by Mark Burnell
‘The circumstances have changed.’
‘Maybe that’s true but I didn’t join your organization to start killing third parties who have nothing to do with Khalil or Reza Mohammed.’
‘You joined this organization to do exactly what it tells you to do. Those were the conditions. And frankly, after what you did to Marin and Ferreira in Rio, I find your reluctance unconvincing.’
‘That was self-defence.’
‘Really? According to the statement that Luiso, Marin’s useless bodyguard, gave to the local police, you shot Marin in cold blood.’
‘It was in the heat of the moment.’
Alexander’s irritation began to show through. ‘We’re straying from the point, which is this: you’ve made contact with Serra and now that his links to Khalil have been confirmed, we need to ensure that you keep close to him.’
‘By killing an innocent?’
‘Leon Giler is hardly an innocent.’
‘Let me guess. Unpaid parking fines?’
Alexander drew deeply on his cigarette, letting the smoke linger in his lungs, letting words linger in his throat. Rosie avoided looking at either of them, and busied herself with the file on her lap.
‘You’ll take this contract. I want you to close it as soon as you possibly can. I want you to impress Serra. Or rather, his client.’
‘You don’t know that the client’s Khalil.’
‘Not for sure. But I’ve a strong suspicion it is. Khalil has a personal history with Leon Giler. And it makes perfect sense for him to put this job out to tender. For one thing, Giler spends most of his time in the States and Khalil wouldn’t want to take the risk of travelling there for this kind of work.’
Petra glanced at the face on the screen again. She knew there would be no denying Alexander—not here, not now—so she nodded her compliance. Alexander said, ‘Rosie has gathered some information for you, which she’ll now take you through. You’ll get a more detailed briefing on Giler when you’ve confirmed the contract with Serra.’ He rose to his feet. ‘There’s one more thing. I don’t know how efficient Serra’s network is but he may place you under surveillance so you’re not to come here any more. Not unless you have clearance. The less contact there is between us, the better. Use the usual channels and wait for instructions.’
* * *
I am in the darkness looking at the screen. It is a larger room, a larger screen and a darker darkness; I am in a cinema. Frank White is sitting next to me. When I returned from Magenta House I found a note that had been slipped beneath my door. Marina, I was wondering whether you would like to come to the cinema with me later today. Call me when you get back. Yours, Frank. The message seemed shy and awkward. I liked that. Besides, in the age of mobile phones and pagers, it’s rather nice to get a piece of paper slipped beneath the door.
I have seen Frank once since our cup of coffee on Piccadilly. It was yesterday. We met in the entrance hall. I was going out, he was coming in. We should have had a conversation that was typical of two people on their way to do something else; a few pleasant exchanges and then a ‘well, I must be getting on’-type comment. Instead, we talked for quarter of an hour, stranded, half in the building, half out. I can’t remember a single thing we said. But I do remember that when we realized how long we had been there, we were both embarrassed and that we both tried to laugh it off. Unsuccessfully.
The cinema we are in is the Curzon Mayfair on Curzon Street. The film we are watching is part of a Kieslowski retrospective. It’s Three Colours Red. Sitting here in the darkness makes me feel like a schoolgirl truant once again. I am reminded of boys in the back row, of hungry tongues and clumsy fingers, of stolen cigarettes. When I was Lisa, I used to go to the West End cinemas in the afternoons. It was cheaper and the theatres were emptier and that was where I found solitude when I needed it. Sometimes, I went to the cinema to hide, to nurse my bruises in the darkness, to stare into nowhere in a place where no one would notice.
Afterwards, Frank suggests dinner and we go to a small bistro in Shepherd Market where I eat sea bass baked in salt, and where Frank eats seared tuna. We drink lusty, Sicilian red wine. I am quite cold towards him and he doesn’t seem to mind this; it really appears he has no expectations. Part of me is offended but the greater part is relieved. I don’t feel any pressure and I don’t believe that he does, either. We talk easily in the knowledge that this isn’t going anywhere. On our way back home, he asks if he can cook for me one night. I say I don’t know—can he cook for me? He doesn’t get it at first, so I’m embarrassed. And when he does, he recognizes how poor the joke is and he’s embarrassed. So I cut my losses—our losses—and say yes, that would be nice.
* * *
They met at the Jardins du Luxembourg on a freezing afternoon when the grey air was so damp it felt like the roadside slush that snow becomes in any city. Marc Serra was wearing a long, fawn, cashmere overcoat that Petra instinctively disliked. She was wearing a North Face snow-jacket and faded jeans tucked into thick grey socks that were themselves tucked into sturdy walking boots. They walked among the chestnut groves and the formal terraces. The coldness gave them a degree of privacy.
‘Can I ask you something personal?’ asked Serra.
‘You can ask.’
‘How old are you?’
‘How old do you think I am?’
‘I’m not sure. That is to say, my sources aren’t sure. Around thirty-two, maybe? Some say thirty, others say thirty-five…’
‘But you say thirty-two?’
‘Like I said, I’m not sure. You look kind of young for thirty-two.’
‘And you look kind of old for forty-four but I’m not going to hold it against you.’
Petra was pleased to see that the remark stung and she could tell that Serra was surprised that she had bothered to discover his age. She had suspected him of vanity from the first moment she had seen him. She wondered what he would have guessed as her true age. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight? These days, when she looked in the mirror, she didn’t feel that her face reflected twenty-three. Too much had happened in the four years since nineteen for her to still look twenty-three.
They stood at the edge of the Grand Bassin, the octagonal pond at the centre of the terraces. Petra watched clouds of grey pigeons explode from the tops of the trees to her right. They circled her twice and then wheeled away towards the Palais du Luxembourg which seemed to be floating on a bed of mist.
‘Has your client changed his mind?’ she asked.
Serra lit a cigarette. ‘I regret that he hasn’t, no. Have you changed yours?’
‘Yes.’
Serra seemed genuinely puzzled. ‘Yes?’
Petra nodded. ‘But I need to know about timing. Is there a schedule?’
‘As quickly as possible.’
‘Does it matter where it happens?’
‘No. Our information says he will be in New York for the next fortnight. If it could be done by then, that would be perfect.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘How will you do it?’
‘I’m not sure yet.’
Serra exhaled smoke slowly. ‘My client will be very pleased to hear this news.’
‘I doubt it. His decision to remain anonymous is going to prove expensive.’
‘How expensive?’
‘One million dollars American. Half now, half on completion.’
‘A million dollars? For Giler?’
‘Correct.’
‘That’s ridiculous! It’s … it’s … extortionate!’
‘So take me to court.’
Serra began to gesticulate with his hands. ‘But you could walk up to him on the street. You could get him anywhere. His bodyguard is almost as out of shape as he is.’
‘I’m aware of all this.’
‘He’s a businessman, not the President of Israel. Be reasonable.’
‘This isn’t a reasonable business.’
‘I could get some climbing-the-walls junkie to do this for a hund
red bucks. It’s not an assassination, it’s an errand.’
‘Then get an errand-boy. My price is a million dollars. And that’s final.’
Serra looked disconsolate and shook his head. He muttered something beneath his breath that Petra didn’t hear. They turned away from the pond and headed for the nearest exit, which was close to the station. When Serra finally gave his answer, Petra was silent for a moment. She had fully expected—and hoped—to be rejected. Serra’s capitulation could only mean one thing: he had to hire her. She could have asked for two million and he would have agreed.
‘How can you justify a million?’ he wanted to know.
‘Easily. This is a job I don’t need or want. Think of me as a lawyer who hires himself out to wealthy clients but who also does a lot of pro bono work. The fat fees I charge my wealthy clients subsidize the pro bono work. Now think of yourself as a wealthy client. It shouldn’t be too hard. You look like one.’
Serra glared at her for a moment and then smiled. Perhaps he thought she was teasing him—she wasn’t—or perhaps he liked women who talked back.
‘And where would you want the money deposited?’
Blankness fell over her. She had never even considered this. ‘What?’
‘The bank? The account number? For the first five hundred thousand dollars?’
* * *
I am buying clothes in Joseph and I am not enjoying it because I am buying for Marina. She wears garments that are well cut, she wears black a lot, she wears suits, she wears designer labels. These are not the things that Stephanie and Petra choose to wear. Their preference for scruffy clothes is, perhaps, the one thing they have in common. Apart from the body they share.
A skeletal assistant runs a Gold Amex in the name of Marina Gaudenzi through the machine. The total comes to one thousand four hundred and eighteen pounds. Absurd, definitely. Rather like charging a million dollars to kill a businessman. Or eighty pounds to let someone fuck you.
When I’m Marina, I am a single Swiss Catholic, aged thirty-one, although the way I behave might give the impression that I am forty. I have two sisters—one older, one younger. I have a degree in chemistry and a love for classical music, particularly Sibelius. I like sailing and was taught by my father, who had a boat on Lake Geneva. When I speak English, I speak it with the same accent as Petra. Unlike Petra, I like to wear scent—always Chanel.
The sales assistant is placing my clothes in two bags. I can tell that she doesn’t like me. It’s mutual. She’s a snob, she doesn’t believe I belong in this shop despite the money I’ve just spent. I don’t mind because she’s right. This is strictly Marina’s territory. I find it difficult being her and have started to ignore some parts of her. She never touches alcohol but I drink it occasionally. My temper sometimes betrays her self-control. And as for Sibelius, I’m happy to listen to his music from time to time, but not as often as I choose to listen to Radiohead or Manic Street Preachers, and that’s something that Marina Gaudenzi would never do.
I leave the shop with a bag in each hand. I’m not quite sure who I am as I walk along the pavement but what I do know is that the clothes I am carrying belong to someone else.
* * *
According to the Fortune 500, Leon Giler was worth $3.5 billion. Petra sat cross-legged on her living-room carpet and spread the documents before her. Newspapers had provided Giler’s initial wealth; in 1977, he’d acquired his first daily in Baltimore. Others soon followed in Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and New York. In the Eighties, Giler had moved into radio and television and, in 1989, he’d fulfilled a childhood dream when he’d purchased an ailing Hollywood studio. Although his was essentially a sentimental investment, his business methods were notoriously ruthless and, for a while, his name passed into common usage. Those who were unceremoniously fired from their jobs talked of ‘getting Gilered’. Now, he was carving a new fortune for himself in satellite communication.
Apart from a mansion on Long Island and two Manhattan apartments, he also owned an apartment in Paris, a small Greek island, a permanent suite at the Dorchester in London and a ranch in New Mexico that he had never visited. Giler was ostentatious yet hated publicity. A hugely generous contributor to charitable causes, he was a famous penny-pincher when it came to accounting of any sort, from corporate level down to a child’s allowance. He liked to portray himself as the respectable family man, the loving husband and ideal father, yet he couldn’t resist gorging himself on hookers. To Petra, Giler seemed like a man who was at war with himself.
This inner struggle seemed to extend particularly to the question of his Jewishness. He was not an observer of the halacha, the corpus of Jewish law, and this appeared to have left him with a guilt he could not assuage, no matter how hard he tried. He was a contributor to New York’s Yeshiva University and paid for large amounts of housing in apartment blocks in Borough Park, Brooklyn, a predominately Jewish section of the city. He was an active sponsor of the Lubavitcher Hasidim in New York and was also a patron of the Jewish Museum.
Giler had also provided financial support for the Israeli government’s programme of building Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories. Those who had compiled the file suggested that this might be the reason that Khalil wanted Giler killed. Petra paused. Was that enough? It was certainly a contentious issue but she found it hard to believe that someone like Khalil—whoever he was—would order the execution of someone like Giler over such an issue. In the end, it made no difference. Serra had hired Petra to do a job. His reasons were a private matter and nothing to do with her. She was simply a contractor.
Later, she came across a photograph of Giler’s wife and their five children, four boys and a girl. She turned them over and laid them face-down on the carpet.
* * *
The whore’s golden tongue had been replaced by no tongue at all. Or so it seemed. Petra was standing in Frank White’s living room as he poured her a glass of chilled Saint-Véran. White wasn’t saying anything either but he seemed easier with it, which was strange because Petra considered herself an expert at awkward silences.
She glanced at her watch. It was four days since she had met with Serra in Paris. This time tomorrow, she would be in Manhattan. The thought of it made the hairs stand up on her arms.
On a coffee table at the centre of the living room there were several ornamental rock samples. She picked one up. It was turquoise in colour and shot through with veins of rust. The sample was surprisingly light and was jagged, its shape not entirely dissimilar to a chunk of quartz.
‘Beryl,’ said Frank, as he handed Petra her glass.
‘What?’
‘That’s beryl. One of the beryllium minerals, which are used in alloys of copper, nickel and aluminium. They’re used in X-ray tubes and nuclear reactors. Emerald and aquamarine are the gemstone varieties, but beryl is the commercial source of beryllium, although if it’s clear and transparent it can also be gemstone. I got that piece in Mozambique.’
‘Ah yes. The geologist. The man who checks what’s under people’s feet.’
‘A long way under, usually.’
She put the beryl down and picked up another sample, which was vaguely cylindrical in shape and dirty yellow in colour. ‘What’s this?’
‘Apatite.’
‘I’m sure you could make a bad joke out of it with a name like that.’
‘You’d find it more useful if you were to make fertilizers, pesticides or cleansing products out of it. Or even smoke-bombs. It comes from the Kola Peninsula in northern Russia, near the border with Finland.’
‘You’ve been there too?’
He nodded. ‘I’ve collected all these pieces personally.’
Petra put the sample back on the table. ‘So it’s sort of like a photograph album, then? Except with these, you can feel them. It must be nice to be able to feel the places that you’ve been to.’
Frank was wearing black jeans and black shoes. His shirt was bottle-green. Even though Marina would not have done
so, Petra wore jeans too because she had not wanted to dress up. No effort equalled no encouragement which, in the end, equalled no nasty surprises. So there was no little skirt, no skimpy top, no jewellery, not even make-up. Just her jeans, a navy jersey and a coarse-bristled brush rushed once through her hair; she was Petra pretending to be Marina dressed as Petra.
Frank put on music that she didn’t recognize but liked. She looked at the CD cover. John Martyn, ‘Solid Air’, released in 1973, before she was even born. But not before Marina was born. It was at moments like this that Petra had to remind herself that for Frank, Marina was who she had to be.
In the kitchen, she saw something that was painful to her; Frank preparing food. The knife was a blur, the thud of the blade on the board a drum-roll. In seconds, the vegetables were sliced and cut. She could have been watching her father. She could have been watching Keith Proctor. She held her wine glass tight to her breasts. Frank caught her staring at him. ‘Is everything all right?’
She nodded. ‘I was somewhere else.’ And someone else.
Frank’s flat was a little larger than hers and he had breathed some life into it. Apart from the rock samples, there were pieces of real furniture, like the oak table at which they sat to eat. There were also enlarged photographs that he had taken around the world; astonishing skies over desolate stretches of Patagonia, tidal waves of golden sand in the Sahara, the sun haemorrhaging over Siberia. She noticed that there were no people in any of the shots. She thought of her own flat, and of all the other places, and found the comparison depressing. But this was not an evening for decline.
The hours melted slowly.
Frank brought food to the table and, when they were finished, removed the plates. When Petra tried to help he told her it was unnecessary, so she remained seated and watched him work. They finished the Saint-Véran and he opened a bottle of Nuits-St-Georges. Later, he placed a board of cheese between them, next to a bowl of fruit. They were virtually silent while they ate and, even when they talked, silences peppered their conversation. And as the night grew older, these silences became longer and easier.
