Today he particularly begrudged the time spent at the airport since his own inquiry into Steinmetz’s accident had reached an interesting stage. The previous evening, just before he’d left the office, he’d had a message from a contact in the German forensic service. The paint scrape along the driver’s side of Steinmetz’s car had matched a sample in their paint library. It had turned out to be a special hand-blended colour called Black Onyx. Most people would think it was just a shiny black paint, his contact had added, but in fact it contained finely ground gemstone, which made it particularly translucent. It was only available on top-of-the-range models, Audis, BMWs and Mercedes. What interested Leplan particularly was the information that any car with this paint would have had to be ordered specially. If this had been done in Switzerland, it shouldn’t be difficult to trace the person who had ordered it. Leplan was becoming more and more convinced that there was something sinister about Steinmetz’s accident and he couldn’t wait to get on with the next stage of his researches.
He made himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the desk, pulling towards him the log of the night shift. The only thing of interest was the notification at 23.15 the previous evening of an unscheduled private plane coming in from Moscow, due to land at 10.20 this morning. Some bigwig coming for something or other, he thought. Can’t be a delegation, or we would have been notified sooner. He looked at his watch: 8.30. He picked up the phone and dialled traffic control. ‘Any lowdown on this Moscow arrival?’ he asked.
‘It’s an ambulance flight. Notified last night. Expected to arrive at 10.12. We’ll be landing them at the charter terminal. Crew of four, plus doctor and two nurses. Picking up and leaving straight away. Don’t think anyone’s intending to go landside but Immigration will know.’
Leplan finished his coffee and strolled over to the Immigration hall, weaving his way through a hubbub of excited children. All was quiet in in the office behind the desks.
‘It’s a diplomatic flight,’ said the duty immigration officer. ‘One of their guys has had an accident and is being repatriated for urgent medical attention. They didn’t give us a name and we have no powers to ask, if that’s what you’re wondering. It’s authorised by their Ambassador. A stretcher case, they said, so we’ve agreed the ambulance can drive airside to load the stretcher on. No one’s landing and they’re going straight off.’
‘God help them, whoever they are,’ said Leplan. ‘They’d get much better medical attention here. Maybe it’s a fatality. I think I’ll go over and watch proceedings. Might have a word with the ambulance crew. I assume they’re locals?’
The immigration officer nodded. ‘See you there,’ he said.
At quarter to ten Leplan and the immigration officer watched as an ambulance was cleared through the barrier of the charter terminal. A dark-suited man got down from the front passenger seat and showed a document to the guard, and the ambulance was waved in. Leplan didn’t recognise him from where he stood, but he knew the camera at the guard post would have taken a good shot of his face. Exactly on time a small plane landed and parked. The ambulance drove up to the door, and a stretcher on which was strapped an inert figure wrapped in a blanket was quickly loaded on board by the ambulance attendants, supervised by the dark-suited man. Within fifteen minutes the plane was taxiing for take-off.
Hmm. That was a pretty smooth operation, thought Leplan as he waved the ambulance to a halt by the barrier. I wonder what it was all about.
It was not until Liz sat down in the café in the Place du Bourg-de-Four that it struck her how strange it was that Sorsky had chosen this as a meeting place. Until now their meetings had taken place on park benches with a clear view of the surroundings and she had received the impression that he had taken extensive precautions against surveillance. But this café was in a crowded little square, where it would be impossible to spot surveillance. She wondered why he had changed his operating methods. Did he have some reason to think there was no longer a risk?
She selected a table inside, by the wall at the back, so she would at least see everyone who came in. But the disadvantage was that she could see nothing of what was going on outside. The café was almost empty; it was too late for breakfast, too early for lunch. She ordered coffee, unfolded her newspaper and kept her eye on the door.
Sorsky was late again. She glanced at her watch for the fourth time. It was 11.45, three-quarters of an hour past the time he’d given her. How long should she wait? No longer than an hour, she decided.
At five to twelve she rang Russell White.
‘It’s no show,’ she said. He would recognise her number.
‘No show?’
‘Yes. Have you heard anything?’
‘Nothing.’
‘OK. I’m coming back.’
‘All right. See you shortly.’
Chapter 21
Liz dropped her bag on the floor, closed the door and leaned back against it. Home, she thought. Through the open door of the sitting room she could see the sun shining in through the sash windows on to the carpet. She’d bought this place a couple of years ago with the proceeds of the sale of her basement flat in the same large Victorian house and a mortgage she could only just afford. She’d loved the basement flat too when she’d bought it – the first property she had ever owned – though it was rather shabby and dark, and for several years she’d had neither the time nor the money to improve it. But when she’d returned from a posting to Northern Ireland, this ground-floor flat had been on the market. She’d viewed it first out of curiosity, with no idea that she might be able to afford it, but the estate agent had surprised her with his estimate of what she might get for the basement, and her mother, who had never liked the basement flat, had encouraged her to go for it, and suddenly to her great surprise she had found herself the owner.
She still had too little time to look after the flat properly, and she hadn’t yet got round to employing a cleaner to replace her old one, who had retired to the South Coast; after several days away the dust lay in a thin layer on the surfaces and last weekend’s newspapers were still in the heap on the floor where she’d left them. But it was Saturday and she’d soon have the place tidied up.
As she dusted and vacuumed, she smiled at the contrast between her humdrum cleaning and what she’d been doing twenty-four hours earlier. After waiting fruitlessly for an hour in the little café in the Place du Bourg-de-Four, she had spent the afternoon at the Embassy with Russell White. As soon as he’d learned that Sorsky hadn’t shown up, he’d put a surveillance team on to the Russian Trade Offices and another man at the Russian Embassy to try and get a sighting of Sorsky. Each hour they phoned in to report; each hour they repeated that there was no sign of the man. Then White got one of his colleagues, who had grown up in Normandy and spoke French with a regional accent, to ring the Russian Trade Delegation and ask for Sorsky. The receptionist had said that he wasn’t in the office, and no, she didn’t know when he would next be there.
Liz had cancelled her flight reservation and rung her mother to explain she wouldn’t be home in time for lunch the next day. She’d spent a sleepless night in the hotel, kept awake by the uncertainty of the situation. Could Sorsky have had a change of heart? It was always a possibility, especially if he had found out nothing further and felt that he’d already done all he could to alert the West to the threat to Clarity.