The Third Woman--A Stephanie Patrick Thriller, page 38
‘It will be—the fact that she’s dead. But I’m also talking about her and Brand.’
Azzam Fahad stopped walking to consider it. Eventually, he said, ‘Where?’
‘Paris.’
Azzam said, ‘You should know that we’ve kept all our options open. At every stage of our negotiation with you, we’ve actively considered alternatives.’
‘I wouldn’t have expected anything else.’
‘We have people lined up to replace you, Gordon.’
Wiley resisted the instinct to ask for names. ‘There’s nobody out there who can put this together the way we can. We both know that.’
‘Not as a single entity, perhaps. But broken into pieces—it can be done. Quite easily, as a matter of fact.’
Wiley tried to manufacture a smile. ‘In that case, I guess it’s up to us to make sure it never gets to that.’
Azzam nodded. ‘Paris, then. Where and when?’
They parted at the arcades, close to the memorial for the miner August Zang.
* * *
I’m alone in the drizzle on Bruno-Kreisky-Platz, outside the Austria Center, trying to put the pieces together. The man holding open the Mercedes door for Gordon Wiley was Roland, my part-time lover in Brussels. Can it really be only ten days since I woke up in his apartment overlooking avenue Louise? It seems much longer.
Mentally, I rewind and play. Roland entered Hall D and spoke to Kenneth Kincaid. They left together. Outside the Austria Center, Roland gravitated to Gordon Wiley, leaving in the same car as him. I’m guessing that Wiley sent Roland into the convention hall to bring Kincaid out. What does that make him—a messenger boy? Why not? That would explain a lot. The blown cover of Marianne Bernard would make sense. Even though I allowed him almost no access to my life, Roland knew enough to form a starting point. After that I presume it was easy. Perhaps it wasn’t even him. Perhaps he just pointed others in the right direction. Perhaps he was left to get on with what he did best: nourishing my sexual appetite. Knickers down, defences down.
I feel like crying. At my own stupidity. My arrogance. What was I thinking? But there’s more to it than that. Despite the cold, cavalier nature of our arrangement, I feel betrayed. Almost violated. There’s not much justification for this feeling; after all, it’s not as though I invested any trust in Roland.
Perhaps it’s because I thought he cared. And now it appears that he cared even less than I did. For me, it was simply a matter of cheap pleasure. And some of that pleasure was to be found in the idea that Roland actually felt something for me. For her, for Marianne. Now, however, it seems I was just a work detail, a shift on the factory floor.
I remember the last time I spoke to Roland. It was shortly before I left his apartment the morning after my return from Turkmenistan. I was dressed, he was still in bed. He was looking at me in a curious way so I asked him what he was thinking. He replied, ‘That I went to bed with one person and woke up with another.’
And I said, ‘I know the feeling.’
Robert appears at my side. He doesn’t ask what’s wrong. He just puts his arm around my shoulder and says, ‘Let’s get out of here.’
* * *
They didn’t talk much on the U-Bahn. At Stephansplatz, Newman phoned the Imperial and tried to get through to Gordon Wiley’s suite. Stephanie stood close by, trying to clear her head.
‘It’s over,’ he told her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Wiley’s gone.’
The Butterfly signing had been scheduled for six in Wiley’s hotel suite.
Newman said, ‘He checked out. Wherever he was heading in the Merc, it wasn’t back to the Imperial. Maybe Stern got it wrong.’
‘Or Wiley changed his plans.’
‘Could be.’
‘So what now?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe we should go and check.’
Stephanie felt drained. ‘You go. I’m going back to the hotel.’
‘You okay?’
‘I’ll be fine. I just need to be alone. I’ve got to think.’
She took the U-Bahn as far as Zieglergasse and walked the rest. The spectre of Roland lingered. His participation explained how many subsequent events had occurred but not why.
She checked for messages at the Lübeck’s front desk but there were none. Still no word from Julia. She took the stairs to the second floor. In their room, she kicked the door shut with her heel, shrugged off her jacket and stepped out of her shoes.
‘Don’t make me do anything we’d both regret.’
She recognized the voice. Iain Boyd.
She said, ‘I’m guessing it’s a little late for that.’
‘Turn round. Slowly.’
The familiar features came into view; ruddy, weather-beaten skin, thick blonde hair cut short, square shoulders. He wore a black jacket by The North Face, a pair of jeans and scuffed walking boots. She looked at the gun.
‘A Glock 17. When in Austria…?’
‘Don’t bother. I’m not in the mood, Stephanie.’
‘How are you, Iain?’
His eyes were flint. ‘Surprised. Angry. Disappointed.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘Where’s your friend?’
‘He’ll be back soon.’
There was a pause while Boyd decided whether she was lying. ‘I never thought it would come to this. Not after all I did for you.’
‘How’d you find me?’
‘You mean, apart from following the trail of corpses you’ve been leaving all over Europe? We’ve had Kleist under surveillance for three days.’
‘We haven’t been here for three days.’
‘Christ, Stephanie, wake up. They’re ahead of you. When you dropped the decoy at Lyon they looked the other way. After Obernai they knew you were heading for the border into Germany. That you were going east.’
‘They? Aren’t you one of them?’
‘Don’t get lippy with me. Sit down.’
‘Where?’
‘End of the bed.’
He’d cleared a space. When she and Newman had left the room the bag had been on the bed. Now it was in the corner by the table, its contents in a pile on the carpet. As she sat down he crossed the floor to the window, drew the curtains, then stood with his back to the wall. The invisible thread from the Glock’s tip to the centre of her chest never faltered as he moved.
‘They guessed you’d head for Vienna so they checked to see who you knew here. Kleist.’
‘How did they guess? I could have kept going. Romania, Russia. Anywhere between here and the Bering Straits.’
‘I’ve no idea. I’m just the bullet. But they knew. And as usual they were right. Unlike your usual trick—Stern—Kleist is still an easy man to find.’
‘Very funny.’
‘I wish it was.’
‘How many Magenta House people are here?’
‘Four. Including the boss.’
‘Rosie?’
‘To you, perhaps.’
‘I thought you’d retired, Iain.’
‘They brought me back for you. Against my will. She thinks I’m the only one who can talk you down. The alternative is less complicated.’
‘Then I suppose I should be grateful to you.’
‘I nearly said no. Sorry, can’t be arsed, send someone else. You’d be dead by now.’
‘Not necessarily. You trained me.’
‘Drop it, will you? This isn’t a joke, Stephanie.’
‘I was set up.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
‘They don’t care.’
‘But what about you?’
‘It doesn’t matter what I think.’
‘So why are you here?’
‘You’ve got to come in.’
‘To Magenta House?’
Boyd nodded. ‘For debriefing.’
‘I don’t work for them any more.’
‘Grow up, Stephanie.’
‘They’ll kill me.’
‘They’ll kill you if you don’t. That’s for sure.’
‘You mean you’ll kill me.’
He looked at her. Pained and resolved in equal measure. They’d had something once. But that wouldn’t matter to Boyd. He’d take no pleasure from it at the moment of execution but, in years to come, he’d be able to rationalize it; the culling of a sick specimen to protect the overall health of the population.
Stephanie thought of Julia and the prints she’d seen at the Verbinski clinic.
‘I can’t come in, Iain.’
‘Then you’ll make a dead man happy.’
Alexander. Always a good card to play.
She said, ‘I don’t trust you.’
‘You’re going to have to do better than that.’
‘Think for yourself. You know me.’
‘Not any more.’
In a corner of her mind an idea had lingered: that Boyd would always be there for her somehow. More than anyone, he’d created Petra but he’d also been the man who’d resurrected Stephanie. A far greater achievement, in both their eyes.
‘I need time, Iain.’
‘If it was up to me…’
‘Not days. Hours.’
He shook his head. ‘You know the way it works.’
‘Do they know you’ve found me yet?’
‘They know where I am.’
‘But you haven’t contacted them since I walked in here.’
‘Don’t bother asking.’
‘Okay. I’ll ask something else. How is it that Lance Grotius had my old Magenta House clearance code on his laptop?’
‘No idea.’
‘You haven’t thought about it. I can tell from your expression.’
The accusation was only partly true. A thought had occurred to him. Not concerned directly with Grotius and a laptop, but related. Five days earlier, in Paris, he’d confronted Pierre Damiani in his apartment overlooking Parc Monceau. That lead had been fed to him by Magenta House. Every lead had been fed to him by Magenta House.
The identity that Stephanie had kept in the safe-deposit box at Banque Damiani had not been issued by Magenta House. It had been an independent creation. He wondered how the organization had learned of it. And then he wondered why he’d been selected to find Stephanie. Because she trusted him? That was the reason Rosie Chaudhuri had given him. She’d also implied that because Boyd knew Stephanie better than anyone else, he’d be better equipped to locate her. But he’d turned up nothing. He’d had to rely on them. In other words, they could have sent anyone.
‘My code was on his laptop, Iain. I need you to believe that.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Let me explain something to you. Magenta House was split into two assassination sections. All the information relating to those two sections was stored in a computer in the basement of the building. That computer was hermetically sealed. Information was brought in and taken out on modified disks that could only be used on other computers, providing they met the security criteria.’
‘Fascinating. And irrelevant.’
‘Didn’t you hear what I said? Grotius had my clearance code on his laptop. That could not have been retrieved—or stolen—electronically.’
‘I don’t know why I’m listening to this.’
‘I’ve been sold out.’
‘And you think it’s Magenta House?’
‘It looks like it but I don’t know. Just like you don’t know how they figured out I was heading for Vienna, not Vladivostok.’
‘Forget it.’
Stephanie felt her temper fraying. ‘There’s a woman in this city masquerading as me. Same name, same look. She’s even got the same scars. Know why? Because she is me. Know how she got the scars? Cosmetically. Again, like me. The surgeon who did it took her cue from a series of stills from film footage of me and Komarov in an apartment in London. Magenta House film footage. How do I know that? Because they used it as leverage on me. What I don’t know is this: how stills from that footage found their way to the Verbinski clinic here in Vienna.’
‘If it’s not going to make any difference what’s the point?’
‘The point is this: maybe it’s Magenta House but maybe it’s not. In which case, they’re being set up too. And that’s more serious than having me on the run. That means they’re no longer quite the invisible organization they thought they were.’
Boyd wanted to maintain the rhythm of refusal but found he couldn’t. He replayed her argument in his mind.
Stephanie looked at the contents of her bag and said, ‘There are two DVDs over there. One of them has footage of my clone in bed with Anders Brand and a hooker. You can see the scars on her quite clearly. They appear genuine. Take the disk, have a look. You should be able to tell.’
* * *
The clock ticks. I’m sitting on the bed, Robert’s on the chair by the window. We’re waiting for Julia to call. There’s nothing else we can do.
‘Why do you think he backed down?’ he asks.
‘I’m still not sure.’
‘Something you said?’
‘I guess so.’
Boyd looked at me for a long while before asking me how long I needed. Twelve hours, I told him. He seemed pained and pitying in equal measure, then nodded his assent. That was just after six. Robert returned here at seven. Since then, we’ve been killing time. The longer we wait, the slower each hour passes.
‘Tell me about you and Scheherazade, Robert.’
‘What about her?’
‘The first time I saw the two of you in the Lancaster, you didn’t look like lovers. But you didn’t look like just-good-friends, either.’
He takes his time. ‘We go back a long way. Originally I met Scheherazade through her husband, Omar. And I met Omar when I was working for my uncle.’
‘This was after Lebanon?’
‘Yes. Several years later. Most teenage rebellions occur during the teenage years. Mine happened during my twenties. Most teenage rebellions kick against conservatism. Mine kicked against liberalism.’
‘As personified by your father?’
‘And by the life I’d been living with Rachel. It was broken. It couldn’t be fixed. I just wanted to get as far away from it as possible. My uncle got me a job at the New York offices of Mackenzie Resources. I started at the bottom and worked my way up and that’s how I met Omar. In Riyadh, on business. Soon after, he asked me to work for him.’
‘Did he know about Lebanon?’
‘Yes. Which makes his attitude towards me even more unusual. I was tainted by that experience. Very few people in that world would have hired me. But he was an unconventional man in some ways. He always took people as he found them. So I went with him. And through him, I met Scheherazade.’
I raise an eyebrow. ‘That’s appreciation for you. A man offers you a job and you take his wife as well.’
‘Nothing happened between us while Omar was alive. There was never any possibility of that. Even after his death, there could never have been anything overt. Scheherazade wouldn’t have allowed it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Her background. Her devotion to her husband. Discretion was more than a choice. It was an obligation.’
‘So you waited until the dust had settled?’
‘The dust never really settles for a widow like Scheherazade when her husband was a man like Omar.’
I remember the little I knew of her before that night in the Lancaster, most of it gleaned from the French press. Much of the coverage had ignored her business acumen and had focused on her love-life instead. Nearly all of it had been idle speculation. There had been a few romantic rumours but only of the vaguest kind. There had never been a hint of scandal.
‘Your relationship was a secret?’
‘An open secret. When someone like Abel Kessler brings it up, or Sergei Volkov, it’s because they knew we were close but have never been sure quite how close. They suspect but they can never confirm.’
‘How complicated.’
‘That was one of the reasons it ended.’
‘What were the others?’
Robert smiles. ‘They’re private, Stephanie. But they’re not startling. They’re the usual things.’
Privacy’s fine by me. Where would I be without it?
I say, ‘It’s nice that you’ve stayed close.’
‘It is.’
‘She has a great reputation as an investor, doesn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘How much of that is down to you?’
‘Scheherazade has a brilliant mind. I helped where I could but the reality is she didn’t need me that much. People tend to forget how smart she is. They say that she married Omar because he was rich and old. The truth is, Omar had the sharpest mind I’ve ever encountered. Scheherazade was attracted to that. Genuinely. She knew their time together would be limited but she was determined to make the most of it. That’s the kind of woman she is. She married Omar because the other men she knew didn’t match up. Simple as that.’
‘Except you.’
‘Only after he was dead.’
The phone rings. I answer it.
‘Petra? It’s Julia.’
* * *
Kärntnerstrasse, ten-forty-five. The café was half-empty, warm and smoky, Chopin playing softly over poor speakers. Julia was already there, drinking coffee with a glass of cheap armagnac. Stephanie ordered a cappuccino at the bar then sat opposite her at a table by the window.
‘You sure about this?’ Julia asked.
Stephanie nodded. ‘Midnight?’
‘Yes. He doesn’t like it if I’m late.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’m ready to run.’
‘Don’t go back to your apartment. Just in case.’
‘I wasn’t going to. When I leave here, I’ll collect my money and vanish.’ She picked up a small cloth shoulder-bag and pushed it across the rough wooden table. ‘Look inside. I’ve taken precautions. Anybody tries to screw with me, they’re going to regret it.’
Stephanie peered inside the bag. The gun was a Russian PSM, a weapon developed for the old Soviet security services. After the collapse of the Soviet Union they had started to crop up across central and eastern Europe. The silencer, Stephanie noticed, was custom-made.
