Shouldn’t the FCO have protected him a bit more? First of all, they had sent him to Algiers on a research project that had turned into a baptism of fire, then they had sent him to Paris, but not with a full contract and the usual protections. They wanted him to assist Brendan in looking after Johnny Musselwhite for a couple of days, which would also have been no problem had Brendan not cried off and dumped Walter in it. And now, Stewart was buggering off back to Paris, leaving Walter to be interviewed by various police and investigating officers over the next twenty-four hours. Twenty-four? he thought. I’m only twenty-four.
Walter resolved that, the second he got his passport back, he would fly back to Paris and terminate his contract.
Growing up in a mobile home in the corner of a field above the River Tamar, after his father had disappeared, was not that bad. He and his sister had plenty of friends in the village, and he had the advantage of being a bright kid. The generations mixed together in a way that he hadn’t seen elsewhere, whether in the pub, at the music festival or in the gig racing. He was tall with strong arms, which made him a natural choice to be part of the six-person gig team, rowing in the competitions around Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. His artistic talents also made him a regular as the painter of the stage scenery for the local amateur dramatic productions.
While irritated at the FCO and the French authorities, he had been treated fairly by Madame Bettancourt, the prosecutor. The last couple of days had been a roller coaster, and he still couldn’t bring himself to relax until the interviews were over and he had his passport in his hands.
The enormity of the situation kept welling up inside him. Who would kill a British minister, and in France? Why? The killer or killers must have been in the hotel. Had he seen them? He didn’t think so, but how close had he come to being killed himself if he had stepped out of his room at the wrong moment? He shivered. The killers were probably professionals from Russia or some ‘rogue’ state, as the prosecutor had described them.
Why did they take Johnny’s laptop, phone and passport? Or was that what they were after? They didn’t need to kill him to steal those things, did they? They could simply break into his hotel room while he was out.
Whether it was because he was annoyed, affronted, patriotic, inquisitive or bored, he decided to investigate a few things himself. What else was he going to do? For the next twenty-four hours, he was trapped in Colmar, and he was intrigued. He opened up his laptop and searched ‘Johnny Musselwhite’. There was enough to keep him occupied for weeks.
Having been married three times, resulting in four children, one of whom was a well-known model (warranting pages of salacious gossip herself), he was the son of Sir David Morton Musselwhite, the MP for Cheltenham. How he had ended up following his father into politics was the stuff of legend, mostly made up of privilege, luck and deep, pale-blue eyes that seemed to charm both young and old and male and female alike. Most people would agree that, for his first marriage, he had chosen well (that’s ‘well’ in the financial, bottomless-pit sense of the word). The divorce settlement set him up for the next ten years. His second wife had a minor title from her father, who was some baronet. Then came the drinking and the drugs – and that was just her. He laughed it all off and made a success of several business ventures that various school friends seemed to front for him. Despite some financial impropriety here and there, he managed to float to the top.
Being the Minister for Energy was the pinnacle of his parliamentary career, which surprised many – not only because of his debauched and incoherent lifestyle but also because he was a vociferous Remainer and defender of the EU.
Walter took a break from the screen and wondered who would want to kill Johnny (he was thinking of those other than some madman from a rogue state). He probably had his share of enemies, but poisoning was pretty extreme and, ultimately, traceable. What was he doing that a rogue state wanted to stop – permanently? He stood up and looked obliquely down at the still water of the canal. If only the sea off Newlyn were this calm during the annual gig race.
He walked back to the desk, past his jacket draped over the chair.
On impulse, he lifted it and took out the business card that Johnny had been using to cut his cocaine. He looked at the name again: the name of someone he had seen in Algiers.
CHAPTER SIX
Mike had exhausted herself reading about the three existing pipelines, and she now knew about pounds per square inch, compression stations every sixty miles, and the comparative costs of overground and underground versus underwater. On her computer, she had spent an enjoyable five minutes on Google Maps trying to follow the underground pipelines across the desert and mountains. They sure knew how to disguise them. For most of their length, they were underground, punctuated at key points by compressor stations that pushed the gas along the next stage.
It was while searching for compression stations that she spotted an article on an explosion the previous day at what it called “compressor station no. 6”. The article was in an Algerian newspaper in French and warranted only a few lines. How serious was this? Was it sabotage? Was Randy involved?
Mike’s phone buzzed. The display said “Dr Rose Delavine”.
“Hello, Rose. I never asked you what sort of doctor you were,” Mike began.
“Well, I have to deal with assholes all day …”
“Proctologist, then?”
“… most of them above me,” Leonard continued.
“That image will stay with me all week. What can I do for you?”
“I’m getting kicked by the President to find out what’s happening in Algeria before he visits Morocco.”
“Doesn’t he have a bunch of people in Algiers? You’re in London.”
“Yes, but the intelligence may well come via Five Eyes. Have you found Randy yet? It’s getting urgent.”
“No, but I’m worried that he’s blowing up compressor stations in Algeria.”
“That would be unfortunate – and especially over the next couple of weeks.”
“Leonard, if it’s urgent, can we stop messing about? What’s his cover name? What’s his cell phone number? Where’s he meant to be and what’s he doing?”
“I wanted you to come at this from the side, but, OK, events have overtaken things.” He paused. “Why not check out a name? Ramon Ramirez. And I can give you his cell phone number, but it hasn’t been operational for weeks, and there’s no locational data available since that time.” Leonard read out the cell phone number.
“Where was he last known to be?”
“Málaga, Spain.”
“Doing what?”
“Well, before Putin,” he said, pronouncing it ‘Poot’n’, “got the hots for Ukraine, he was meant to be, shall we say, loading the dice in Morocco’s – or effectively Uncle Sam’s – favour.”
“Doing what? Blowing up pipelines?”
“Yeah, well sort of … stuff like that … but nothing permanent.”
“Why?”
“To encourage the Algerians to reopen the pipeline across Morocco to Spain. The President was hoping that it would make the Algerians play nice.”
“Then, I’m guessing, the Ukraine war happened, the Nord Stream 1 pipeline got shut down, and everyone wants natural gas.”
“And let’s just say that the President’s enthusiasm for the Moroccan claim to Western Sahara has been temporarily downgraded, and the Algerians may suddenly be our new best buddies. He doesn’t want us shitting in the Algerian nest over the next few months.”
“Was he behind the explosion yesterday?” Mike asked.
“I sure hope not.”
