Without warning

She ordered another coffee and paid for the entire bill when it came, but didn’t finish her wine. Even a few mouthfuls had left her feeling light-headed and dizzy. It would have been luxurious to stay in the cafй for a few hours, drinking and smoking Gitanes as though all was right with the world, but Caitlin hauled herself to her feet as soon as she’d downed the second espresso. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

The American headed out through the kitchen towards the rear of the cafй. The owner nodded and tutted and tried to look as sympathetic as he could for the pretty cancer girl. The kitchen was cramped and narrow, with crammed shelves running all the way up to a high ceiling. A woman in a stained apron gave them a querying look but the owner, her husband most likely, shushed her with one word: ‘Cancer.’

Caitlin shut her eyes for a few seconds before pushing open the flyscreen door and stepping out into the small darkened car park. A single pallid globe struggled to illuminate the courtyard, in which two scooters and a battered old van were parked. She had shifted the guns into easy reach, but there was nothing in the scene to alarm her.

‘Well, my Spidey senses ain’t tingling,’ she told Monique, who gave her a weird look in return. ‘We’re fine,’ she explained.

Two blocks later, she found a couple of bicycles chained to a cast-iron railing in front of a white, Moorish-looking tenement, and was pondering how to break the chains when Monique admonished her.

‘Please, Cathy… sorry, Caitlin. Bicycles? Look at them. They are not expensive models, no? The people who ride these do so because they cannot afford a car. Do not steal them, please. They will not be insured. You will only be spreading more misery.’

Caitlin’s irritation at the scolding was transitory. She was feeling quite ill now, and was coming to think she would need Monique to get through the next couple of days if she was unable to make contact with Echelon. It was better that the girl was feeling more confident, even if it meant she’d be less malleable and, frankly, more of a pain in the ass. ‘Fine,’ she conceded. ‘No bikes. But we’re gonna need some wheels soon. If we get caught out in the open on foot we’re dead.’

They resumed their journey towards the 14th Arrondissement, walking against the flow of one-way traffic along the Butte-aux-Cailles, which was alive with throngs of younger Parisians, all of them wealthy and well dressed, hopping from bars to clubs and restaurants as if this were a normal evening with a warm spring in the offing. The buildings here were smaller, with steeply pitched Alpine roofs, and tended to be given over to commercial concerns, chichi diners and exclusive clubs, so the two fugitives stood out in their cheap, unwashed clothes. A few bookstores remained open for late-night browsers, and apple trees lined the street, perfuming the air with sticky pink blossoms. The footpath in front of the cafйs and bistros had been colonised by clusters of small round tables, all covered in immaculate white linen, and playing host to lovers, friends, gourmands and modern boulevardiers. Monique’s cluster of angry political badges and sewn-on patches drew a score of withering glances and even open sneers. Caitlin tried to arrange her face in as neutral a fashion as possible, but something about her must have tripped warning beacons for most of those they passed by. In contrast with Monique, nobody looked her in the eye or dared make any snide, slanting comment about her bloodstained pants and leather jacket.

Two police cars and an ambulance went rushing by at one point, forcing Caitlin to softly squeeze Monique’s arm and remind her to ‘be cool’. She felt terribly exposed on the expensive strip, and wondered whether it might be wiser to dive into a side street, but the GPS indicated that the route they were walking would get them quickly to the apartment opposite Montparnasse Cemetery. The longer she was out on the street, the more imperative her need for shelter. She hadn’t said anything yet, but her headache was getting worse, and now she was beginning to suffer from such severe nausea that it was possible she might lose her dinner all over the sidewalk. She had to get to that apartment. There, she’d find shelter, weapons, money, clothes and, just possibly, somebody from Echelon waiting to bring her in. Maybe even Wales. Although, what the fuck ‘bringing her in’ meant at the end of a day like this was a mystery. Perhaps a flight to London on one of the agency’s black renditions – if the French were still allowing them. Nothing that had gone down in the last few hours gave her any confidence on that score. She was certain the muscle at the hospital had been French secret service. But she had no idea why they’d come in hot.