CHAPTER TWO
On that fateful day in August, Leonard had just left Mike Kingdom’s cabin.
What is it about that man? She walked to the fridge, knocked the top off a bottle of Peroni and grabbed a bag of salted cashew nuts. Her mind was completely focused on devising a way to find Randy. She also opened some windows, which was an automatic reaction whenever Leonard had been in her office – or home; this had a therapeutic effect as it allowed the sounds of the forest to enter. Today, this meant the rasping of some squabbling jays and the trill of a wren.
She removed her black wig and put it back on its polystyrene head. Rubbing her scalp, she sat down and calmly tried to work out what this was all about. Why had Leonard come to her and in an off-the-record way? He must be in trouble or he would be using his massive resources and network of contacts. Was this trouble solely because of Randy or were there other things? Leonard had asked her to stop Randy from doing something and report back to him; clearly, Randy had not completed his task yet.
This was more than finding a needle in a haystack – she didn’t even know in which haystack to search. In fact, she didn’t even know which country the haystack was in.
Not having access to the CIA computer network was going to make this so much more difficult. She had been given free access the last, and only, time she had freelanced for Leonard. Now, she couldn’t even contact her friends at her old Five Eyes office in Chiswick. She was on her own and she had to be discreet.
At that moment, a loud plane roared slowly overhead. It was too early for the A320 on its way from RAF Brize Norton to the Falklands. Probably a tanker plane, she thought, and her mind drifted off, trying to decide which surveillance aircraft over the Middle East it was about to refuel. She brought herself back to the matter in hand. If in doubt, start at the beginning.
Randy; it all must start with Randy.
The obvious thing to do was to try to contact him. He was her brother-in-law after all and, of course, she had his personal cell phone number. Why not call it? She dialled and waited. There was no reply, so she sent an anodyne but teasing message: “Call me. I have some good news.”
She called his landline. Number not in use. She called Eleanora, a friend from the distant past who lived in Copenhagen, and asked if she had heard from Randy. Nothing. Mike thought about contacting Randy and Dylan’s parents, but she decided against it as this would only worry them. They had already lost one son.
It was all worth a try, but she wasn’t hopeful.
Another Peroni seemed to be a useful displacement activity. She knocked the cap off.
He won’t be using his real name, she thought. How can I find him if he isn’t using his real name and I don’t know what he’s doing and in which country?
She liked a challenge. Fighting for her life after the accident had displayed her stubbornness, and she knew she was as good as anybody at searching databases – it’s what had got her recognition in the CIA in the first place – but you have to get a fingerhold. You have to start with something. She went back over Leonard’s words carefully. What had he said that might be useful? He wanted Randy to stop what he was doing and report back. Whatever Randy was doing was against the latest US policy. He might be in France, Spain, Italy, Morocco or Algeria. He was undercover in a gas company.
She began to address each point in turn.
What could Randy be doing that he needed to stop? He was a geologist who could speak Spanish, like Dylan, having grown up near the Mexican border in California. Was he in Spain doing something? What would the CIA want someone like Randy to do? She made a note to check if Spain produced natural gas. Even if it did, why would the CIA be interested? Curiosity got the better of her, and she immediately searched for natural gas production in Spain. It produced so little, ranking eighty-sixth in the world; this was a dead end, surely? She burst out laughing. Most people wouldn’t understand that what turned her on was the pursuit. If anyone thought that being an analyst means hitting a button and the answer comes out immediately, they would be so disappointed.
She moved on to US policies. Which was the policy that had changed under this or previous presidents that would warrant Leonard leaving his office and being driven to her cabin, given that he was wedded to his big, black leather office chair in ways that were probably not entirely healthy? What had changed in relation to the five countries Leonard had mentioned? She drew a blank. As to Randy’s location, she had some knowledge of the three European countries, but, again, she drew a blank. About the two North African ones, she knew absolutely nothing. She made a note to educate herself on these and quickly.
She took a swig of beer, and before she could consider the fourth matter, her train of thought was completely derailed. There, on the floor, alongside the armchair where Leonard had been sitting, was a folded newspaper. She walked over and a shooting pain shot up her left leg; this settled down after a few paces. She hadn’t seen him drop it. Leonard may look like a sloppily put-together assemblage of the bits found on an abattoir floor, but he was no fool. He had dropped it on purpose. Officially, he couldn’t tell her what this was all about, she guessed. This was well outside being need-to-know, and she was no longer part of the CIA. However, the paper must have been left to give her a lead.
There were no outside pages, but she could see from the date at the top that it was five months old and from London. She flicked through, looking for a highlighted section or some obvious headline. Nothing jumped out to her on her first look until she saw a small article under world news.
It was entitled “Ukraine fallout”, but it was the word ‘Algeria’ that had caught her eye:
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman arrived from Morocco at Houari Boumediene Airport, Algeria, yesterday (30th March 2022) for an unprecedented visit by the US equivalents of the Foreign Secretary and Deputy Foreign Secretary; they met Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra.
Neither Morocco nor Algeria were obvious places for such important members of the US government to visit, so the question was why? And why should it involve both of them at a time when Russia, Ukraine, China and elsewhere should be top of the list of priorities?
One reason seemed obvious: the shortage of global oil and gas supplies due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. According to the article, “Algeria is the fifth largest gas exporter in the world.”
Mike Kingdom leant back in her chair and drained the last flat, warm mouthful of her Peroni. So, Algeria is the fifth largest gas exporter in the world, she thought about this, rubbing her thumbs and forefingers together in excitement. Something inside her told her she had just been given the end of a thread that would lead to Randy.
Her knowledge of Africa was restricted to the fact that Egypt was at the top right and South Africa, unsurprisingly, was way down at the bottom.
She called up Google Maps and orientated herself. She started at the western end of the Mediterranean Sea, with Spain and Gibraltar to the north and, eight miles to the south, Morocco. Together, they provide the gateway from one of the largest and most important seas on earth to the Atlantic Ocean. East of Morocco, with a long Mediterranean coast, is Algeria, which is the second largest country in Africa and extends far south across the Sahara to Mali. Why had she never come across Algeria before? The second largest country in Africa and the fifth largest natural gas producer in the world. The CIA must be well represented in Algiers, surely?
She sat musing on what her brother-in-law, Randy, had to do with any of this and where he was at that precise moment. In truth, they had never been close, mostly because he had his life in California, and she was working for Five Eyes in London. She knew deep down, however, that Dylan would have wanted her to drop everything and find Randy – or at least to keep him out of trouble.
The screaming of a muntjac deer woke her up and she realised that she had dozed off after many hours of reading long reports about the Maghreb, the area of northwest Africa that included Morocco, Algeria, the contested Western Sahara, and bits of Libya, Mali, Tunisia and Mauritania. What was Leonard trying to tell her? She decided to close the windows and go to bed.
Only the most malevolent of fathers would call their son Walter Cecil when their surname was Flushing. He had disappeared from family life when Walter was fourteen years old – to the relief of everyone. Unfortunately, the verbal abuse through school impacted heavily on Walter; he became introverted and studious. While emerging with very good grades, he became immune to everyone calling him W.C. In fact, for a while, he stopped speaking entirely. Inside, however, his mind was firing on all cylinders. People tended to put him down as a basket case. This was to underrate him seriously. The small mat of curly, brown hair, which sat at the top of a face with a long nose and darting eyes, disguised a sharp mind.
He amazed everyone by reading French and politics at Oxford. This in turn had led W.C. Flushing to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and an initial temporary position as the ‘lowest of the low’, supporting the staff at the British Embassy in Algiers. He hated it more than school, but he had at least learnt Arabic on a course at the FCO language-teaching centre in the basement of its King Charles Street HQ in London. He was hoping this might all lead to a permanent post with the FCO. Sadly, his inability to fit in had been acknowledged immediately, even though he had completed all of the basic administrative tasks well and had spent six months compiling a well-received study entitled The Current Political Tensions in the Maghreb. At his first review, it had become apparent that North Africa was not his natural habitat (this was in his FCO evaluation report). However, his reliability, language skills and problem-solving abilities were recognised, and he was reallocated. Instead of being the ‘lowest of the low’ in Algiers, he was promoted to the ‘lowest of the low’ helping in the service section in Paris.
After a few months, he had settled in. This embassy, with its 270 staff, was much larger than the one in Algiers, and this meant he could disappear into the background as long as he performed the allocated tasks well. Outside work, he led a quiet and separate life. His living accommodation was very small and new. This suited him, as he had no interest in sharing and was unmoved by dreamy Parisian garrets on the Left Bank.
He was now called Walter, having left his nicknames behind in high school and at Oxford.
Possibly because someone saw his potential (or possibly because he was the only one available), in August 2022, he found himself in a small hotel in Colmar, the most beautiful town of the Alsace in eastern France. Trapped between the French Vosges mountains and the Black Forest in Germany, the people of the Alsace really don’t care whether their government is in Paris or Berlin; the region had changed hands that many times. They took the best from both cultures. Nouvelle cuisine with German proportions. The hotel was chocolate-box pretty, with the geraniums outside each window reflected in the canal below; it was a photographer’s dream.
Walter had left early to buy some pastries and a coffee before returning to meet John ‘Johnny’ Musselwhite in the reception at 9.00am the next day. He was tasked with making sure that Johnny, the British Minister for Energy, made it to a meeting with his French counterpart to discuss a joint Anglo-French project on Green energy using some of the old potash mine sites in the Alsace – an industry now completely closed, but that had left a similar legacy to coal mining in the UK, such as rusting winding gear and the equivalent of slag heaps.
Walter had never been to the Alsace before, so the whole experience had been like a paid holiday. The transfer from Basel airport had been easy, and as soon as he had arrived at the hotel, he met Johnny, who had promptly ordered room service and gone to bed early. It looked like it was a paid holiday for Johnny as well. He had, it seemed, driven down in his old Mercedes on his way to a break in the South of France and Spain. The planned meeting, which would take up only a couple of hours of his time, would probably make the whole trip tax-deductible. Walter was meant to be assisting someone called Brendan from the British Embassy in Paris, who had cancelled at the last moment. This did not bother Walter as the job was really a couple of hours of carrying bags for the minister and the odd bit of translation. He decided to go out to eat and found an auberge that served a melted cheese dish called raclette, which he accompanied with a large beer. He was back in the hotel by 9.35pm, slightly regretting his choices and opting to sit up with extra pillows in case any of it made a reappearance.
As arranged, he was downstairs early the next morning, wearing an unworn silk tie that he had bought in an Algiers souk. He was looking forward to a light breakfast at 8.30am. To pass the time, he was checking the headlines on his phone until he became increasingly concerned that his ward had not yet appeared. The driver was arranged for 9.30am, so Walter tried to calm his nerves and ordered another coffee. He was much happier within the confines of the embassy, dealing with minor consular or other administrative issues. ‘Out in the field’ was not where he felt comfortable. At 9.00am, he decided to walk up the wood-panelled stairs to Room 7 and tap the door gently. There was no response. He tapped again a little louder, thought he heard movement and beat a hasty retreat downstairs to wait. Twenty minutes later, he had released the knot on his shiny tie a little and was struggling to complete the easy crossword on his phone. With a burst of resolve he went back up to Room 7 and knocked on the door in such a way that no one inside could have ignored it. When there was no response, he ran downstairs and went straight to reception.
A few minutes later, a lanky lad with slightly protruding eyes pulled down his waistcoat and tapped the door yet again. With no response, he used his master key card and pushed it open. There was a strange smell, and the curtains were still pulled closed. He called out Monsieur Musselwhite’s name and flicked on the light.
The white powder and the business card on the glass top of the bedside table rather gave the game away. Monsieur Musselwhite was still wearing last night’s clothes: dark-blue chinos and a red-and-white striped shirt. He wasn’t wearing shoes or a tie, and he was staring with pale eyes at a small wooden beam above him, which really did not warrant much attention. His jacket was draped over a chair next to a small table on which were his car keys.
After checking his breathing, or lack of it, and establishing that he was stone cold, the receptionist turned to Walter and said he would telephone a doctor and the police. With that, he ran out and headed downstairs. Walter had a few seconds of regretting that he hadn’t become a librarian like his careers master had advised him, and then he went into professional mode. He couldn’t do anything about the cocaine. However, he began to look for Johnny’s mobile phone and passport, together with any briefcase or documents – he knew instinctively that these should not be examined by the French authorities. He further checked the jacket’s pockets for Johnny’s wallet or anything incriminating (as if taking cocaine was not a big enough problem). He found none of these items, which struck him as odd. Were they in his car? He was about to return to his room next door when the business card Johnny had been using to cut the cocaine caught his eye. He recognised the name on it and picked it up carefully before putting it in his jacket pocket. It was not, in fact, a paper business card but rather a plastic memory stick that doubled up as a business card.
