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SET A THIEF ...
Ivanov had to go.
Of that Olga was certain. The vigilante group that he had organised and led successfully for many years, with (as she still believed) genuine concern for the public good, had latterly been subverted to serve his own private ends. She had realised all along that to warrant the fees willingly paid, clients suggesting targets who ought to be dispatched must themselves have had a very substantial material interest that tainted the reliability of their information, hence the importance of Ivanov’s independent checks. Now it was clear that her latest assignment had not been the elimination of a villain but personal revenge for a misfortune brought upon himself by Ivanov’s own greed and disregard of warnings. She bitterly regretted it, especially since on very brief acquaintance she had come to like the man.
That thought made her stop and check a rather different line. Had she allowed her personal feelings to cloud her judgement? It was important to be sure before going any further along the path she contemplated. Martin Barratt had been very agreeable, certainly, but many a scoundrel can be charm itself when it suits him. Did that idea fit the character? No, not at all, so far as she could judge, and she had plenty of experience. He had probably fancied his chances with her, as would practically any normal man in the circumstances, and she had no false modesty about her own attractions; they were too useful in her work. Even so, their conversation had been on exactly the level to be expected of casual acquaintances thrown together just for an evening, and her concern for the comfort of his final conscious moments no more than it would have been for any other decent individual.
With that settled, she had to consider how to go about dealing with Ivanov. The near-impossibility of doing so without sharing his destruction did not greatly trouble her, since she regarded it as a reparation for her own guilt. However, when it came to the point, she found that she had been forestalled.
Katya was a brilliant driver, and the car crash that she had engineered to dispose of Ivanov left her seriously but not fatally injured. The damage was fully repairable. Visiting her in hospital, Olga found that their motives had been similar; Katya had been appalled to find that Ivanov, for whom marital fidelity was simply an obstacle to his own sexual conquests, had used her merely to dispose of an inconvenient husband.
Wishing her a good and rapid recovery, Olga left the hospital and pondered her own course. Katya had agreed that Ivanov’s treachery left the group too ethically compromised to continue, and so did Viktor, the most important remaining conspirator, when told of the situation. In fact Olga’s revulsion now covered the whole profession. That left her wondering about her own future.
Although her occupation would horrify the conventionally pious, she was deeply religious in her own strange way. On her next visit to her confessor, who while aware of her activities had given up trying to convince her that they were not just criminal but seriously immoral, he was greatly relieved to hear of her decision. Of course he urged her again to admit her actions to the authorities; he had to, but as she always said, what good would that do for anyone? In that case, he now suggested, she might more usefully apply her expertise to preventing assassinations instead of performing them. It seemed worth trying.
In Ivanov’s records she had found that the next target on the list was a Dmitri Grigoriev. As a matter of course Ivanov always kept information about clients in a code to which only he held the key, but Olga had already cracked it simply for amusement. In this case it was an oligarch in the Russian energy industry to whose plans Grigoriev’s much smaller enterprise was an irritating impediment, and at the very least she could warn him of the danger.
She was not to know that there had recently been another plot on his life in which his own security chief appeared to be implicated, one foiled only after a tense few days that left the post decisively vacant. Given her acknowledged background he needed to be very sure of her good faith before accepting the warning at face value, but everything she told him came successfully through the most stringent tests that he could apply, and subsequent events convinced him in other ways of her loyalty. He therefore recruited her to his now depleted security staff. The hostile client would obviously have to find a new executioner, and that gave some time for extra precautions.
In the event they were not needed as the enemy ran into difficulties of his own that for the time being would make Grigoriev more useful as an ally than troublesome as a competitor. When approached to join forces he kept to himself that he knew of the earlier plan, but had it very much in mind until political complications neutralised whatever threat might remain. Olga was then able to spend some time devising suggestions for improved general security that impressed Grigoriev deeply enough for her to be put in charge of implementing them.
Otherwise a year passed with no more demanding task than discretely vetting friends of Gigoriev’s widowed daughter Svetlana. One with whom she spent increasing amounts of time was an army officer by the name of Vladimir Youssupov. Because of his habit of sticking bills on a spike pending readiness to pay them, he was known among his friends as Vlad the Impaler, a nickname that even if merely humorous did not endear him to her father. Neither did the association of the family name with the assassination of Rasputin, ancient history though it was. It was only an uncomfortable feeling, but Grigoriev’s instincts had served him well and he therefore got Olga to run particularly careful checks on the man.
Beyond improvidence and the likelihood that his interest was as much pecuniary as romantic, nothing particularly discreditable turned up; his military duties were apparently discharged adequately, he had reasonable social graces and there was no suggestion of philandering. He had one known previous attachment that after years of going neither one way nor the other had ended unspectacularly, Olga thought probably from sheer boredom, and while Grigoriev could raise no enthusiasm for him, neither had he any solid objections. Youssupov’s eventual asking formally in the old-fashioned way for permission to propose marriage was overly fastidious and struck Grigoriev as distinctly odd, but hardly grounds for criticism, and permission was given with at least an appearance of readiness.
The guest list passed to Olga for checking well before the wedding had the expected mixture of family, friends, business associates and politicians whose favour needed to be cultivated. One entry however stuck out like a sore thumb: an Englishman with no obvious link to any of the other categories. It was so far out of keeping that it could hardly have crept in by accident, but no one else among the staff knew anything about him and Olga was compelled to ask Svetlana herself.
Evidently it was someone who had been particularly kind to her when she had been stranded for a few days in England during the previous crisis. Everything that Olga could find out about him was satisfactory but she had lingering doubts that she felt warranted a personal investigation and therefore arranged a visit to England. That was the easy bit; reaching the actual village was another matter, but she got there eventually, wondering how on earth a supposedly modern country could have such poor provision for travel outside the main centres.
She had an address, but not a street plan, so asked at the Post Office, mentioning in the hope of useful information that she was to visit a Brian Hoskins: he was away for the week, but a neighbour might know where if the business was urgent. One of them could only say that it was somewhere in Scotland, but the other had contact details, and it turned out that the hotel had a last-minute cancellation for the next two nights; would she like to be picked up from the station? So it was arranged.
Fortunately it was on the main line to the far north, so the journey was straightforward. On checking in she asked if Mr. Hoskins was there.
“That’s his key, so probably not. Is he expecting you?”
“No, this business came up suddenly and I wasn’t able to warn him.”
“Shall I tell him you’re here when he comes in?”
“Thank you, but the name wouldn’t mean anything to him. I�
�d prefer meeting him to come as a surprise.”
The girl was a little taken aback. “A pleasant one, I hope.”
“So do I!”
Come dinner time, she asked the maitre d’ to identify Hoskins to her without attracting his attention. He was eating alone, which simplified matters, and afterwards she found a seat in the lounge within his line of vision. He clearly took appreciative notice of her and with a rather more subtle variant on the old dropped-handkerchief routine, she was soon able to get into the conversation that on past experience she was confident he would welcome. It was her first visit to the area, but by no means his, and the expected offer to show her around came very readily. They arranged to breakfast together.
During that meal, however, the receptionist came to tell him of a telephone call. On returning, he explained very apologetically that he’d have to cancel their arrangement, or postpone it a day (Olga assured him that the morrow would be quite satisfactory) as his cousin’s widow needed help to settle a problem with her late husband’s estate.
“She’s only recently bereaved, then?”
“No, it was over a year ago. An odd business - he’d been called to a meeting in a Tyrolean hotel, but the other fellow didn’t appear. It turned out that he was in some criminal gang that had been wiped out by a rival lot that afternoon.”
Olga was startled, but mentioned having heard of such an incident about that time involving a character called Weston.
“Weston! Yes, that was the name. I should have remembered; Doris was always going on about what a pest he was. Forever wanting information about my work, but wouldn’t ask me directly. Anyway, whether it was due to that shock I don’t know, but during the night Martin himself had a fatal heart attack.”
“How awful! I hope you can sort out the problem.”
“I don’t suppose it’s anything serious. Doris always tends to fuss. She’s no need to; Martin left her pretty well provided.”
That relieved one of Olga’s qualms. Brian left her with suggestions for occupying the day and they arranged a time to meet for dinner.
The following morning Brian suggested an itinerary, including the reconstructed Iron Age lake dwelling on Loch Tay, the Ben Lawers visitors’ centre particularly for its explanation of the rather surprising local geology, and then perhaps the 5000-year-old Fortingall yew tree. Olga was happy to agree, since as she said, he knew the area and she didn’t. However, she found the tortuous track over the pass into Glen Lyon rather hair-raising, and eventually had to ask for a stop as she was feeling rather queasy.
They got out and Olga went to the edge, breathing deeply and admiring the view. Brian, with a fit of sneezing, failed to hear another car descending the slope, far too fast. It rounded a sharp bend, skidded and headed straight for him. Olga hurled herself at him, sending him staggering clear, but was herself caught by the car’s sliding rear end and flung on to an exposed rock.
Her last thought was of relief at having finally cleared her debt to Martin Barratt’s family.
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THE GIFT
Gaston was good at his job. As an executioner during the Terror, he dispatched aristocrats, clerics and other enemies of the Revolution with the calm efficiency of a butcher preparing meat for the market, the dispassion of a bookkeeper filling the pages of a ledger. If the abject cowardice of a former tyrant might give him a moment of contemptuous satisfaction, or the severed head of a pretty girl a twinge of regret, he showed no sign of either. To all appearances he was merely a smoothly-functioning instrument of the Revolution, doing what had to be done with the least possible fuss.
He never mentioned any family, friends or mistress, living or dead, locally or in some other part of the country. His accent suggested an origin in one of the southern provinces, though none in particular. What had brought him to Paris was equally obscure. He had simply appeared when the need for him arose, spoke of nothing but the work to be done and no more than necessary of that, and at the end of each working day vanished until the next. His most inquisitive colleagues, after some vague thoughts of following him that always gave way to more pressing business, had long since given up trying to find out more about him.
The day when the Comte de Soissons turned up in the tumbrel started no differently from many another. There was a rather chilly breeze, enough to give the prisoners an excuse for shivering, but most appeared to be calmly resigned to their fate; after all, death was inevitable sooner or later, the guillotine at least put a swift end to material anxieties, and if there was anything to follow, they had the clearest possible warning to prepare themselves for it. The few in an open state of funk, and even fewer who tried to disguise their fear with a show of bravado, at most irritated the more stoical. The Comte, however, was an exception to all this; he seemed almost cheerful. For all his seventy-odd years he trotted up the steps as though to a promising assignation, winked at Gaston and drew him slightly aside.
“You seem a reliable sort,” he said. “I’d like you to look after this. You might even find it useful.” And producing a curiously-designed ring, he passed it over. Gaston was too nonplussed to do more than stare at it for a moment and put it in his pocket. “Right,” said the Comte. “Better get on with our business. Adieu - or should I say ‘Au revoir’?”
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