Chapter 9
At six o’clock the café in the small square known as Place du Bourg-de-Four was half-empty. It was too early for dinner, and there were just a few people enjoying an after-work apéritif before heading home. Liz sat at a table under the outside awning, with a glass of Campari and soda and a copy of Paris Match. She hadn’t touched her drink: she wanted to be completely clear-headed. She had taken a taxi from the Embassy along the shore of Lake Geneva, then walked the half-mile inland, stopping from time to time to look in shops with wide windows which she could use as mirrors to check her back. She went into one or two of these, and at one stage retraced her steps back to a place she had been in before, as if she had left something behind. By the time she’d sat down at this small café, she was pretty sure that she wasn’t being followed.
Unless… there had been a man in a dark winter overcoat and hat who’d been walking ahead of her as she’d turned away from the lake. It wasn’t particularly his clothes that she’d noticed so much as his build – squarely broad-shouldered, almost grotesquely so, as if he had once spent many years as a weightlifter.
She’d spent the afternoon with Russell White at the Embassy, going over every detail of the two contacts with Sorsky: how he’d looked, exactly what he’d said. Liz had looked at the mug shots of the Russian intelligence contingent in Geneva and listened to White’s debating with Terry Castle whether Sorsky was SVR or FSB. ‘The Swiss think he’s part of the Security Department,’ said Terry Castle.
Castle had produced a collection of large-scale maps of the area of Parc des Bastions as well as a laptop computer on which he had brought up Google Street View so Liz could rehearse the route she would take for the meet. At their second contact, Sorsky had given White an envelope which contained detailed instructions as to how to approach the rendezvous. He clearly had some plan of his own for checking that she was not under surveillance.
Over the top of her Paris Match, Liz saw a man walking across the square towards the café. He didn’t look in her direction, and he wasn’t wearing an overcoat or a hat. But his build looked familiar – he was broad and square. He stopped at the edge of the pavement and gestured for service. A white-aproned waiter went over to him and the man began speaking – loudly in bad French. It appeared that he wasn’t asking for a table but for directions. The waiter pointed up the street, the man nodded and set off in the direction indicated. Liz noted with relief that he was heading away from the park.
She waited until he had disappeared from sight, then gestured to the waiter for the bill. She paid, stood up and crossed the square.
The route she’d been given took her through a medieval stone arch on to Rue St-Léger, a narrow twisting street with a long stone wall on one side– the ‘Reformation Wall’ she’d learned that afternoon at the Embassy, built to commemorate the city’s die-hard Protestantism. As she neared the park gates, she glanced around and was relieved to see that there was no one else on the little street.
Once inside the park, she strolled along the wide tree-lined avenue which divided the park into two halves. She was carefully controlling her pace now, forcing herself to resist the urge to hurry. Ahead of her on the left was a complex of buildings which she recognised from the maps. They were built in what looked like a light-coloured marble to a classical design. These, according to the maps, had formerly been the headquarters of the botanical society, and now housed the administrative offices of the university.
It took her ten minutes to walk the length of the park. As she neared the wide gates at the far end, facing Place Neuve, she saw an array of life-sized chess pieces. A group of tourists were standing watching as several young people slowly moved the pieces at the direction of two older men – clearly the players. Liz scanned the small crowd gathered around the chess board, looking for anyone whose attention was not focused on the game. Nothing.
Going through the gates, she waited on the edge of Place Neuve. Traffic swirled around the square, horns blaring and brakes squealing; a smaller version of Place de la Concorde in Paris, and equally terrifying. She waited for the nearest lights to turn red, then dashed for the sanctuary of a small island in the middle of the square. Here she paused as if to read the inscription on the immense statue of a local general, but all the while her eyes were looking for signs of surveillance.
A woman emerged from the park. Would she wait to see where Liz was going? No. She walked off and disappeared down a side street. A tall man in a yellow sweater was buying a paper at the kiosk over by the park gates; he looked across in her direction, then quickly looked away again. This made her feel uneasy, but he took his change and walked away from the square.
Following Sorsky’s instructions, Liz took her life in her hands and dashed back across the street to the park gates, drawing only one blast of the horn from an irate driver. She retraced her steps along the avenue, but halfway down she turned right, on to a broad path leading to the university’s marble buildings. After fifty yards she stopped, as instructed, and sat down on a solitary, unoccupied bench under a tall tulip tree.
She sat there for almost ten minutes, pretending to read her Paris Match. She was debating how long she should wait when out of the corner of her eye she saw a man come out of the shadow of a copse of trees to one side of her, at one corner of the university buildings. He was walking quickly, looking straight ahead towards her, and as he drew closer, she recognised him. Not from their meetings almost two decades before – he looked quite different, thinner, older, balder – but from the photograph she’d seen in the MI6 Station Mug Book.
His face was expressionless as he came up to the bench and sat down at the far end from Liz, taking a folded newspaper out of his raincoat pocket. She continued to stare at a page of Paris Match as he unfolded the paper on his lap and fixed his eyes on the front page. After a moment he said quietly, ‘I am sorry for the complicated instructions but they were necessary. I am confident you were not followed.’
She hoped he was right and that he was as confident about himself.
‘Do you remember me, Liz Carlyle?’
‘Of course I do, Alexander. It’s good to see you again. I’ve never forgotten your talk at that seminar.’
‘Thank you. I also remember the other time we met. You were about to take your final examinations, and I gave you some advice. Which you seem to have taken.’ He smiled wryly. ‘You have not perhaps chosen the career I expected, but it has certainly kept you out of academic life.’
She smiled, wondering how much he knew. Presumably quite a lot, otherwise why would he have asked for her? But though she was very curious to know how he had kept abreast of her career, this meeting was for him to talk to her, so she said nothing and waited.
‘You know I am in the same business as yourself?’
She nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘I have information that should be of interest to your government. Of great interest, in fact. I asked to see you because I knew nothing of those I’d be dealing with here – perhaps someone low-level who might not understand the significance of what I have to say. Then it could all go nowhere and I would have taken the risk for no benefit at all.’
‘Well, I can guarantee you that whatever you tell me will be heard at the highest level.’ She felt this sounded rather pompous, but it appeared to reassure Sorsky, who nodded and seemed satisfied. Then he began to talk.