“So what do you think of Farfaglia?”
“Superb. A fine actress and a great soprano.”
“I’m glad you like her. I was fortunate enough to assist, in a small way, with her training.”
“How wonderful to see your belief in her confirmed.”
“Il bacio di Tosca.”
“Excuse me?”
“Questo è il bacio di Tosca. ‘This is Tosca’s kiss!’ Her words when she stabs Scarpia.”
“Of course! I’m sorry, my Italian…”
“Is most accomplished, Signorina Morel.” Again, that icy half-smile.
She inclines her head in denial. “I don’t think so, Signor Greco.” Part of her is conducting the conversation, part of her is calculating ways and means, timing, evasion routes, exfiltration. She is face to face with her target, but she is alone. And this, as Konstantin has so often made clear, is how it will always be. No one else can be involved except in the most peripheral, disconnected way. There can be no backup, no staged diversion, no official help. If she’s taken, it’s the end. There will be no discreet official leading her from the cell, no waiting vehicle to speed her to the airport.
They talk. For Villanelle, language is fluid. Most of the time she thinks in French, but every so often she awakes and knows that she’s been dreaming in Russian. At times, close to sleep, the blood roars in her ears, an unstoppable tide shot through with polyglot screams. On such occasions, alone in the Paris apartment, she anaesthetises herself with hours of web-surfing, usually in English. And now, she notes, she is mentally playing out scenarios in Sicilian-inflected Italian. She hasn’t sought out the language, but her head echoes with it. Is there any part of her that is still Oxana Vorontsova? Does she still exist, that little girl who lay night after night in urine-sodden sheets at the orphanage, planning her revenge? Or was there only ever Villanelle, evolution’s chosen instrument?
Greco wants her, she can tell. And the more she plays the well-born, impressionable young Parisienne with the wide-eyed gaze, the greater his desire grows. He’s like a crocodile, watching from the shallows as a gazelle inches closer to the water’s edge. How does it usually play out? she wonders. Dinner somewhere they know him well, with the waiters deferential and the bodyguards lounging at a neighbouring table, followed by a chauffeured drive to some discreet, old town apartment?
“Every first night, this box is reserved for me,” he tells her. “The Greci were aristocrats in Palermo before the time of the Habsburgs.”
“In that case I consider myself fortunate to be here.”
“Will you stay for the final act?”
“With pleasure,” she murmurs, as the orchestra strikes up.
As the opera continues, Villanelle once again gazes raptly at the stage, waiting for the moment that she has planned. This comes with the great love duet, “Amaro sol per te.” As the final note dies away, the audience roars its applause, with cries of “Bravi!” and “Brava Franca!” echoing from every corner of the house. Villanelle applauds with the others, and eyes shining, turns to Greco. His eyes meet hers, and as if on impulse, he seizes her hand and kisses it. She holds his gaze for a moment, and raising her other hand to her hair, unfastens the long, curved clip, so that the dark tresses fall to her shoulders. And then her arm descends, a pale blur, and her clip is buried deep in his left eye.
His face blanks with shock and pain. Villanelle presses the tiny plunger, injecting a lethal dose of veterinary-strength etorphine into the frontal lobe of his brain and inducing immediate paralysis. She lowers him to the floor, and glances around. Her own box is empty, and in the box beyond, an elderly couple are dimly visible, peering at the stage through opera glasses. All eyes are on Farfaglia and the tenor singing Cavaradossi, both standing motionless as wave after wave of applause breaks over them. Reaching over the partition, Villanelle recovers her bag, retires into the shadows, and takes out the Ruger. The double snap of the suppressed weapon is unremarkable, and the low-velocity .22 rounds leave barely a loose thread as they punch though Greco’s linen jacket.
The applause is subsiding as Villanelle opens the door of the box, her weapon concealed behind her back, and beckons concernedly to the bodyguards, who enter and genuflect beside their employer. She fires twice, less than a second separating the silenced shots, and both men drop to the carpeted floor. Blood jets briefly from the entry wounds in the back of their necks, but the men are already dead, their brainstems shot through. For several long seconds, Villanelle is overwhelmed by the intensity of the killings, and by a satisfaction so piercing that it’s close to pain. It’s the feeling that sex always promises but never quite delivers, and for a moment she clutches herself, gasping, through the Valentino dress. Then slipping the Ruger into her bag and squaring her shoulders, she exits the box.
“Don’t tell me you’re leaving, Signorina Morel?”
Her heart slams in her chest. Walking towards her down the narrow corridor, with the sinister grace of a panther, is Leoluca Messina.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“That’s too bad. But how do you know my uncle?”
She stares at him.
“Don Salvatore. You’ve just come out of his box.”
“We met earlier. And now, if you’ll excuse me, Signor Messina…”
He looks at Villanelle for a moment, then steps firmly past her and opens the door of Greco’s box. When he comes out, a moment later, he is carrying a gun. A Beretta Storm 9mm, part of her registers as she levels the Ruger at his head.
For a moment they stand there unmoving, then he nods, his eyes narrowing, and lowers the Beretta. “Put that away,” he orders.
She doesn’t move. Aligns the fibre-optic foresight with the base of his nose. Prepares to sever a third Sicilian brainstem.
“Look, I’m glad the bastard’s dead, OK? And any minute now, the curtain’s going to come down and this whole place is going to be crowded with people. If you want to get out of here, put that gun away and follow me.”
Some instinct tells her to obey. They hurry through the doors at the end of the corridor, down a short flight of stairs, and into a crimson-upholstered passageway encircling the stalls. “Take my hand,” he orders, and Villanelle does so. Coming towards them is a uniformed usher. Messina greets him cheerily, and the usher grins. “Making a quick getaway, Signor?”
“Something like that.”
At the end of the passageway, directly below Greco’s box, is a door faced in the same crimson brocade as the walls. Opening it, Messina pulls Villanelle into a small vestibule. He parts a blanket-like curtain and suddenly they are backstage, in the heavy half-dark of the wings, with the music, relayed by tannoy from the orchestra pit, blaring about them. Men and women in nineteenth-century costume swim out of the shadows; stagehands move with regimented purpose. Placing an arm round Villanelle’s shoulder, Messina hurries her past racks of costumes and tables set with props, then directs her into the narrow space between the cyclorama and the brick back wall. As they cross the stage they hear a volley of musket-fire. Cavaradossi’s execution.
Then more corridors, discoloured walls hung with fire extinguishers and instructions for emergency evacuation of the house, and finally they are stepping from the stage door onto the Piazza Verdi, with the sound of traffic in their ears and the livid purple sky overhead. Fifty metres away, a silver and black MV Agusta motorcycle is standing at a bollard on the Via Volturno. Villanelle climbs up behind Messina, and with a low growl of exhaust they glide into the night.
It’s several minutes before they hear the first police sirens. Leoluca is heading eastwards, winding through side streets, the MV Agusta nervily responsive to the sharp twists and turns. At intervals, to her left, Villanelle catches a glimpse of the lights of the port and the inky shimmer of the sea. People glance at them as they pass—the man with the wolfish features, the woman in the scarlet dress—but this is Palermo; no one looks too closely. The streets narrow, with washing suspended above and the sounds and smells of fa
mily meals issuing through open windows. And then a dark square, a derelict cinema and the baroque facade of a church.
Rocking the bike onto its stand, Messina leads her down an alley beside the church, and unlocks a gate. They are in a walled cemetery, a city of the dead, with family tombs and mausoleums extending in dim rows into the night. “This is where they’ll bury Salvatore when they’ve dug your bullets out of him,” says Messina. “And sooner or later, where they’ll bury me.”
“You said you were happy to see him dead.”
“You’ve saved me the trouble of killing him myself. He was un animale. Out of control.”
“You’ll take his place?”
Messina shrugs. “Someone will.”
“Business as usual?”
“Something like that. But you? Who do you work for?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters if you’re going to come after me next.” He draws the squat little Beretta from his shoulder holster. “Perhaps I should kill you now.”
“You’re welcome to try,” she says, drawing the Ruger.
They stare at each other for a moment. Then, without lowering the weapon, she steps towards him, and reaches for his belt. “Truce?”
The sex is brief and savage. She holds the Ruger throughout. Afterwards, placing her gun hand on his shoulder for balance, she wipes herself with the tail of his shirt.
“And now?” he says, watching her with awed repulsion, and noting how, in the half-light, the asymmetrical tilt of her upper lip makes her look not sensual, as he’d previously imagined, but coldly rapacious.
“Now you go.”
“Will I see you again?”
“Pray that you don’t.”
He glances at her for a moment and walks away. The MV Agusta kicks into life with a snarl and fades into the night. Picking her way downhill between the tombs, Villanelle finds a small clearing in front of a pillared mausoleum. From the Fendi shoulder bag she takes a Briquet lighter, a crumpled blue cotton frock, a pair of wafer-thin sandals and a lingerie-fabric money belt. The money belt holds 500 in cash, an airline ticket, and a passport and credit card identifying her as Irina Skoryk, a French national born in Ukraine.
Quickly changing her clothes, Villanelle makes a pyre of the Valentino dress, all documents relating to Sylviane Morel, and the green contact lenses and brunette wig that she has been wearing. The fire burns briefly but intensely, and when there is nothing left she sweeps the ashes into the undergrowth with a cypress branch.
Continuing downhill, Villanelle finds a rusty exit gate, and a path leading down steps to a narrow lane. This gives onto a broader, busier road, which she follows westwards towards the city centre. After twenty minutes she finds what she has been looking for: a large wheeled garbage bin behind a restaurant, overflowing with kitchen waste. Pulling on the opera gloves she looks around her, and makes sure that she’s unobserved. Then she plunges both hands into the bin, and pulls out half a dozen bags. Unknotting one, she thrusts the Fendi shoulder bag and the Ruger into the stinking mess of clam shells, fish heads and coffee grounds. Returning the bag to the bin, she piles the others on top. Last to disappear are the gloves. The whole operation has taken less than thirty seconds. Unhurriedly, she continues walking westwards.
At 11 a.m. the following morning, agent Paolo Vella of the Polizia di Stato is standing at the bar of a cafe in the Piazza Olivella, taking coffee with a colleague. It has been a long morning; since dawn Vella has been manning the cordon at the main entrance to the Teatro Massimo, now a crime scene. The crowds, by and large, have been respectful, keeping their distance. Nothing has been officially announced, but all Palermo seems to know that Don Salvatore Greco has been assassinated. Theories abound, but the general assumption is that this is family business. There’s a rumour that the hit was carried out by a woman. But there are always rumours.
“Will you look at that,” breathes Vella, all thoughts of the Greco murder temporarily banished. His colleague follows his gaze out of the cafe into the busy street, where a young woman in a blue sundress—a tourist, evidently—has paused to watch the sudden ascent of a flight of pigeons. Her lips are parted, her grey eyes shine, the morning light illuminates her close-cropped hair.
“Madonna or whore?” asks Vella’s colleague.
“Madonna, without question.”
“In that case, Paolo, too good for you.”
He smiles. For a moment, in the sun-dazed street, time stands still. Then as the pigeons circle the square, the young woman continues on her way, long limbs swinging, and is lost in the throng.
2
Villanelle sits in a window seat in the south wing of the Louvre art gallery in Paris. She is wearing a black cashmere sweater, leather skirt, and low-heeled boots. Winter sunshine pours through the vaulted window, illuminating the white marble statue in front of her. Life-sized, and entitled Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, it was carved by the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova in the final years of the eighteenth century.
It’s a beautiful thing. Psyche, awakening, reaches upwards to her winged lover, her arms framing her face. Cupid, meanwhile, tenderly supports her head and breast. Every gesture speaks of love. But to Villanelle, who has been watching the visitors come and go for an hour now, Canova’s creation suggests darker possibilities. Is Cupid luring Psyche into a sense of false security so that he can rape her? Or is it Psyche that’s sexually manipulating him, by pretending to be passive and feminine?
Unaccountably, passers-by seem to take the sculpture at its romantic face value. A young couple imitate the pose, laughing. Villanelle watches closely, notes how the girl’s gaze softens, how the flutter of her eyelashes slows, how her smile turns to a shy parting of the lips. Turning the sequence over in her mind like a phrase in a foreign language, Villanelle files it away for future use. Over the course of her twenty-six-year lifespan she has acquired a vast repertoire of such expressions. Tenderness, sympathy, distress, guilt, shock, sadness… Villanelle has never actually experienced any such emotions, but she can simulate them all.
“Darling! There you are.”
Villanelle looks up. It’s Anne-Laure Mercier. Late as usual, with wide apologetic grin. Villanelle smiles, they air-kiss, and stroll towards the Café Mollien on the gallery’s first-floor landing. “I’ve got a secret to tell you,” Anne-Laure confides. “And you mustn’t tell a soul.”
Anne-Laure is the closest thing that Villanelle has to a friend. They met, rather absurdly, at the hairdresser. Anne-Laure is pretty, extroverted and more than a little lonely, having exchanged life at a busy public relations firm for marriage to a wealthy man sixteen years her senior. Gilles Mercier is a senior functionary at the Treasury. He works inordinately long hours, and his greatest passions are his wine cellar and his small but important collection of nineteenth-century ormolu clocks.
But Anne-Laure wants to have fun, a commodity sadly lacking in the life she shares with Gilles and his clocks. Right now, before they’ve even reached the curving stone staircase up to the restaurant, she’s pouring out the details of her latest affair, with a nineteen-year-old Brazilian dancer at the Paradis Latin cabaret.
“Just be careful,” Villanelle warns her. “You have a lot to lose. And most of your so-called friends would go straight to Gilles if they thought you were playing around.”
“You’re right, they would.” Anne-Laure sighs, and links her arm through Villanelle’s. “You’re so sweet, you know that? You never judge me, and you’re always so concerned.”
Villanelle squeezes the other woman’s arm. “I care about you. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
In truth, it suits Villanelle’s purposes to spend time with Anne-Laure. She’s well-connected, with an insider’s access to the finer things of life. Haute couture shows, tables at the best restaurants, membership of the best clubs. Besides which she’s undemanding company, and two women together attract far less attention than a woman on her own. On the negative side Anne-Laure is sexually reckless
, and it can only be a matter of time before some indiscretion is brought to Gilles’s attention. When that happens, Villanelle doesn’t want to give the impression that she’s complicit in his wife’s infidelity. The last thing she needs is the hostile attention of a senior public servant.
“So how come you’re not shorting the Nikkei Share Index or whatever it is that day-traders do?” Anne-Laure asks, when they are finally installed at a table.
Villanelle smiles. “Even super-capitalists need a day off. Besides, I wanted to hear about this new guy of yours.” She looks around her at the shining silver and glassware, the flowers, the paintings, the golden wash of the lights. Outside, beyond the tall windows, the sky has faded to a snow-laden grey, and the Carousel Gardens are almost deserted.
As they eat, and Anne-Laure talks about her new amour, Villanelle makes attentive noises. But her mind is elsewhere. Fine-living and designer clothes are all very well, but it’s months now since the Palermo operation, and she badly needs to feel her heart race with the prospect of action. More than that, she wants confirmation that she’s valued, that the organisation regards her as a prime asset.
She can still see, half a world away, the grim sprawl of the Dobryanka remand centre. Was it worth it? Konstantin had asked her. Throwing her life away to avenge her father, himself a man who’d gone to the bad. Put like that, of course, it wasn’t worth it. But given her time again, she knew that she’d act exactly as she’d acted that night.
Her father had been a close-quarter battle instructor before he’d started freelancing for the Brothers’ Circle. And although Boris Vorontsov hadn’t been the ideal parent, given to whoring and heavy drinking, and dumping Oxana in the orphanage whenever he went away on active service, he was her flesh and blood, and all she had after her mother’s death.
There hadn’t been many birthday or New Year presents, but her father had taught her to defend herself, and more. There had been memorable days in the forest, wrestling in the snow, shooting at tin cans with his old Makarov service pistol, and lopping through birch-trunks with his Spetsnaz-issue machete. She’d hated the machete at first, finding it heavy and unwieldy, but he’d taught her how it was all in the timing. That if you got it right, the weight of the blade and the arc of the swing did the job for you.
Codename Villanelle Page 4