Chapter 10

Summary

Claude Whelan, First Desk, phones his wife Claire from a Hub stairwell and broods on loyalty, on his Second Desk having lied to him at his first COBRA session that morning, and on his old codename Galahad. Diana Taverner brings news that Adam Lockhead’s passport has lit up on the Eurostar and that she has sent Emma Flyte to meet the train, with no official chain of custody. River, travelling on the passport of the dead Adam Lockhead, sensed a flag at border control but was allowed aboard; he reaches St Pancras in the early evening and heads for the tube, expecting a tail. Flyte and Devon Welles pick him up at the station, and Flyte drives him up Pentonville Road under Taverner’s orders to keep him isolated and not interrogate him. Her memory is troubled by the mole on his lip, and she asks whether they have met; before she can place it, Patrice — who has reported ‘Package still undelivered’ to Frank, learned that Bertrand’s passport lit up, and stolen a car — rams them. River comes to with the airbag out and sees Patrice at Flyte’s window; Flyte draws her gun. River says Patrice’s name and tells him Les Arbres burned down, Patrice closes the distance and takes the gun, and with sirens closing he jabs Flyte in the throat and forces River to run with him.

Beats

• C10S01 · Claude Whelan — Whelan takes a moment in a Hub stairwell to ring Claire and say he will be late, brooding on loyalty and on his Second Desk having lied to him at his first COBRA session that morning. He recalls being Galahad over the river and being renamed RP1 on elevation, and considers resignation before deciding to catch the bad people instead. Diana Taverner finds him with the news that Adam Lockhead’s passport has lit up on the Eurostar and the train arrives in five minutes; she has sent Flyte and wants no official chain of custody, and Whelan tells her to keep him in the picture.
• C10S02 · River Cartwright — River read a flag in the border guard’s face as she handed back ‘his’ passport, but was allowed to board, which may mean they want him back in England quietly. He spends the crossing wondering how deep a hole he is in, travelling on the passport of a man recently shot twice in the face. He sleeps, wakes as the train reaches London in the early evening, and decides the tube is the best way to shake off whoever is following.
• C10S03 · Emma Flyte — Flyte picks him out stepping off the train — youngish, fairish, athletic, no luggage — and calls Devon Welles, who has just got back into the city and is on a stool outside a sushi place. She puts her phone away and moves in, needing both hands free.
• C10S04 · River Cartwright — Still spacey from sleep, River thinks about the previous night’s obliteration of the already-dead Lockhead’s face and about how much his grandfather knows of Les Arbres. Crossing from St Pancras to the shared underground, he is remembering the training exercise that made him a slow horse when a hand takes his arm and a woman asks for Adam Lockhead. She has his passport, and the three of them walk him out to the street, where his claim to be in the security services gets short shrift.
• C10S05 · Emma Flyte — Flyte takes a quiet professional pleasure in the detention, though it is not an arrest, and notes Taverner’s instructions — keep him isolated, do not interrogate, restrain if necessary — issued after a twenty-second blast of fury. Driving up Pentonville Road, Lockhead says this is not the way to the Park, and Flyte asks whether they have met, nagged by the mole on his lip and by a half-memory she cannot land. As she almost reels it in, a car strikes them.
• C10S06 · Patrice — Patrice, limping from the morning but otherwise unhurt, has rung Frank to report ‘Package still undelivered’ and been told that Bertrand lit up at St Pancras. He reflects that Yves’s martyrdom has made it necessary to destroy everyone who knew them, and remembers Frank giving Yves a photograph of his mother and a box of matches on his seventh birthday. Resolving to get Bertrand off the island, he steals a car and drives at the vehicle carrying River.
• C10S07 · River Cartwright — River comes to with the airbag out, the car shunted into railings and the attacking vehicle stationary in the road. He sees the blonde’s holstered Heckler & Koch, fails to open his jammed door, and watches the young man in the leather jacket appear at her window with a face that flickers through recognition before going blank. Flyte gets her gun out and orders him back and down.
• C10S08 · Patrice — Patrice is unimpressed by the gun, reasoning that people who shout orders are not the people who shoot, but he is shaken because the man in the car looks almost exactly like Bertrand. A civilian intervenes and is told to get back in his car; Patrice keeps his hands at shoulder height, talks to stall, and lets the woman repeat herself until River says his name.
• C10S09 · Emma Flyte — Flyte realises the two men know each other and repositions to cover both, and the memory finally arrives: the grubby spook was Jackson Lamb, and this is River Cartwright, the man whose body was misidentified. River says he is just back from Les Arbres and that it burned down. As Flyte opens her mouth for a last warning, Patrice closes the distance, her arms go skywards, the gun fires, and the gun is his.
• C10S10 · River Cartwright — River tries to talk Patrice down, stepping between him and Flyte and invoking Yevgeny, and Patrice asks who he is. River gives the name Adam Lockhead, which only confuses him further, while the sirens close in. Patrice lowers the gun, says they are leaving, jabs Flyte in the throat when she objects, and forces River to run with him, firing over the heads of the crowd.

People

• Claude Whelan — First Desk, brooding on loyalty and on his Second Desk’s lie
• Diana Taverner — Second Desk, who reports the flagged passport and orders a deniable pickup
• River Cartwright — travelling as Adam Lockhead, detained at St Pancras and then taken by Patrice
• Emma Flyte — head of internal security, who arrests River and is left in the road
• Patrice — rams the car, disarms Flyte and forces River away with him
• Frank Harkness — Patrice’s controller in Europe, who takes his report and gives him the St Pancras lead
• Yves — dead comrade, ‘blasted to pieces in lunatic martyrdom’
• Bertrand — Patrice’s comrade, whose passport lit up at St Pancras
• David Cartwright — River’s grandfather, the O.B., thought about but not present

Places

• Westacres — site of the bombing three days earlier
• Les Arbres — the house River has just visited and found burned down
• Regent’s Park — the Park, where River expects to be taken

Lines worth keeping

“On the Eurostar. His passport lit up coming through border control. His train arrives in five minutes.” — Diana Taverner, reporting to Whelan that the missing Lockhead has surfaced

“Have we met?” — Emma Flyte, to River in the car, as the mole on his lip nags at her memory

“It burned down, Patrice. There’s nothing there any more.” — River Cartwright, trying to reach Patrice through the stand-off in the road

“We. You and me. Or I’ll kill you here.” — Patrice, telling River he is coming with him

Threads

• Plants: Taverner’s insistence on no official chain of custody — she wants River held off the books.; Flyte’s half-recalled ‘pair of tweezers and a sieve’ and the mole, which identify River as Cartwright.; Patrice’s attachment to Bertrand, and Frank’s network of ex-CIA contacts that produces the passport lead.; Yves’s death as the trigger for a cleanup: all traces of his past must be destroyed.; River’s claim to have just come back from Les Arbres, which he uses as leverage on Patrice.; River is taken away by Patrice, with Flyte down in the road.
• Payoffs: The Lockhead passport flagged at border control pays off River’s use of a dead man’s identity.; Frank’s protocol call pays off Patrice’s failure at the garage and sends him to St Pancras.; Flyte’s memory of Lamb’s remark pays off the earlier misidentification of River’s body.
• Continuity: It is three days since the Westacres bomb, and Whelan’s first COBRA session was that morning.; Whelan is First Desk, formerly codenamed Galahad and now RP1; Taverner is Second Desk; Flyte heads internal security.; River’s train arrives five minutes after Taverner’s call, and he reaches London in the early evening.; The passport belongs to Adam Lockhead, a dead man shot twice in the face.; Patrice reports ‘I’m gold’; Frank is somewhere in Europe at an unspecified location.; Yves is dead, Bertrand is alive, and Patrice is limping from the taxi impact but not slowed.; Flyte is left on her knees in the road; River leaves with Patrice.

Characters

• Claude Whelan
• Diana Taverner
• River Cartwright
• Emma Flyte
• Patrice
• Frank Harkness
• Yves
• Bertrand
• David Cartwright

Places

• Westacres
• Les Arbres
• Regent's Park