“Communist kitsch,” murmurs Niko. “Dickhead.”
The shots of the books show copies of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Machiavelli’s The Prince and Donald Trump’s Great Again, political thrillers by John le Carré and Charles Cumming, memoirs by David Petraeus and Geri Halliwell, and two shelves of Intelligence-related titles.
Other photographs are of pictures on the study wall. The students in the university dining hall, Cradle shaking hands with the U.S. four-star general, the salmon-fishing shots, and the family holiday snaps.
“Remember,” Eve says, as she refills the kettle for another round of tea. “The word or phrase we’re looking for could have as many as thirty characters. Think of quotes. Ex- public-school types like Cradle love quotes; they’re a way of showing off how well read they are.”
An hour passes, punctuated by speculative bursts of talk, flurries of key strokes, and the growl of night-traffic on the Tottenham Court Road. Lance goes outside for another roll-up. A second hour passes. Hangovers begin to bite, faces take on a defeated aspect, and Zbig mutters in Polish.
“What did he say?” Eve asks Niko.
“He said that this is about as much fun as fucking a hedgehog.”
“Right, well, let’s take a break and see where we are.” She stands up and looks at the others. “Can I have your best guesses so far? We’ve got three attempts at this password before the system locks down, so before we try one we need to be really sure we’re in with a chance. Niko, do you want to go first?”
“OK. My best shot is something based on ‘Methinks it is like a weasel.’”
“Don’t get it,” says Eve.
“It’s a quote,” says Niko. “From Hamlet. There’s a copy of Hamlet in the bookcase.”
“So?”
“The Weasel Program is also the name of a mathematical experiment by Richard Dawkins. It’s based on the theory that, given enough time, a monkey hitting random characters on a typewriter could produce the complete works of Shakespeare. Dawkins says that even if you just take the phrase ‘Methinks it is like a weasel,’ and a keyboard limited to twenty-six letters and a space bar, it would still take a high-speed computer program longer than the life of the universe to generate the correct phrase, given that there are…”
“Twenty-seven to the power of twenty-eight possible combinations,” says Billy.
“Exactly.”
“Would our subject know about this Weasel thing?” asks Claudia.
“No reason why not,” says Eve. “And Hamlet is definitely the odd one out in that bookcase. Anything else, Niko?”
He shakes his head.
“Scream If You Wanna Go Faster?” suggests Claudia.
“That’s not from Hamlet,” says Zbig.
“Funny guy. No, it’s Geri Halliwell’s second album. I bought it when I was sixteen. I used to sing ‘It’s Raining Men’ into my hairbrush in front of the bathroom mirror.”
“Zbig?”
“How about The Naïve and Sentimental Lover… It’s one of the le Carré titles.”
“That’s good,” says Eve. “I can see our man using that. Any other thoughts, anyone?”
“I don’t like any of them,” says Billy.
“Any particular reason?” asks Claudia, closing her eyes and bowing her head.
“They just sound wrong,” says Billy.
“You don’t think any of them are worth a try?” asks Eve. “In any form?”
Billy shrugs. “Not if we’ve only got three tries before we’re locked out, no. We’re not there yet.”
“Lance?”
“If Billy says we’re not there yet, then we keep looking.”
“I’m sorry, everyone,” Eve mutters. “You must be exhausted.”
Claudia and Zbig look at each other, but neither speaks.
“Those printouts,” says Niko. “Shuffle them, then lay them all out again.”
Eve does so, and they stare at the A4 pages in silence. A minute passes, then another. Then, at the same moment, as if by telepathy, both Claudia and Niko place an index finger on the same sheet. It’s a photograph of Penny Cradle with the children, Daniel and Bella, in a vast square in front of an ancient, pillared building. Penny is smiling a little fixedly, and the children are occupied with ice creams. In the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph someone, presumably Cradle, has written “Stars!”
“What?” says Eve.
“Not what. Why?” Claudia replies, and Niko smiles.
“I’m not with you,” says Eve.
“Why this photo?” says Niko. “All the others are show-off shots, chosen to prove how important and successful this guy is. The high-profile acquaintances, the expensive long-haul holidays, the salmon fishing, and the rest of it. But this one’s just… I don’t know. The wife looks stressed, the kids look bored. Why does he call them stars? Why’s the photo there?”
They all lean closer. “Wait a minute,” says Zbig, his voice low. “Wait a fucking minute…”
“Tell us,” says Eve.
“That square’s in Rome, and the building behind them is the Pantheon. You can’t see it, but there’s a carved inscription on the front of it. Marcus Agrippa, Lucii filius, consul tertium fecit. Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, built this when consul for the third time.”
“So?”
“Wait till you see how it’s actually written. Billy, can you Google ‘Pantheon inscription,’ and print us an image?”
Eve snatches the single sheet as it issues from the laser printer. Beneath the pediment of the building, the inscription is clearly legible:
M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT
“Now that looks like a password,” says Claudia.
Eve nods. “Billy?”
“I like it. Nice high entropy.”
“So let’s try it.”
A flurry of keystrokes.
Access denied.
“Try just the letters without the spaces,” Eve suggests.
Billy does so, and this time Niko turns away, and Zbig swears in Polish.
Eve stares at the screen with exhausted eyes. She looks back at the A4 print, at the sunlit square and the family group, and something falls quietly and precisely into place. “Billy, for the first attempt, you used upper-case letters and full stops, yes?”
He nods.
“But if you look at the inscription, those aren’t full stops. They’re symbols to mark the ends of the words, so that the inscription’s legible.”
“Er… OK.”
“So try it again, but where you put full stops, put stars.”
“You’re sure?”
“Do it,” says Eve.
A flurry of keystrokes, then silence.
“Christ on a bike,” breathes Billy. “We’re in.”
At the fashion house in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the anticipation is mounting. Like every haute couture show ever staged, this one is running late. No one is so gauche as to betray actual excitement, but there’s an expectancy in the muted laughter, the flickering glances, and the delicate tapping of lacquered nails on iPhones. Villanelle closes her eyes for a moment, dismissing the crowd around her—the socialites overdressed for the press cameras, the fashion professionals in shades of black—and inhales the heady perfume of wealth. The fragrance of the lilies, fuchsias and tuberoses banked on either side of the runway, and entwined with that, the smell of designer scent—Guerlain, Patou, Annick Goutal—on warm skin. And as a top note, the sharper odour of the sweat lending a faint sheen to the foreheads of an audience that has been waiting here, on too-small gilt chairs, for more than forty minutes.
Absently, Villanelle reaches out and takes a rose-petal-flavoured Ladurée macaroon from the box on Anne-Laure’s lap. As she closes her teeth on its crisp outer shell the lights dim, the shining peals of a Scarlatti cantata fill the space, and the first model swings out onto the runway, wearing a long, crocus-yellow silk coat. She’s a vision, but Villanelle doesn’t really register her.
What would hap
pen, she wonders, if Lara Farmanyants were to announce that Oxana Vorontsova is alive. Would anyone believe her, or care? Who was Oxana Vorontsova, after all? Some crazy student who shot three gangsters in a Perm bar, and then supposedly killed herself in prison. Old news, long forgotten. Russia’s a madhouse these days, and people are being murdered all the time. Why would Lara speak out? Who would she tell?
On the runway, immaculately tailored suits give way to embroidered crossover tops and tulle ballet skirts in dusty pink. Anne-Laure sighs appreciatively, and Villanelle helps herself to another macaroon, this one flavoured with Marie-Antoinette tea.
The point is not who she would tell, or who would care. The point is that if any element of the Villanelle legend threatens to unravel—if there’s so much as a loose thread—then she becomes a liability to the Twelve. And if that happens, she’s dead. Which leads back to the necessity of killing Lara. But would she be able to get away with it? The Twelve have people everywhere. She could confide in Anton, but she doesn’t fully trust him, and he might well decide that it is her, and not Lara, who has to be eliminated. Besides, she has to admit that she’s stirred by Lara, with her unblinking sniper’s gaze and hard, efficient body. She’s excited by the poignancy of her need.
A Handel sarabande. Cocktail frocks in silvery grey, furled like unopened petals around the slender bodies of the models. Evening gowns in midnight blue, embroidered with galaxies of diamanté stars.
Shooting Konstantin was bad. The sudden nothingness behind his eyes. Did Anton fly her halfway across the world to kill him out of a perverse consideration? Or to deliver a brutal message to Villanelle about the reality of her situation?
What’s most concerning is that the crisis in Odessa arose at all. It tells her that while the organisation that employs her is more than capable of solving its problems, it’s also susceptible to error. Konstantin always gave her to believe that in working for the Twelve, he and she were part of something which was both invisible and invulnerable. This episode showed that for all its reach and power, the organisation could be hurt. Despite the warmth of the salon, Villanelle shivers.
The lights soften. The fashion show has progressed to the bedroom, to a dreamscape finale with the models swaying and weaving in delicate camisoles, sheer nightdresses, and shimmering organza gowns. The designer steps onto the runway, blows kisses at the audience, and is met by waves of applause. The models retreat, and waiters circulate with trays.
“So did you see any of that?” asks Anne-Laure, handing her a flute of pink Cristal champagne. “You seemed miles away.”
“Sorry,” murmurs Villanelle, closing her eyes as the icy wine slides down her throat. “I’m a bit zonked. I haven’t slept much.”
“Don’t tell me you want to go home, chérie. We’ve got the whole night ahead of us, starting with a party backstage. And there are two very handsome men over there, staring at us.”
Villanelle inhales the scented air. The champagne has set her body tingling. The exhaustion falls away, and with it, for now, the doubts and fears of the last twenty-four hours.
“OK,” she says. “Let’s have some fun.”
“So,” says Richard Edwards. “Dennis Cradle. You’re really sure about this? Because if you’re wrong. If we’re wrong—”
“We’re not wrong” says Eve.
They’re sitting in Edwards’s thirty-year-old Mercedes in an underground car park in Soho. The grey-blue interior is worn but comfortable, the open windows admit a faint smell of exhaust.
“Run it past me again.”
Eve leans forward in her seat. “Acting on information given to us by Jin Qiang, who almost certainly knows more than he’s saying, we investigated a large payment made by persons unknown to a Gulf State account held by one Tony Kent. It turns out Kent is an associate of Dennis Cradle, and when we conducted a covert search of Cradle’s property, we found a locked file concealed on his computer. When we broke the password and opened it, we discovered details of a numbered account in the British Virgin Islands owned by Cradle. We also discovered that a sum in excess of £12 million has recently been paid into this account by Tony Kent, from the account that he controls at the First National Bank of Fujairah. I’d say that was conclusive enough to act on.”
“So you want to bring Cradle in?”
“I propose that we have a quiet word with him. We don’t mention these accounts and payments to anyone—Revenue, police, whoever. Instead, we leave everything in place. But we turn Cradle. We threaten him with exposure, shame, prosecution, whatever it takes, and we wring him dry. If he helps us, and agrees to let us run him against his paymasters, he gets to keep the money. If he doesn’t, we throw him to the wolves.”
Edwards frowns, beating a soft percussion on the steering wheel with his fingers. “If you’re right about the people who are paying him…”
“I am right.”
He stares through the windscreen at the concrete walls, and the low ceiling with its sprinkler fittings. “Eve, listen to me. There are enough dead people in this story. I don’t want you and Dennis Cradle adding to their number.”
“I’ll step carefully, I promise you that. But I want this woman, and I’m going to get her. She killed Viktor Kedrin on my watch, she killed Simon, and she’s killed God knows how many other people besides.”
He nods, his expression grave.
“She’s got to be stopped, Richard.”
Richard is silent for a moment, then sighs.
“You’re right. She has. Do it.”
When Eve gets home, Niko is sitting at the kitchen table making calculations in a notebook. The table is littered with electrical components and cooking ingredients. He looks tired.
“So,” he asks her carefully. “Did you find what you were looking for in that file?”
“Yes,” she says, kissing the top of his head, and subsiding into the chair next to his. “We did. Thank you.”
“Excellent. Can you pass me that glass beaker?”
“What exactly are you doing?”
He attaches two wires to a multimeter with alligator clips, causing the needle to swing wildly. “I’m making an enzyme-catalysed fuel cell. If I get this right, we should be able to charge our phones using icing sugar.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been so distant, Niko. Truly. I want to make it up to you.”
“That sounds promising. Perhaps you could start by putting the kettle on?”
“Is this for the experiment?”
“No. I thought we might have a cup of tea.” He sits up and stretches out his arms. “It’s over, then, that project you were working on?”
Behind his back, she takes the Glock 19 pistol from her waistband holster and transfers it to her bag.
“No,” she says. “It’s just beginning.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Luke Jennings is the author of the memoir Blood Knots, short-listed for the Samuel Johnson and William Hill prizes, and of several novels, including the Man Booker Prize–nominated Atlantic. As a journalist, he has written for The Observer, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Time. Visit his website at lukejennings.com.
Also by Luke Jennings
Fiction
Breach Candy
Atlantic
Beauty Story
Nonfiction
Blood Knots: A Memoir of Fishing and Friendship
The Faber Pocket Guide to Ballet (with Deborah Bull)
Children’s Fiction
Stars (with Laura Jennings)
Stars: Stealing the Show (with Laura Jennings)
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Codename Villanelle Page 19