The Rhythm Section--A Stephanie Patrick Thriller

by Mark Burnell

  After three months, a new rumour began to circulate: the gang had not been ignorant at all; they had known there was no cocaine in the lorry. They’d known about the guns. The guns were what they were after but as for what purpose, who could say? The whisper was that although the two dead men had belonged to the original gang, the woman had not been Anna Gerets. Quickly, another rumour spread: Anna Gerets was alive and well and living in Thailand. Or was it Indonesia? No one could say for sure but, yes, she was definitely in that part of the world. It was said that she had split from Guy a year before and was now living off her cut from their previous heists. She was drifting, contemplating a new life in a new country under a new identity. And who knew this for sure? Well, it was hard to say. I didn’t meet her myself, you understand, but I met this Dane in a bar in Manila and he’d heard it from someone else. Someone who actually met her. Apparently. And so it went. A culture of rumour was created which, in time, gained sufficient critical mass to pass into some form of fact.

  A question that had seemed answered slowly became unanswered: who was the woman whom the Belgian police had shot through the left shoulder? The woman who had, miraculously, escaped.

  A season changed and a gruesome possibility surfaced. The name was whispered quietly. Petra Reuter, the human plague. The physical descriptions were not dissimilar—although with Reuter you never knew; she was such a mistress of disguise—and the ability to avoid capture was entirely consistent. In fact, Reuter hijacking weapons seemed an altogether more plausible explanation than Anna Gerets and her two accomplices mistakenly attempting a cocaine heist.

  This was how fiction ram-raided truth.

  Just as she had never questioned the need to have surgery for the cosmetic scars, Petra had never asked Alexander whether the French police officer had really committed suicide. Or how they had traced Anna Gerets, or who had killed her and dumped her body into the sea. She preferred not to know how the rumours were planted and nurtured. She just accepted it for what it was: another slice of real life to be added to the fake life created for her. She was a collage of impersonation and deceit, mostly assembled while she had still been Stephanie, or a prostitute named Lisa.

  Originally, the Petra Reuter legend had been created as an open-ended option, one of a set of four artificial identities, two male and two female. Stephanie became Petra because she was the closest physical match of the two female legends. Of the four legends, Petra was the only one that had been activated. It was strange to think that while Stephanie had been destroying herself, her next life was gradually and painstakingly being manufactured by Magenta House. The Mechelen incident had occurred six months before Keith Proctor had walked into her room on Brewer Street.

  This was what she was thinking about as she turned off John Adam Street, into Robert Street. She paused for a moment by the sign: L. L. Herring & Sons Ltd, Numismatists, Since 1789. Collectors of coins. It wasn’t the only thing they were collecting inside the building; lives, also, were being amassed, sorted and stored. Deaths, too.

  Alexander’s secretary, Margaret, was a large woman with a generous nature, as if to compensate for the frugality of her master’s. Once upon a time, she had been married. Now, she was professionally wedded to Alexander and the extraordinary hours he kept. Petra wondered whether she had any social life at all.

  ‘Nice to see you again, Stephanie.’ Margaret was one of the few who continued to use the name. ‘He’s waiting for you. You can go in.’

  Alexander’s office was on the top floor of the smaller of the two buildings, the one closer to the river. It was old-fashioned, two computers on a mahogany desk being the only genuine concessions to modernity. In many ways, it resembled a library; full shelves from floor to ceiling, reading lamps on Alexander’s desk and on a small table by the door. It had an air of antiquity and a sense of tranquillity. Within the rest of the twinned buildings, there was enough technology for the present and for the future, so this seemed like a small sanctuary, a place to let the mind work uncluttered by microchips.

  Alexander was at one of the computers behind his desk by the bay window. Petra crossed the carpet and sat down. Still gazing at the screen, he asked, ‘Were you hurt?’

  ‘Not seriously. I was lucky.’

  He considered this for a while. ‘In time, you’ll find it’s as important to be lucky as it is to be good.’

  ‘I was nearly killed.’

  ‘Nearly but not quite. If you had been, it would merely have proved that we were wrong about you, and that you weren’t good enough. You may or may not be interested to know that Marin’s bodyguard—I think his name is Luiso—survived.’

  Petra shrugged.

  Alexander said, ‘Apparently, you used him as a human shield.’

  ‘It’s what Boyd taught me.’

  He nodded to himself and then abandoned the computer. On his desk, there was a coffee pot sitting on a tray with two cups and saucers, a silver sugar bowl and a small jug of milk. Alexander began to pour.

  Petra said, ‘Marin was involved with Mechelen. He was the gun-seller.’

  Alexander stiffened for a second. ‘Was he now?’

  She wondered whether his reaction was provoked by the information itself, or by the fact that she was in possession of it. She waited for something more from him but that was all he offered her, so she said, ‘I’d like to know how you missed that.’

  He handed her a cup and saucer. ‘We can’t know everything. Even the largest organizations can’t know everything.’

  ‘You absorbed the Mechelen situation for me but didn’t know about Marin’s involvement? I find that hard to believe.’

  ‘We first knew of Marin through another source.’

  ‘Even if you didn’t know much about Marin, you presumably knew all there was to know about Mechelen. Otherwise how would you have known it was safe to claim the role for me?’

  ‘He must have used an intermediary.’

  ‘Like Lehmans?’

  ‘Possibly. All we can say for sure is that Marin’s name didn’t come up.’

  ‘Who was the original source?’

  ‘Marc Serra.’

  That made some sense. ‘You sent me out to Rio to agree a price with Marin. You told me it was going to be routine.’

  ‘It should have been.’

  ‘Marin’s people were surprised that I made the trip just to conclude the deal. And now that I think about it, so am I. A price could’ve been agreed over the phone.’

  ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘Something’s not right.’

  ‘Marin was completely untrustworthy. For all I know, perhaps he decided to kill you just so that he could boast that he was the one who got rid of the infamous Petra Reuter. That’s the kind of man he was.’

  Petra knew more about lying than most people. Next to her, Alexander was an amateur and it showed. The least palatable explanation for what had occurred in Rio was starting to look like the most plausible.

  She said, ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘You wait. Serra is the same lead as Marin. He’s just further along the line.’

  Petra halted, tripped by an instinct. She knew she was missing something but couldn’t see it.

  Alexander said, ‘My advice to you is that you should relax for a couple of days. Recuperate. Your sites are up and running, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then all you have to do is check them from time to time. Let’s see what happens.’

  ‘Do you really think he’ll come looking for me?’

  ‘Who can say? One thing is for sure, though. You’re not in the shadows any more, no longer just a legend. You’re identifiable now, a myth made flesh and blood.’

  * * *

  Petra returned to her flat, a one-bedroom place in a block that filled a gap between Half Moon Street and Clarges Street; her apartment looked on to the former, the building’s entrance was on the latter. It was just six days since she had left for New York to become Susan Branch. It was
only a fortnight since she had moved in.

  She had turned down the heating before leaving so it was now cold. She altered the thermostat and the boiler fired. Compared to most of the flats she had stayed in over recent months, this one was not bad. It was small but comfortable, if a little soulless; typical, in other words, of the corporate flats that formed the majority within the building. Hers belonged to Brillex-Martins, the Belgian pharmaceutical and chemical company for whom Marina Gaudenzi worked.

  She remembered the other places without fondness. There had been a freezing two-room apartment above a café in Ostend. That had been March. The days had crawled by. She’d spent hours waiting for the phone to ring, staring vacantly at the harbour and the gunmetal smudge of sea and sky. Three months later, the ageing owner of the café—the one who had rented her the place—would confirm her description to the police, but only in the broadest terms. After all, what could he say? He had only seen her on three or four occasions. He would tell them what he knew of her, but how much was that? She didn’t appear to have gone out much. She had paid the rent in cash, in advance, and had been no trouble. Had she said why she was in Ostend? Not that he could recall.

  After Ostend, she had travelled to Berlin for a miserable month in a decaying tenement block populated almost exclusively by Turkish immigrants. From Berlin, she’d moved to Zurich for a fortnight, slumming down with heroin addicts and petty thieves.

  Barcelona, Sarajevo, Marseille, Bucharest. So the list went, the cities already blurring in her memory, linked only by her desire to leave them. It was not that they were unappealing places. Rather, it was the life she was forced to lead in them that was unappealing. She had to be glimpsed but not seen, a presence, not a person. In isolation, she waited for instructions. Go out to the airport. You’re meeting a passenger off the Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt. They will not be on it so call the following number from the nearest pay-phone in the terminal. When it’s answered, don’t speak. Put the receiver down. Then return to your apartment. She never questioned the purpose of such routines. If there was method in the madness, she did not want to discover it. Sometimes, her instructions would send her further afield. A weekend in Oslo, perhaps, or a three-day trip to Milan. But the destinations were always an irrelevance because the reality was always the same; a hotel room, a phone, a long wait watching TV in a language she did not understand.

  Often, exercise was her saviour, toning both the body and mind. She increased her strength and suppleness, devising new routines to occupy the empty hours and save her from negativity. In this, she was only partially successful. She had become a nomadic loner and no matter how hard she tried to combat it, there were times when the isolation and the tedium were depressing. Especially when she considered the future. Alexander had told her this was how she would live her life for at least a year, maybe more. It was necessary, he said, in order to build up Petra into a convincing three-dimensional reality. It was not good enough for Stephanie to masquerade as Petra; she had to become Petra and that took time. In the end, however, the process lasted just six months. The deaths of Grigory Ismailov and Lionel Lehmans changed everything.

  * * *

  ‘Are you all right?’

  The enquiry came as a shock. It took her a moment to adjust to the real world. His face was familiar. So were the surroundings. She was in the over-priced Europa supermarket on the corner of Curzon Street and Clarges Street. She remembered now. There had been no food in the flat.

  The man said, ‘It’s Miss Gaudenzi, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He was holding a bag of apples. ‘You dropped these.’

  She looked at them. ‘I did?’

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay? You look a little … lost.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’re shaking.’

  It was true but Petra snapped at him anyway. ‘I said I’m fine.’

  That was a lie. One moment, she had been shopping for groceries, the next, she had been shooting people in a hotel room. The thought of it had overwhelmed her. The memory had played like a dream—it felt unreal—but it was still a memory, a record of something that she had done.

  The man wore jeans and a heavy, black jersey over a white T-shirt. Petra guessed he was six foot two. His hair was as dark as hers—almost black—and just as thick. He had a large Roman nose and sharp blue eyes, as clear as the blue she had seen from her aircraft window earlier in the day. His name had temporarily deserted her.

  Flustered, she said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten–’

  He handed her the apples. ‘I’m Frank.’

  Frank White. That was it. They lived in the same building. They had passed one another in the entrance hall a couple of times during the week before New York. They had exchanged the odd phrase; a greeting, a farewell, a comment about the weather.

  Petra said, ‘I didn’t mean to be rude.’

  ‘It was nothing. Forget it.’

  ‘I’m just tired. Jet-lagged, I guess.’

  ‘You’ve been abroad, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  The questions were too quick, too direct. ‘On a business trip. A couple of places.’

  He seemed to sense the resistance in her. They paid for their goods and stepped on to Curzon Street. He examined the change in his hand and said, ‘That place is like the Bermuda Triangle. Money just disappears in it.’

  In front of them, on the other side of the street, was the façade of the Third Church of Christ, Scientist. Carved into the stone portal above the entrance were three phrases: HEAL THE SICK; CLEANSE THE LEPER; RAISE THE DEAD. Again, Petra pictured Marin standing by the sliding glass doors, crying like a child, the first bullet hitting him in the throat. A father of five. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to banish the image.

  Frank White was still making small-talk. They entered their building and waited for a lift to descend. On the hall table there was a large padded envelope addressed to her. She looked at the reverse side and recognized the smudged inky stamp. It was from Adelphi Travel. Or rather, Magenta House. Yet more information to be processed and stored, she supposed.

  She glanced at her watch. In Brazil, afternoon would be making way for early evening. She wondered what Marin’s villa at Búzios was like. That was where the children had been while she was shooting their father. Her head ached. She put a hand to her temple.

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Perhaps I could offer you a cup of coffee?’

  Petra tensed. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Or tea, if you’d prefer it.’

  Somewhere deep within her, inexplicably, she felt anger towards Frank White. The trigger was a mystery but the feeling was familiar. ‘I don’t think so, Mr White. I don’t think I want anything from you.’

  * * *

  There was frost outside. Petra saw it on the windscreens of the cars parked beneath the street lamps. It was still dark at ten-to-seven in the morning. She sipped from a mug of green tea and then sat down at the Compaq lap-top that was on the smoked glass table-top. The modem squealed as its electronic tentacles spread out, hunting for other tentacles to cling to. She reached Magenta House at Adelphi Travel. The computer in Adelphi Travel then looked for a host and came up with a short-list to choose from: Bank of America, RTZ, Nike, Finnair, Renault, DuPont, Crédit Suisse, Marriott. Out of dislike, she chose Nike. Each day, the short-list varied, between five and ten firms picked at random. From then on, the selected firm was, effectively, making the link. That was where the line of communication would be traced back to.

  She visited the first of her web-sites, Heavens Above, which was dedicated to stargazers, comet-prophets and all things pertaining to alien abductions and UFO sightings. Ken and Bryon, the two men—or boys, perhaps?—who ran the site and edited the on-line newsletter, were based in Urbana, Illinois. There was a discussion forum for visitors, each message being displayed in chronological orde
r, next to the name of the sender and the time at which it was received. When the list grew too long, it was edited by Ken and Bryon, which was what had happened while Petra had been abroad. She prepared a new message of no significance; what mattered was the name she used.

  Can anybody tell me whether they saw a strange light over Hamburg on December 3?

  It occurred at about 2.45 a.m.

  It was a white disk about twice the length of a commercial aircraft.

  V. Libensky.

  She ran two e-mail addresses, one through AOL as Rosario Alcon, the other through MSN as Andrew Smith. She checked those. There was nothing on either. Nor was there anything at any of the other three sites she used.

  She switched off the screen.

  * * *

  I am not meant to be a human being any more. That’s the whole point. Yesterday, I was a perfect machine. Designed by experts, built to specification and flawlessly programmed, I functioned just as I was supposed to. I followed instructions so deeply ingrained that they have become instinctive. I was automatic and lethal, an entity without conscience.

  I take another sip of green tea and hope that the hangover will pass quickly. Last night, alone in this depressing flat, I drank vodka. Not to ease the anguish, it should be understood, but to ease the lack of it. I have been shocked by what I did, but I have experienced no regret. I have examined the consequences of what I did and concluded that every action I took was correct. And I have thought about the friends and relatives of the two that I killed and I know that they will be grief-stricken, although I can feel no grief for them. I can analyse anything but, emotionally, I am numb. If those who created me could see me now, they would be so pleased.

  I have the heart of a computer.

  17

  There were several photographs of him, some in colour, some in black and white. He had thick, brown hair that was turning silver at the temples. The skin on his face was dark and creased, a combination that suggested too much sun. Against this background, his blue eyes looked paler than they probably were in reality. Petra checked his age. Forty-four. For a financier—for that was what he called himself—he looked in reasonable shape.