by Henry Porter
‘It is not a problem for me to save your life. I am getting used to it.’
Anastasia came down in a big black polo-neck sweater and a grey skirt. They kissed and made oddly formal enquiries about each other’s injuries, yet much more passed between them – a mute wonder that they were still alive, as well as a kind of helpless acknowledgement of their love for each other. The five of them sat down to dinner, Harland having taken soup to the armed officers who were guarding the house. Ulrike raised her glass in silence to the table, directing just a hint of reproof to her husband, who replied with a squeeze of the eyes that meant something to both of them. She smiled.
The wine, the warmth and the enormous sense of relief affected Samson, who staggered to his feet forty-five minutes later and said he must sleep, which he did in a neat white bedroom where there was a wooden half tester bed and a nightlight in a frosted glass jar.
In his dream he was with Anastasia, back on that huge black bridge slung between two worlds. The waters of the River Narva had risen impossibly high and lapped the structure, threatening to sweep them away. He couldn’t move. He was calling out. Then he became aware of a hand stroking his cheek, the back of a hand, moving in a particular way. He opened his eyes and saw in the candlelight a face in shadow and the blur of a white robe. ‘Thank you for being with me: thank you, dear Samson,’ she said. She kissed his forehead, lingered for a few seconds, during which the scent of soap reached him, then her finger ran down to find his lips and she bent again to kiss him, saying, ‘Thank you,’ as her lips touched his.
‘Stay,’ he said. ‘I’m awake now. What time is it?’
‘Two. I couldn’t sleep.’ She kissed him again and climbed in beside him so she was lying on his right side and they did not touch each other’s injuries. They held hands and looked up at the shadows on the ceiling made by the patterns in the frosted candle glass. It reminded her of Igor’s lamps and she told Samson about the elfin boy and the old partisan lady out in the woods. Then they lay, more or less wordless, until she said, ‘It’s like we’re being repeatedly shipwrecked together – only you and I know what we’ve been through. All that terror!’
‘The ultimate nakedness,’ said Samson.
‘You remember I said that?’
He looked at her in the half-light and nodded. She struggled out of her nightie and stood for a moment. There was a large bandage just below her right shoulder. She was incredibly thin – she said she’d lost twelve pounds and dropped a whole size. She stripped the covers back and, holding on to the bed post for balance, straddled him and leaned forward so her breasts pressed against his chest and she was looking into his face. ‘I need a gambler in my life,’ she whispered.
‘I’ve given up,’ he said.
‘You’re still a gambler. You took so many huge risks! How can anyone just decide to kidnap a man off the street? I mean, who does that?’
‘It was the only thing I could come up with.’
‘I’m glad you did, and I am so, so glad to be here with you. It’s just the most perfect sensation in the world. I love the smell of you and that funny little-boy look of excitement in your eyes when you think you’re going to have sex.’ She straightened and moved down and let him inside her. ‘I love you, Samson, but God you’re infuriating. You’re so obstinately you!’
‘You’ve said all that before. Please stop talking and kiss me,’ he said.
‘Of course! And now I’m going to have to do all this by myself, I suppose.’
‘You suppose right. I’m hardly in a position to do anything with this.’ He jerked his chin towards his bandaged and bound arm. Then she began to move and they found the wonder of the first days in Venice again.
The next day, the team from KaPo – all of them, it seemed, around Samson’s age, or younger – arrived, together with a whey-faced individual from British GCHQ who was just about tolerated.
Samson abruptly changed his mind about Denis Hisami’s determination to expose Crane’s operation. He realised he had been so focused on freeing Anastasia that he hadn’t fully absorbed the implications of what lay in Misak’s dossier, or the blizzard of discoveries made by Naji. Hisami had stumbled on the project to destabilise Europe with Russian money channelled through a respectable American start-up and had gone ahead and exposed it all, with the gravest consequences for himself and Anastasia. Of unprecedented scale and wickedness, the operation was now the priority of all Europe’s intelligence agencies and KaPo had distributed the relevant evidence for each territory to react to the threats that faced them.
The media blackout on Crane’s demise and what had come to pass on Narva’s rail bridge had allowed them a little time to round up the key suspects and freeze assets before the networks were properly alerted to the implications of Crane’s disappearance. As the head of the French DGSI – the General Directorate for Internal Security – later observed, the response of the European agencies to the networks of violent right-wing extremists was almost exactly the same as three years before, when a Syrian boy named Naji Touma produced a hoard of intelligence on IS. But no one appreciated Naji’s vital role in this affair because, while Samson and Anastasia were being treated in hospital, Harland had ensured that his name was never mentioned.
Naji was nevertheless as irrepressible as ever and was rather enjoying himself, taking seasoned intelligence officers through his latest discoveries about the shell companies, bank accounts and many false identities used by Crane’s Russian beneficiaries, as well as Crane’s operation to skim millions from the money transferred from TangKi. Yet he was also modest and kept saying that his work would not have been possible without help from Jamie, his source on the other side of the Atlantic, or the digging done by Daniel Misak before he was murdered by Crane. Nearly $165 million of the $270 million was accounted for, though a good portion of that had been skimmed or invested in artworks now stored in Switzerland, Luxembourg and Italy. Through one scam or another, Crane had stolen in the region of $32 million from the Russian terror fund. Samson argued that any money that was recovered should be returned to TangKi so that the board members would have to own what had happened on their watch.
That point made, he stepped away to call Jim Tulliver in New York and gave him the bare bones of what was happening. Tulliver still had no idea that Samson had arranged for his boss’s email to be hacked. He wanted to keep it that way and left a lot out but, clearly, Tulliver had now read the Misak dossier. A team of forensic accountants was already putting together the story of how the company was used to launder money and they were paying particular attention to the source of funds in America.
‘There is some good news, however,’ said Tulliver. The authorities are backing off on the citizenship issue. It looks like Denis will be free to move about the country in the next twenty-four hours. His passport is still suspended.’
‘And the film of Aysel made no difference?’
‘Denis expected much worse. He can survive that.’
‘But can Anastasia? Can the Foundation survive that publicity?’
‘We’ll see,’ said Tulliver. ‘There’s also now a question of funding it.’ He tried to congratulate and thank Samson, but Samson brushed him off. ‘Is Anastasia there? Can I speak with her?’
At that moment Anastasia entered the room with Ulrike. Everyone rose and Ulrike gestured that they should return to their seats. Anastasia’s eyes met Samson’s and she smiled.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Samson told Tulliver. ‘She’ll be in touch when she’s feeling stronger.’
Tulliver began to thank him again.
‘Jim …? Jim …? Sorry – you’re breaking up,’ Samson said, and hung up.
He tipped his head towards the door. Anastasia smiled and nodded enthusiastically.
Later, on the beach, he said he liked the clothes Ulrike had lent her. ‘Those colours suit you.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, and looked down at the prints her borrowed Wellington boots had made in the wet sand. Her face had clouded.
He said nothing and they walked to the great boulders at the water’s edge. The sea was calm. A little way out a cormorant stood on one of the boulders, drying its outstretched wings in the weak winter sun. ‘It looks like a sculpture,’ she said, then moved to his other side, her hand seeking his uninjured right arm. She turned and looked into his eyes. ‘I still can’t believe what you did for me, Samson.’
‘Don’t forget what you did for yourself,’ he said. ‘You decided you were going to survive.’
‘Yes, but you …’
‘Don’t thank me,’ he said, grinning. ‘Anyway, I have to admit I was in two minds until I found your phone and realised you’d kept all those photographs from Venice and that my birthday was still your passcode.’
‘You found the phone! My phone! The one I put in Louis’s pocket? Jesus!’
‘It’s a long story. The Carabinieri missed it. But for one reason or another, it was really helpful to us. You can have it back, of course.’
‘And you went through it,’ she said with dawning horror.
‘For professional reasons only,’ he said, and she gave him a light punch on his bicep. ‘Then I understood,’ he continued, after a long pause in which he held her searching gaze, ‘that I loved you and I had to tell you this in person, which could not be done while you were being held by those bastards in Russia. So, here I am, doing precisely that. I love you, Anastasia.’
‘I know that!’ she said with irritation, and stamped a boot into the sand. He waited. They looked out to the horizon in silence. ‘The thing is,’ she said at last, ‘I’m not yet used to the idea that I’m not going to be killed at any moment. The absence of terror is weirdly hard to deal with. Somehow, I’m going to have to find my normal, fucked-up self again. Do you understand?’
‘I do,’ he said.
‘Of course you do. You’ve been through it more than me.’ She looked along the beach to the line of trees that ran down to a bank of grey shingle. ‘Last night was so …’
‘Wonderful,’ he said.
‘Yes, it was wonderful, and we are so very close like that. What are we going to do? Please tell me how this ends. What do we do now? I mean, I have to go back to Denis. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where does that leave us?’ Tears were springing to her eyes.
‘You need time,’ he said. ‘Denis is in real trouble and he needs you.’
‘Don’t be so fucking noble.’
‘I’m being realistic, but at least you can never doubt what I feel for you. You are married, and that matters, and I had a kind of a sort of a thing going with someone in London, but I mean it – I love you and I always will love you.’
‘I don’t care who you’ve been to bed with. It’s really not the point. What about us? How do we go on?’
He shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’
‘And we’ve got so little in common – it’s just sex and Venice.’
‘We shared a bullet, too. That must count for something.’
She smiled, her eyes still glistening with tears. They turned to see a figure waving from the boat sheds and starting towards them.
‘And we have Naji Touma in common,’ he said. ‘And Naji,’ she agreed, and darted a kiss to his lips. ‘Thank you, Samson.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to my editor, Jane Wood, who has done so much to bring this series of novels to life, and to my agent, Rebecca Carter, of Janklow and Nesbit, for her unflagging support. My gratitude also to Otto Penzler and Morgan Entrekin for their shrewd suggestions, and to Pamela Merritt for her first read.
Living with someone writing a book is almost certainly worse than actually having to write the book yourself so I thank Liz for enduring the process and the author.
