by Mark Burnell
'Don't bother asking.'
'Okay. I'll ask something else. How is it that Lance Grotius had my old Magenta House clearance code on his laptop?'
'No idea.'
'You haven't thought about it. I can tell from your expression.'
The accusation was only partly true. A thought had occurred to him. Not concerned directly with Grotius and a laptop, but related. Five days earlier, in Paris, he'd confronted Pierre Damiani in his apartment overlooking Parc Monceau. That lead had been fed to him by Magenta House. Every lead had been fed to him by Magenta House.
The identity that Stephanie had kept in the safe-deposit box at Banque Damiani had not been issued by Magenta House. It had been an independent creation. He wondered how the organization had learned of it. And then he wondered why he'd been selected to find Stephanie. Because she trusted him? That was the reason Rosie Chaudhuri had given him. She'd also implied that because Boyd knew Stephanie better than anyone else, he'd be better equipped to locate her. But he'd turned up nothing. He'd had to rely on them. In other words, they could have sent anyone.
'My code was on his laptop, Iain. I need you to believe that.'
'Whatever.'
'Let me explain something to you. Magenta House was split into two assassination sections. All the information relating to those two sections was stored in a computer in the basement of the building. That computer was hermetically sealed. Information was brought in and taken out on modified disks that could only be used on other computers, providing they met the security criteria.'
'Fascinating. And irrelevant.'
'Didn't you hear what I said? Grotius had my clearance code on his laptop. That could not have been retrieved – or stolen – electronically.'
'I don't know why I'm listening to this.'
'I've been sold out.'
'And you think it's Magenta House?'
'It looks like it but I don't know. Just like you don't know how they figured out I was heading for Vienna, not Vladivostok.'
'Forget it.'
Stephanie felt her temper fraying. 'There's a woman in this city masquerading as me. Same name, same look. She's even got the same scars. Know why? Because she is me. Know how she got the scars? Cosmetically. Again, like me. The surgeon who did it took her cue from a series of stills from film footage of me and Komarov in an apartment in London. Magenta House film footage. How do I know that? Because they used it as leverage on me. What I don't know is this: how stills from that footage found their way to the Verbinski clinic here in Vienna.'
'If it's not going to make any difference what's the point?'
'The point is this: maybe it's Magenta House but maybe it's not. In which case, they're being set up too. And that's more serious than having me on the run. That means they're no longer quite the invisible organization they thought they were.'
Boyd wanted to maintain the rhythm of refusal but found he couldn't. He replayed her argument in his mind.
Stephanie looked at the contents of her bag and said, 'There are two DVDs over there. One of them has footage of my clone in bed with Anders Brand and a hooker. You can see the scars on her quite clearly. They appear genuine. Take the disk, have a look. You should be able to tell.'
The clock ticks. I'm sitting on the bed, Robert's on the chair by the window. We're waiting for Julia to call. There's nothing else we can do.
'Why do you think he backed down?' he asks.
'I'm still not sure.'
'Something you said?'
'I guess so.'
Boyd looked at me for a long while before asking me how long I needed. Twelve hours, I told him. He seemed pained and pitying in equal measure, then nodded his assent. That was just after six. Robert returned here at seven. Since then, we've been killing time. The longer we wait, the slower each hour passes.
'Tell me about you and Scheherazade, Robert.'
'What about her?'
'The first time I saw the two of you in the Lancaster, you didn't look like lovers. But you didn't look like just good friends, either.'
He takes his time. 'We go back a long way. Originally I met Scheherazade through her husband, Omar. And I met Omar when I was working for my uncle.'
'This was after Lebanon?'
'Yes. Several years later. Most teenage rebellions occur during the teenage years. Mine happened during my twenties. Most teenage rebellions kick against conservatism. Mine kicked against liberalism.'
'As personified by your father?'
'And by the life I'd been living with Rachel. It was broken. It couldn't be fixed. I just wanted to get as far away from it as possible. My uncle got me a job at the New York offices of Mackenzie Resources. I started at the bottom and worked my way up and that's how I met Omar. In Riyadh, on business. Soon after, he asked me to work for him.'
'Did he know about Lebanon?'
'Yes. Which makes his attitude towards me even more unusual. I was tainted by that experience. Very few people in that world would have hired me. But he was an unconventional man in some ways. He always took people as he found them. So I went with him. And through him, I met Scheherazade.'
I raise an eyebrow. 'That's appreciation for you. A man offers you a job and you take his wife as well.'
'Nothing happened between us while Omar was alive. There was never any possibility of that. Even after his death, there could never have been anything overt. Scheherazade wouldn't have allowed it.'
'Why not?'
'Her background. Her devotion to her husband. Discretion was more than a choice. It was an obligation.'
'So you waited until the dust had settled?'
'The dust never really settles for a widow like Scheherazade when her husband was a man like Omar.'
I remember the little I knew of her before that night in the Lancaster, most of it gleaned from the French press. Much of the coverage had ignored her business acumen and had focused on her love-life instead. Nearly all of it had been idle speculation. There had been a few romantic rumours but only of the vaguest kind. There had never been a hint of scandal.
'Your relationship was a secret?'
'An open secret. When someone like Abel Kessler brings it up, or Sergei Volkov, it's because they knew we were close but have never been sure quite how close. They suspect but they can never confirm.'
'How complicated.'
'That was one of the reasons it ended.'
'What were the others?'
Robert smiles. 'They're private, Stephanie. But they're not startling. They're the usual things.'
Privacy's fine by me. Where would I be without it?
I say, 'It's nice that you've stayed close.'
'It is.'
'She has a great reputation as an investor, doesn't she?'
'Yes.'
'How much of that is down to you?'
'Scheherazade has a brilliant mind. I helped where I could but the reality is she didn't need me that much. People tend to forget how smart she is. They say that she married Omar because he was rich and old. The truth is, Omar had the sharpest mind I've ever encountered. Scheherazade was attracted to that. Genuinely. She knew their time together would be limited but she was determined to make the most of it. That's the kind of woman she is. She married Omar because the other men she knew didn't match up. Simple as that.'
'Except you.'
'Only after he was dead.'
The phone rings. I answer it.
'Petra? It's Julia.'
Kärntnerstrasse, ten-forty-five. The café was half-empty, warm and smoky, Chopin playing softly over poor speakers. Julia was already there, drinking coffee with a glass of cheap armagnac. Stephanie ordered a cappuccino at the bar then sat opposite her at a table by the window.
'You sure about this?' Julia asked.
Stephanie nodded. 'Midnight?'
'Yes. He doesn't like it if I'm late.'
'What about you?'
'I'm ready to run.'
'Don't go back to your apartment. Just in case.'
&nbs
p; 'I wasn't going to. When I leave here, I'll collect my money and vanish.' She picked up a small cloth shoulder-bag and pushed it across the rough wooden table. 'Look inside. I've taken precautions. Anybody tries to screw with me, they're going to regret it.'
Stephanie peered inside the bag. The gun was a Russian PSM, a weapon developed for the old Soviet security services. After the collapse of the Soviet Union they had started to crop up across central and eastern Europe. The silencer, Stephanie noticed, was custom-made.
'Do you know how to use this?'
Julia looked contemptuous. 'Alexei taught me. He was an expert.'
'This belonged to him?'
She shook her head. 'I got it from Club Nitro. There's a guy there. Kurt …'
'You know that I know Kurt, don't you?'
Julia managed a fragile smile. 'Well, he wouldn't do it for me at first. But when I said I was going to use it on you he wouldn't even let me pay for it.'
'It's an unusual gun.'
'Kurt has unusual friends. Anyway, this is Vienna. Everything is available.'
'So I've heard.'
Julia gazed into curls of cigarette smoke. 'As soon as I had it in my hand, I wanted to go straight over to the hotel and do it myself. When I think of all the lies I tolerated. Girls like me it doesn't matter where we are, there's always some bastard waiting for us.'
'I wish I could disagree with you. Where will you go?'
'I don't know yet. I have a friend in Amsterdam. It would be nice to see her again maybe. What about you?'
'I'd like to run. But I'm not sure I can.'
'Which is why I have to run?'
'I'm afraid so. There can be only one Petra.'
'But I thought she was supposed to be dead.'
'She is.'
Julia poured the rest of her armagnac into her coffee. 'Seems like we have a connection; whatever one of us does affects the other. We're almost the same woman.'
Stephanie nodded. 'How can I contact you?'
'Why would you want to?'
'To tell you when it's safe to stop running.'
Julia grinned mischievously. 'Maybe I'll get a taste for it. Like you.'
'If you're like me, you'll want to stop. Better to have the option, at least. Do you have an e-mail address?'
'Sure. Several.'
'Me too.'
'See?'
Julia ordered another couple of cappuccinos and they talked. At eleven-forty-five they settled the bill. Which was when Julia said, 'We're about the same size, wouldn't you say?'
'More or less.'
'Perhaps we should swap clothes. You should wear what Julia wears when she's being Petra. Especially the glasses.' She took them off to show Stephanie. 'He'll be expecting this beautiful bruise.'
They changed in the cloakroom. Julia had a slightly fuller figure than Stephanie. As they stepped on to Kärntnerstrasse and exchanged kisses, she said, 'I guess I'm going to have to lose weight if I'm ever really going to be you.'
Stephanie shook her head. 'No. The real me is exactly the way you are now.'
'So what does that make you?'
'Exactly what I'm supposed to be right now. An impostor.'
Day Twelve
You are here to see Herr Stonehouse?'
The man at Reception was utterly inscrutable yet Stephanie saw straight through his politeness. You're a tramp and if Herr Stonehouse wasn't such a valued guest I'd toss you straight back into the gutter. He picked up the phone, pressed a three-digit number and spoke softly. It was ten past midnight in the opulent lobby of the Hotel Imperial on Kärntner Ring.
'Room 510.'
Up to the fifth floor, down a long, quiet corridor, one turn to the left, then as far as the room at the end. She looked left and right, took out the Heckler & Koch, held it at her side and rang the bell. She heard the approach on the other side of the door. He was talking. A phone conversation? Or was there someone in the room with him?
The door opened. John Peltor, in the middle of a call, snatched a glimpse of the clothes and sunglasses, then slapped a hand over the mouthpiece and hissed, 'You're late. It's after midnight. What have you done to your hair? I told you never to change anything unless I …'
He didn't see the gun. Not until Stephanie pointed the weapon at his teeth. He stared into the black hole at the centre of the silencer. And then at the face behind.
'I'll get back to you,' he murmured, before finishing his call.
He reversed into the suite. Stephanie closed the door behind her and followed him in.
'Take it easy, Petra. Okay? Don't do anything we'll both regret.'
'Unlikely.'
The room was huge. Cream walls with inlaid panels of pale pink-and-cream striped wallpaper, thick gold curtains, a candle-bulb chandelier, antiques, oils on canvas set in generous gilt frames. Peltor put his phone on the coffee table. There was an open attaché case on the sofa beside a small olive canvas knapsack.
'Nice room,' Stephanie said. 'I should have listened to you in Munich. Corporate slaughter clearly pays.'
'Don't play the nun, Petra. It doesn't suit you.'
'Are you picking up the tab? Or is it on an Amsterdam expense account?'
He was wearing some unpleasant beige slacks and a lime polo-shirt, tightly tucked in to emphasize the narrowness of his waist in comparison to the broad sweep of his shoulders.
'What are you doing here, Petra?'
It was the first time she'd ever seen him nervous.
'I'm the one with the gun, I'll ask the questions.'
'I got people all over Europe looking for you.'
'I know. I've run into a few of them.'
'I heard you made a real mess of Grotius.'
'It was no more than he deserved.'
'Maybe. Not like Gavras, though.'
'Who?'
'Rafael Gavras. Obernai. The guy who stuck a kilo of Semtex under that shit-heap you were driving. For a while there I felt sorry for the poor bastard. Then I found out he was Cuban.'
'I heard on the radio that he was arrested.'
'That's the best thing that's happened to him lately.'
'Dead?'
'Deader than Nixon's nuts. Can you believe it? The guy gets bailed, six hours later he's history. A tragic domestic accident. Broke his neck while combing his hair. Something like that.'
Anxiety dressed as bravado. Typical Peltor. Stephanie told him to drag the chair by the desk to the centre of the floor.
'Gotta hand it to you, Petra. That's not a bad impression of Julia.'
'Doing an impression of me?'
'Right. What did you do to her?'
'Nothing. Sit down.'
He lowered himself on to the chair. 'You didn't kill her?'
Stephanie stared at him. 'Why would I kill her?'
'Where is she?'
'By now? She's gone. Vanished.'
'No way. Not without her money. She's not the type.'
'I told her to forget the money. I told her who you really are. What you are. After that, she wasn't too concerned with the money. How'd you find her?'
The chair creaked, barely taking his vast frame. 'Internet.'
'Is that the way you meet most of your women?'
'Fuck you.'
Stephanie took off the glasses so that he could see her eyes. 'I've been on the run for ten days, no thanks to you. I'm tired and I'm upset and I'm a woman with a gun. You'd do well to remember that the next time you open your mouth.'
Peltor knew better than to doubt her. 'I needed someone who could pass for you. Took me a few days but I narrowed it down to about a dozen. All in Europe, two of them here in Vienna. I swear this city oozes cooze. You can smell it on the street …'
'Please. Less local colour.'
'So I contacted this ratty little asshole …'
'Rudi Littbarski?'
'You know him?'
'Not socially. '
'Littbarski knows every creep under every rock in this town. He found out she was a regular at th
is sleaze-pit out by UNO City. Club Nitro. So I went out there with him and it went from there. I saw her a few times, then made her an offer. How did you find her?'
'I'm a big fan of Parisian art-house movies.'
Peltor raised an eyebrow. 'I guess that means you met my pal Étienne Lorenz.'
'In a manner of speaking. I'm curious. Munich and our chance meeting at Café Roma – all planned?'
'No. I was as surprised as you.'
'You have no idea how surprised I was.'
'It happens. It happened to us. Remember? JFK?'
Stephanie tightened her grip on the gun. 'You're lying.'
Peltor tensed. 'I swear, Munich was a coincidence.'
'Last chance.'
Peltor's eyes widened. 'Munich was a coincidence.'
'But?'
He was shaking. Stephanie had never imagined she would see such a thing. She'd assumed a man like Peltor would face the bullet with a tirade of defiance spat through gnashing teeth.
'But?' she prompted him for the final time.
'After Munich … was not a coincidence.'
'What was it? Amsterdam? I know Heilmann worked as a consultant for DeMille.'
Peltor looked amazed. 'Was that why you killed him?'
'No.'
'Why, then?'
'None of your business. Tell me what happened after Munich.'
'Well … you killed Otto. That's what happened.'
'And?'
'And it didn't take a genius to figure out who did it. Not after I ran into you. That was how your name came up. We were looking for someone to discredit Brand. I doubt you'd have been a natural candidate. But after Otto you seemed ideal. Nobody could've discredited an honourable man better than you and we'd get payback for one of ours.'
'Let me get this straight: if I hadn't killed Heilmann, Paris would never have happened.'
'It would have happened. But not with you. And maybe not in Paris. But Brand was always going to get it. One way or another.'
Stephanie thought briefly of Jacob and Miriam Furst. She took three slow, deep breaths to calm herself.
'What about what you said to me during our breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental? All that advice you gave me about retirement?'
For a moment Peltor looked genuinely upset.
'Whatever you think of me, Petra, I never wanted you to go the way of Juha Suomalainen.'
