Without warning

They started moving again. Monique’s shoulders had hunched forward and she was holding her arms stiffly by her sides. Caitlin recognised it as one of her tells: she was furious again.

She sighed. ‘Bilal Hans Baumer,’ she said, and immediately caught Monique’s attention.

‘You know his full name?’ She looked both surprised and wary.

‘Of course I know his name, darlin’. He was my target.’ She dropped into her best Schwarzenegger. ‘I haaf extensiff files.’

The French girl didn’t get the reference. Caitlin pushed on regardless.

‘Bilal Hans Baumer. Born 5 May, 1974 in Hamburg, Germany. Parents, separated. A German auto mechanic, Hans Baumer, and Turkish mother, Fabia Shah. His father named him Wilhelm, but Hans was a drinker and abandoned the family after losing his job in 1978. His mother was a reformist Muslim. Her brother Abu came to act as a surrogate father for the boy after Hans took off. Abu had always called him Bilal instead of Wilhelm. The name stuck – don’t stop walking. Come on, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.’

Monique had come to a halt just metres from the back of the minibus. The father, who’d been about to climb into the driver’s seat, caught her eye. He looked guilty, as though she had found him out doing something shameful. Monique favoured him with a shaky smile, and he nodded, taking in their backpacks and the appearance of flight that hung about them.

‘Bonjour,’ said Caitlin as they passed. ‘Bon chance.’

‘Bon chance, mademoiselles,’ he nodded back, before climbing in and closing the door with a slam. Caitlin scanned the back of the van, thinking of asking for a lift, but it was crammed full with children, adults, boxes, suitcases and food.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ asked Monique as the minibus pulled away.

Caitlin kept walking. ‘Through his uncle, Abu, Bilal came to meet other lost boys, most of them the products of failed unions between German men and migrant women. His mother stills lives in Neukцlln in the council flat where he grew up. She works for the Berlin City Council records department. She is inordinately proud of his achievements. He is one of the few young men in the neighbourhood to finish school, let alone university. He has a real job, and would have represented Germany in volleyball at the Athens Olympics.’

A few people were beginning to show up on the streets now, some of them also dressed for hiking. Another family emerged from an apartment block just across the street. The children were crying, complaining about the way their eyes stung and how it hurt to breathe. A young man rode past on a bicycle, wearing goggles and a painter’s disposable mask. He rang his bell as he passed them, fluttering his eyebrows. It drew a brief smile from Caitlin, made her feel a little better. But still she continued.

‘Bilal is tall and rangy with light olive skin and thick, wiry hair, coloured darker, almost caramel blonde. He has wide shoulders, long well-muscled arms and legs. No fat. Deep brown eyes, so brown they almost appear black from more than a few feet away. A ready smile that seems to spark off a high level of nervous energy. He rarely sits still for more than a moment and is given to little jumps and skips when he’s excited. He talks with his hands.’

Monique was staring at her now, almost walking into a pole at one point. Her eyes were wide, and anxious. As far as she knew Caitlin had never met Bilal, of course, but she had just described him perfectly.

‘Uncle Abu encouraged him to remain in school and proceed to university while many of the young men around him had simply gone onto welfare. Abu funded the boy’s education and supported his mother. As Bilal Baumer, he studied the German equivalent of sports science and became a qualified personal-fitness instructor, first working for a health insurance company, providing physiotherapy and rehab training for older clients, and later moving to a gym, where he proved very popular with the female clientele. I believe that is how you met, in fact, when he took you for a complimentary training session at a women-only gym in Berlin. When you were in the city eight months ago.’

Monique now looked physically ill, but Caitlin gave her no respite.

‘Bilal took up beach volleyball after a trip to Sardinia in 1995 and became a German regional champion with his partner Jurgen Mьller. Their run to the Olympics was cut short by Mьller’s acceptance into the Deutsche Marine.’

They had stopped walking again, and now stood on the edge of the gutter while Caitlin quickly checked up and down the street for any signs that they were being followed. It seemed clear. She spoke without emotion, simply recalling the facts from the dossier she had committed to memory as soon as her case controller had handed her the file on the al-Qaeda recruiter known as al Banna.