‘So, all the street fighting, the ethnic clashes – they were engineered by the School? That seems a bit far-fetched.’

Larrison, who looked so much older than the last time they had spoken, just two months ago, shook his head sadly. ‘Not all of them, Cait. A lot of violence arose naturally. Once the capstone was off, the geyser blew. But yes, some incidents were engineered to bring on a wider confrontation. An uprising. Even then it may not have worked. Conspiracies often don’t, as you would know. But Israel nuking half of the Arab world – that was a deal breaker. Race war, holy war, civil war, whatever you want to call it. It was inevitable after that. And people have been killing each other ever since.’

She moved her head carefully to look out of the windows again. The rain had turned the suburbs outside into a bleary, grey netherworld, but some elements did resolve themselves. There was no traffic, vehicular or pedestrian. The only aircraft aloft were military, and of course she had already noted that they were attacking targets within the city. There seemed to be fewer fires burning than she remembered, but the rain was heavy, and on looking more closely she could see that whole districts had already been burnt out.

Caitlin snuggled deeper into the sofa. It was strangely comforting. ‘You said something about my next mission?’

Wales clicked his tongue. ‘Yup. I did. We didn’t tell you, because you didn’t need to know, not at that point. But the file on Baumer was a joint operation with the DST, the intelligence arm of Sarkozy’s Ministry of the Interior. Sarkozy had decided to move against the Algerian School and asked us to help. It was unprecedented. Echelon does not play outside of the family. But in this case, we did, because the strategic consequences could affect the family, generations down the line. The Brits were particularly gung-ho. Your mission was designed to shake out Baumer’s contacts. To expose Bernard Lacan and his people. They were being monitored by the DST without their knowledge.’

‘Or so we thought,’ added Rolland.

‘Or so we thought.’

‘There was a leak?’ asked Caitlin.

Larrison grunted. ‘There was. We still don’t know where from. But Lacan found out, and that’s why he bet so much on grabbing you up. He needed you to start unravelling the op against him and the other School masters.’

‘Son of a bitch,’ muttered Caitlin.

‘I’m sorry, Cait, but you know the rules.’

She waved away his apology. ‘I’m not pissed at you, Wales. I know my job, and I know it’s not always what it seems. I’m a pawn. I can be sacrificed. It’s just… I dunno. I’m sick, Wales, really sick. And it’s messing with my head, the way I think and see things.’ A weak breath escaped from her lips, and she deflated. ‘I made a friend. An asset. I shouldn’t have, but I did. I’m not well… And I got her killed because I wasn’t good enough to save her.’

The room broke up into a jewelled kaleidoscope as more tears came. Larrison leaned over and patted her on the knee. Her dad had done the same thing a thousand times, and it only served to deepen her sadness. Wales’s voice was soft, like her father’s had once been, but still hard with it.

‘You’re not a pawn, Caitlin,’ he said. ‘You’re a knight. And you’re still in play.’

41

18TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS

The BBC offices in Paris were an armed compound, with every window covered in steel plating. It did nothing to dull the arrhythmic tom-tom beat of heavy machine-gun fire or the dense, percussive thud of high-explosive ordnance pounding the rubble in the 16th Arrondissement just a few minutes’ drive away. A sandbagged gunpit and razor wire guarded the main entrance, secured by a rotating team of gunned-up heavies from Sandline, a British-based ‘private military company’. Dave, one of the operators, was American, and Melton had initially attempted to forge some kind of relationship with him, but entirely without luck. All he ever received in return for his stream of ‘howdy’s, ‘hi there’s and ‘how ya doin’?’s were grunts and the blank, dead stare of deep disinterest.

‘He’s not really a people person, is he?’ said Monty Pearson, the chief of staff. ‘Still, better than having every man and his mad dog wandering in, eh?’

Monty was a thirty-year veteran of war reporting, having cut his teeth on the Golan Heights all the way back in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War. Like most of the bureau staff, he was a new arrival, a volunteer, in his case from Kabul. Paris was considered a war posting, which was how Melton had moved from freelancer to staffer almost as soon as he’d put his foot in the door with his collection of Iraq War interviews. Very few people had the desire, experience and unique mix of skills that he brought to the table.

Even among the grizzled veterans of the Beeb’s first-rank war correspondents, he stood out because of his own combat experience.

‘Tea?’ asked Monty, as they gathered in the second-floor conference room, a windowless box in the centre of the building. Along with the production studios down in the basement, it was one of the most secure areas in the building, but even so, every now and then a larger explosion nearby would shake flakes of plaster from the ceilings. Melton could feel the detonation through the soles of his shoes.

There was no coffee to be had, unfortunately, and Bret had noticed that the Brits really did seem to function a lot more effectively with just a cup or two of their weak, milky brew inside them. He had no idea where Barry, the office manager, sourced their supplies, but in a starving city riven by ethnic and civil warfare, he somehow kept the larder stocked and the teapots full. When Melton had complimented him on his scrounging chops, Barry had grinned back and said, ‘If I can keep Jim Muir’s fuckin’ beer fridge full of fuckin’ Boddingtons in Beirut, a cup of fuckin’ char in Paris in’t going to bovver me, is it, guvnor!’

‘But a decent cup of Java’s impossible?’ Melton asked.

‘All but,’ said Barry, in an apologetic tone. ‘Frogs is killing each other over mouldy croissants and fuckin’ Nescafe. So no, Mr Melton, no fuckin’ coffee. Learn to drink somefin civilised, why doncha?’

The small team of correspondents and editors took their places around the conference table, most of them juggling papers and folders in one hand, and bone-china cups and saucers in the other. A packet of ‘biscuits’, as they insisted on calling all forms of cookie life, sat in the centre of the table, and Monty doled out one to each tea drinker, before carefully twisting the packet closed again and clamping it with a wooden clothes peg. The provenance of the peg was never explained. It was a peculiar ritual, one that Melton had rather come to look forward to each day. He was offered one of the McVitie’s wholemeal ‘bickies’ to have with his glass of water, but again he turned it down.

‘Couldn’t get any Oreos, Barry?’ he teased, only half in jest.