The Rhythm Section--A Stephanie Patrick Thriller

by Mark Burnell

  To her surprise, she found it was the small things she enjoyed most about Frank. She liked to watch him shave in the morning. Sometimes, he’d catch her reflection in the mirror and ask what she was doing and she’d shrug and say nothing. She noticed herself absorbing details, cataloguing the minutiae in the library of her mind. His watch was Swiss with a worn leather strap. He was right-handed. None of his clothes had a designer label and he tended towards the conservative in cut and colour. He wore circular glasses to read and she liked the way they sat on his large Roman nose. He was a slow eater. There was a small scar by his left eye, the legacy of a childhood fall. When he talked of his travels, which at Petra’s instigation he often did, his eyes glazed over and she knew he was back in the place he was describing.

  These were the things that made Frank three-dimensional to Petra. Each trivial fragment was a revelation, compounding all those that had gone before. And as the days melted into weeks, she found herself becoming increasingly enveloped by this private universe, to the exclusion of everything that existed outside it. Which made Serra’s reappearance all the more unwelcome.

  On the third of February, there was a response to V. Libensky on the Heavens Above site. Petra initiated the dialogue in the usual way and, forty-eight hours later, they met in Amsterdam. Petra noticed the difference immediately. Well tanned and slimmer, Serra was more subdued than before. There was no talk of imminent collaboration although he did raise the prospect of a longer-term arrangement. On the other hand, he seemed pleased to see her on a personal level so that when he said they should meet again to discuss the future, Petra wasn’t sure what future he had in mind. For her own part, she was true to type and was indifferent towards him. Serra, too, was true to type and appeared to enjoy it.

  Back in London, Alexander fretted. It had been a gamble to reveal to Serra that Petra knew that Khalil was his paymaster and it appeared to have back-fired. Rather than proving to be a pass to the inner circle, it seemed Serra had opted for caution and had excluded her altogether from whatever was forthcoming. Alexander insisted Petra remain in contact with him to see if there was any way he could be persuaded to reconsider. Serra’s January tan concerned Alexander. Where had he got it? Discounting the holiday destinations of the southern hemisphere, Alexander focused on the Far and Middle East and on Africa. The list he created only fuelled his anxiety.

  Petra and Serra met again in Amsterdam at the start of the third week of February. As before, she stayed at the Hotel Ambassade. They spent three days in the city, meeting between other appointments he had to keep. Serra seemed more relaxed and talked openly about an alliance where Khalil would select targets, where Serra himself would organize finance and where Petra would carry out operations. She agreed to consider it but promised him nothing. On their third and final evening in Holland, Serra made a pass at Petra. She rejected it but not too firmly, allowing the scent of possibility to linger. A date for Paris was fixed.

  Petra had already considered that she might have to resort to something personal in order to get close to Serra. While she found the prospect distasteful, she was not worried about her ability to see it through. As a prostitute, she had learned how to compartmentalize her mind. In Scotland, Boyd had taught her techniques to reinforce this skill; picturing the mind as a house with many rooms, all separate, into any one of which a problem could be dispatched. The trick was learning how to shut doors. As Stephanie, it was a talent she had developed to perfection, divorcing herself from Lisa, so she was confident that if she had to have sex with Serra, it would have no influence on her relationship with Frank. It would not be infidelity. It would be business. Just like it used to be.

  * * *

  When Serra came, the sound that emerged from his throat was like a strangled cough. The next thing Petra knew, his body was pressing down on her, crushing her to the sheets. His skin was damp with perspiration, hers was dry. For several moments, neither of them moved. Their breathing was the only sound in the room. Petra felt her heart thumping inside her chest and tried to ignore the faint sense of nausea in her stomach. Serra withdrew from her slowly, leaving a sore heat in his wake. She watched him get off the bed and head for the bathroom to remove and dispose of the condom. When he returned, he said, ‘Are you sure you have to leave tomorrow?’

  She nodded. ‘You’re not the only one with other interests.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘You think that just because you’ve had sex with me, I’ll tell you anything you want to know?’

  ‘You never tell me anything I want to know.’

  ‘Then we have something in common.’

  ‘But you know where I live. This is Paris. This apartment is my home.’

  ‘And you know where I live. In my computer. You’ll always find me there.’

  ‘I could have you followed.’

  ‘You could try.’

  They talked for twenty minutes before Serra turned out the light. It was eleven-forty-four. Petra waited until half-past-twelve, allowing him time to slip into a deep sleep. Then she got up.

  In the bathroom, she opened her wash-bag and took out a small bottle of scent, a cellophane-wrapped tampon travel-pack and two sachets of ‘Nu-Fresh Handy-Wipes’, which were supposed to be disgusting moistened squares of cleansing tissue, but which actually contained a small amount of anaesthetic gel. She opened the tampon container. Inside was one syringe and two needles. She freed one of the needles from its wrapper and attached it to the end of the syringe, before removing the suction-sealed lid from the top of the scent bottle. The scented masking agent, which was sweet, was neutral and harmless. The liquid in the bottle was Ketamine, which was what had been injected into Petra when she had been abducted by Magenta House. Ten milligrams per kilogram of body-weight would provide between twenty and twenty-five minutes of surgical anaesthesia but without the necessity for assisted breathing. Petra didn’t want to send Serra so deeply under but she needed secure time to roam, so she altered the dose slightly. If necessary, there was plenty of Ketamine left for a second administration.

  She returned to the bedroom with the syringe and one of the sachets. Gently, she moved on to the bed beside Serra, who had begun to snore. He was sleeping on his side, which was good. At first, she considered a buttock for the intramuscular injection but then opted for the knotted muscles at the back of the shoulders, which, in Serra’s case, were fairly hairy. She tore a corner off the sachet and squeezed some of the gel on to her fingers. Serra shifted at her touch but the movement of her fingers was slow and rhythmic and his breathing soon settled. It took sixty seconds for the anaesthetic to work its way through the skin and into the muscle. Petra waited for two minutes just to be sure.

  She was certain the needle would wake him but Serra never stirred when it pierced his skin by the edge of a large, dark mole. She depressed the plunger and sent the Ketamine into his system.

  It was cold so she got dressed, pulling on a pair of jeans, a thick black jersey and her navy socks. She reached into her canvas rucksack and unfastened an inner pocket from which she took a small, portable document scanner. Then she moved from the bedroom into the hall, through the large living room that overlooked the rue de Rivoli, and into the office at the other end of the apartment. It had taken Petra three days to study Serra’s routine, to identify those things she wished to investigate in private, to earn some partial trust from him. And during those three days—and the nights that divided them—she had denied him nothing. That was the price that had to be paid for this moment. As an act of prostitution, her performance was without equal.

  Petra knew what she was to Serra: something rough and something dangerous. That was the thrill for him; he possessed a disdain for low culture and outsiders, yet he conducted business with the worst dregs from humanity’s barrel and took pleasure in it. Petra was familiar with the type. Men who publicly conformed to a certain station in life, but who, privately, liked nothing better than to get dirty with the targets of their contempt. Sh
e had seen the hunger in his eyes as she traipsed through his magnificent apartment like a tramp he’d scraped from the street, her scruffy rucksack slung over her shoulder, her boots scuffing the floor. When they had sex he was coarse and indulgent, and Petra could easily imagine his other women; pale, fine-boned creatures to whom he had to ‘make love’.

  Now, she was alone. She drew the curtains in his office and switched on the light. His lap-top was on a mahogany desk. She raised the screen, switched it on and drew up a directory of the system files and the data files. In the system files, she examined the times and dates of file entries. Then she turned her attention to the data, starting with the names and numbers in his address books. Some were familiar, most were not, none startled her. After fifteen minutes, she came across a folder entitled ‘FDS/12’. Inside, there were four files: FAT, FAT/1, FAT/2, FAT/3. And so a minor mystery was solved: the Fat Three List was FAT/3. Petra saw that there had been an original FAT list, followed by three revisions. The last recorded amendment to each of the files confirmed this. They had been emptied in order, at intervals of one week, three and a half months and six days. FAT/3 had been cleared at the beginning of December.

  She opened the top drawer of his desk and found the plastic container full of paper clips. Her fingers clawed the key out of the bottom of it—she had watched him put it in there the previous morning when he thought she was out of sight—and used it to unlock the filing cabinet by the door. There was a mass of correspondence to and on behalf of Banque Henri Lauder. She found folders full of bank statements, some personal, some commercial. The French-Arab Scholarship Society, she noticed, had an account in Zurich with almost eight million Swiss Francs in it. It received a monthly income of one hundred thousand Swiss Francs from a Sliema-based branch of the Mid-Med Bank in Malta. Alexander had wondered how the Society was really funded, how it could afford to sponsor one hundred and thirty-five ‘students’ throughout the European Union. Now Petra knew the answer, and the truth was that one hundred and thirty-five seemed rather meagre.

  She began to run the document scanner over the information she deemed valuable. Much of it would be of little use to Magenta House but she knew that Alexander would find a way to pass the information on to another, more appropriate intelligence agency if he thought it merited it. That in itself would make it valuable currency. It took two passes of the machine to record a sheet of A4, which would later be cut and reassembled side by side to form the page. Petra was meticulous when it came to replacing everything exactly as she found it.

  In other drawers, she found other documents. In one folder, she came across receipts and invoices for imports and exports handled by a London-based firm called Anglo-Egyptian Cargo Company, which was based on the Earls Court Road. There was a travel agency—RJN Travel—in Hogarth Road, which was also in Earls Court. She recalled that the al-Sharif Students Hostel was nearby, which seemed too close to be a coincidence. Petra made a mental note to have the connection investigated. Intriguingly, she found an invoice from a firm of west London electricians which contained FAT/3 in the box that should have contained the date. There were twelve entries on the list but they all appeared as product code references. Once she’d scanned the list, she closed the folder and moved on.

  There were letters to and from Telegenex, the French firm who manufactured missile guidance systems. Serra was acting on behalf of a client who was, himself, a broker for an anonymous end-user. There were monthly payments to a private account from Murray-Gardyne, the small Canadian arms manufacturer. Interestingly, the payments came from an account in Mexico City and Petra knew that the firm owned an illegal land-mine production facility in Guadalajara.

  Other files revealed a large amount of information and a surprising proportion of it was London-based: Arab newspapers, Middle-Eastern diplomatic officials, banks, restaurants, import-export companies, hotels, property firms, airlines, private individuals. Nearly every entry had a contact name to go with it but of all those she saw, only one stood out: Alexandria Clothing Company—garment importer/Qadiq, I.

  * * *

  When Serra awoke, Petra pretended she was still asleep. He shuffled into the bathroom and she heard the shower. Half an hour later, she rose from the bed and pulled on his grey silk dressing-gown. She found him in the kitchen, fiddling with a chrome espresso machine. The hand holding the cup and saucer was trembling.

  ‘Morning,’ she said.

  He jumped, spilling some of the scalding coffee on to his fingers. Petra leaned against a wall and folded her arms as Serra sat down at the zinc-topped table and lit a Marlboro. His eyes were bleary, the whites stained a sickly yellow. There was a greyness to his skin that added ten years to him.

  ‘You don’t look too good.’

  He glanced at the empty bottles of burgundy by the sink. ‘I feel like shit.’

  ‘A hangover?’

  ‘Worse. Ill, maybe, I don’t know…’

  Petra shrugged unsympathetically. ‘I hope it’s not contagious.’

  Serra’s left arm reached across to rub the back of his right shoulder. ‘I have an ache, too.’

  Petra smiled. ‘So it’s true, then.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That Parisians are the greatest hypochondriacs in the world.’

  She filled the kettle, fired a gas ring and placed it on the blue flame.

  ‘When are you going?’ Serra asked.

  ‘Half an hour.’

  He scratched his jaw. ‘There’s something we need to discuss before you go.’

  ‘Can’t it wait? You don’t look up to it.’

  ‘No. It can’t wait. It’s Khalil.’

  Petra hoped the lurch in her chest hadn’t manifested itself in any way that Serra could notice—if, indeed, he was in a condition to notice anything. ‘What about him?’

  Serra sucked on his cigarette and looked thoughtful. ‘Rightly or wrongly, Khalil believes the United States is leading a crusade against Islam.’

  ‘Not an original idea.’

  ‘No. But a sincere one.’

  ‘Maybe even a correct one,’ Petra said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Not being a Muslim, it’s not something I feel personal about.’

  ‘No. But American imperialism is, perhaps, something you feel personal about?’

  ‘What I feel personal about is personal.’

  * * *

  They kissed, they hugged, then they kissed again. Then Frank said, ‘How was it?’

  Petra looked into his eyes. ‘Tiring.’

  He led her into the kitchen where he began to prepare green tea. She sat on a steel stool and watched. He asked her questions and she made up answers for him. Yes, the trip had been a success but Brussels had been damp and cold. No, she wasn’t sure when her next trip would be.

  The kitchen was the same. Frank was the same. Everything was as it had been before. It wasn’t necessary to believe that she’d had sex with Serra.

  Frank turned round and offered her a mug of green tea. Petra took it, placed it on the table and then took hold of his hand. She said, ‘I missed you.’

  * * *

  It’s five to six in the morning and I am in Frank’s sitting room, a mug of coffee in my hands. I am wearing a thick black jersey of his that almost reaches my knees. The wool scratches my skin. I have been awake for hours.

  Rosie, one of Magenta House’s in-house operators, once told me about Greta Muller, an East German spy who worked undercover in Britain from 1981 until the fall of the Honecker regime in East Germany. Among those in the international intelligence community, Muller has become a minor legend. Posing as a Swede—she spoke Swedish fluently—she came into contact with a vulnerable GCHQ operative named Roger Bolton, whom she married the following year. Not only did she marry him, but she had three sons and a daughter by him. Her exposure only occurred when secret Stasi files were made public and her true identity was revealed. By the time MI5 was alerted—less than twenty-four hours after the discovery—Muller had va
nished, abandoning her husband and four children. Bolton, it transpired during interrogation, had never suspected a thing. Why should he have? She had never given him a reason to doubt her. They had even stayed with her parents—their children’s grandparents—in Stockholm, he claimed. They were fakes too, it turned out, elaborate extras in an extravagant deceit. Today, nobody knows where Greta Muller is, or whether she is even alive. But her reputation is assured.

  I take a sip from my coffee mug. Marriage, children and a decade of deception. How did she do it? Perhaps she avoided making the critical error that I have made. Perhaps she avoided the pernicious side-effects of love. Once the heart infiltrates, it subverts. I thought reason and willpower would protect me but I should have known better.

  Last night, I made love with Frank and it was beautiful. When we kissed my soul flooded into his mouth and when I looked into his eyes, he was the world and everything in it. Nothing else mattered or even existed. But when I closed my eyes, I saw Serra. And the more I tried to banish him, the more persistent he became.

  I want Frank but I cannot have him without Serra. Frank is the future but Serra is the key to the future. Or rather, he is the key to one future, one of many. I am trapped and I don’t know what to do.

  23

  Alexandria Clothing Company. That was the name painted beside the door at the rear of the warehouse. Last time, she had followed Ismail Qadiq into the building through the front. Now, at five to midnight, the building was deserted and would remain so until morning.