by Tom Cain
“My academy was the Feliks Dzerzhinsky University. It was run by the KGB. I was assigned to the second chief directorate, which monitored foreigners within the Soviet Union. I was taught English. I was educated in art, western culture, film, even politics, so that I could hold a conversation with the most sophisticated visitors to our country. And then I discovered what I was really being trained to do. Have you heard of the term honey trap?
“Sure.” Carver nodded. “A guy meets a pretty girl in a bar. They go back to his place. They have sex. The next day someone shows him the pictures. Either he tells them what they want to know, or wifey sees the snaps. Your lot went for honey traps in a big way. So, you were one of those girls, huh? The ones us Westerners were always warned about.”
“I was the honey in the trap, yes. You want to know the truth? I was a prostitute for the State. When I went to Moscow, I was a virgin. I had not even kissed a boy. By the time I graduated, there was nothing I did not know about attracting a man and giving him pleasure. Every trick, every perversion . . . and you know, we were always told to be as dirty as possible because a man will talk much more if he is filmed on his knees being whipped or taking a dildo up the ass than if he is simply putting his dick in the mouth of some cheap whore.
“And I was good, you know. When Alexandra Petrova was sent on assignment, all the boys at headquarters would gather around to see the photographs and the videos. And naturally, the senior officers liked to ensure that my work was of the highest quality. So they invited me out to their dachas for the weekend and I . . . I . . . Well, you can imagine what happened.”
She blinked three or four times and looked away.
Carver sat up and held out a handkerchief. “Hey, come on. Stop beating yourself up. You were a kid. You lived in a dictatorship. You didn’t have any choice. I mean, what would have happened if you’d said, ‘No, I refuse to do this’?”
“If I was lucky I would have been transferred to some small, cold town in Siberia. If not . . . What happens to whores who anger their pimps? They get raped, beaten, killed . . .”
“It’s not your fault, then.”
She gave him a tired smile. “You mean, I’m a whore the same way you’re a killer?”
“That’s one way of looking at it. I suppose there could be others.” Carver didn’t know what else to say. He could feel his defenses falling apart with every word she said, every time he looked at her face.
Alix loosened her arms and stretched her legs. She smoothed the T-shirt down over her thighs. Then she leaned forward and stared Carver straight in the eye, as if issuing a challenge.
“Perhaps. But I will not know that until I have heard your story too.”
“Well, I need a drink before I start spilling my guts.” Carver got up and started walking toward his kitchen. “How about a glass of wine? Let’s pretend we’re normal, have a nice, cold bottle of Pinot Grigio on a summer afternoon.”
She thought for a second. “Pinot Grigio, an Italian wine. Also known in America as Pinot Gris. Not a classic wine but, as you say, very refreshing.” A smug smile. “See? I was trained well.”
Carver paused in the doorway. He looked at the beautiful woman in the ratty old T-shirt. “Yeah,” he said. “I can believe that.” Then he went to get the wine.
28
Pierre Papin brewed a large pot of very strong coffee, found a fresh pack of cigarettes, and got to work. The Englishman he knew as Charlie had returned to England, still dressed for the weekend in his corduroy pants and knitted sweater. He’d told Papin that he needed to talk to his boss and decide what they should do. Doubtless they would use their own means to track down their missing operatives. Papin was determined to beat them to it. And then he would take advantage of whatever he discovered.
It amused him to think that no one else in Paris shared his interest in the couple’s fate. The TV stations had stopped showing the composite photos by early afternoon. The death of the princess had become a global tidal wave, swamping all other news in a mass of grief, speculation, and sheer curiosity. The police had been happy to let the other events of the night be swept under the bureaucratic carpet.
So much the better for Papin. He had no competition. Yet he knew Charlie worked for men who would very much like to find Carver, the girl, and that precious computer. And all Papin’s instincts told him these men would not be alone. Others would also be searching. After all, if his bet was right and Petrova was Carver’s new partner, she must have a boss in Russia. He’d be wondering where she’d got to and what she was doing. If Papin could get information that both sides wanted, he could drive the price sky high. So he commandeered all the tapes from the Gare de Lyon and took them back to his unmarked, unnumbered office.
His first task was to identify Petrova. The hair color Carver had bought must have been intended for her, because he had not used it himself—that much was clear from the CCTV images of him they’d already identified. So Papin’s composite photo of Petrova was already out of date. He decided to start again from scratch.
Papin looked at every person seen walking toward the platform for the Milan train between six forty-five and its departure at seven fifteen. Thankfully, at that hour on a Sunday morning, the station was relatively quiet. He ignored all single males, families with children, anyone who was obviously under eighteen or over forty. All he wanted was young female adults traveling alone.
Twenty-two fit the bill, so Papin printed up stills of all of them. Then he started the process of elimination again.
Papin approached the problem logically. Petrova had persuaded a trained assassin to forget all his basic field craft. He should have killed her. Even if he had spent the night with her, he should have killed her afterward. He could not afford to let a potential witness live. Yet he had. Clearly this was an exceptional woman.
It took a matter of seconds to flick through the pile of stills and get rid of all the obviously dumpy, plain ones; the backpackers with bulging thighs; the short-sighted, buck-toothed, flat-chested wallflowers; the anonymous young women whose destiny was to always remain invisible to men. That left seven. Beauty, thought Papin, was indeed a rare commodity.
Not that all seven of them were beautiful. But one had to be careful. This woman had been through a tough night. She would be tired, not looking her best. And a closed-circuit camera was not the most flattering lens. Papin looked again, more closely. Four more pictures hit the trash can.
Now there were three finalists in Pierre Papin’s contest. The first was a pretty little blond in tight jeans and a lacy white peasant top. Papin smiled to himself. This one would certainly tempt any man. But her golden hair fell to her shoulders. And why had Carver bought hair color and scissors if not to get rid of such distinctive locks?
That left two. One was a redhead. Despite the hour and the day, she was smartly dressed, an ambitious young executive, heedless of weekends and holidays. Papin examined her sharp features and the tight, dark slash of her lipsticked mouth. He could imagine what she would be like in bed: fiery, controlling, neurotic. This one would be easy to anger and difficult to control. A man would have to play Petruchio to her shrew. She hardly looked like the seductive model Charlie had described.
The third woman wore a short, pale blue dress. Papin paused to imagine the way it would look as she walked, stretched across her ass, flicking around her slender thighs. He paused to let himself enjoy that thought. It was just business, he told himself. He had to put himself in Carver’s shoes.
Charlie had said Petrova looked like a model. Well, this girl had the body for it and the fine, haughty features. Even in the blurred, grainy video still that much was obvious. Papin looked at her raven black hair. It was roughly cut, like an urchin’s. A coiffure like that could cost a fortune in a smart Parisian salon, or you could get the same effect for free. With a pair of cheap scissors and a bottle of dye from a pharmacy shelf.
Yes, thought Papin, this was the one. It was a gamble to eliminate all the other possibilities,
but he was prepared to go all-in. He believed he had found Mademoiselle Petrova.
29
They were both on the sofa now, sitting at either end, with the empty bottle of wine in an ice bucket on the floor below them. Carver had showered too. Now he was wearing a loose-fitting white T-shirt and a pair of faded blue linen pants. He looked good. Alix had seen the way he’d been looking at her from the moment they’d first met. She wondered when he’d make his move.
“Your turn,” she said.
“Must I?”
“Yes! I did. And anyway, I want to know how you became who . . . what you are. I have met lots of people who kill. But I never met one before who made me omelettes, or listened to anything I had to say. I guess I never met a killer with manners.”
“You don’t want to be taken in by manners. Having manners doesn’t necessarily mean you care about other people. Sometimes it just hides the fact that you couldn’t give a damn.”
She looked at him. “Can you give a damn?”
“About what?”
She said nothing.
“Yes, I give a damn.”
All he had to do was lean toward her, break the invisible wall between them. Her pulse rate started to rise. Her breathing deepened. Her back arched fractionally. Her lips relaxed, ready to receive his.
But Carver didn’t move.
Alix felt like an idiot. Then her temper flashed. How dare he play games with her? How dare he look at her with those cool, assessing eyes?
“You didn’t finish your story,” he said.
Alix didn’t reply.
“Tell me about Kursk. What was the offer he made you? The one you could not refuse.”
“I told you, I have said enough. Now you tell me something.”
“What?”
“I don’t care. Anything. Just so long as it is true.”
Carver looked away. He put a hand up to his face. He leaned back and gazed at the ceiling.
“Fair enough. I’ll tell you why I didn’t kiss you just now.”
Alix was silent, but her eyes narrowed as she looked at him.
“I was scared. I was afraid that if I opened myself up, even that much, I would not stop until I had given myself away, every bit of me. Is that true enough for you?”
“Yes,” Alix whispered.
She had been watching Carver’s eyes as he spoke. Something in them had changed, as though a curtain had been drawn aside to reveal a distant view of the man he really was. But now she could see him closing up again. When he spoke again, that other man had vanished.
“So . . . Kursk?”
She wanted to scream at him: Forget Kursk! She longed to get the hidden Samuel Carver back. But she had to find the patience to wait, to let him emerge of his own accord. So she gathered her thoughts and said, “It was very simple. He blackmailed me.”
“What do you mean?”
She sighed. “May I smoke?”
She could see him hesitate for an instant. There was a fastidious, disciplined side to Carver. It probably came from his years in the military. All the videos on his shelves were in alphabetical order, all the cooking implements in his kitchen were immaculately arranged. He would not like anyone smoking in his apartment.
As if he knew what Alix was thinking, Carver laughed. “Sure. Go ahead. Then talk.”
Alix inhaled deep into her lungs, then let out a long, slow stream of smoke that curled and eddied in the shafts of afternoon light that shone through the apartment’s deep-set windows.
“I had been in the KGB for less than two years when the wall came down. Suddenly, all our old allies were rebelling against us, kicking our soldiers out of their countries. It was humiliating. Everything any of us had known was falling apart.
“For a while, we carried on in Moscow as if nothing had happened. In some ways it was easier. More Westerners were coming to the city. They thought that the cold war was over and they had won, so they did not care what girls they screwed, or what they said to us. But then Gorbachev was deposed, Yeltsin took over, and suddenly there was no money to pay anyone. The whole country was run by gangsters. However bad it had been before, now it was one hundred times worse. We had nothing. We had to live somehow.”
“You sound like you’re expecting me to judge you. I’m in no position to do that.”
“Maybe. Anyway, I was lucky. Because I can speak English I got a job at a hotel, the Marriott, working at the reception desk. I found a good man, a doctor. He was not rich or handsome, but he treated me with respect.
“For a long time, I thought I was okay. Then Kursk started coming to the hotel. He had worked with the girls as a ‘bodyguard.’ That was what they called it. The real reason was to make sure we did not do any business for ourselves, or try to run away with a rich foreign client. Kursk liked to remind me that he knew who I was and what I had done. He could expose me at any time. Everything I had worked for would be ruined. I offered him money to go away, but he turned me down. He was happier teasing me, just keeping me like a fish on the end of a line. I knew that sooner or later he would pull on the hook.
“That’s what happened. Kursk came to the hotel on Friday morning. He said he needed a partner on a job. He wanted a woman. People would be distracted by her and pay less attention to him. He told me to leave work, tell my supervisor I was feeling sick. If I came with him, he would pay me ten thousand dollars, U.S. And if I did not . . .”
“Let me guess. He still had some of your old photographs. You would be caught by your own honey trap.”
Alix nodded.
“So what happened to the doctor?”
“He is still there. He wants to marry me.”
“What do you want?”
“He will give me a home, maybe a family. I will be a respectable woman.”
“But?”
“But I do not love him. I would just be selling myself again.”
“Come here,” said Carver.
He opened his arms, and Alix nestled against his shoulder. He put his arms around her. She could feel him pressing his nose against her hair, breathing in its scent. Then he leaned back against the arm of the sofa and she went with him, relaxing into his lean, muscular embrace.
It took a couple of minutes for Alix to realize that Carver was asleep. She smiled ruefully. She must be losing her touch if men could take her in their arms without being driven mad with lust. But perhaps it was a greater compliment that a man like Carver would let himself sleep. That was the ultimate vulnerability. She could do anything to him now.
Alix slipped out of Carver’s arms and got to her feet. She stroked a lock of hair away from his forehead, then gently kissed his brow, like a mother would a child. She picked up the wine bottle, the ice bucket, and the glasses and carried them to the kitchen.
She walked along the hallway to Carver’s bedroom, smiling as she saw the TV on a stand at the end of the bed, exactly as she’d predicted. There was a bedside table with a photograph in a silver frame, showing Carver at the helm of a yacht with a woman hugging him from behind. They were both laughing.
Alix felt a quick, sharp stab of jealousy. Who was this woman making Carver so happy? There was no trace of any feminine presence in the apartment. She wasn’t part of his life now. Even so, Alix resented her closeness to Carver and the unforced joy in their laughter.
She told herself she was just being professionally thorough as she looked through Carver’s wardrobe, fingering the fabric of his classic English and Italian suits, smiling at his well-worn jeans and baggy sweaters. She thought of his tracksuit. Why was it that the older clothes got, the more men seemed to like them?
On the top shelf of the wardrobe, above the hanging suits and shirts, there were a couple of folded blankets and a rolled-up duvet. Alix had to stretch to reach the duvet. She pulled it down, then carried it through to the living room and draped it over Carver’s unconscious body.
But where was she going to sleep? This was a bachelor apartment. There was only one bed. Alexandra Petrov
a went to sleep in it.
30
Alone in his office on Sunday night, Pierre Papin pursued the question of Carver, the girl, and the train they had taken out of Paris. A check on the ticket machines at the Gare de Lyon had come up with more than a dozen purchases made during the missing minutes when Carver could have used them. Four of these were for one ticket only. Papin was tempted to dismiss these, but he had to consider the possibility that the Englishman had dropped the girl and continued to a separate destination on his own.
Several of the ticket buyers had used credit cards, none in Carver’s name. But that was to be expected. If he had used a card, the name would certainly be that of an alias. So Papin was left with the task of checking twelve separate journeys, involving more than twenty individuals, hoping to track down his two suspects by a process of elimination.
It was a massive task and would require a great deal of cooperation. Ideally, Papin should ask for help from other departments, but he had no intention of doing that unless it was absolutely unavoidable. It was a matter of selfpreservation.
It is said in politics that your opponents are in the other parties, but your enemies are in your own. Papin operated on the same principle. He had a visceral distrust of his colleagues in the various branches of the French security system. He knew they’d happily stab him in the back if it gave their department a moment’s advantage. That was the way the game worked in every intelligence community. It wasn’t the terrorists, the spies, and the other assorted dangers to national security you had to worry about. It was the bastard in the next office.
There had to be another way of tracking his prey. Papin put himself in Carver’s position: Okay, he arrives at the station with the girl. They split up in case anyone is looking for a couple. He tells her to go to the Milan train, makes a public show of buying tickets to Milan, and lets himself be seen on camera walking toward the appropriate platform. But unless he is engaged in a massive double bluff, he does not get on that train. He gets on another train, using tickets he has bought from a machine. Yet Carver and the girl do not return to the concourse. . . .
