The Accident Man:A Novel

38

The four directors met around a glass table and sat on plain metal chairs. The tabletop was free of paper and writing implements: No minutes were ever taken of the board’s meetings. Security was absolute. There were no phones on the table, no pictures on the wall, nowhere to hide any kind of listening device. The air-conditioning vent was plastered directly into the ceiling and could not be unscrewed. The light fixtures were sealed units, fitted with long-life bulbs. The sound- and bulletproof windows were hidden behind blackout blinds. The men had left their phones, wallets, keys, and loose change in plastic trays, then passed through a scanner before they entered the room.
The chairman got right down to business. “Gentlemen, thirty-six hours have passed since the Paris operation. In one important respect, it was a success. The mission’s main objective was attained. There are, however, a number of loose ends that need to be tied up.”
“It’s a little worse than that, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry, Finance, is there something you’d like to say?”
“Yes there is, actually.” The man’s appearance was impeccably tailored, but his voice was tense, teetering on the edge of panic. “The whole thing’s turning into a bloody nightmare. The country’s gone mad with grief, the republicans are having a field day, and the monarchy’s facing the biggest crisis since the abdication. Meanwhile, we’ve got an assassin on the loose. He could be anywhere in the world by now. And if he talks, we’re done for.”
The chairman sat perfectly still, letting the finance director say his piece. Then he continued as if the words had never been spoken. “As I was saying, there are a few loose ends. My information suggests that the security services are under extreme pressure to find out what happened. The PM’s pet hooligan, Trodd, has declared that he does not want a newspaper beating him to the truth. This administration is obsessed by headlines, of course. . . .”
A third voice, its accent Australian, entered the conversation. “Mate, you can hardly blame them. Headlines don’t get any bigger than this.”
“Indeed not, Communications. News management will play an extremely important role over the next few days and I’ll be looking to you to make sure that we don’t see any unwelcome headlines. It’s in no one’s interests for the actual events or their participants to be made public. I’m sure we can reach some kind of discreet, even anonymous accommodation with the government. If they are given Carver’s name, and a credible assurance that he has already been dealt with, that should keep the wolves from our door. Perhaps the operations director would like to update us on his progress.”
“I’ve spent the day trying to put a crew together. It hasn’t been easy to get people of the caliber we’ll need. As you know, we exclusively use freelance operatives, hired at arm’s length, and we lost a number of our best contractors over the weekend, but I’m confident that we’ll be ready to move within the next twenty-four hours. First we’ve got to find him, of course.”
“Well, that should be a cinch,” sneered the finance director. “I’m sure he’ll send us a postcard to let us know where he is.”
The chairman frowned at the consortium’s moneyman, wondering whether it was time to replace him. He would put his mind to the problem once the Carver issue had been resolved.
He turned back to the operations director. “Are we any closer to tracking him down?”
“Yes, chairman, I think we are. He left Paris yesterday morning by train from the Gare de Lyon. He may well have been accompanied by one of the Russians, who had, of course, been ordered to kill him—a woman, Alexandra Petrova. If she is indeed with him, it’s not clear whether she intends to carry out her assignment or has genuinely defected, as it were. Either way, I’m certain Carver’s still in Europe. He bought tickets for Milan but didn’t take that route. I’d guess he’s somewhere in eastern France, or maybe Switzerland. It doesn’t really matter. I don’t think he’ll try to run. I’d expect him to be much more assertive.”
“By which you mean . . . ?”
“That he’ll try to come after us before we can get to him.”
“You don’t sound too concerned about this prospect.”
“Well, he doesn’t know who we are. And it’s going to be very hard for him to find out without alerting us to his presence. Besides, I may have a lead on his precise whereabouts. I have a contact in Paris, name of Pierre Papin, works for French intelligence. He has been tracking Carver and Petrova’s movements using railway-station surveillance systems. He says he knows where they went.”
“So why hasn’t he told you?”
“He wants money for his information.”
“How much?”
“Half a million U.S. dollars. I think we should go for it.”
“That’s ridiculous!” exclaimed the finance director.
“Really?” replied the chairman. “What makes you say that? Some would call it quite a modest price for keeping us all alive and getting the government off our backs.”
The man in the pin-striped suit took a deep breath and smoothed back his hair, clearly embarrassed by his loss of control. When he spoke again, his voice was calmer, more assured, the voice of a man used to giving orders rather than taking them.
“I simply question whether we can afford to expend many more resources without being certain that the benefits justify the cost. The Paris operation involved a significant financial downside. Of course, we were able to save a great deal by withholding fees from some of the personnel involved. But even so, there were major logistical outlays, not to mention considerable sums spent purchasing influence within a number of French institutions. We lost several men, whose families will have to be compensated and kept quiet. Massive damage was sustained to two properties, which will have to be repaired at great cost. I therefore believe that any further expenditure should be considered very carefully.”
The chairman nodded. Perhaps the finance director was not beyond salvaging after all. “A very persuasive argument. As you said, Operations, Carver will be obliged to show himself. So make sure that when he emerges from hiding, we are ready and able to deal with him.”
The operations director glared at the moneyman, who had undermined him, then turned back to his boss. “But what are we going to do about Papin? If we don’t pay him, he’ll try to give Carver to someone else. And there’s another thing. He’s got our computer. It’s protected by passwords, encryption, and firewalls. There’s no way Carver’s broken into the files just yet. But he’s a resourceful individual. He’ll find a way of cracking them eventually. And we can’t let that happen.”
“No,” agreed the chairman, “We certainly can’t have that.” He thought for a while, tapping his fingers against the surface of the desk, then continued. “How are we supposed to make contact again?”
“He’s calling at twelve thirty our time.”
“Fine, then have his call patched through to me. I shall persuade our French friend that he has more to gain by keeping us happy in the long term than by making a fast buck now.”
“And if he isn’t persuaded?”
“I shall make him pay for his stubbornness.”



39

Bill Selsey, a twenty-two-year veteran at MI6, a man whose chief ambitions were a steady career and a solid pension at the end of it, sidled up to Jack Grantham’s glass-fronted office at the far end of one of the open-plan offices that lent MI6 headquarters a deceptive appearance of corporate normality.
“Busy, Jack?”
Grantham looked up from the screen where he was checking files on the world’s professional hit men and wondering why so many of their whereabouts were listed as “Unknown.” What was the point of knowing about the bad guys if you didn’t have the resources to keep proper tabs on them?
“Nothing urgent. What can I do for you?”
Selsey parked his ample backside on the edge of Grantham’s desk, ignoring his colleague’s disapproving frown.
“There’s an interesting development in the Paris investigation,” he said. “We just received a call from one of our European partners—Papin, one of the more interesting characters in the French intelligence community. He seems to float around without any formal job title, but he has a habit of popping up in unexpected places.”
“So?”
“So, he says he knows where to find the people responsible for the crash in the Alma Tunnel.”
Grantham sat up in his chair, his mood changing in an instant from polite indifference to total concentration. “Really? Where does he say they are?”
“Well, that’s the catch. He wants us to pay for the information. Says he won’t consider anything under half a million dollars.”
“He wants us to pay? Bloody hell, even by French standards that’s a bit steep. Whatever happened to interservice cooperation?”
“He’s not doing this for his service, Jack. This one’s strictly off the books.”
“Do we trust him?”
“Of course not, he’s French. Which means he’s self-centered, unscrupulous, and couldn’t give a monkey’s about anything except his own immediate advantage.”
“But is he any good?”
“Not bad. Yeah. If he says he knows where these people are, I believe him.”
“All right, but if he thinks we’ve got half a million dollars to chuck his way, he’s obviously not been informed about our budget cuts. Can we get to him for free?”
Selsey’s hangdog face brightened. “Ah, that’s the good news. Not only is he working off the books, he’s sending his message from a humble payphone rather than one of DGSE’s secure lines—presumably doesn’t want any record of his communications with us and the other bidders appearing on their logs.”
“Bit amateur. We’ll have much less trouble tracking that.”
“Perhaps greed is getting the better of him. It’s amazing what the prospect of easy money does to the human brain. And he probably underestimates our ability to track him. We only let the Frogs see a fraction of our signals intelligence, after all. Their officers won’t necessarily realize just how powerful Echelon and GCHQ really are.”
“Can we find him?”
“Working back to the site of his call is tricky but not impossible. We may manage it. But our real chance will come when he calls back. We’ve got to conduct some sort of negotiation. If we keep him talking, we’ll get an exact position.”
“He’s not going to be that daft, surely?”
“He stands to make half a mill. He might take a risk for that.”
Grantham frowned. “I can see why he’s not worried about us. Even if we don’t shell out any cash, we’re hardly going to hurt a fellow professional from a country that’s one of our allies.”
“Even if he is French?”
“No, not even then. But there’ll be other people out there who are a lot less scrupulous. Papin’s got to get his money, take his clients to the killers’ location, then get out in one piece himself. Tell you what, Bill, you said this guy’s not bad.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, he’s going to have to be a hell of a lot better than that to pull this one off.”




40

Alix watched Carver as he worked his way through an enormous helping of venison stew and noodles in the restaurant of the Hotel Beau-Rivage. It was called Le Chat-Botté.
“That means Puss in Boots,” Carver had said with a cheeky, naughty schoolboy glint in his eye. There was something boyish about the gusto with which he attacked his food too, as though he didn’t have a care in the world, nothing to think about except for the plate in front of him and the glass of red wine at its side. His appetite seemed completely unaffected by the prospect of what they had to do in a few hours’ time. Then again, he wasn’t the one who’d have to squeeze into a tight-cut skirt.
Even as they went upstairs to his suite, she was still trying to figure Carver out, to uncover the true self he kept so carefully hidden—from himself as much as everyone else. So many men she had known had struggled to be even one-dimensional, but not this one. He was so assured in his own world, so uncertain in hers; so cold at some moments, so emotional at others. Yet it sometimes seemed to her as though Carver’s emotions were obvious to everyone but him.
She wondered if he knew how powerfully his eyes expressed his feelings. In the short time she had known him, she had seen icy rage and aching tenderness, ebullient laughter and exhausted vulnerability. She thought of the books, records, and paintings in his apartment, the consideration he could show when he was at ease. Then she thought of him walking into the mansion in Paris, gunning down two men, finishing them off with a shot to the head, and walking away from their bodies without a second glance. She remembered lying on the ground by that bus stop, her face pressed against the sidewalk, his knee digging into her spine. How could she reconcile that man with the one who had lain beside her that morning, who was taking her in his arms again this afternoon?
She pulled away a fraction. “Should we be doing this? I thought we were here on . . .” she tried to find the right words. “On business.”
“We are,” he replied. “We have one chance to find out what we need to know. In a few hours, Magnus Leclerc is going to walk into the bar downstairs. You are going to seduce him. I am going to scare him witless. Then I’m going to start asking him questions. Leclerc is our only lead. If we can make him talk, we can find the people who betrayed us. If not, well, it’s just a matter of time till they find us, no matter how far or fast we run.”
“So shouldn’t we be doing something else? You know, something useful or important?”
“Such as what? This is like any other operation. Most of the time you spend just waiting around. We don’t know if the operation’s going to work. We don’t know if we’ll be alive tomorrow. What could be more important than seizing every moment we can?”
She considered what he had said, weighing the merits of his case. Then she smiled. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s seize the moment.”




41

Pierre Papin was dog tired. He had worked for almost forty-eight hours, virtually without a break. His eyeballs felt like sandpaper and his brain had been coshed. With every passing minute, thought became more of an effort and his tension and uncertainty increased. And yet, for all that, he was making progress.
Some of the locals had been uncooperative, but even dumb insolence provided a form of information. He’d gone into a small café, demanded to see the owner, flashed his ID, and shown him the pictures of Carver and the girl. The man had shrugged and said, “Never seen them before in my life,” but the answer was too quick. He’d not even bothered to examine the photographs.
There’d been a small boy in the café, six or seven years old. Papin had got down on his haunches, held out the picture of Carver, and put on his most wheedling voice: “Have you seen this man come into the café?” But before the boy could answer, the café owner had picked him up and stuck a finger in Papin’s face, hissing, “Leave my son out of this!”
Papin knew he must be getting really close. He knocked on doors, approached women taking dogs for walks or bringing shopping back to their homes, made inquiries with impeccable politeness and a dash of charm. Soon he had discovered Carver’s address. But he did not know whether his quarry had returned to his apartment while he’d been making his inquiries.
The Frenchman needed to answer that question before he made his next move. He slogged up the endless stairs to the fifth floor of an ancient apartment building and knocked on the door. The sound of a lock opening was followed by the sight of a very respectable-looking woman of pensionable age peering around the half-open door with the look of disapproval that was clearly her default expression.
Papin showed her his card and, adding an enticing note of intrigue to his voice, explained that he was deeply sorry to disturb madame, but there had been reports of an illegal immigrant settling in the apartment level with hers in the adjoining building. Before taking the appropriate action to rid the neighborhood of such an undesirable, he wished to discover whether the individual in question was currently in occupation.
He produced a device that looked like a doctor’s stethoscope attached to a microphone. This seemed to convince the old lady, or at least to arouse her curiosity. She let Papin in, offered him coffee and biscuits (he declined with profuse thanks for her kind hospitality), then watched, in fascination, as he placed the microphone against several points on the wall abutting Carter’s apartments, listening intently each time. Finally, Papin stepped away from the wall, folded up his listening device, and shook his head. “The individual in question is not in residence, madame,” he said, sounding suitably frustrated. “But have no fear. I will be maintaining a vigil all day. He will not escape.”
A few minutes later he was standing on the top-floor landing of the building next door, facing a simple dark blue door.
So this was where his quarry hid from the world. Papin was tempted to break in and grab the laptop. It must be in there; Carver hadn’t been carrying it when he left that morning. But there were bound to be security measures— Carver was not the type to leave himself unprotected—and even if there were not, Carver would know that someone had been there the moment he stepped through the door, and he’d be off like a startled gazelle. It was far better to keep a low profile. Papin was certain the two of them would be returning to the apartment that day. They’d been walking through town like lovers on a day off, not fugitives on the run—they weren’t going anywhere. He’d save them for the highest bidder.
It was time to call Charlie. But when he dialed the number, Papin was put through to another phone and a voice he didn’t recognize.
“To whom am I speaking?” he asked.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Then this conversation is over.”
“Wait a moment, Monsieur Papin. I am Charlie’s superior. You are talking to me because he does not have the authority to deal with your financial conditions, and I do. I’m afraid that I cannot accept your demand for five hundred thousand dollars.”
Papin had expected some form of negotiation. “Alors, monsieur, I am sorry. If you will not pay me the required sum, I will find a client who will.”
“Three hundred. And that is my final offer. Not a penny more.”
“No, I will not lower my price. But I will make you a deal. You pay me two fifty up front, I take you to the location. From there it will be one twenty-five if you find the people, one twenty-five for the computer. You will not pay in full unless you have everything you need. Fair?”
There was silence at the other end of the line while the man considered the offer. Papin wondered what the counterbid would be. But then came a grunt of assent: “Fair enough, monsieur. So what are the arrangements?”
“You will send one man to the front entrance of the Cathedral of Saint Pierre in Geneva, Switzerland. I will be there for precisely five minutes, starting at five p.m. local time. I will be wearing a dark blue suit and holding a rolled-up newspaper. I apologize for the cliché, monsieur, but it will suffice. Your representative will say, ‘Charlie sends his regards.’ I will reply, ‘I hope Charlie is well.’ He will say, ‘Yes, much better now.’ He will then hand me the first half of the payment—remember, bearer bonds, endorsed in my name. I will give further instructions at that time. Your man may have backup for any action that is required, but he will only call for this backup when I give permission.”
“I understand. Five o’clock this afternoon at the cathedral. I will have someone there. Thank you, Monsieur Papin.”
“On the contrary, Monsieur. Thank you.”
Papin put down the receiver, raised his eyes to the ceiling, then let out a long sigh of relief. He rubbed the back of his neck as he pondered his next move. He had the money in the bag. He didn’t need another bidder. But what if there was a way to make more than one deal? He might yet be able to double his money. Yes, that would be something. And if he played it right, he could get the killers and their bosses off his back for good.




42

Deep inside the futuristic, postmodernist ziggurat on the south bank of the river Thames that had been the headquarters of MI6 since 1995—and which its more cynical inhabitants, unimpressed by the building’s expense, vulgarity, and sore-thumb prominence, had dubbed “Ceau?escu Towers”—Bill Selsey was sitting by a telephone receiver, waiting for a call. Beside him were other secret service officers wearing headsets, operating digital audio recorders, and monitoring the connection between their lines and the tracking equipment at GCHQ. Jack Grantham was sitting at the same table as Selsey, ready to listen in on whatever Pierre Papin had to say.
The phone rang. Selsey paused for the technicians’ thumbs-up, then picked up the receiver.
Papin was all apologies. “I am so sorry, Bill, but I already have a buyer for my information. We are meeting at five p.m.”
“Well, I’m sorry too, Pierre. Maybe we could have done some business.”
“Maybe we still can.”
“How would that be?”
“You could buy my buyer.”
Selsey rolled his eyes across the table at Jack Grantham. What was the Frenchman playing at now?
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“Simply that I can now provide you with a complete package: the people who killed your princess and the people who hired them.”
Selsey couldn’t help it. He laughed out loud. “So you shaft the people you’ve just done a deal with and sell them out to us?”
“Exactly.”
“Bloody hell, Pierre, you’ve got a nerve! Presumably you’d like to be paid by us too.”
“But of course. The price is the same: five hundred thousand U.S.”
“Yeah, well, there’s just one problem. We don’t have that kind of money lying around. You know how it is, endless bloody budget cuts, every penny has to be justified in triplicate. Probably the same with your lot, right?”
“Yes, it’s true. We cannot afford to be extravagant. But this is not extravagance. This is a small outlay for a huge return.”
Across the room a signals tech gestured at Selsey to keep talking. He mouthed the words “almost got it.” Selsey nodded. He kept talking.
“I agree. If we did get that entire crew, it would be good. But to be honest, that’s what concerns me. You’re planning to deceive a group of known killers. I’m not sure you want to be doing that. In fact, I’d say we’re the only people you can trust. We’re pros, like you. We’re not in the business of harming our allies’ agents. So why don’t you come in with us? We’ll keep an eye on things, cover your back. I mean, even if your clients don’t discover you’re about to rat them out, they may decide they don’t want to pay your money after all. They may try to get it back . . . over your dead body.”
“But it would be of no use to them. That is why I demanded endorsed bearer bonds. They can only be cashed by me. No, Bill, your offer is very kind, but I’m sure I can look after myself. And also I would be safer without you. If I do not sell my clients to you, they have no need to harm me. And if I do sell them, and they find out, then I do not think you would be able to save me. So I want money to cover the extra risk, or no deal. What is it to be?”
Selsey looked across at the signals tech and got a thumbs-up. “Then I’m sorry, Pierre, but it’s no deal.”
“I’m sorry too, Bill. Another time.”
And the line went dead.
“Good work,” said Jack Grantham, leaning across the table to give his colleague a supportive pat on the arm. “So, where is the treacherous little sod?”
“Geneva,” said the signals tech. “Public phone on the Rue Verdaine, right by the city cathedral.”
“Damn!” muttered Grantham. “We can’t get there in time from here. We’ll have to use someone local.” He picked up a phone and dialed an internal number. “Monica? Jack Grantham. Something urgent’s come up in Geneva. Who do we have in the UN mission there? . . . What do you mean one of them’s on holiday? It’s September, people should be back at work. . . . Okay, well, get the chap—sorry, the woman, my mistake—get the one who isn’t busy lying on a beach and tell her to give me a ring asap, would you? And see what we can rustle up from the embassy at Bern—that’s not far from Geneva, right? . . . Excellent. Well, tell them to call me once they’re on their way. Coordinate with the girl in Geneva. . . . Yes, Monica, I know she’s a grown woman, it’s just a figure of speech. . . . Well, whatever this female is, I want to talk to her. Now.”
He put down the phone with exaggerated care, shook his head silently, then turned to Bill Selsey.
“Right, Bill, this is strictly a surveillance job. I don’t want people running around the streets of Geneva firing guns and playing at double-o-seven. I just want every scrap of information we can get on the killers Papin claims to have found. And I want to know about every phone conversation, every e-mail, every text message in and out of Geneva this afternoon. And do me a favor, Bill. Get onto Cheltenham and Menwith Hill. Tell them we need saturation coverage.”



43

Grigori Kursk put down his mobile phone, kicked the hungover blond out of bed, and threw some money after her as she grabbed her clothes and scuttled from the room. He reached for the empty vodka bottle on the bedside table and held it up to the light to see if there were any dregs left at the bottom. He needed something to kick-start his day. He’d been given new orders and was getting back to work.
He called Dimitrov’s room, just down the hall of their two-star hotel in the center of Milan. “Wake up, you lazy cocksucker! Yuri called. We’ve got a job, Geneva, three hours’ time. . . . Yeah, I know that’s not enough time. That’s why you’ve got to get your ass out of bed and down to the lobby. Tell the others. By the front desk, five minutes. Anyone who isn’t there, I will personally ram an Uzi up their backside and let rip. Got that?”
Five and a half minutes later, Kursk was at the wheel of a BMW 750, forcing his way into the lunchtime traffic on the Via de Larga. He had 330 kilometers between himself and Geneva, and the cars around him were moving slower than a legless man in a tar pit. He pressed his fist to the horn and kept it there, screaming locker-room obscenities at every other driver on the road. No one around seemed too impressed; in Milan that passed for everyday behavior. Kursk slumped back in the driver’s seat. “F*cking Italians. They move fast enough when there’s an army after them.”
Finally, the lights ahead turned green, the traffic began to move, and they started to make progress. Kursk relaxed a hair. He took a pack of Balkan Stars from his shirt pocket, pulled one out of the pack, then reached for the car’s lighter. He took a deep drag and kept driving, one hand on the wheel, the other holding the cigarette.
Sitting next to him, Dimitrov decided it was safe to risk a question. “So, what are we doing in Switzerland?”
Kursk blew smoke toward the windshield. “We’re meeting some French bastard and he’s going to take us to that whore Petrova and her English lover boy.”
“And then?”
“Then we kill the Frenchman and we take the other two back to Yuri. And then, God willing, we kill them too.”
Kursk rolled down the window and yelled at the car ahead of them. “Get that useless pile of crap out of my way, you spaghetti-eating son of a whore!”
“Forget it, Grigori Mikhailovich,” said Dimitrov. “He doesn’t understand Russian.”
Kursk pulled his head back inside the car. “Oh no, Dimitrov, that gutless bastard knows exactly what I’m saying.”



44

Carver had been impressed by the way Alix had shopped. On the rare, very rare occasions he’d allowed himself to be dragged along behind a woman on a retail expedition, he’d been bored, exhausted, and massively irritated by the endless trail from one crowded, overheated rip-off joint to the next; the constant riffling through rack after rack of clothes that looked identical to him; the relentless questions—“Does this make me look fat?” “Which do you prefer?” “Will this go with those boots we saw?”—to which he could only silently contemplate the same, unchanging answer: “How the hell would I know?”
But Alix was different. She bought clothes the way he bought munitions. She had a purpose in mind. She knew the effect she wanted to create, and she supplied herself accordingly.
Now she was preparing for her mission with the same professionalism. She showered. She toweled herself off, blow-dried her hair, and came back into the bedroom, where Carver was still lying on the bed, draped in a thick terry-cloth hotel robe, waiting for his turn in the bathroom.
Alix got out her underwear and took off her towel. Carver was intoxicated by the intimacy of watching her as she slipped into her panties and bra. He relished all the sights and sounds that are so normal, even banal, to a woman, yet so fascinating to a man: the slither of fabric over skin, the snap of elastic, the little twists and adjustments of her body, the self-absorption as she examined her appearance in a full-length mirror inside the wardrobe door. Yet there was nothing showy about her actions. She seemed indifferent to Carver’s eyes washing over her, as if, like a dancer or model, she were so used to being naked in the presence of other people that any modesty or coyness about her body had long since evaporated. Nor was there any vanity in the way she looked herself up and down. Her expression was serious, her self-examination meticulous. She was getting ready for work.
As she stepped away from the mirror, she finally glanced at Carver.
“What do you think?”
“I think you’d better get dressed fast before I lose all self-control.”
“No,” she said. “Fun is over. Time for business.”
She walked across to the dressing table, which was already dotted with bags of makeup, pots of skin cream, a can of hair-spray, brushes, combs, and a couple of paper shopping bags. One contained a skullcap made of some kind of nylon that looked like thick pantyhose. She put it on, pushing her hair beneath it until every strand had disappeared. As she worked, she caught Carver’s eye in the dressing-table mirror.
“So, were you always rich?” she asked.
He looked at her with eyebrows raised, taken by surprise by her question. “Rich? Me? Christ, no! Far from it.”
“But you were an officer. I thought in England only the upper classes became officers.”
Now he smiled. “Is that what they told you in KGB school?”
“You can tease me, but it’s true. The rich lead the poor. It’s like that everywhere.”
“Maybe, but I didn’t become an officer because I was rich. I became an officer because I was adopted.”
Now it was her turn to be surprised. She stopped her handiwork and turned her body to face him.
“How do you mean?”
“My mum gave me away. She was just a kid who got pregnant. She came from the kind of family where abortion wasn’t an option, but they weren’t going to have a teenage daughter pushing a pram around, either. So they sent her to a home for unwed mothers, told everyone she was visiting relatives abroad, and then got rid of the baby as soon as they could.”
Alix had turned back to the table and was rummaging through her makeup as she listened to Carver’s story. Now she looked into the mirror again, frowning this time.
“Who raised you, then?”
“A middle-aged couple. They’d never had children of their own. They were nice enough and they meant well, but they couldn’t cope. In time they realized that they wanted a quiet life more than a scrappy little rascal running around the place, making a racket all day. So they sent me off to boarding school. They felt it was the best thing for me.”
“Did they love you?” She was powdering her face.
“I don’t know. They never said so, not out loud. But I think they cared for me. You know, in their own way.”
“And what about you? Did you love them?”
Carver sighed. He got up off the bed and walked over to a chair, near to the dressing table. “Well, I didn’t dislike them,” he said as he sat down. “And I was grateful to them. I knew they were making sacrifices for me; I appreciated that. But I don’t think I really knew how to love, not from the heart. I mean, why would I? If you don’t get that from your mother, you never find out about love until much, much later and then, suddenly, it’s like, oh . . . right . . . so that’s what they were talking about. Comes as quite a shock.”
“And then you lost her too.”
“Yeah. Not so good, that.”
Alix twirled her mascara brush through her eyelashes.
“So, how old were you when you went away to school?”
“Eight.”
“Bozhe moi! . . . And the English think they are civilized!”
“You don’t know the half of it. The school was in this ancient country house, miles from anywhere. The first morning, we all got woken up at seven o’clock. We got dressed and the dormitory captain led us downstairs to the lawn at the back of the school. And we did drills, proper military drills. Quick march! Left turn, right turn, stand to attention, stand a-a-a-t . . . h’ease! It makes me laugh now, it was so bloody mad.”
“Yet you became a soldier?”
“Well, schools like that have been churning out upmarket cannon fodder for centuries. They were specifically designed to produce reasonably intelligent, physically fit, emotionally screwed-up young men who’d travel to the world’s hottest, nastiest places, do their duty, and lay down their lives when required.”
“And you are one of these people?”
“When I’m working.”
“And when you’re not working?”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to sort out.”
For a few moments they were silent. Alix concentrated on her lipstick. With her newly painted face, done in a style unlike anything Carver had seen on her before, her bald head, and her half-naked body, she looked oddly impersonal, like a showroom dummy waiting for its costume. Then she reached for the other bag and took out her wig. She pulled it over the skullcap, brushed it and sprayed it, and suddenly Carver was looking at a completely different woman.
He expected her to get straight up and cross the room to the closet where her clothes were hanging. Instead she sat there hesitantly, her eyes vague and unfocused, as if her concentration had been broken by some inner uncertainty.
“There was something I didn’t tell you yesterday, about my past,” she said.
Carver sat back in his chair, caught her eye in the mirror.
“I said that everything about it was bad. But that’s not true. I had special privileges because of what I did for the State. At home in Perm, women wore horrible, shapeless sacks. They ate stale food that tasted of nothing. They worked so hard. When my mother was only forty, she was already old, like a woman of sixty in the West. But in Moscow I was dressing in Armani, Versace, Chanel. I had never before owned more than two pairs of shoes, always made of plastic. Now I had a closet filled with shoes from Paris and Milan.
“Sometimes I would take men back to my apartment. There were beautiful Italian sheets on my bed. There was Scotch whisky in the drinks cabinet. You cannot imagine. No one in Russia lived like that—no one outside the highest levels of the Party. I loved those things. It did not matter what I had to do, I would never have given them up. I sold my soul.”
Carver leaned forward. “Did you like my flat?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Did you like my flat? I mean, it’s nice, isn’t it? You haven’t seen my car, but that’s pretty nice too. So’s the boat I keep on the lake. And I think you know how I paid for them.”
“So what are you saying, that you are as bad as me?”
“I guess. But who’s to say what’s good or bad? People get on their high horses. They sit in their comfortable, safe little lives and they talk about moral standards. But any idiot can come out with this week’s socially acceptable bullshit when they don’t have to face any consequences or get their hands dirty. I spent years watching good friends get blown to pieces, their guts torn apart for politicians who lied through their teeth. I know there are bad guys out there and I know what they can do. That changes your perspective, big-time.
“Sorry, got a bit carried away,” Carver offered, grimacing.
“No,” she said, “I understand. And I like it when you get passionate. I like seeing who you really are.”
“Christ, do you think that’s the real me?”
She was about to reply when there was a knock on the door. Carver went to answer it, picking up his gun from the bedside table along the way. He opened the door a couple of inches and then relaxed when he recognized who was on the other side.
“Thor! Good to see you. Come in.”
Larsson’s tall, gangly figure—all arms, legs, and hair—ambled into the room. He was carrying two large nylon bags, suspended from his shoulders. He saw Alix getting up from her makeup table and stopped.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I had no idea.” A shy smile spread across his face and his blue eyes creased in private amusement. “Am I interrupting?”
“Not at all,” said Carver, “We were just getting ready. So, Thor Larsson, this is Alexandra Petrova.”
“Call me Alix,” she said, standing on tiptoe to give Larsson a peck on the cheek.
“Uhh, yeah . . . call me Thor,” he answered, as his face flushed beneath his freckles.
Her smile gently teased Larsson for his embarrassment yet welcomed him as a friend. “Okay, Thor, please excuse me. I think I should get dressed.”
The two men stood watching her for a second as she flitted across to her clothes. It took an effort of will for Carver to drag his eyes and his thoughts away from Alix and force himself to concentrate on the gear Larsson had brought in his bags.
“Right,” Carver said. “Assume that this room is the command center. I’ll be here—in the first phase, at least—monitoring communications. Then we need a wire on Alix, handheld remote video that you’ll have to control, and a complete sound-and-vision setup for the other room, the one where Alix will take the guy we’re going for.”
“No problem,” said Larsson. “I’ve got everything you’ll need.” He rummaged in one of the bags and pulled out a couple of cigarette packs. “These should do the trick.”
Carver looked unconvinced. “Are you sure? I can’t afford for this to go wrong. It’s the only chance I’ve got.”
“Relax,” said Larsson, patting Carver’s shoulder. “Have faith. I know what I’m doing. And by the way . . .” He bent down till his face was right in front of Carver’s, and murmured, “I want to talk about that other job you asked me to do, the decryption. Call me later tonight. We need to speak . . . alone.”