Invisible Armies

Chapter 24

Keiran arrives fifteen minutes early at their agreed destination, a Starbucks on the south side of the Thames, between Blackfriars Bridge and the ominous tower of the Tate Modern. He feels nervous. Not just because he is exhausted, has been at his computer nonstop since hearing the news of the bomb. Keiran doesn't want to let his cloak of invisibility slip like this. This is a public place, it should be easy to get away and lose himself if he needs to, but that doesn't make him feel safe. Not with what he now knows about Laurent. Danielle is in love with him, she might have told him. This isn't safe. But it's necessary. He knows her well enough to know this has to be done in person.

He orders a black coffee and sits with his back to the wall. He sees Danielle approach, on the pedestrian thoroughfare perpetually buzzing with hundreds of people that is the south bank of the Thames. She looks pale and weak. Her smile when she sees him does not reach her eyes, and when she enters, she pauses for a fraction of a second to look around the Starbucks. Her nervousness alleviates his; an equality of fear.

She orders a chai latte and sits across from him.

"Thanks for coming," he says.

She nods acknowledgment.

He reaches into his leather jacket, draws out a manila envelope, and gives it to her. "Have a look."

Danielle opens the envelope and spills its sheaf of A4 paper onto the wooden, coffee-stained table. The first page contains two black-and-white pictures of a young Laurent, height markers behind him. Mug shots. His hair is up in a black mohawk but he is recognizable, staring angrily into the camera, then looking to the side, his jaw clenched. The name on the small chalkboard he holds reads 'SYLVAIN BRISEBOIS'. She stares at it for a moment, then starts on the next three pages, his criminal record. She reads intently. Her hands begin to shake.

"He probably told you his real name was Patrice," Keiran says. Danielle doesn't react.

"After what he did he had to get two false names. One from stealing a dead child's birth certificate. Security in Quebec was nonexistent until 2001, anyone could walk into a church registry and steal an identity. Just like Day of the Jackal. The Foreign Legion demands a government ID when you join them, before they give you a new name, and he couldn't give them his real one. Not when he was wanted for rape and murder. From what I can gather he was associated with a biker gang in Montreal, the Rock Machine. But never actually a member. There's been a war on between them and the Hell's Angels for years now. Hundreds dead, bombs, shootings, bars burned, people disappeared. Sylvain disappeared too. Age twenty-two. Then Patrice appeared, for maybe a month. Then Laurent turned up at the Foreign Legion office."

"I knew all this already," Danielle says. He knows she is lying. "So he grew up fucked up. That was years ago. He's different now."

"If you say so."

"What do you care about what he used to be?"

Keiran says, "I don't know if you've been reading the news, but Kishkinda and Terre have been going through some interesting times lately."

"Very funny."

"We had quite an amazing run of bad luck as soon as Laurent appeared on the scene, didn't we? We get run out of India moments after he turns up, we smash and grab their Paris office and watch him torture a man for no gain, then a bomb goes off and kills Angus and Estelle. Look at the next report."

The next document is highly technical, carefully formatted, full of numbers and medical-sounding terminology. It is twenty-three pages long. Some of the jawbreaking words are grouped under headings with Indian-sounding names.

"It may not mean anything to you," Keiran says, "but –"

"No, it does," she says slowly. "It's like some of the documents they processed in the Bangalore office when I worked there. One of our clients was this big Hartford insurance company. It looks like an analysis of medical claim reports. Is that it? What does this have to do with anything?"