Rip Tide Read online

  Rip Tide

  Stella Rimington

  To my grandson George

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Chapter 1

  Liz Carlyle looked at her watch. The French Minister of the Interior was in full flow, expatiating on the new security threats facing Europe. From where Liz sat, in the back row of the seats set out in the library of the Institute for Strategic Studies in Whitehall, she could survey the whole room. At the front French and English officials, senior policemen and military officers sat alongside journalists, who were eagerly scribbling on their pads. At the back, assorted French and British spooks were grouped, well out of sight of the TV cameras. For this Friday morning was the press conference concluding the previous day’s Anglo-French Ministerial Security Summit.

  Liz’s last posting in Northern Ireland had led to a close involvement with the French security services, and now, back in counter-terrorism, she had special responsibility for joint operations with the French. Next to her Isabelle Florian, her colleague from the DCRI – MI5’s French counterpart – was shifting in her seat, looking worried that she’d miss her Eurostar back to Paris. Liz liked Isabelle, a businesslike woman in her forties with a careworn face and a good sense of humour – not at all the chic Parisienne that Liz had expected and rather dreaded.

  When they’d first met they’d been able to speak to one another only through an interpreter, but since then, in preparation for this job, Liz had taken an intensive course in French and was now fairly fluent.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Liz could see the tall, elegant figure of Geoffrey Fane of MI6, standing at the side of the room, leaning nonchalantly against a pillar, surveying the scene through half-closed eyes. Typical of him, she thought, to station himself where he had a bird’s-eye view of the room. He prided himself on his private intelligence network, which meant knowing everyone’s personal business – particularly, it seemed to Liz, her own. He would have noted that she was not sitting next to Charles Wetherby, who was now the MI5 Director of Protective Security. A few years before, she had thought herself in love with Charles and she knew her feelings were reciprocated. But at the time he had been married; his wife was a chronic invalid and a clandestine relationship had been out of the question. Geoffrey Fane had sussed this and had delighted in subtly taunting Liz about it. Now Charles was a widower, Fane would be watching to see what developed between them.

  The French Minister sat down at last and the Home Secretary started her remarks. Thank goodness she will be a bit less long-winded, thought Liz, who had helped draft her speech. She listened with half an ear to the familiar phrases about the continuing serious threats Europe faced from terrorism. Traditional espionage still endangered security, she was saying, while new threats were appearing from cyber attacks on the infrastructure of countries.

  The historic circular room, lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, was becoming warm and stuffy, overheated by the lights of the TV cameras. The journalists’ questions became desultory and at last the conference concluded. There was a scraping of chairs as the audience stood up and the Ministers and their entourages left the room. Next to Liz, Isabelle grabbed her briefcase. She gestured impatiently at someone in the row ahead of them; a man, medium height, dark-haired, and dressed in the smart casual uniform of the French – a grey turtleneck and a checked jacket.

  ‘Martin, hurry up,’ said Isabelle. ‘The train’s in forty minutes.’

  ‘I wanted to say hello to Liz,’ he said amiably.

  ‘Well, be quick about it,’ Isabelle ordered.

  The man grinned. ‘There is always another train.’

  Isabelle looked at Liz and raised an eyebrow.

  Liz smiled. ‘Isabelle, I’ll see you in Paris on Monday. Is ten o’clock okay?’

  Isabelle nodded then turned to Martin, explaining, ‘Liz is coming across for a follow-up meeting. This kind of conference is all very well, but it doesn’t give us any time for detailed discussions.’ She looked at her watch. ‘We really must be going.’

  ‘Goodbye, Martin,’ said Liz. Isabelle was already heading for the exit.

  ‘I hope you mean au revoir,’ he said with a small smile as they shook hands.

  Later in the day, as the train emerged from the tunnel on the French side of the Channel, Liz looked out of the window as the countryside flashed past. This journey had become very familiar to her; she’d noticed that it was the appearance of the villages, particularly the shape of the church towers, that showed you were in another country, even before you noticed the road signs in French.

  And then almost before she could blink they reached Paris. In the fresh sunlight of the spring evening it seemed to her the most beautiful city in the world. Not even the noisy jostling crowd on the platform of the Gare du Nord could sour things. And when the Metro slowed for Saint-Fargeau, her stop on the north-east outskirts of Paris, her pulse quickened at the prospect of the weekend ahead.

  She crossed a busy road, then went down a side street. As she approached a now-familiar house, she saw the other tenant, Madame Beylion, come out of the front door. She was a stout, elderly lady with a face set in deceptively dour lines, for she was in fact the kindest of souls.

  ‘Bonjour, Madame Beylion,’ Liz called out, much more confident speaking in French than she had formerly been.

  ‘Ah! Bonsoir, Madame.’ The old lady waved and smiled. ‘Monsieur est à la maison. Il vous attend.’

  Upstairs the door opened just as Liz was about to ring the bell. ‘Telepathy,’ she said.

  ‘I saw you through the window,’ Martin Seurat replied with a grin, and they both laughed. Then he gave her a big kiss. He’d changed out of his work clothes, and was wearing a dark blue Lacoste polo shirt and cotton trousers. With its regular features and dark deep-set eyes his face was at once handsome and a little forbidding – until he smiled, and his eyes lit up.

  Martin was in the DGSE, MI6’s French counterpart. Liz had met him on the same Northern Irish investigation that had led to her association with Isabelle. It had turned out t
hat her quarry was a former colleague of Martin’s in the DGSE, a man called Milraud, who had become an arms dealer. As the operation had proceeded the immediate mutual attraction had strengthened between Martin and Liz, and after the operation had ended they had gone off together to a small hotel in the Provençal hills, where in the early Mediterranean spring they had unwound in each other’s company.

  Now, a year on, what Liz had thought of at first as a fling had turned into . . . what exactly? She didn’t know or care to analyse it too deeply. She was just happy with it as it was, and their arrangement certainly fitted in well with her current job. Martin’s flat had become her temporary home when, as quite often happened, work took her to Paris.

  On her first visit to this flat, Liz had been taken by surprise. She had been expecting a smart bachelor pad in a central district of Paris, somewhere very different from the comfortable apartment in a handsome house in the 20th arrondissement, which was where he actually lived. She knew him better now. The quiet, wide square shaded by plane trees, the friendly neighbours, the local shops where they seemed to have known M. Martin for years, all fitted his personality much better than the minimalist apartment she had imagined.

  This evening they had a simple supper in the little alcove off his kitchen, while they caught up with each other’s news. It had been almost a month since they’d last seen each other apart from the brief meeting at the press conference. Martin’s daughter, who lived with his ex-wife two hundred kilometres away, was taking the Baccalauréat this year and applying to the Sorbonne. He was pleased at the prospect of soon being in the same city as his daughter.

  ‘By the way,’ he said as he cleared their plates from the table, ‘there’s been news of our old friend from Porquerolles.’

  ‘Milraud?’ Liz asked in astonishment.

  ‘Not Antoine,’ said Martin, as he came back from the kitchen. He filled her glass with the last of the bottle of Beaune they had shared. ‘His wife, Annette. She was spotted in Versailles, of all places, but by the time we heard about it, she’d disappeared.’

  ‘I’m amazed she risked showing her face in France.’

  ‘She has always loved the high life. Hiding out with her husband in one of the new Soviet republics would have palled for her very quickly. I am just hoping that Antoine has come with her. Then we’ll get him,’ Martin said with a hint of steel in his voice.

  They moved into the sitting room; Liz stood by the window, holding her glass, looking out at the little square across the street. The hour’s time difference with England meant dusk was starting to fall, and a small circle of old men were finishing a last game of boules. Small powdery explosions of dust flew up each time a player carefully tossed a heavy silver-coloured ball.

  ‘A little Armagnac?’ asked Martin.

  ‘No, thanks. I’ll just finish my wine.’

  ‘So you’re seeing Isabelle on Monday?’

  ‘Yes. We’re going to compare notes – as she said, there wasn’t much time at the conference to go into detail.’

  He nodded, but didn’t ask any more questions. Early on in the relationship they’d established an understanding about discussing their work, which meant never enquiring in any detail about what the other was doing.

  Now he got up and stood beside Liz at the window. The players were finished for the evening and were packing their boules away in small leather pouches. Martin put his arm round her. ‘Liz,’ he said tenderly, ‘I’ve got a suggestion to make . . . and I don’t want your answer right away.’

  She looked up at him and smiled. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I was wondering,’ he began, then paused. ‘Wondering whether you’d ever think about coming to live here – in Paris, I mean, not necessarily here in this flat.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s just that I miss you so much when you’re in England.’

  She drew away from him, continuing to stare out of the window. She didn’t reply.

  ‘I’ve said the wrong thing, haven’t I?’

  She turned back and reached for his hand. ‘No, you haven’t. You know I love being here with you. But it’s just . . . it’s such a big decision, Martin. I need to think about it.’

  ‘I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget I did, Liz. I don’t want it to spoil our weekend.’

  ‘I don’t want to forget about it, Martin. I just need to think about it.’

  He put his arms round her again and kissed her. ‘I want you to be here all the time, that’s why I brought it up. But I know it’s selfish of me. There are other things in life that are important to you – believe me, I do understand that.’

  She leaned her head against his chest. ‘There’s no other person more important to me than you are.’

  He let her go and took hold of her hand. ‘Come on,’ he said with a laugh, ‘don’t let’s get too serious. I think it’s time for bed, don’t you?’

  Chapter 2

  As daylight broke over the Indian Ocean, spilling light the colour of chalk on the distant horizon, Captain Jean-Claude Thibault watched the outline of the huge ship emerge slowly from the darkness. He’d known she was there, just three kilometres away across the calm waters of the Indian Ocean, but now he could see her clearly. Indeed she was impossible to miss: a container vessel, probably four hundred feet long, painted a rich maroon with a yellow stripe at her plimsoll line just above the water. Fully laden, she was low in the water as she ploughed through the sea, heading south.

  Standing on the bridge of his corvette, binoculars to his eyes, Thibault could see the Greek flag flying from the stern and make out the name painted in black along one side of the snub-nosed prow: Aristides. He’d been expecting her arrival; as part of a new international protection force, his job was to see her and other vessels safely through the dangerous waters off the Horn of Africa, on their way to port in Mombasa.

  As Thibault watched her moving forward at a good rate of knots, leaving very little wake behind, his First Officer, standing beside him on the bridge, tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. Thibault shifted his binoculars and saw a skiff, so small that it took a moment for him to focus on it. It was close in, under the overhang of the larger vessel’s stern, hugging dangerously close to her side. He wondered momentarily if it were a dinghy let down by the Greek ship’s crew to make some repair, but dinghies didn’t look like that – a dilapidated wooden craft that couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet from bow to stern, with a mast that looked like the branch of a tree. Half a dozen figures sat huddled in the little boat, one at the stern holding the rudder of a massive outboard motor, which looked heavy enough to overturn the fragile craft.

  Pirates. They must have crept up on the ship in the dark, lurking alongside until dawn began to break. They couldn’t have noticed the corvette waiting in the darkness and, if they saw it now, must be gambling on taking over the ship before it intervened. Captain Thibault watched with fascination as the men in the skiff began lifting a long thin metal ladder; it rose straight into the air like a construction crane, then tilted gently until it leaned against the side of the ship. It was being carefully extended, a segment at a time, aiming for the lowest point of the deck, at the stern. He could see the curved ends at the top of the rungs, designed to hook as tight as handcuffs over the deck rail.

  Thibault gestured towards the tanker, and spoke tersely to the First Officer: ‘En avant.’ Let’s go.

  Though the corvette was small compared to the massive container ship, her engine packed a mighty punch. Within seconds she was closing in on the Aristides and her unwelcome visitors at maximum speed. Simultaneously the radio officer, Marceau, was trying to contact the bridge of the container ship, to warn them of the imminent attack. ‘They must all be at breakfast,’ he muttered after his repeated radio bursts received no reply.

  When no more than two hundred yards separated the vessels, Captain Thibault gave further orders and two of his crew took up position behind the pair of .30 mm cannons mounted on the bow. Three more men armed with rifles stood by.
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  Ahead of them, a figure had detached itself from the huddle in the skiff and started to clamber up the ladder. He was soon halfway up, a rifle on a sling hanging from one shoulder as he climbed.

  Suddenly the corvette’s radio crackled into life. ‘This is M.V. Aristides. Why are you approaching?’

  The crew member did not sound alarmed; it would be evident to those on the container ship that the approaching vessel was a French patrol boat. Marceau replied sharply, ‘French Warship Tarasque. We are not your only visitors. Pirates are climbing a ladder at your stern.’

  Thibault took over the microphone. ‘This is Captain Thibault, French Navy. One pirate is boarding you: stern, port side. Armed. There are others in a skiff at your stern. We’ll deal with them. Keep your crew below decks and out of range. Is that understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ came the confirmation.

  They were less than a hundred yards from the tanker now, and Captain Thibault ordered the engines to be slowed to idling speed. He clicked a switch on a microphone, and his voice was transmitted clearly through an amplified speaker across the water.

  ‘This is the International Protection Force. Stay where you are, and do not attempt to board the ship.’

  There was an eerie silence. Looking behind him at the French patrol boat, the solitary pirate on the ladder began a rapid descent. Suddenly the outboard motor started up and the bow of the little skiff swung round. The man on the ladder jumped, clearly hoping to land amongst his colleagues. Too late: the skiff had already accelerated away, and he landed with an enormous splash in the water.

  Ignoring him, Thibault tersely issued orders and at once the corvette took off after the skiff. In less than thirty seconds she was closing in, though the pirates showed no sign of slowing down.

  ‘Two warning bursts,’ the Captain ordered, then watched as his men on the bow swung the .30 mm cannons towards the skiff. They fired a line of tracer shells that sailed just ahead of the smaller boat, a few of them skimming the surface like stones thrown from a beach.

  Now the skiff slowed down, and the French ship slowed too, cutting the engine and floating towards the smaller craft. The French sailors on the forward deck watched the armed men in the skiff intently. They were close enough to distinguish the individual figures, wearing jeans and T-shirts; as they drew nearer they could see details of the men’s faces, some half-obscured by dark glasses. But it was the weapons they were watching most closely. Suddenly two men stood up, rocking the skiff with the abrupt movement. They raised their rifles and cracking sounds rang out above the low throb of the corvette’s engines.