Eve sips her tea and lowers her cup to its saucer. ‘Not yet. But bear with me. We know that our female assassin – who we’re calling Villanelle, by the way, for reasons that I’ll explain – was in Venice. We know that she’s employed by the Twelve, the organisation that Cradle told us about.’
‘Whoever they might be.’
‘Yes. Now suppose, for argument’s sake, that Orlov worked for them too.’
‘Yes, I can see that if you suppose that, you can construct a revenge motive. But just because this woman and Orlov both had a connection to, um . . .’
‘Yevtukh.’
‘Exactly, to Yevtukh, it doesn’t mean to say that they knew each other. Equally, just because she’s in Venice at the same time as Yevtukh, it doesn’t mean she . . .’
They fall silent as an elderly woman pushes a shopping trolley very slowly past their table. ‘I had the cauliflower cheese,’ she confides to Eve. ‘It tasted of nothing at all.’
‘Oh dear. My friend’s enjoying his shepherd’s pie.’
‘That’s nice.’ The woman peers at Richard. ‘Bit simple, is he?’
They watch her go. Eve swallows the last of her tea, and leans forward. ‘Of course she killed him, Richard. He went off with her and never came back. The whole affair has her name written all over it.’
‘So what is her name again?’
‘I’m pretty sure that the name she uses professionally, or as a codename, is Villanelle.’
‘How did you arrive at that?’
She explains.
He puts down his fork. ‘You’re doing it again.’
‘What?’
‘This woman leaves you a card, sprayed with her scent and signed V. You discover that she uses a scent called Villanelle, so you conclude that she calls herself the same thing. That’s guesswork, not a logical consequence of the known facts. And the same is true of the connection between the woman—’
‘Villanelle.’
‘All right then, if you insist, between Villanelle and Orlov. You want it to be so, so you deduce that it is so. My personal opinion is that we should pursue the Sverdlovsk-Futura line of enquiry that you outlined in your report. Follow the money, in other words.’
‘Of course. We should do that. But with respect, I need you to trust me on this, because I’m getting to understand our assassin and how she operates. She gives an impression of recklessness, giving me that bracelet, for example, but actually she takes very calculated risks. She guessed that I’d follow her to Venice, sooner or later, and that I’d figure out that she killed Yevtukh. That’s all part of her plan. Because knowing I’m there, just a couple of steps behind, gives the game its edge. She’s a psychopath, remember. Emotionally and empathetically, her life is a flatlining blank. What she wants, above all, is to feel. Killing gives her a rush, but only a temporary one. She’s good at it, it’s easy, and the thrill diminishes each time. She needs to jack up the excitement. To know that her wit and her artistry and the sheer horror of what she’s doing are appreciated. That’s why she’s drawing me in. That’s why she told me her name, using the perfume. She likes setting me these perverse little puzzles. It’s intimate and sensual and hyper-aggressive, all at the same time.’
‘Assuming that this is true, why you?’
‘Because I’m the one who’s after her. I’m the source of the greatest danger to her, and that excites her. Hence the provocations. All that erotic bait-and-switch.’
‘Well, it’s clearly working.’
‘By which you mean what, exactly?’
‘I mean that she’s calling all the shots.’
‘I acknowledge that. I admit that she’s been fucking with my head. What I’m suggesting is that we get ahead of the game. Let me go to Russia. I agree that it’s possible that Villanelle and Orlov have no connection, that their lives don’t intersect at all, but let’s just look and see what we find. Please. Trust me on this.’
Richard is expressionless. For perhaps half a minute he stares out of the window at the busy street below. ‘We share a birthday. Shared, I should say.’
‘You and Konstantin Orlov?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you the same age?’
‘No, he was a couple of years older. He fought as a conscript in the Soviet-Afghan War. Served under Vostrotin and was wounded, quite badly, at Khost. Won a medal, a good one, which must have brought him to the attention of someone with a bit of pull, because a couple of years later he turned up at the Andropov Academy. That’s the finishing school for spies outside Moscow. It used to be run by the KGB, but by the time Orlov left they’d become the SVR.’
‘So this was all . . . when?’
‘Khost was in 1988, and Orlov graduated from the Academy in, I’d guess, 1992. One of Yevgeny Primakov’s brightest and best, by all accounts. There was a posting in Karachi and then another in Kabul, which is where I met him. Very clever, very charming, and I’d guess completely ruthless.’
‘He was declared?’
‘Yes, diplomatic cover. So he was on the circuit. But he had fast-track SVR written all over him. And he knew exactly who I was too.’
A staff member, name-tagged ‘Agniezka’, appears at their table. ‘I take?’ she asks, nodding at Richard’s abandoned shepherd’s pie.
‘Thank you, yes.’
‘Don’t like?’
‘No. Yes. Just . . . Not hungry.’
‘You want feedback form?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘I give you anyway. You’re welcome.’
‘Why, in a free world, would you choose to have a tongue piercing?’ Richard asks when Agniezka has gone.
‘I have no idea.’
‘Is it a sex thing?’
‘Truly, I don’t know. I’ll ask Billy. Go on about Orlov.’
‘I’ll tell you a story about him. We met at a reception at the Russian embassy – this was in Kabul – and after directing me to the best vodka, he introduced me to a colleague of his whom he described as a secretary although we both knew she was no such thing. Anyway she was attractive, and obviously clever, and laughed at my jokes despite my far-from-brilliant Russian, and when she went it was with a backwards glance that lasted just that moment longer than it needed to. It was all done with a very light touch, and when I told Konstantin that I’d love to see her again but just couldn’t face the paperwork, he laughed and gave me another glass of Admiralskaya.
‘Anyway, I reported the encounter in the usual way and the next day I got a couriered message from Konstantin. He remembered that I’d said I liked bird-watching, and wondered if I’d like to go on a short drive with him outside the city. So I logged the approach, and a couple of days later I met Konstantin in Dar-al-Aman Road outside his embassy, where two vehicles turned up with Afghan drivers and half a dozen wild-looking locals armed with AKs. We drove out of the city on the Bagram road, past the airport, and half an hour later we turned off in the middle of nowhere, drove round a low hill, and there were all these parked vehicles, and tents, and the smoke from fires. There were thirty or forty people there. Arabs, Afghans, tribespeople and a team of heavily armed bodyguards. So I asked Konstantin, rather nervously, what the hell was this place? And he said, don’t worry, it’s all fine, look closer.
‘And that’s when I saw these lines of perches, and on them, these superb birds of prey. Sakers, lanners, peregrines. It was a falconry camp. I followed Konstantin into one of the tents, and there, hooded and ready to fly, were half a dozen gyrfalcons, the most beautiful and expensive hunting birds in the world. There was also a white-bearded guy there, extremely fierce-looking, who Konstantin said was a local tribal chieftain. He introduced us, someone brought us lunch, Coca-Cola and some kind of meat on skewers, and then we drove further into the desert and the falconers flew their birds at bustard and sand-grouse. It was truly spectacular.’
‘I would never have had you down as a bird-watcher.’
‘I wasn’t one until I joined the Service. Then I found out that
several of the top Russia hands were birders, and that it wasn’t enough to know your Pushkin and Akhmatova, you had to know your waxwings from your wagtails too. So I took it up, and caught the bug.’
‘So you had a good day with Orlov?’
‘It was an extraordinary day, and I honestly didn’t care that I was probably spending it with arms traders, opium dealers and the high command of the Taliban. I wouldn’t even have been surprised to have come face to face with Osama bin Laden, who I later learned owned several gyrfalcons.’
‘And Orlov didn’t make any kind of approach?’
‘Lord, no. He was much too smart for that. We talked very little except about the birds and the wildness and strangeness of the occasion. And while he obviously had his professional reasons for cultivating me, I sensed that he took a real pleasure in my enjoyment of the day. I liked him very much, and I meant to return the invitation in some way. I felt that it was important not to be in his debt. But I never got the chance. He was recalled to Moscow shortly afterwards, and we later learned that he’d been appointed chief of Directorate S.’
‘Did you ever see him again?’
‘Once, very briefly. It was in Moscow at a party for Yuri Modin, who fifty years earlier had been the KGB controller for Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt, the Cambridge spies. Modin, by then pretty old, had just written a book about it all, and Konstantin was something of a disciple of Modin’s. They met, I’m guessing, at the Andropov Academy, where Modin was a guest lecturer. He taught a course named “Active Measures”, which included subversion, disinformation and assassination, and from the way that Konstantin ran the directorate, it was clear that he had taken Modin’s philosophy very much to heart.’
‘Then in 2008 Konstantin leaves the SVR altogether. Jumped or pushed?’
‘Put it like this: when you’re running an SVR directorate it’s up or out. And he wasn’t promoted.’
‘So he might be resentful of his old bosses?’
‘From the little I knew of him, that wouldn’t have been his way. Konstantin was an old-school Russian fatalist. He’d have taken it philosophically, packed his bags, and moved on.’
‘To what, do we know?’
‘No. From then to now, when he turns up dead in Odessa, we have absolutely no knowledge of his whereabouts or activities. He vanishes.’
‘You don’t think that’s strange?’
‘I do, and it is. But it doesn’t tie him to our killer.’
‘So what do you think he was doing for the last decade?’
‘Gardening at his dacha? Running a nightclub? Salmon fishing in Kamchatka? Who knows?’
‘How about placing a lifetime’s experience of covert operations at the disposal of the Twelve?’
‘Eve, there is no logical reason in the world to believe that that’s the case. None.’
‘Richard, you didn’t hire me for my logical skills. You hired me because I was capable of making the imaginative leaps that this investigation demands. Villanelle might play with the idea of leading us on, of leading me on, but when it really matters she covers her tracks like a professional. Like a professional who’s been trained by the best. By a man like Konstantin Orlov.’
He frowns, steeples his fingers, and opens his mouth to speak.
‘Seriously, Richard, we’ve got nothing else to go on. I agree with you about the money-trail and the Tony Kent connection, but how long’s that going to take us to untangle? Months? Years? The three of us at Goodge Street certainly don’t have the resources. Or the experience.’
‘Eve—’
‘No, listen to me. I know there’s a chance that Orlov and the Twelve aren’t connected. But if there’s a chance they are, even a small one, then surely we have to follow it up. Surely?’
‘Eve, it’s a no. You can investigate the hell out of Orlov from here, but I’m not sending you to Russia.’
‘Richard, please.’
‘Look, either you’re wrong, and there’s no connection, in which case it’s a waste of your time and my resources. Or you’re right, in which case I’d be encouraging you, in the most irresponsible fashion imaginable, to place yourself in harm’s way. You turn up in Russia and start asking questions about political assassinations and the careers of men like Orlov . . . I don’t even want to think about the consequences. Or, for that matter, about what I’d tell your husband if anything happened to you. We’re talking about a country so traumatised, so abused by its leaders, so systematically ransacked by its business class that it can barely function. You start making enemies in Moscow, and a teenager will shoot you in the face for the price of an iPhone. There are no rules any more. There’s no pity. It’s just havoc.’
‘It may be all those things – and I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear what you said about my husband – but it’s also where the answers are.’
‘Possibly. But you’ve said it yourself. Who do we trust? If we’re to believe Cradle, and in the light of events we’ve got no choice but to believe him, the Twelve are buying up precisely the kind of people we’d need to help us.’
‘That’s what I want to ask you. There must be someone you know over there who’s clean. Some man or woman of principle who can’t be bought.’
‘You don’t give up, do you?’
‘No, I don’t. If I was a man you’d send me, and you know it.’
He nods. ‘Eve, please. We can talk further if you want, but there’s a couple over there staring at us, and I think they want this table. Also, I need to get back to the office.’
Petra Voss yawns and stretches. ‘Well, that was nice. I’m glad I rang for you.’
‘Happy to be of service.’ Villanelle extricates her naked thigh from between Petra’s. ‘Just don’t forget who’s really in charge around here.’
‘Remind me.’
‘Again?’
‘I’ve got a terrible memory.’ Taking Villanelle’s hand, Petra pulls it between her legs.
‘Tell me about Max Linder,’ Villanelle says.
‘Are you serious?’
‘I’m curious.’
Petra bucks against Villanelle’s hand. ‘He’s weird.’
‘In what way?’
‘He’s got this . . .’ She gasps, and pushes Villanelle’s fingers deeper.
‘He’s got this what?’
‘This thing for . . . Mmm, yes. There.’
‘This thing for?’
‘Eva Braun, apparently. Please, don’t stop.’
‘Eva Braun?’ Villanelle raises herself on one elbow. ‘You mean, Hitler’s—’
‘No, I mean the cat’s mother. Scheisse!’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘Like he’s her reincarnation. Are you going to fuck me again or not?’
‘I’d love to,’ says Villanelle, withdrawing her hand. ‘But I should get back to work.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yes. I’m just going to borrow your shower.’
‘So you’ve got time for a shower, then?’
‘If I don’t have one, I’ll end up in the shit with Birgit. And that I don’t need.’
‘Who’s Birgit?’
‘Max’s crazy bitch manageress. She sniffs us to make sure we’re clean. If I walk into her smelling of pussy she’ll fire me.’
‘Well, we don’t want that, do we? I might join you in the shower.’
‘Be my guest.’
‘I already am.’
Back in the staff quarters, the temperature is, as usual, several degrees lower than elsewhere in the hotel. In the room they share Villanelle finds Maria sitting on her bed, wrapped in a blanket, reading a Polish paperback.
‘You missed lunch,’ Maria says. ‘Where were you?’
Villanelle takes her rucksack from the chest of drawers and, turning her back on Maria so as to block her view, reaches inside it and takes out a ring of keys. ‘A guest wanted me to make up her room again.’
‘Shit. Which one?’
‘That singer. Petra Voss.’
> ‘That’s not fair, not in your lunchbreak. I saved you some food from the kitchen.’
She hands Villanelle an apple, a wedge of Emmental cheese, and a slice of Sachertorte on a saucer. ‘We’re not supposed to have the cake, I took it out of the room-service fridge.’
‘Thanks, Maria. That’s nice of you.’
‘People don’t know how hard it is, all the shit we have to do.’
‘No,’ mumbles Villanelle, her mouth full of Sachertorte. ‘They really don’t.’
‘So we’re not going to Moscow after all,’ says Lance. ‘That’s a shame. I really fancied some of that.’
‘Richard thought it was too dangerous to send me. Being a woman and everything.’
‘To be fair, you’re not field-trained. And you do have a tendency to go a bit off-piste.’
‘Really?’
‘That last night in Venice, for example. You should have let me know where that jewellery designer’s party was.’
‘How do you know the party was for a jewellery designer?’
‘Because I was there too.’
‘You’re kidding. I didn’t see you.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t have.’
She stares at him. ‘You followed me? You seriously fucking followed me?’
He shrugs. ‘Yeah.’
‘I’m . . . I don’t know what to say.’
‘I was doing my job. Making sure you were OK.’
‘I don’t need babysitting, Lance. I’m an adult woman. Which appears to be a problem round here.’
‘You have no field training, Eve. That’s the issue, and that’s why I’m here.’ He glances at her. ‘Look, you’re good, OK? Smart. None of us would be here if you weren’t. But when it comes to tradecraft and procedure, you’re . . . well, you’ve got to trust me. No flying solo. We watch each other’s backs.’
After pulling on a pair of rubber cleaning gloves, Villanelle uses her pass-key to let herself into Linder’s room, which Maria has serviced earlier. She works fast. The bathroom cupboards reveal little of interest, beyond a predilection for rejuvenating face creams. The clothes in the wardrobe are good quality, but not so showy and expensive as to alienate his working-class supporters, or to give the lie to his supposedly spartan lifestyle.
No Tomorrow: The basis for Killing Eve, now a major BBC TV series (Killing Eve series Book 2) Page 14
