She missed the man. There was a dull ache in her heart and she realised that it was as simple as that. She missed him and wanted to be with him. What were complications and indecisions in the face of massacre and war, of life and the universe? They were restrictions she had placed on her own heart and her own love that were not real and could vanish at the wave of her hand. The only chains that could bind her were those of her own creation; she was free.
At their last meeting, she had told Henning to leave her alone, to go away. It was too late. This was not a film. Sometimes you could miss chances in life and they didn’t come around again.
Suddenly she felt cold despite the desert sun and she turned her gaze to the metal jackets of the oil rigs in the distance. She had messed it all up, realised too late that she loved him. She loved him. With these words, her heart began to ache. Stevie swallowed the lump in her throat and blinked back a tear. These thoughts must be quashed until she was completely alone. She wound down the window and let the air blow through her.
Lakes of warm crude spread along the shores of the Caspian, giving off that distinctive sulfuric smell. In the dustbowl ahead of them were hundreds upon hundreds of old oil derricks, for the most part still, a petrified forest of rusted steel. Marlena swung the jeep down a dirt road that led through the oil field. ‘It’s not strictly on the way,’ she said, ‘but I can never come to Baku without visiting Mordor.’
The place could not, thought Stevie, have been special to anyone but Marlena. It was ruined, derelict, with crumbling concrete bunkers and broken boulders. But, as they drove on, Stevie noticed that the black pools of oil reflected the sky like perfect mirrors, and that they were now driving through a field of blue sky and high cloud. It was surreal.
‘A bit like being in heaven?’ Marlena laughed. ‘This is the closest I’ll ever get.’ She stopped the jeep and they jumped out. There was not a soul in sight. Marlena leant over a pool and dipped her finger into the oil. ‘It’s warm,’ she said, ‘like the blood of the earth.’ She licked her finger. ‘Taste it.’
Stevie put her finger in the pool—it was indeed runny and warm—but chose to wipe it on her handkerchief instead.
Marlena grinned at her. ‘That’s the taste of money.’
Back on the road, they passed several police cars and roadblocks but were waved through every time. ‘It’s the diplomatic plates,’ said Marlena, waving at the last officer. ‘Otherwise we’d be ripe for a shakedown every two hundred metres.’
The road ran alongside a huge pipeline running to Tbilisi in Georgia, then Ceyhan, in Turkey; telegraph poles led in long lines to nowhere. A truck piled to bursting with watermelons swerved past them, then another carrying fat-tailed sheep destined, no doubt, for the shish kebab. By the side of the road, a man was roasting a whole bull, skin and all, with a blowtorch. The land was flat and dry and the horizon disappeared into a shimmering silver haze.
Soon they pulled onto another dirt road and drove until they arrived at a dusty grey field dotted with mud craters. It was as desolate as the moon. ‘Gobustan,’ announced Marlena, and hopped out.
They could have been the first—or last—two people on earth. Craters of dried grey mud protruded from the earth. Inside, molten mud bubbled under the methane gas jets. ‘Put your hand in,’ Marlena said.
Stevie looked at her. Was she mad?
‘Go on.’
Stevie moved closer to the crater—she could feel no heat, there was no smell. Carefully she leant forward, one eye still on Marlena, watching for sudden movement, and dipped a finger in. The mud was cold. Stevie dipped her whole hand in. The mud felt glorious—cool and smooth. It made her want to leap in naked in the moonlight. Stevie laughed as a bubble of mud popped and splattered her face.
‘It’s wonderful for the skin,’ said Marlena, dipping both her arms in up to the elbow. She sat back on her haunches, arms drying in front of her, like some glamorous cave woman. Abruptly her smile vanished. ‘Stevie, we are doing something very dangerous with Krok. There is no going back from here. John has already set things in motion.’
Although she already knew this, Stevie shuddered. Suddenly things were no longer funny.
‘Krok is holding a party for his friends and associates. You can imagine what that means. This is our chance. Clémence is organising it and you’re invited.’ Marlena pulled out her cigarette case with her muddy fingers—now dry and grey like bones—and lit a cigarette. ‘I need you to turn up, as if nothing has changed,’ Marlena continued. ‘The slightest thing could make him suspicious enough to blow this. We can’t risk him changing anything about his operations; it would make my knowledge worthless and jeopardise the chance of his conviction. My life depends on it and suddenly I want to live, very much.’ She exhaled a stream of smoke into the desert sky.
‘Anyway,’ she continued, shaking her head, ‘the drama will centre around the fact that Krok plans to announce my engagement to Aristo and Skorpios knows nothing about it. He will be furious with Krok when he finds out his partner is hosting a celebration for his son, and the woman he forbade his son to marry.’ She flashed a smile. ‘He won’t be thinking that the bride-to-be is out to snare him.’
Stevie wondered if any other woman had used her engagement party to sting a mercenary and doubted it. Marlena was one of a kind.
‘Doesn’t he wonder what happened to the Medusa we borrowed?’ she asked, remembering her flight from Sardinia.
Marlena waved her hand. ‘I told him the engines were being repaired in a closed dry dock by a friendly boat mechanic. They are not difficult to replace. Krok’s more concerned with finding out who tried to kill him. He thinks it might have been Skorpios. I think his insistence on announcing the engagement in this way is his method of provoking Skorpios into trying again—revealing himself. It would fit with the twisted way Vaughan’s mind works.’
Stevie wanted Marlena’s plan to work; she wanted the man rendered powerless, crushed, but there was a flaw in her thinking.
‘I’m the problem, Marlena. I think Krok is already suspicious of me. If I turn up, it might put him on his guard.’
‘What makes you think he suspects you?’
‘He may have tried to kill me.’
Marlena raised a narrow eyebrow.
‘Twice,’ added Stevie, ‘although I’m not sure that it was Krok . . .’
Marlena looked out at the distant hills. There was no sound, not even birds. ‘The diving accident,’ she said finally. ‘The cliffs at Bonifacio.’
Stevie nodded. It was amazingly quiet out here, she thought, like the world was on pause.
Marlena kicked a clod of dried mud into the little volcano and watched it sink. ‘That was me,’ she said, looking up at Stevie. ‘I tried to kill you. I thought you were a plant of some kind. I’ve had that before.’
‘What?’ Stevie recoiled.
‘It wasn’t Krok. I filled your tank with the exhaust from the compressor. I thought it was rather neat. Krok found out it was me, of course. He didn’t believe you were an agent or anything else—“too vain, too stupid” were his words,’ Marlena added, with her old smile of cruel satisfaction. ‘He told me to leave you alone. But I saw you snooping about—checking maps, ringing phones, sneaking around outside locked doors. I knew you were up to something—and I was right. When I saw you standing like a little fool at the edge of the cliff, I couldn’t resist giving you a little push.’ She shrugged resignedly. ‘We all have our time to go. I suppose it just wasn’t yours.’
Stevie didn’t know what to say. She was out in the middle of a desert with a woman who had tried to murder her. Twice. She glanced at the car. It wasn’t far, but Marlena had the keys. She felt for her knife, strapped to her calf, and prepared to use it.
‘Relax,’ Marlena said, noticing Stevie’s hand creeping towards the hidden blade. ‘If I wanted you dead, I would have already tried.’
Stevie was not convinced. ‘That’s the point,’ she reminded her cautiously. ‘You did try.’
‘You’re no threat to me.’ Marlena crushed out her cigarette. ‘I need your silence now.’ She looked up. ‘And your help. I’m going to need friends after this, Stevie, and I won’t have many left that I can trust.’
Stevie nodded slowly.
Marlena looked at her watch. A cloud of dust appeared above the dirt track: someone was driving towards the volcanos. Stevie followed the cloud but her eyes couldn’t make out the vehicle. It was still too far away. She felt a shiver of fear. ‘Company, Marlena?’ she asked casually.
Marlena watched the eddy of grey dust and did not reply. As the vehicle drew closer, Stevie realised it was a dirt bike, the figure on it unrecognisable in a silver helmet and sand-coloured jacket as it roared to a stop by the four-wheel drive. The driver jumped off—a tall man, Stevie noted. She felt her mouth go dry with fear. What was Marlena planning?
She stood up, ready to face this new danger head on.
Marlena, who must have sensed her terror, laughed. ‘Think of it as reparations, Stevie. Something to say, “I’m sorry I tried to kill you, chérie.”’
The man lifted off his helmet and grinned. Stevie’s blood rushed back to her face—she walked and then began to run towards Henning.
With her feet lifted off the ground, she clung to Henning, enveloped in his tight embrace, hoping he would feel the remorse in her body. Stevie did not know what to say. Fortunately Henning did: ‘I see it takes a murderer to bring us together.’
Stevie smiled as he lowered her gently to the ground. ‘Well, it’s one way to answer the old “how did you two meet” question.’
They stared at each other, dusty faces, silly smiles, out in the desert plains of Central Asia, and time stood still. So still, in fact, that they did not notice the helicopter until it was hovering right above them.
It landed sending up blinding plumes of grey dust. Stevie and Henning covered their mouths and noses. She could just make out Marlena’s violet wrap and a glint of gold sunglasses climbing nimbly aboard. As it lifted off the ground, Stevie noticed the golden scorpion painted on the tail.
‘Skorpios!’ she cried in alarm, expecting the strafing sound of gunfire—it was a trap for both of them.
Henning put his arm on her shoulder and shook his head. ‘Aristo,’ he said.
They watched the helicopter carry off the husband- and wife-to-be until it was nothing more than a fly-speck in the sky.
‘I want to show you something,’ Henning said unexpectedly, handing her the bike helmet.
They roared off into the scrubby desert, up towards the cliffs that towered above the plain. Below them now stretched the moonscape, all dry mud and tussock; a prison, several pipelines and, smudged on the horizon, the oil rigs. Henning headed for a large boulder. ‘Watch out for snakes,’ he called back with a smile as Stevie made to follow him.
She made a face.
‘Look.’ He was pointing to some carvings on the back of the rock. ‘What do you think they are?’
Stevie peered at them for a moment. ‘They look like longboats, but—’
‘Exactly! Vikings.’
‘Vikings? Here?’ Stevie looked around the arid plain. It seemed unlikely.
‘These cliffs were once the coastline. The Caspian was much larger thousands of years ago. Why not?’ He shrugged. ‘Thor Hey-erdahl told me about them once. He said when he saw them, he actually wept.’
Stevie looked at Henning, his face lit up with passion. There was nothing false about his love of ancient writings and history. That was something true she knew about Henning. Maybe it was enough.
He turned to her and wrapped his arms around her, then took her hand and led her to another stone. ‘This one is very special,’ he said. ‘It’s graffiti.’
‘In Latin.’
Henning nodded. ‘It was left by a Roman legionnaire. This is the easternmost Latin inscription ever discovered.’
Stevie stopped and looked about her. ‘What a strange place this is.’ In the distance, the Caspian was a pale, milky blue, and tiny prehistoric-looking lizards ran about the boulders. They found a sliver of shade by a large boulder and sat, enjoying the breeze that blew in from the south. Henning had brought lunch: cold roast chicken and a bottle of white wine wrapped in aluminium foil, two tiny tin cups.
‘There’s a theory,’ began Henning, pouring wine for each of them, ‘that the Garden of Eden was not just a metaphor, and that it was in the Aji Chai valley, here in Azerbaijan.’
‘Is there evidence?’
‘There is some—and if you think about it, these lands have been inhabited for thousands of years. Cave-dwellers occupied the Caspian coast right here from the early Stone Age until deep into the Iron Age. Then Vikings made an appearance at some point—’
‘The longboats,’ said Stevie with a smile. She loved seeing Henning in full steam.
‘Yes, and don’t forget Zoroastrianism—one of the first great monotheistic religions—grew here in the sixth century BC, where Zarathustra was quite possibly inspired by the mysterious burning water at Qäsämänli.’ He took another sip of wine and lit a Turkish cigarette. Stevie inhaled the smoke and the particular smell of that tobacco triggered memories of Moscow, of danger, and of love.
‘Alexander the Great makes an appearance,’ Henning was saying, oblivious to the shudders breaking through Stevie, ‘followed by an Arab conquest in the eighth century. Islam had arrived, bringing the beautiful stone minarets and caravanserais, all still standing in old Baku. Azerbaijan went on to be devastated by the Mongols and Turkmens—several times, starting in 1225, and was then dragged into the Great Game with the arrival of the Russians in 1795.’
‘And who would have thought we would end up here—’
‘Playing at Adam and Eve . . .’ Henning finished her sentence with a smile.
Stevie looked over and grinned into the dear face. Her heart felt full and she had never known that before. As Henning kissed her deeply, a tiny part of her wondered if it would last, but, for that moment, in the hills outside Baku, deep in Central Asia, with Henning at her side, Stevie was at peace.
18
Malaga airport is not the most charming introduction to Spain. Stevie weaved past the English club promoters—fake tans and tits—waving fliers for the next dance party and took her shoulder bag from the carousel. She had arrived alone, dressed in yellow Capri pants and a peach silk shirt, a Pucci scarf around her neck and large pink coral earrings swinging. Krok’s drivers were picking up the party guests from the airport and she had to look the part. Her muddy boots from Gobustan would hardly be appropriate.
Clémence had invited Henning to the party but his flight had already been booked and they had to arrive separately. Stevie felt dishonest, concealing what she knew from him, yet there was no conceivable way that Henning could be let in on the operation. She slid over the subjects of Clémence and Marlena and Krok like a drop of water on oil. Henning knew only that her mission to investigate the Kroks was over and that this was, for all intents and purposes, a farewell.
By the luggage carousel, she saw Stéphane struggling with a large Vuitton suitcase and sashayed over. ‘Yoohoo, Stéph,’ she called, giving him a big smile and ostentatiously not helping him with his bag. Stevie decided she would attach herself to Stéphane. He would be perfect cover.
A fleet of cars was waiting, gathering guests as they arrived and driving them out through the mad, dusty roads, past the mangy chickens and scavenging dogs, the ugly buildings and oily seashore of Malaga itself, and out into the countryside. Stevie rode with Stéphane. From what he had to say about the preparations—he had been hours on the phone with Clémence—the occasion was to be a real extravaganza, a three-day blow-out of serious proportions.
‘Is it a birthday?’ she asked lightly, holding her fingernails to the light and examining her (hastily self-applied) nail polish. She wondered what the official reason for the party was.
Stéph pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘I think it’s a comeback.’ Stéph was per
ceptive and canny; he had to be, living life by his wits. ‘A sort of “they tried to kill me but I’m back and bigger than ever” party.’
‘To reassure the clients,’ Stevie said, nodding.
‘Exactly.’
‘Isn’t it a bit risky for all those arms dealers and buyers and whatever to gather in one place for a party?’ She kept her tone disinterested, but she did very much wonder.
‘Oh, I think the law and other forces have been after Krok’s friends for years. They haven’t managed to get them before, and nothing’s changed.’ He changed tone, joking now. ‘They are gathering for a private party, nothing more sinister than that, Officer.’
Stevie remembered the Costa and her realisation: evil likes to enjoy itself too.
‘I suppose it is just a party.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s not as if they are going to be actually buying missiles by the pool.’
Stéphane raised his eyebrows. ‘Don’t be so sure about that. I think—’ he lowered his voice, but the driver’s eyes were on the road and it was unlikely he could hear much ‘—Krok has something special planned. Clémence was very hush-hush on the phone, but when I saw her in Paris, we had champagne and macaroons at Ladurée and the combination always makes her chatty. She mentioned an exhibition of sorts, and an auction. Krok thinks it will generate more excitement, more notoriety for STORM, and drive the prices of his hardware up. He’s probably right too. You don’t get many more competitive super-egos in one place than with Krok’s pals. They’re quite an impressive bunch.’
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