Trapped (7 page)

Cate nodded, puzzled, but not inclined to argue.

They passed under the thick city walls and, as they came out into the bright sunshine, Cate immediately struck off to the right, the long, cobbled walkway in front of her edged with cafés and buzzing with the laughter and chat of the lunchtime crowd.

She spotted an alleyway ahead of her. She took a diagonal path, cutting through a café terrace, and headed up into the cool whitewashed alleyway out and away from the noise and bustle of the main street. If Marcus was watching, she had done as he had told her to.

But the quiet stillness of the empty alleyway was making her feel vulnerable and insecure. Why had Marcus sent her this way? She still didn't know if she could trust him. If he had been involved with Andrei's beating, he wouldn't hesitate to get rid of a witness. And she was the only witness there was.

With doubts whizzing through her mind, she turned down into another tiny side street and, at the first doorway she came to, she pushed herself back into the porch so that she could hardly be seen. She waited, her heart beating fast. It seemed almost comical to think that someone would want to follow
her, but then the events of the day before hadn't exactly been normal.

The seconds ticked slowly past. Cate was just about to step out of her hiding place when she heard someone coming up the main alleyway. He or she wasn't walking at a normal speed, or even sauntering as a tourist might do. The gait was stealthy, quiet, stop-start. Was it possible that someone really was looking for her?

She waited, her breathing quiet and shallow. Then, nervously, she inched her head forward to look around the door post. Her heart jumped. Just a few metres away from her, a man was walking slowly up and down the alleyway. His face was obscured, but he was tall – over six foot – with large muscular shoulders. Was he looking for her?

Cate drew back into the doorway and held her breath. It looked as if it could be Piot but she daren't stick her head back out again to check. And if it was him, was he friend or foe? She forced herself to stay calm. Either way, she heard his footsteps slowly walk away and, a few minutes later, Cate sidled back down the street and looked carefully around the corner. There was no sign of her blond tracker but she was taking no chances.

Instead of continuing up the alley, she doubled quickly back the way she had come and, knowing that she was safer in a crowd, stayed on the busy high street that led up towards the town square.

The market was finished for the day and the water cannons from the town's cleaning department were hosing away the last of the day's litter. Cate narrowly missed being splashed with dirty water as she walked briskly through. Now the dusty town
square was in front of her, the traffic roaring around it at a tremendous rate.

Everyone seemed to be ignoring the pedestrian crossings and Cate felt she had to take her life in her hands just to cross over into the child's playground which dominated the centre of the square.

There was no sign of Marcus. Young children wandered about in the heat, pottering from slide to swing to roundabout, whilst their parents lounged on wooden benches in the shade.

Suddenly Cate thought of Arthur, remembering how cute he was when little and how the two of them had clung together after her mother had suddenly and inexplicably left home.

With a huge effort she brought herself back to the job in hand and, reminded of Arthur and his advice, she sat down on one of the park benches and brought out her phone. She still wasn't sure about these two men and no one knew she was meeting them. She didn't want to overreact but she needed to tell someone where she was going.

She searched around in her rucksack for the tracker device and to her relief found it in a side pocket. She texted Arthur.
Just checking out the tracker. I'll call in one hour.

Overreacting or not, she felt happier knowing that he was monitoring her. The text sent, she activated the tracker. From now on Arthur would be following her every move – wherever it was she was being led.

Cate stowed the phone back in her rucksack and walked around the edge of the square, skirting the scrubby sand that stood between the playground and the road. She had all but
given up looking for Marcus when he appeared through a cluster of trees. He was not alone. By his side was the man who she had just shaken off in the alleyway – it was indeed Piot.

‘Well done, Cate,' said Marcus. ‘Good work. You completely lost Piot here.'

For a few seconds Cate was speechless. Then she let rip. ‘Why was Piot following me?' she demanded. ‘You asked me – well, begged me – to help you last night and I told you everything I knew. Now I find that you are playing some stupid game with me. I've had enough, really I have. I'm out of here.'

‘Wait, Cate, calm down.' Marcus had her by the arm now. ‘Cate, I won't deny we need some help. And we – I – think that you're the ideal person to give us that help. You're clearly brave – you showed that when you saved Andrei's life – and you are great at thinking on your feet.

‘Not many sixteen-years-olds are as smart as you. You were right to trust your instincts and confide in me. Shaking off Piot just now – well, that was just a test – and you passed with flying colours.'

Cate's eyes opened wide and she stared from one man to the other. Now she really had no idea what to think. Outrage took over. These men were not being straight with her. Finally she spoke, trying hard to contain her anger. ‘Just who the hell are you to be setting me a test?'

Marcus shot Piot a questioning glance. There was a silence and then Piot slowly nodded.

‘That, Cate Carlisle,' said Marcus, looking her full in the eye, ‘is what you are just about to find out.'

Marcus led Cate back down the hill at a pace so fast she had to jog; her rucksack holding her phone and tracking device bumped comfortingly into the small of her back. The trio – Piot behind her – came to a halt outside a fish shop. The fishmonger was still doing a roaring trade.

Today's main catch was sardines, and hundreds of the little fish were piled high in a shimmering pyramid of silvery scales. A middle-aged woman with two tiny children simply held open a large plastic bag by the edge of the counter and one of the fishmongers liberally shovelled in a couple of dozen fish with his bare hands. There was no attempt to weigh the purchase, there was not even a price on the fish, but the shopper seemed to know exactly how much money to hand over and the deal was done without a fuss.

Two large, shiny lobsters, claws still waving, were wrapped up in damp newspaper and shoved into a basket; an old man
reached up and helped himself to one of the huge nets of furry mussels which were still dripping pungent sea water. It was a cheerful, colourful spectacle and Cate could have watched it for hours, but Marcus was nudging her shoulder, ushering her down an alleyway by the side of the shop.

A set of rusty iron stairs led steeply up, before turning into a walkway which crossed over the narrow alleyway roughly five metres above them. It was little more than a fire escape, wobbling and clanking slightly as the three of them climbed it in silence. Cate felt calm. She had made her decision to listen to what Marcus was going to say, to trust him and now, she had to admit, she was curious about what she was going to find out.

Ahead, Cate could see a door with dark green, peeling paint marked with a grubby brass plate:
Tomas Bourgoyne. Accountant
.

Piot pushed at the door and it opened into a gloomy corridor, remarkable only for the grubbiest lino Cate had seen in a long time. A door was half open into a tiny office where Cate could just about make out the profile of a dark, curly-headed man focused intently on a computer. He didn't even look up as they passed his door and likewise Marcus and Piot made no sign of recognition. Mr Bourgoyne, Cate presumed. Clearly he was not the person they were coming to see.

As Cate's eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she spotted the tiny camera lenses positioned at intervals along both sides of the ceiling, whirring through tiny silent arcs following, in perfect synchronicity, the movements of the humans below.

At the far end of the corridor was a door marked
Stocker
–
Stores
, a door clearly important enough to have been made secure with numerous bolts and locks controlled by a numerical
keypad. Cate watched carefully as Marcus, turning half away from her, rapidly punched in a long sequence of numbers.

But Cate was far too quick for him. The keypad was in standard formation, so she could work out from the position of his fingers the keys Marcus had just pressed. Now all she had to do was remember them, and her father had taught Cate and Arthur how to do just that when the three of them were whiling the hours away at yet another airport.

Cate's dad's system went like this. Numbers – make a date and find something that reminds you of it. Marcus had just punched in 1068 – the Battle of Hastings plus two. Switching to the letters on the keys to aid her memory, the next part was CZHH – Christmas in Zambia is Heavy and Hot. Followed by another number sequence: 3110 – Hallowe'en.

The door opened and the three of them walked through to a dark hallway. Opposite them was a lift, the old-fashioned sort with metal folding gates As Cate watched in amazement, Marcus slid aside a filthy panel to reveal a screen no larger than her iPod. He pressed his thumb against it, a green light flickered for a few seconds and then the lift doors slowly opened.

‘Welcome aboard,' said Marcus, punching the down button.

The lift juddered and rocked alarmingly before coming to a sudden, almost violent halt. It had covered, Cate reckoned, at least fifty metres, right down into the centre of the massive rock on which Antibes itself stood and certainly deep enough to render Arthur's tracking system useless. She put the thought out of her mind.

There was a protective metal door which had to open before
the trio could leave the lift and, as it began to clank slowly to one side, Cate could see it was a good ten centimetres thick – bulletproof. Wherever she was going, it was somewhere that required full security. Despite her determination to stay cool, her heart was beginning to race. She looked up at Marcus, who seemed like a stranger now, and it took all her will power not to stay in the lift and flee back up and out again to the world of sunshine and blue skies.

He looked back at her and smiled. ‘Welcome to the Mediterranean HQ of the International Maritime Intelligence Agency.'

They stepped out into a vast underground space. The air felt thin and sharp, a salty cold hitting at her bare legs and arms and making her shiver.

‘What is this place?' she asked in astonishment.

‘The caves have been here forever. This part of the world has loads of them,' explained Piot. ‘But it took the German High Command to work out that this could be a good place to hide, in the unlikely event that the Allies would invade France from the Mediterranean.

‘They put these lifts in and then tunnelled escape routes out through the rocks to the sea at the back of the caves.' His voice took on a sardonic note. ‘They happened to have a lot of cheap labour on their hands.'

From one side to another, the area measured at least thirty metres, each high dark wall lit only by the light coming from an almost continuous row of cinema-size screens. In front of many of them stood small groups of men and women either watching the films or bent over computers.

Some screens were blank, emitting a silvery, flickering glow. Others were screening films and, as Cate looked from one to another, she began to recognise what she was seeing.

‘Liverpool,' murmered Cate as one film showed running footage of the famous Liver Birds, and the river Mersey.

‘Marseilles,' answered Piot for her as she moved her gaze to another screen. ‘That's Bremen in Germany; over there is Naples, and look – wonderful Copenhagen. Just like the song. Have you made the link yet?' He grinned at her mischievously. ‘Just how good is your geography?'

‘All ports,' said Cate slowly. ‘But why?'

‘A-ha, well done,' said Piot cheerfully. ‘International crime usually involves things like drugs and people and goods, and all these need to be moved around. Planes, even the small ones, have to file a flight plan and the large ones, well, let's just say they have caught more drug dealers since the security operations were brought in after 9/11 than in the whole of the twentieth century. Cars and lorries, forget it. A random road check or a sniffer dog at a border crossing can destroy the best laid plans. No, even in this day and age you can't beat a nice fast boat when it comes to shifting illegal items efficiently. And all boats have to come into port at one time or another.'

‘Which is where the IMIA comes in,' Marcus joined in. ‘This section keeps an eye on every major port from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea. No one knows us, but we're there. We watch and track and chase and finally we step in and sabotage anything nasty, before it happens.

‘In short, we do the dirty work that the local police can't, or
don't even know about, and that the military haven't got the expertise for. We go undercover, sometimes for months at a time. We break rules, use guns and surveillance and now . . .' He grinned at Cate. ‘. . . even teenagers.'

‘You won't have heard of us, of course. Nor will any politicians – or they won't admit to it, which comes to the same thing. We're on our own, really, and that's the way we like it.'

As Marcus finished talking, Cate suddenly realised that they had been joined by a fourth person. He was not much taller than Cate, his dark hair receding, but he nevertheless carried with him an unmistakable aura of authority and power.

Not be messed with
, thought Cate as the two of them sized each other up in silence.

Marcus broke the impasse. ‘Cate, this is Henri Sorenzki, ex-SAS, seconded to the American CIA, had a jaunt with Mossad, back as number two at Interpol, and now Head of the Southern Central Sector of the IMIA. Got all that?' He grinned as Cate gaped in amazement.