The Third Woman

by Mark Burnell

  Once I'm naked – apart from my socks, which he chooses to leave on – he sits back and examines me. He prods the sutures in my side, then picks at one with a nail. The flesh snags when he pulls it out.

  'That looks kinda tender,' he says, aggravating the delicate wound.

  I can't quite suppress the flinch. Excitement flares in his eyes. His other hand maintains a gross erection.

  'I know you never liked me, Petra.'

  He leans over me so that his huge body casts me into shadow. Then he dips his head towards my shoulder. He's so close I can feel the heat he radiates. He presses his mouth to my scar and begins to work his tongue around it.

  'You always thought I was some hick asshole,' he whispers.

  How true.

  When I don't react he sits up. 'In Munich, when we were on the roof I saw you looking at my body. I could tell you wanted it so bad. You just didn't want me.'

  Under different circumstances, I'd laugh. The ones with the muscles always assume that women find them attractive. The truth is, of course, that mostly it's other muscle-bound men who find them appealing.

  He rises from the bed and goes into the bathroom. I hear water running from a tap. I twist my body to see if there's anything within reach of my fingers. Nothing. I lift my head. Is there something one of my feet could drag towards me? No.

  Peltor returns and sits on the bed beside me. 'You're going to talk to me, Petra. I swear to God you're going to talk to me.'

  He trails fingertips over my face, around my throat, across my breasts, never looking anywhere other than into my eyes. He squeezes a nipple. I bite my tongue. The squeeze becomes a pinch.

  When he finally sees pain he sighs, almost sorrowfully. 'Petra, Petra, Petra.'

  The mantra. Just as Julia described it.

  Time to change strategy.

  'What do you want, John?'

  'John, is it? Not asshole?'

  'What do you want?'

  He bends down and kisses me, finding my reluctant tongue with his, before whispering into my ear, 'You, Petra. I want you. Nothing else.'

  In my world, assassins are colleagues or adversaries. They're clinical or useless. But he's psychopathic. He's like a religious fanatic; there's no possibility of negotiation. There's no logic that can appeal to him. There's nothing he needs. There's nothing I can sell him or promise him. At this moment, with the most primitive chemicals saturating his brain, he has everything he wants spread before him.

  I try to ignore the fingers that are creeping between my thighs. The prospect of sex disgusts me but I know I can survive it, no matter what he does, no matter how long it takes. It's what follows that scares me. He looks at me with eyes that have glazed over fully. They have no depth. Every restraining instinct is suspended.

  'Petra,' he murmurs thickly. 'Petra, Petra, Petra.' His huge hands move on to my thighs and press them apart. When he looks down between them his jaw slackens with pleasure.

  'Say you want me, Petra.'

  He leans over me, his weight pinning me to the mattress. I can smell his breath.

  'Go on. Say it.'

  But I can't. I won't.

  I hear a soft click.

  'Come on, Petra. Say you want me inside you. Say you need me.'

  A tentative female voice calls out. 'Room service.'

  We freeze, our widening eyes asking the same question for different reasons.

  For a big man he moves amazingly swiftly. He's off me and standing at the foot of the bed in a second, a blur of shiny muscle. I hear the door close.

  'What the fuck is going on?' he bellows into the corridor.

  You can't expect to be taken seriously when you look like he does; skin slippery with sweat, an erection like an enormous coat-peg, that stupid goatee beard.

  A single muted shot rings out and Peltor is punched backwards. He hits the coffee table and falls.

  Now that's what I call room service.

  Stephanie watched herself emerge from the corridor holding a Russian PSM with a silencer. That was how it appeared to her; Julia was still wearing the clothes they'd swapped in the café.

  Julia saw Stephanie on the bed – prostrate, naked, confused – and put her hand to her mouth. Peltor was gasping, his right hand covering the bullet wound just below the rib-cage, blood leaking freely over his granite torso. Julia put her gun down on the bed and severed Stephanie's wrist bindings. Then she went over to Peltor.

  'You were never going to pay the second fifty thousand, were you?'

  'I was … I swear I was … I …'

  'So how come you stole the first fifty thousand?'

  'Take it easy … let's talk …'

  'No more talk. Where's my money, you bastard?'

  His reply came between halting breaths. 'There … over there …'

  He pointed to the sofa. Julia looked across and saw the canvas knapsack beside the open attaché case.

  Stephanie was still on the bed, barely able to move. Her hands were swollen and numb, her muscles as dead as lead, the room spinning. She couldn't see Peltor on the floor. But she heard him hissing to Julia through clenched teeth.

  'More … I can get you … more. Another fifty … another … hundred …'

  Julia shook her head in contempt. He coughed an offer of two hundred thousand at her. She spat on him then collected the knapsack from the sofa and peered inside. Her initial payment of fifty thousand was still there; the chance to begin again.

  There was a second shot.

  Julia hit the wall face first. The exit wound in her throat left a scarlet rose on the wallpaper. She disintegrated over the sofa, the knapsack tumbling to the ground.

  Peltor was clutching the coffee table for support with one hand. The Heckler & Koch had been underneath Stephanie's jeans which were on the floor beside him. As soon as he'd been shot – even as he fell – he'd been aware of that. Always the operator.

  It took Stephanie several seconds to realize what had happened. To understand that the second shot had not been Julia finishing off Peltor.

  Stephanie heard him moving and forced herself up on to one elbow. The room swam. She glimpsed Peltor hauling himself to the kneeling position. She heard the hard click of her gun clattering on the coffee table. And then remembered where Julia's gun was. On the bed. She'd put it there when she'd severed Stephanie's bindings.

  Sweating almost as furiously as he was bleeding, John Peltor steadied himself to point the Heckler & Koch. Petra cast off Stephanie's remains and forced herself down the bed, retching as she moved, to retrieve Julia's PSM.

  The door was shut but the Housekeeping pass key was still in the slot. Iain Boyd pressed his ear to the door. Nothing. He slipped inside quietly and moved into the suite.

  The man he knew as Paul Ellroy was dead. He could see two wounds, one to the torso, one to the head. Stephanie was on the bed in a foetal curl, not moving. A second woman, who looked very much like her, was dead on the sofa. A large pool of blood had formed on the carpet beneath her head. He checked the bathroom then returned to the bedroom.

  Apart from the pair of socks that she was wearing, Ellroy and Stephanie were both naked. Boyd looked around; clothes everywhere, two guns, a torn T-shirt, a small aerosol, an open attaché case and a canvas knapsack spilling euro notes.

  'Stephanie.'

  He could see she was breathing.

  'Stephanie,' he repeated. 'It's me. Iain.'

  Still nothing. Gently, he laid a hand on a cold shoulder.

  'You okay?'

  He began to uncurl her. She was bleeding lightly from the wound in her side and from a temple graze. She'd retched over herself. There was residue around her mouth, on her breasts, in her hair. Her eyes were red. Not just from tears, Boyd thought, there'd also been something else. He looked at the aerosol. She was very pale.

  'Can you hear me?' he whispered.

  She wasn't registering at all.

  He picked her up and carried her to the bathroom. He filled a basin with warm water and held
her over it. He made her rinse out her mouth, then cleaned her face and wiped the blood from her hairline. She was trembling.

  Back in the bedroom, he sat her on the bed while he scavenged for clothes. Her knickers were covered in Peltor's blood. So were Julia's shirt and jacket. He manoeuvred her back into her black jeans. In the wardrobe was a laundered shirt on a hanger wrapped in plastic. A buttercup button-down Ralph Lauren, the calling card of the preppie executive. Just the image Ellroy had coveted. Boyd helped her into it. It was enormous.

  Stephanie flinched. She wasn't sure whether it was the feel of it or the smell of it. No amount of hotel starch could put enough distance between the cotton and its owner.

  Boyd took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. Then he crouched in front of her and raised her head so that they were looking at one another. 'You're going to have to walk, Stephanie. I can't carry you out of here.'

  'I told him,' she murmured.

  'Told him what?'

  'In Munich. I told him.'

  'What did you tell him?'

  'You don't retire from this life. It retires you.'

  Taborstrasse, one-twenty-five in the morning, a meagre apartment on the second floor, above an optician. There were people there. She wasn't sure how many. Three or four, maybe. They moved quietly between rooms, their voices soft. She heard English but was left in the hands of a woman called Fatima who spoke to her in faltering German. She helped Stephanie into a warm bath and brought her clean clothes; underwear, thick socks, two long-sleeved T-shirts, black cotton trousers, a dark blue sweater.

  Back in the bedroom, Boyd said to her, 'Get some rest.'

  'Where's Robert?'

  'Safe.'

  'Is he here?'

  Boyd shook his head. 'He's still in Vienna. We moved him.'

  'Where?'

  'Somewhere more comfortable than this. You'll see him later. Now try to get some sleep. If you need anything, I'll be outside the door.'

  'There's no time. There's so much to …'

  'No there isn't. It's over.'

  He shut the door. Stephanie drew the curtains. The room overlooked Taborstrasse. A cable supporting two lamps ran from beneath her window to the other side of the street, crossing the power-lines for the trams. The thought evaporated the moment it formed; she lacked the energy. Or was it the will?

  She lay on the bed. There had been pictures on the wall once. Dark squares and rectangles marked out their positions on wallpaper with a floral print. She stared at the ceiling and thought of Julia. Her death seemed particularly cruel. She'd earned the right to a new life and Stephanie felt sure she'd have made something good out of it.

  Julia had died because of Peltor's greed. So had he. Stephanie didn't understand why he'd felt the need to steal back the first fifty thousand. Because he could? Perhaps. Just to prove to Julia – moments before he killed her, Stephanie supposed – that he'd known all along where she'd hidden it. To emphasize his control over her. To prove to her how worthless she was. That was the kind of man Peltor was.

  Julia had saved her life. Without her intervention, Stephanie knew that she would have died a protracted and vicious death. And that once it was over, Peltor would have taken credit for the corpse of Petra Reuter. Stephanie recognized the irony: Peltor's greed had prevented him from achieving all he had wanted. But there was no pleasure in that.

  Not with Julia dead. Not with Petra Reuter dead.

  Eventually she slept. It was after six when Boyd woke her. They went into the tiny kitchen. The apartment was quiet; Stephanie couldn't hear anyone else. Boyd prepared coffee.

  'How did you know where I was?' she asked.

  'How do you think? I had you followed.'

  'What?'

  'Wake up. Why did you think I agreed to give you more time?'

  The answer compounded her despondency. 'To see what I'd do?'

  Boyd nodded.

  She dropped her head and muttered, 'Bastard.'

  'If you'd been half the woman I used to know I wouldn't have taken the risk.'

  'I'm glad I'm not.'

  He caught her eye. 'So am I.'

  'What about Robert?'

  'We had him under surveillance as well. He didn't go anywhere. But we moved him after you and I left the Imperial.'

  'I should have guessed.'

  'For what it's worth, they weren't happy about it. They wanted me to bring you in there and then.'

  'So why didn't you?'

  Boyd allowed himself the faintest hint of a smile. 'You know why not. I wanted to see what you'd do.' He paused for a moment, then added: 'Besides, I've always trusted you more than I trusted them.'

  Stephanie moved over to the window. A passing tram grumbled; she felt the faint reverberation rising from Taborstrasse. Boyd took three chipped enamel mugs from the wooden pegs nailed to the wall.

  Stephanie said, 'I'm sorry you had to see me like that.'

  He was still facing away from her. 'Me too.'

  'Who's the other mug for?'

  On cue, the door opened.

  Rosie Chaudhuri was a conundrum; the only good memory Stephanie had of Magenta House. However, now that she ran the organization Stephanie found it hard to see her as the woman she'd once known. The position she currently occupied was synonymous with the worst of all Stephanie's memories. Rosie was a new head on an old body.

  'Hello, Steph. How are you?'

  She didn't say anything at first. Instead, she thought of the photographs that had reached the Verbinski clinic. Magenta House photographs. Originally, they'd been leverage. Now they were evidence.

  Rosie had grown her black hair long. Stephanie had forgotten quite how attractive she was; dark brown eyes, beautiful clear skin, high cheekbones, complemented by an elegant, conservative dress sense. Bombs might detonate but standards never slipped.

  Boyd poured coffee for all of them. Rosie sat at the diminutive table that occupied most of the floor space, leaving Stephanie standing. Reverse psychology. To be recognized then ignored.

  'It's a hell of a mess out there,' Rosie said.

  'I want to see Robert.'

  'In good time.'

  'Now.'

  'In good time.'

  Stephanie stayed beside the window, her arms folded. 'Who's Maurice Hammond?'

  They both stiffened. Stephanie was surprised; she'd anticipated a reaction from Rosie – that was why she'd tossed her the question nice and early, to try to catch her off-guard – but she hadn't expected anything from Boyd.

  Rosie said, 'Maurice is a former director of 850.'

  'How well do you know him?'

  'We've met. Why?'

  'Late last year he came to Vienna with a set of photographs of me. Of me and Komarov, to be precise. Stills taken from some film footage. You know the film. You were the one who showed it to me in Zurich.'

  'Are you sure about this?'

  Stephanie nodded. 'Do you know who Lance Grotius is?'

  'I do now.'

  'Grotius had my Magenta House clearance code on his laptop.'

  'Stephanie …'

  'I was set up right from the start.'

  'And you think we had something to do with that?'

  'I know you did. As an organization.'

  'I can assure you …'

  'No you can't.'

  Avenue Kléber, Paris, 08:15.

  Wiley closed the double-doors so that he was alone in the boardroom at Amsterdam Europe's head office. He sat at one end of a long table, a slim plasma screen in front of him. At its centre was the Amsterdam logo. Beneath were two words: Tomorrow Today. Under current circumstances, the very antithesis of prophecy.

  The INTELSAT link came to life. John Cabrini had lost his sheen. He was still wearing a Clive Ishiguro silk polo-neck yet he looked anything but dapper. Eight days based in the New York mobile control suite had aged him. Artificial light, artificial air. And, as it had turned out, artificial optimism.

  Wiley said, 'Talk me through Vienna.'

&nbs
p; 'Peltor's dead.'

  Wiley had heard the news an hour earlier. 'What about Reuter?'

  'We have a body.'

  'Is it her?'

  'No. It's the substitute.'

  'What about the location?'

  'It's been secured. The bodies have been extracted. Everything's under control. We're relocating them.'

  'Together?'

  'Separately. She'll be planted, he'll disappear.'

  'How soon can we leak the news?'

  'Around eighteen hundred your time.'

  'What about Reuter?'

  'We know she was there. We don't know what happened. We're assuming she killed both of them.'

  'How come?'

  'The substitute was scheduled to visit Peltor at midnight. We don't know how he tracked her but the sweep team found cash in the room. Looks like it was hers.'

  'Maybe she was carrying it.'

  'Maybe. Or maybe he had it and that's why she went there. She'd want it back.'

  Wiley considered Peltor. He'd told Wiley on more than one occasion that Julia, the Reuter clone, had been paid off and had disappeared. Wiley wasn't entirely surprised to discover that this probably wasn't true. There had always been something of the cowboy about Peltor. A confidence that strayed into arrogance, a casual disregard for authority, an unjustified tendency to assume superiority.

  Cabrini said, 'The Reuter clone was shot with a Heckler & Koch USP. The same kind of gun that Reuter herself used in the barn in Alsace. We'll run tests for an exact match but I think you can assume it was the same weapon.'

  'So Reuter shot her clone.'

  'Looks like it. Peltor was shot with a Russian PSM. There's no previous on that.'

  'Wasn't the clone a Russian?'

  'She was. But I'd still put my money on Reuter.'

  'What chance of finding her now?'

  'Ultimately, it's assured. There are two ways it can happen. Either she pops up to dispute the identity of the clone. That's the easy, quick way. The moment she does, we take her out. The only way she can dispute the identity is by proving her own identity.'

  'Why would she do that?'

  'Precisely. She wouldn't. Which leaves us with the alternative.'

  'She does nothing and stays hidden?'