Killer Traitor Spy by Tim Ayliffe

Author:Tim Ayliffe [Ayliffe, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

RONNIE

SAINT-MALO, DECEMBER 1986

‘Deux bières, s’il vous plait.’

Ronnie’s French was terrible but he knew enough to get what he needed from a bar.

A scruffy-looking guy with a red cotton scarf knotted around his neck nodded his chin and grabbed a tall glass from a drying rack, pulling the lever on the beer tap, triggering a rush of yellow liquid that took a wasteful moment to hit its target. Ronnie watched as the white head grew until it filled half the glass, overflowing onto the catching tray. Satisfied with a pour that only a Frenchman could appreciate, the barman used a spatula to level the foam, before placing the glass in front of the American and repeating the process all over again.

‘Will you be eating?’

The guy in the scarf had switched the conversation to English.

‘Maybe.’ Not knowing how much a beer cost in a place like this, Ronnie handed over a few more Franc notes than he thought he’d need. ‘Just the drinks for now.’

Leaving some of his change on the bar, Ronnie grabbed the beers and found a quiet table in the corner close to the fire with a view of the door.

He had never visited Saint-Malo before. It was a long way to travel from London, but he wasn’t surprised they were meeting here. The old port city on the jagged edge of the Brittany coast was popular with tourists, but never at this time of year. Winter on either side of the English Channel was freezing. It was especially brutal here, where the wind was laced with ice and the low-hanging sun was no match for the towering sandstone walls of the old town which kept half of Saint-Malo in shadows. Even the French stayed away.

Ronnie had caught the train from Paris the afternoon before, checking into a hotel on the esplanade with small rooms, short beds and windows that rattled in the wind. Not that he’d managed much sleep. Dmitry Lebedev was his prized asset and the hastily organised meeting had made Ronnie nervous. All of the protocols that had been carefully agreed between the two men had been thrown out the window when, four days earlier, Ronnie had been approached by a woman he didn’t know in a Knightsbridge pub and handed a crumpled note with a time, date and address for a bar in Saint-Malo, signed off with the letter ‘D’. Nothing else. No message. Ronnie couldn’t even be sure the note was from Lebedev. The Russian had returned to Moscow and hadn’t been seen or heard from in months. Now this. A random contact delivered in a random way. Ronnie had every right to be suspicious.

The CIA man had slept with a Beretta under his pillow and a chair balanced against the door, wondering whether the Russian had been compromised. Wondering whether it was a trap. Whether there were KGB operatives preparing to kidnap him and tie him to a chair, inject needles into his arm, force him to tell them everything he knew about the traitor in their ranks.

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