by Mark Burnell
'Her?'
'This is the only way.'
'Look, there's not enough time. Wiley won't agree to it and …'
'You're the largest single private investor in Amsterdam, Scheherazade. You can get him to do whatever you want. That's why the signing is happening out at La Défense. Karyo's your lawyer, not one of theirs.'
Zahani dropped the pretence for icy silence.
'Ten o'clock tomorrow,' Newman repeated.
'What if they won't …'
'Make them. And tell them that she won't be coming with me. I'll be alone but if anything happens to me … well, you can guess the rest.'
'How did you get involved with her, Robert?'
'You wouldn't believe me.'
'I'd believe anything of you.'
'Some other time. I'll see you tomorrow morning.'
'Okay. For you.'
They stepped on to the street into the jaws of a worsening wind.
'So what now?' he asked.
'We need to disappear. Until you make the deal they'll be looking harder than ever for us.'
'Any ideas?'
She nodded. 'I know the perfect place.'
They walked to rue Vieille du Temple, less than five minutes away. The red and gold sign above the shop was illuminated by three small lamps: Adler, boulangerie – patisserie.
Stephanie peered through the window. Claude Adler was carrying two empty wicker baskets towards the rear of the shop. She knocked on the window.
'Fermé!' he roared, without bothering to look.
Stephanie tapped again and he turned round to see who it was.
As he opened the door for them, he said, 'Petra. I'm sorry, I didn't …'
'Forget it, Claude. I know what a nuisance customers can be.'
'Very funny. Come in, come in.'
Stephanie introduced Robert then said, 'The last time I was here you asked if there was something you could do to help. Well, there is.'
Day Thirteen
Half-past-midnight and the guttering candle was almost dead. Sylvie Adler produced a replacement from the wooden cupboard over Stephanie's shoulder, dipped the wick into the oily flame, then crushed the new candle into the soft remains of the old. Stephanie saw red and gold reflected in Sylvie's tears.
There were three bottles on the table, two from the Languedoc and a half-drunk bottle of Calvados. Between them was the last of dinner; cassoulet, bread, cheese, cups of espresso and an ashtray full of dead Gauloises.
Stephanie hadn't meant to drink. She needed a clear head now. But she'd succumbed anyway. Just as she had with Julia in Vienna. In fact, because of Julia.
Claude Adler lit his last cigarette of the night. 'Did you ever see Jacob draw?'
Stephanie shook her head.
'Even with the arthritis, it was something to watch. These horribly disfigured fingers, they could barely hold a pencil.' He curled his own fingers into a claw. 'And then the tip would touch the paper and something beautiful would appear. Quickly or slowly, rough or polished. He used to say that forgery was craft. I think he was too modest. He was a forger, yes, but an artist also. He didn't just copy. He created. He injected life. Everywhere.'
When Adler had asked Stephanie why the Fursts had died she hadn't been able to give him an adequate answer. Because the world isn't fair, she'd said. He'd nodded and drained his glass; a grudging toast to an unpleasant, universal truth.
Shortly after one, Claude and Sylvie went to bed, leaving Stephanie and Newman in the kitchen. The flickering candlelight lent his face colour and deepened the lines. She looked at him and for a brief moment imagined they were together under the moon in Mauritius. Exactly where she should have been at that instant. Where she could still be in thirty-six hours. Where they could still be.
'What are you thinking?' he asked her.
'Nothing,' she said. 'Nothing at all.'
She could hear Claude Adler moving upstairs. That was how she knew it was four-thirty. That was when his day started, seven days a week, hangover or no hangover. Cyril Bradfield had told her that.
Stephanie and Newman were in the small living-room overlooking rue Vieille du Temple. Newman was asleep on the sofa, Stephanie was on an old armchair, her legs folded beneath her. A car passed by on the street below, the exhaust in need of a new silencer.
She'd tried to sleep but her mind wouldn't let her. She'd given up at three and had made herself coffee. Sitting alone at the kitchen table, she'd thought about Julia. The first time she saw the film, Stephanie had realized she was watching a dead woman. Filming Petra Reuter with Anders Brand only made sense if she died. Seen from that perspective, there seemed something predetermined about the different paths that had taken Stephanie and Julia to Room 510 of the Imperial Hotel.
Now there was the possibility of a definitive exit. Or, as Julia had put it, the chance to begin again.
She went through to the kitchen where Adler, dishevelled, was making coffee.
He said, 'You made the papers.'
There was an early edition of Le Monde on the counter, opened at the appropriate place. It was a brief report. There'd been a shooting in an industrial compound off Haidestrasse in the Simmering district of Vienna. The police had been called to the scene after an anonymous tip-off and had discovered a single female body. Although they had yet to confirm it the victim was now widely believed to be the notorious terrorist-turned-assassin, Petra Reuter. There was no mention of Peltor. Stephanie wondered what had happened to his body. Dumped in the Danube? Why not?
'Is it true?' Adler asked.
'Is what true?'
'The description of you. Terrorist. Assassin.'
'Who did you think I was, Claude?'
Hunched over the sink, his back to her, he shrugged. 'I don't know. No one ever said. Not exactly. I mean, it was obvious you were different but …'
'It's true, Claude. At least, it was.'
He turned round. 'So Jacob and Miriam …'
'They were never involved. They were innocent. But they died because of me. Because they knew me.'
Stony-faced but devoid of obvious judgement, he nodded, then looked down at the papers. 'So … is it good news?'
'In a way.'
'It must be liberating to be dead.'
'Not yet. But it could be.'
Five-fifteen. Adler was downstairs in the bakery, Sylvie was in the bathroom, the radio on, music muffled by the clatter of running water. Newman was standing by the kitchen window, arms crossed, tired. They went through the plan for a third time. When Stephanie had finished, Newman said, 'What if Wiley won't cut a deal?'
'He has to.'
'But what if he won't?'
'Tell him I'll kill him. Not today or tomorrow. But soon. Grotius is dead. Peltor's dead. He knows there's no protection from me. He'll make a deal. There's no reason for him not to. Amsterdam have what they want: a body. A dead Petra Reuter. I don't care if she's discredited. I don't want her back. So as long as they leave me in peace, I'm happy to stay silent. Everybody wins.'
'So you do your thing, I do mine, then we meet.'
'That's right.'
'Then what?'
'Then it's up to us.'
She walked from rue Vieille du Temple to boulevard de Sébastopol. It was a bitter morning, puddles frozen, car windscreens frosted, breath iced. Sylvie Adler had given Stephanie a thick coat and a scarf but neither could protect her fully from the temperature.
She'd remembered from her previous visit that the easyInternetCafé was open twenty-four hours a day. She took a terminal, sent a message and waited.
Parting from Newman had been strangely muted. Neither of them had been quite sure what to do, what to say. They'd hugged, kissed, hugged again. He'd whispered into her ear, 'Be careful.'
'You too,' she'd whispered back.
Then they'd looked into each other's eyes, both anticipating something more. But there wasn't anything. Not yet. Not until they were together again.
The screen flickered.
> > Petra. No sleep for the dead? How strange.
Stern. Stephanie looked at her watch. Twelve minutes. She shook her head, the theory gathering momentum and forcing a smile through the fatigue. She started to type.
By the time she left the easyInternetCafé it was six-thirty-five. She made the call from a France Télécom phonebooth, dialling the memorized mobile number. She wasn't confident of getting through but was eventually answered on the thirteenth pulse.
'Madame Zahani?'
'Thank you for agreeing to see me.'
'Under the circumstances, how could I refuse? Robert gave you my private number?'
'Not knowingly.'
'Then I must remember to change it.'
Scheherazade Zahani wore a large, white towelling dressing-gown, nothing on her feet, no make-up. Stephanie was surprised, then suspicious. It seemed consistent, though; the calculated choice of a chess player. They were in the kitchen; stainless-steel, ceramic and glass, vast and gleaming. Zahani had dismissed the apologetic cook the moment he'd appeared and was now making tea for them. Again, a deliberate choice, Stephanie felt.
Zahani said, 'You took a risk calling me, then coming here.'
'Robert described you as a woman of infinite options. I didn't think you'd want to overlook some of them. Not until you knew what they involved.'
'We'll see. What do you want?'
'I want to know about Butterfly. Specifically, what it would mean to you if the deal were to collapse.'
'It won't. It'll be signed at two this afternoon.'
'Hypothetically.'
Zahani considered it briefly then shrugged. 'I have plenty of other interests.'
'It wouldn't matter to you?'
'I'd lose some money. But it wouldn't matter, no.'
'Why not?'
'One can never underestimate the extent to which America will fail to understand the world beyond its borders. Bearing this in mind, one can always position oneself to take long-term advantage of a short-term setback.'
'You have another position?'
'I have several. I always have several. Not to do so would be foolish in the extreme. There are many possible outcomes for Iraq and its neighbours. The regional situation is as it's always been: liquid. But I suspect this isn't really why you're here.'
'No. It's Robert.'
Zahani smiled a little. 'I imagined it would be.'
They talked for half an hour. They started with Robert then diversified. Zahani gave Stephanie the assurance she'd come for, while Stephanie gave Zahani the answers she'd needed. Above all, the confirmation of the coincidence; Stephanie running into Newman on the car-park ramp with all its consequences. She appeared to find it reassuring, the missing component dropped into a complex equation, allowing her to come to the conclusion she knew to be true.
As Stephanie was preparing to leave, she said, 'The last time I was here you suspected who I was, didn't you?'
'That would be over-stating it. But I had an instinct about you.'
'Yet you helped me anyway and, in doing so, jeopardized Butterfly.'
She took her time. 'It kept my options open. My long-term options.'
Stephanie wondered what those might be.
Zahani said, 'My husband was Yemeni. Did you know that?'
'I thought he was Saudi.'
'A common misconception. He emigrated to Saudi Arabia to make his fortune. Being Yemeni helped him. It automatically removed him from the court politics of the royal household. My husband grew up poor yet even when he was rich he clung to the principles that had helped him when he was young. These were things he passed on to me. He taught me that the most valuable commodity of all is time. And that patience is control. The reason time is so valuable, he used to say, is that it's the one resource the poor have in abundance and that the rich can't buy. In business, for instance, Western companies – including, I'm afraid to say, the Amsterdam Group – worry about the next financial quarter, or the next financial year. In Iraq or Bangladesh or Afghanistan, wherever there are many poor – that's not a pressing concern. So, when it comes to dealing with the West, this is what they understand: that if they wait long enough they will prevail by default.'
Stephanie smiled. 'Always the chess player.'
'Always. For me – for us – it's like this: a Muslim tribesman meets an American in a remote mountain pass. The American asks for directions. The tribesman insists they share some tea first in a gesture of friendship. The American accepts. The tribesman gathers some sticks, lights a fire, boils the water and brews the tea. Before long, the American grows restless. He tries to remain courteous but wants to be on his way and, eventually, his impatience gets the better of him. He glances at his watch. The tribesman sees this so the American apologizes. To which the tribesman says, "You've got the watches but we've got the time."'
Café Bleu on rue Cler was very small. In the summer, Stephanie supposed, tables spilled on to the pavement and tripled capacity. Today, on a morning in January, the space beneath the canopy was empty. The interior was predictable; rough wooden tables, a bar of battered zinc, walls stained sepia by decades of tobacco.
She sat by the window and peered through the peeling paint on the dirty glass. She checked her watch. Five-to-nine. Any time now. She ordered some coffee.
Maurice Hammond was three minutes late, according to the schedule that Rosie had given her on the flight from Austria. Each morning he walked from Pension Sylbert, just off avenue Bosquet, to the same café on rue Cler for breakfast, entering at exactly nine o'clock. Stephanie had asked Rosie how she knew this.
'He told me once. Every time he's in Paris, it's the same ritual. Same place to stay, same place for breakfast.'
He looked older than in the photograph. Shorter, too, with a patrician nose over a full moustache. He was hampered by a limp – the right knee, perhaps, or even the hip – and was wearing a suit that was too big for him. Chalk-stripe, double-breasted and slightly shabby, Stephanie guessed it had fitted neatly before age had reduced him.
He took a table on the far side of the café and spoke to the waiter in fluent, elegant French.
Stephanie hadn't decided where to kill him. Her initial inclination had been to shoot him in his room at the Pension Sylbert. Then she realized that she wanted to see him first. To see exactly what a friend of Alexander's might look like. During the atrophied years of Magenta House, there had never been so much as a whisper concerning Alexander's personal life. The idea that he might have had friends, or enjoyed books, or opera, or a glass of wine – anything, in fact, that humanized him had seemed scorchingly perverse.
So she'd settled for Café Bleu. Her curiosity satisfied, there would be plenty of easy opportunities. Perhaps even in the café itself. Or out on the street. She wasn't worried about witnesses. She knew how to melt into the fabric of a city better than anyone. Within an hour, a physical description would be out of date.
She went through the two papers she'd brought with her, Le Figaro and Liberation, and found her death reported in both. The article in Liberation mentioned a possible recent sighting: There are unconfirmed reports that Reuter was in Paris late last year. An unnamed witness claims to have seen her leaving the Four Seasons George V with another woman.
And so it begins, Stephanie thought. The unconfirmed report would, in time, be confirmed. Soon after, the film footage would seep into the public domain and Anders Brand's posthumous disgrace would be complete.
Slowly, I realize that I'm not going to kill him. Or even question him. Through the early hours of this morning I went over all the things I thought I might say to him before I pulled the trigger. There would have been outrage, naturally. And accusations of betrayal, bloodied hands, ethical bankruptcy. All the tools of Petra's trade, in fact. But now the moment is here, I find I really can't bring myself to do it.
For one thing, killing Maurice Hammond would drag me back into the realm of Magenta House and that's something I'm not going to allow. They can do their own dirty work.
Much as I like Rosie, she tossed Hammond to me as cheaply as a waiter's tip.
I don't take any comfort from the fact that he'll die in London next week. I can't even feel particularly hostile towards him despite what he's caused me. It doesn't even bother me that this man was a friend of Alexander's. I simply don't care any more. Not about him. Not about them.
The newspapers are right. Petra Reuter really is dead. I've seen it in print. Now I know it's true. I'm Stephanie Patrick. Whatever I do now, I do in my own name.
At her apartment on avenue Foch, Scheherazade Zahani took Newman by the arm and steered him towards the armchair next to hers, leaving Gordon Wiley to occupy a nineteenth-century sofa upholstered in cream and gold silk. Newman remembered the salon. The only changes he could see were on the walls; the two Jan van Eyck canvases that had hung opposite the French windows had been replaced by a religious portrait by Bernard van Orley and a painted panel depicting the crucifixion by Gerard David.
There were four other men in the room. The one standing beside Zahani's chair was Balthazar Karyo, her lawyer. In New York he'd been known as the Brute in the Suit; short silver hair, a thirty-year-old stud scar running from forehead to jawbone, a thick nose that carried three obvious breaks, but impeccably dressed. Newman and Karyo had always got on but neither betrayed this to the room. Newman looked at the three men behind Gordon Wiley. One of them would be a lawyer, perhaps even two. But he was certain that at least one would be security. Looking at the trio, it was impossible to separate them.
Wiley said, 'I still don't understand how you got involved in all this.'
Newman said, 'It's like that old blues line: if it wasn't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all.'
'I guess you probably think you know her pretty well by now.'
'I'm here to make a deal. Nothing else.'
'Come on. What do you think's going to happen? You cut the deal for her, then what? The two of you ride off into the sunset? You both live happily ever after?'
'I'm only here to make sure there is an after.'
'She'll cut you loose.'
'Doesn't matter.'
'She could kill you.'
