Without warning

He was going to miss Sayad, and felt yet again that he was simply allowing events to sweep him along and away from another friend, one whose own future looked very bleak. Melton didn’t see anything good happening in this part of the world any time soon. There was no way the US could sustain a presence here, but it remained an area of vital importance to the surviving great powers. How long could it be before Chinese, Indian and Russian warships replaced the US Navy on permanent station in the Gulf? As his eyelids drooped and he tried to suppress the snoring he knew was going to piss off his fellow passengers, he sought to get his head around the strategic and economic wreckage of the Israeli strike, but he was too tired and the seat too comfortable, and before long he was asleep.

He woke briefly, thousands of miles later in Gibraltar, but popped another couple of pills, drank some water and went back to sleep. After that he didn’t stir again until the plane began to descend. A flight attendant appeared at his elbow to gently rouse him and the BlackBerry addict, and to ask that they put their seats into the upright position for landing.

‘We’re in London?’ he croaked.

The young woman, a rare beauty of Caribbean heritage by the look of her, seemed distracted and anxious. ‘No,’ she replied with a shake of her head. ‘No. We’re stopping in Paris. It’s… unscheduled… but nothing to worry about. We’ll refuel and be on our way.’

That brought him awake.

‘We won’t be going to London,’ said his travelling companion, whom he’d avoided talking to so far.

‘I’ve been out of it, sorry,’ said Melton, still feeling groggy. ‘I snore. Has something happened?’

The man, a young, nondescript-looking character with one of those weird Amish-style beards, shrugged and held up a pair of earphones. ‘Sennheiser sound-cancelling technology,’ he explained. ‘Blocks out jet engines and loud snoring. Not a problem.’

Okay, so he wasn’t Amish then.

‘Britain’s closed its borders,’ he went on. ‘They haven’t told us yet.’ He waved a hand towards the front of the plane to indicate he meant the flight crew. ‘But I snuck a look at a news feed in the toilet. Everything’s locked down. Air and sea ports, ferries, the Chunnel – all of it.’

Melton’s head was clearing slowly because of the painkillers in his bloodstream. ‘Why?’ he asked.

BlackBerry guy folded his arms in obvious disgust. ‘Blair’s saying something about unrest spilling over the Channel. It’s rubbish. I need to get home. Do you see any jihadi whackjobs on this plane? We’re business people. This is just bullshit.’

‘What unrest?’ asked Bret. ‘I didn’t think those riots in Paris were so bad, considering.’

The man looked at him like he was dealing with a retarded child. ‘You’re kidding me, right? You’ve been out in the boonies, have you? Paris is on fire, man. All of France is. It’s a civil war. And they’re sending us into the middle of it.’

* * * *

ONE MONTH

14 APRIL, 2003

* * * *

35 NOISY-LE-SEC, PARIS

‘So, you missing Uncle Sugar yet? Nostalgia sucks the big one, don’t it?’

Caitlin’s voiced cracked and she smiled through split, swollen lips, with teeth stained cherry red by her own blood. But the look on Reynard’s face was totally worth it.

The Frenchman did his best to hold his feelings in check, but she’d struck a nerve point and his anguish spilled out in a slight downturn at the corners of his mouth, the merest pout of his lips and a hollowing of the cheeks, as he tilted his head back in an effort to disengage emotionally from his prisoner. He would not beat Caitlin for her insolence. The Algerian would be back later on to do that. Reynard – not his name, but to Caitlin he looked like a Reynard, like a hungry fox licking shit from a wire brush, as her old man would have said – he was too important to get her blood on his hands.

‘The doctors tell me you are a very sick little girl,’ he said, speaking to her in English as usual. ‘We could help you. Your illness progresses, but it is not too late. Help us, so we can help you.’

She laughed, a wet, rattling sound that ended in a string of explosive, searingly painful coughs. They felt like phosphorous burns in her chest. Small gobbets of blood flew out and spotted his shirt and tie. ‘Sorry… Red just isn’t your colour, is it, Reynard?’ she said, before hawking up a mouthful of phlegm and blood to spit at him.

Caitlin had given him the name as soon as she realised he was not going to identify himself, not even with a false name. It was a cheap trick by the Frenchman to increase her feelings of powerlessness, and one easily countered by her simply calling him something and sticking to it. Hawking up blood clots to spit at him helped a little, too.

He held up a clipboard to protect himself, but she let fly anyway, hitting his fingers with a satisfyingly lurid chunk. He cursed her in French and stormed out of the cell, dragging the door closed behind him. A heavy iron cage, it slammed shut with a deafening clang.