by Chris Ryan
They were delivered by the shirtmaker's eighteen year-old daughter, a girl fashioned by chance and genetic accident into a creature of extraordinary beauty. Like many Singaporeans she was slender and ivory-skinned, but unlike any Singaporean that David Litvinoff had ever seen her eyes were a dazzling tropical green. As soon as she walked into his hotel room the young New Yorker - already many times a millionaire -- felt himself drowning in her gaze. They were married three months later.
Marrying Grace, it was said, was the first and last impulsive thing David Litvinoff had ever done. At his preliminary interview for the position of bodyguard, Slater had been struck by the man's remoteness. Litvinoff had barely spoken, raising his eyes from his paperwork for no more than a few seconds at a time and indicating his final approval of Slater with a nod. What he and his wife had ever had in common was hard to imagine.
88
Chris Ryan
fjFor the Singapore shirtmaker's daughter had Mne one of the international set's most dazzling and jvert stars. As a child she had seen glamour at a ice -- now she wanted it for herself. And she got She spent her husband's money with reckless :he - buying art in Manhattan, enlightenment in haute couture in Paris, and holiday homes in St and Aspen. She was a particular darling of the ion houses, for unlike ninety-nine per cent of the -lifted harpies who occupied front-row seats at the s, Grace LitvinofFwas beautiful. The waist-length iin of raven-black hair had been replaced by a chic : bob and the long green eyes were perhaps a little we knowing than they had been when her husband first encountered them sixteen years ago, but lerwise time had stood still. Her skin was still as fcate as the petal of an orchid, while her body led and streamlined by hundreds if not thousands of of gym workouts, yoga, tai-chi, hydrotherapy , deep-tissue massage, was as lithe as a panther's.
twenty minutes, as she tried on outfit after t, Slater watched the shop's Bond Street entrance a well-stuffed chair. Where, he wondered Jely, would they be lunching today? Earlier in the they'd visited the Mirabelle, and Marco Pierre e had joined them at their table. jj-From the far end of the shop, by the changing SMns, came the sound of female giggles. *Neil, darling,' came Grace LitvinofFs mid-Atlantic �wl. 'We need you!'
89
The Hit List
Leaving the nine shopping bags by the counter he hurried over. His employer's sleek, elegandycoiffed head protruded from one of the changing-rooms. Two assistants in gilt-buttoned suits stood on either side of the door. There was an air of stifled hysteria.
'We need a decision, Neil. For the reception tonight do I go with . . .'
She stepped out wearing a sheer, barely existent silk top over an embroidered lace brassiere.
'Or do I go without?
She reappeared without the bra.
For a long moment he gaped at her, stared at the small, dark-pointed breasts trembling beneath the silk.
'Well, Neil? What do you think?'
The two assistants were smiling at him, enjoying his discomfort.
'I'm . . . I'm not sure,' he managed, looking away.
'I think Neil disapproves of me,' Grace Litvinoff cooed. 'I guess the decision will have to wait. Perhaps I'll wait and see how I feel.'
There had always been an edge of flirtatiousness in her dealings with Slater, but she had never, he thought, quite crossed the line like this before. God, but she was sexy though, with those lazy green eyes and that sly, spoilt mouth. And, of course, those edible little breasts. Wondering about the rest of her, imagining her nude - imagining her arching beneath him and murmuring his name - he felt himself harden.
And turned to the door of the shop. Get a grip, he told himself angrily. Get a fucking grip. He'd lost it
90
Chris Ryan
dropped his guard and his concentration one ed per cent.
. I very naughty?' she asked him, passing him the jnraining the silk top - so light it felt empty. 'Are ji, very cross with me?' fjtt here to guard you, Mrs Litvinoff,' he replied
lly.
jmeone to watch over me . . . Do you know that Neil?'
j^J'in afraid not, Mrs Litvinoff. Would you like me to the bags to the car, or would you like to go on fcewhere else?' thought Valentine, perhaps. And then lunch.'
at was it, wondered Neil Slater, looking around minimalist white-on-white dining room, that ted all these people? Why did they all look as if knew each other -- as if they belonged here by it? And why - Italian loafers or no Italian loafers - 1't he feel that way? Why did he always feel the sider?
JlfPerhaps it was that sense of outsidership - that sense t life's rules don't quite apply - that had linked them I in the Regiment. That was what had been missing his life since leaving the army, he thought -- the er satisfaction of bending the rules. As a agbroke's employee, and now as Duckworth's i, there was no such satisfaction to be had, no such ijivilege to be enjoyed. ^'Thoughtfully, his eyes scanning the room for any
91
The Hit List
jarring note -- for anything or anyone that shouldn't be there - he raised a glass of mineral water to his lips.
And held it there.
Something out of the ordinary was happening. Grace LitvinofFs hand was delicately - but very definitely - exploring his thigh. They were sitting in a corner beneath a tall, white-curtained window and she was leaning forward and confiding to him that what she really wanted - what she really badly wanted and wasn't prepared to wait any longer for - was for him to take her back to the flat and undress her and fuck her hard for the whole of the afternoon.
'Can we go now, Neil?' she whispered, her long fingers closing over him. 'Can we just pay the bill and get the car and go? I just can't wait any longer.'
Slater felt himself stiffening. His professional resolve evaporated before the need in her long green eyes. You can't blame a compass for pointing north, he told himself.
Her husband, he knew, was in Milan until Wednesday.
'Excuse me!' Grace Litvinoff waved breezily to one of the waitresses. 'We have to go.'
The waitress looked at the table, at Grace's fully charged glass of Krug Champagne, at their barely touched Lobster Newburg. 'Is everything all right, Mrs LitvinofP'
'Everything's perfect,' she smiled, giving Slater an encouraging squeeze. 'We just have to go. It's kind of urgent.'
92
Chris Ryan
dropped her napkin and stood up. Slater iered if he dared do the same.
ie silver Lexus, as usual, she sat in the back while sat in front with the driver. No word passed ireen the three of them. Grace LitvinofF, as she to do, chatted to friends on her Nokia, while attempted to squash down the bulge in his jsers and went through the motions of monitoring : surrounding traffic.
ie entrance to the Litvinoffs' building was in Place, behind Piccadilly. Dismissing the ieur, Grace Litvinoff waited as Slater carried the or so shopping bags into the hallway. In the lift, ch was operated by a uniformed porter, she eared to ignore him, but as soon as the gates closed rind them on the eighth floor she turned her face to t
|IWait,' he told her, and unlocking the door to the louse apartment quickly disarmed the intruder i. Behind him she slipped the chain over the latch. |I didn't get a chance to finish my Champagne,' she lispered. 'Would you be an angel?'
the kitchen, Slater found a bottle of cold Dom ion and a single crystal glass. She was waiting for in the terrace room - a cool, light-filled space ated by the view over Green Park. She took the s, drank from it, and placed it on the mantelpiece. 5n, wrapping her arms delicately around Slater's tk, she kissed him. The kiss took a long time.
93
The Hit List
Closing his eyes, Slater surrendered to the soft urgency of her mouth and the pliancy of her slender body beneath his hands. He had never in his life held a woman as impossibly exotic as this, never tasted a scent quite like her scent, never felt skin quite like her skin.
'You're so quiet, Neil,' she said, slipping her long fingers beneath his shirt. 'You hardly say anything.'
'I'm not so much of a talker,' he murmured into her hair. 'I'm more of a doer.'
'And are you going to ... do me?' she asked.
'I think I am, yes.'
'Call me by my name,' she said, drawing her nails softly down his back. 'Look into my eyes and say, "Grace, I'm going to fuck you.'"
'Is that what you want?' he asked, undoing the silk loops of her mandarin-collared shirt.
'That's what I want,' she breathed.
'In that case,' said Slater, moving his mouth to her breasts, feeling the dark nipples harden beneath his lips and against his tongue, 'you should wait and see what happens.'
'No words of love?' Her mouth was against his hair.
'No words.'
They undressed each other and he carried her through to one of the bedrooms. 'Wait!' she said, snatching up her handbag.
In the mirror he watched her rise and fall over him. The whole scene -- the tall, white room, the sunlight at the windows, the slight, gasping figure straddling him - had an air of impossibility, of unreality.
94
Chris Ryan
ace,' he said.
I me, darling,' she said quietly. 'Talk to me. Tell ijow much you want me.' Her eyes were closed
,*
fou know how much,' he said, moving his hips in
with hers. 'You know how much I want you. f much I've wanted you since the first second I
^y�u'
IfWhen did you want me most?'
i morning, in the shop. That was . . .' fould you have liked those girls to watch us?' [ wouldn't have cared.' |he leant over him, let her hair fall in his face. 'Do 5, love me, Neil?'
hesitated for less than a moment, felt the slick, insistence between her legs. At that moment he id have told her anything. 'Yes. I love you.' ^ell me that you do. Use my name.' I He reached for her hips, pressed them against him. ye you, Grace. You're the most. . .' ler nails dug into his shoulders. 'Go on!'
I're the most beautiful. . .' j'Go on, Neil!' she gasped, biting her lower lip. 'Tell
how . . .'
�But Slater was beyond words. Flipping her on to her ck, taking her rhythm for his own, he drove into her i a lost, desperate abandon. Beneath him he felt her Jten, cry like an animal, tear at his shoulders with her
until at last they were riding the wave together. Mouthing each other's names, laughing with
95
The Hit List
disbelief at the unexpectedness of it all, he fell exhausted to her side, watched the white room reform around them. She lay like a cat, eyes closed, and tentatively he drew his tongue across her breasts. What the hell am I doing here? he asked himself. What the hell have I done?
Smiling, she drew him to her.
'Do you really love me, like you said? If I was to get a divorce from David, would you . . . still want me? Would you still look after me?'
He looked at her, kissed the soft hollow beneath her ear, felt the coolness of her blue-white diamond stud earring against his mouth. 'Yes,' he said. His brain felt totally disconnected from his body. 'Yes to everything.'
That evening he accompanied her to a reception at the Tate Gallery. As he patrolled the crowd, mineral water in hand, he wondered if he was completely insane. If Duckworth got to hear that he'd spent the afternoon in bed with one of his best clients - or to be precise with the wife of one of his best clients -- then his bodyguarding career was over. He'd committed the cardinal sin.
But it would have been worth it. God, but she was beautiful. Never in his wildest dreams had he thought he would ever see such an exquisite creature curled beside him, hear her whisper his name, beg him to make love to her again. And again. She was a tiger, green-eyed and insatiable. *
96
Chris Ryan
ained, drowsy with sex, they'd showered and ed at six o'clock. He'd discovered he was lous, and raiding the fridge had discovered a pot strakhan caviar, a mango, and a bottle of Japanese
r. Grace Litvinoffhad recharged her batteries with cube of sushi, which to Slater's eyes looked as if
rould barely sustain a weasel. 'You should eat s!' he told her, patting her flat little stomach.
Then I'd look like everybody else,' she answered. I my clothes wouldn't fit. And you wouldn't want
lie looked at him, watched him wash up the plates cutlery that they'd used. 'Neil, when did you last , sleep with anyone?' Ill's been quite a long time,' he admitted. 'I was a bit out of things for a while. And that side of my life
much closed down.' IfWere you ill?'
f; Something like that. I had a bad tour of duty across : water.' ?In the USA?'
*In Northern Ireland. And by the end of it things I come on top.' " *I came on top a couple of times this afternoon,' she i. 'It's not such a bad place to come!' ('Funny girl.'
^They'd agreed on the ground rules. In public /here except in the flat - they would behave as ent and bodyguard. Not so much as an intimate look pounds Uld pass between them. Slater would do his job
97
The Hit List
exactly as before -- given her husband's vast wealth the possibility of a kidnap attempt remained a real one. Meanwhile they would communicate using text messages on their mobile phones.
The paintings at the reception were very large, and showed hugely enlarged parts of the human body. There was a vast and filthy fingernail, an arsehole the size of a dustbin-lid, a weeping appendectomy scar, and several square metres of acned buttock. For the most part the 200 or so guests were standing with their backs to these paintings, although each new arrival gave the exhibition a cursory glance. To Slater's eye they were a creepy, vampiric bunch - especially the men, with their too-short hair and their tightlipped, puritanical expressions. Grace, as he watched, was greeted by two of them - zombies in their mid-forties with plucked eyebrows and the over-pink faces of habitual amyl nitrate users. Having discussed her outfit in detail - an outfit Slater had helped choose -- they took an arm each and steered her from exhibit to exhibit.
'Are you having a good time?'
At first Slater was unaware that the voice was addressed to him.
'Lost for words, are we?'
Slater nodded, and turned away. The speaker was a carefully groomed man in his fifties with a goatee beard.
'Do you like the paintings, then?'
'Not a lot. At least I wouldn't hang them on my
98
Chris Ryan
S, if that's what you mean. Not that they'd fit on Jls.'
sorry to hear that.' fell, it's a small place. Not bad though, for the
y-'
>, I'm sorry to hear you don't like the paintings. ; do you put on your walls?' ater frowned and pretended to consider. 'Well, |iknow that poster of the tennis girl scratching her
9
ie other man raised an eyebrow. 'Yes, indeed I He nodded vigorously. 'Well, I must be ating.'
sod luck,' Slater called after him. Wanker, he mentally.
soft, familiar voice behind him. 'Neil, I'll be er half hour or so, OK?'
Grace, with her two hangers-on, ater nodded. 'Sure. No problem.' )id I just see you talking to Daniel Sweeting?' she i, indicating the departing man.
asked me if I liked the paintings.' id you told him?' ^said I didn't.'
ae hangers-on looked at each other, their eyes ening in horror.
Jrace smiled. 'He's the artist. He's also a friend of e, so try not to give him too hard a time if you run i him again.' 'm sorry,' said Slater levelly.
99
The Hit List
'Neil looks after me,' Grace told her two companions. 'He keeps me safe. He's my desert island luxury.'
They looked him up and down. Particularly down.
'I suppose this must all seem very strange to you,' said one.
'I've seen stranger,' said Slater, his eyes moving around the room.
'So where did you train?' said the other. 'Is it like a social work thing?'
'Sort of,' said Slater. On the other sid
e of the room Salman Rushdie and Geri Halliwell were walking arm in-arm. Seeing Slater, the novelist raised a hand in greeting.
'Neil knows everyone,' said Grace.
She left him alone after that, and Slater tried not to stare too intently after her. Already he wanted her again, and more badly than he could begin to put into words. He was grateful to his job for having enabled them to meet, but Andreas's crack about bodyguarding being a service industry still reverberated in his mind. These people regarded him as being of lower status than themselves, he mused, and even though they met as equals in bed, Grace surely felt the same. Her husband paid for him to be delivered to her door every morning, after all.
Was this really how a former SAS soldier should be occupying himself? As a glorified male escort? He thought of Dave Constantine cleaning lavatories and
100
Chris Ryan
eking plug-holes in Wormbridge. Dave was i>ly in Africa by now, sweating out the last two alcohol and cursing himself for having walked i Linda. But he was also doing the thing that he'd i born to do -- the thing that they'd all been born
fou're a Minerva BG, aren't you?' ater snapped out of his reverie. The questioner was l&bout the same age as himself- a tough-looking with a crewcut and a closely controlled justache.
fes,' said Slater. 'You too?' |?Yeah. I'm looking after Mr Rushdie. How long
: you been working for Duckworth?' IThe two men compared notes. Tab Holland was a ler Military Policeman, and like Slater was not �dy impressed by the antics of some of the moneyed He'd spent the last week looking after a pop sup, and described how he'd had to carry tampons him at all times -- the lead singer's cocaine habit caused her to haemorrhage from the nose on a Mly basis.
Holland was interested to hear that Slater had been the SAS. 'Did you see the Evening Standard? he ced, and Slater shook his head.
ji 'A bunch of your guys lifted Radovan Karadjic. icy'd been watching his place in Bosnia - some farm, i'think -- and followed him when he and some of his were driving towards the border into lontenegro. Bloody great firefight, apparently --
101