The Third Woman

by Mark Burnell

  'Your scars. Don't they take you back?'

  'Not any more. Twenty years of the high life have eased the pain.'

  I'm not sure I believe him. 'Did you ever consider doing something about them?'

  'Like what?'

  'I don't know. Cosmetic surgery, maybe …'

  'That's just another kind of scar. Anyway,' he says, touching the ruined tissue on my left shoulder, 'you should talk.'

  'This scar is cosmetic.'

  'What do you mean?'

  I explain it to him.

  'Well, there you go,' he concludes. 'My point proved.'

  'How?'

  'Cosmetic surgery is a lie. I don't want to live like that.'

  'You're right,' I concede. 'It eats away at you.'

  'I don't like the scars but they're part of me. And I'm okay with that.'

  'Then I envy you. For being comfortable with the way you are.'

  'It wasn't always like this. It took time.'

  'Don't they ever make you feel self-conscious? Mine are insignificant next to yours but there are times when I really detest them.'

  'I'm only really aware of them when other people react to them.' He smiles a little awkwardly. 'Of course, if you're naked, that can make it worse. There've been one or two who found them hard to get used to. There was also one who said she found them sexy.'

  I pull a face. 'How long did she last?'

  'She didn't make it to breakfast.'

  I giggle, then land the sucker punch. 'What about Scheherazade Zahani?'

  'What about her?'

  'Was she one of them?'

  'Why?'

  'I was thinking about her. Actually, I was thinking about the way we met. And trying to think of what might have happened if it had been different.'

  'And she fits into that how?'

  'She doesn't. Not in my new version. She's just an interloper from reality.'

  'So how do you see us now?'

  'We meet on a plane. Which means we're confined but not like in your apartment. It's something more natural, more … organic. It goes from there. A chance meeting.'

  'The Lancaster was a chance meeting,' Robert points out.

  'But we're dropping that. This is the new version. Where we talk like normal people. By the time we get to our destination we agree to meet for a drink and trade phone numbers.'

  'That's it?'

  'No. Then we decide to share a taxi into town from the airport.'

  'Which town?'

  'It doesn't matter. Any town.'

  'You have to make it real. Pick one.'

  'Okay. Madrid. Or Nice. Wait – no – make it New York.'

  'Why New York?'

  'The traffic. It takes for ever to get to Manhattan from JFK.'

  'So?'

  'More time together in the taxi.'

  'Ah.'

  'And then, when we get there, we decide not to wait for that drink.'

  'Sounds nice.'

  'It could have happened like that for us.'

  Robert considers it. 'I guess so.'

  'We'd have stood a chance, too.'

  'We're not dead yet, Stephanie.'

  'Not yet.'

  The pause that follows is filled only by the applause of the rain.

  'Anyway,' he says, 'the longer the odds, the better the pay-out.'

  A string quartet was playing in one corner. Beneath glittering chandeliers the Hotel Bristol's staff dispensed Krug 1985 and canapés. Stephanie reckoned there were one hundred and fifty guests in the Festsaal. Less than one in ten were female. Newman took two glasses from a passing waitress, handed one to Stephanie and guided her into the gathering.

  'Robert – there you are!'

  He was a short man with tight black curls oiled to a scalp that grew visible towards the very top. Thick, tinted lenses couldn't conceal a slight squint.

  Newman shook his hand. 'Abel. Good to see you. It's been a while.'

  'Most certainly. Jakarta, two years ago, I think.'

  'Actually, it was Kuala Lumpur. The Grand Prix. Petronas?'

  'Of course. How could I forget?'

  'This is Marina Schrader. Marina, meet Abel Kessler.'

  Newman and Kessler started trading news. Stephanie drifted away from them. She recognized a few faces among the strangers. Albert Raphael, for one, the Canadian newspaper baron who'd recently become an American citizen. His wife, the socialite and self-appointed intellectual Paula Kray, stood beside him. They were talking to Richard Rhinehart. Newman had told her that Rhinehart was a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and a leading light at the American Partnership Foundation. Stephanie now remembered that Albert Raphael had appeared on the list of Amsterdam directors she'd seen.

  'Hi. I'm Elizabeth Weil. I don't believe we've met.'

  She had heavy features and a mouth even more luscious than Stephanie's. Her beautiful cream-coffee skin was made for gold. Stephanie felt dour beside her.

  Weil said, 'I think I know every other woman in the room.'

  'I'm Marina Schrader. How do you do?'

  'Could be better. Could be somewhere else,' she said, her voice a gentle purr, the accent East Coast American. 'I hate these things, don't you?'

  'So how come you're here?'

  Weil swept thick black hair out of large anthracite eyes. 'I'm taking part in a debate tomorrow. Then I'm scheduled to deliver a paper the day after.'

  'At Petrotech?'

  'Where else?'

  'What's your subject?'

  'The curse of oil.'

  'That sounds like a humorous topic. What do you actually do?'

  'A question my accountant always asks. I guess I'm an academic. That's what people say. Or a freeloader, depending on your point of view. I work for the Potomac Institute in Washington.'

  'I'm afraid I haven't heard of it,' Stephanie lied.

  Weil's definition varied from Newman's. 'Basically, we promote the export of responsible democracy.'

  'Responsible democracy? You mean, like having one glass instead of the whole bottle?'

  She considered the comparison for a moment. 'Actually, that's a pretty accurate representation of what we believe in. Especially in those areas of the world that hold our attention.'

  'Which areas would they be?'

  'Primarily the Middle East and Asia. What do you do, Marina?'

  Stephanie had an answer ready. 'I'm a lady of leisure.'

  Weil laughed. 'I wouldn't say that in this room. You'll see a lot of men reaching for their wallets.'

  'I'm an investor. A private investor.'

  'In this environment that's a quick way to make friends.'

  They talked for an hour and laughed more than those around them. Stephanie allowed Weil to feed on a sense of solidarity that didn't exist. But she liked her and could see why Weil felt isolated. The other women in the room looked humourless; career addicts too busy to know they were miserable.

  People gravitated towards Weil to pay their respects or to flirt: Brian Grabel, a senior executive with Halliburton; Azzam Fahad, number two at the Iraqi Oil Ministry; Lauren Dougherty, an executive with Bechtel; Jean-Claude Fernandez, owner of a French construction firm.

  At nine Well said, 'I'm afraid I have to go. I have a dinner at the American Embassy and I'm very late. It's been a pleasure meeting you, Marina. If you hadn't been here, I'd have been on time for the ambassador.'

  'Glad to be a hindrance.'

  'Will you be at Petrotech tomorrow?'

  'I expect so.'

  'If you're around in the afternoon come to the debate. It should be lively.'

  'If I'm around, I will.'

  Well handed Stephanie her business card. 'I'll write it on the back for you. Hall D, Blue Level, 15:30.'

  Stephanie didn't really notice Weil's farewell or departure. Instead, she stared at what was written on the card and knew that she'd seen it before.

  Leonid Golitsyn.

  His name was a prompt. The colour-coded levels of the Austria Center. The
Hotel Bristol. She'd seen these details together. Slowly, it came back to her, from the apartment on quai d'Orléans in Paris, four or five days ago. A note from a travel agent, an itinerary. A private aircraft – Moscow-Vienna-Moscow – and a reservation for a penthouse suite at the Bristol. She couldn't remember how long Golitsyn had been booked in for.

  There had been brochures with the itinerary. She could only recall the content of one: Mir-3, a new drone for oil pipelines designed by a RussoFrench company whose name escaped her.

  There had also been a brief schedule attached; three items, each with a colour-code, each with a time. And although she couldn't swear that 'Hall D; Blue Level, 15:30' had been one of them, in her bones, she knew it had been.

  She found Newman, who was still talking to Abel Kessler, made an excuse and left. She returned to the Lübeck, collected the gun and walked to the U-Bahn, taking the U3 from Westbahnhof to Stephansplatz, then the U1 to Vorgartenstrasse.

  Mexikoplatz was almost deserted. The rain had stopped but a bitter wind was blowing. By the time Stephanie reached the building on Engerthstrasse her fingers were already numb. She looked up at the pistachio facade. The lights were off.

  The suffocating heat of the entrance hall was a pleasure. She took the stairs to the third floor. Using two short pieces of wire cut from a coat-hanger at the Lübeck she addressed the lock. She wasn't an expert but she didn't need to be; it took forty seconds to let herself in.

  She pulled the Heckler & Koch from her coat. The music coming from the floor below was Serbian pop. The kitchenette had a gas-boiler attached to the wall. A blue flame threw feeble light over an empty sink. There was no food in the fridge, just juice and Diet Coke. In the bedroom a blue check duvet was scrunched into a ball at one end of a single mattress. Dirty clothes covered the floor. An upturned cardboard box doubled as a bedside table. There was a German copy of Vogue on it, beside an empty pack of Marlboro Lights and five foil condom wrappers, four of them torn open. By one wall was a cheap black suitcase. Stephanie bent down to look inside – more dirty clothes – and noticed a book on the other side of the upturned box, its pages swollen by moisture. It was a Russian edition of a cheap horror novel called Glittering Savages by an English author she'd never heard of. There was a photograph between the damp pages.

  An improvised bookmark or an attempt to conceal?

  She examined the picture. Damp and age had distorted the colour. The edges were yellow and there was a strange purple glow over the centre of the photo, like a chemical bruise. But none of this distracted from the content.

  Curiously, she wasn't shocked; it was almost a relief.

  Konstantin Komarov, standing by a Mercedes outside the Hotel Baltschug. The hotel she had stayed in when she first went to Moscow. How long ago had that been? Four years? Five? She turned the photograph over.

  Petra –

  I love you. Today, tomorrow, for ever.

  Don't forget.

  Kostya.

  It wasn't his writing. But it felt like it. Just to see the words written. A declaration of love from one phantom to another. Artificial in every way yet still capable of making a deep cut.

  First Stalingrad, then the film, now here. Petra, the third woman, the link. But why the second apartment? Was it merely another stepping stone for the posthumous enquiry that should have been well under way by now?

  She went into the living-room. Overall, the place seemed more like a home than Paris. There were coins on a coffee table and cartons of Chinese food, half-eaten. On the sofa was an out-of-date TV schedule and a bottle-green jersey with holes at the elbows. There were a dozen paperbacks on a DIY shelf, nine of them Russian, the others German.

  She looked at the CDs. Bjork, Air, The Cardigans. Less of a plant than the music she'd found in Stalingrad. Unlike the letter she found among the mail stacked on top of the TV.

  It was from Grumann Bank on Singerstrasse.

  We are pleased to confirm the arrangements that you and I agreed upon yesterday. Should you require further facilities here in Vienna, or in Brussels, or further afield, we will be only too happy to offer our services.

  Yours faithfully,

  Gerhard Lander.

  The letter was addressed to Marianne Bernard. But as Marianne Bernard, Stephanie had never been to Austria. She checked the date – 4 December – then heard the scrape of metal against metal.

  A key sliding into a lock.

  'Who are you? What are you doing here?'

  Her hair was dyed black and cut in a bob. Despite the night, a large pair of black sunglasses masked a third of her face; she looked like a fly. She wore a tartan mini-skirt, black tights, black boots, black leather jacket. She clutched a brown paper bag in her right hand, which was grazed raw across the back. Crimson lipstick was plastered across a broad mouth.

  Stephanie was standing in the kitchenette, which had allowed the woman to close the front door and move into the living-room before seeing her. The gun was out of sight but in reach, just behind the kettle.

  'I said, what are you doing here?'

  Stephanie stared into the curves of matt black glass covering her eyes. 'Perhaps that's a question I should be asking you.'

  'Get out.'

  'We need to talk.'

  'How did you get in here?'

  'What's your name?'

  She reached into the brown paper bag.

  Stephanie grabbed the gun from behind the kettle. 'I wouldn't if I were you.'

  'Fuck!'

  'Put the bag down. Slowly.'

  'It's just some shit from the store.'

  'Put it down.'

  'I was reaching for cigarettes.'

  'I don't want to shoot you in the hand. But I will. Put … it … down.'

  She did so.

  'Now take off your glasses.'

  'Why?'

  'It's the middle of the night.'

  'So?'

  'I'm not going to ask you again.'

  She pulled them from her face and Stephanie felt a pang of guilt. The right eye was swollen, a broad palate of colours rising through the skin.

  'What happened?'

  'None of your business.'

  'What's your name?'

  'That's none of your business either.'

  'The quicker you answer the questions the quicker I'll leave. But I'm not going until I have my answers. And I'll get them one way or the other. So do both of us a favour. Now what's your name?'

  'Petra.'

  'Small world. So's mine.'

  She looked at Stephanie more carefully and it began to sink in. She focused on the face first, then the rest. Similar-looking, similar build. In fact, more than similar. Her indignation melted away but there was no comfort in the comparison.

  'Got any other names?' Stephanie asked.

  'Julia. You?'

  'One or two. But you can stick with Petra.'

  'What are you doing here?'

  'Take off your leather jacket.'

  She did. Underneath she wore a grey polo-neck.

  'Take that off too,' Stephanie said.

  Julia hesitated, then said, 'I don't do women.'

  'Is that right?'

  'Not usually.'

  'Take it off.'

  'You gonna pay me?'

  'No. But if you play your cards right I won't shoot you.'

  Julia pulled the polo-neck over her head. She was wearing a cerise and black leopard-skin print bra. The scar was neat. A small rough circle on the left shoulder.

  'Turn round.'

  The exit wound was an exact copy of the entry wound. Amateur, but good enough for a clandestine film. Stephanie noticed other marks. A couple of large red welts, two bruises over the ribs, lateral scratch marks over the lower back.

  Stephanie took off her coat, put the gun on the sideboard by the kettle, and pulled off her sweatshirt, revealing her own bullet-wound through the left shoulder.

  Julia whistled softly. 'Holy Mother …'

  Stephanie pulled the sweatshirt back on. '
One of us is a fake. The other's a killer who got shot through the shoulder during a shoot-out with Belgian police about eight years ago. Do you know which one you are?'

  Julia tried to muster a smile. 'Well … you're the one with the gun. Where'd you get the cuts and bruises?'

  'France. Where'd you get yours?'

  'Don't ask.'

  'What about the scars?'

  'An operation.'

  'I'll let you into a secret. Me too.'

  'I don't understand.'

  'Sure you do. It's a question of false identity. Like appearing in a movie, pretending to be someone else.'

  Julia shifted uncomfortably. 'Can I smoke?'

  'Yes.'

  'My cigarettes are in the bag.'

  'Better show me first.'

  She did. Three packs of Marlboro Lights, a bottle of vodka, some bread and a tube of Pringles. She tore the cellophane from the first pack and lit a cigarette, the ritual restoring some self-confidence.

  Stephanie said, 'You can put your top back on, if you want.'

  Julia pouted cheaply. 'Is that what you want?'

  'Yes.'

  'Another time, perhaps?'

  She pulled on the grey polo-neck. She had a fuller figure than Stephanie's. The kind of figure Stephanie had once enjoyed over a long, idle summer. She'd been happy while it lasted but a strenuous training regime that autumn had reduced her to a muscular hardness that had stayed with her ever since.

  Stephanie said, 'Why'd you agree to your operation?'

  'Money. Why else?'

  'You agreed to be scarred for money?'

  Julia was contemptuous. 'I've been scarred for no money. So this was better.'

  'That's nice.'

  'Why did you agree?'

  'I didn't. I wasn't given a choice.'

  'How come?'

  Stephanie ignored the question. 'How much money?'

  'A lot. Enough to reverse most of the damage when the time comes. And plenty more.'

  'Tell me how it happened.'

  'I went to a clinic here in Vienna. The Verbinski. Do you know it?'

  'No.'

  'Doctor Müller had photographs of a woman – you, I guess – and she matched the scars from the prints.'

  'Did you get a look at the photos?'

  'Sure.'

  'And it was definitely me?'

  'Yes. I mean, I guess so. This was back in October. I remember the face because it looked a lot like me. And like you, if you know what I mean. I didn't recognize the man, though.'