified massive internal bleeding dribbling from the corner of her mouth. She opened her eyes for the last time.
‘Don’t forget your promise,’ she murmured and then lay very still.

6

The cold water did little to soothe the pain and nothing at all to reduce the feelings I had as I hung on the iron rung of the ladder beside the oil terminal. The people on the boat had been very kind and consoling about the death of my “daughter” but I knew I had to get away. Once I got into the hands of the Dutch police, goodness knows how long I would have been held up with questioning and explanations and I knew that time was too short for such luxuries. Instead, I had stumbled towards the slowly-opening ramp and leapt for freedom.
Swimming had been difficult due to the pains in my back and shoulders from the force of the explosion and, several times, I had come near to giving up and sinking into the slimy grey waters of the Nieuwe Waterweg, the deepened channel which hastened the waters of the Maas in their rush to the Nord Zee. However, it was not courage that kept me afloat and swimming, nor some kind of inner strength. No, it was pure hate. Whoever it was that had been responsible for the death of Simone was going to die - very slowly and extremely painfully.
I guessed that it wouldn’t take long for the harbour police to start looking for me. Probably the message about the explosion had already been radioed ashore and there were men out looking for me right now. Fortunately, there was a light mist on the surface of the water that morning and I was virtually invisible as, in agony, I clambered up the steel ladder until I lay, panting, on the stone dock.
Raising my head, I looked around me and, everywhere, there were oil tanks and pipelines. Europoort was built on land reclaimed from the Maas delta and was of little use for anything but this sea of industrial eyesore. Leant up against a pipe, I began to think something near constructively. I had to find a vehicle. If the answer was anywhere, it was in Paris and that city was a long way from here.
A hundred yards away was an office portacabin with a couple of vehicles parked outside. Ian Fleming would have given James Bond an Aston Martin at least and Simon Templar would definitely have received a Jenson Interceptor courtesy of Leslie Charteris but I had the choice between a battered Renault pick-up truck and a twenty-ton articulated tanker. Suspecting that the pick-up might be fractionally faster and a little less conspicuous than the tanker, I headed for the former.
Damn, I thought as I peered inside, no keys in the ignition. I could have done a hot-wire start but it always takes far longer than the ten seconds as advertised on television and I had neither the strength nor the patience to struggle with the fastenings of the tatty dashboard.
The problem was solved for me a few moments later when a man of about fifty in dirty overalls approached and opened the door. His eyes goggled as he looked straight down the barrel of my automatic.
‘Rotterdam,’ I instructed.
The Dutchman hadn’t the faintest idea who I was or what I was doing in his vehicle but he did understand the universal non-verbal communication I held in my hand. Slowly, he got in and started the engine. We negotiated the roads around the Esso Refinery without trouble, crossed the railway line and turned left onto the N15.
All my life, I have seen pictures of Holland. You know the ones - windmills, tulip bulbs, plump ladies in funny white hats and clogs. Don’t you believe it. Twentieth-century Holland is one gigantic industrial estate. As far as the eye can see in every direction there are oil-refineries, factories, oil-refineries, storage depots and oil refineries.
No-one appeared to be following the pick-up as it rolled eastwards towards Rotterdam. I had the dutchman drive through the Beneluxtunnel to Schiedam and then drop me on the northbound side of the A13 close to Zestienhoven Airport. As soon as he was out of sight, I crossed over the autosnelweg and hitched a lift back into the city. I guessed he would report his adventure at the first opportunity and that, before long, everyone would be looking for me in the direction of Den Hague.
The morning sun shone down on me warmly and my clothes had almost dried on me so I soon looked no more disreputable than most of the labourers who were wandering about between docks and railway yards. I pinched a fairly decent-looking overcoat from a man in the toilets at Central Station and I was soon fast asleep in a second-class compartment of the Hook of Holland to Paris Express.
I tried to relaxed and regain my strength. Instead, all I found was that I got very stiff from the damage to my muscles and ligaments. Still, I was alive whereas Simone was dead, poor kid; splattered all over the bulkhead of a North-Sea ferry, and for what?
The one she had called Marcel had waited until I was out of the car before detonating the bomb which had killed her. Why? Ten seconds earlier and he would have got me too, but he had deliberately waited. Why Simone? Why not me?
I found no answers inside my mind and it was late afternoon as the train drew into Paris Nord and there seemed to be no welcoming committee from the Surité as I stepped down to the grey platform. I had no idea what I was going to do nor where I was going to go but what I did know was that the way I was feeling I had to kill someone - almost anyone would do.
Using one of the credit cards that had come with the overcoat, I took a room in a hotel not far from the station. I am not, by nature, a thief but there was a need to cover my tracks for a few hours. I shrugged. If what I believed was about to happen actually happened, then none of this would matter anyway.
I used the evening to try to plan out my course of action. Simone’s father, Emile de Bosvile, was the only lead I had so I guessed that is where I would start. However, it might just be that he was further in with the Consortium than his daughter had believed. Simone wouldn’t have been the first girl in the world to discover, too late, that her own sweet father was not quite as pure as she had earnestly believed him to be.

IT was raining when I woke. Paris is one of those cities that only likes sun. Under its spell, the flowers bloom and the girls blossom (or is it the other way round?) Anyway, the city is altogether a beautiful place to be. However, when it rains, even in springtime, there is nowhere in the world more miserable. To this day, I am convinced Victor Hugo only ever wrote in the rainy season.
As the morning wore on, the rain abated to a fine drizzle and I took the opportunity to sneak out to the news-stand and grab an English newspaper.
‘Il pluie, ne fait ce pas?’ greeted the clerk pointlessly upon my return and, for some reason, it made my anger surface again. Of course it was bloody-well raining, any idiot could see that. One of the disadvantages of joining the European Community is that the French seem to have developed the same preoccupation with the weather as the British have had since rain stopped play in the third test match between the Romans and Druids.
I made it back to my room, poured myself a drink of water and stretched the damp paper out on the bed and the bold headlines hit me full in the face.

SEARCH GOES ON FOR MULTIPLE KILLER

Police have today stepped up their hunt for the Cleveland man who on Friday murdered two policemen. Their bodies were found beside their car with multiple stab wounds. It is thought that their attacker, believed to be a certain Michael Blackman of Cedar Cottage, Egglescliffe, had been in the process of kidnapping the only daughter of French industrialist Emile de Bosvile.

A further tragedy followed this morning when Monsieur de Bosvile shot himself upon learning that his sixteen-year-old daughter had already been brutally raped and then stabbed to death by Mr Blackman when the ransom money he had demanded for her release had not been paid. More details on page four.

With shaking hands, I turned to the page indicated, already fairly sure of the kind of thing I would find.

Pretty French schoolgirl Simone de Bosvile had been on holiday in England with three friends when the abduction took place despite the efforts of her colleagues to save her. It is believed that the girl had been forcibly held in the cellar of the kidnapper’s own home and forensic evidence seems to suggest that the girl had been repeatedly raped and then finally killed in a fit of rage when Mr Blackman learned of her father’s inability to pay the ransom for her safe return.

Hospital sources reveal that, when her body was found in nearby woods, there were over one hundred stab wounds on it in addition to the marks of strangulation. The doctor in charge was quoted as saying: ‘The killer obviously took sadistic delight in deliberately mutilating the poor girl. Such treatment of a young child is to be regarded as totally inhuman.’

This monstrous, cold-blooded killing has roused the local population to anger especially when it was revealed that Mr Blackman had once undergone prolonged psychiatric treatment after the mysterious disappearance and subsequent death of his own wife.

In spite of everything, I couldn’t help laughing out loud. Where on earth did they drag up all this nonsense? There had been nothing mysterious about Mary’s departure, she had simply had enough. As for her death, she just gave up the will to live. It had been she who had needed the psychiatric treatment, not I. I read on:

Police are still trying to trace the identity of the female accomplice of Mr Blackman who was accidentally killed when a consignment of explosives mysteriously ignited on board a cross-channel ferry last night. The woman is described as five-foot-six tall with dark hair and blue eyes. Anyone recognising the description should contact Kingston-upon-Hull police.

The rest was all utter nonsense in a similar vein. Blue eyes indeed. However, my own eyes returned to one particular set of words on the front page - “sixteen-year-old daughter”. Sixteen? Surely not?
Upon reflection, I suppose it was just possible. I never have been a good judge of ages, especially of teenage girls. When my daughter, Jennifer, had been sixteen, she had often brought her classmates home and I had to admit that some of them had looked no more than twelve-year-olds while others, dressed up, could easily have been taken for eighteen or nineteen. The now empty polystyrene cup disintegrated in my grip as I imagined what I would do to whoever it was had ordered her death.
What on earth was going on? One minute they wanted me alive, the next they were trying to kill me. Then they wanted me alive again but had destroyed what had overnight become the centre of my life. When I left Egglescliffe, I thought I had it all worked out but now it was all wrong again. Everything the news release said about me was untrue and they had even got Simone’s description wrong. It was the girl who was murdered in Yarm who had had the blue eyes, not Simone.
I re-read the part about her father and wondered what he had been told which would make him take his own life. If I was as rich as Emile de Bosvile and someone had done to my Jenny what I was reported to have done to his Simone, I would have moved Heaven and Earth to find whoever it was that had done the vile act. I would then have personally removed some of the more vulnerable parts of his anatomy, without anaesthetic, and stuffed them down his throat before slicing him up into tiny pieces. The last thing I would have done is shoot myself.
The rain took great delight in ruining the whole day for everyone and only eased up as evening fell. I looked out of the hotel window towards the Seine where, in the distance, the lights of the Place de la Concorde were reflected in the rippling water. Just like that distant flicker of light, an idea began to form in my mind so, putting on the overcoat, I checked my gun and walked out into the night.

I went no more than fifty yards before they got me. I had become careless, thinking I had succeeding in reaching Paris unnoticed. As they bundled me into their car, there seemed little point in struggling. I would just have to explain away my actions as best I could. I had nothing in the way of proof but I could clear myself of most of what the charges were likely to be.
The car was a police Citroen and the four men had identity cards so I simply slouched in the back between two mountains of muscle and gave in. Whatever happened now would happen - it was out of my control. I didn’t know how they had found me so soon but they had and that was that.
I looked out at the rush hour traffic and frowned. I knew much of the layout of Paris and it was not the Suritée headquarters to which I was being taken as the car roared out of the city in what I knew was roughly a southerly direction. For half an hour we drove in silence until the car turned into a wide gateway which opened as we approached. The drive was long and the house at the end fairly big. A mock eighteenth-century chateau, I guessed as the headlights illuminated the facade briefly and the car swung round in the drive.
‘Venez,’ said the leader, gesturing, and I obediently followed him inside. I had little choice with Bill and Ben either side of me.
All attempts that I made to question them fell on deaf ears as I was led up the winding stairs and pushed into a big room where a stranger awaited me.
‘Asseyez vous,’ he instructed without looking up from the papers on his desk, nodding to the upright chair and I obeyed, believing I would learn more by being co-operative at this stage. I had obviously not simply been arrested for murder else I would be sitting, handcuffed, in some scruffy Paris cell. Time rolled by and nobody said anything.
‘Je suis ici,’ I began eventually, indicating the room, the house. ‘Pourquoi?’
‘Pourquoi pas?’ he replied before looking up and switching to English. ‘You have led us - how you say? - a merry chase, Monsieur Blackman. It appears our people and your people greatly underestimated your capabilities.’
I smiled to myself. At least someone appreciated my efforts to find the truth.
‘There must be a thousand men searching for you,’ he continued. ‘Everywhere from Scotland to Italy right now and here you are, in France.’
‘What is going to happen to me?’
‘You will stay here, as our guest, for a while. There are things we need to know, things only you can tell us.’
‘But I know nothing. I am probably more confused than anyone else right now.’
‘That may be so. However, with what you know and what we know, we might have the whole picture between us.’
I nodded. ‘That is possible.’
‘In a few moments, I am going to ask Doctor Almen to come in and give you a small injection to loosen your memory a little. We will then ask you a few questions and, hopefully, we will then know the whole truth.’
‘Do I have any choice?’
He smiled pleasantly. ‘I’m afraid not. You see, things are moving very quickly and we have no time to waste on niceties.’
‘You know about Le Consortium?’
‘Naturellement. Our sources informed us some days ago and we are closing in on them fast. However, there are still some details to be confirmed and that is where you will help us. With the information you have locked away in your memory, we can get the ones at the top, the ringleaders.’
That made sense to me. What I could not accomplish alone, the might of Interpol could crush forever and my poor Simone would be avenged.
In due course, the doctor arrived with a pretty, dark-haired nurse and I was led to an adjoining room where I took off my jacket and shirt and lay down on a couch. The room was full of strange electronic equipment and I guessed that medicine had already entered the twenty-first century in France. The nurse carefully fixed sensors to my chest and temples. This was sophisticated equipment and the young woman certainly knew her stuff. Eventually, the doctor inserted the needle and the fluid seeped into my arm. Gradually, my senses deteriorated until my whole world was full of lights and voices. Some, I seemed to subconsciously recognise while others were strange. One particular voice stood out from the rest, one I had never expected to hear again–the quiet, confident, husky voice of Simone de Bosvile.
At first, I vaguely remember struggling, fighting what I knew could not be but it did me no good at all and, eventually, my mind drifted off into a dense darkness coupled with a stark silence.

WHEN I came to, it was still black. I felt very strange and put it down to the after-effects of the drug they had given me to open up my mind. I tried to move but found I could not.
‘Allo,’ I ventured but the silence remained.
The bunk I was on was now angled slightly from the horizontal and my wrists and ankles were firmly anchored with stout straps which felt like leather and creaked a little as I struggled. There was also something fixed around my head wlich I could not identify but which permitted limited movement.
Suddenly, there was a bright flash right in front of my eyes and I was on a deserted beach with plane trees close to the shore. In the background, I could even hear the sound of the sea breaking upon the sand. At first, I thought I was watching a screen of some sort but the objects changed perspective as I moved my head. It was as if I was actually there.
It was then that I noticed I had something in my hands. I looked down and wondered who or what they were expecting me to shoot at and why, because it had a long barrel and was fitted with a telescopic sight. The silencer was as big as a rolling pin and I recognised the weapon instantly. I should, it had been mine for many years.
As I looked up, a familiar figure came into sight ahead of me. It was a slim, deeply-tanned girl in a white bikini and, as she strolled towards me in a leisurely manner, swinging her arms as if she had not a care in the world, another figure appeared –a man–who caught up with her. While I watched, she turned to face him, stood up on tiptoe with her arms around his neck and then kissed him. I felt jealousy rumbling deep inside me as they smiled at each other and then proceeded to walk, hand in hand, along the beach toward where I was. In time, they stopped just a few few feet from me and Simone lay down on the sand. She put her arms behind her head and smiled at the man.
‘Would you make love to me, Michael?’ she suddenly said to him and I fought to control my inner feelings.
The man smiled and nodded. I started to speak but neither of them seemed to notice me as she casually peeled off her bikini top. I closed my eyes tightly and, by the time I had opened them again the bottom part had also been removed and the two of them were making passionate love on the beach. Simone was obviously enjoying the whole thing immensely and it made me sick at the thought of the girl I had believed to be so good, so pure, publicly indulging in such shamelessly obscene conduct.
‘Michael,’ cried Simone suddenly from under the man. ‘I have betrayed you. You must kill me, you must kill me. Shoot me now, Michael. Pull the trigger. I am a liar and a traitor. Please kill me.’
My hands slowly lowered the gun until the end of the silencer rested on her skin just above her navel. The rounds in my rifle were similar to those in my hand gun. The same soft lead and hollow tips, the same large charge. The biggest difference was that these projectiles could tear someone in half a quarter of a mile away. I knew that at this close range I only had to pull the trigger once to blast a hole in her belly big enough to kick a football through. I wanted to do it, I had to do it but I couldn’t. She was already dead. How could I kill her again? On top of that, I still loved her.
As I moved the gun away from her, the voice changed. ‘Michael, you didn’t do it. You didn’t kill me. I hate you. I hate you.’
At the same time, a sharp pain shot through my whole body as the voice continued to alternately chastise me and plead for death. I refused and fought against the sea of agony that swept over me and then finally fell over the edge into a deep, black pit of silence.

7

I don’t know how long I lay there after I had regained a little of my consciousness. I could see nothing but the voice was still there. At times, it offered soothing words of love, more intimate words than Simone had ever spoken to me while she was alive. At other times, she was angry with me for not killing her. It was as though she was still alive, ceaselessly haunting me.
I have never believed in ghosts, at least not the “spook in the castle” type of ghoul that walks in the night dragging chains. However, as the days went by and the same procedure was followed over and over again, I began to wonder. Lack of real sleep, the frustrations of continually experiencing that same piece of virtual reality, the intense pain when I refused to obey her voice, the torments of conscience; all these made me a very confused and disturbed person.
For thirty years of my life I had been a perfectly rational person. Granted, I had had the kind job which produced moments of high tension and even regret at times, but I had coped none the less. Then had come the moment of disaster. Mary had left me, not because either of us had been unfaithful but to try and shock me into taking some notice of her. Unfortunately, instead of turning me towards her, her actions had alienated us from each other and I had withdrawn into a shell. Initially my daughter, meaning well, had tried everything she knew to try to bring about a reconciliation. She had failed because, by then, I was too far gone and her continual nagging and accusations had tipped me over the edge. For ten years, I had hated women, loathed them for what I felt they had done to me and for what I had become.
Then, Simone had erupted into my life with a suddenness that had spun me around and belted me where it hurt most, my pride. In spite of the last ten years of abstention, I had fallen and fallen hard. Her sudden death had marked the end of my life as I had known it. All there now was to live for was revenge but it was being made difficult by the ghost which now reappeared daily and taunted me with her body and voice.
It was on the fifth day that I gave in. Blow it, why should I be the one to have to suffer all the pain and humiliation? Perhaps if I pretended to go along with them, it would become easier. I was so tired.
The scene began as usual; the greeting, the kiss, the caressing. This time, I let her have it.
Everything went black. I don’t know what I expected to happen next but what I didn’t expect was the voice. ‘Oh, Michael, thank you, thank you. That was wonderful. Now, I must reward you for being such a good boy.’
Hands touched my, caressed me, and repeated waves of pleasure broke over me and seemed to go on forever.
That night, I slept like a log. No voices disturbed me and there were no more accusations. Once or twice, I partially awoke to the sound of sweet music and Simone’s voice speaking softly in my ear, thanking me over and over again.
After that, I never refused again and, for a whole week, I simply “killed” her at the right psychological moment and then just lay back to enjoy the prize. I had no illusions as to the fact that it was some kind of brainwashing technique. The only thing that still was not clear was the purpose of it all. If Simone had been alive, I could see the logic in trying to hypnotise me into killing her. But as it was.... I suddenly had a thought that made me laugh inside. Maybe they really did think she was still alive. If so, they were in for a shock.

On the tenth day, I awoke in a different room. My eyes took in the white ceiling and walls and the small window set high up. A comfortable enough prison, I thought, and swung my legs to the floor and looked at what they had done. In several places, I could see the tiny scars from the burns where the electrical probes had brought me the pain. Also, there were the marks of the needles in my arm and the tell-tale hole in my wrist where I had been fed intravenously while I had slept. Other than that, I appeared to be in one piece.
Unsteady on my feet at first, I staggered over to the door and, to my surprise, found that it was not locked. I opened it a foot and put my head out. The passageway was empty and silent. Quietly, I tip-toed down the corridor until I reached the open area at the end which overlooked the patio and swimming pool. For a long time, I stared out at the blue water and stone surround and, beyond, the grass and trees. It all looked so pleasant and peaceful and I wondered how many people out there had any idea what was going on.
‘Bonjour, Michael,’ came the soft voice behind me and I froze. Good grief, no. It can’t be.
I whirled round and stared at the young woman who had entered. Her body was that of the nurse but her voice had been that of Simone. Mind you, wearing nothing but a towel round her waist, she would have been hard to recognise as any member of the medical profession.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ she asked kindly and I nodded dumbly, staring at her while she stepped closer and placed her delectable hand on my chest. It was a gentle hand which I recognised instantly. She smiled again. ‘I have been told that this is my last day and to make sure you have everything that you need.’
When I stepped back and shook my head, she slid open the patio door and stepped out into the sunshine. I watched as she cast off the towel, plunged into the pool, swam up and down a few times and then clambered out and lay on the sun-lounger to dry off.
I was just about to go outside to try to prise some information from her when the phone rang. For a long time, I ignored it as the sound seemed to permeate the whole house and echoed around the half-empty rooms. In the end, I had to pick it up, already fairly certain as to who it would be.
‘So you are up,’ said the voice on the other end of the line.
‘I expect you know that already,’ I replied with resignation as to the repercussions of hearing that voice from the long-distant past.
‘Of course I do,’ he said, sounding no different after all those years. ‘I know everything.’
‘What is this all about, Carstairs?’
‘You will find out in good time, dear boy.’
I suddenly lost my cool. ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve.’
‘Of course. There is a lot at stake.’
‘Why did you kill Simone?’
‘We didn’t,’ he said casually. ‘They did.’
‘Why?’
‘She knew too much, I expect.’
‘Damn it all, Carstairs, she knew nothing. She was just a kid.’
‘Do I detect a certain amount of feeling, Michael? That won’t do at all. Most unprofessional.’
‘Look. I’m not in your department any more. I retired ten years ago, remember?’
‘Michael, no one retires from the department. You, of all people, should know that.’
‘There is nothing in the world that will make me work for you again.’
‘But there is, Michael. There is the girl.’
I laughed nervously. ‘Don’t talk rubbish. Simone is dead, we both know that.’
‘Is she? Are you sure?’
After a fortnight or so of mixed torture and pleasure, I was hardly sure of anything any more. However, for the rest of my life, I would never forget the sight of that poor girl lying, bleeding, on the car deck.
‘I saw her, Carstairs,’ I said, slowly and deliberately. ‘Whoever was responsible for murdering Simone will die, I swear it.’
He laughed. ‘That’s what I like about you, Michael. Straight to the point with no beating about the bush.’
‘I mean it!’
‘Of course you do. And now I will tell you how you can get your revenge.’
I didn’t answer.
‘There is a leak in the department.’
I burst out laughing and the tension broke. ‘There are always leaks in the department. Leaks are what keep spies in full-time employment.’
‘This time, it’s a real leak.’
‘Plot and counter-plot, eh?’
He ignored me. ‘By now you will know about Le Consortium.’
The name brought me back to seriousness. ‘Only what Simone told me.’
‘What she won’t have told you is that the countdown has already started.’
‘Countdown?’
‘For war!’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked cautiously.
‘I mean that, already, the satellite is functioning and just needs a certain signal.’
‘Princess?’
‘Of course. Everything hinges around Princess, doesn’t it?’
‘Tell me.’
‘The air probes are already in use and the ground probes are being tested next week. If the tests are successful, the Consortium plans to go ahead immediately.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Because they, too, have a leak,’ he replied smugly.
‘You have a spy in their camp?’
‘Had.’
‘Had? Who?’
‘Emile de Bosvile.’
I sat down. ‘Simone’s father?’
‘Of course. He worked for British Intelligence. Didn’t you know?’
‘How could I? I’ve been out of the circus for ten years.’
‘You are out now and that is why you are perfect for this job.’
‘What job?’
‘You must eliminate the source of the leak.’
‘But you don’t know who it is.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Who?’
‘Your niece, Suzette.’
‘Suzette? Now I know you are mad. Suzette works with weather data at Cambridge.’
‘Suzette controls Princess,’ he said quietly.
‘And?’
‘Princess is the key. The Consortium have taken over the tracking station at Laroque des Albères in the anti-Pyrenees. If they can ever get your niece there, they will have total control of Europe.’
I couldn’t help laughing. It was all far too ridiculous. Or was it? Princess was in orbit - Suzette herself had confirmed that fact. If the Consortium had control of her, it really was the end. You see, only I and a few others knew that Princess was more than a communications satellite. Right from its conception, Project Requiem had been set up to use the satellite as a base to code and encode secret signals. Princess was one very clever piece of electronics. But, surely, not Suzette?
‘Where exactly am I?’ I finally got round to asking. ‘And when is it? I’ve lost all track of time.’
‘You are just outside Fontainebleau in a chateau that we run and it is the fourth of July.’
‘How did you know where to find me?’
‘We followed you. The Consortium were not the only ones keeping tabs on you.’
‘Then you knew what they would do?’
‘Suspected, shall we say. If we knew, we might have prevented them.’
‘Might? Only might?’ I was getting angry again.
‘Of course. But as things turned out, everything is perfect.’
‘Perfect?’ I yelled at him. ‘Simone is dead, damn you. Unprofessional or not, I cared for her.’
‘So you did. And now you must take your revenge. You will find that everything is ready.’
‘Ready?’ I asked warily.
‘Yes, take Yvette’s car. She won’t be needing it any more.’
‘Who’s Yvette?’
‘The nurse. I have left her there for you to use as you wish. You must do whatever your instincts tell you. She is expendable.’
Yes, I thought, just like poor Simone. ‘But if I leave here I will be recognised.’
‘Have you not looked in the mirror? Michael, you’re slipping.’
Still gripping the phone I moved to where I could see my own reflection and stood, gaping. What had they done to me? In the mirror was a stranger. My appearance had not completely changed, of course; that would have taken much longer in between films. All they had done was to die my hair, grow me a moustache and inject silicon into parts of my nose and cheeks. However, only someone who knew me very well would recognise me now. They were certainly very determined if they were prepared to go to all this trouble.
‘I’ll need some equipment,’ I finally said with resignation.
‘There is explosive in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator and your gun is behind a false panel at the back of the broom cupboard.’
‘It seems you’ve thought of everything.’
‘We do try, my boy. We do try.’ He rang off.
Cautiously, I made my way to the kitchen, opened the fridge and confirmed his information. Two kilos of Semtex and, in a separate box, detonators and remote equipment. Behind the broom cupboard, I found the other item. The clips of ammunition for it were on the shelf above. I took it to the upstairs front window and looked through the sight. The crosshairs focussed on a duck on the river about five hundred metres away. Laying it down again, I fitted a full clip and shunted a cartridge into the breech. The gun was a semi-automatic rifle with self-dampening, sprung-recoil action and fitted very comfortably as it should. Resting the barrel on the low wall of the raised veranda, I sighted again. There was no wind so no compensation had to be made. It all now depended on just how well the adjustment had been maintained on the sights.
The “plop” from the silencer was accompanied by a slight jerk and a huge plume of water jumped up beside the duck, sending it squawking into the air. So, down and right, I thought, and compensated with a fine adjustment to the knurled knob. Searching again, I found that all the ducks had flown. Couldn’t blame them really. I would have done the same if I had been frightened out of my life on such a peaceful day.
I went around to the back of the house and opened a balcony window overlooking the pool. Yvette still lay on the sun bed below me. She saw me and looked up at me over the top of her sun glasses and, as I watched her seductively flaunting herself in the warm sunshine, I thought about what had happened recently. It had almost certainly been Yvette who had inflicted the pain upon me during the brainwashing. It was probably also Yvette who had dealt out the pleasure when I complied. It had definitely been Yvette’s voice which had mimicked Simone’s so perfectly and brought me so much anguish and heartache.
Jenny had said I was useless at voices and she was right. Ever since I had been almost blown up by a land mine in Belfast, I had suffered. I was not deaf or anything, it was just the quality of the sounds which had been impaired. I simply found it difficult to tell voices apart as if I was listening to them on a tape recording all the time.
I took off the safety catch and looked at her through the telescopic sight. My feelings began to surge as I focussed onher face. However, this time, it was different. There was no fear now, only hate and an overwhelming desire to totally destroy anything and anyone that had in any way contributed to Simone’s death. Whatever had happened over the last month, I had changed. Simone had started it with her love and the brainwashing techniques of Colonel William Carstairs had finished me off. I smiled as I lowered the barrel slightly till the cross-hairs were on a spot mid way between her pert breasts. This was going to hurt her a hell of a lot more than it hurt me. I squeezed repeatedly until the entire clip was empty.
‘It is my last day,’ Yvette had said. She was dead right.

CAREFULLY, as if nothing had happened, I dropped the rifle into its carrying case and then got dressed. With my automatic snugly under my left arm and my jacket on, I skipped down the steps, Yvette’s car keys in one hand and the gun case in the other. I smiled to myself as I examined my handiwork at close quarters. There was little left of Yvette that could be recognised as ever having been human. I smiled. It is amazing how so much blood can be spread so far around from one relatively skinny person. I felt elated and very pleased with myself and my weapon.
The car, a Cobalt Blue Renault, started first time and roared down the drive with gravel pattering inside the wheel arches. Turning right at the end, I was soon heading northward, towards the city. The traffic was light as I joined the Boulevard Périphérique, heading west and, gradually, it dawned on me that it must be Dimanche, Sunday, and I smiled again. At Porte de la Muette, I turned off into the Bois de Boulogne, the magnificent park-cum-forest separating La Defense from Paris proper. There were families walking and playing, children everywhere, as I finally pulled off the Route de la Grande Cascade and parked under the trees.
My whole body was shaking. Some kind of reaction had set in and I could hardly control my limbs, much less the car. For half an hour, I was sick and full of tremors until the feeling gradually receded and I wound up with a big hole where my stomach had been. I was utterly disgusted with myself. What kind of a monster had they turned me into? I had completely disintegrated a poor, innocent, (well, perhaps not innocent) defenceless girl; and for what? Just to prove that my gun still worked properly. Carstairs had known. That’s why he had left her with me when the others had gone. She had stayed behind to play prostitute, not target, and I wondered if she would have stripped off and lain by the pool so calmly if she had known that her name had already been crossed off the books.
“Disposable Assets”, Carstairs called them, not people at all. Mere pawns in a game where he held all the pieces and made up the rules as he went along.
It had to stop and it had to stop now, before anyone else died, before my brainwashing-induced schizophrenia totally destroyed me as well as everyone I came into contact with.
I took out my automatic pistol and, with shaking hand, released the safety catch and put the barrel into my mouth. There was only one way to prevent the same thing happening again. Someone else could play God from now on in. I closed my eyes and pulled the trigger.

8

Nothing happened except that I nearly broke one of my teeth as the hammer fell home. I tried again but with the same result. Feeling calmer, I then examined the clip. It was empty. In my frantic haste I had not even noticed that they had taken the bullets out of my gun.
Reaching into the dashboard, I took out the box of specially-doctored cartridges and reloaded. It was as I finished that I began to think logically. Killing myself would achieve nothing, not for the peace of Europe. I had to die, one way or another, I now knew that for a certainty. It would probably be very soon, too, but if I could only finish what I had started, Simone may not have died totally in vain.
Tonight, after dark, I would try to fathom things out at this end. If that produced nothing, I was going back to England. I did not believe that my niece was guilty of either spying or working for the Consortium, but there was only one way to find out - watch her for a while and, if necessary, have it out with her. Only if I was totally convinced of her guilt would I act. If what Carstairs had told me was correct, everything depended upon Princess and, as he had so rightly said, Suzette controlled Princess. With the elimination of Suzette, peace would be assured, for a while at least. As for the long-term future... Well, none of us has control over that.
One thing was certain - within a week, I would know either way. If Suzette was innocent, then Carstairs was wrong and the prospect of a Third World War was in someone else’s hands altogether and Europe would be much better off without a trained killer like me. If she was guilty...? There would simply be two funerals instead of one. I would regret doing it but, surely, a single sacrifice was better than a war which could kill millions of innocent people.
Going to a nearby phone booth and examining the local directory for Paris, I found the address for the offices of Guillemot Internationale. I had to start somewhere and there seemed as good a place as any. In the meantime, I booked myself into a small motel near Versailles and settled down to wait for dark. Through the rest of the day, I slept on and off and ate real food for a change that the owner’s lonely daughter kindly offered to provide.
She was an odd girl. Mid twenties, fairly tall and, at a guess, half a stone underweight. It was clearly obvious from a single glance at her well-cropped tee-shirt that the word “bra” meant nothing to her but also clear that such an item of clothing would have been both superfluous and out of character. While she was standing, her micro-skirt only just covered her underwear but when she sat on the tall stool opposite me and crossed her long legs, I had to look elsewhere. However, the food and hospitality were good and the invitation to sample her additional delights pretty obvious so I showed my gratitude by leaving a generous tip before beating a hasty retreat back to my room.
French television is nothing special, especially if your French is not perfect. Mine was pretty good, it had to be, but some of the more subtle meanings of the comedian’s jokes went right over my head. There was news on the other side which I ignored - it was invariably bad.
Why do news reporters only look for bad news? I suppose it’s because we only like to watch bad things happen. When we learn that Mrs Jones gave birth to triplets, we yawn. When they are all chopped to pieces by a mad axeman, we love it and watch with interest for days, desperate for any sight of blood. Well, if the Consortium get their way, there will be plenty of that around.
The third channel was an old film about the war and, having seen such battles for real, I tried again. It was a musical and I lay back to watch as afternoon turned to evening. When it finished, the screen cleared and the motto “Please wait for next film” lit up the screen. Of course, I smiled, so many hotels now have a video channel in addition to the normal broadcast channels and I had found it.
I slept right through an overdubbed version of Superman IV and when I awoke it was to a strange scene. A near-naked girl had her wrists tied to a tree branch above her head and she was being furiously whipped by someone who looked more like a gorilla than a man.
What on earth was I watching? Although a little disgusted at the sight, I also found it somehow fascinating while she screamed in agony and pleaded for mercy while the blood ran in streaks down her back. I imagined perverted people all over the hotel watching this action and gaining some sort of sensual satisfaction out of it but the scene did little for me. However, as it was clearly almost over, I stuck it out to the bitter end and then relaxed as the subtitles began to roll. Oh well, I thought, let’s see what’s on next before I switch channels.
Suddenly, something caught my eye and I only just took it in before it disappeared. Jumping to my feet, I threw on my dressing gown and ran to the reception area.
‘Bon soir, monsieur,’ greeted the eager-to-please bomshell as I burst into the office.
‘I need to see that last video again,’ I threw at her.
Her suntanned face lit up like a Sahara dawn. ‘Monsieur is a dirty old man, n’est-ce-pas?’
‘No,’ I said, embarrassed at the way her skirt rode up almost to the waist as she slipped from the stool. ‘You don’t understand. There was something on it that I have to see again. Something important.’
‘How important?’ she said, leaning across the desk with a cheeky grin, the front of her tee-shirt mere millimetres from my itching fingers.
I sighed in resignation at what I might have to resort to with this girl. ‘Very important.’
‘Very well,’ she said, pleased that she had someone–anyone who could take some notice of what she had on offer. ‘Come through to the back room. I cannot replay over the system because the other guests are wanting the next film so I will give monsieur a private viewing.’
‘I would be very grateful, Francoise.’
I was grateful for her help and we sat down to watch. I didn’t want to see the whole thing through again but she insisted and seemed turned on by the whole thing. I was dismayed. I would have thought her to be offended at such abuse of one of her own gender, insulted even, but no. She actually enjoyed it and leant closer at the critical moments, her entire anatomy trembling with a shared excitement.
‘Can you slow it down at all?’ I said as the film drew to a close and Francoise glanced at me sideways with a sly grin before dropping to her knees in front of the machine while she complied.
I knew that I had not been wrong and smiled as the final titles rolled slowly down the screen. There were no more that I recognised - just the one name, a name which Simone had once used. In the film, the part of the young girl had been played by a certain Marie-Ange Le Touzel.
Could there be another girl with that name, I asked myself? I then asked Francoise.
‘Oh yes,’ she said as she tied her hair behind her head. ‘Both the Christian name Marie-Ange and the family name Le Touzel are fairly common in France.’
I sighed with disappointment. I thought that I had caught something but had actually come up with nothing.
‘However,’ continued my companion. ‘There is only one girl of that name in films.’
I looked at her sharply. ‘What?’
She stared at me. ‘You have never heard of Marie-Ange Le Touzel?’
‘No.’ Of course I hadn’t. I’d never watched such movies before in my life.
‘Monsieur has not lived. Mademoiselle Le Touzel is very famous all over France since she made her first film last year.’
‘Last year? But she’s little more than a child.’
Francoise grinned. ‘Deceptive, isn’t it?’ She rummaged in a pile of papers on the table and came up with a back issue of a popular french video magazine.
‘See, here,’ she read, snuggling up too close for comfort. “Sex-kitten Marie-Ange Le Touzel celebrated her first year in show business with a party at her home in Sorède last weekend. The nineteen-year-old star plans to retire when she is twenty-five and take up deep-sea fishing with English husband, David.”’
I stared at the magazine for a long time. Sorède, the magazine said she lived. David, it told readers her husband was called. This was all too much of a coincidence. But where was the connection with Simone’s death?
‘My cousin works in the film industry,’ Francoise was saying as she poured us both coffee. ‘I am absolutely film crazy so she sometimes takes me along to the studio when they are shooting. She once once worked with Marie-Ange in Paris. Apparently, she is one of the nicest, kindest, people she had ever met and her man was a darling. He supervises all the filming himself, you know.’
‘Doesn’t he get upset when he sees his wife being viciously thrashed by a seven-foot gorilla?’
Francoise laughed. ‘It’s not for real. You don’t think he really whips her, do you?’
I was taken-aback. ‘It certainly looked like it to me.’
‘Mon Dieu, it would never be allowed. Look, you never actually saw the whip hit her, did you? Watch, I’ll run it back.’ She did and she was right. The gorilla raised the whip and cracked it and you saw the girl’s back bleed but never did you see the thong actually strike her. ‘They use red dye for blood. She made another film the day after that one and there wasn’t a mark on her back, I swear it. The whole thing is simulated.’
‘Simulated?’
‘Of course. None of it is real.’
‘What’s the company called?’ I found myself asking.
‘Vidéo Exclusif,’ she read from the paper. ‘Based in Argèles.’
‘Argèles,’ I repeated.
Simone had mentioned a friend who had lived in Argèles. Someone who’s lover she had left because of loyalty to a friend. Could this be the same person? Was Simone’s friend this Marie-Ange Le Touzel? Had Simone run away because of her husband David? And was this David the person I half-suspected he was? If he was, then I knew one or two more answers.
‘I have to go,’ I said, standing up. My heart and pulse raced. If this film had been faked, perhaps....?
‘Go, monsieur? But it is two in the morning. Where will you go?’
‘I have to watch another film.’
She stood up. ‘Father normally takes over now for the rest of the night. May I come with you?’
I thought about the bloody pieces of Yvette’s body spread all around the pool at the Chateau. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’
‘Please. I think you are being in trouble and I want to help.’
I sighed. ‘Very well.’

IT didn’t take us long to get back to the chateau. Carefully avoiding going anywhere near the patio, I let us in through the side door. The old house was in complete darkness and we crept from room to room until we found the right one. It was without windows so I felt safe in putting on the light.
‘Ooh, la-la,’ said Françoise, staring at all the equipment in the room.
We found the equipment behind the tilting couch where I had been confined for so long and also the headset with which I had been fitted.
‘Virtual reality,’ she explained as she turned it over in her hands. ‘It is of a new kind which projects images directly into the retina. When watching, you can believe you are actually there.’
‘I know,’ I said soberly.
The whole thing was controlled by a computer which I switched on and inserted the CD Rom into its slot. From the menu which appeared on the screen, I selected the option called “Beach Scene.” We both watched it through on the computer’s monitor and Francoise just sat there in silence with her long legs up on the desktop. Except for the initial few words Simone had spoken on the tape, all the rest had been spoken directly by Yvette who had been able to adjust her words to my responses. Even without Yvette’s very intimate commentary, it looked bad.
‘Well?’ I asked carefully.
‘That’s not faked,’ she said seriously. ‘Mon Dieu, you can see every detail quite clearly. Run it through again.’
I went back to the menu and entered “Beach Scene” again.
‘Sacre Bleu,’ she said and my sentiments had not been dissimilar. ‘Who is the chick?’
‘A young lady by the name of Simone de Bosvile.’
The name obviously didn’t mean a thing to her for she said; ‘And the man?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘He’s a fair bit older by the looks of it. Why is it that these young chicks waste themselves on older men?’
I took that as a compliment. Françoise was little more than half my age. Françoise sighed. ‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’
I nodded. ‘Yes, she was.’
She looked at me sharply. ‘Was?’
I looked at the floor. ‘She..er..died.’
She reached out and touched my face. ‘I’m sorry. I am thinking you were very much in love with this girl.’
I looked deep into her eyes. ‘Yes. I am thinking that I was.’
The laughter broke the tension and she picked up a notebook and pencil. ‘Run it again. This time, I’m going to take notes. I cannot believe it is real.’
Encouraged, I obeyed and, yet again, we saw it through - four times in succession. When it had finished, she smiled. ‘Voila!’
‘You mean...?’
‘Fake as a quarant-neuf franc note.’
‘But...?’
‘Run it again.’
I ran the programme again and there was the beach. Onto the beach walked Simone and she was joined by the man. So far, so good. Then she lay back on the sand and the top came off, no doubting that bit. She turned to the man and said “Would you make love to me, Michael?”
‘Pause and inch it back,’ said Françoise and, puzzled, I worked out how to do it and we saw the final ten seconds again, frame by frame, as she leant forward, staring at the screen. ‘She doesn’t say that at all.’
I jerked upright. ‘What?’
‘Run it again and watch her lips closely.’
I did and I could see what Françoise meant. It was not easy because Simone was turning towards the man slightly as she spoke.
‘When I was about ten,’ said Françoise. ‘I had an ear infection which rendered me partially deaf for over a year and I had to learn to lip read. I know for a fact that your Simone does not say “Would you make love to me, Michael?”’
I was elated. ‘She doesn’t?’
‘Definitely not. She does start “Would you...” but then turns her head. At the end of the sentence, she closes her eyes and turns back slightly. Also, the name she uses is not Michael.’
‘Does that matter? It might not have been his name and my name could have been overdubbed later. Can you tell what she says in-between?’
She shook her head. ‘We’ll have to look for clues. Let it run.’
I did and she had me pause it several times as she made frantic notes. I couldn’t see what on earth she could get from it all but I let her get on with it. She was clearly an expert at this type of thing.
She laughed at the end. ‘Michael. I have news for you. This is not one film but two films.’
‘Two films?’
‘Yes. Run it once more and I will show you what I mean.’
I did.
‘Watch the man’s left hand,’ she said as it touched Simone’s shoulder after she had removed her top. ‘What do you see?’
I shrugged. ‘A hand. Suntanned, hairy, gold ring.’
‘Keep watching.’ And then, ‘Pause. Now look at his hand.’
I did. It was engaged in a rather obscene kind of groping. Suntanned, hairy. I frowned. ‘Where did the ring go?’
‘It didn’t go anywhere. It’s a different hand. Just watch the whole sequence through again. Each time you see enough of the girl’s face to recognise her as Simone, you will see the gold ring. Whenever the ring disappears, the face is out of shot. Watch.’
I did and she was right. ‘But that must mean...’
‘Precisely. Two men and two girls. Both similar but not exact. Now watch it all through and only take notice of the scenes where either the man wears a ring or when you can see Simone’s face. Ignore all the others and then, afterwards, tell me what you have seen.’
When it had finished, I sat in silence for a long time.
‘Well?’
‘He doesn’t touch her. He doesn’t damn-well touch her at all.’
Françoise smiled. ‘That’s the conclusion I came to. All the sexually explicit scenes are done by the man without the ring and in none of those shots can you positively identify your Simone as having been the willing partner.’
‘You mean..?’
She nodded. ‘I suggest the first film is a perfectly innocent one of two people together on the beach and another, entirely separate, film of two different people going all the way. The two films have then been very cleverly edited together. In fact, if you look closely enough, you can even see that the sand is a slightly different colour in some of the shots.’
I was relieved to some extent to know I had been conned but it still didn’t explain her opening words nor her quite obvious devotion to this man.
‘Run it once more,’ Françoise said. ‘I have to know what she says.’
I did and the answer came quite unexpectedly almost at the end of the film. Françoise pointed out a small plastic bottle on the sand to me and then restarted the programme.
The man’s name was still not clear, but the rest was and Françoise spoke the words Simone had really mouthed. ‘Would you rub oil on me, “somebody”?’ She paused. ‘Satisfied?’
I was. ‘Yes.’
‘Quite a different story now, isn’t it? Your Simone takes off her bikini top, not that unusual in this day and age, and that is all. As far as the film that contains actual shots of Simone goes, that is all that happens.’
‘Françoise, you have no idea what this means to me.’
‘You are sure that Simone is dead?’ she asked kindly.
‘Yes, I was there. She was murdered by terrorists.’
‘I’m sorry. How can I make it up to you?’
‘Come back to Paris with me. I have one more thing to do.’
Yes, I thought as I pocketed the CD Rom disk. One more thing. Probably the most dangerous thing of all, but it would tell me what I desperately needed to know.

9

Leaving an annoyed-at-being-left-behind Françoise in the car to keep watch, I secured entry to the main offices of Guillemot Internationale in the industrial area just off the road towards St Denys. It was not that difficult. After all, it is part of what I had been trained for.
From the state of the deserted offices, it was obvious that the staff were currently in a state of mourning for their deceased employer. Emile de Bosvile had clearly been a popular man and it was his office I made a bee-line for first of all. I found it at the end of the ground-floor corridor and there was nothing remarkable about it. It contained a polished desk, executive chair, the usual decorations and a huge map of Europe showing, I gathered from the accompanying chart, the Guillemot branches in blue and customers for the sports gear the factory manufactured in green. There were blue pins in Paris, Luxemburg, Aix-en-Provence, Genève and Toulouse and green pins littered the map from Bordeaux to Berlin. Business was evidently booming.
I looked closely with the aid of an anglepoise lamp and something caught my eye. There was a very faint pencil mark running up the map in roughly a north-to-south direction from the Mediterranean to the Baltic. It took several minutes for the penny to drop as I looked at some of the places the pencil line intersected. Schwerin, Halberstadt, Eisenach, Tachov, Gorizia, Zadar, Durres, all in a fairly straight line. When I had puzzled over it for a while, I saw something else. Written along the line were the faint words “scanning pattern”. What scanning pattern? Princess? Surely not. The satellite was over the Sahara and could never in a million years produce such a pattern of scanning.
After nearly scratching my head to the skull, I gave up and sat at the desk for inspiration. The surface contained the usual things so I started on the drawers. In the first was a framed photograph and, as I looked at it, a tear trickled down my cheek. It was a picture of two people, one of them Simone, and I suddenly knew what it was she had said that day on the beach. A young girl had said to the man she loved so dearly, ‘Would you rub oil on me, PAPA?’
There was nothing else to be seen at the desk so I pocketed the photo, stood up and went through the dividing door into a smaller anti-room. At first, it seemed to be just a store of sorts and contained little I could see of interest. It was as I was about to leave the room that I noticed, on the wall, there was a mirror in rather an odd place. Carefully, I moved it slightly and then saw the crack. Lifting it down altogether, I revealed what many must have missed, a very well-hidden wall safe. I examined it carefully. It had a combination lock but I did not know the number and, although fairly skilled at breaking and entering, I was no safe-cracker.
Searching in all the usual places, I tried to find a note of the combination. It’s amazing how many people don’t remember and write the number down in the back of a convenient diary or inside a drawer. However, either I was thick or Emile had been very careful. Probably both.
Returning to the main office, I retrieved my small bag. Plastic explosive I did understand, so I packed some liberally around the catch mechanism and pushed home one of the detonators taken from the fridge at the chateau. I then went back into the other office, closed the door after me, ducked down behind the desk and pushed the button on my remote-control device. There was a sharp crack and a little smoke oozed from around the door frame. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door, strode to the safe, grasped the entire contents, retreated and spread them out on the desk in his office. There were several documents but as far as I could tell, they bore no resemblance to anything which might be in any way incriminating or even defamatory to the Consortium.
In desperation, I went back to the safe which had, by now, cleared of smoke. Apart from a couple of inconsequential things I had missed, I could see nothing - until I started to close the door. Taped behind a false panel which had become dislodged by the explosion, was a square envelope. I tore it free and tucked inside there was a CD Rom. It had no identification label but one thing was for sure, if Emile had hidden it, it had to be of some value. Disk in hand, I went from office to office until I found a suitable computer terminal, switched it on and then inserted the disk into the slot.
‘C: >’the amber characters on the screen informed me.
‘DIR D:’ I typed which produced:-

BOOT.INI
PRINCESS.EXE
DESTRUCT.EXE
AX.DAT
BX.DAT
CX.DAT
DX.DAT
EX.DAT

With heart in mouth, I pressed Ctrl, Alt and Del to autoboot the programme and the menu offered me a choice of AX, BX, CX, DX and EX, the subroutines highlighted in the directory. I selected each in turn but, with no data coming in from Princess, on each occasion I had to abort to get out again. My niece, Suzette, might understand all this gibberish, but I didn’t.
I came back to the main screen and the screen said ‘A :>’ once more.
‘DESTRUCT,’ I typed in the absence of anywhere else to go.
‘Are you sure? (Y/N) >’ came the response.
‘Y’ I entered, hoping I was not doing anything irreversible.
‘Destruct ready >’ said the screen.
‘RUN DESTRUCT’
‘Do you wish to save the co-ordinate data? (Y/N) >’
Since there was no co-ordinate data to be saved, I typed ‘N’.
‘Data NOT saved. Do you wish to arm the satellite? (Y/N) >’
My heart stopped. “Arm the satellite?” So I was right. Operation Requiem had begun.
‘N’ I typed quickly.
‘Do you wish to arm the PRNCS self-destruct sequence? (Y/N) >’
As the disk was running in a computer not armed with a self-destruct mechanism, I felt pretty safe in typing in ‘Y’, just to see what would happen.
‘Do you wish to activate the CADE auto-destruct sequence? (Y/N) >’
CADE? What on earth was CADE? Then I remembered what Suzette had once told me - Computer Assisted Data Evaluation.
‘Y’ I typed, becoming concerned that I was getting in too deep.
‘Self-destruct initiated. Enter six-digit code >’
So, there was a failsafe mechanism built into the system. I entered six noughts and the screen cleared.
‘Personal code installed,’ came the reply. ‘Do you wish to continue? (Y/N) >’
I pressed the middle key on the top line of letters.
‘Self-destruct sequence in operation. Default time-delay is three minutes. Press red button to activate >’
The screen cleared once more and then came that single, ominous word ‘End >’
There was no red button to press on this computer. The disk was presumably intended for one that had the CADE system installed, one which was linked by satellite dish to Princess. I escaped the system and felt almost as lost as I had been when I arrived.
I stood up and walked around the office. All I had learnt was that the data was divided into five sections, presumably five different geographical areas, and that the data could be deleted in an emergency. Then I remembered those words ‘Do you wish to arm the satellite?’
Was this programme the same as that installed in Suzette’s computer in Cambridge? Or, if not, did the Consortium’s tracking station at Laroque des Albères have a similar capability? I had to know because if it had then Suzette, or someone like her, could use Princess not just to gather data but also to send it.
The programme had said “arm” the satellite and that looked to me very serious indeed. I knew something of the initial NATO testing of the system, two of us had been involved in checking on them - myself and a certain David Thomas, almost certainly the husband of Simone’s friend, Marie-Ange Le Touzel and he, too, was in France making somewhat unusual software. In use by NATO, the system was safe, or at least as safe as it can be in the hands of any superpower. However, in the hands of a terrorist organisation such as the Consortium, the possible consequences were too ghastly to be contemplated. “The plot thickens”, I would probably have said if this had been one of my books.
I was about to take out the disk when I suddenly found inspiration. Sitting down again, I switched on the laser printer.
The disc whirred for a few seconds and the screen said ‘Ready >’
‘PrintScreen,’ I entered and the printer started up, producing a hard-copy of the autoboot programme. It was as the printer stopped that I heard the voices. Carefully, I switched off the monitor and backed into a closet just as two women came in.
‘Est ce que tu veux boire avec Pierre ce soir?’ one said, placing her bag on the chair near the computer.
Watching them chatting, I felt fairly relaxed. After all, I could see them through the small gap by the door jamb and could have killed them instantly if necessary. Then, without warning, the one with dark hair started to unbutton her dress. What is this, I thought to myself? Glancing at the other girl, I saw that she too was taking her clothes off.
I couldn’t explain the effect this was having on me. While there had been the element of danger, I had remained calm and collected. Now, I was shaking like a leaf and the gun I held was wobbling about all over the place. The voice inside my head said ‘Kill me, Michael, shoot me now. Please kill me.’ Surely those women could hear me, the noise in my ears was deafening.
‘Kill,’ my mind shouted. ‘Kill, maim, destroy,’ it commanded and the more I resisted, the stronger it pressured me. The argument inside myself was tearing me apart but, suddenly, it stopped. Both girls had donned blue overalls over their underclothes and were folding their discarded garments and placing them in a drawer, still chattering endlessly. They continued their tête-a-tête about boy friends for a few more minutes before the one called Antoinette suggested coffee.
‘Oui,’ replied Jacqueline. ‘Je voudrai bien.’ And they went down the corridor in search of the beverage of their dreams.
When I was absolutely sure they had gone, I burst out of my hiding place, sweating and trembling violently. Once, I had feared women. Now, I hated them in certain circumstances and, I had discovered, wanted to hurt and kill them. When I had seen Yvette at the chateau, she had looked and sounded so much like Simone. However, instead of going and doing what most normal men would have done in similar circumstances, I had found myself overcome with an unquenchable desire, not simply to kill, but to tear apart, utterly destroy. Here in Paris, I had been confronted with a similar situation but had resisted and the result was that I was now virtually a nervous wreck. Instinctively, I wanted to run after them and shoot pieces off them while they screamed for mercy.
Other than using virtual reality, I didn’t know all the details of the technique Carstairs had used on me but it had certainly worked very well. Now, all I had to do was to control it until I had the right person in my sights and, when I did, there would be no holding back.
Gradually, my heart beat returned to something near normal and I was about to leave when I remembered the disk and, pushing it into its envelope, I shoved it into my pocket to join the print-out, photo and “Beach Scene” and left the building. My mind raced all the way to my car and, as the first light of dawn touched the eastern sky, I took Françoise home to bed.

WE both slept until almost noon and she had a lot of explaining to do to her father as to where she had been for most of the night but, as he had no wish to offend a paying customer, he simply grunted and left her to cook my breakfast. After feeding our faces, we went back to my room and I spread the print-out across the bed.
‘What do you know about computers?’ I asked Françoise as she stepped from the shower.
‘Not a lot,’ she replied, sitting beside me with the towel tucked between her legs. ‘We use one in the office, mainly as a word-processor to do the invoices and statements, but I have no idea how they work.’
‘Okay, then I’ll explain.’ I held up the CD Rom. ‘This disc is divided into three individual programmes, one with separate subroutines. The print-out is of the autoboot programme, the one which comes on automatically when you start up. The programme is divided into lines of instructions and the first dozen or so lines set up the screen variables and then send the computer to a sub-routine called PRNCS.ini for data.’
I moved my finger to the place. Most of it was straight forward but, within that set of instructions, was one line I didn’t understand at all. Line 260 of the programme read “angle=angle+DEG(ASN*0.5)”. It had been a long time since I had been to school and arithmetic was never my strong subject, so I was lost.
‘The main programme is fairly straight forward and deals with data received from a satellite in space. There are instructions for the menu screen, subroutines for the ensuing choice made and then calculations on which to base the data from AX, BX, CX and so forth. Interestingly, the means of calculating the data for AX, BX and CX are virtually the same. Only the source of the data is different. Different sensors for the different geographical locations, I presume.’
I looked closer. DX section was quite different, there being a very complicated data evaluation routine involved. The source of the data had to be from a very different kind of sensor. EX was even worse. Françoise kept me well supplied with coffee and food and it took me most of the day but, finally, things began to make some kind of sense, at least on paper. AX, BX and CX zones were obviously in the atmosphere. They would be what Suzette would use for evaluating her weather information. The system for evaluating DX contained a great number of “FOR...IF...NEXT” loops which conveyed to me that the data was being filtered in some way. Only ground sensors would need that much sorting out. So, Princess could identify troop movements.
EX had me tied up all evening and half way through the night and, fortunately for me, Françoise was very patient and understanding. It was almost morning before inspiration came.
‘Have you got it?’ she said as I walked around the room with the print-out in my hand.
‘I think so,’ I said slowly. ‘But why someone would want to evaluate data from under the surface of the sea, I have no idea.’
‘Submarines?’ she suddenly said. Out of the mouths of babes, sucklings and a motel-owner’s daughter.
‘Have you got a map or atlas of Europe?’
‘In my room,’ she said and, pulling on her dressing-gown, went to get it. In less than two minutes, she was back.
It still didn’t make sense. The area of the scanning pattern for Princess wouldn’t help either the Consortium or NATO. I had to have missed something, something important. It was then that I remembered the map with its faint pencil line in Emile’s office. “Scanning pattern” was what the accompanying words had said, but it was all wrong. I looked at the print-out again and my eyes kept falling on that one line. 260 - “angle=angle+(DEG(ASN*0.5)”. I gave up. Perhaps it would come to me later.

I slept in the next morning and then rang Directory Enquiries. They gave me the number of the Registered Office for Vidéo Exclusif in Perpignan. I got Françoise to ring up and pose as a researcher for a TV company and she told me what she had found.
‘The company is based at Argèles, which I think you already know. Apparently it was originally set up as a trust company.’
‘A trust company?’
‘The beneficiaries were under age at the time.’
‘Who were the beneficiaries?’
She smiled. ‘Guess.’
‘Mademoiselle Marie-Ange Le Touzel?’
She nodded. ‘D’accord. And...?’
‘Simone de Bosvile,’ I said with certainty.
Françoise nodded. ‘Trés bien. There are two trustees, each holding fifty-percent of the trust shares. Half are held by another company - Guillemot Toulouse.’
‘And the other half?’
‘By the Executive Producer of the company...’
‘David Thomas.’
She looked at me sharply. ‘How did you know that?’
‘I guessed.’
She consulted her notes once more. ‘Guillemot Toulouse also holds a twenty-five percent share in a the parent company, Guillemot Internationale.’
‘Did he tell you about the directors of Guillemot Toulouse?’
‘Oui. Any Guesses?’
‘Emile de Bosvile?’
She shook her head. ‘Not any more.’
‘I give in.’
‘David Thomas and Simone de Bosvile. Almost a year ago, Emile’s share was bought out by the other two directors upon Simone’s eighteenth birthday.’
Something else that the papers had got wrong, I thought. I’ll bet it was the girl who had been murdered in Yarm who had been sixteen, not Simone. ‘What about Guillemot Internationale?’
‘No information. The company’s registered address is a bank in Genève and there are no public details available.’
Dead end. To learn more, I would have either to go to Geneva, probably a waste of time knowing the traditional security of Swiss banks, or to England. The latter seemed the best bet as I would also be able to check up on Suzette and find out what my cute little niece was really up to.

I left without warning, feeling very guilty about deceiving Françoise who had done so much to help me. However, there were more important issues at stake and the next stage might well be the most dangerous of the lot. If I survived and Europe survived with me, then I would return and make it up to her, perhaps permanently if she would have me. We were not in love in the general sense of the word. I still loved Simone and nothing could alter that. However Françoise and I had found in just a couple of days that we were relatively comfortable together and perhaps that would be enough for both of us.
I headed north to Calais and took “le Shuttle.” By mid-morning, I was close to London and the first thing I did was visit the main library in Croydon with a hand-written copy of that dreaded line 260. To save time, I offered it to the pretty lady librarian wearing a lapel badge which informed me that her name was “Louise” and she studied it closely.
‘Trig,’ she informed me pleastantly and directed me to the relevant bookshelf.
“First-Year Trigonometry for GCSE students” seemed about my level of book and I looked up the index. After reading only ten lines, I knew what it was all about.
With grim determination, I replaced the book, thanked the mine-of-information and headed for the car. It was the eighth of July. In just six days, Carstairs had said, the tests would begin. If the Consortium were going to act, it would be then, before the results of the tests became public knowledge.
I drove northward at a leisurely pace during that day, evaluating all the information in my possession as I went. The M25 was fairly busy and so was the M11 but, by mid-afternoon, I was in Cambridge. I drove straight into town to find a hotel but, on the way, passed a modern, glass-fronted block of offices bearing the sign “S.I.E.D.” and a memory pinged in my mind. Skidding to a halt, I reversed back to the entrance. There were a couple of spaces empty, so I drove in and parked.
So this was where it all happened. S.I.E.D. - Satellite Information Evaluation Databank. Somewhere in that building, someone else knew what this was all about.
Quietly but nonchalantly, so as not to draw too much attention to myself, I walked across the car park. There were cars of many types; BMWs, Audis, even one or two British ones. What caught my eye was one that stood on its own beside the legend “DATA SUPERVISOR”. It was an RS Cosworth, twenty-or-so-grand’s worth of hot vroom. My fingers ran over the brilliant white paintwork which was still warm in the summer sunshine and I was fascinated. Someone must be making a lot of money.
My thoughts were disturbed by the clicking of high heels coming towards me. Smiling at the thought of so much power in the hands of one foot, I turned towards the source of the sound and then froze. The girl approaching me was dressed in a smart, navy-blue suit with a pretty, white blouse underneath. Her face was suntanned behind the dark glasses, and framed by hair dark. I couldn’t move and stood, transfixed, as she strode confidently towards me. It couldn’t be but it was. There was no doubt about it.
Here in Cambridge, not ten metres from where I stood, was the smiling, vivacious Simone de Bosvile.

10

As she closed the gap between us, I took a step towards her, held out my arms a little and she stopped, staring at me. Of course, I suddenly remembered, my appearance had altered significantly.
The feeling started slowly at first. The words ‘Would you make love to me, Michael?’ kept repeating in my mind, over and over again. I wanted to grab her, throw her across the bonnet of her car and strangle the life out of her.
I fought the feeling as I had in Paris and the pain started while the voice began to say ‘Kill me, Michael. You must shoot me, kill me, now.’
Her lips were moving but the words were not the same, just like on the film. She repeated her words and, this time, I heard; ‘Excuse me. Are you all right?’ in a perfect Cambridge voice.
I opened my mouth to speak but no words came, just a gargling sound as I fell to my knees on the hard tarmac. The girl dropped to her haunches beside me then turned and called to a work colleague. ‘Jim, fetch water, quickly. And the doctor.’
I fought for breath as the pains stabbed me all over. A man in his mid-twenties arrived with a glass and thrust it in her hand.
‘Where’s that doctor?’ she snapped as she held the glass to my mouth and the cool water trickled down my throat.
‘He’s on his way, Miss Blackman.’
Miss Blackman? My whole body jolted at the name and I began to cough and splutter as the liquid went down the wrong way. Wave after wave of relief flooded over me. It was not Simone, it was her cousin, my niece.
Wow! She was so like Simone. For one moment, I had thought... Nonsense. I had wanted to think, that was all. It had been ten years since I had actually seen Suzette in the flesh, having broken physical ties with the rest of the family when Mary had died.
Over that intervening period, Suzette and her brother had phoned at Xmas and the like, but now the skinny, always-laughing, thirteen-year-old schoolgirl I had carried, piggy-back, across the River Granta that fateful summer, had metamorphosed.
I felt like screaming. She was beautiful; a twenty-three-year-old version on the girl I had just begun to love until she was torn from my grasp by a chunk of Semtex.
‘Here comes the doctor,’ said the one she had called Jim and a short, balding man pushed through the small group of bystanders which had gathered around. He praised Suzette for her prompt action as she stood up.
Suddenly, she was the smart, efficient office supervisor once more as she turned to the group. ‘It’s all right. You can go now.’
She said it in a kindly voice but she was obeyed instantly and, within a minute, I was alone with the three of them. The doctor stood up and spoke briefly to Suzette before walking away with this Jim fellow.
‘It appears you are suffering from overwork,’ said Suzette as she helped me to my feet.
She was virtually in my arms and I fought a nuclear war inside me as I forced myself to smile and thank her for her kindness. She smiled back and the bright summer sun was eclipsed.
‘Can I offer you a lift anywhere?’ she asked, her arm still round my waist. Something else flashed across my memory. She was even wearing the same perfume Simone had. Good grief, the two of them were alike.
‘No,’ I said in response to her question. ‘I’m all right now, Miss. Thank you very much.’
She put her hand in her jacket pocket, pulled out a card and offered it to me. ‘I’m sorry but I have to go now. If you need any more help, you can get in touch with me at this number.’
I looked down at the card and smiled inwardly. Now, I even knew where she lived.

I watched the Cosworth pull out into the gathering traffic and then got into my own car. I thought about what had happened and now knew what it was all about. I had believed I was brainwashed into killing the already-dead Simone. I wasn’t. It was Suzette who had to die. I had not seen her for all those intervening years, but Carstairs had and he knew just how alike the girls were.
If I felt the urge to kill her so strongly after a brief meeting in the street, what would I do to the poor girl if I ever met her alone?
I started the engine and turned towards town where I spotted a phone booth.
‘Yes,’ said the familiar voice when I had dialled.
‘It’s me,’ I said.
‘And?’
‘I’m in Cambridge. I’ve found out where my niece lives.’
‘Congratulations,’ he said, the sarcasm poorly disguised. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Watch her for a while. I told you before, I will take no action until I am sure.’
‘Very well. You will soon find out that I am right.’
‘I will need help.’
‘You are on your own,’ said Colonel Carstairs. ‘The Birdwatcher always works alone.’
I recoiled slightly at his use of my old code name. ‘This time, it’s different. It may take a day or two to build up a case.’
‘Why don’t you just close the case and have done with it?’ he snapped. ‘You’ve never been squeamish before.’
He was trying to provoke me but I was well aware of his tactics. ‘I am not squeamish. It is simply that I am not sure. I want Harry Williams.’
‘I’m sure that I could send someone better than him. He is getting on a bit now, you know.’
‘I don’t care. Get him on a train first thing in the morning. I know I can trust him to tell me the truth.’
‘Don’t you think that I am telling you the truth?’
‘It would be a novelty,’ I accused.
‘That’s unkind,’ he said without offense.
‘Take it how you will but I want Harry here, tomorrow. If you send anyone else, I’ll terminate his contract on sight.’
‘What if it’s a her?’ he teased, fully aware of what my present feelings would be.
I was jolted but remained calm. ‘I would do the same for her.’
‘Very well. Harry will be on the first train from Liverpool Street. Don’t keep him waiting at the station.’
‘Listen Carstairs, get one thing straight. I’m in charge of this operation and I will do what has to be done, with or without your help. However, if you want it done within the department rules, give me the back-up I demand.’
‘You shall have it,’ promised the Colonel and the line went dead.

CAMBRIDGE station had changed little over the intervening years. One very long platform for the main-line trains from London to King’s Lynn and vice-versa with several smaller bays for the Newmarket and Ipswich cross-country, the Ely and Peterborough local and the electric trains from King’s Cross via Hitchin and Royston.
I remembered the first time I had come here. It was when my brother John had arrived home on leave and I had met him off a steam-hauled express from London that had sucked and blowed like an old man after its virtually non-stop journey. Now, rail travel was cleaner and sleeker but with no excitement, no sense of adventure and, despite the improvements and finesse progress had brought, no quicker.
Even after ten years of ageing, I recognised Harry immediately as he climbed down hesitantly from the blue and grey carriage and shuffled towards me as if in pain. He had aged, not just the ten, literal years since I had last seen him, but had turned from a smart, efficient aide in his forties to an “also-ran” who was now close to retirement.
‘It’s good to see you, Mike,’ he greeted warmly as we shook hands in the shade of the big canopy. ‘I’m glad you’re back on the team again.’
‘Only for this one, Harry,’ I said. ‘This is a special, one-off assignment...and the last.’
He looked at me for a long time before he spoke. ‘We’re all getting old, Mike.’
‘In this last week, I’ve aged twenty years,’ I said as he handed his ticket to the collector and we filed through towards the car-park. ‘You will have heard about what happened on the ferry.’
‘Regrettably, I did,’ he sighed. ‘Mademoiselle de Bosvile will be a great loss to the department.’
I stopped suddenly in the middle of the road and the whole scene seemed to go misty before my eyes. ‘What did you say?’
‘About...?’
‘About her being a loss to the department. Do you mean to tell me that Simone was working for British Intelligence?’
He looked surprised. ‘Of course. Didn’t you know?’
‘The bastard,’ I swore and my companion didn’t have to be told to whom I was referring.
We climbed into the car. ‘How long had Simone been working for us?’
‘Since she was a child. Emile often used her to run messages for him if he was being watched.’
‘Then Emile really was working for us, too?’
‘Naturally. It runs in the family. Ever since the seventeenth century, there has been a de Bosvile in France working for England.’
‘And the French never suspected?’
‘Of course they did,’ he sniggered. ‘They’re not stupid. It was a little game we played between us. They knew. We knew they knew. They knew we knew they knew. It all added to the fun.’
‘And yet they killed her.’
Sharply, he turned round to look at me. ‘No, they could never have done that - it would be like killing one of their own. Already, they have put their very best men on finding the people who arranged it.’
‘The Consortium?’
‘Ah, yes,’ he murmured. ‘Le Consortium.’
‘Does it really exist?’
‘Who knows?’ he shrugged. ‘I guess it has to. We didn’t kill the girl and the French didn’t. And neither did they kill her father.’
I sat bolt upright. ‘But I read that Emile de Bosvile had committed suicide on hearing of his daughter’s death.’
‘Suicide? Four bullets in the back? A little unlikely, I think you’ll agree.’
I sighed and shook my head. ‘So they killed Emile as well.’
‘It is rumoured that he stole something from them. Something very important.’
I smiled to myself. Yes and I knew what that something was. I suddenly wondered if Carstairs knew and almost opened my mouth to say something but then paused. It wouldn’t hurt to let them remain in ignorance for a while longer.
‘Then how did I fit in?’ I got round to asking as I drove along Trumpington Road.
‘We wanted you in France because of your knowledge of the original system but Carstairs was reluctant to involve you because of your...illness.’
‘My rebellion, don’t you mean?’ I contradicted but then paused. It was not fair to take it out on poor little Harry Williams. ‘Then who arranged to contact me?’
‘The French approached Emile as intermediary.’
‘He had that kind of relationship with them?’
‘Of course. They trusted him.’
‘But he was a British spy!’
‘He was Excalibur!’
I nearly collided with a lorry in my shock but turned into a side street to recover.
‘Emile was Excalibur?’ I asked in the ensuing silence. ‘But I thought that Excalibur died.’
‘Petrone de Bosvile did. It was he that your brother was sent into the Pyrenees to make contact with towards the end of the war and Emile was his grandson. Excalibur is and always has been the hereditary title of the de Bosviles.’
‘Emile? Simone?’
He nodded. ‘Andrew de Bosvile, third Earl of Ramsden, was the first to use the title officially. It was given to him by King Charles II.’
‘And there had been an Excalibur ever since?’
He nodded. ‘Until now.’
‘Who will take over the title now that Emile and Simone are dead?’
He shook his head. ‘There is no-one. No-one that both nations will trust.’
I thought for a moment. ‘There is me.’
Harry looked at me sharply. ‘But you are the Birdwatcher.’
‘Only in the eyes of the British. To the Consortium, I will be Excalibur, the executioner’s sword.’ I turned to him. ‘Tell me honestly, do you really think my niece is the traitor?’
He shrugged. ‘Someone is. We know it is not you, because you were out of circulation at the time, nor was it Emile because it was he who raised the alarm. It has to be someone very close, someone who knows all about Princess and there are very few who know what we know.’
There are even less who know what I know, I thought with resignation. I suddenly wondered if Suzette knew. If she did...
Harry Williams was still speaking. ‘That’s why we brought you in, you see? You knew, but you were clean. I knew, Carstairs knew, Emile and young Simone knew and, now, Miss Blackman knows.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘She would have to. She works with Princess every day. She wouldn’t be able to do that without knowing all about it. That’s why she has to be the one.’
‘I’m still not convinced.’
He looked at me. ‘We don’t have much time.’
‘Listen! If Suzette is guilty, she will have to make a move soon. She is no use to them here in England.’
He looked at me oddly for a second and it was a long time before I realised the significance of that single, solitary glance.

Nothing of significance happened for the rest of that day except the that I managed to gain access to Suzette’s flat while she was out. As I would have expected, it was very neat and clean and, to my surprise, totally devoid of any reference or connection with the male of the species except, hanging over her bed, a photograph of her brother, Roger.
One thing did get me worried, though. In the small bedroom which served as a study, there was a personal computer. I switched it on, took the disc from my pocket and tried it in the machine. So, I thought, Suzette’s equipment is capable of running the Princess programme I had taken from Emile’s office.
In itself, it proved nothing, of course, but it seemed like another nail had been driven into Suzette’s coffin. It was because of that discovery that I took what I felt was a reasonable precaution. I carefully cut open the silk lining of her one and only suitcase and inserted a strip of plastic explosive behind the hinges, along with a remote-controlled detonator. As an extra, I added one of the direction-finding bugs which had been sent from London. If she suddenly upped and moved, I would know. Not only that, I now had the means to stop her before she could do irreparable damage to Europe.

During the rest of that day, the old soldier and I took it in turns to watch the house because for me to be seen again at S.I.E.D. was asking for trouble. On the Friday, we managed to get access the the empty flat opposite which meant that at least we could take it in turns to rest between shifts.
Carstairs had wanted me to do it alone. If he had got his way, then by now I would have been fast asleep and may easily have missed the most significant event.
Suzette came home early and, after an hour in the flat, came out carrying the suitcase. My heart almost stopped as I watched her close the boot and, dressed in tee-shirt and denims, climb into her car. Putting on her dark glasses, she started the engine and began to pull away. The whole thing took me a little by surprise and, had it not been for the frantic waving to get going from Harry, I might have lost her. As it was, I didn’t and, sick a heart, I followed the white Ford RS Cosworth down the M11, around the M25, through Dartford Tunnel and onto the M2. From there, it was but a short ride to the tunnel.
Up to that point, I had been pretty certain of her innocence and yet here she was, bold as brass, on the Shuttle with the next stop Calais and France. On board the train, she spoke to no-one, looked at no-one in particular and, if it hadn’t been for the sudden cry of a small child which made me glance around, I would not have seen the two men who were watching her very closely indeed.
It is never easy to tell the bad guys from the good guys, even when you are in the middle of things, but there was something familiar about one of them. They could be from Carstairs, members of the Consortium or, as I strongly suspected, French Security. So, I thought, they didn’t trust us as much as Harry thought they did. The question was, did they mean to harm my niece, arrest her or simply observe her as I was doing? I deliberately nudged past them and they took no notice of me whatsoever. Perhaps they did not yet know of my presence. They soon would.
At Calais, I was several cars behind Suzette as we headed south. I could not help but notice the black Citroen that was never far behind me. I smiled. Typical French Security, predictable as ever.

ALL the way through Northern France, the weather got warmer and I got more and more depressed. It could just be a holiday, I kept telling myself as, in procession, we passed Arras and then Senlis. It was on the Boulevard Périphérique, Paris Ring Road, that the tail made its move. As I had expected, Suzette took the less-congested Western route through the series of tunnels beneath the Bois de Boulogne. It was as the daylight faded that the Citroen accelerated.
I was slow, caught off-guard for a few seconds and, before I knew it, it was coming past me. By the grim look on their faces, I could see they meant her no good. They now had Securité Nationale de France written all over their faces and the guns appeared as their car rapidly closed the gap between itself and Suzette’s Ford.
I took a chance. I had to protect Suzette until I knew whether she was guilty or not and having her banged up in some Paris prison or worse would prove nothing, to me nor to anyone else. Slamming my foot onto the throttle, I launched my car into the gap between them and attempted to cut across in front of them. The horn blared and tyres screeched as the Citroen swerved like mad to avoid me and they were forced onto the slip-road of the A13. I could see the fists waving as they daren’t stop with so much traffic behind them. The Boulevard Périphérique is a four lane race-track where only the totally insane drive at the best of times. Only someone with a total death wish would attempt to stop or turn on it.
I supposed that they might still find us but it was several kilometres until the first exit from the road they were on and, by the time they had circumnavigated Versailles and then worked out which route Suzette had taken, we would be well down the Autoroute du Soleil. Suzette appeared not to notice the goings-on behind her; at least she gave no indication she had as she drove southwards as if she had not a care in the world.
She’s innocent, I kept telling myself. Any minute now, she’ll turn off towards Nice or Genève. She’s not headed for the Pyrenees at all; she’s on holiday, off to Bordeaux perhaps. I was making excuses for her but it didn’t work as she gradually got closer and closer to the place where I hoped she was not headed.
It was when she turned off the Autoroute de la Catalane at Le Boulou that I finally allowed myself to be convinced of her guilt. Along the D618 she drove, turning right at St Génis-des-Fontaines. After stopping briefly for supplies, she continued up the hill above Laroque des Albères and into the Forêt de Sorède. There, in a little white villa on the side of Pic Neulos, she stopped. We were high in the Anti-Pyrenees, among the trees which rose from the valley all the way up to the narrow, tarmacadam road running along the ridge at the top of the mountain. There was nothing especially remarkable about that particular tarmacadam road except that it wound its way directly from the tiny village of Laroque des Albères to a low, concrete building that had once been controlled by NATO. However, since Spain had joined the EU, it had found its way into the hands of the Consortium.
I sighed in resignation. Suzette was now less than a mile from the building which I knew was the main satellite tracking station which controlled Princess.

11

I felt sick at heart and watched Suzette from a distance as she got out of her car and entered the villa above Sorède in the Anti-Pyrenees. Carstairs was right, she must be working for the Consortium and, now, they had all their people together in one place. Carstairs had also told me that it was tomorrow they were to start testing the satellite’s probes so the timing was right, too. If this was all true, then the end of Europe could be just a matter of days away.
Parking my car in the trees, I got out and scrambled up the rocks which were strewn across the mountainside until I was in a position to see anyone who arrived or left the villa. I lay in the warm sunshine contemplating the events of the last few days and there seemed no way out of it. Suzette was here so she was guilty and therefore had to die.
A flash of light caught my eye, high in the tree-line on the opposite side of the valley. I squinted but could see nothing so I went back down to the car and retrieved my rifle and the camera I had bought before leaving Cambridge and started to climb higher up the ridge. The air was still and clear and not a single cloud was visible in the deep, blue sky as I scrambled upwards, always on the hidden side of the trees. Laying down on the grass, I inched forward towards the edge of the rocks and gently parted the leaves in front of me. Laying my anorak down on the ground, I draped it over the front of the lens like a canopy. No-one was going to get any tell-tale reflections from me.
There were two of them. One, a small man with a moustache, obviously French. The other, taller, leaner, sat holding the binoculars easily in his hands as he watched Suzette’s villa carefully. The cross-hairs of my sight moved from his face to his right ear. One tiny squeeze, one slight pull, and he would not feel a thing as what brains he had were spread all over the side of the hill.
As I watched, he sat up a little more and handed the glasses to his colleague who peered down into the valley as I heard a car start up. Glancing below me, I saw Suzette wave to someone driving away in a yellow Citroen 2CV, turn and walk across the stone patio and then stand for a moment, looking into the pool. Slowly, I turned a little and the crosshairs poised on the side of her neck and I started to shake a little.
With considerable self-control, I kept telling myself this was Suzette, not Simone, who was standing on the edge of the swimming pool just three-hundred metres below me. I had just gained control again when my heart started beating uncontrollably. Slowly and gracefully, she casually stepped out of her denims and peeled off her blouse. In only her panties, she dived into the pool. The strip had not been designed to be sensual, I told myself, she was just having a swim to cool off after her long drive. However, as she hauled herself out of the water, tied her dark hair in a coil on top of her head and lay down on the sunbed, it took all the inner strength I could muster to prevent myself systematically blasting her into very small pieces as I had Yvette.
For a long time I lay on my back, fighting for breath, as the pains slowly receded. How long could I keep this up before I had to give in? At the chateau, it hadn’t taken many days for the brainwashing to break me. But that had been a film. This was a real, live person.
Carstairs had been right in one thing. I had never hesitated before so why was I doing so now? It was because something didn’t fit. All the evidence was against her, that I knew, and if she was guilty and I didn’t act, millions would lose their lives. What was one person’s life when so much was at stake?
When I looked again, Suzette was still there, highlighted by the red glow of the setting sun. Peering across the valley, I noticed that one of the men had gone. I searched the mountain, with heart pounding in case he was stalking me, but he was nowhere in sight. For a while, I forgot Suzette and watched and listened but no-one came to hunt me. Eventually, the other man went as well and we were alone in the valley - Suzette and I, traitor and executioner, Sunbather and Birdwatcher, Princess and Excalibur.
Gradually, the sun dropped below the Pic de Trois Termes and the temperature, although still warm, dropped noticeably. As I watched through the 600mm lens of my new camera, Suzette stood up (click-click), stretched (click-click-click), picked up her previously-discarded clothes (click) and walked in through the patio doors of the villa. Carefully and quietly, I slithered down the hillside towards the villa, ever aware of the surroundings. As darkness loomed, I crouched in the bushes beside the pool and watched her through the window. She was obviously meeting someone. The black split micro-dress, big gold earrings and fish-net stockings told me that much.
Frantically, I made my way around the villa, down the lane and had just reached my car when I heard the distinctive sound of the Cosworth reversing out of the drive and then starting down the mountain. The white blur flashed by as I started my car and, without lights, followed her into Sorède. Turning left, she took the lower road and, a kilometre later, pulled into the car park of a small restaurant.
As I observed, she greeted the landlord like a long-lost uncle and was shown to a table. After a few moments, she was joined by another girl whom I didn’t recognise at first. In high heels, skin-tight purple leggings and with her hair pinned up, she was difficult to equate with the fair-haired girl I had earlier seen drive away from the villa in the 2CV. I had expected her to meet someone else, exchange secret papers or the like but after two hours of sipping wine and eating the best French food while my own stomach rumbled, Suzette said her goodnights, jumped into her car and drove back to the villa. Certainly nothing very suspicious there. In fact, she was acting just like I would expect a perfectly innocent holiday-maker to act. Had we got it all wrong? Carstairs hadn’t thought so. The French Security obviously didn’t think so either and neither did the two watchers in the trees, whoever they were. That being so, why was it I still had this nagging doubt? I didn’t ought to - her very presence here confirmed she was more than she had made out. If she wasn’t working for the Consortium, then what on earth was she doing here at this particular time?

DURING the early hours of the morning, I managed to manoeuvre my car into the trees high above the valley. It was very difficult in the darkness but, I thought, whatever happened today I was going to have a grandstand view. From where I sat, perched behind a small outcrop, I could see the whole valley as the sun rose. Through the trees, the rusty cables of the hardly-used ski-lift stretched between towers which stood, motionless, against the background of trees and sky. Below me, the whole Plain of Rousillon lay stretched out like a map and the winding road snaked towards me past the villa which stood, silent and still in the early-morning sunshine.
The sound of an engine broke the silence and I watched as the little yellow 2CV wound it’s way through the gorge, up the steep hill and parked in front of the villa. The crosshairs followed the girl with the golden hair as she bobbed up the steps, basket in hand, and entered the villa. Somehow, she was vaguely familiar. Something about the teenager in denim mini-skirt and yellow top had jogged a memory from way back. I had never seen the girl before this week, of that I was absolutely certain, but the memory gnawed at me as I peered through the sights.
It had been like this eleven years ago when I and two others had come to observe, at least that’s what Carstairs had called it. Guarded, more like, as trucks of materials and equipment were ferried up the hill from Le Perthus and put together to construct the tracking station which, for years, had carefully watched over the border with Spain. Those were the days, the NATO days, when we lived on American rations for a change and swapped stories with US army rookies who were really CIA agents in disguise. Of course, we were just innocent British servicemen, supposedly having never heard of the SAS who was paying our wages.
It was an hour before anything moved and, when it did, it came my way. Low, sleek, white and very noisy as it roared in four-wheel-drive up the mountain track that led to only one place. The crosshairs focussed on her face behind the tinted windscreen and I could clearly see her dark glasses as she hauled the car around a hairpin bend, raising clouds of dust in the process. The car passed right below me, roaring along the forest trail through the trees, the trail which connected with a certain tarmacadam road. The engine note faltered as it reached the top and, by the time I had got into my car, all had become quiet again.
With heart in mouth, I got into Yvette’s Renault and edged up the track with a drop of hundreds of feet mere inches from my wheels. Suzette had come up like a rocket whereas I had a little more respect for my tyres, my suspension and my life. At the top, I pulled into the trees once more and, grabbing my camera from the back seat, pushed my way through the bushes. Suddenly, it was there. The long, low, concrete building with antennae atop; the sister of the one at Cambridge; one of a pair of tracking stations which read the data from Princess.
I searched and soon found it. In front of the building was a car park and, in the car park, a white Cosworth. Unslinging my camera, I rested it against the bole of a tree while I focussed the long lens onto the group of people beside the car. They were several hundred metres away but I could see clearly enough. What was she up to? I had never seen her acting like this before. What had she turned into?
I focussed the long lens onto her face as she laughed aloud with two men who had come out of a door in the side of the tracking station, her sunglasses perched on top of her head. I could clearly see the shape of her body through here thin cheesecloth top as she chatted away to them. If I could, they must be getting a grandstand view. Every time she opened her mouth, I heard her voice say ‘Would you make love to me, Michael?’ and felt the feeling rising inside me. Kill! it said. Destroy!
Fortunately for Suzette, all my camera would say was “click-click” as I took several close-ups of her and her two companions. One was short with a moustache, the other was taller. Together, they made the pair of watchers from across the mountain.

I could have killed them all, should have done by all rights, but I didn’t. Something inside me said “no”. Instead, I again hesitated and, half an hour later, I was in the little border town of Le Perthus. After only ten minutes of conversation, Suzette had driven away from the tracking station, over the Col de L’Ouillat and down into the town. Parking her car in the car park beside the viaduct at the top of the town, she had gone shopping. I was trying to get a number on the phone.
‘It seems you were right,’ I finally said after some delay.
‘What do you mean?’ asked the Colonel.
‘This morning, bold as brass, she drove right up to the front door of the tracking station at Laroque and got into conversation with two of the operators.’
In spite of his previous accusations, for some reason, the Colonel was obviously not happy. ‘That wasn’t supposed to happen. We arranged for her to go to France simply to convince them that we knew all about what they are doing.’
Now I was really confused. ‘Don’t we?’
‘Of course not. But they don’t know that.’
It was some time before I spoke again. I knew. Why didn’t he? ‘So what happens now?’
‘She must be eliminated.’
A lump came to my throat. ‘Immediately?’
‘Before she leaves France,’ he insisted. ‘But it must look as if the French have found out about her spying and did it to cover themselves.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a little surprise inserted into her suitcase.’
The line went dead and I stood for a long time without moving. Just when I thought I had it all clear in my mind, the water became muddy again. “We arranged for her to go the France,” Carstairs had said. Who was “we”?
I had asked him whether we knew what they were up to and his answer had indicated that we were still somewhat in the dark. But we weren’t. We knew about Princess. The only thing Carstairs didn’t know that I knew was that the satellite was not where she was supposed to be. That single, almost-insignificant line in the computer’s config.sys programme made all the difference, the one I had almost ignored because I hadn’t understood it. I wondered how many others knew that Princess was not geostationary over the Sahara Desert at all. Instead, she was over a thousand miles further east, over Eastern Somali. Instead of just scanning France and Britain, as she should have been, Princess was also scanning the whole of Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Mediterranean.
Emile had known, that’s why he had stolen the disk from the Consortium in the first place. In desperation, probably because he knew he was being watched, he had sent his own, precious daughter to England to try to find the one person whom he knew was clean, the one person who might just put two and two together and begin to understand what it was all about. But why would he do that? I could think of only one answer - the leak in British Intelligence the Colonel had mentioned.
Instead of going straight to Carstairs, Simone had come to me. But why? It had to be because her father had been fairly certain that the leak was somewhere inside the department, someone very close to the top. Unlucky for Simone, somewhere along the way she had picked up the terrible trio who had probably been following her right from the start, intent on eliminating her and whoever it was she made contact with.
It hadn’t been guilt which had prevented her screaming in the woods that day, it had been a last, frantic attempt to save the life of the one man who could, in turn, save not only her father but the whole of Europe. The poor girl had been willing to allow herself to be raped and then possibly cut to pieces by those maniacs just to try to prevent me, a complete stranger, being killed. I had seen what they had done to the other girl at Yarm and felt sick at the thought. In the hospital at Stockton, I could not help but have noticed the terror deeply etched into the girl’s face before death had come blissfully. That’s what they had intended for me. That’s how Simone would have died if Bruce had not pricked up his ears at her muffled cry.
But who was Suzette working for? For the Consortium? Then why did Carstairs say that “we” had sent her in? Was she also working for British Intelligence? If so, why was I now to eliminate her when I should be protecting her? None of it made sense. Unless...?
No, impossible. I banished the ridiculous thought from my mind.

THE next few days looked like being the most boring in my life. I lay on my rock on the side of the mountain while Suzette lay on the sun-bed below me and, gradually, got a deep tan. But that’s all that happened. No sign of the people from the tracking station, no earthquakes, not even a shower of rain to break the monotony. My niece made no attempt whatsoever to contact anyone except the fair-haired girl who came every day to lay in the sun with her. I daren’t look at either of them too closely. If I did, I became turned-on and it started the overwhelming desire to kill, to destroy. I didn’t even take the rifle when I went to watch them, else they would now both be very dead.
Carstairs had been very explicit. It had to look like an accident or that they had done it. But, I kept thinking to myself, who was this “they” he referred to? The Consortium or$the French?
My brain hurt for trying to work it out so on the Wednesday, I decided to go for a ride. Looking at my map, I worked out that Argèles was around half-an-hour away so I left Suzette and friend sunbathing and drove into town.
Argèles is divided into two townships. There is the old market town with its stone buildings and olde-world atmosphere - usually referred to as Argèles-sur-Mer which means “on-sea” - and the new town, Argèles Plage, with its beaches, pleasure arcades and the like - a new town with a lively holiday air. It was to the latter I went first in the absence of a specific address.
The phone book didn’t help me at all. There was no Vidéo Exclusif listed nor anything like it, and I began to wonder if I had got it wrong. Frustrated with trying, I went out of the heat and into a bar and ordered a beer. It was a pretty sleazy joint and a video was playing a film which would have had the proprietor arrested in England, especially at lunch time.
‘C’est bon, eh?’ said the barman as he slopped a cold lager in front of me.
‘Oui,’ I said, indicating the lusty chick on the screen. ‘Elle est trés belle, n’est ce pas?’
‘You are English?’ he said conspiratorially. Was my accent that bad? ‘We have special treat for English tourists.’
I wondered what it was and had nowhere else to go so I followed him into another room where several men were watching something way over the top. I shook my head and returned to the bar once more.
‘You no like?’
‘No,’ I said, and then added with sudden inspiration. ‘I prefer younger girls.’
‘Ah, monsieur. Then you will like our very own local star, Mademoiselle Le Touzel.’ He leant closev. ‘She lives near here, you know?’
‘Does she?’ I asked trying not to sound too interested. ‘How do I get to meet this girl?’
‘Impossible,’ he roared in laughter. ‘Ramon would kill you if you went near her.’
‘Ramon?’
‘Go to the studio one day, mon ami, if you want to end up face-down in the Mediterranean. He is very jealous of his little sister.’
‘Is the studio near to here?’ I asked as I slipped a hundred frank note across the counter.
He pointed. ‘Just across the road in that precinct. It is above the health club. But beware of Ramon. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
I laughed with him and, when I had finished my drink, slipped out into the sunshine. The square was crowded as I walked across and looked in the window of the Centre de la Santé et la Forme.
There was a pleasant-looking woman behind the counter and she was busily talking to someone on the phone. As I watched, a man came down the stairs, a man I recognised instantly and hoped never to meet alone on a dark night. It was the gorilla from the whipping film. So this was the dreaded Ramon.
I stood back a little so they didn’t see me and, just then, the inner door opened and another figure emerged. There was no mistaking that cheeky smile nor the shapely body in that incredibly short summer dress. She kissed the gorilla on the cheek before waving to the receptionist and heading straight for me.
Trying to look totally disinterested, I stood on the street corner as Marie-Ange Thomas, née Le Touzel swept right past me.
‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ she said pleasantly with the kind of genuine smile which would have melted the heart of Genghis Khan.
She nodded greetings to local shopkeepers as she danced her slim hips into the market place. Despite her occupation (or perhaps because of it) everyone seemed to love her and most continued to smile even when she had passed by, while their eyes stayed firmly glued to her suntanned legs and swaying pert little bottom.
Outside the supermarket, she swung her legs into a red open-top Ferrari and smiled at a couple of youths who whistled appreciatively at her uninhibited display of brown thighs and contrasting white panties which she made no attempt to conceal. Why should she, I thought soberly? The locals had likely watched every one of her films. If so, they would already have seen the whole works.
She obviously enjoyed the attention she was getting and everyone gave way to her as she roared out of the square. All this distraction gave me time to get to my own car and, as she turned onto the D2, I was just a few hundred yards behind her.
If I owned a Ferrari, I would spend most of the time with my foot hard down. Marie-Ange was quick but also very careful as she negotiated the bends alongside the tiny River Massane at speeds of no more than eighty-five. As we drove, I became more puzzled, especially when she turned left at Sorède and began to climb towards la Vallée Hereuse. For one frantic moment, I thought she was going to Suzette’s villa but, instead, she turned left just after the waterfall and drove up a narrow lane through the trees.
I parked my car near the renovated estate office and scrambled up the slope until I could see the house clearly and wondered how many people, like me, had driven down this road and had never even seen this hidden paradise. Cautiously, I made my way towards the building and could hear the sound of splashing water.
As I broke out of the shrubbery, Marie-Ange climbed out of the pool and began to dry her hair with a towel. I watched her standing there with her arms above her head and was reminded of the whipping film. I also knew for an absolute certainty where else I had seen that body.
The feeling started in my stomach and tore through my body like an express train as Marie-Ange draped her towel over the back of a chair and, humming softly, strolled towards me.
‘Kill me,’ screamed the voice in my head. ‘Shoot me now, please.’
Marie-Ange gasped as I grabbed her by the hair and slammed her hard against the mottled stone wall. Before she could cry out, I placed my hand firmly over her mouth. She began to struggle but then stopped, her eyes open wide in terror, as I held up my gun for her to see and then slowly released the safety-catch. I was in no mood for messing about. Revenge was going to be very, very sweet.
‘Tais toi!’ I commanded sternly and then sadistically rammed the barrel into her stomach. Tears of pure agony came to her eyes as she fought back the pain.
‘Comprenez?’ I whispered in her ear.
She nodded as far as my grip would let her, so I took my hand away from her mouth and wrapped it around her throat instead, my thumb on her windpipe, my gun still firmly jammed into her belly. I didn’t really care whether I tore out her throat or splattered her guts all over the wall.
‘Ne fait pas du mal,’ she whimpered quietly.
‘Where is David?’ I asked and she looked surprised at my use of English. I knew she had to understand English because her husband’s French always had been lousy.
‘I’m here,’ said the Yorkshire voice behind me and I felt the unmistakable outline of the twin barrels of a twelve bore shotgun rest against the back of my neck. ‘Put the gun down, pal, or I’ll blow your bleeding head off.’

12

It was not just my old buddy’s French that was lousy, his tactics were just as bad. If he pulls that trigger now, I thought wickedly, the shot will indeed decapitate me. However, It would also do horrible things to Marie-Ange’s face which was also directly in his line of fire.
Without moving even my head, I calmly said, ‘No, Dave. You put yours down.’
At the same time, I twisted my gun barrel slightly in his lovely wife’s stomach and she squealed with pain before starting to cry. I felt the pressure of the barrels ease on my neck.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he said as his gun still covered me.
‘I might not look the same, Davy Boy, but don’t you recognise the voice?’
He looked at me for a long time as I watched him out of the corner of my eye. Then the penny dropped as he carefully laid the gun on the patio and then slowly backed away. ‘Don’t hurt her, Mike, for God’s sake. I’ll do anything you say.’
I concentrated on Marie-Ange. So would you - she was far better-looking. ‘What say you, my little porno star? Do I kill you now for what you have done to my life or do I hurt you some more first?’ I twisted the barrel again. She was going to have one hell of a bruise by the time I had finished with her.
She screwed up her eyes. ‘Don’t hurt my baby.’
I hesitated and a cold wave swept over me. Baby? Carefully, I eased off a little and she relaxed.
‘Merci bien,’ she sighed and I swallowed. She was a damn good actress, I’ll give her that. I must have just caused her unbearable agony but she had hardly murmured. All she cared about was her unborn child. I looked down at her slightly-rounded belly and guessed that she was probably telling the truth.
‘Go and sit next to David,’ I commanded and she scurried to obey.
I dragged up a chair and sat, facing the wrong way, my gun resting on the high wicker back. ‘I ought to shoot the pair of you, right here and now.’
‘We had no choice,’ said my ex-army colleague. ‘They threatened to kill a friend of ours.’
‘Simone?’
Marie-Ange jumped as if she had been stung. ‘What do you know of Simone?’
I was not in the mood for beating about the bush. ‘She’s dead.’
‘Dead?’ said David Thomas and Marie-Ange cried out and fell across her husband’s lap, her shoulders heaving as she sobbed. David stroked her hair. ‘How did she die?’
‘They blew her up on the cross-channel ferry.’
He seemed genuinely dumfounded. ‘But they promised...’
I leant forward. ‘Who promised, Dave?’
‘French Security. They came a month ago and said they had a special contract for us. We were loathe to do it at first because I thought the stress might be bad for Marie-Ange at the moment, but they said that Simone’s life depended upon it.’
I looked at Marie-Ange. ‘So you made the film for them?’
She looked down at her hands in her lap. ‘I had no choice. We both loved Simone.’
I stood up. ‘And so did I. But they killed her before I even got chance to tell her.’
The couple looked at each other and David nodded. Marie-Ange got to her feet and went inside the house. In a moment, she returned wearing a translucent housecoat which did absolutely nothing to hide her most attractive assets. I wondered why on Earth she had bothered as she gave me a postcard advertising North Sea Ferries. It was post-marked the day Simone had died and read (in French):-

My dear Marie-Ange,
You’ll never believe it but I’ve met this wonderful man. I told you I was not yet ready for love again but I know that I will do simply anything to keep him. His name is Michael and he is really kind and considerate. He says he is going to help father and for that I will give him my life and anything else he asks for. For the first time, I am deeply in love. See you soon, married and pregnant I hope (but not necessarily in that order).
Your dearest friend,
Simone

I sat down and a tear dripped onto the card and I suddenly realised that, this time, it was one of mine. The next thing I knew, the fair-haired Marie-Ange was sitting on my knee with my head in her arms, holding my face tightly to her chest.
‘What can we do?’ asked David.
‘Nothing. I must do it. Your wife needs you here, making babies.’
‘They promised they would protect Simone,’ Marie-Ange said softly in my ear. ‘You loved her, didn’t you?’
I nodded. ‘Very much. I don’t know how or why but I did. She was a very brave girl.’
‘What’s it all about, Mike?’ asked David.
‘I wish I knew. You remember when they built the tracking station up on the hill?’
‘Do I just? I never met so much secrecy in my whole life.’
‘Well, it got finished. Now, it is owned by a company called Guillemot Internationale. Simone’s father was the Managing Director.’
‘What would Emile de Bosvile want with a tracking station?’ asked Marie-Ange.
‘Emile didn’t. It was the other directors who wanted it. I now believe they found out that Emile was giving information to the French and British governments about what they were up to and had him killed.’
‘Simone, too?’
‘Yes, Simone, too. She came to get me, you see. At first, she came just for her father but the other directors who, along with others, called themselves the Consortium, sent a gang of thugs after her. Somehow, I think she managed to persuade them that she was acting on behalf of the whole company, not just her father. Whether they believed her or not, I don’t know. All I do know is that I had good reason to believe her and that confused them. I think it was about then that they changed their plans. Instead of killing me, it was Simone who had suddenly become expendable and so had to die. My guess is, our respective governments began to realise what was happening and have let it run. They can’t openly be seen to be fighting each other so they concocted this idea of your film for a certain scheme and that’s where Simone’s death also came in handy.’
‘Scheme? What are they trying to do?’
‘Our people are trying to get me to kill Suzette. They say she is the leak in security.’
‘Suzette? Simone’s Aunt?’
‘They look alike, you see, almost like identical twins. There is only a couple of years difference in their ages.’
She looked thoughtful. ‘You could be right.’
I changed the subject. ‘Who’s the fair-haired girl who visits Suzette at the villa?’
‘That’s her cousin, Marianne.’
‘Marianne?’
‘Raoul’s daughter. How much do you know about the de Bosvile family?’
‘Only that my brother married Simone’s great-aunt. John has never talked much about his adventures here and how they met.’
‘Do you want to know?’
‘Yes, I think I’d like to. Would you rather go inside?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘David, would you go and fetch wine? I want to hold Michael for a moment.’
I was a little shocked but David smiled and wandered inside as she rested her head on top of mine and held me tight.
‘Feeling better?’ she asked after a moment and I nodded as I breathed again. ‘That was to thank you for looking after Simone.’
I grinned. ‘You have a very effective way of showing your appreciation.’
She winked. ‘They do tell me that I have the knack.’
‘You’ve certainly got all of that,’ I agreed. ‘Dave is one very lucky man.’
A cheeky smile touched her lips. ‘He is, isn’t he?’
‘Tell me about the family.’
‘Where shall I start?’
‘Start with the war.’
‘D’accord. I got all the details from Simone and Marianne. Let’s start with Grandfather Petrone. He had been the resistance leader in this part of France during the later years of the war. His family lived just down the valley in relative peace until, close to the end of the war, the retreating Germans came.’
‘Why did they come here? Surely they would be desperate to get back to Germany.’
‘They had been cut off, you see, and wanted to change their identities and blot out any trace of their escape over the Pyrenees into Spain. They arrived in the valley under the command of a certain Hauptmann Zimmering.’
‘I remember reading about that. I think the allies had suspected they would do that and that is why my brother had become involved. He was already highly-skilled in radio transmission and other subterfuge.’
‘That’s right. He was unloaded from a submarine just south of Argelès one dark night in early 1945. After making contact with the resistance here, his job was to lay low and simply report the movements of the escaping troops to the allied fleet anchored off Biarritz. In the middle of all this, the Germans arrived here and, through collaborators, found out about the secret transmissions. Searching high and low, they had been unable to find your brother so, in desperation, they began to torture the inhabitants.’
‘How many suffered?’
‘It was the de Bosvile family who received the brunt of the maltreatment. Petrone’s fourteen-year-old son, Raoul, was mercilessly beaten in front of his father and when that didn’t work, the malicious Gestapo leader started on his wife, Chérie, and then his daughters - Juliette, Pascale and Dominique. The Germans didn’t beat them, they simply raped them. Poor Petrone must have been going out of his mind. They forced him to watch.’
I gritted my teeth and thought of Jennifer. ‘I know I would.’
‘And me. On the fourth day, Chérie’s heart gave out and she just... drifted away.’
I said nothing. What was there to say that could bring her back?
She took a deep breath. ‘Two days later, Dominique died in agony from internal bleeding.’
‘Poor woman.’
She looked at me sharply. ‘Woman? Dominique was twelve-years-old.’
I felt sick. Did men really do this sort of thing to children?
‘Over the previous few months, your brother had become very friendly with the eldest daughter, Juliette, who was expecting his child but, after being repeatedly raped, she lost the baby.’
‘John never told me about that. I knew that Juliette had been ill but didn’t know why.’
‘At the time, John didn’t know either. He had been in hiding - Petrone had insisted upon it. Apparently, the death of young Dominique broke the spell and some of the soldiers mutinied and cut the throat of Hauptmann Zimmering and then fled into the mountains, leaving behind a trail of death. Petrone died soon afterwards, partly from the last beating they gave him before leaving and partly from a broken heart.’
‘How did the surviving girls fare?’
‘Juliette had lost her baby, Raoul was in a terrible state and, it was later revealed, fourteen-year-old Pascale was pregnant with a German soldier’s bastard, goodness knows which one. The girl later died giving birth to Emile, Simone’s father.’
‘Good grief. I had no idea.’
‘It wasn’t the sort of thing the family was proud of. Juliette had guts but it was still regarded as a miracle that she survived long enough to give birth to Roger and Suzette.’
‘John always was very quiet about the last few months he was here.’
‘Rumour still has it that he and young Raoul, between them, personally killed every one of those soldiers.’
I smiled. ‘That would be just the kind of thing my brother would do.’
‘It at least gives you an idea why Simone was what she was. Her father had been illegitimate, and worse, the son of a German trooper. The French naturally were suspicious of him right from the start. Emile fought every millimetre of the way and brought up Simone the same way. She would have happily died for her father.’
‘In a way, she did.’ I turned to David. ‘What do you remember about Project Requiem?’
‘Princess? Geostationary over Gabon. Weather satellite.’
‘Wrong.’
‘Wrong?’
‘Geostationary over Somali. Communications satellite.’
He frowned. ‘What kind of communications?’
‘Coded Military ones.’ I looked from one to the other as they stared back at me. ‘Princess serves two main purposes other than the innocent one of gathering weather data. Firstly, she scans the whole length of what was the Iron Curtain and can pick up troop movements and the like. The same under the sea where it can identify submarine exhaust trails. Even nuclear submarines tend to heat up the water around them in the course of cooling the reactor core.’
‘Useful piece of equipment.’
‘That’s not all. In addition, it has a power which can, in the wrong hands, be used to control the world. It can... what was that?’
David looked round. ‘What?’
I took out my gun once more and whispered, ‘There’s someone out in the trees.’
‘I didn’t hear anything.’
I slowly got to my feet. ‘Marie-Ange, get inside the house. Lock all the doors after you and get under the table or something.’
She looked at David for confirmation and hesitated.
‘Go,’ he said and she ran, slamming the door after her.
It was almost dark by now and mosquitoes had begun to gather as I slipped around the side of the house while David retrieved his shotgun and went to the far side of the pool. All was quiet except for the faint chirping of crickets as I dropped to the ground and rolled towards the trees bordering the drive. If I could just get to my car...
A shot rang out and something ricocheted off the patio a foot from my head. So, they meant business, whoever they were. I held my fire and looked for the muzzle flashes but no more came as I saw David crouch behind the bole of a tree. I waved my arm and began to roll again until I was half way down the drive. Vaguely, I could see the outline of my car. However, I could also see the Audi beside it. I waited. Another shot rang out but it came nowhere near me. There came the sound of breaking glass. There must be several of them, I thought as I scurried back up to the house and crouched beside the garage door.
‘David,’ I called softly but got no answer. I saw a shape moving towards the house. It was too tall for David so I fired and the figure groaned and fell to the ground. Gunfire erupted all over the gardens as I ducked away from the flying lead and stone chips and rolled towards Marie-Ange’s Ferrari. The keys were not in the ignition so I got in and let off the handbrake. I had to even things up somehow. Bullets whined around me so I crouched over the wheel as it rolled backwards down the steep drive. At the last moment, I jumped out.
‘Sorry, Marie-Ange,’ I whispered as her racing car struck the Audi straight-on and both vehicles burst into flames. Two men leapt from their vehicle and died as my gun barked twice.
Suddenly, I was running up the drive again, this time with my rifle in my hands. A shape appeared and fired a revolver at me. David had only a shotgun so I loosed off three shots, rapid fire, and the shape seemed to disintegrate before my eyes. It went quiet as I crossed the lawn and then stumbled across something on the grass. I picked myself up and stopped as the form moaned. It was David and he was bleeding heavily. I had no way of knowing how badly he was hurt in the poor light so I left him and circled the house. Two shapes came out of the porch and died instantly. For a long time, I waited but there was no further movement. I slowly crept right round the house but it was quiet.
‘Come and get me,’ I called to make sure but no-one came and no-one got me. I knocked on the door. ‘Marie-Ange, open up. It’s Michael.’
No answer. I went over to where David lay. The groaning had stopped. Completely. For ever. Damn!
I went back to the house which was still in darkness. Further knocking brought no response so I assumed Marie-Ange had locked herself in the cellar or something and couldn’t hear me. I went round the back and found the side door open. The sidelight had been smashed and then I remembered the sound I had heard of breaking glass. With heavy heart, I pushed the door open and stepped inside. Everything was deathly silent as I stepped carefully from room to room in the semi-darkness. The house seemed deserted. A stair creaked under my foot as I climbed and I stopped, rifle at the ready. Silence. I continued to the top and checked each room. All empty. Where was she?
I went back downstairs and switched on the light, ducking instinctively in case of gunfire but none came. Even the cellar was empty. Throwing caution to the wind, I turned on all the lights and checked everywhere. Had they taken her away? I hadn’t seen anyone leave, not alive anyway. Completely mystified, I went back outside to where the smell of cordite still hung on the air. It was then that I saw her. She was standing over David’s body with her housecoat hanging loosely around her shoulders, staring down at it and sobbing, her arms clutched round herself. I ran over to her and put my arm around her shoulders. She looked up at me and opened her mouth but no sound came.
‘I’m sorry,’ I heard myself say and she turned completely to face me. As she did, she sank slowly to her knees and I knelt beside her. It was then that I saw what they had done to her.
There was nothing I could do, she was already dying from loss of blood. I held her tight as she had held me and kissed her face and lips as she gradually relaxed and then was gone. For a long time, I did not move but held her close, her life blood soaking into my shirt front, as I stared at her dead husband a yard away.
I had done this. If I had kept my stupid bloody nose out of it, David would still be alive. Not only that. I had also killed pretty little Marie-Ange as surely as if I had been the one who had held the knife as it sadistically slashed open her belly.

ONCE, when I had been in the department only a couple of years, some wit had written the word Midas across one of my reports. It seemed at the time that everything I touched turned to gold. But things have changed. Now, everything I touch turns effluent.
It had to have been a quarter-of-an-hour before I moved and carried Marie-Ange into the house and laid her on her own silk bedspread. I then went down again and struggled up with David whom I lay beside her mutilated body and pulled the sheet up to cover them both. Whatever they might or might not have done, neither of them had deserved to die like that.
With the sheet up to her neck, Marie-Ange looked like a sleeping child, as I arranged her lovely hair around it on the pillow. She seemed to smile up at me as I touched her cheek, wiping away a tiny droplet of blood that had splashed up when they had slashed at her. I then kissed those soft lips for the last time. France had lost one of its bravest soldiers.
I beat a hasty retreat down the valley before someone got curious and, all through the next day, there was frantic police activity with house-to-house searches and the like. From high up the mountain, I watched as they invaded the privacy of my niece and found nothing, of course. By mid-afternoon, the ambulance had been for the bodies and the valley was quiet once more.
All day long, I seethed. What a waste. Why did David and Marie-Ange have to die? Admittedly, they knew too much but they were no real threat to the Consortium - just two people trying to live in peace together. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced it had something to do with Suzette. I sighed. I guess the time has come for her to die.

JUST after dawn, she was up and packing. Marianne arrived to say goodbye at about nine o’clock and, by half past, the Cosworth was ready to start down the valley. If I used the bomb, I thought, it would satisfy everyone. I would not have to watch and Suzette wouldn’t feel a thing. The holiday was over for both of us.
I knew the spot. In my mind I had gone over it a thousand times. Just through the trees, the road narrowed where the gorge was deep and the river current strong beside the falls. Wait till she throttles back, listen for the squeal of tyres on the hairpin bend and then - Boom! Car off the road, into the gorge, under the water, dead Suzette. I smiled. Carstairs will like this one.
The car started and I watched as Marianne waved while Suzette backed her car onto the road. She tooted as she drove away, roaring down the mountain in low gear. On the straight, she accelerated, like she did every other time and, as she entered the gorge, I took out the remote control box and pushed up the switch. A red light glowed. Leaning back on the rock with my eyes closed, I listened as the engine throttled back and the tyres began to squeal. There was no going back.
I pressed the button.

13

I panicked. There was no explosion, no crash. What had gone wrong? Frantically, I checked the switching and pressed the button again. Still nothing. She must have found the bomb and removed it. An innocent girl couldn’t have done that. As the sound of her car retreated into the distance, I heard the faint rumble of thunder higher up the mountain. For the first time in a week, clouds were gathered around Pic Neulos and it looked as though there was going to be a storm. However, there could be no storm which could compare with the wrath of Carstairs if my niece was allowed to return to England alive. Presumably, having made her contact here, she was returning to consolidate the data between the tracking stations preparatory to starting the non-reversible action that would decimate Europe.
I was so angry with myself that I missed my step and my knee gave under me as I slithered down to the road and the excruciating pain ran up my left leg as I limped towards my parked car. With teeth gritted, I forced myself inside and started the engine. At high speed, I shot down the mountain in chase but it still took over five miles before I caught up with the Cosworth, held up in traffic. There were few routes she could have taken so I was fairly safe in my assumptions. I forced myself to think ahead. She was going back and that meant her work was finished.

THERE was nothing unusual about the journey that day. Suzette followed the autoroute north and, just before teatime, she stopped at a motel near Lyon. After all the sleep I had lost in the last few days, I desperately wanted to nod off but could not in case I lost her again and I could not afford to do that, not now. I sat in the car and Suzette presumably slept like a baby, without a care in the world, while I watched and waited. My leg hurt like blazes and I couldn’t get comfortable as I kept my all-night vigil. In the early hours, I got frustrated and tried to break into her room but not only was the door firmly locked, it was also in full view of the reception area. She was learning fast. I tried her car. The sign said “Beware - Alarm fitted” and, as I watched, the little red light on the dashboard winked at me, telling me that the sign had spoken the truth.
The bomb had failed, so how was I now going to do it? Doing it that way should have been easy - just press a button and she’s gone. I couldn’t understand how it could have failed but it had. Now it meant that I would have to do it face to face, while she watched me, and I knew that, whatever she had done, it was not going to be easy.

DAWN came in due course and, as I peered over the dashboard, my niece loaded her suitcase into the boot, paid her motel bill and drove out of the car park. I checked the action of my automatic and followed. The time for deceit was over. I was tired, I was miserable but, most of all, I was hopping mad. I had to do it now and do it in broad daylight.
Suzette’s car turned onto the Autoroute, heading north - towards England. I followed as, carefully, she kept dead on the speed limit of 81 mph. I eased up behind her in the Tunnel de Fourvière where the autoroute passes beneath the hilly suburb of St Just and saw her glance in the rear-view mirror as we came out of the tunnel. She didn’t accelerate or swerve or anything. She just drove forward at the same speed. I lay the automatic on my lap. The road seemed empty as I glanced around, eased down on the throttle and pulled gently into the overtaking lane. I saw her glance in the mirror once more but she made no move to pull away. Perfect.
I started to draw alongside and pressed the button to lower the passenger window. Smiling to myself, I took off the safety-catch. Any second now. At that moment, she glanced sideways and saw me. My heart quickened as I raised my arm.
‘Goodbye, Sweet Suzette,’ I said.
Things then happened so fast I scarcely knew what was happening. She smiled back and waved. I hesitated. She slammed her foot on the pedal and all four tyres of her Cosworth started to scream and produce smoke as 204 BHP hit the wheels. I fired.
My shot was too late, of course, and the bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the arnco at the side of the road with an audible pwang! I hauled at the wheel to stop the swerving I had caused by the sudden moves and when I looked back to the road, the rear end of her white Cosworth was receding into the distance. I put the gun down and accelerated. I was furious but it was useless. There was no way that I could catch her. It was Friday and any traffic about was headed for the coast while we were heading away from it and the northbound carriageway was virtually empty.
In fact, if it hadn’t been for the toll-booths, I would have lost her altogether. It’s funny. Normally, I would curse them for the hold-ups they caused. Today, I was thanking them as I slowed so that she would not see me and stayed a respectable distance behind.
As the afternoon began, I had to fight to keep my eyes open as we hurtled, in formation, towards the English Channel at just under 110 mph. She then did something which took me completely by surprise. I had assumed all along that she was heading for England, for home. Instead, as we drove around the Boulevard Périphérique encircling the city, she turned off at Porte Dauphine and into Paris itself. Great heavens, I thought, she’s going to the Guillemot offices.
One thing was better. The holiday traffic was heavier in the city and she was easier to follow on crowded roads. It was when she parked her car in the underground car park off the Avenue Foch and then proceeded to flag down a taxi that I became really confused. What was the little witch up to?
Slowly, in the gathering traffic, I followed the taxi around the Arc de Triomphe and then down the Avenue des Champs Elysées. There were tourists everywhere as we went towards the Louvre only to turn left at the Rond Point and then right onto the Rue du Faubourg St Honore which ruled out Guillemot. I should have known immediately where she was going, but I was only certain when the taxi passed the Elysée Palace and then turned left into a side street. She climbed out, dressed in her smart white blouse and denim skirt and then walked, calm as you like, into the building on the right which bore the engraved brass sign “Ambassade Grande-Bretagne”.

Had we all been wrong about Suzette? If not, why was she now going to the British Embassy? It was the last place I would have expected her to go if she was working for the Consortium. Perhaps, after all, she was, like Simone, working for the British Government. It would certainly explain some of the things she had done.
Parking the car in a side street off the rue de Fauberg St Honore, I managed to get into La Poste sorting offices and made my way to a second floor window from where I had a perfect view of the street and the entrance to the courtyard opposite. Carefully, I took my rifle from its bag and laid two clips of ammo on the cill. It was a habit I had never broken over the years. My range instructor had once told me, ‘Always have a spare, you never know when it might come in handy.’
Mind you, if Suzette survives the very first shot, it will be a miracle in itself. I certainly doubted she was going to start shooting back at me. For one thing, she didn’t seem the 007 type. For another, there was nowhere on her person she could have concealed a pencil, never mind a Berretta.
I opened the window a few inches and rested the silencer on the cill. The crosshairs focussed on the empty archway below. The traffic was noisy in the narrow street due to some kind of a diversion but there was no sign of Suzette. My mind still raced. Was I doing the right thing? If she was working for the Consortium, yes. If not...
I looked around the room and saw the telephone. On the spur of the moment, I reached out and picked it up. I looked outside. Still no sign of Suzette. With the open area in front of the Embassy, I would have plenty of opportunity to sight and fire if she left the doorway.
I dialled a number. ‘It’s the Birdwatcher,’ I said to the familiar voice.
‘Where are you?’ asked Captain Harold Williams.
I told him and he was silent for a moment. ‘Have you done the job?’
‘Negative. Where is Carstairs?’
‘He is out of the office at present. I will get him to ring you. What is your number?’
I looked down at the phone and read out the number on the dial.
‘Stay where you are until he contacts you.’
‘What if Suzette reappears?’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Inside one of the British Embassy buildings.’
‘Carstairs will ring you back immediately.’
‘Harry!’
‘Yes, Mike.’
‘I’ve sent you a parcel. I’m trusting you to see that it is handled properly.’
‘What is it?’
‘A letter for each of my children and a message for the world.’
‘Mike,’ he suddenly said. ‘Be very careful.’
‘How...?’
He rung off. Something was wrong. Every instinct I had developed over the years told me so as a hundred alarm bells rang in my brain. Harry Williams was not just a colleague, he had been almost a friend and, by his words, he was trying to tell me something, something he could not afford to say openly on the phone.
The traitor had to be close to him. Perhaps it was him. If so, by sending him Emile’s floppy disk I had just ruined everything. There was certainly no-one closer to the top. Harry Williams had all the information on Princess, Excalibur and Birdwatcher. He knew about Simone and Emile and me. If he was the traitor, then when this was over I would find him and destroy him.
The phone rang and jolted me. ‘Is it done?’ Carstairs asked.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘The bomb failed to detonate.’
‘What? Is she still alive?’
‘Yes. I tried to shoot her on the motorway but she tumbled me and escaped in that racing car of hers.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Inside the Embassy.’
‘You know what that means?’
‘No.’ Too right, I didn’t. All of a sudden, I knew sod all.
‘It means,’ he continued, ‘That the game is over. Not only do they know that we know, now our own people know that they know that we know.’
‘Pass that one by me one more time.’
‘It means, my friend, that you and I are going to have to disappear, permanently. I will arrange immediately for the usual amount to be debited to your Swiss account and will contact you again if I need you. In the meantime, I’m going a long way away from here.’
What did he mean? Why was he going to disappear? And from whom?
‘Is there anything else you want me to do?’ I asked instead, hoping that maybe I could avoid the inevitable.
‘Yes, it is most important. The girl knows too much and, therefore, cannot be allowed to return to England under any circumstances. Go and kill her now. Shoot her, stab her, strangle her if you like. But make sure, without fail, that she dies immediately. Do you understand?’
No, I didn’t. But I knew I had to do as I was told or else another Birdwatcher would appear on the scene and I would be the next target. I looked across at the Embassy. ‘It is as good as done.’

FOR the tenth time in as many minutes, I adjusted the focus on the sights. It was a useless gesture. At this range, I could have fired in almost any direction and been pretty sure to hit her. My car was in the street behind and, before her body hit the ground, I could be half-way out of Paris. By nightfall, I would be on the ferry to England and freedom.
Trying to get comfortable with my still-aching leg, I took out a hard object from my pocket. It was the photograph of Emile and Simone. With a slight smile, I propped it up on the window cill where I could see it clearly.
A sound disturbed me and I craned my neck to see what it was. A newsman had just erected a small stand on the far corner outside a jewellers and had begun advertising the early evening edition. Adjusting the angle, I used the telescopic sight to read the headlines and my heart faltered. They read:-

DES MORTES EN VERSAILLES
Pere et fille se meutre dans l’incendie au motel

I swore, loudly and explicitly. More unnecessary deaths. Françoise had not been the light of my life but she had tried to help me and now the Consortium had killed her and her father as surely as they had killed the others.
Pure, unadulterated rage swept over me. I wanted to shoot down everyone in the street - anyone, it didn’t matter who. I aimed at the newsman but hesitated. I aimed at a young couple with a dog and almost spread them all over the pavement. My anger continued to rise, fuelled by the frustration of having no deserving target to shoot at. My hands shook, my brain whirled, my heart beat frantically as I looked around for something upon which to unleash my fury. At that moment, Suzette walked out of the porchway.
I watched with glee as she stepped out into the sunlight and pushed down her sunglasses to cover her eyes. I took off the safety catch and set the gun to rapid fire. The crosshairs followed her face as she stepped towards the road. The desire to kill accelerated through me as I allowed the crosshairs to drop to the centre of her chest.
Suzette paused on the edge of the kerb and held up her arm to summon a taxi. The feeling reached its climax as Simone’s voice shouted in my ear. ‘I have betrayed you, Michael. Kill me now.’
I closed my eyes and squeezed the trigger.

14

The short silence which followed the short burst of automatic fire was abruptly broken by screams as I turned, without daring to look to see the results of what I had done, and limped for the door. There were tears in my eyes as I dragged it open preparatory to descending the stairs and hot-footing it into the sunset. In truth, I didn’t want to do it. Rather, I just wanted to lie down and die. I had not just eliminated a traitor, someone who might have shared in taking the lives of millions of innocent people, I had also killed someone I had once loved very dearly.
The sudden explosion spun me around as the jagged pain caught me full in the chest. Falling back in the doorway, I tried to wipe the blood from my face but my left arm wouldn’t work properly. Rolling over, I tried to draw my pistol but another explosion sounded and the pain came right across my back and head. Fighting for breath, I lay in a heap as the agony coursed through every vein of my body, every nerve of my being then, slowly and painfully, I raised my head a little.
‘Thank you,’ said the calm voice. ‘That just about ties up all the loose ends.’
I tried to focus on the face but I needn’t have bothered, I would have known that voice anywhere. There were two other shapes beside him and focus came for enough time for me to recognise the two remaining youths - the ones who had murdered Simone as well as the other girl in Yarm. Each of them was holding a smoking sawn-off shotgun and they were laughing.
I was dying but had to know if I had done the right thing in sending Harry the only piece of hard evidence I had.
‘You’re wrong,’ I managed to blurt out. ‘There’s still Harry Williams.’
Colonel Carstairs looked at his watch and grinned. ‘I don’t think so, Michael. It was too late for Harry five minutes ago.’
He didn’t need to explain what he meant. Now we were all done for. Simone was dead as was her father. Marie-Ange and David were dead. Suzette was dead. Harry was dead and, soon, I would be dead, too.
‘How did you get here?’ I said, droplets of my own blood spattering my already stained shirt front. Maybe if I could stall him until the police arrived...
‘I was here all the time, dear boy. Watching and waiting.’
‘Here? In Paris?’
He nodded. ‘For two days now. I knew the girl would come here and that you would follow. I had every confidence in you.’
I must have sounded pretty stupid. ‘You knew Suzette would come to Paris? But How?’
‘She had to come here to get herself a new passport. She couldn’t get back to England without one. You see, we had inadvertently taken her other one when we stole her suitcase so that circumstances would force her to drive past the tracking station on her way to Le Perthus to buy a new one.’
I almost laughed as I wondered where her original suitcase had been when my kilo of Semtex had gone off. Somewhere important, I hoped.
He sighed. ‘Poor Suzette. She had no idea what was going on all around her.’
The full implications of his words began to dawn on me. ‘You mean she was....?’
‘Innocent? Of course, dear boy. Totally innocent. We gave her the time off work and suggested she spend a well-earned few days at her mother’s old place at Laroque des Albères.’
‘Then, if she was innocent, why did she have to die?’
‘Like I told you before, she knew too much.’
‘She knew about Princess?’ Just in time, I stopped myself saying any more.
‘Of course. Miss Blackman wrote the autoboot programme. She would have to know.’
So, it was Suzette who had written the programme, was it? Maybe the Consortium really didn’t know about the true position of Princess after all. Not until they found the disc, that is. It might take a while for them to find out as they would not be expecting me to send it to Harry. It might even get lost in the post. Huh! Pigs might fly. Only important things that are extremely urgent ever get lost in the post.
‘You see,’ he continued quietly. ‘We have a copy of the computer programme in our hands and we no longer need Miss Blackman. And, now she is dead, we have total control. Don’t you see that?’
I nodded. I wanted to laugh at him, to tell him that he was too late, but they would all find out in due course. ‘Then why was I involved?’
‘It’s you we really wanted here. In a moment, the police will arrive and they will need to look no further for a murderer and traitor. You have a certain reputation, especially after all those lovely newspaper reports we released about your supposed activities in Egglescliffe and Yarm.’
I felt sick. They had been using me and all these others simply to get me to kill my own niece and, on top of that, she was innocent. I said to him ‘Then, you are...?’
‘In the Consortium? Why, of course. Have been all along. There was no leak in the department. I was the leak. It was deliberate, don’t you see that? It was almost discovered by little Emile. Do you know that he stole the programme from us? But now we don’t need it any more. We can now control Princess without it.’
In spite of the pain, I smiled inwardly. Without Suzette’s own “doctored” programme which had that significant line 260 with its trigonometrical equation, they had nothing. They wouldn’t even be able to find Princess, never mind control her. On top of that, the only person who knew enough about it and might have been persuaded to assist them was lying, dead, in the street below.
The feeling had totally gone out of my arm now as I tried, desperately, to ease the agony in my torn chest. ‘When... when do you plan to start?’
‘Within the week. It is set now. All we need is for the Russian and American Fleets to be in the right positions and Princess can do the rest.’
‘You mean to use Princess to send coded signals to them so that they will launch their nuclear missiles, don’t you?’
‘Michael, my boy,’ he smiled. ‘You are getting wise in your old age. We simply retire to our fall-out shelters until it’s all over and then the world will be ours for the taking.’
‘You’re nothing but a bunch of raving loonies.’
‘Not at all, Michael. In fact it’s a pity we have to dispose of you in this way. However, we have to buy a few more days of time, therefore there has to be a patsy for the assassination of a loyal British citizen. Now you understand why some of my recent statements to you may have seemed more than a little misleading. Your niece was a very clever young lady and she would have known instantly the minute we went to work with the satellite and might even have found a way to override our instructions, given time, so that’s another reason why she had to die.’
‘Suzette knew nothing.’
‘We couldn’t afford to take that chance. Neither could we kill her ourselves because the French were watching us very closely after the deaths of Emile and Simone de Bosvile.’
‘Who ordered the murders of David and Marie-Ange?’ I managed to get out as the pain went across my back once more.
‘Who do you think?’ he said with a sly smirk on his face. ‘I only wish I had been there to see it. They tell me the girl had a lot of guts.’
I felt sick. ‘That’s not funny.’
‘It’s hilarious. She wanted publicity for her latest film and now she’s got plenty of that.’
‘What about Emile’s daughter?’
‘Ah, yes. The very delectable Simone. In a sense, it’s a shame she had to die. I would rather have liked her for myself. She would have kept me warm at nights in my shelter at Genève while I waited for the radioactive fallout to dissipate.’
‘She wouldn’t have wanted an animal like you, Carstairs.’
‘Wouldn’t she? She fell for you, I understand.’
‘She knew class when she saw it. She was no fool.’
‘I tell you one thing. She fooled me, and it’s not often that anyone has one over on me. You might like to know that when she decided to team up with you, you both had me very worried for a while.’
‘But she didn’t have to die.’
‘Of course she did. How else was I going to get you mad enough to go after your own niece?’
‘You’ve got an evil and twisted mind, you know that?’
‘You could be right. However, you have to admit that it worked.’ He grinned. ‘If you knew just how much trouble went into making that film on the CD-Rom, you would be proud of us. I hear that it was very good.’
‘It was a fake and I saw through it immediately,’ I lied to try to unbalance him. ‘Simone wasn’t like that at all and I knew it.’
‘You found out did you? So, Emile’s “innocent” little daughter was just a common whore after all, was she? Ah well, it’s too late now. I’m just sorry that I wasn’t there to see her die. I was told that Marcel’s car bomb made lovely job of her.’ He laughed aloud as the noise of approaching police sounded on the stairs.
‘However,’ he said as he raised his revolver. ‘The next best thing is to see you die. Goodbye, Michael.’
Where I found the reserve of energy from, I’ll never know but, as the bullet caught me in the shoulder, I was already rolling across the floor and I hardly hesitated as it tore a chunk off me and then ricocheted along the tiled floor. One handed, I grasped my rifle and, still rolling, rammed home the spare clip from the window cill.
Taking one last glance at Simone’s smiling face in the photo, I rolled back and simply held the trigger tight while I waved the barrel around as best I could with one good arm, filling the whole room with soft lead. I could have taken the death, even the indignity of being branded a traitor but to blatantly insult Simone’s memory...? Carstairs had gone too far.
I watched with fascination as pieces of them seemed to fly off in all directions, splattering the whole interior of the room with blood. The door burst open as the pin clicked on the empty chamber and a bullet from a gendarme’s gun sent the rifle spinning from my grip.

I thought I was dead but I could hear sounds all around me. Men talked, sirens wailed, engines revved and, after some indiscernible time, I smelt hospital.
There was no pain, just a numbness which gradually crept over my entire body. I opened my eyes and saw that I was not alone. Not far away was another stretcher-trolley with a body upon it, covered with a sheet. I suppose that, once upon a time, the sheet had been white. Now, it was almost totally soaked with the blood of an innocent girl.
A doctor came over with a man who looked obviously Suritée. After a brief conversation, the doctor leant over me. ‘Comment vous appelez vous?’ he asked. ‘Quelle est votre nom?’
My name? That’s not important. Someone has to know about Princess. If Suzette had lived, it would have been all right or even Harry might have been able to do something to stop them. Now there was only me. I don’t know how many of the Consortium are left but they have to be stopped. I have to tell someone about the disk. It is all that’s left. If I don’t, all this will have been for nothing.
The doctor seemed like someone who could be trusted. ‘Princess,’ I said as pain came once more. ‘Princess is...’ The pain swept over me then it went and I felt my breathing stop.
‘Que dit-il?’ asked the gendarme as I felt my eyes close for the last time.
‘Je ne sais pas,’ I heard the doctor say as if from down a long tunnel. ‘Il me dit seulement “Princess.” Cela ne fait rein.’
I groaned inwardly. They don’t understand.
I have to fight.
I must live for just another minute, just one more minute.
Please, don’t let me die, not yet. I have to tell them.
Please. Don’t let me die.
Don’t let me...........................................

EPILOGUE

(Extract from an English edition of le Monde dated Saturday 17th July)

Murder and mayhem came to the streets of Paris yesterday when an assassin opened fire with an automatic rifle in the Rue d’Anjou and shot a young woman near the entrance to the visa section of the British Embassy. Medical sources at the Hospital Cochin were quoted as saying that her death would have been instantaneous and without pain. The forensic expert who examined the body upon arrival said the injuries sustained were so extensive that a positive identification may never be possible.

It is thought that this assassination is linked to a plot by an organisation called le Consortium which had attempted to overthrow the existing powers in Europe. The unknown assassin, who himself died in the resulting gun battle with the police, is believed to have been British and to have been largely responsible for the demise of the Consortium by blowing up their tracking station in the Pyrenees close to Laroque des Alberes.

The event is also believed to be linked with the lucky escape of an elderly civil servant in London whose life was saved by a phone call which had taken him into an adjoining office when a previously-planted time-bomb was detonated under his desk.

Police sources say that the Consortium has now been overthrown completely and that the death of the young woman in Paris was almost certainly a major step in its defeat.

A passer-by, who was nearly caught in the line of fire, stated; “It was horrible. There was blood everywhere.”

This witness, a Mademoiselle Suzette Blackman of Cambridge, England, also told our reporter. “The bullets came so close I could almost have believed that he was shooting at me.”