The Third Woman

by Mark Burnell

  The trouble was this: now that she was in his position, where would she find the time to achieve that balance herself?

  She was outside her front door seven minutes after the call. The dark green BMW was already there. On the leather back seat was a slim briefing folder.

  After Berlin, the future had assumed an obvious shape. Rosie would replace Alexander. His death had spared Magenta House's trustees an awkward dilemma: how to substitute a man who had become utterly synonymous with the organization to its ultimate detriment? As for Stephanie, she was to disappear for good, sending the legend of Petra Reuter into permanent retirement.

  False reports of Petra's activities had always existed. Some were simply wrong, others were deliberate mischief. Several times she'd been accredited with assassinations that Magenta House knew to be the work of others. It didn't matter. Any rumour, true or false, added to the legend. So Rosie hadn't been surprised when new rumours began to circulate after Berlin; since nobody had ever suggested that Petra was dead there was no reason for stories about her to dry up.

  Stephanie had spent most of her adult life seeking a divorce from Petra. Now that she'd got it, any form of reconciliation seemed inconceivable. Nobody at Magenta House knew Stephanie the way Rosie did. They'd been friends. They'd been the outsiders in an organization of outsiders.

  Stephanie, can it really be you?

  'I need to go to the bathroom.'

  Stephanie knew the procedure. Let him urinate or defecate in the chair. Reduction was the road to compliance. Yet even as she thought it, she knew she wouldn't do it. She released his hands again and told him to tear the tape from his ankle.

  He rose awkwardly. His thigh muscles and hip flexors were stiff, hamstrings tugging at his lower back. He had to place a hand on top of the chair to complete the movement. His first few steps were clumsy, as pins and needles began to work the nerves.

  The bathroom door had a bolt instead of a key.

  Stephanie said, 'Don't shut it.'

  'You're going to watch?'

  She tossed a hardback on to the floor, steered it into the doorway with her foot, ushered him in, then pulled the handle, leaving a six-inch gap. At the flush she pushed the door open. Newman was fastening his trousers.

  'Can I wash?'

  'Get on with it.'

  He cleaned his hands then filled the basin with cold water and pushed his face into it, holding it there. He straightened slowly, water dripping down the front of his shirt.

  'How about a shave?'

  'No.'

  'I promise I won't attack you with my razor. It has a safety strip.'

  'Let's go.'

  Stephanie directed him back to the chair; waving the Smith & Wesson at him for emphasis. She gathered the washing line and crouched behind him. He offered his hands before she'd asked for them.

  She tried again. 'How did you get your scars?'

  'I told you. It's none of your goddamned business.'

  She was tempted to pull the cord until the wounds reopened. But to hurt him would be to hand him a small victory. She wrapped the plastic coated line around the wrists, securing them a little less firmly – something he would be sure to notice – before drawing the line down and fastening it to a strut beyond his reach. She was aware of him taking a deep breath and expanding his muscles as she bound him.

  'What time does the maid come?'

  'Seven-thirty.'

  It was already after six-thirty.

  'Do you let her in?'

  'She has her own key.'

  Stephanie picked up a phone. 'What's her number?'

  'What do I tell her?'

  'Anything you like as long as it sticks.'

  'Is it just today?'

  'Until further notice,' Stephanie said. 'Maybe a couple of days.'

  She held the phone close to his ear but so that she could hear it too. When Yvette answered Newman said he had visitors and didn't want to be disturbed. He told her he'd phone her when he wanted her to resume her schedule.

  Stephanie took the handset from him. 'She didn't sound surprised.'

  'So?'

  'Maybe she's used to such requests.'

  'Her husband's serving twelve years for armed robbery. Two of her three sons are dead, the other's a drag queen. It's going to take more than a day off to surprise Yvette.'

  'Maybe. But if she shows up unexpectedly, I think I'll manage it,' Stephanie said, as she noticed the keys to the apartment on the side-table. 'By the way, I may need to go out later. What's the number for the door downstairs?'

  '9063.'

  'Nine-zero-six-three?'

  'That's right.'

  'You sure about that? What about 2071? That was the number you used last night. Think about it. Take your time. Two-zero-seven-one.'

  Newman bit his lip.

  She shook her head. 'Disappointing. And stupid.'

  'Why'd you kill them?'

  'I didn't.'

  'Then why are you running? Why are you here?'

  'I don't know.'

  Newman snorted.

  And Stephanie reacted: 'What does that mean?'

  'You don't seem like a novice.'

  'How the hell would you know?'

  He looked as though he had an answer but said nothing.

  Annoyed with herself, Stephanie mumbled, 'Forget it.'

  'Forget what? That you stuck a gun in my face?'

  'Be quiet.'

  'Maybe you are a novice.'

  'Shut up.'

  'What are you going to do? Shoot me?'

  'You don't think I would?'

  He wanted to press the challenge. She could see that. But he backed down. Just a fraction. He thought he was reading her correctly but what if he was wrong?

  'Why were you at the Lancaster?' he asked.

  'Are you deaf?'

  'Tell me. I want to know.'

  'I said … shut up.'

  'Come on. You want me to believe you, don't you?'

  'Just fuck off.'

  I make myself coffee in the kitchen. I'm hungry but there's not even any bread. I expect the maid brings it. Still warm from the baker, I'll bet. With fresh Casablanca lilies to go in the octagonal vase in the hall. Nothing but the best for this one.

  I'm angry with him, which is absurd. Only one of us has the right to be angry with the other. I should have let him piss himself. Just to establish my dominance over him. I hear echoes of a distant lecture: interaction with a hostage establishes a relationship, however unusual, which, in turn, humanizes the hostage in the eyes of the captor, making it harder for the captor to treat the hostage in the necessary fashion.

  The necessary fashion. What is that in this situation? I have no idea. He was a matter of convenience. A spur-of-the-moment exit strategy in a crisis. He's of no value to me. Unlike his apartment, which is a haven.

  Perhaps the 'necessary fashion' should come from the business end of the Smith & Wesson. Avoid complications, kill the hostage, occupy his apartment for as long as required. But I'm not going to do that. I may be Petra but I'm not that Petra. Not any more.

  I stand by the window. Above the light pollution the sky is brightening to plum. I expect it's warm and sunny in Mauritius. I should be eating mangos to the sound of the surf.

  I think about Stern, Amsterdam and Anders Brand. Most of all, though, Stern. My sense of betrayal extends beyond the professional to the personal. I feel like a rejected lover. I know that's ridiculous but there it is. It hurts. I thought we had something special.

  I try to put my feelings to one side. Stern gave me Golitsyn for free. That, perhaps, should have been a warning.

  > This isn't sentimentality. This is business. If anything happens to you, I'll lose money.

  Only the first two sentences ring true. Stern was making money before I ever used him. And he'll still be making money long after I've gone.

  Newman was angry. With her. With himself.

  Now that he was alone again, he tried to impose some order on his scattered
thoughts. It was an impossible situation to categorize. He'd been kidnapped. He was a hostage. But in his own home. These facts didn't fit the general profiles that he knew well after years in the oil business.

  Ninety percent of kidnaps worldwide were for ransom and the vast majority went unreported. Official estimates put the annual number of ransom kidnaps between five thousand and twenty-five thousand. The discrepancy between the two tended to be a matter of definition. What was beyond dispute among the experts was the true number, which was over fifty thousand. In certain sectors of the oil industry this was common knowledge; in those areas of the world where kidnapping was a national sport, employees of oil companies were a preferred target. The remaining twenty percent of kidnaps were mostly political and were far less predictable.

  Newman wasn't sure which kidnap category he'd fallen into. Most likely, something that accounted for a very small fraction of one percent of the total.

  Once caught, there were certain rules for all hostages. Above all, that a hostage should do nothing to agitate a captor. Awkward hostages suffered. It was better to be cooperative. To try to establish a rapport. He knew this yet he'd still provoked her. And for what? Absolutely nothing.

  His aggression had been fuelled by fatigue and anxiety but so long as she remained an unknown quantity he couldn't afford to make such elementary errors. A hostage's scope for influence was inevitably limited but the least one could do was not to make things worse.

  He analysed what he thought he knew. His abduction wasn't about money. And it wasn't political. Or personal. Which probably made it criminal.

  That was how it felt. A crime that had gone wrong. He was an accidental hostage. His had been a kidnap of chance, a kidnap of bad timing. Were the rules the same for such a thing? Until he knew better he chose to assume so.

  Play the game.

  These thoughts coalesced, gradually giving him something to focus on – a lifeline to cling to – which was crucial.

  He knew that beyond all doubt.

  'I'll bring you something to eat when I get back.'

  'You're going out?'

  I pull some tape from the roll and bite through it, leaving me with a six-inch strip. 'For a while. Don't get over-excited. You'll still be here when I get back.'

  'Wait. What are you going to do with that?'

  'I told you. I have to go out.'

  'Is it for my mouth?'

  'Yes.'

  'Please don't. I swear I won't make a sound.'

  I raise an eyebrow. 'Do I have your word on that?'

  He starts to fidget, snagging himself on his bindings.

  'Relax,' I tell him. 'I won't be long.'

  But he's not relaxing. His breathing quickens. The colour drains from his face. Being gagged is never pleasant but he seems to be over-reacting.

  'Start breathing through your nose.'

  He shakes his head.

  'Calm down.'

  He swallows. 'You don't understand …'

  'Doesn't matter. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner I'll be back to take it off.'

  'Please – don't do it.'

  'Look, I'm not walking out of here so that you can shout the house down. Now stay still.'

  His grey skin starts to glisten. I step forward and try to place the tape over his mouth. He thrashes his head left and right.

  'For God's sake, stop it!'

  In his panic, he starts yelling. The chair rocks beneath him. I try to grab his hair but he ducks forward.

  'Calm down! I'm not going to hurt you.'

  'Get the fuck off me!'

  My backhand swipe catches him on the cheek just below the right eye, snapping his head to the left. The contact feels like an electric pulse. It runs from the bones in my hand up to the shoulder socket.

  For a moment, he's stunned into submission. So I move behind him, grab his head in a lock and smear the tape across his mouth.

  'Now relax. And breathe through your nose.'

  It was a beautiful day, no clouds to obscure a diamond sun set in sapphire sky. The moment she set foot outside the building she felt lifted. She chose to forget Newman and his reaction to the tape. A chilly breeze sent shivers through the Seine.

  She crossed Pont Louis-Philippe and returned to Web 46 on rue du Roi du Sicilie, just five minutes away from the apartment. She didn't bother checking any of her own e-mail addresses. Instead, she used a neutral Hotmail address – Joan Appleby – to send a message to Cyril Bradfield.

  > Cyril – having a lovely time in NZ. Off to Sydney next week. Then Melbourne, Alice Springs, Darwin. HK next month, then home. Hope you're well – Joan.

  Then she created a new Hotmail address – no name, just a series of letters and numbers – and sent a second message to a third address. This one had been established by Bradfield but had never been used. He checked it twice a month to keep it active, but never did so from his own computer. A message from Joan Appleby would direct him to it.

  > Cyril, Jacob and Miriam are dead. Whoever did it is after me. You're in danger. Everything's gone. If you can, contact me through our friend. Love, you know who.

  When she'd finished, she went to a nearby café and ordered coffee, orange juice and an omelette. She hoped Bradfield would remember the process. When it came to technology beyond his own field of expertise, he remained stubbornly ignorant.

  Apart from Stephanie herself, Bradfield was the only link between the Fursts and every version of Petra. Which meant that he was probably already dead. If he was alive and safe, he'd know what to do. And if he was alive and under duress, he'd still know what to do; she'd given him a secure way out.

  > Contact me through our friend.

  Any involved party reading that phrase would assume it referred to Petra. And Bradfield would confirm that. But he knew that in an emergency all Petra's addresses were to be considered redundant. If he was in trouble, he'd be able to warn her in his response.

  Guy Grangé, an immobilier on boulevard Magenta in the 10ème arrondissement. There were one-room and studio apartments for sale in the window. The digital images were fuzzy. The meagre rentals were hanging from a felt-covered board inside.

  Central heating and cigarettes robbed the air of oxygen. The office was staffed by a middle-aged woman with tinted lenses in her glasses and tinted streaks in her hair. Defeated and grey, she was sitting beneath a cheerless property calendar with a photograph of a commercial rental. Nobody had bothered to turn the page since October.

  Stephanie showed the woman the receipt she'd found in Golitsyn's attaché case. 'There's no address on this.'

  'No.'

  'And no phone number.'

  'With short-term rentals, we keep the address and only issue the invoice number. It's a question of security.'

  'Security?'

  'This isn't the 16ème, you know. The people we deal with, well …'

  Somewhere near the bottom of the heap herself, she still found plenty of others to look down on.

  Stephanie showed her the keys she'd taken from Golitsyn's case. 'I have these but I don't know where to go. My boss has gone away. I'm supposed to go over and check everything.' She glimpsed the signature on the bottom of the receipt. Medvedev's, naturally, not Golitsyn's. 'You don't know how difficult these Russians are …'

  The remark sparked a lightning strike of solidarity. 'Almost as bad as the Africans.'

  Stephanie rolled her eyes in sympathy. 'Say one thing, do another.'

  'That's the least of it. You know something? We lose money with them. Seriously. Even when we take it in advance.'

  'No. How?'

  'The condition of the places when we take them back – you wouldn't believe it. Disgusting. As for the Chinese – I don't know where to start …'

  She was in her stride now, reaching into the memory bank for the worst offenders. And as she did so, she gathered a scrap of paper and a felt tip pen.

  New York City, 06:20

  There was someone downstairs. John Cabrini sat up in b
ed, ears straining for the sound inside over the sounds outside; a distant dustcart, an alarm, two Cubans arguing on the pavement beneath his window.

  The more he listened the louder the silence became. Until it was broken by a second clunk. Definitely inside.

  He got out of bed and pulled on a grey towelling robe he'd stolen from a hotel in Turin. He wasn't going to confront anyone in a pair of navy boxer shorts and a string vest. In the drawer of his bedside table was a Ruger P-85. Evelyn, his wife, had never let him keep a gun in the house. He'd bought the weapon three months after she'd died. Unable to endure the prospect of a life without her, he'd intended to use it on himself. At the last moment – safety-catch off, forefinger squeezing he'd hesitated.

  That had been fourteen years ago. The gun had never been fired. But on four previous occasions he'd been ready to shoot, two of them in the last twelve months. Both times, the intruders had vanished by the time he'd reached the pizza parlour downstairs. Both times, there'd been broken glass on the floor and no cash in the till.

  Angelo's on West 122nd Street in Harlem. Nothing fancy. Just good pizza and cheap prices. Part of a chain of seven Angelo's restaurants in Harlem and the higher reaches of the Upper West Side and Upper East Side. Michael Cabrini, John's younger brother, owned the business, employing his wife, two sons and a handful of nephews. As he was fond of saying, 'Franchises ain't worth shit unless you got someone you can trust running them. That means you, John. You and the boys. No outsiders.' Which was why the empire had halted at seven; his brother had run out of employable sons and nephews.

  Cabrini tip-toed down the stairs and through the kitchen. He paused in the shadow of the doorway that led into the restaurant, his eyes gradually growing accustomed to the gloom.

  The man was making no attempt to hide. He was sitting at a table in the centre of the room. In front of him, on the red check tablecloth, was a cup and saucer.

  'Hope you don't mind. Made myself an espresso.'

  Pale-skinned, the remains of black hair greying at the temples, bald on top, in his fifties, he was wearing a navy-blue overcoat over a suit. Even in the half-light Cabrini could see how polished the tips of his black shoes were. He approved. Beside the cup and saucer was a felt hat.