I stooped to pick the paper up, and the man said ‘Thank you’; but grappling with the baby carriage, he had no hands to take it. I stood and watched as he clambered on, received through the open door by his panicked wife. The last whistle blew. The platform had emptied of everyone except the guard and myself. In a moment the doors would lock. I looked at the paper up close. There was only one person who could have released that photograph. Commander Frank Knight had vaporized my most valuable asset in the creases of tomorrow’s fish-and-chip wrapping. My face would be everywhere. My name, too. Movement would become impossible. Helping me would be suicide. I was beyond the pale.

Time was up.

If I stayed, it would get bloody, quickly. If I left, it might be impossible to return.

All bets were off.

I stepped on to the train.

10

‘Monsieur?’

‘S’il vous plaît, un café et un verre d’eau.’ My eyes scanned the menu chalked up on a thin blackboard hung near the door. ‘Et un croque-madame,’ I smiled. ‘J’ai faim.’ The waiter nodded and cleared the cups and plates left by the couple whose table I’d taken. The bistrot was set to the side of a small square dominated by a large church, a short walk from the Gare du Nord. In the summer tables and chairs must have spilled out of the concertinaed wood and glass doors on to the flagstones outside. But on that cold morning the panes had fogged over, creating a damp, grey curtain that cut off the city beyond. It was good to be inside.

When I’d arrived, I’d exchanged the sterling left over from getting to Paris and then used some of those euros to buy a train ticket to Berlin, via Düsseldorf. I’d walked the cavernous concourse cautiously but casually. In Ashford there’d been no point in hiding my face from the station’s security cameras: Mann’s passport would have given my route away immediately. But in Paris I was careful not to show my face to the lenses that pivoted on gantries above me. This was where I needed my trail to go cold – or at least cool.

The station seethed with passengers and tourists, watched by patrols of maroon-bereted paratroopers from the 3rd Marine Infantry Regiment. The troops moved slowly, purposefully, Famas assault rifles cradled across their chests, eyes looking for a fight – and, if and when they got word, for me.