honey. It’s your old friend from New York. I have some news. You wanna give me a call sometime? I’d love to hear your voice.
Her first thought was to pick up the receiver, but she knew that a call from Joan Guttmann meant Moscow Rules: no names on an open line; no talking about the past. That was why she hadn’t identified herself. In case anybody was listening in. In case anybody ever found out about Tunis.
Amelia was out of her dressing-gown and into a pair of jeans and a sweater within two minutes. She grabbed a Barbour from the utility room, put on some Wellington boots, locked the house and went back to the car. She turned it around in the lane, drove into the village and parked a hundred metres from the pub on the Salisbury road. There was a telephone box on the corner, mercifully un-vandalized and still accepting coins. Amelia turned on her mobile and found Joan’s number buried in the contacts. Then the long, drawn-out ring of an American telephone, the click of somebody picking up.
‘Joan?’
The two women had not spoken for almost ten years. Their last encounter had been both brief and distressing: the funeral service of Joan’s husband, David Guttmann, who had suffered a heart attack while working at his office in Manhattan. Amelia had made the journey across the Atlantic, expressed her condolences all too briefly at a service on Madison Avenue, then returned to the UK on a red-eye from Newark three hours later. Since then, there had been no contact between them, save for the occasional email or hastily scribbled Christmas card.
‘Amelia, how are you? You’re so clever to call back so soon.’
‘It sounded important.’
It hadn’t sounded important, of course. The message had been as deliberately mundane as any Amelia had ever heard. But ‘news’ from Joan Guttmann meant only one thing. Something had happened to François.
‘It
is
important, honey, it really is. Are you OK to talk?’
‘As long as you are.’
Joan cleared her throat, buying time. It was difficult to tell whether she was apprehensive about what she had to say, or merely searching for the right words. ‘Did you happen to see the French newspapers at all this week?’
Amelia didn’t know how best to answer. She kept abreast of events in France, but no particular developments had been flagged up in the previous few days. She began to respond but was interrupted.
‘Something really quite terrible has happened. It’s Philippe and Jeannine. They were on vacation in Egypt. They were mugged, attacked on a beach. They’ve been murdered.’ Amelia leaned against the freezing glass of the phone booth, a hammer blow. ‘The thing is, your boy has been in touch. He must have somehow traced me through the system at Père Blancs. I’ve had a contact at Langley look into it, run some background. He checks out. It’s François. I guess he’s reaching out or something. He’s lost his parents and he’s hurting. I couldn’t keep it from you, honey. I’m so sorry. I really need to know what it is that you want me to do.’
19
Looking down from his balcony, Kell saw that Amelia Levene was not alone.
Ten feet in front of her, emerging from the Valencia hotel pool, came a fit-looking man in his early thirties wearing navy-blue shorts and a pair of yellow-tinted swimming goggles. He had a lean, exercised physique and moved through the shallows with a slow, self-conscious swagger, a man used to being stared at by women. He pulled the goggles down around his neck and Kell saw that his face precisely matched the image in the photograph of François Malot. The same firm jawline, the easy good looks, the lightly stubbled chin. Amelia, sensing him, looked up from her book and reached across to pull a towel from a neighbouring lounger. She then stood up and passed the towel to Malot, at arm’s length, to prevent herself getting wet. Malot appeared to thank her and wiped his face clear of water. He dried his back and chest, wrapped the
Her first thought was to pick up the receiver, but she knew that a call from Joan Guttmann meant Moscow Rules: no names on an open line; no talking about the past. That was why she hadn’t identified herself. In case anybody was listening in. In case anybody ever found out about Tunis.
Amelia was out of her dressing-gown and into a pair of jeans and a sweater within two minutes. She grabbed a Barbour from the utility room, put on some Wellington boots, locked the house and went back to the car. She turned it around in the lane, drove into the village and parked a hundred metres from the pub on the Salisbury road. There was a telephone box on the corner, mercifully un-vandalized and still accepting coins. Amelia turned on her mobile and found Joan’s number buried in the contacts. Then the long, drawn-out ring of an American telephone, the click of somebody picking up.
‘Joan?’
The two women had not spoken for almost ten years. Their last encounter had been both brief and distressing: the funeral service of Joan’s husband, David Guttmann, who had suffered a heart attack while working at his office in Manhattan. Amelia had made the journey across the Atlantic, expressed her condolences all too briefly at a service on Madison Avenue, then returned to the UK on a red-eye from Newark three hours later. Since then, there had been no contact between them, save for the occasional email or hastily scribbled Christmas card.
‘Amelia, how are you? You’re so clever to call back so soon.’
‘It sounded important.’
It hadn’t sounded important, of course. The message had been as deliberately mundane as any Amelia had ever heard. But ‘news’ from Joan Guttmann meant only one thing. Something had happened to François.
‘It
is
important, honey, it really is. Are you OK to talk?’
‘As long as you are.’
Joan cleared her throat, buying time. It was difficult to tell whether she was apprehensive about what she had to say, or merely searching for the right words. ‘Did you happen to see the French newspapers at all this week?’
Amelia didn’t know how best to answer. She kept abreast of events in France, but no particular developments had been flagged up in the previous few days. She began to respond but was interrupted.
‘Something really quite terrible has happened. It’s Philippe and Jeannine. They were on vacation in Egypt. They were mugged, attacked on a beach. They’ve been murdered.’ Amelia leaned against the freezing glass of the phone booth, a hammer blow. ‘The thing is, your boy has been in touch. He must have somehow traced me through the system at Père Blancs. I’ve had a contact at Langley look into it, run some background. He checks out. It’s François. I guess he’s reaching out or something. He’s lost his parents and he’s hurting. I couldn’t keep it from you, honey. I’m so sorry. I really need to know what it is that you want me to do.’
19
Looking down from his balcony, Kell saw that Amelia Levene was not alone.
Ten feet in front of her, emerging from the Valencia hotel pool, came a fit-looking man in his early thirties wearing navy-blue shorts and a pair of yellow-tinted swimming goggles. He had a lean, exercised physique and moved through the shallows with a slow, self-conscious swagger, a man used to being stared at by women. He pulled the goggles down around his neck and Kell saw that his face precisely matched the image in the photograph of François Malot. The same firm jawline, the easy good looks, the lightly stubbled chin. Amelia, sensing him, looked up from her book and reached across to pull a towel from a neighbouring lounger. She then stood up and passed the towel to Malot, at arm’s length, to prevent herself getting wet. Malot appeared to thank her and wiped his face clear of water. He dried his back and chest, wrapped the
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