Triple Cross
Also by Tom Bradby
Shadow Dancer
The Sleep of the Dead
The Master of Rain
The White Russian
The God of Chaos
Blood Money
Secret Service
Double Agent
TRIPLE
CROSS
A KATE HENDERSON NOVEL
TOM BRADBY
Atlantic Monthly Press
New York
Copyright © 2021 by Master of Rain Ltd
Jacket design by Alex Camlin
Jacket photographs: woman © Yuliia Vereshchaka/EyeEm/Getty;
London cityscape © Sergey Borisov/Alamy Stock Photo
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First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Bantam Press, an imprint of Transworld Publishers
First Grove Atlantic edition: September 2021
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data available for this title.
Typeset in 11.5/16pt Palatino LT Std by Jouve (UK), Milton Keynes
ISBN 978-0-8021-5921-2
eISBN 978-0-8021-5922-9
Atlantic Monthly Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
groveatlantic.com
To Claudia, Jack, Louisa and Sam.
Contents
- prologue
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
Prologue
NOW KATE HENDERSON was sure. She had seen the clean-shaven man with faded jeans, olive T-shirt and fawn trainers while she waited in line at the butcher’s shop on the square. And the woman with dark glasses, a lime sundress and what looked like a blue Chloé handbag had been paying for parking just in front of them when they arrived in the centre of town an hour ago.
Kate put down the giant aubergines she was about to buy, nodded regretfully at the wizened Frenchman behind the trestle table and wandered nonchalantly back along the market stalls until she was standing beneath the entrance to the Grand Cathedral, the Église Notre Dame de Bergerac. She glanced up at the clock and wove her way across the road and into the pedestrian zone beyond.
It was the kind of day the South of France had been invented for, perhaps 23 or 24 degrees in the sun, and she was grateful for the patches of shade as she turned left and wandered along a side street, gazing unhurriedly into the shop windows. She went into a store selling the most expensive stationery she’d ever seen and spent a few minutes trying out fountain pens at the counter.
When she emerged again, she didn’t look back and was careful to move with the same relaxed gait and rhythm. She walked on through a covered market, stopping to buy some pastries, and finally got back to find her husband and children still at the table in the little square, lingering over the dregs of their coffee.
‘Success?’ Stuart asked, noticing that his wife was carrying little in the way of groceries.
‘Yes. We need to go.’
‘Take a seat. I’ll order you a café au lait.’
‘We need to go now. Don’t make a fuss. Don’t argue. Don’t look surprised or shocked. Just get up, go in and pay, and then we’ll leave.’
They looked at her, dumbfounded. ‘What’s going on?’ Stuart asked.
She gave him a broad smile, swinging her back towards the cathedral, so that there was no chance any of her watchers could read her lips. ‘Just do as I say, Stuart. And please don’t ask any more questions.’
All three looked like they wanted to argue with her, to fight against this intrusion of the past into their fragile idyll, but they knew better than to try. Fiona and Gus stood at either side of their mother as they waited for their father to pay.
‘It’s getting hot,’ Kate said. Neither answered. ‘Even I might have a swim later,’ she added.
Stuart returned. ‘Most expensive coffee in history,’ he said easily. ‘Almost as bad as bloody Venice.’
Kate smiled at him and they turned down the cobbled street in the direction of the quay and the river.
And now she spotted a third shadow: she’d seen the young woman with a nose piercing and Crocs by the fig stall at the market around the cathedral. Or was she imagining things?
Kate moved faster. She took Fiona and Gus’s hands and they held on to her willingly. ‘Come on,’ she said. She wanted to run and was starting to pull along both her children.
‘What is it?’ Stuart whispered again. ‘What’s spooked you?’
Kate shepherded them across the road, which ran alongside the Dordogne river, sparkling now in the midday sun. The quay doubled as a car park. ‘Get in,’ Kate said, as they reached their rented Renault Clio. She took the keys from Stuart.
‘You’re not insured,’ he said, but she ignored him. She slid in behind the wheel, pulled the driver’s seat forward, glanced in the rear-view and side mirrors.
The man in the olive T-shirt was forty or fifty yards behind her, but moving fast.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Fiona’s voice was shrill with fear.
Kate reversed steadily, ignoring her daughter. As she turned on to the road, she watched the man get into a black Volkswagen Golf, the girl with the pierced nose joining him. ‘Damn,’ she said.
‘What is it, Kate?’ Stuart asked, as she spun around the corner, accelerated to the top of the slope and swung right on to the narrow old bridge that led away from the town.
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Are we being followed?’
‘I think so.’ She glanced in the rear-view mirror at the Golf on their tail. ‘Yes, we are.’
‘Why?’ Fiona asked, fear in her voice.
‘Please, just give me a minute. I need to work out what’s going on here.’
Kate drove through the tiny hamlet across the bridge, then accelerated up towards the cemetery. She barely touched the brakes at the crossroads, prompting Fiona to squeal in terror, then hammered up the hill towards the vineyards that criss-crossed the slopes beneath the Grand Château of Monbazillac.
She was touching 120 kilometres an hour on the straight section of the narrow road and still at sixty or more in the tight chicane beneath the village, but the Golf stayed with her. As they passed the château, Gus turned to look back down the hill. ‘They’re still behind us, Mum!’
‘It’s all right,’ Stuart said calmly. ‘Your mother knows what she’s doing.’
Does she? Kate thought. It’s starting to feel like a really long time since I knew what I was doing.
She slowed to a crawl through the village, past the pretty church, the elaborate new mairie and what looked like a wine shop-cum-restaurant. Then she floored the pedal on the long, gentle slope beyond it.
Halfway down through the vineyards, the speedometer nudged 140. She hit the next set of tight turns a shade more slowly, but it was all she could do to keep the Clio on the road. Fiona screamed. Gus’s knuckles whitened as he clutched the grab handle just below the roof. Even Stuart’s face was draining of colour.
As she rounded the final corner, Kate yanked the wheel left. The Renault shot up a gravel track and flew off the crest. She hit the brakes as it landed and skidded to a halt beneath the cover of the trees.
The Renault’s dust cloud drifted away into the wood as they waited, Kate’s heart pounding.
They listened.
The Golf roared into sight on the road below them, slowed for the curves and accelerated again as it emerged from the stretch of woodland into the valley.
Kate finally exhaled.
‘Fucking hell,’ Fiona exclaimed. ‘You nearly killed us.’
‘Jesus, Mum,’ Gus said. ‘You are the man.’
‘Woman, I think you mean,’ Stuart corrected. ‘And, yes, your mum does know what she’s doing.’ He looked at Fiona. ‘Mind your language.’
Kate had closed her eyes. She would not, could not, go through all this again.
1
KATE KNEW SHE was in trouble from the expression of rapture on her children’s faces. No matter how often she had repeated on the plane to Bergerac that this trip did not imply any kind of formal rapprochement with their father, they were now listening spellbound to his endless reminiscences about happy times in their past.
‘You totally owned him!’ Gus said.
‘The look on his face!’ Fiona added.
The story in question concerned an argument in a ski lift in Les Arcs a few years previously, triggered by Gus’s irrepressible determination to jump the queue. Stuart had faced up to an aggrieved middle-aged Frenchman with such force that the man had immediately backed down. Kate hadn’t much cared for the incident in the first place, and the story didn’t improve with the telling. But she didn’t interrupt. The meal had already proved a minor miracle and she saw no good reason to burst its fragile bubble. Fiona had eaten everything put in front of her without being prompted. Gus was more garrulous than he’d been for some time. He’d taken the opposite route to his sister: his pallid cheeks were fleshy from too much comfort eating, the impression of teenage puppy fat accentuated by the terrible helmet haircuts he allowed his sister to inflict on him. But his face was currently transformed by laughter. So, too, was Fiona’s. For a moment, Kate could forget the stark angularity of her daughter’s cheeks that betrayed the seriousness of her growing mental disorder.
After the chase this morning, they had seen no further sign of their pursuers. Aside from a brief conversation back at the rented farmhouse, in which Kate had said she couldn’t think of any reason why anyone should be following them, they’d all seemed to push it to the back of their minds, perhaps because the fear of slipping into the past was too much for any of them to deal with.
Only Kate remained firmly on guard. She tried to relax as she witnessed the pleasure the rest of the family took in each other’s company. She didn’t like Stuart’s goatee beard, or his attempt to relive his youth in tight T-shirts and jeans – he had clearly been working out in Moscow, if nothing else, while exiled there – but even she’d found herself laughing at some of his appallingly unfunny jokes, and his determination to be on good form was infectious. She realized she felt better than she had in months.
She could see, though, that Fiona and Gus considered this day as a curtain-raiser on a future longed-for reunion that must surely now be imminent. And Kate already dreaded the return journey, during which she would have to explain once again that their father’s betrayal of his family and his country still made any rapprochement a remote possibility.
Kate reached for the bill. Stuart, normally so quick to pay for everything in the past – their marriage had been curiously old-fashioned in that respect – looked sheepish. They both knew he didn’t have the means to pay for anything at all, these days. Kate was even coughing up for the farmhouse.
‘Thanks so much, Kate,’ he said.
‘It’s a pleasure,’ she replied, with as much sincerity as she could muster.
They tipped out of the restaurant and piled into the car. Kate let Gus sit in front beside his father, who shouldn’t really have been in the driver’s seat. But that was perhaps the least of their problems. She tried to keep her survey of the car park discreet. There was no sign of the black Golf, or any other vehicle that might have been ready to follow them.
‘Cool place,’ Gus said.
‘Nice food,’ Fiona added, without catching her mother’s eye.
‘Would we be able to go to school here?’ Gus asked.
‘Depends if you want to start speaking French,’ Stuart said. ‘Though I guess it would help in the next lift-queue bust-up.’
‘They have international schools, don’t they?’ Fiona asked.
‘I think they possibly do in Bordeaux. I haven’t looked into it yet, but I will.’
Stuart glanced over his shoulder. Perhaps he was looking for some sign of approval from his wife. Kate kept her counsel. She was far from ready to contemplate moving here to begin life again with her former husband. Not many people managed to betray their wife, their family and their country, and she was a long way from forgiveness.
Conversation dwindled, until it was drowned by the steady hum of the cicadas through the open windows.
They turned right past the sandstone church and wound their way through the village to a bumpy track that led past a coppice to the farmhouse, hidden in the fold of the valley and surrounded by its own vineyard.
Kate had barely removed the keys from the ignition when she noticed the dark Range Rover parked in the corner of the drive next to the swimming pool. A second vehicle stood under the trees. Both faced the exit. ‘Get into the house,’ she said to the others.
‘I’ll check—’
‘Take the children inside, Stuart.’
As Kate walked towards the Range Rover, the prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, James Ryan, and his cabinet secretary, Shirley Grove, climbed out.
‘Kate Henderson, as I live and breathe,’ the PM said. He’d put on weight again and looked older. His cheeks were puffed and saggy. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets and he wore a curious half-smirk, like a schoolboy caught stealing from the local sweet shop. It was his political stock-in-trade.
‘Good evening, Mrs Henderson,’ Grove said.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Good question,’ the PM said. ‘On the money, as always. Can we talk somewhere? Can’t be overheard by your husband, I’m afraid.’
‘No. We can’t. I’d be grateful if you could leave.’
‘We’ve come a long way, Kate.’
‘I don’t care how far you’ve come. I’ve retired. Mrs Grove can vouch for that.’
‘Indeed she can. But events have a habit of upsetting the best-laid plans, as you very well know.’
‘That’s not my problem any more.’
‘I’m afraid what we have to tell you may encourage you to change your mind.’
‘I don’t want to hear it.’ Kate began to turn away, in no doubt that she really, really didn’t. Not this time.
‘You have no choice because not to listen to what we came here to say could prove injurious to both you and your family.’ The prime minister gave a barely discernible nod towards the house.
‘Is that a threat?’
‘A fact, I’m sorry to say.’
‘Was it your people following me this lunchtime?’
‘An army surveillance team. We just needed to know you didn’t have any troublesome company.’
‘Why the army?’
‘It’ll make sense if you let me explain.’
‘Just hear us out, Mrs Henderson,’ Grove said. A thumbnail scratching at the sleeve of a woollen cardigan gave the lie to her calm, even impassive demeanour.
‘Wait a minute,’ Kate said. She went into the house where Stuart and the children sat anxiously around the kitchen table.
‘What is it?’ Stuart asked. ‘What did they want?’ He wasn’t doing a good job of hiding his nerves.
‘I’ve got to hear what he has to ask. Probably just something from the old days they need help or advice on. I’ll be back inside half an hour. Don’t wait up for me.’
‘You said you wouldn’t do this any more,’ Fiona said. ‘You promised it was over.’ She stood and backed towards the cooker, as if preparing for a confrontation.