Delta points at a gilt-framed mirror reflecting the far end of the hall. In it, a figure is just visible behind a large, ornate desk. As one, Villanelle and Delta rise from each end of the sofa. As she gives covering fire, he blasts the desk with the shotgun. Wood chips fly, and a body pitches heavily to the floor. Four down. There’s a movement in the opposite corner, and a rifle barrel shows above a white leather armchair. Bravo smacks a burst into the upholstery, and a mist of blood reddens the zebra-print wallpaper. Five.
Ducking back behind the sofa, Villanelle changes magazines and runs for the stairs. The remaining hostage-taker, she guesses, is waiting on the first floor.
She inches up the stairs, and cautiously brings her eyes level with the first floor. A figure appears in the nearest doorway, she fires, and her head is whipped back with such force that, for a moment, she’s certain that she’s been shot. She falls to a crouch, her ears ringing, and is steadied by a hand to her shoulder. Pinpoints of light are bursting in front of her eyes.
“OK?” a familiar voice asks.
Villanelle nods, too dazed to wonder why Lara’s there, and reaches a hand to her helmet. There’s a deep furrow scored through the armoured plastic; a centimetre lower and it would have been her skull.
“You both fired at the same time,” Lara says. “And luckily for you, he fired high.”
The sixth guard is lying on his back in the doorway. The ragged, sucking sound of his breath indicates a lung shot. With Villanelle covering her, Lara runs up to him, an automatic in her right hand.
“Where’s the hostage?” she asks in Russian.
The guard looks upwards.
“Next floor up?”
The faintest of nods.
“Anyone guarding him?”
The eyes flutter and close.
“No one?”
The reply is an indistinguishable mumble. Lara leans closer, but all she can hear is the sucking of his chest. Levelling the handgun, she fires a single round between his eyes.
“What are you doing here?” Villanelle says.
“The same as you.”
“That wasn’t the plan.”
“The plan has changed. I’m your back-up.”
Villanelle hesitates for a moment, and then biting back her doubts, leads Lara up the last few stairs. At the top, facing her, is a door. Taking out the fibre-optic scope, Villanelle slips the flexible 1mm cable over the carpet and under the door. The tiny fish-eye lens shows a brightly lit room, empty except for a figure trussed to a chair.
Silently, Villanelle tries the door. It’s locked. A single round from the KRISS Vector blows out the cylinder, she kicks it open, and she and Lara burst into the room.
Together, they attend to the figure on the chair. There’s a black cloth bag over his head, stiff with dried blood. Underneath it, Konstantin’s face is battered. He has been gagged, and his breathing rattles through a broken nose.
As Lara removes the gag, Villanelle draws her combat knife and severs the PlastiCuffs binding Konstantin to the chair. He slumps to one side, his bruised and bloodied head thrown back, working his swollen fingers and drawing air into his lungs.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Lara tells Villanelle. “You’re thinking that you’ll never be safe as long as I’m alive, because I know who you really are. You’re thinking about killing me.”
“This would be the perfect moment,” agrees Villanelle.
“You can also see how that puts me in the same position. How I’ll never be safe as long as you’re alive.”
“True again.”
“Oxana? Lara?” Konstantin whispers through lips dark with dried blood. “It’s you, isn’t it?”
Both women turn to him. Neither removes her balaclava.
“I never told them anything. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know that,” says Villanelle. She glances at Lara, notes the deceptive casualness of her stance, and the tautness of her index finger on the trigger guard of the automatic.
Konstantin’s eyes move to Lara. “I heard what you said. You two have no cause to fear each other.”
Lara’s gaze narrows, but she doesn’t speak.
Villanelle genuflects, so that her face is level with Konstantin’s, and her body shielded from Lara by his. Reaching behind her back, she draws the Glock from its holster.
“Something you once told me,” she says to Konstantin. “I’ve never forgotten it.”
“What was that?”
“Trust no one,” she says, and placing the barrel of the Glock against his ribs, squeezes the trigger.
Gaining entry to the Cradles’ house is something of an anticlimax. After disabling the burglar alarm with a signal-jammer, Lance lets himself and Billy in through the front door with a set of skeleton keys. Helpfully, the Cradles have left their lights on, to discourage intruders.
Eve drives away, doubles round the block, and pulls up beneath a street light fifty metres away. In the shadowed passenger seat she’s almost invisible, but she can see pedestrians and traffic coming from both directions. She knows what the Cradles look like. She’s seen Dennis often enough at Thames House, and Penny at a couple of the rather grim drinks parties that the Service feels moved to organise each December. She’s confident that she’ll recognise them.
She’s instructed Lance and Billy to go straight to the study and concentrate on the computers. To download everything on every drive that they can find, and copy any documents that they think might be relevant with handheld laser scanners. Both men seem to be experienced burglars; presumably this was what Richard Edwards meant when he described them as “enterprising.”
Eve sits in the car, her mood switching between acute anxiety and boredom. After what seems like a dangerously lengthy interlude, she sees Billy sauntering along the pavement towards her.
“We’re pretty much done,” he says, subsiding into the passenger seat. “Lance wonders if you’d like to take a quick shufti.”
Confidence, Eve tells herself. Look respectable, press the bell, march in through the front door. Lance lets her in and hands her a pair of surgical gloves. The front hall is narrow, with a tiled floor and white gloss woodwork. There’s a sitting room to the left, and a kitchen beyond the staircase. Eve feels her heart pounding. There’s something profoundly shocking about trespassing in this way. “Fancy some toast and Earl Grey?” Lance asks.
“Don’t joke, I’m starving,” says Eve, steadying her voice. “What’ve we got?”
“This way.”
Dennis Cradle’s office is a neat, rather smug little room, with built-in shelving and bookcases, a desk in the same pale wood, and an ergonomic office chair. On the desktop is a powerful-looking computer with a twenty-four-inch monitor.
“Assuming Billy’s gutted that,” Eve says.
“If it’s on there, we’ve got it. Plus an external drive and various memory sticks we found in the drawers.”
“Is there a safe?”
“Not in here. There might be one somewhere else in the house, but even if we found one, I doubt we’d have time to crack it before they get back.”
Eve shakes her head. “No, if there’s anything we need, it’ll be in here. I very much doubt he’d share the kind of information we’re looking for with his wife.”
“Sensible bloke,” murmurs Lance.
Eve ignores him. “So looking round here, what do you see?”
“Controlling type. And pretty pleased with himself, I’d say.”
The photos, mounted in a group on the wall above the desk, show Cradle with friends in a university dining hall, shaking hands with a U.S. Army general, catching a salmon in a mountainous river, and posing with his family on holiday. The shelves hold a mix of bestselling thrillers, political memoirs, and titles related to security and Intelligence issues.
Lance’s phone buzzes. “It’s Billy. The Cradles are outside. Getting out of a taxi. Time to go.”
“Shit. Shit.”
Lance moves fast and silently. Eve follows, her heart
pounding so hard she thinks she’s going to vomit. In the kitchen Lance slips the garden door latch, hurries Eve out, and quietly closes the door behind them. They’re on soft ground now, some kind of lawn. Shit. Why are the Cradles back so early?
“Into the lane,” Lance orders. Overhung by bushes, this leads to the road. Eve swings a leg awkwardly over the low fence, thorns tearing at her clothes. Desperately, she wrenches herself free, and Lance follows her.
“OK, lie down.” He presses a hand between her shoulder blades. The ground is hard, uneven and wet.
“The lights,” she hisses, struggling to control her breathing. “We left the fucking lights on.”
“They were on when we went in. Chill.”
Angry noises issue from the Cradles’ kitchen. A banging of cupboard doors. Utensils slammed onto hard surfaces.
“When I say the word, make for the road,” whispers Lance.
“What are we waiting for?”
“Dennis. He’s still in front, paying the taxi driver.”
Eve wills Penny to stay in the kitchen. She doesn’t. Eve hears the garden door pushed open, and a thumb flicking at a cigarette lighter. Moments later, she smells smoke. Penny can’t be more than a couple of metres away. Rigid with the fear of discovery, Eve barely dares to breathe.
There’s the faint sound of the closing front door, and of a male voice. Eve presses herself even harder into the ground. Her face is inches from Lance’s shoe.
“Look, I’m sorry, OK.” The man’s voice, much closer now. “But I honestly don’t see…”
“You don’t see? Well for a start, you condescending shit, you don’t ever tell me to calm down in front of our friends.”
“Penny, please. Don’t shout.”
“I’ll shout as loud as I fucking well like.”
“Fine, but not in the garden, OK? We’ve got neighbours.”
“Fuck the neighbours.” Her voice drops. “And fuck you, too.”
A brief silence, then something flips over the fence, and lands in Eve’s hair with a tiny scorching hiss. The kitchen door clicks shut, and Eve claws at the half-smoked cigarette, melting the latex glove and burning her fingers before she finally tears it loose.
“Go,” whispers Lance.
Wincing with pain, Eve follows him down the lane to the road. No one seems to be watching as they climb into the car, but she’s glad they’ve got false number plates.
“What’s that smell?” asks Billy, letting out the clutch.
“My hair,” says Eve, pulling off the half-melted glove.
“Crikey, I won’t ask. I’m assuming we’re all going back to Goodge Street?”
“Billy, we don’t have to go through all this stuff tonight,” Eve says.
“Maybe, but let’s do it anyway. There’s bugger-all on TV.”
“Lance?”
“Yeah, whatever.”
“Everyone good with pizza?” Billy asks. “We passed a place on the Archway Road.”
It’s nearly midnight when Eve rings Niko. He’s at home, and the two other teachers who have come to dinner are still there.
“Niko, look, I’m really sorry about tonight, and I’ll make it up to you, but I need to ask you something. Something important.”
Niko grunts non-committally.
“I need your help. Can you come to the office?”
“Now?”
“Yes, I’m afraid now.”
“Jesus, Eve.” He pauses. “So what do I do with Zbig and Claudia?”
She considers. “How good are they?”
“What do you mean, good?”
“IT stuff. Security protocols. Cracking.”
“They’re very clever people. But right now, they’re shit-faced.”
“You trust them?”
“Yeah, I trust them.” He sounds weary. Resigned.
“Niko, I’m sorry. I’ll never ask you for anything again.”
“Yes, you will. Tell me.”
“Call a cab, and get over here. All of you.”
“Eve, you’re forgetting. I don’t know where ‘here’ is. I don’t know where anything is any more.”
“Niko…”
“Just tell me, OK?”
When she puts down the phone the others are looking at her. Billy’s hands are poised, unmoving, above his keyboard. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Lance asks.
She meets his gaze. “We’ve looked at everything on the external drive and the memory sticks, and everything we downloaded from his hard drive, and it’s all squeaky-clean. We’ve just got this one locked file, and I’m afraid that if we don’t crack it, everything else we did tonight counts for fuck all. Dennis Cradle is old-school MI5. He’s not a techie, but he knows how to create a high-entropy password. Billy’s brute force attack isn’t working. We need more heads on this one, and I’ve got clearance from Richard to use outside consultants if necessary.”
“So who are these people?” Lance asks.
“My husband’s Polish, and an ex-chess champion. He teaches maths, but he’s a pretty damn good hacker. Zbigniew is his friend, a classics scholar, and Claudia is Zbig’s girlfriend. She’s an educational psychologist. They’re smart people.”
“What about Official Secrets?”
“We’re just asking them to help us crack a password. Nothing more. We’re not going to name any names, give them context, or show them what we find in the file.”
Lance shrugs. “OK by me, I guess.”
“Billy?”
“Yeah. What he said.”
“So would you have killed me?” Villanelle asks.
“Those were my orders,” says Lara. “If you didn’t finish Konstantin off, I was to shoot you, and then him. He was compromised.”
“He wouldn’t have told them anything.”
“You know that, and I know that. But it’s not theoretically impossible, so he had to die, and you had to kill him, and I was the back-up. That’s how they operate, our employers.”
“You haven’t answered my question. Would you have killed me?”
“Yes.”
They’re lying, naked, on the Learjet’s foldaway bed. They smell of sweat, sex and gunshot residue. In forty minutes they will land at Vnukovo airport, south-west of Moscow. Lara will leave, and Villanelle will continue to Paris via Annecy Mont Blanc and Issy-les-Moulineaux. There will be no official record of her entering France, just as there was no record of her leaving.
She strokes the nape of Lara’s neck. Feels the prickle of her cropped hair. “You were good tonight. That running head-shot was perfection.”
“Thank you.”
“You practically decapitated him.”
“I know. That Lobaev’s a dream to shoot.” Gently, she takes Villanelle’s upper lip between her teeth, and explores it with her tongue. “I love your scar. How did you get it?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I want to know,” says Lara, reaching between Villanelle’s legs. “Tell me.”
Villanelle begins to answer, but feeling the slippery flutter of Lara’s fingers inside her, arches her back and sighs, her body’s pulse becoming one with the engine-note of the Learjet. She pictures the aircraft racing through the night, and the dark Russian forests far below. Taking Lara’s other hand in hers, she sucks the trigger finger into her mouth. It tastes metallic and sulphurous, like death.
Eve meets Niko and his friends outside Goodge Street tube station. Niko touches a hand to her arm, the gesture stiff and self-conscious, and she smells plum brandy on his breath. Zbig is wild and bear-like and visibly drunk, and Claudia is glacial and avoids Eve’s eye. Looking at them, Eve feels her optimism fade.
In the office Lance has made tea, and noting Claudia’s expression, has slipped outside for a roll-up. The temperature is dropping. Eve finds everyone chairs.
“So how can we help?” asks Claudia, her face expressionless, her hands taut at the collar of her coat.
Eve looks at the assembled faces. “We have a password to break.”
Niko looks at Billy. “Life or death, I understand.”
“You could say.”
“So what are you trying?”
“Right now, a series of dictionary attacks. If that doesn’t do it, I’m going to try a rainbow table. But that’ll take time.”
“Which we don’t have,” says Eve.
Claudia frowns, still holding her collar tightly closed. “How much do you know about the password-holder?”
“A bit.”
“You think we can possibly guess the password?”
“I think we can have a bloody good try.”
Claudia looks at Zbig, who shrugs, and blows the steam off his tea.
“Tell us about this guy,” says Niko.
“Smart, middle-aged, well educated…” Eve begins. “Computer-literate, but not a full-on geek. He would have people to take care of issues like computer and network security at work. But the file we need to crack was hidden on his home computer, so probably password-locked by himself.”
“How well was it hidden?” asks Claudia.
“Billy?”
“Executable .bat file. Not completely entry-level.”
“My instinct about this guy,” Eve says, “is that he would consider himself clever enough to create an uncrackable password. He’ll have informed himself about things like information entropy…”
“Like what?” asks Zbig.
Niko rubs his eyes. “Password strength is measured in entropy bits, which represent the base-2 logarithm of the number of guesses it would take to break it.”
Zbig stares. “Sorry… what?”
“You don’t need to know all that,” says Claudia. “What Eve means is that our target is smart enough to know that the password will have to be obscure, it will have to be long, and it will have to incorporate different types of characters.”
“He’s arrogant,” says Eve. “It won’t be something random. The password will mean something to him. Something he thinks no one will ever guess. And I’d put money on the fact that there’s a clue in plain sight in his office, which is why Billy photographed everything on his desk, on the walls, and in the bookcase. We’ve just got to out-think him.”
Lance reappears, smelling of cigarettes, and Billy spreads out the A4 prints. There’s a shot of the desktop, showing Cradle’s computer, landline phone, anglepoise lamp, DAB radio and binoculars, as well as miniature busts of Mao Tse Tung and Lenin.
Codename Villanelle Page 18