“Pierre was poisoned? Oh, God. How?” Though the news didn’t come as a surprise, Anna was shaken.
Barnes took over. “He ingested or was injected with a lethal dose of tetrodotoxin. Difficulty breathing, thirst, sweating, immobility—you said Barton barely moved the whole time you were talking—whilst symptoms of a heart attack, are also present in tetrodotoxin poisoning. The someone he told you had almost knocked him down? Obviously, that was Komarov. You might recall the classic case of the dissident Bulgarian murdered in London? The ferrule of an umbrella was fitted up as a hypodermic to shoot the poison ricin into his system. The assassin got away; who notices a man simply walking along swinging his umbrella? The intelligence consensus was, and remains, that the killer and invention were Soviet. KGB, to be exact.”
“Sorry,” Anna said with some urgency, “but I’m more concerned about what I’ll be doing than what was done by Soviet operatives years ago. Marina is now handing me the stuff she’s brought, her version of the fake YOUNGER. I then take the bag out of my purse and give it to her?”
“Yes—and make sure you tell her about switching to the Boots containers in London because you were afraid of someone catching up with you if you had to flee.”
“What if Komarov doesn’t show up?”
Barnes laughed grimly. “The result will be the same: two more pissed-off Russians in the world. Grigoriy will be furious if he thinks Marina has the products and, with them, the reins of their deal. And she’ll be beyond livid when she finds out the products are inexpensive everyday skincare. But he’ll turn up. He’s stayed on top of this, and he won’t pass up the chance to grab the only YOUNGER in existence.” His eyes gleamed, and again Anna was struck by his passion to see Komarov manacled and put away. “As far as we know, he’s working alone, but don’t let your guard down, Anna. Don’t drink anything, eat anything, or touch anyone, no matter what. Got that?”
“Got it. And when Kelm shows up?”
Barnes shrugged. “Just try to stay calm. You won’t see me, but I’ll be there. As will David. And people with weapons. So”—he got to his feet—“that’s it for today. Chips will come by at half past nine in the morning to say hello. I’ll come with the sound team at half past one; they’ll fix you with a wire and we’ll check the transmission. Then David and I will leave you. You’ve got the schedule. At half past two, a taxi driven by one of our men will take you to Piazza Navona. You’ll pay him, for the benefit of watchers, then sit at a table outside in the front row at Caffè Bernini. If there isn’t one free, ask the waiter to put one out for you and tip him. You’re a good actress, Anna; you’ll know what to do.”
After an evening of slow and tender lovemaking that took Anna to even greater heights of ecstasy than the fiery passion of the preceding days, Anna expected to fall asleep easily. But long after she could hear David’s breathing assume the measured calm of sleep, she lay wide awake, fearful and queasy. When she did doze off, she was startled awake by her dream in which a hand with a hypodermic needle came closer and closer as a voice murmured, “Just relax, Tanya. You’ll be young for eternity now.”
She must have groaned aloud, because David reached over in his sleep and took her hand. She unclenched her fist, lay back, and finally relaxed. With him holding her, she felt protected.
She could hear the water running in David’s bathroom when she woke at eight, so she went to her own and showered, then carefully did her makeup, eschewing the deeper-hued items in favor of the softer “Anna” shades and roughing up her bob to turn it into a more youthful style. Her text had said she’d been using YOUNGER every three days, and, since she was begging to regain her youth, it made sense that she wouldn’t have transitioned gracefully back into her old self but would be stuck between Anna and Tanya. She wore her black jodhpurs and a black jersey; she’d add her cardigan once the wire had been taped in place. She pulled on her UGGs, superstitiously telling herself that as long as she was prepared to run, she probably wouldn’t be forced to.
David was seated at the table with tea and a newspaper when she entered the living room. He looked up, his face tense. “Yesterday’s courier must have brought the Friday papers from London.”
“Thanks. I’m not up for reading right now.”
“Slow news period, anyhow.”
“Let’s hope it stays that way. As opposed to ‘American Woman, Others Killed in Piazza Navona Shoot-Out.’”
“No one’s getting killed,” he said. “You look like Tanya’s mum fallen on hard times, by the way. Here, have a cup of tea and ignore my anxiety. I’m used to directing thrillers, not appearing in them.”
“I’m more eager to get it over with than anxious. I’ve been frightened for so long now, it’s second nature.” She was lying again, and to David this time, but she didn’t want her anxiety to spread to him. Both their lives were still in danger: not only was she sure she now knew who the murderer was, but she was also positive that, while Barton had been sincere about Tanya’s work schedule and pay plan, Martin Kelm had been generous with his offers of freedom whenever she wanted to quit for the simple reason that he planned, sooner or later, to kill her. A cooperative Tanya Avery would have resulted in an Anna Wallingham every bit as dead as an uncooperative Tanya Avery. She pushed away the thought and went on evenly, “I was lying awake last night thinking of how much has happened in such a short time. I can barely remember having been in Amsterdam, and that was only six weeks ago.”
“And just over a week ago, I had no idea Anna Wallingham was still alive. So it’s not all bad.”
“I think you’re actually excited today just because you get to hang out with the MI6 guys.” She made her tone light.
“Well, that, too. Though it’s fear as much as excitement. I can’t sit back and enjoy being a spectator when you’ll be smack in the middle of it.”
There was a tapping, even more reticent than Malcolm’s, at the door. “That must be Etherington,” David said. “No, you eat. I’ll get it.”
Sir Charles looked carefree as ever, as though he were popping into someone’s box at the races. “I won’t be there this afternoon,” he noted. “I leave that to the younger generation. Or generations, in my case. But I look forward to seeing you back here afterward. I’m sure you’ll do us proud.”
After he’d left, she turned to David. “Do you think he’s forgotten I’m not a British citizen, or did he just use the first cliché that sprang to mind?”
There was a table free at the front of Caffè Bernini, so Anna didn’t have to go through a whole pantomime with the waiter. She made a show of looking for her friend, checking out the other tables facing onto Piazza Navona and those behind. She saw a few obvious tourists, a dapper older man in a camel’s hair jacket with an elegant woman in silk, a solitary man in a tweed hat with the bulbous, blue-veined nose of a serious drinker hunched over what appeared to be not his first double grappa, some suntanned Americans with Cokes and beers, but no Marina. Sitting at her front table, she scanned the piazza in an obvious way—figuring Anna the unknowing stooge would be so desperate to see Marina she wouldn’t bother faking casualness. She looked at her watch; that, too, would seem natural. Still five minutes to go. Turning her head in a 270-degree arc, she saw no sign of David, Andrew, Kelm, or anyone else familiar.
Her heart lurched when she saw Barton’s widow enter the square from the street on the right. She was wearing a sable jacket, even though she must have been sweltering in the mild weather. Could that be her idea of camouflage? Or was the aim to look like just another rich fashion maven on a spending spree, since she carried a couple of designer shopping bags? “Ah, Marina,” she murmured as if to herself, barely loudly enough for the microphone taped to her breastbone to pick it up, waving discreetly in case she wasn’t immediately recognizable as what she now thought of as Lisa/Tanya/Anna.
“Anna,” Marina said when she got to the table. “I’ve been so worried!” she said
unconvincingly while her eyes remained flinty. She sat in the chair to Anna’s right, setting the bags, one large and one small, by her feet. “I am relieved now. It has been such hell for me. And the boys are, of course, distraught.”
“The poor children,” Anna said sympathetically. “Where are they?”
“In Russia, with my mother,” came the reply, delivered with a dismissive wave of the hand. Good old Marina, Anna thought. “I will call you Anna, yes? What will you have? An aperitivo, yes? An Aperol spritz?”
“Campari soda, I think.”
“Me also.” She paused, staring into the square, her face unreadable. Then she got to her feet. “But not here.” She picked up the bags. “Too gloomy, this place. Look at the sun shining on the other side of the piazza. Come, Anna, we must sit in the sunshine.”
“Oh, but I—I got us such a good table!”
“Good for what?” Marina sniffed. “To sit and stare together at the sunny tables across from us?”
“No, but—” She felt herself melting under Marina’s withering glare.
“Then why stay here? Well?”
Anna stood, slowly reaching for her bag and slinging it over her shoulder, fighting panic. Just what the day needed, she thought frantically, the wrong main actress deciding to improvise. She couldn’t argue. She knew Marina; fighting her decision would strike the other woman as suspicious. And she was suspicious enough already. There was just one chance of walking away today with the entire BarPharm horror show behind her, and it didn’t include refusing to indulge Her Highness.
Marina wasn’t tapping her foot, but she might as well have been.
“You’re right, as usual,” Anna said with her warmest smile. “No wonder I was feeling chilly.” She followed dutifully as Marina strode across the square and between the two famed fountains, then managed to elbow out of the way a startled young couple who’d been eyeing an outdoor table as it became free. Oh, hell, not even in the front row. Stuck in the middle. Anna’s heart sank. Would anyone even be able to see her from across the piazza?
At least Marina was appeased, sighing in satisfaction as she set her bags down again, Anna noting that the large one bore a Gucci logo and the smaller that of Prada. “So, this is much better, yes?” Marina pronounced as she peremptorily flagged down a waiter and ordered two Campari and sodas. She plucked a pack of Benson & Hedges and a gold lighter from her Hermès handbag. “I smoke, yes?”
“I didn’t know you smoked,” Anna said.
“Pierre didn’t like the smoking. So, no cigarettes around him. Now I smoke too much. And you? You don’t look so good, Anna. The results don’t last. This is good to know. You still have products, but you have not been using them, yes?”
“I cut back weeks ago to every three, four, five days at the most. You know, to stretch them out. Do I look just ancient? Did you bring me more?” She made her voice as frantic and pathetic as possible.
“No need to worry. I have them for you here, and I will provide them as long as you wish. You can even go back to the doctor again to start the full regime again if you wish.” She was silent as the waiter set down their drinks, then continued in a severe tone. “But why did you leave so suddenly? I get to the hospital, and my husband is dead and Tanya gone!”
“It was because of that man, Martin Kelm,” Anna said. “You know him?”
Marina nodded. “MI6 man,” she lied glibly.
“Yes. Before he collapsed, Pierre was starting to tell me something—”
“And then he fell down, yes? You were thinking he wanted to warn you about Kelm?”
“I was afraid Kelm was in the street, watching. I couldn’t go to the hospital; I panicked. I’ve been hiding ever since.”
“So, Kelm is an English spy gone bad!” Marina gestured wildly with her cigarette, then tsk-tsked in irritation. “Now I have got my ashes in your drink! I must get you another.” Quickly, she picked up Anna’s glass in one hand and headed inside, taking the shopping bags with her. Well, trust had never been her strong suit.
As subtly as she could, Anna murmured, “Andrew, can you hear me? We’re across the square now.”
She took a deep breath. Was Martin Kelm in one of the apartments over this or another café, looking through a rifle scope at her blond hair shining in the sun?
Marina returned, a fresh drink in her hand, which she set unceremoniously in front of Anna. “Now, what were we saying? Ah, yes, Kelm. I must tell the police about this Kelm. Pierre trusted people too much.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And your products, Anna?” she demanded. “You have them for me? What I brought is, I think, close to what you have. But I can give you something stronger next time.”
“Oh, yes, that would be good. I brought what’s left—not much but certainly enough to check the formula.” How could she keep stalling without babbling? She opted for babbling. “I realize now more than ever how lucky I was to have participated in YOUNGER’s development. I hope you forgive me for leaving like that.”
Marina nodded in satisfaction. “Yes. Good. So, now we are partners again, as we were fated to be. And here are your products.” She reached for the small Prada paper tote at her feet and set it on the table next to her. “To our future. And to Pierre, of course.” She reached for her glass.
Anna raised hers to toast, then set it down immediately to unzip her shoulder bag and fumble around in it. As she did so, she felt something jiggling inside her jersey. The wire, she thought. The damned wire has pulled free from the transmitter! The others can’t even hear me! She froze in horror.
Marina took a sip, then set her glass down and sighed impatiently. “So, you have what’s left of the products for me, yes?” she prompted.
“Yes, I do.” Anna smiled as naturally as she could and held up the plastic Boots bag, then set it on the table next to her, opposite the Prada bag. “I transferred everything into these jars on the train out of London. The lab packaging was too obvious if someone chasing me went through my things.”
“You feared Martin Kelm? Yes, of course.”
“Oh, I wasn’t worried solely about him,” Anna said conversationally, meanwhile thinking Okay, might as well go for broke now. “I was more worried about you, you see.” She had, as they said in the theater, just gone off-script. Now neither actress was playing her role as the director would like. Anna had gone rogue.
Marina stopped in the act of reaching for the Boots bag. “You were afraid of me? Why ever would you be afraid of me?”
“Well, you know, when I saw those CCTV photos of you on the platform at Oxford Circus the day Olga was killed—”
“Don’t be ridiculous! I had nothing to do with that silly cow’s suicide.” She frowned. “Nor would I ever travel by Tube. What supposed pictures are these?”
“I got them from someone who had no doubt Olga had been given a helping hand onto the tracks,” Anna replied calmly. “Good disguise. He thought you were a workman. I did, too, until I studied a photo in which you were looking down and saw your birthmark.” Marina’s hand went on autopilot to the back of her neck. “You must have been enraged when you realized Olga was going to ruin your plans, eh? Plus, you know,” she continued in the same conversational tone, “I fibbed a little before. It wasn’t something about Kelm that Pierre was about to tell me when he died; it was about you. Had he told you he’d destroyed the YOUNGER formula? Is that why you poisoned his cappuccino? You fooled him. He thought it was the hot coffee burning his mouth. But it was the toxin, wasn’t it?”
“How dare you! You know very well Martin Kelm is a killer. Why do this, Anna? You are trying to blackmail me?” Marina shook her head and sneered. “I told Pierre you were trouble. You wish to prove me right when I’m the only one trying to help you?”
Anna reached out with both hands and ostentatiously switched her drink with Marina’s. “All right. We’ll drink then. To Pierre?”
“What are you doing with my drink? Have you lost your mind?”
Anna picked up the drink that had been Marina’s. “Not at all. Let’s toast, huh?” She had to fight now to keep her voice even. Surely, Marina had no intention of leaving her alive. Where in the hell was Andrew?
A softer tone came into Marina’s voice. “Don’t you want to be very rich, Anna? I can make you indescribably wealthy, you know.”
“Is that what you told Pierre?”
Marina sneered as the mask fell. “Pierre was weak. Oh, you should have seen him repenting, saying he had no right to play God, sniveling that if people—even some amateur third-rate mafia spies—were going to die because of YOUNGER, then YOUNGER had to die.” She snorted. “He thought I’d respect him for destroying the formulae that would make us billionaires! Did he tell you he was going to the police after he gave you the explanation he felt he ‘owed’ you? Can you believe that?”
“I can. Perhaps I understood him better than you did. But to kill him?”
“He destroyed everything without asking me! YOUNGER is mine, and Barton Pharmaceuticals will be, too, once that old bitch of a maman dies. I was the one waiting in the street, you idiot. I let myself into the flat with my own keys as soon as you left so I could take the products that were mine, too. I admit I underestimated you. Then I needed Mr. Kelm—to find you. But you found me instead, didn’t you?” She stared impassively. “I must tell you, Anna, the hair is now too blond. You look like someone impersonating a rich Russian. But you will never be either, will you? I must also tell you I have a pistol with a silencer in my hand that’s ready to fire. You will slump over like a woman who drinks too much, and I will be gone. Yes, the sable is a trifle warm and bulky but I like the inside pocket. And I am bored with your nonsense now.”
Younger Page 29
