“Anna Krojer?”
It was too hot inside the terminal, making me sweat, that and the thought I was on a mission again and this could be the one: the one I wouldn’t come out of.
“Yes.”
He looked at me with a slow smile, middle-aged, hair turning grey at the temples, heavy wristwatch that looked fake but wasn’t.
“Purpose of visit?”
I smiled, trying to look a little nervous, not used to travelling abroad, had only left Germany once, last year to go to England, and now I was in Paris for a few days on holiday.
“Have you not been to Paris before, mademoiselle?”
“No,” I said. “But I expect I’ll like it.”
He stamped my passport and waved me through and that was that. I walked outside, the cold refreshing though the rain wasn’t, and I ran for the Avis counter and collected the keys and got out of there, and into the Fiat.
Turner had said the last location they had for him was the hotel. It was a dingy place, one of a large number of budget hotels in Montmarte, with the busy traffic of bodies coming in from Place Pigalle keeping the rooms occupied, if only for an hour at a time, and someone probably dealing a little Algerian hash in the back.
Traffic was hell and the rain fell down like a warning, and I went round the obelisk twice before finally getting onto the road I needed. I was going to make sure I didn’t go anywhere near Notre Dame; you never want to expose yourself unnecessarily to one of them.
I had left Turner at his office, then wandered over to Provisions.
“Ah, Killareny.” Dobson, mousy and twee in a dark suit that looked like it had been stolen from a coffin. He pulled out a file and passed it to me.
“Anna Krojer,” he said, “age twenty-seven, German, spent the last year in London studying textile design. Going to Paris on holiday before returning home. I expect you to have memorised the dossier by the time you get to Paris.”
“When do I leave?”
“We were able to fit you in on the next flight.” He came from round the counter. “That’s in two hours.” Mousy moustache quivering. “We’re also going to need to arm you.”
That wasn't entirely unexpected, but I didn't like it. I don’t usually carry guns; guns make you think they’re the answer and when they’re not there and you don’t know what to do, you’re finished. I prefer relying on instinct and my head, not a useless piece of metal. I used it last time but only because it was already there for me, and that was an assassination and you can’t kill one of those bastards without a whole clip of bullets pumped up with blood, that or a bloody nuke.
“No,” I said, “thank you,” and he didn’t suggest it again, but it made me nervous because, unless angels are involved, I mean directly involved, they wouldn’t have suggested it, and if angels were involved, then this mission was set up a hell of a long time in advance, and they were pretending that it wasn’t.
“Anything else?” Dobson said, and what he meant was: what final arrangements do you want to make if the executive is lost in the field? I thought about it, and I’d end up doing what I always did, which was to send a single red rose to Ben. In the event of the shadow executive failing to complete the mission.
“Sign here and...here.”
There was a car outside and I hurried in, getting in the front next to Marshall who drove me cheerfully through the rain to Heathrow.
“Have a good time in Paris.” He’d saluted me with two fingers to the temple and driven off, still whistling.
“Do you have a double room?” I went into three hotels before I got here, acting just like a tourist would when looking for a cheap room. I was clean; I didn't have a tail when I left the airport, but I didn’t know enough, and when I’m in the field, nowhere is friendly ground. Not knowing the full extent of the mission doesn’t worry me; in fact I prefer it that way; if the executive in the field knew too much about the mission she would begin worrying. I prefer relying on myself to figure it out without getting killed, but what I didn’t like was that they had tried very hard to make it sound routine, and they had lied. “When was the reservation made?” I’d asked the clerk at Avis, and she’d said the call had come through the day before. Which meant this was no holiday away in Paris, no simple missing person job; this was the real thing and all bets were off.
“Let me see.” The hotel clerk spoke a careful English. Beard, deep set eyes, fingers with the nails chewed clean flicking through a register. “Yes I think we can give you one, is it for you and...I see.”
I gave him the passport, the Anna Krojer one, and paid in cash for two nights in advance. This wasn’t the sort of place that took credit cards.
The room was on the second floor, a climb up the narrow spiral stairs and I had the room facing the street, a double, complete with rusting sink and mildewed shower. It would do. I don’t like singles--there is less room to manoeuvre.
This wasn’t the hotel he’d stayed in; that was the third one I’d tried, and I only went in to see the floor plan and to check the room Eldershott was supposed to have stayed in, which wasn’t much different from the one I was currently in: springy bed, chipped sink, a mouse slinking out of the wainscoting as if embarrassed to be seen in such surroundings. I knew how it felt.
He’d had a double, too, and I wondered who he had tried to bring back there with him; I didn’t think he’d stayed a stone’s throw away from the red light district that was Place Pigalle without reason.
I opened the window and looked down. I could jump if I needed to; it wasn’t too high unless you lost your nerve, and then you’d be finished anyway. The dossier said he had stayed at the hotel for three nights--the minders didn’t seen him leave on the fourth one, and the hotel said he never checked in again after going out at night, but how or why or when, they were vague about. The dossier added that it didn’t seem like a deliberate smokescreen operation, just French uncooperativeness.
I had to find Eldershott, and I had a feeling the answer lay just down the road, where the street stalls and the clothes shops gave way to peepshows and cabarets.