by Karen Guyler
“I don’t like that the person who took a pot shot at you a couple of days ago hasn’t been caught.”
“I think we’re quite safe.” He followed her gaze at the mountain opposite. “You think there’s someone up there? You do realise they’d have to be a serious mountaineer to climb that side at this time of year. Sean, ready?”
Finch grunted, and they lifted one end of the kayak each, placing it up on the rock shelf. Rubin took off his helmet and dropped it inside the boat, stripped off his jacket and the top layer of his dry suit.
Eva glanced behind them. Rubin noticed.
“The trees themselves probably are easier cover for an assassin right now.” He looked amused, taking and putting on the thermal base layer, fleece and bulky parka that Finch handed him from the holdall.
“You should take extra precautions for your safety until Goran Willander’s killer has been apprehended.”
“Sean here has my back.”
“The assassin could as easily take him out.” Eva pointed out.
Movement in her peripheral vision distracted her, had her reaching for her jacket zip, but she wasn’t as fast as Luke, who had his Glock out already, prescribing the arc for his target. In the water the would-be assassin was dark grey, a small head, large eyes, regarding them curiously.
“I sincerely hope you’re not about to shoot it.” Rubin said.
“Of course not.” Luke retaliated, “just doing your bodyguard’s job.”
More seals popped up, bobbing around the first, watching the humans.
“Biggest raft I’ve seen for a while,” Rubin said, “I hope they’re gone by the time the cruise ship moves.”
Finch zipped away the layers Rubin had discarded and dropped the bag into the kayak.
“On three. One, two, three.” They lifted it above their heads.
“Mr Rubin, we have evidence that proves your life is in danger.”
But they walked away from her with no acknowledgement, crossing the rock like it was a gritted pavement.
Eva and Luke followed more gingerly, but Rubin and Finch charged up the slope as though outrunning a bullet.
Panting along behind them, when she burst out from the tree cover, only their silver hired SUV remained parked by the road. No sign of the distinctive Tesla or Carl Rubin.
Great, her first crack at this had gone nowhere. Objective one, failed.
10
“You’re on speakerphone with Eva and me,” Luke advised Nora as he drove carefully away from the fjord. The windscreen wipers kept up with the patchy snowfall on their slowest setting. Eva peered up at the clouds. They were underperforming.
“How’s it going?” Nora asked.
Eva looked at Luke, he didn’t answer and she didn’t know what to say.
“That good? You heard the news? About the new PM?”
“Don’t tell me,” Luke said, “Edward Markham got it.”
“Won’t tell you then. Eva, Edward Markham got it.”
Being abrasive, cock-sure and bolshie worked sometimes then. Eva hadn’t warmed to him even before she’d actually met him. But that had to be a good thing for her. It’d be the new Foreign Secretary on her review panel.
“Gordon was right,” Nora went on, “Markham’s ordering reviews. Which gives you both a little down time; we haven’t rinsed the fraud case against Agnetha Rubin yet and now our accountants have to prioritise budget reports.”
“Likely timescale?” Luke asked.
Nora sighed. “Yours is low priority.”
“Does that mean we have to stay here until she can be arrested?” Eva’s question wasn’t exactly mission-oriented, Lily was expecting her to be away for only one night. “Isn’t that a waste of resources?”
“Perils of an easy case.” Luke said. “I’m guessing you didn’t put us up in a spa?”
“Chancer.” Nora said. “I’ll be in touch. I’m pushing to get it done asap.”
Luke hung up. “Let’s see where they’ve put us.”
“What’s rinsed?”
“When we pass the case on to arrest the client, we have to be doubly sure nothing can be traced back to us. Trails have to lead away from MI6, we can’t have anyone associating The Society with us, or word getting out that everyone who instructs us is then mostly arrested.”
“Mostly?”
He nodded. “You’ll understand. Word spreads fast in prisons where Agnetha Rubin will end up. We have to be absolutely sure our fingerprints are nowhere near anything we give to law enforcement.”
He pulled into the well-cleared car park of the hotel. “I’ve stayed in worse, anything with a roof on is good.” He burst out laughing. “Your face, we don’t get the five-star luxury the Bond movies would have you believe but they do look after us. I’ve got an errand to run which’ll give Rubin time to cool off then we can try speaking to him again.”
Eva’s room was all blond wood and white, an arctic landscape reflected indoors but the shower, huge and powerful, was right out of a hot spring. She let the water pummel her, focusing on the tropical rain sound of the man-made waterfall, the warmth of the drops on her skin.
And inspiration found her in the form of her father’s wisdom, words he’d quoted often in his interviews. The story doesn’t start when you become aware of it, you need to go backwards to find the origin. Thank you, Daddy, backwards it is then.
In the hotel bar, she laid her snow parka on the chair beside her, checked again that her suit jacket was still done up.
The coffee she ordered was artfully made, a frond of white in the chocolate topping, but the size of it wouldn’t warrant her sitting there for more than two minutes.
She logged onto the servers at S, searching for Agnetha Rubin in the dossier. Nothing stood out in her family background, she’d been average at school, married Rubin at eighteen, had no children. Quite the socialite, lots of photos of her at events all over Europe and the Middle East where she really dressed the part. If her jewellery was real, it was no surprise she could afford to hire The Society.
Eva extended her search to include Carl Rubin. The photos told her nothing, too staged. A search of hospital records showed Agnetha hadn’t been in the emergency department since she was fifteen, after a fall from a horse. Neither had he.
No police reports on or from either of them. Why couldn’t she just ask him for a divorce? Even if it split his personal fortune, they had more than enough to go round. What was driving Agnetha if it wasn’t money?
No contact with the client, her trainer’s voice in her mind was loud. The Society was far more fearsome as an anonymous group.
But if she could talk to Rubin again now, as soon as the backend stuff was sorted out, they could get Agnetha arrested and fly straight back to London.
Eva signed for the coffee, remembering as she wrote the E of Eva to extend it to Erika. She scrawled Miles so it was less recognisable as a name, hoping it didn’t differ too much from what she’d signed in at check-in. Showing initiative, that had to be a plus, using less resources, another advantage. Surely the panel would recognise that? Shrugging on her coat, Eva stepped outside where everyone walked quickly, minimising their time spent out of the warmth of the inside.
A train was waiting in the funicular railway station, ready to speed her up the side of Mount Floyen as though it was giving her its approval. Getting out at the top, Eva headed for the road where the Rubins lived. The houses were understated, coloured clapboard with car ports and perfectly landscaped gardens, doubtless designer fitted out interiors that were perfectly co-ordinated in a flow from graceful minimalist room to graceful minimalist room.
Their view, wow, that was what made these places a CEO draw. Eva could have watched it all day, even today when the sea borrowed its colour from the sky, grey and ominous-looking. Bergen spread itself out below her, the sprawl of low buildings reaching almost to the waterfront where two cruise ships waited patiently in the harbour, one dwarfing the other.
A woman came out of one o
f the houses, crossed the road, walking away from Eva. Blonde, petite, her white fur coat and headband almost glowing in the dim daylight, looked incongruous with her black skin-tight trousers and black trainers. Swinging her arms, the woman power-walked, checking behind her before crossing the road. Agnetha Rubin.
The origin of the story sped up. Eva reached their house. No psychedelic Tesla anywhere to be seen. Maybe Agnetha was meeting her husband. Seeing them together might help Eva understand. Not part of your remit, she could hear Luke telling her. But not willing to talk to police officers, Rubin was clearly going to be hard to reach. And there was no way she was failing this test.
Follow her, let her go. Which choice?
None at all really. Eva sped up behind Agnetha who walked steadily down the steps and steep pavements, following signs for Bergen centre. Eva was just going to watch, if she could see them together it might give her ammo to get Rubin to agree to do what he was supposed to so she could claim this mission a success.
On a switchback, Agnetha shot a look behind her. Eva had to fight the urge to hide, pulling her phone out instead, taking a photo of the fabulous bolts of colour knitted around the trunks of the trees close to her. Lilac, yellow, red and blue, they fruited rainbowed pompoms on their lower branches, their bright pops of colour welcome.
She gave Agnetha more distance as they paced down the hill, but she didn’t look back again. Into the town Agnetha marched past the row of market stalls skirting the edge of the wide pavement curving away from the harbour front.
A guy in a dark parka over which he’d tied a blue and white striped apron held a tray out to Eva.
“You want to try?”
“No thanks.” Eva flicked a glance at the white coat almost at the entrance doors to the fish market building.
Seal,” he gestured down first line of bites of dark meat, “whale, reindeer.”
“I’m vegetarian,” she shrugged it like a confession, rushing on.
A steady stream of people hurried into the fish market through the glass entrance doors, log-jamming against those who dawdled to leave it.
A swarm of Japanese tourists congregated around one of their number who was shouting, gesturing furiously at one of the men in their group. Eva crossed to the second door, slipping past a woman in a bright blue scarf.
At that moment, the woman stepped the same way, barging into Eva who knocked into a vision of white. Little more than a tap contact, but suddenly Agnetha Rubin was flying backwards. She landed right on her back, her perfection squelching on the concrete floor where the melting ice and water sprays from the fish stalls had accumulated in pockets of dirty water. Glaring up at Eva.
11
Barely pausing, the woman in the bright blue scarf muttered something in Norwegian, but the universal tone of ‘what the hell are you doing’ was easy to make out.
Agnetha Rubin still glared at Eva. So much for no contact. She could hardly just walk away now.
“I’m so sorry, she pushed me too.” Eva held a hand out to help.
People rushed past them on every side, coming into the warmth and noisy bustle of the fish market. As delicious as the wafts of fresh coffee and warm pastries were, they weren’t strong enough to mask the sharp fishy odour.
“You want to look where you’re going.” Agnetha twisted behind her, looking at the back of her coat. “My coat’s ruined.”
Eva argued with herself. There’d be time enough to rationalise the right or wrong of doing this. The one that won was Luke’s own: this is your mission. How could she pass up this gift?
“Agnetha? Agnetha Lundstrom?” Eva asked.
“My name is Agnetha Rubin now.”
“Well, congratulations. I’m just getting divorced, couldn’t quite manage the whole happy ever after thing.”
Agnetha scrutinised her. “Who are you?”
“Erika Jakobson, wasn’t that at school but, you remember me, we were in the same year for a while, until my parents had to take me out and put me in international school. I’m just as hopeless at Norwegian now as I was then. How about we get a coffee, it’s the least I can do and, of course, I’ll get your coat cleaned for you.”
“Okay, but I choose where.”
Agnetha breezed out of the building, long strides across the square without checking if Eva was following. Not that one. Eva sent a psychic instruction to Agnetha that she didn’t get. She pushed open the door Eva didn’t want her to because it led into a smoked glass fronted champagne bar that, in an expensive city, oozed Krone signs.
A middle-aged man welcomed Agnetha with a double-handed handshake and a greeting Eva couldn’t understand. She checked her phone, hoped its refinements were as good as Sadie had told her they were, and put it in her suit jacket pocket.
Eva watched the unintelligible back and forth between the man—the manager, she guessed—but didn’t need to understand it to work out he’d introduced Ralph, who was presumably waiting tables while his modelling career got going. Agnetha waved a hand behind her at Eva, and Ralph bent his head sightly. That smile, Eva couldn’t help wondering if he worked on the side for the books that had bare-chested men draped on the covers. He’d be good at that.
He caught Agnetha’s coat as she dropped it. “Hang that somewhere else, it’s not had the best day.” She said it in English as a dig? “There, we want to sit there.”
Agnetha smiled at the manager as she chose the table at which a couple sat talking over each other then pausing awkwardly at the same time.
“Of course, Mrs Rubin. In the meantime, if I may suggest you wait just here,” he gestured at Ralph who pulled out one of the leather armchairs for Agnetha at a low table two along from the one she wanted, “with a drink of your choice, on the house, of course.”
Agnetha smiled, folding herself into the chair as though she were a dancer. “This will do nicely.”
Eva felt clumpy beside her.
“That strawberry one I had last time, you have some still?”
The manager nodded. “And for you, madam?”
“Coffee would be lovely.” Eva said.
Agnetha looked at her, “you do know this is the premier champagne bar in Norway?”
Of course it was.
“I’m not much of a drinker,” Eva excused herself. “Alcohol gives me a headache. Caffeine’s my god.”
“We’ll have a bottle and two glasses,” Agnetha instructed. “Upgraded. Coffee later. And Ralph to serve me.”
One glass of champagne would be okay. Eva could handle that and, with a bit of luck, it would soften Agnetha up to answer her questions.
The ice bucket was a masterpiece of gold and black, placed on Agnetha’s side of the table. Watching her, Ralph withdrew the bottle slowly from the clutches of the ice cubes. It was like a magic trick. The ice had made the gold-labelled bottle grow to twice the size of a normal one. Droplets of water ran down the glass as he presented the bottle to Agnetha for inspection. She smiled and nodded, pulling off her headband, ruffling her hair, basking in his attention. She didn’t quite pout at him, but her eyes were definitely giving him a come on. Whatever she purred at him in Norwegian made him smile, slowly.
“You’re new.” She accused him in English.
“I am,” he replied.
“I will thank your manager.” She toasted him, turning to Eva when he went to serve someone else.
“Skol.” Eva wet her lips while Agnetha downed several swallows. “This is lovely.”
Soft relaxing music, subdued lighting, it was a place to spill secrets.
“I haven’t seen you around that I recall. You didn’t stay here?” Agnetha asked.
“I work for an international company, nowhere really feels like home anymore.”
She snapped her fingers at Ralph, who almost fell over his feet in his scramble to refill her glass. She talked to him as though Eva wasn’t there, her smile was definitely an invitation.
“How about you?” Eva tried to ask it innocently when Ralph left them to it, bu
t it landed between them sounding like the set-up question it was.
Agnetha tossed back the rest of her drink, stared at the empty glass. “I wanted a role in the business but I’m only good for wining and dining, apparently.”
“Is it Carl Rubin your husband, the CEO of Futura Energy?” Eva said it as if she’d just realised, ignoring her phone vibrating with an incoming call.
Agnetha topped up her glass.
“His partner was just shot, wasn’t he? I’m sorry for your loss.” Eva tried not to stare, not to be obviously gauging her reaction. But it was as surprising as her husband’s had been. A careful nothing beyond a study of her drink.
Eva waited.
“It’s very sad.” Agnetha said finally. “He was a lovely man. They’re quite rare, I’m finding.”
“You must have been so worried. I heard your husband was right beside him when it happened. It must have been scary for him.”
“I suppose so.”
“Does it worry you, that he has such a high profile?”
Agnetha laughed. “He seems to have nine lives, or at the preparation for them at least.”
Eva’s phone vibrated again.
“Sorry, I just need to check.” Not Lily. Pierre, Luke’s cover name calling, again. “Think my boss wants his report badly.” She slid her phone back into her jacket pocket. “Can I ask you something personal?”
Agnetha gestured at Eva’s glass. Eva sipped the pink champagne, feeling the bubbles fizz against the roof of her mouth, but Agnetha wasn’t having sipping.
“I’m not drinking alone.” She finished hers and looked expectantly at Eva, refilling both glasses, when Eva copied. “Now you can ask me.”
“Did you have a pre-nup when you got married? Only I didn’t and now my husband is saying I’m only entitled to the half of the assets we had when we got married.”
“Any decent lawyer will have that thrown out before the judge can read the statement. I can give you the name of one. Here’s to your freedom.”
Another toast. This wouldn’t have a happy ending. Eva could already feel mellowness spreading through her.
