Gemini

I gazed into his eyes and said, ‘I feel it, too.’

I think he was telling the truth. At the time, that never occurred to me because everything I said to him was a lie and I assumed we were both playing the same game. When he said we should meet again in Geneva I said that would be lovely, that I couldn’t wait. Which was as close to the truth as I ever got with Massimo; I needed unforced access to his company apartment. Later, when he told me he thought I looked beautiful, I just smiled, as I wondered whether I would be the one to kill him. As it turned out, it was somebody else: Dragica Mark.

When Claesen mentioned her name, the memory of the last time we were together was resurrected: about two years ago, at the derelict Somerset Hotel on West 54th Street in Manhattan. We were in a narrow service corridor down one side of the hotel. It was dark and damp, the sound of the city barely audible over the rain. She was armed with a Glock. She told me to kneel. There was nothing I could do but obey. Then she asked me questions, which I answered honestly. Certain that I was about to die, there had seemed little point in lying. Finally she fired the Glock. Above my head. By the time I realized I was still alive, she was gone.

Place des Ferblantiers, ten in the morning. Petra’s guide wore the traditional white djellaba with a pointed hood. Inside the Mellah, the Jewish Quarter, they entered a covered market. In the still heat, smells competed for supremacy: fish, body odour, chickens, rubbish and, in particular, a meat counter with oesophagi hanging from hooks. The hum of flies was close. Beyond the market the guide led her through a maze of crooked streets, some so narrow she could press her palms against both walls. There were no signs and no straight lines. They passed doors set into walls, snatching occasional glimpses: a staircase rising into darkness, a moving foot, a sleeping dog. Lanes were pockmarked with tiny retail outlets: a man selling watch straps from a booth the size of a cupboard, a shop trading in solitary bicycle wheels, Sprite and Coke sold from a coolbox in the shallow shade of a doorway.

They came to an arch. Beneath it a merchant was arranging sacks of spices. Behind the sacks, on a wooden table, were baskets of lemons and limes. Garlands of garlic hung from a wooden beam. They passed through the arch into a courtyard. Beneath a reed canopy two women were weaving baskets.

They headed for a door on the far side of the courtyard, took the stairs to the upper floor, turned left and arrived at a large, rectangular room. It was carpeted, quite literally: carpets covering the floor and three walls. Other carpets were piled waist high, some exquisitely intricate, with silk thread shimmering beneath the harsh overhead lighting, others a cruder style of kilim, in vivid turquoise, egg-yolk yellow and blood red. The fourth wall contained the only window, which looked out onto the courtyard.

Maxim Mostovoi was at the far end of the room, sprawled across a tan leather sofa as plushly padded as he was. He wore Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses and a full moustache. His gut stretched a pale green polo-shirt that bore dark sweat stains in the pinch of both armpits. Fat thighs made his chinos fit as snugly as a second skin.

Jarni, the whippet-faced man from the villa at Palmeraie, stood to Petra’s right. Beside him was a taller man, a body-builder perhaps, massive shoulders tapering to a trim waist, black hair oiled to the scalp, his skin the colour and texture of chocolate mousse. He had a gold ring through his right eyebrow.

‘I feel I know you,’ Mostovoi murmured.

‘A common mistake.’

‘I’m sure.’ He nodded at the body-builder. ‘Alexei …’

Petra said, ‘I’m not armed.’

‘Then you won’t mind.’

Petra had been frisked many times. There were two elements to the process that almost never varied, in her experience: the procedure was carried out by men, and they took pleasure in their work. More than once she’d had eager fingers inside her clothes, even inside her underwear and, on one occasion, inside her. The man who’d done that had gorged himself on her discomfort. Later, when she crushed both his hands in a car door, she took some reciprocal pleasure from the act.

‘You should be more careful where you put your fingers,’ she’d told him, as he surveyed what remained of them.

Petra had dressed deliberately. Black cotton trousers, a black T-shirt beneath a turquoise shirt tied at the waist and a pair of lightweight walking boots. Suspended from the leather cord around her neck was a fisherman’s cross made of burnished mahogany, the wood so smooth that the fracture line at the base of the loop was almost invisible. She wore her long dark hair in a pony-tail.

Among friskers she’d known, Alexei the bodybuilder was about average. In other words, tiresomely predictable. Petra knew that behind his sunglasses Mostovoi wasn’t blinking. His face was shiny with sweat. As he took in the show, she took in the room. Apart from his mobile phone, the table was bare. A lamp without a shade stood on an upturned crate at the far end of the sofa. By the door she’d noticed a box containing a wooden paddle for beating the dust from carpets. Next to the box there was a portable black-and-white security monitor on a creaking table, a bin, a ball of used bubble-wrap and an electric fan, unplugged. She’d been in rooms that offered less. And in situations that threatened more. Until now she hadn’t known whether Mostovoi would be viable.

Alexei reached between her legs, but Petra snatched his wrist away. ‘Take my word for it, you won’t find an Uzi down there.’

He glanced at Mostovoi, who shook his head, then continued, skipping over her stomach and ribs before slowing as he reached her breasts. His fingers found something solid in the breast pocket of her shirt. Petra took it out before he had the chance to retrieve it himself.

‘What’s that?’ Mostovoi asked.

‘An inhaler,’ Petra said. ‘With a Salbutamol cartridge. I’m asthmatic’

He was surprised, then amused. ‘You?’ It was the third version of the inhaler Petra had been given. She’d never used any of them. Mostovoi’s amusement began to turn to suspicion. ‘Show me.’

‘You put this end in your mouth, squeeze the cartridge and inhale.’

‘I said, show me.’

So she did, taking care not to break the second seal by pushing the cartridge too vigorously. There was a squirt of Salbutamol from the mouthpiece, which she inhaled, a cold powder against the back of her throat.

The frisk resumed, until Alexei stepped away from Petra and shook his head. Mostovoi seemed genuinely amazed. ‘You don’t have a gun?’

‘I didn’t think I’d need one. Besides, I didn’t want your friend to feel something hard in my trousers and get over-excited.’

A barefoot boy entered the room, carrying a tray with two tall glasses of mint tea and a silver sugar bowl. Fresh mint leaves had been crushed into the bottom of each glass. He passed one to Petra and the other to Mostovoi, before leaving.

Petra said, ‘That was a neat idea, using Claesen as an intermediary yesterday.’

‘It was a matter of some … reassurance.’

‘I know.’ She caught his eye. ‘Your reassurance, though. Not mine.’

Mostovoi inclined his head a little, a bow of concession. ‘Your reputation may precede you, but nobody ever knows what follows it. Within our community you’re a contradiction: the anonymous celebrity.’

‘Unlike you.’

‘I’m a salesman. Nothing more.’

‘Don’t sell yourself short.’

Mostovoi smiled. ‘I never do.’ He lit a Marlboro with a gold Dunhill lighter. ‘This is a change of career for you, no?’

‘Not so much a change, more of an expansion.’

‘I know you met Klim in Lille last month. And again in Bratislava three weeks ago.’

‘Small world.’

‘The smallest you can imagine. You discussed Sukhoi-25s for five million US an aircraft. For fifty-five million dollars, he said he could get you twelve; buy eleven, get one free.’

‘What can I say? We live in a supermarket culture.’

‘Or for one hundred million, twenty-five. Which is not bad. But you weren’t interested.’

‘Because?’

‘Because the Sukhoi-25 isn’t good enough. The MiG-29SE is superior in every way. That’s what Klim told you. And that they can be purchased direct from Rosboron for about thirty million dollars each. However, good discounts can be negotiated, so …’

‘But not the kind of discounts that you can negotiate. Right?’

Mostovoi took off his sunglasses and placed them beside his phone. He wiped sweat from his forehead. ‘That depends. I understand you’re also in the market for transport helicopters. Specifically, the Mi-26.’

‘Actually, the Mi-26 is all I’m in the market for. Klim got over-excited. We discussed the Sukhoi and the MiG, but that’s all it was. Talk.’

Mostovoi looked disappointed.

The Mi-26 was a monster: 110 feet in length, almost the size of a Boeing 727, it was designed to carry eighty to ninety passengers, although in Russia, where most of them were in service, it was not uncommon for them to transport up to one hundred and twenty.

‘How many?’ Mostovoi asked.

‘Two, possibly three.’

‘That’s a lot of men.’

‘Or a lot of cargo.’

‘Either way, it’s a lot of money.’

‘I’m not interested in running a few AK-47s to ETA or the IRA.’

Mostovoi pondered this while he smoked. ‘Still, a deal this size … normally I would hear about it.’

‘Normally you’d be involved.’

‘True.’

‘Which would leave me on the outside.’

‘Also true.’

Petra took a sip from her tea, letting Mostovoi do the work. Casually, she wandered over to the window, which was open, and looked out. There was no hint of a cooling breeze to counter the stifling heat. The canopy covering the basket-weavers was directly below. She glanced at Alexei and Jarni. They’d relaxed; Jarni’s eyes had glazed over. The wooden grip of a Bernardelli P-018 protruded from the waistband of his trousers. Alexei was wearing a tight white T-shirt that revealed his chiselled physique to maximum effect. And the fact that he was unarmed.

The immediate future was coming into focus. She returned her attention to Mostovoi, who was talking about the nature of the clients she represented. A rebel faction of some sort, perhaps. Or drug warlords. From Colombia, maybe, or even Afghanistan.

‘What’s your point?’

‘Maybe there is no deal.’

He made it sound as though the idea had only just occurred to him. Petra felt her damp skin prickle with alarm. ‘Klim thinks there is.’

Mostovoi snorted with contempt. ‘That’s why Klim flies economy while I have a Gulfstream V …’

Petra spun to her left, sensing the movement behind her: Alexei advancing, swinging at her. The blow caught her on the ribs, not across the back of the neck, as intended. But it was enough to crush the air out of her. She tumbled onto the mustard carpet, her glass of tea shattering beneath her. Alexei came at her again, brandishing the wooden paddle like a baseball bat.

Jarni yanked the Bernardelli from his waistband. Petra rolled to her right, fragments of glass biting into her. The paddle missed her head, crunching against her shoulder and collar-bone instead. Moving as clumsily as she’d anticipated, his bubbling muscularity a hindrance, not an advantage, Alexei attempted to grasp her, but she slithered beyond his reach.

Jarni aimed a kick at her. His shoe scuffed her left thigh. She made a counter-kick with her right foot, hooking away his standing leg. He toppled backwards. As his elbow hit the ground the gun discharged accidentally, the bullet ripping into the ceiling, sprinkling them with dusty rubble.

Before she could get to her feet Alexei’s boot found the same patch of ribs as the paddle. Winded and momentarily powerless, she couldn’t prevent the bodybuilder grabbing her pony-tail and dragging her to her knees. Jarni was on his side, stunned, the 9mm a few feet away. Alexei hauled her to her feet and threw several punches, each a hammer-blow, the worst of them to the small of her back, the force of it sending a sickening shudder through the rest of her. Then he attempted to pin her arms together behind her back. Which would leave her exposed to Jarni. Or even Mostovoi. Through the fog, she understood this.

Petra curled forward as much as she could, then dug her toes into the ground and launched herself up and back with as much power as she could muster. The crown of her head smacked Alexei in the face. She knew they were both cut. His grip slackened and she wriggled free as he staggered to one side, dazed and bloody. Petra grabbed the inhaler from her breast pocket, pressed the cartridge, felt the second seal rupture and fired the CS gas into his eyes.

Jarni was on his feet now, the gun in his right hand rising towards her. With a stride she was beside him, both hands clamping his right wrist. Unbalanced, he wobbled. She drove his hand down and nudged the trigger finger. The gun fired again, the bullet splitting his left kneecap.

Gasping, Alexei was on his knees, his face buried in his hands, blood dribbling between his fingers. Jarni started to scream. And Mostovoi was exactly where he’d been a few moments before. On the sofa, not moving, the complacency of the voyeur usurped by the paralysis of fear.

There were shouts in the courtyard and footsteps on the stairs. She picked up Jarni’s Bernardelli and aimed at Mostovoi’s eyes.

Resigned to the bullet, he matched her stare.

‘Why?’

As good a last word as any, Petra supposed. She pulled the trigger.

Nothing.

Mostovoi blinked, not comprehending. She tried again. Still nothing. The weapon was jammed. And now the footsteps were at the top of the stairs and approaching the door.

She dropped the gun and took the open window, an action that owed more to reflex than decision. She shattered the fragile wooden shutters and fell. The canopy offered no resistance, folding instantly. Her fall was broken by the bodies and baskets beneath. From above, she heard a door smacking a wall, a rumble of shoes, shouts.

Instantly she was on her feet, accelerating across the courtyard towards the arch. Behind her, shots rang out. Puffs of pulverized brick danced out of the wall to her right. From another door in the courtyard two armed men emerged in pursuit. Then she was in the gloom of the arch, safe from the guns behind, but not from the threat ahead.

Even as her eyes adjusted to the shade she saw the merchant reacting to her, bending down to pick up something from behind a stack of wooden boxes. With her left hand Petra reached for her throat and tugged the cross. The leather cord gave way easily. The merchant was rising, silhouetted against the sunlight flooding the street. Her right hand grasped the bottom of the cross, pulling away the polished mahogany scabbard to reveal a three-inch serrated steel spike.

The merchant raised his revolver. Petra dived, clattering into him before he could fire. They spilled across sacks of paprika and saffron. In clouds of scarlet and gold she aimed for his neck but missed, instead ramming the spike through the soft flesh behind the jawbone up into the tongue. He went into spasm as she grabbed his revolver, clambered over him, spun round and waited for the first of the chasing pair to appear. Four shots later they were both down, and Petra Reuter was on the run again.

The Hotel Sahara was between Rue Zitoune el-Qedim and Rue de Bab Agnaou, the room itself overlooking the street. Petra closed the door behind her. Deep blue wooden shutters excluded most of the daylight. It was cool in the darkness.

There was a small chest of drawers by one wall. Petra opened the top right drawer. She’d already removed the back panel so that it could be pulled clear. She dropped to a crouch, reached inside and found the plastic pouch taped to the underside. The pouch contained an old Walther P38K, an adaptation of the standard P38, the barrel cut to seven centimetres to make it easier to conceal. She placed the gun on top of the chest of drawers.

Her pulse was still speeding and she was soaked – mostly sweat, some blood – the dust and dirt of the Mellah caking her skin.

There was a loud bang. She reached for the Walther. The bang was followed by the drone of an engine. A moped, its feeble diesel spluttering beneath her window. A backfire, not a shot, prompting a half-hearted smile.

Across town they would be waiting for her at the Hotel Mirage; Maria Gilardini’s clothes were still in her room, her toothbrush by the sink, her air ticket wedged between the pages of a paperback on the bedside table.

Petra opened the shutters a little, dust motes floating in the slice of sunlight. In the corner of the room was a rucksack secured by a padlock. She opened it, rummaged through the contents for the first-aid wallet, which she unfolded on the bed. Then she stripped to her underwear and examined herself in the mirror over the basin. Her ribs were beginning to bruise. Among the grazes were cuts containing splinters of glass.

Mostovoi had known there was no deal; not at first – he’d agreed to meet her, after all – but eventually. The more she considered it, the more convinced of it she became. He hadn’t asked enough questions about Klim to be so sure of his doubt. The fact that he’d allowed himself to be met proved that he was interested – with so much money at stake, that was inevitable – and yet he’d known. Or suspected, at least.

She used tweezers to extract the shards of glass, then dressed the worst cuts. Next she took the scissors to her hair, losing six inches to the shoulder. Not a new look, just an alteration. She put in a pair of blue contact lenses to match those in the photograph of the passport: Mary Reid, visiting from London, born in Leeds, aged twenty-seven, aromatherapist. Rather than Petra Reuter, visiting from anywhere in the world, born in Hamburg, aged thirty-five, assassin.

The hair and the contacts were useful, but Petra knew there were more significant factors in changing an identity; deportment and dress. When Mary Reid moved, she shuffled. When she sat, she slouched. The way she carried herself would allow her to vanish in a crowd. So would the clothes she wore, and since Mary Reid was on holiday they were appropriate: creased cream linen three-quarter-length trousers, leather sandals from a local market, a faded lilac T-shirt from Phuket, a triple string of coral beads around her throat.

She abandoned the rucksack and the Walther P38K, taking only a small knapsack with a few things: some crumpled clothes, a wash-bag, a battered Walkman, four CDs, a Kodak disposable camera and a book. Even though her room was pre-paid, she told no one she was leaving. She caught a bus to the airport and a Royal Air Maroc flight to Paris. At Charles de Gaulle she checked in for a British Airways connection and then made a call to a London number.

Flight BA329 from Paris touched down a few minutes early at ten to ten. By ten past, having only hand-luggage, she was clear of Customs. The courier met her in the Arrivals hall. He was pushing a trolley with a large leather holdall on it. She placed the knapsack next to the holdall and they headed for the exit.

‘Good flight?’

‘Fine.’

‘Debriefing tomorrow morning. Eleven.’

At the exit Petra picked up the leather holdall and the man disappeared through the doors with her knapsack. She turned back and made for the Underground. As the train rattled towards west London she opened the holdall. Her mobile phone was in a side pocket. She switched it on and made a call. When she got no answer she tried another number.

She knew it was unprofessional, but she didn’t care. She was tired, she was hurt, what she needed was rest. But what she wanted was something to take away the bitter taste.

After the call she went through the holdall: dirty clothes rolled into a ball – her dirty clothes – and another wash-bag, again hers. In another side pocket she found credit cards, her passport and some cash: a mixture of euros, sterling and a few thousand Uzbek sum. There was a Visa card receipt for the Hotel Tashkent and an Uzbekistan Airways ticket stub: Amsterdam-Tashkent-Amsterdam. In the main section of the holdall there was a plastic bag from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, a bottle of Veuve Cliquot inside, complete with euro receipt.

Much as it hurt her to admit it, she admired their craft. If nothing else, they were thorough.

At the bottom of the bag was a digital voice recorder with twenty-one used files in two folders. Also a Tamrac camera bag containing six used rolls of Centuria Super Konica film, a Nikon F80, a Sekonic light meter, three lenses and a digital Canon. She knew what was on the Canon and the rolls of film: details from the Fergana valley, home to an extremist Uzbek Islamic militia.

At Green Park she swapped from the Piccadilly Line to the Victoria Line, and at Stockwell from the Victoria Line to the Northern Line. From Clapham South she walked. It took five minutes to reach the address, which was sandwiched between Wandsworth Common and Clapham Common, a street of large, comfortable semi-detached Victorian houses. Volvos and Range Rovers lined both kerbs.

Karen Cunningham let her in. They kissed on both cheeks, hugged, left the holdall in the hall and made their way through the house to the garden at the rear. A dozen people sat around a wooden table. Smoke rose from a dying barbecue in a far corner of the garden.

‘Stephanie!’

Her fourth name of the day.

From the far side of the table Mark was coming towards her. He wore the collarless cotton shirt she’d bought for him, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. They kissed. She noticed he was barefoot.

They made space for her at the table. Someone poured her a glass of red wine. She knew all the faces in the flickering candlelight. Not well, or in her own right, but through Mark. After the welcome the conversation resumed. She picked at the remains of some potato salad as she drank, content not to say too much. Gradually the alcohol worked its temporary magic, purging her pain. Purging Petra.

From Marrakech to Clapham, from Mostovoi to these people, with their careers, their children, their two foreign holidays a year. From a steel spike to a glass of wine, from one continent to another. Two worlds, each as divorced from the other as she was from any other version of herself.

It was after midnight when Mark leaned towards her, frowning, and said, ‘It’s not the hair. It’s something else …’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘There’s something … different about you.’

‘You’re imagining it.’

He shook his head. ‘Got it. It’s your eyes.’

For a moment there was panic. Then came the recovery, complete with a playful smile, while the lie formed. ‘I was wondering how long it would take you to notice.’

‘They’re blue.’

‘Coloured lenses. Found them in Amsterdam. Pretty cool, don’t you think?’

1

Mark Hamilton was lying on his front, snoring into his pillow, one foot hanging over the end of a bed that wasn’t built for a man of six foot four. Stephanie looked at the scar tissue running across his central and lower back. She had scar tissue of her own – on the front and back of her left shoulder – but, unlike Mark’s scars, hers were cosmetic, surgically applied to mimic a bullet’s entry and exit wound.

She glanced at Mark’s bedside clock. Five to six. She tiptoed to the kitchen to make coffee. A bottle of Rioja stood by the sink, two-thirds drunk. Which was how they’d felt by the time they’d returned to Mark’s flat shortly after one. Despite that, he’d opened the Rioja, put on a CD, Ether Song by Turin Brakes, and they’d talked. About nothing in particular. After three weeks, it was enough simply to be together again. Normally her trips abroad only lasted a few days.