Edward had seen his share of trouble. He knew there was no point in cowering in front of this thug; that would only fuel his sense of physical superiority. He said, ‘How dare you? Get out of this house at once.’
‘I’d be quiet if I were you, old man.’
‘Get out,’ Edward said loudly.
Suddenly Antoine released his grip on Cathy’s throat. Pushing her aside, he stepped forward. His right hand came swinging quickly through the air – too quickly for Edward to duck. It hit him hard on the side of his mouth. He felt a tooth crack as he stumbled and fell forward, landing on his knees just short of the fireplace. Blood filled his mouth and he spat it out, staining the beige carpet. He sensed Antoine standing over him and the Frenchman said, ‘Don’t get up, or there’ll be more where that came from.’
Edward looked at the fireplace. He could see the set of fire irons – a bellows, a poker, tongs. He stayed on his knees, and heard the man turn back towards Cathy. ‘Now write the cheque, and make it out to cash. If you try and cancel it, I promise I’ll be back, and this time I’ll get your little boy.’
Cathy walked to the desk, and fumbled in the drawer. She must have hesitated for the Frenchman grew angry. ‘Write it, bitch, before I give your father a good kicking!’
Edward waited until he heard the scratching of pen on paper. He turned his head very slightly and saw that Antoine was now standing behind Cathy, watching her make out the cheque. Edward carefully reached out his hand until he could grab the poker, then in one quick movement heaved himself to his feet, blood still dripping from his mouth.
Antoine had turned around. Edward raised the poker. The Frenchman laughed. ‘Who do you think you are, old man? If you swing that thing at me you might get lucky and break a bone or two, but then, I promise you, I’ll take it off you and beat you to death.’
There was relish in his voice, and looking at his heavily muscled figure Edward realised that what he said was true. Edward himself was tall rather than heavy-set, and while thirty years ago it might have been an equal match, there wasn’t much question of who would win a fight today. But he couldn’t do nothing, not when his daughter was in danger, and little Teddy too.
He stepped forward, and raised the poker with both hands. Antoine waited with his hands ready and his legs akimbo in a karate stance. Behind him Cathy had turned and was staring at them, fear contorting her face.
Edward took another step and started to swing. As Antoine raised his arm to block the blow, Edward stopped swinging the poker. He brought it back, this time very low, and crouching down, swept it with all his strength against Antoine’s leg. There was the cracking noise of breaking bone.
‘Ahhhh!’ the Frenchman shouted, and fell to the floor, clutching his knee. Agony spread across his face as he lay writhing on the carpet, but Edward was taking no chances. He moved until he stood near Antoine’s prone head, and raised the poker again. ‘If you even try to get up I will split your head in half,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the fallen man. ‘Cathy, go out and ring 999. Tell them you have an intruder in the house, and he’s got your little boy.’ He sensed she was in shock, and said as coolly as he could, ‘Go on, girl, there’s no time to waste. Make the call, then fetch Teddy and run to the neighbour’s.’
He heard her go, but kept his eyes fixed on Antoine, who had both his hands on his injured knee and was sweating with pain. Edward took a step back; he didn’t trust the Frenchman an inch. ‘I repeat: if you so much as lift your hand, I will hit you again. But this time I’ll hit your head. Nod if you understand, or I may hit you anyway.’
Slowly Antoine’s head moved up and down.
‘Well done,’ said Edward, hoping the police wouldn’t dawdle.
They didn’t. The magic words ‘he’s got my little boy’ did the trick, and within four minutes by Edward’s watch two patrol cars screeched to a halt outside the house. Cathy had ignored the second of Edward’s orders: she sent Teddy running to Mrs Wolfson next door, but stayed behind herself. She opened the door as the police ran up the steps, and explained rapidly that the older man in the room next door was her father, and that the intruder was the heavy-set man lying on the floor.
It took a good quarter of an hour for Edward to explain things, and required a call to Special Branch and another call to a woman at MI5 in London, but at last the officer in charge got the drift. The ambulance which took the Frenchman to the hospital for treatment for his broken kneecap was accompanied by two policemen, and one of them was armed.
Chapter 51
Liz caught the first flight to Marseilles, still shaken by Edward’s phone call of the evening before. His account of the fracas when Antoine arrived unexpectedly at Cathy’s house had been chilling. He’d stressed that both Teddy and Cathy were all right, but she could read between the lines and knew he was minimising the danger they had all faced. It had clearly been a close call with Antoine, and could easily have ended in something horrendous.
René had been clever. He’d sent Antoine to Brighton three days earlier than he’d said he himself would show up there. His claim when he was arrested at Le Barbot that Antoine had gone to Marseilles had been a completely plausible red herring.
Marseilles. The place seemed to be the key to everything that had happened recently: to Cathy’s problems with the commune, to the efforts to subvert Operation Clarity; to the meetings with Sorsky; and to the Russian intelligence officer, Kubiak, who had supervised Sorsky’s expatriation and afterwards been seen in Marseilles. Liz gazed out of the window of the plane as they began to descend over the Massif Central towards the Mediterranean, and the pilot announced that in twenty minutes they would be on the ground.
It was disappointing that her interview with Park Woo-jin hadn’t provided more information. He had seemed to her, by the end, to be telling the truth, but the trouble was that he didn’t know much beyond his own story.
Bokus had rung her the previous day about the man they knew as Mr Dong. South Korean Intelligence had identified him from the photographs as a senior North Korean intelligence officer, Dong Shin-soo, which made complete sense of Park Woo-jin’s story. Searches of the flight manifests for the arrivals from Marseilles that the Singhs’ taxi firm had met indicated that he travelled on a French passport. But why he was based in Marseilles remained a mystery, and her conviction that Kubiak’s trips there were connected in some way to Park Woo-jin’s spying at the MOD was still not backed by any hard evidence. Liz knew Marseilles was a cosmopolitan port, full of immigrants from North Africa and further afield, where no doubt the answers to many mysteries could be found. But would it provide the answers she was looking for?
She caught the airport train to the centre of the city. By now it was almost eleven o’clock in the morning and the streets around the port were buzzing with activity. She had rung Martin the night before to arrange a meeting place and to tell him the news about Antoine. Now an extradition request was being sent to the British authorities.
Martin was waiting for her at the bar of a café in the old port, halfway along a cul-de-sac of small shops.
‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, kissing her on the cheek. ‘Is Cathy really all right? And how is Edward now?’
‘They’re both OK, thanks. Though pretty shaken up. Edward was very brave – he’s not exactly a spring chicken.’
‘No, but once a soldier, always a soldier.’
Liz suppressed a smile. Edward and Martin not only shared a military background but a fierce pride in it as well.