manifold abuse.
The harm once done I cannot now undo
Yet that I loved remains for ever true.”
That floored me for a good half minute. “I didn’t know he had it in him,” was all I could eventually mutter.
“You never saw his gentler side.”
“Didn’t know he had one.” Something that had struck me as vaguely incongruous in the poem came to the surface; whatever her faults, Sophie had never been in the least vindictive - too far the other way, if anything. “Did you in fact take satisfaction? I shouldn’t have thought it of you.”
“I think he meant it in a kind of legal sense,” explained Lucy. “As reparation for an offence, I mean. You know, as in the challenge to a duel - ‘Sirrah, I demand satisfaction!’.”
Sophie nodded, still a little tearful, so that was evidently how she had taken it, and the conversation moved on to other things. Rain in the afternoon had ceased, the wind dropped to nothing, and the sky over to the west had largely cleared. The remaining clouds, lit obliquely from below, were a blaze of gold.
“It’s got a bit stuffy in here. Shall we take our nightcaps out on the terrace?” suggested Sophie once she had regained her composure, and we agreed. The setting sun had laid a trail of shimmering light along the inlet leading out towards the Atlantic, and reminded me of that scene in Bulgakov’s novel where Pontius Pilate, released at last from his centuries of inertia, strides off upon the path of moonlight to meet his redeemer.
“It’s a lovely evening,” I commented, “and so quiet here.”
“The silence of a summer night ...”, murmured Lucy.
“What ...?” I asked, rather too loudly, and Lucy hastily signalled me to hush.
But Sophie hadn’t heard. She was standing oblivious at the edge of the terrace, facing out to the west, arms outstretched in welcome, intent on something that I couldn’t see.
Lucy, understanding her sister so well, just turned to me and shrugged, eyes uplifted in mock-despair.
Some people never learn.
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SET A THIEF ...
Ivanov had to go.
Of that Olga was certain. The vigilante group that he had organised and led successfully for many years, with (as she still believed) genuine concern for the public good, had latterly been subverted to serve his own private ends. She had realised all along that to warrant the fees willingly paid, clients suggesting targets who ought to be dispatched must themselves have had a very substantial material interest that tainted the reliability of their information, hence the importance of Ivanov’s independent checks. Now it was clear that her latest assignment had not been the elimination of a villain but personal revenge for a misfortune brought upon himself by Ivanov’s own greed and disregard of warnings. She bitterly regretted it, especially since on very brief acquaintance she had come to like the man.
That thought made her stop and check a rather different line. Had she allowed her personal feelings to cloud her judgement? It was important to be sure before going any further along the path she contemplated. Martin Barratt had been very agreeable, certainly, but many a scoundrel can be charm itself when it suits him. Did that idea fit the character? No, not at all, so far as she could judge, and she had plenty of experience. He had probably fancied his chances with her, as would practically any normal man in the circumstances, and she had no false modesty about her own attractions; they were too useful in her work. Even so, their conversation had been on exactly the level to be expected of casual acquaintances thrown together just for an evening, and her concern for the comfort of his final conscious moments no more than it would have been for any other decent individual.
With that settled, she had to consider how to go about dealing with Ivanov. The near-impossibility of doing so without sharing his destruction did not greatly trouble her, since she regarded it as a reparation for her own guilt. However, when it came to the point, she found that she had been forestalled.
Katya was a brilliant driver, and the car crash that she had engineered to dispose of Ivanov left her seriously but not fatally injured. The damage was fully repairable. Visiting her in hospital, Olga found that their motives had been similar; Katya had been appalled to find that Ivanov, for whom marital fidelity was simply an obstacle to his own sexual conquests, had used her merely to dispose of an inconvenient husband.
Wishing her a good and rapid recovery, Olga left the hospital and pondered her own course. Katya had agreed that Ivanov’s treachery left the group too ethically compromised to continue, and so did Viktor, the most important remaining conspirator, when told of the situation. In fact Olga’s revulsion now covered the whole profession. That left her wondering about her own future.
Although her occupation would horrify the conventionally pious, she was deeply religious in her own strange way. On her next visit to her confessor, who while aware of her activities had given up trying to convince her that they were not just criminal but seriously immoral, he was greatly relieved to hear of her decision. Of course he urged her again to admit her actions to the authorities; he had to, but as she always said, what good would that do for anyone? In that case, he now suggested, she might more usefully apply her expertise to preventing assassinations instead of performing them. It seemed worth trying.
In Ivanov’s records she had found that the next target on the list was a Dmitri Grigoriev. As a matter of course Ivanov always kept information about clients in a code to which only he held the key, but Olga had already cracked it simply for amusement. In this case it was an oligarch in the Russian energy industry to whose plans Grigoriev’s much smaller enterprise was an irritating impediment, and at the very least she could warn him of the danger.
She was not to know that there had recently been another plot on his life in which his own security chief appeared to be implicated, one foiled only after a tense few days that left the post decisively vacant. Given her acknowledged background he needed to be very sure of her good faith before accepting the warning at face value, but everything she told him came successfully through the most stringent tests that he could apply, and subsequent events convinced him in other ways of her loyalty. He therefore recruited her to his now depleted security staff. The hostile client would obviously have to find a new executioner, and that gave some time for extra precautions.
In the event they were not needed as the enemy ran into difficulties of his own that for the time being would make Grigoriev more useful as an ally than troublesome as a competitor. When approached to join forces he kept to himself that he knew of the earlier plan, but had it very much in mind until political complications neutralised whatever threat might remain. Olga was then able to spend some time devising suggestions for improved general security that impressed Grigoriev deeply enough for her to be put in charge of implementing them.
Otherwise a year passed with no more demanding task than discretely vetting friends of Gigoriev’s widowed daughter Svetlana. One with whom she spent increasing amounts of time was an army officer by the name of Vladimir Youssupov. Because of his habit of sticking bills on a spike pending readiness to pay them, he was known among his friends as Vlad the Impaler, a nickname that even if merely humorous did not endear him to her father. Neither did the association of the family name with the assassination of Rasputin, ancient history though it was. It was only an uncomfortable feeling, but Grigoriev’s instincts had served him well and he therefore got Olga to run particularly careful checks on the man.
Beyond improvidence and the likelihood that his interest was as much pecuniary as romantic, nothing particularly discreditable turned up; his military duties were apparently discharged adequately, he had reasonable social graces and there was no suggestion of philandering. He had one known previous attachment that after years of going neither one way nor the other had ended unspectacularly, Olga thought probably from sheer boredom, and while Grigoriev could raise no enthusiasm for him, neither had he any solid objections. Youssupov’s eventual asking formally
in the old-fashioned way for permission to propose marriage was overly fastidious and struck Grigoriev as distinctly odd, but hardly grounds for criticism, and permission was given with at least an appearance of readiness.
The guest list passed to Olga for checking well before the wedding had the expected mixture of family, friends, business associates and politicians whose favour needed to be cultivated. One entry however stuck out like a sore thumb: an Englishman with no obvious link to any of the other categories. It was so far out of keeping that it could hardly have crept in by accident, but no one else among the staff knew anything about him and Olga was compelled to ask Svetlana herself.
Evidently it was someone who had been particularly kind to her when she had been stranded for a few days in England during the previous crisis. Everything that Olga could find out about him was satisfactory but she had lingering doubts that she felt warranted a personal investigation and therefore arranged a visit to England. That was the easy bit; reaching the actual village was another matter, but she got there eventually, wondering how on earth a supposedly modern country could have such poor provision for travel outside the main centres.
She had an address, but not a street plan, so asked at the Post Office,
Skiddlethorpe and other stories Page 11