The English Girl: A Novel

Lubéron, Downing Street, and now this. He was close; he could feel it. A few more hours, he thought, as he poured the bitter liquid down his throat. And then he would sleep for a month.
    At ten minutes past ten, he headed downstairs to the lobby, where he told the night clerk that a Monsieur Duval would be arriving shortly. He paid the room charges in full and left behind an envelope, which was to be given to Monsieur Duval at check-in. Then he headed outside and climbed behind the wheel of the Passat. As he was driving away, he peered into the rearview mirror and saw Keller walking into the hotel, right on schedule.
    This time they had given him not only a destination but a specific route as well. It took him across fields of windmills and eventually to the gasworks, refineries, and rail depots of west Dunkirk. Before him rose a mountain range of gravel, like a miniaturized version of the Alps. He sped past it in a cloud of dust and turned onto a narrow road running atop a long breakwater. On his right were the cargo cranes of Dunkirk harbor; on his left, the sea. He marked the starting point of the road with the TRIP setting on the odometer; then, exactly one and a half kilometers later, he pulled to the side and switched off the engine. The car shuddered in the heavy, wet wind. Gabriel climbed out and, turning up his coat collar, set out across the beach. The tide was out; the sand was as hard and flat as a parking lot. He stopped at the water’s edge and hurled his Beretta into the sea. It was a fine place for a soldier’s gun to end up, he thought as he started back toward the car. On the bottom of the sea, off the beaches of Dunkirk.
    When he arrived back at the road, he looked in both directions, east, west, then east again. There were no other people about and no headlights approaching, only the lights of the cargo cranes and the distant glow of the gas fires burning atop the refineries. Gabriel opened the trunk and placed the key on the ground, just inside the left rear wheel. Then he climbed into the trunk, arranged his moderately sized frame in something like a fetal position, and pulled the hatch closed. A few seconds later the phone rang.
    “Are you in?” asked the voice.
    “I’m in.”
    “Five minutes,” said the voice.
    As it turned out, it was closer to ten minutes before Gabriel heard a car pull up behind him. He heard a door opening and closing, followed by the tack-hammer clatter of boots over asphalt. It was the woman, he thought as the car lurched forward. He was certain of it.
    O nce free of Dunkirk, she drove at speed for more than an hour, only twice coming to a complete stop. Then she turned onto a pitted track and continued to drive at speed, as if to punish Gabriel for the impertinence of asking for proof of life before surrendering ten million euros in ransom. At one point the Passat bottomed out with a heavy, scraping thud. To Gabriel it sounded as though they had just struck an iceberg.
    The pitted track soon gave way to soft, deep gravel, and the gravel to the concrete floor of a garage. Gabriel knew this because, when the car came to a stop, the sound of the engine was vibrating back at him from the walls. After a moment it fell silent, and the woman climbed out, her heels clattering loudly over the floor. The trunk opened a few inches, and the long pale hand inserted a swath of cloth, which Gabriel immediately pulled over his head.
    “Are you ready?” she asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Do you know what’s going to happen if that hood comes off?”
    “The girl dies.”
    Gabriel heard the hatch of the trunk rise. Then two pairs of hands, obviously male, took hold of him, one by the shoulders, the other by the legs, and lifted him out. They placed him on his feet with surprising gentleness and made certain he was stable before binding his hands behind his back with a pair of flex-cuffs. Then they seized him by the elbows and frog-marched him across the gravel, slowing slightly to help him up two brick steps and through a doorway.
    The flooring inside was wooden and uneven, like the floorboards of an old farmhouse. As they made a series of quick turns, Gabriel had the sensation of being guided by a figure of authority. They clambered down a flight of steep stairs, into a cool cellar that smelled of limestone and damp. The hands pushed him forward for several more feet, jerked him to a stop, and then eased him downward, onto the edge of a cot. Gabriel listened carefully to the