by Mark Burnell
Rosie tried a smile. 'In better shape than you, by the look of it.'
'His hands?'
'Bruised but not broken. Most of the damage was from the punches he threw.'
'I want to see him.'
Alexander spoke up. 'Not now.'
'Where is he?'
'Somewhere safe.'
'Where?'
'You can't see him, Stephanie. It's for his own good.'
'Don't give me that!'
He pointed a finger at her. 'I told you a dozen times, at least. One slip is all it would take. But you never listened. Which is why we're here now. You've compromised yourself, Stephanie. Which means you've compromised us. And him. He's safer where he is, in quarantine from you.'
Exactly the sort of thing she'd expect Alexander to say. But the tone was a surprise. There was no savagery, no subliminal pleasure. Instead, she thought she detected concern.
'What's he been told?'
'Not a lot. Does he know what you do?'
'No.'
'You've never mentioned it? Never let it slip in a loose moment?'
'Absolutely not.'
'That's not the impression he gives.'
On the inside, she managed a smile. How typical of Mark. And how revealing. He hadn't known, exactly, but he'd made an educated guess. And he'd been happy to accommodate it. Or, if not happy, able to overlook it. Which only cast her current situation into greater relief.
'What a fucking mess.'
'I'm sorry, Stephanie,' Alexander said.
She shrugged it off. 'What happens now?'
'Someone else will finish it.'
She nodded. 'And me?'
'You're not in much shape to do anything.'
'What about our deal?'
'We'll work something out. In the meantime I'd like you to stay at a safe-house for a few days. Just until this is resolved. Arrangements are already in hand. We'll transfer you later today.'
'Why?'
'Because you can't go near anything familiar. Hamilton's flat, your flat at Maclise Road, the friends you made through him – they're all compromised. You don't have anywhere else to go.'
They provided a room for her at the top of Magenta House. Now that most of the leaves had fallen from the trees she had a clear view of the south bank and the Millennium Wheel. In the early afternoon Brian Rutherford, a doctor with a private practice on George Street, came to check her injuries. He diagnosed the pain in her left hip as a strain of the flexor.
'Just like Cameron Diaz,' Stephanie said.
'I'm sorry?'
'Never mind.'
Rosie visited her later in the afternoon. 'You're going to a flat in Paddington. It'll be fine for a couple of days. Get as much rest as you can.'
'What about Mark?'
'We've got him at a hotel, under protection. That much I can tell you. He's staying in considerably more comfort than you.'
'What's going to happen to him?'
Rosie frowned. 'Nothing. When this is over he'll be able to pick up his life again.'
'What's left of it.'
'Don't be melodramatic, Steph. You're the one who needs to think about that.'
From anyone else, Stephanie would have been offended. 'What's the story?'
'Mistaken identity.'
'That's a little lame, isn't it?'
'In a few days it'll be over. In a fortnight it'll be history.'
'Have you spoken to him?'
Rosie nodded. 'Last night, after he'd been discharged from hospital. I took him to the hotel.'
'How was he?'
'As you'd expect. Shocked. Confused. Angry. Can I ask you something?'
'What?'
'Any idea how they found out?'
'No,' she said. It wasn't a lie, exactly, but it certainly wasn't the truth. 'I took so many precautions, Rosie. I didn't think I'd left anything to chance.'
Ten past ten. It's a cold wet night as I step onto Adelphi Terrace. The way I look, the way I move, there can be little doubt that I'm defeated. I had it all within my grasp and now it's gone. The fight has deserted me. That's what I'm hoping they'll see.
Rosie puts her hand on my arm, before I climb into the same Range Rover that brought me here from the airport this morning. 'It'll work out, Stephanie. One way or the other.'
Again, there are two men in the front and one beside me. I don't recognize any of them. They all look in good condition. In other words, nobody is taking any chances. Alexander wants me in a safe-house while the end-game is played out. His reason? I'm no longer able to participate in it. Or, I need to recuperate. Or, I'm even more unstable than he initially thought.
Perhaps there's another reason. Alexander's nervous. When I consider his conciliatory tone, I wonder whether that's complimentary or contradictory. My feeling is, he's trying to pacify me. Just for a day or two. Just until he has what he wants.
As for Rosie, she's stranded between friendship and obligation. As incomprehensible as I find that, it's crucial to recognize it. If she has to go one way or the other, which will it be? I thought I knew. Now I'm not sure. The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes. I still need the Gemini list.
Up Charing Cross Road and into Tottenham Court Road, I sit slumped in my leather seat, my face pressed to the glass. I was so sure I could keep Mark safe. That I could have a real life to make this other life bearable. But my existence as Stephanie is no more authentic than my existence as Petra. They're both built upon a foundation of dishonesty.
Except that what I feel for Mark is genuine. Just like it was with Kostya. In both cases, love cuts through the lies and protects the truth. No matter what Alexander might say, he can't compete with that.
Park Lane is busy, so's the Bayswater Road. We're close to Paddington. I know there will only be one moment for me. My head still lolling against the glass, I let my eyelids flutter with fatigue as we slide to a halt.
In the end they make it absurdly easy. We're in Hyde Park Square. The flat is in a mansion block. I know the type; mostly owned by foreign nationals, only occupied a month a year, good security and eighty per cent empty. The two men in the front enter the lobby to check that everything is all right as the man sitting beside me comes round to open my door.
Sometimes the luck runs against you, sometimes not. I slide onto the pavement, shoulders rounded, despondent, submissive. He closes the door, glances at the lobby and waits for the signal. The two inside are talking to the porter.
My minder's about the same height as me, which makes it easy to head-butt him when he looks my way. His nose pops. As he stumbles back against the car I kick him hard, on the side of his right knee. He crumples. Once he's down I stamp on his right ankle with as much force as I can.
I don't bother waiting to see if they've noticed.
By the time I hear the first shout I'm into Strathearn Place. I don't feel the cuts on my feet opening up again. I don't know what's fuelling me but I'm running as fast as I've ever run. Into Sussex Place, across Sussex Gardens and into London Street. Several seconds later I hear squealing brakes on Sussex Gardens, which tells me how far ahead I am. It's enough because now I'm into a small grid of interlocking streets. I can cut one way, then the next, knowing that every time they turn a corner and I'm not there, their doubt will grow and their pace will drop.
Bleached by the white light overhead, Stephanie sat at one end of the carriage as it rattled through the darkness between Euston Square and King's Cross. The Underground late at night had always been a curious interface between the general public and the city's underclass – the dispossessed and the deranged – with only the drunk crossing between the two. These days she felt like a tourist. A voyeur. Once she'd been one of them. Although perhaps she looked like one of them again, drenched as she was.
She surfaced at King's Cross. Victoria was the nearest station to her destination but she had to assume that within hours station CCTV tapes would be under scrutiny at Magenta House. A sighting at King's Cross would mislead and simul
taneously present a number of options. Had she used the main line to leave London? Had she melted into the surrounding area?
She knew that recordings from street cameras could also be sequestered, as S3 tried to narrow down her whereabouts. Which was why she avoided as many main roads as possible, picking a largely residential route to Longmoore Street in Victoria. The variable hazard remained patrolling police, but she expected to spot them before they spotted her.
Longmoore Street, the familiar façade: bricks blackened by dirt, rotten window-frames, blue paint peeling from the front door. Cyril Bradfield opened it and peered at her over half-moons, surprised then confused.
She said, 'I didn't call. I couldn't risk it.'
He glanced up and down the street. 'Come in.'
'Cyril, I'm sorry. I'd never do anything …'
'I know.'
Alexander had said she had nowhere to go. He'd almost been right. But this remained the one place that nobody knew about. It was warm inside, the air thick with sweet tobacco. She waited for him in the sitting room while he fetched her a towel. An open book was resting on one arm of an old leather armchair: Peter Hopkirk's Quest for Kim. Classical music was playing. Stephanie picked up the empty cassette case: Khachaturian.
'Tea?'
She took the towel – once yellow and fluffy, now off-white and threadbare – and managed fragments of an unconvincing smile.
'Something stronger, perhaps?' he suggested.
He interpreted her silence correctly, collecting two cheap tumblers from the kitchen and a bottle of Bowmore from a cupboard beneath the bookcase.
'I've been waiting for a special occasion to open this.'
'I'm not sure how special this is.'
Stephanie sat on a sofa that tilted from one end to the other. She began to dry her hair. Directly ahead of her, on the wooden mantelpiece there was a black-and-white photograph in a silver oval frame. Ellen, Bradfield's wife, dead for almost twenty years. In the years before that she'd been his portal to the world, allowing him to submerge himself fully in his peculiar art. In those days Stephanie would have conducted her business with Ellen.
He handed her half a tumbler. 'It's fine stuff, this. Do you a power of good.'
'Whisky usually crucifies me.'
'Looks like somebody's already taken care of that.'
She cupped the glass in both hands. Bradfield sat in the armchair, slipped a marker between the pages of his book and placed it on a side table beside a brown Bakelite telephone.
'So, what's happened?'
She dropped her gaze into her glass as her vision blurred. The first drop peeled away, falling into the gold below. And once they started they wouldn't stop, streaming down her cheeks, down her nose. Bradfield began to haul himself out of his chair. Between lurching breaths she told him not to. She held the glass tightly, the liquid dancing to her convulsions.
Eventually, the worst of it passed, sobs subsiding to sniffs. She wiped her face, smearing wetness across it, then took a sip that became a slurp. The heat erupted in her chest. When she looked, half the whisky had gone.
The morning suited her mood perfectly: a lead sky overhead, a sharp wind rattling her window with volleys of rain. Her headache made her nauseous. She lay in bed for a while, listening to the worst of the weather, trying not to think about Mark. Or Berlin. Or Hong Kong.
Around eight Stephanie kicked off the coarse blankets and got dressed, a chilly draught to encourage her. The cuts on her feet were black and dry.
It was a small first-floor room at the back of the house, a single bed pushed against one wall. The wallpaper had daisies and dandelions and patches of damp. The overhead bulb was in a cream shade stained sepia with age. Sepia, Stephanie thought, was the colour that best described the spirit of the house. It was the colour of the past.
She could hear Bradfield in the kitchen below; a door shutting, a cough, the rush of water from a tap, then the sound of the morning's news on the radio. She tried to remember what they'd talked about from the top of the bottle to the bottom. Not her predicament, that much she knew. They'd started to but she'd lost control, descending into a chaotic stream of consciousness, part conspiracy theory, part self-pity. And there was nothing she disliked more than self-pity. Bradfield had brought a stop to it. Not tonight, he'd told her, leave it until the morning. Daylight will bring clarity. Not much, as it turned out.
A phone rang. She heard Bradfield answer it.
Which prompted something within her. Another phone. One that didn't ring. A phone that went straight to the answer-machine.
'The thing she'd missed.'
She'd called Mark twice on the Airport Express between Chek Lap Kok and Kowloon. On the Nokia phone. Petra's phone.
She'd imagined the mistake had been committed the night they'd spent together at Maclise Road before she went to Berlin. Savic had called her while Mark had undressed her. She couldn't think how that might have backfired, but it had seemed the only possibility. Until now.
Was it possible that Savic had a trace on the Nokia? Technically, of course it was. How likely was it? Harder to say. How likely was it that Dragica Maric had been involved? That seemed easier to believe. The incident had occurred after they'd been together in Berlin. There would have been plenty of time to tamper with the phone.
Which meant that the measures she'd taken had been sufficient. The mistake had been hers. Human error; Stephanie, as ever, Petra's weak link.
In the kitchen there was tea. Russian Caravan, naturally. Bradfield turned down the radio and offered her something to eat, which she declined. Then they sat at the table while he poured for both of them. As he did so, she began. He listened in silence until she'd finished, twenty minutes later.
'Alexander was right,' she concluded. 'The truth is, Stephanie and Petra can't coexist.'
'Don't be too hard on yourself.'
'That was last night, Cyril. Whisky and emotion. This morning it's headaches and facts. I thought I could live both lives because I thought I was good enough to do it.'
'It was one mistake, Stephanie, that's all.'
'That's another thing he was right about. One slip is all it'll take. That's what he always said. Something as insignificant as using the wrong phone for the wrong call. And all because I was tired and upset, and not paying attention.'
'What will you do now?'
'I don't know.'
'Why don't you just vanish? You could run. They'd never find you. You're good enough for that. Others might slip. You wouldn't. Not by yourself.'
'But they'd find him.'
'Mark?'
'Komarov.'
'Why?'
'The moment I ran, I broke ranks. I'm no longer Magenta House. I'm on the outside. I might even be a target. I don't know. What I do know is this: by running, my agreement with Alexander is over. Komarov's protection is gone.'
'That doesn't mean they'll kill him.'
Stephanie wanted to believe that. 'It doesn't mean they must kill him. But he's on a list. Like the rest of us. It just depends which list you're on. But that's all it takes. It means they can.'
I place a blank cassette into his ancient machine in the sitting room. I press 'play' and 'record' simultaneously. The spools creak into life. I mumble a few words into the tiny fixed microphone, then play the tape back. The sound quality is dreadful but it works.
Ever discreet, Cyril's made some fatuous excuse about urgent work that needs his attention in the attic. Sometimes his attempts at subtlety are so painfully clumsy I wish he'd be more direct. But that's not his nature. Just as confession isn't mine. This won't be my first, but that doesn't make it any easier. I press both buttons again.
'Mark … by the time you hear this I'll be gone. I have no idea how you'll feel about that, after what's happened. Before I go back to the beginning, there is one other thing I'd like to say now. My love for you was genuine. Is genuine. Please remember that, no matter what you hear on this tape. You rescued me. Falling in love with you, learning
to trust you – you made me human again.'
I speak without pausing, forty-five minutes one way, forty-five back. It's not cathartic, exactly, but at least it's a gesture. Which is what I'm reduced to, where Mark is concerned. There's nothing else I can do.
Later Cyril asks me whether I'm ready to start my transformation. Not yet, I tell him. I need to deliver the cassette first.
Just before four I cross Pont Street. It's a dark, wet afternoon, which helps. I'm wearing an old donkey jacket of Cyril's with the collar turned up, a pair of jeans and some boots. The coat swamps me, making me look smaller. I've also borrowed an umbrella, which I hold low, hiding my face. I stand on the corner of Pavilion Road, a long, narrow lane, running parallel to Sloane Street, south of Knightsbridge.
At five past four a front door opens. Again the weather works in my favour. Usually, the women coming out would linger for a few moments, exchanging kisses and gossip before dispersing. Today, because of the rain, that ritual has taken place inside. Umbrellas up, they scatter.
Karen is the sixth to leave the mews house. Twice a week she comes here for yoga. There are more convenient studios closer to home, but she knows everyone in this class. She's been a regular since she was single. These days the sessions are more than an attempt to reclaim her physique; she says they maintain her sanity. They're mini-breaks from motherhood.
I follow her to Draycott Place. Her green Golf is parked on a meter. I hang back a bit, as she unlocks the car. When she climbs in I let down my umbrella and scurry to the passenger door. As the engine coughs to life, I jump in.
She freezes, then sees who it is. Now she's not sure if she's frightened, or just shocked.
'Get out!'
I don't do anything.
'What the hell are you doing here?'
'Twice a week, three until four.'
'Get out.'
'I wanted to call you first but I couldn't.'
'Get out of my car, Stephanie.'
'I couldn't come to your house, either …'
She takes her mobile from her coat pocket. 'I'm calling the police.'
I snatch the phone and switch it off. Now she looks scared, not angry.
'Leave me alone.'