Burr tasted his sherry and pondered the altered photograph and his mind drifted back years to that bloody hotel room where Pagan had the woman under lock and key for a few hours, the way she’d been sitting on the bed, the suggestive brevity of her skirt, the length of luscious thigh. She was surrounded by random particles of sexuality. She gave out stunning electric signals, maps to the paradises in all the secret places of her body. She’d caused blood to rush to Pagan’s head; and elsewhere, no doubt.
He hesitated a second before he said, ‘When you were alone with the woman … I had the distinct feeling as soon as I walked through the door that I was interrupting something rather delicate. The atmosphere, shall we say, was charged. Decidedly so.’
You notice everything, Pagan thought. ‘She attracted me.’
‘Attracted, Frank? Attracted?’
Pagan looked away from Burr’s rather bright good eye, which just then reminded him of a hawk. He’d never confided any of this to Burr before, but he felt the need now. The confessional urge: bless me, Martin, for I have sinned in my heart. ‘All right. More than that. It was the only time in my life when I could literally taste lust. I know that sounds vague but I can’t think of any other way to describe it. I admit I enjoyed the feeling. At the same time it horrified me.’
Burr smiled softly. ‘Why are we so often astonished by unwanted feelings, I wonder. The older I get, the less I find surprising in the human condition. We’re all cocktails of this and that, Frank. A bit of envy, something of love and charity, a dash of dark desire.’
Dark desire, Pagan thought. That described it well enough. He stood at the window. The garden at the back of the house was an extravaganza of flowers, bright colours. The way sunlight moved in shrubbery suggested presences, hidden shapes. All you need now, he thought, are delusions. Seeing her in the shaded cavities of hedgerows and rose-bushes.
Burr said, ‘There’s been a strong personal element involved ever since that first encounter. Something private between you and her. Not a vendetta, exactly. That isn’t the word I’m searching for. Look, I may be way off the mark, and you can object if you wish, but I’ve often thought it was like some bizarre and violent form of extended foreplay on her part.’
Extended foreplay. Pagan turned the phrase around in his mind. He remembered her touch on his skin the night before. The rebellious reactions of his body. He said, ‘That may be the way she sees it, Martin, but along the way a lot of people are being hurt and killed. There’s too much pain and too much grief. If it was just confined to her and me, I could find a way to deal with it, but it’s not …’ He was silent a while. ‘She came back to my flat last night. She was waiting for me when I got home. Armed.’
‘And?’
‘She was only there to prove she could come and go as she pleased.’
‘You might have been killed, Frank.’
‘I have the impression she’s not quite ready for the last act. She’s turning a screw and she’s tightening it a little bit each time she comes into my life. One day it can’t be turned any further. We’re playing this by her rules, Martin. I’ve done almost everything I can think of, followed all the usual procedures, ploughed through tons of material, logged thousands of miles and more. What else can I do? Hang around? Wait for her next step? I’m not built for that. I don’t like being forced into that position.’
‘I suppose it does no good to remind you that patience is a virtue.’
‘I never saw any virtue in it.’
‘No, you never did, did you?’ Burr poked the rug with the tip of his walnut cane.
Pagan said, ‘One unusual thing. She asked about you.’
‘About me?’
‘She wanted to know what you were doing in your retirement.’
‘Odd,’ Burr said. ‘Why would she express any interest in me?’
‘I get to a point where I can’t explain her actions. She fades out into mystery.’
Burr was about to respond when the doorbell rang. He muttered something to himself about the nuisance of unexpected callers and got up from the sofa. ‘Excuse me, Frank. I expect it’s somebody collecting. It’s always somebody collecting. We have more charities in this country than you can shake a stick at. Sometimes I wonder where all these contributions go …’ He wandered toward the hallway. The doorbell rang a second time. ‘Coming, coming,’ he said.
He moved down the corridor, opened the door.
The woman stepped inside at once. The gun in her hand caused Burr to flinch and lurch backward and he almost lost his balance. His cane slid from his fingers and rolled along the floor and blood raced to his head. The important thing, he told himself, was calm – but he’d already shown surprise, which put him at a disadvantage. The only possible weapon had been the cane, and he could hardly grovel along the floor for it. He looked at the woman’s face.
‘It’s been a long time,’ he said.
15
LONDON
She didn’t speak. She kicked the door shut behind her. For support, Burr found himself leaning against a small table. He was conscious of a porcelain vase filled with fading flowers. Wrinkled petals lay on polished mahogany and created dull reflections in the wood. He thought about Pagan inside the drawing-room, wondered if the noise of the door slamming and the cane dropping would attract him into the hallway.
‘Years,’ he said.
She still said nothing. She was dressed in a businesslike black trouser suit with a double-breasted jacket. She wore a necktie loosely knotted. She looked, he thought, like an effeminate man, delicate, attractive if you went in for that sort of thing.
‘That time … that time in the hotel,’ he said. He wanted to play this situation with more aplomb, a little dignity, but his balance was off, he needed the cane. ‘I do believe that was the last time I saw you. With Pagan.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I remember.’
‘Why the gun?’ he asked. He tried a little smile, but he couldn’t get it right.
‘Guess,’ she said.
‘I’m past the age of guessing games. You’ll have to enlighten me,’ he said.
‘The sins of the past, Burr.’
‘I don’t follow. Sins? What sins? I seem to have committed so many along the way.’ Burr, who was still labouring at a forced flippancy, turned his face briefly, looked along the hallway, saw a rectangle of sunlight on the floor where the drawing-room door lay open.
The woman had obviously followed his line of vision. She missed nothing. She gave the impression of being attuned, like a predatory animal, to any slight movement her victim might make.
‘You’re not alone,’ she said. ‘You have company, right?’
Burr gestured vaguely with his hand just as Pagan appeared in the doorway. The woman looked along the hallway and smiled. Pagan didn’t move. The triangulated nature of the situation was off-centre, distorted.
‘Surprise,’ she said.
Pagan took a hesitant step forward. ‘You keep turning up,’ he said.
‘It’s one of my talents.’
She moved the gun, directing it at Pagan a second, then turned it back on Burr, who was thinking all kinds of desperate thoughts – how to reach for his cane and use it against her, which involved a complex sequence of movements, and he was slow with age. He stared at Pagan and frowned, hoping Pagan would have the presence of mind to retreat inside the drawing-room and lock the door and perhaps – perhaps what? Call the police? Jump from the window? Burr was beset by hopelessness. Even if Pagan made a sudden move, what good would it do? He was fifteen feet away, he couldn’t reach the woman and disarm her.
‘What brings you here?’ Pagan asked.
‘Martin Burr,’ she said. ‘Good old Martin.’
Burr turned to look at the woman. He managed to get an imperious note into his voice. ‘Is it your intention to use that weapon?’
The woman flicked a strand of hair from her brow. The smile was absent from her face now. She had an unsettling ability to go from a bright smile
to deadly seriousness in a flash. She could change right before you. Her eyes were lethal.
Pagan took another small step forward and Burr said, ‘For God’s sake, go back, go back, man.’
‘He won’t go back,’ she said. ‘You don’t know how to go back, do you, Frank? Retreat wouldn’t enter your mind, would it?’
Pagan understood he was being taunted. He watched her. ‘You say you came to see Martin. Why?’
‘A business transaction, Frank.’
‘I know your line of business,’ he said. ‘I just don’t see how it relates to Martin, that’s all.’ His voice, he knew, was calm. That was superficial. The weapon emphasized the acute uncertainty of things. The air was still and unbreathable and dangerous. He looked at the woman’s black suit, the necktie, the gun in her hand. He recognized the pistol. It was the one she’d stolen from his flat. It was his own gun that was turned on Martin Burr.
She said, ‘He did something wrong, Frank. Now it’s time to make good again.’
‘What exactly did he do?’ Pagan asked.
‘Martin knows,’ she said. ‘Don’t you, Martin?’
‘Afraid I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,’ Burr said.
‘No? Let’s refresh your memory. What does the name Pasco mean to you?’
‘Pasco?’ Burr asked.
‘Richard Pasco,’ she said. ‘Is it coming back to you?’
Burr made a gesture with his hand that might have suggested puzzlement. Pagan couldn’t be sure what the movement meant.
The woman smiled and shot Martin Burr in the leg. The abruptness of the action was startling. Burr shouted and dropped in an ungainly way to the floor and Pagan, without thinking, took a couple of steps toward the old man. He went down on his knees beside Burr. Blood flowed from the old man’s shattered thigh, but he was conscious despite his obvious pain.
‘Dear God,’ he kept saying. ‘Dear God.’
Pagan, trying to assess the extent of Burr’s wound, placed a hand on the old man’s shoulder. A gesture of comfort, the kind of touch that meant you’ll be OK, we’ll get an ambulance, don’t worry. Turning, Pagan looked up at the woman.
‘Why? For Christ’s sake why?’ he asked. ‘What’s the point of this—’
The woman held her arm out stiff and straight. She fired a second shot. It creased the air around Pagan’s head and struck Burr in the centre of his chest. The old man’s body buckled and he slumped against the wall. His blood flecked Pagan’s arms. Pagan leaned to one side, lost his balance. He sat with his back to the wall and gazed at Burr, who lay motionless.
Slowly, Pagan began to rise. He was aware of a numbness in his legs, an arterial sluggishness such as you might experience in a nightmare when you can’t get your limbs to respond and the horror just behind is gaining on you.
But this was no dream. You couldn’t just open your eyes and the world would be all right again. You couldn’t do that. He stared at Burr, then gazed at the woman. Questions crowded him, but he found speech impossible. His brain was impeded, his tongue useless. He was novocained, but the dosage wasn’t enough to kill all his senses.
She said, ‘You’ve got something to think about, haven’t you?’
He watched her open the door, heard it close behind her, and when his shock had diminished to the point where he could operate, he hurried to the stairs. His sense of time was stripped down. She might have left three minutes ago, or thirty seconds. The staircase was empty and deep in shadow, and far below the glass of the street door glowed in acid sunlight. He moved to the steps and rushed downward, raced to the front door and pulled it open and went out into the burning white street. Left, right, it didn’t matter. There was no sign of her. She’d disappeared in the brilliant sunshine like a night star.
16
BIARRITZ
At three p.m. she caught a flight from London to Paris. At Heathrow there was massive armed police presence, not just uniforms but Special Branch officers she could spot in an instant because they had the hard-eyed look of men who had been trained, or so they like to believe, to detect anything out of the ordinary, evidence of suspicious behaviour, give-away tics of menace. There was nothing exceptional about Kristen Hawkins. If she emitted uneasiness at all it was the standard behaviour of a timid woman apprehensive of air flight.
Passports were scrunitized with more than usual diligence. Officials were tense and cranky. Kristen Hawkins carried a European Community passport issued in London and the photograph inside bore no resemblance to any police poster, so the examination of her passport didn’t worry her. Her document wasn’t a forgery, which might easily have been spotted, but it was more than the validity of paper that gave her confidence – it was a matter of self-conviction, of believing you were the person your passport said you were. You projected around yourself a force field of authenticity.
She passed through the baggage examination. The official rummaged grimly in her possessions. What was there to see in her small suitcase anyway? Some changes of clothing, modest underwear, cleaning fluid for her glasses, simple toiletries, everything you would expect of Kristen Hawkins. She was anonymous, another guileless traveller among thousands.
From Paris she flew to Bordeaux where she rented a car, using an American Express card. She drove south through hazy sunlight. She arrived in Biarritz where the hotels along the seafront shimmered. She travelled a network of quiet backstreets where the accommodation was far less ostentatious than anything along the Grand Plage. The downside of Biarritz, decrepit little houses, stucco peeling, sun-cracked window frames.
She parked the car and got out. She took her suitcase from the back seat and followed a short path that led under a faded canopy to an open door.
She stepped inside the shadowy interior. A fan was turning. Paper streamers attached to the rim of the fan were blown backward by the blades. The room smelled of fried garlic and onions.
The man who appeared in front of her wore only a pair of outsized shorts. In one hand he held a wine bottle, in the other a glass. His lips were stained with wine.
‘Galkin,’ she said.
He came closer, narrowing his eyes. When he was only a few feet away from her he smiled. ‘You amaze me. As always, you amaze me.’ He reached for the woman’s hands and held them between his sticky fingers. She allowed herself to be touched by Galkin for only a moment because there was a demonstrative side to him she didn’t like to encourage, hugs, kisses, hair-stroking.
‘You look spectacularly unappealing,’ he said.
‘I’m supposed to.’
‘Of course you are. Of course. The grey hair. The terrible glasses. And that pallor, my God. Utterly downtrodden. Please, sit down. This is a pleasure. I cannot describe. Wine, you must have wine.’
‘No. No wine.’
‘I remember a time when you would not have refused,’ he said. He poured a generous quantity for himself. ‘To your health. So; what brings you here?’
‘I wanted to see you,’ she said. She sat down in a cane chair that creaked. She took off her glasses and felt warm air, propelled by blades, rush against her face. Galkin gulped his wine. Alcohol was a greased slipway to indiscretion, which was the reason she rarely drank these days.
‘You’ve put on weight,’ she said. ‘You need to lose twenty pounds.’
‘Age and inactivity,’ he said. ‘French food and wine. Time has not been kind to me. You, on the other hand, appear to have struck a bargain with the years. I look below the disguise, I see no blemishes, none of time’s nasty little scars. You must have a secret, eh? A pact with the devil?’
‘Yeah, a pact with the devil,’ she answered. ‘You must have made a few pacts of your own in recent years, Galkin.’
‘I live quietly,’ he said, and smiled his wary smile. ‘I keep in touch with certain parties. You know how it is.’
‘I know how it is,’ she said. Galkin’s world would be populated with redundant intelligence agents, broken-down men stripped of purpose; dreamers. Their hard
currency was usually information, but more often they dealt in the counterfeits of gossip and rumour. And there would be grand plans, of course, schemes to sustain them – the rumoured possibility of freelance intelligence work in Iraq or vague promises of even more vague assignments in Central America for agencies too mysterious to name. Galkin’s world was one of capsized souls.
‘Talk to me about Pasco,’ she said.
‘Ah, Pasco. A victim of American treachery. Poor fellow. Have you decided to assist him?’
She didn’t answer. She detected in Galkin a certain uneasiness. Her sudden appearance must have been the last thing he expected. Speaking to her on a telephone was one thing: he had the safety of distance. Seeing her in the flesh was altogether different. He was troubled, and trying to hide it. But she knew.
‘Did he pay you for the introduction?’ she asked.
‘Dear lady. You do me an injustice. It was a favour – gratis – for a man who’d spent ten years of his life suffering for no reason.’
‘You acted from the kindness of your heart,’ she said.
‘Of course.’
He was lying, of course. He wasn’t adept at it. Money had changed hands somewhere along the way. There had to be profit in helping Pasco. She remembered how Galkin used to look, slim and handsome and self-assured, trim in his KGB uniform, hair always neatly combed. The downhill slide had been fast. The weather in Siberia had begun the rot; the warmth of South-West France had done the rest.
‘It’s wonderful to see you after all this time,’ he was saying. ‘And so unexpected. Out of the blue.’
‘I always arrive out of the blue, Galkin. You should know that.’
‘Yes, yes.’
She’d first met Galkin eight or nine years ago when she’d gone to Moscow at the request of the Third Directorate. Would she be interested in short-term employment? Would she undertake – for a generous fee, of course – the task of bringing together what remained of the radical German underground, by then splintered and spiritless, and create a unified force out of these remnants for the purpose of certain terrorist acts in West Germany that would disrupt the prospect of German reunification? A silly scheme. The senile German underground had fallen apart in internecine bickering, for one thing. Besides, the process of reunification was inevitable, it had an emotional momentum of its own, and no number of assassinations or terrorist activities could ultimately interfere with the general public will. She’d said so at the time, and Galkin had concurred with her judgement. The scheme had been abandoned.
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