by Mark Burnell
I glance at the final sheet of paper in the folder.
Entrance Hall, Yellow Level, 12:00.
Hall A, Red Level, 12:30.
Hall D, Blue Level, 15:30.
A schedule of some kind but with no names.
I return to the attaché case. There's a copy of The Economist, a folder of clippings from newspapers and magazines – primarily gossip from the art-world – and the most recent Sotheby's catalogue. Stuck to the front cover is a yellow Post-it note with a scrawled name and address. Étienne Lorenz, Zénith Studio, rue Andre Antoine, Pigalle.
I go back to Golitsyn's diary. EL – Étienne Lorenz?
The last thing I look at is the receipt I found yesterday from Ginzburg. And the message on the back:
Leonid, mon cher,
merci pour tout,
N x.
Followed, in Russian, by the curious addition:
Diamonds or bread? Only we know which.
Boulevard de Clichy in Pigalle on a wet mid-week morning, as close to a bad hangover as a street could be. Metal shop-front shutters lifted with the creaking slowness of a drunk's crusty eyelid. At night, the sex shops looked their drab, seedy best. By the grey light of day, they had a look that seemed to smell.
Rue André Antoine was just off place Pigalle, a narrow cobbled street rising towards Saint-Jean de Montmartre. Just beyond the Hotel des Beaux Arts and Club Harmony, Stephanie came to Zénith Studio. Which didn't look like much of a studio. It appeared to be a cheap apartment block. On the intercom, there was a sticker over the top button: Lorenz – Zénith. It was hard to imagine Leonid Golitsyn standing where she was, although no harder than picturing him at the apartment in Stalingrad.
Stephanie tried three times. No answer. She tried the next button down.
A woman replied. 'Oui?'
'I'm looking for Étienne Lorenz.'
'Who is this?'
'Celine. I have a delivery.'
'It's the top buzzer.'
'I know. I tried. He's not answering.'
'Maybe he's not there.'
'Will you let me in? I can't leave it out here.'
'What is it?'
A photo-flash from Newman's entrance hall: 'A bouquet. Casablanca lilies. It's too cold out here. They'll die. Perhaps I could leave them inside? I have a card.'
For a moment she thought she'd been cut off. Then there was a buzz.
A dark hall led to a gloomy courtyard. Rain fell from choked gutters, splattering on filthy concrete. There was no lift. A door was open on the third floor landing, secured by two chains. A jaundiced eye watched her from the crack, smoke leaking from a cigarette.
'Where are the flowers?'
'Downstairs. Like I said.'
'So where are you going?'
Stephanie didn't stop. 'Up.'
The woman called after her. 'Lying bitch! I'm going to call the police.'
'I am the police.'
The door slammed shut.
There was a note taped to Lorenz's door. Claudette – you fucking retard. Where are you? Where's my fucking money? Call me before midday. Or get out and don't come back. Étienne. There was a mobile number at the bottom. Stephanie tore the paper from the door, left the building and found a France Télécom booth on boulevard de Clichy.
'Yes?'
There was noise in the background and the reception was poor.
'Étienne?'
'About fucking time. Where are you?'
'Is this Étienne Lorenz?'
He hesitated. 'Who's this?'
'I'm calling on behalf of Leonid Golitsyn.'
'Don't you read the papers? That old prick's dead.'
She decided to meet Lorenz in the sewer. 'That's why you're talking to me, you asshole.'
'Who the fuck are you?'
'A friend of his.'
'What do you want?'
'What do you think I want?' snapped Stephanie.
In the pause that followed, she could tell he was in a car, Eminem on the stereo.
'So … you still want to buy it?'
'Well, I'm not phoning for a date. You're not my type.'
'Same price?'
'Depends.'
'On what?'
'He never told me how much.'
'Ten.'
'That's way too high.'
'Too bad.'
'Okay. See you …'
'Wait.'
'What?'
'How much are you offering?'
Stephanie said, 'Five,' and wondered what she was offering for.
'Fuck you.'
'Fine. Forget it.'
'Seven-five?'
Her turn to hesitate. But not for too long. 'Maybe. When?'
'I can't make it today. What about tomorrow?'
'Here?'
'Where are you?'
'Rue André Antoine.'
Another pause. 'No. Place de Vénétie. You know it?'
He gave her instructions and they fixed a time. After the call she headed back along boulevard de Clichy towards place Blanche.
'Something I can do for you, honey?'
He was standing in the entrance to a sex shop. Fifty-something, small and wretched, in a dirty mustard sweatshirt and faded denim jeans with a bleached crease. The shop window was smeared. Behind the glass were gang-bang DVDs, crotchless knickers in scarlet PVC and a selection of monstrous matt black vibrators.
Stephanie smiled sweetly for him. 'Actually, yes.'
Inverness, 12:05
The private aircraft were parked to the left of the terminal building. By the time Rosie Chaudhuri and Iain Boyd had transferred from the heliport to the Falcon 2000, its engines were already running.
Boyd had trained more Magenta House operatives than anyone else but his association with the organization had effectively ended the moment Stephanie shot Alexander in a toilet at Zoo Station in Berlin. Alexander had approached Boyd in the early days of Magenta House. Recently discharged from the Army, Boyd had been attempting to establish a corporately-orientated outward-bound centre in the Highlands. Short of cash, he'd been an easy target. The centre would be a perfect cover, Alexander had argued, providing him with a legitimate business in a part of the country far from prying eyes. For their part, Magenta House would subsidize the venture, contributing to initial costs, with occasional 'corporate bookings' to follow.
Alexander had always led Boyd to believe that he had selected him personally. Originally, Magenta House had been created by a small, secretive group known as the Edgware Trust. The anonymous members of the Edgware Trust belonged to the security services and oversaw Magenta House's creation and finance. One of the original trustees, as members became known within Magenta House, had been Sir Richard Clere, a man Boyd knew well from his time in the Special Forces. And it had been Clere, in an unguarded moment, who had let Boyd know that it was the trustees, not Alexander, who had decided that Boyd should be hired to train Magenta House's assassins. They'd wanted an outsider, a remote individual in a remote location. Clere himself had recommended Boyd to the Trust. Alexander had merely done their bidding by recruiting him.
Boyd didn't know how many trustees there now were. As far as he was aware, none of the originals were still in place. He'd only ever come across three of them; Sir Richard Clere, who was now dead, Maurice Hammond and Elizabeth Manning. Clere had been a pivotal figure at Bletchley Park during the Second World War and had later headed MI6.
Boyd understood that the original trustees had been reluctant to establish Magenta House at all. It wasn't the illegality that concerned them. It was ethics. They saw the creation of Magenta House as a pact with the Devil. On the other hand, new threats in a new world required new countermeasures. In the end, it was decided that the unit should be quarantined from the established security services, which was a condition that had existed ever since. Now, looking at Rosie Chaudhuri, Boyd wondered who the current trustees were and whether their charter had altered since the dark days of Alexander's disintegration.
The Fa
lcon 2000 accelerated down a fraction of the runway before soaring into the sky. It banked right over the Moray Firth. Boyd glimpsed oil rigs being towed towards the Cromarty Firth before the aircraft ploughed into turbulent cloud.
Rosie said, 'I thought you'd stopped doing the outward-bound courses.'
Boyd nodded. 'Packed it in after Berlin.'
'How come?'
'Didn't enjoy it much. Not my kind of people.'
'What about the money?'
'What money? I was in debt.'
'And now?'
'Now I'm okay.'
'So the people I saw on the beach – a new venture?'
'You could say that.'
'It looked to me as though you're still in the training business, though.'
'Maybe.'
'And making money out of it too.'
'How's that?'
'New 4x4 vehicles at your lodge. A new track leading to the place.'
They'd put down there for half an hour to allow Boyd to change clothes and gather a few things.
'You've not been there before.'
'I'm not without resources, Mr Boyd.'
'Been checking my bank accounts too?'
'Not yet. But now that you mention it …'
To his surprise, he found himself warming to her. 'More money, like you said, and my kind of people. A better deal all round.'
'Who are they?'
That raised an eyebrow. 'You don't know?'
'I've been a little preoccupied over the last twenty-four hours.'
'I'm doing private contracts these days.'
'Private military contracts? Trading on connections from the old days?'
'And the not-so-old days. That lot on the rock, they'll be in Colorado next week for high-altitude training. In three weeks, they'll be in Colombia.'
A destination that covered a multitude of possibilities.
'Who's the client?'
'Paragon Resources.'
Rosie had heard the name but wasn't familiar with them. 'Where do they operate?'
'Former Soviet Union, Middle East, Far East, Latin America.'
'What are they into?'
'Oil, gas, gemstones, precious metals.'
'Sounds lucrative.'
'Very.'
Rosie gave him the updated dossier that had been handed to her as she'd left Magenta House. Boyd read it twice. When he gave it back to her they were approaching the Belgian coast.
He shook his head. 'I don't get it. From the moment I first met her she was looking for a way out. Tell me about the rumours.'
'They never stopped. Before Berlin, after Berlin.'
'And you didn't think it was possible that she could actually become Petra?'
'Frankly, no. Would you?'
'No. I wouldn't. And still don't.'
'But it is her.'
Boyd peered out of the window. 'What about money?'
Rosie shook her head. 'She'd made plenty before Berlin. Somewhere between three and five million dollars, we estimate. Certainly enough for a new life.'
'Through you?'
'No. Independently.'
'Tell me something: why bother? So what if she's out there? She's not working for you any more. She's history.'
'Two reasons. One: her memory. She knows more about the sharp end of Magenta House than anyone alive. Frankly, if she was history, she wouldn't be a problem.'
'And two?'
'DeMille.'
Boyd hesitated. 'DeMille Corporation?'
Rosie nodded. 'Given your new line of business, I imagine you know more about them than I do.'
'I'm sure. What's the connection?'
'They're looking for her too.'
'Why?'
'Leonid Golitsyn. We're not sure of the exact reason but there seems to have been a link between Golitsyn and DeMille.'
Boyd sat back and wondered whether Stephanie knew how many hunters she had. The French authorities, DeMille Corporation and now Magenta House. Three trackers, three agendas. He understood Rosie Chaudhuri's concern. He and the French authorities were known commodities but DeMille was harder to quantify. Clandestine and vast. DeMille was an American weapon of commerce, not of state.
Forty minutes later, the brown fields to the north of Paris began to rise up towards them. Rosie looked at her watch. In two hours, she'd be back in her office overlooking the Thames.
'There's something I need to say before you go. If it comes to it, I want you to look at it this way: she may no longer be the woman she once was, which is a tragedy because more than anything else, she used to be a friend. To both of us.'
Stephanie entered place Vendôme from rue de Rivoli. Ginzburg was in one corner of the square, next to Dior, not much more than a hundred metres away from Banque Damiani. Not much more than forty-eight hours away, either.
The door, baroque curls of black wrought-iron over etched glass, was locked. She pressed the brass button, heard the click and was confronted by a large man in the overstated uniform of contemporary doormen; black Italian suit and unnecessary earpiece. Despite this, Ginzburg was a jeweller of the old school. No clean lines or halogen spots. Instead, burgundy silk wallpaper, heavy damask curtains, green marble shot through with veins of cream. Traditional settings were encouraged for sapphires, emeralds and rubies. More than anything, though, Ginzburg was diamonds. They have both sizes, Kostya had once joked, large and enormous.
A woman stepped forward to greet Stephanie; slim, in her forties, blonde hair stacked like whipped vanilla mousse.
'Is Madame Ginzburg here?' Stephanie asked.
The woman looked at her coldly. 'Not today. I'm sorry.'
'I have a message for her from Konstantin Komarov.'
Five minutes later, Stephanie was ushered into a sumptuous first-floor salon overlooking place Vendôme itself with marble busts between French windows, two Frans Hals canvases on the wall to her left and an alabaster fireplace to the right with a portrait of Aleksandr Ginzburg above it.
Natalya Ginzburg was in a high-backed chair to one side of the fireplace; tiny, bony, fiercely green-eyed with gathered white hair. Her extraordinary cheekbones had once been a feature of sharp beauty. Now they threatened to tear through her papery skin.
She was dressed in a black suit and was smoking the last of a filterless handmade cigarette. The smoke was tinged yellow, the scent of tobacco thick and sweet. Like inhaled toffee. She extinguished it in a soapstone ashtray. A single diamond hung from a platinum necklace; pear-shaped, twenty-eight carats, flawless, the Ginzburg Tear was a celebrated gift from her husband.
'You have a message for me from Kostya?'
Polished French spoken in a surprisingly deep voice.
'Only in the vaguest terms, I'm afraid.'
'Your name?'
A question that always snagged Stephanie. 'Petra.' No reaction. 'Or Stephanie.'
A pencilled eyebrow flickered. Ginzburg tilted her head from side to side, taking her time. 'So … you're the one. I never thought I would actually meet you.'
'You know who I am?'
'Who you are and what you are. You're not quite as I imagined you.'
A stern-looking woman with dyed red hair cut like a man's was summoned and dispatched. She returned with a lacquered tray bearing an antique brass samovar, two tall glasses in silver filigree holders, a silver sugar bowl and a silver armada dish of sliced lemon.
When they were alone again, Ginzburg said, 'I know that you are not here because of some message from Kostya so what is it that you want?'
'I'm here because of Leonid Golitsyn. I saw him the day before yesterday. Just after he died.'
'Just after? How soon after?'
'Let me put it this way: I think I'm supposed to be the one who killed him.'
She reached for a mother-of-pearl cigarette case. 'That sounds awkward.' The cigarettes were short and oval, the paper starched and sepia. She slipped one between crimson lips and lit it with a gold Cartier lighter. Stephanie watched blue veins rise off her spindl
y hand.
Natalya Ginzburg said, 'How do you know – how did you know – Leonid?'
'I'd never heard of him until two days ago. But we must have a connection.'
'And so you've come to me because you think I might know what that is?'
'The two of you knew each other well.'
'You think so?'
Stephanie handed her the receipt with the message on the back. 'Yes, I think so.'
Ginzburg examined the receipt. 'You took this from him?'
'He was already dead.'
Her frosty stare seemed to last all winter. 'Leonid and I have lived in parallel. Born into the same generation, we grew up in Moscow. We fell out of contact during the war; I was a nurse at the siege of Leningrad, Leonid fought for the defence of Moscow in 1941, then served under Zhukov, liberating the Ukraine and Crimea. After the war, we met again, only to be parted once more.'
'How?'
'The normal thing. The Gulag.' Said as a quip, but there was no mistaking the gravity. 'I spent seven years in Vyatlag, not far from Perm. Leonid was sentenced to four at Minlag in the north, and then five at Dalstroi in the east.'
'Why?'
'You imagine there needed to be a reason?'
'When did you meet again?'
'In 1957. Here, in Paris. Can you imagine that? Each of us believing that the other had died in the camps. Then to meet in this city, of all places.'
'What were you doing?'
'I arrived here from Switzerland in 1953, on the very day that Stalin died. By the time I met Leonid again, I was engaged to Aleksandr.'
'How did Golitsyn get here?'
'He never told me. I asked him once but he wouldn't say. There are some questions you don't ask more than once. These days, everybody is encouraged to talk about everything all the time. But some things are best left alone.'
'I agree.'
'Leonid had already buried his past by the time he arrived here. For us, our history was a dirty secret. We whispered in private and were silent in public. I never told Aleksandr anything. He grew up here. The Occupation couldn't compare. He knew that. And knew better than to ask. There would have been no merit in telling him about the things I had to do just to get enough bread to survive.'
'You're being remarkably candid with me.'
'Only because I know that you understand.'