Gemini

When he’d said he was going to bed, just after three, she’d said she wouldn’t be far behind. But she’d waited until he was asleep, even then keeping her T-shirt on as she lay beside him; she was too tired to answer the questions he would inevitably ask when he saw her naked.

Mark owned a place on a corner of Queen’s Gate Mews, off Gloucester Road. The ground floor was a garage, which he used for storage. A steep, narrow staircase led to the first floor, where he lived, and a stepladder that doubled as a fire escape led to the roof, which was flat, and which was where Stephanie took her mug of coffee, having pulled on a pair of ripped jeans.

Above, in a pale pink sky, intercontinental flights lined up for Heathrow. Below, an Alfa Romeo rumbled over cobbles. In the distance, an alarm bell was ringing. She cupped the hot mug with both hands and smiled.

One year to the day.

She’d gone to the Dolomites to unwind. Stephanie had always found that climbing cleared the mind of clutter. It had become part of her routine after a Magenta House contract: a few days away by herself, the local climbing guides her only source of social interaction. By the time she returned to London, more often than not, she’d rinsed the contract from her system.

Mark was staying at the same hotel in a party of six. She noticed him the first day they arrived, her ear drawn to the group by language; they were the only English in the hotel. Over two days, she crossed them in the dining room, at the bar, in the lobby and outside on the observation deck. He was the tallest and least obviously attractive of them, with a storm of dark hair and a perfect climber’s face: craggy, marked with ledges and ridges.

On the third day Stephanie lost her grip during an afternoon traverse of an uncomplicated face. The rope snagged her, twisting her sharply to the right. Her left toe was still locked into a small hold. She felt a sharp pinch in her left hip and chose to walk back to the hotel to try to work off any stiffness. Later she took a cup of hot chocolate onto the wooden observation deck. Mark was in a deckchair, reading a Robert Wilson paperback.

Not wanting any conversation, Stephanie walked to the far end and leaned on the rail. It had been a hot, sunny day, but late afternoon brought with it the first hint of a sharp chill. She drank the chocolate and the mountain air, and watched shadows creep as the sun slid. When she’d finished, she walked back along the deck. They were still the only people on it and he was looking straight at her. Not at her eyes, but at her body. Without any attempt to disguise it.

Irritated, Stephanie said, sharply, ‘You’re staring.’

‘You’re limping.’

Not the apology she’d anticipated. ‘Hardly.’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘It’s nothing. It’s just my hip.’

‘Actually, it’s your sacro-iliac joint.’

‘Sorry?’

‘To you, your lower back.’

‘What are you? An osteopath?’

‘A chiropractor.’

‘And a man with an answer for everything.’

‘Do you want me to prove it to you?’

She tilted her head to one side. ‘Are you for real?’

‘Are you?’

Half an hour later they were in her bedroom; stained floorboards, thick rugs, ageing cream wallpaper with rural scenes in a pale blue print. She could smell the dried lavender in the frosted glass bowl on the chest of drawers. Beside a lacquered table there was a full-length mirror. Stephanie stood in front of it with Mark behind her. Only now did she appreciate how large he was. He completely framed her in the reflection. She’d pulled off her jersey and shirt, and could see her black bra through the thin cotton of her T-shirt.

Mark reached out and touched her, two fingers pressing softly at the base of her neck. It was barely contact, but it sent a pulse through her. Slowly, he walked the fingers down her spine.

‘Why do you climb?’

‘It’s in my blood,’ Stephanie said, her voice no more than a murmur. ‘My mother was a fantastic climber, more at home in the mountains than at home. What about you?’

‘To relax. And because I have friends who climb.’

‘I don’t have any friends who climb.’

‘Then you’re worse than us. In a monogamous relationship with the rock-face? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anything so self-centred.’

‘You might be right.’

To relax, he’d said. Not for the thrill, or the sense of achievement. That was how she felt. Besides, as Petra, Stephanie found herself in situations where the adrenalin flowed faster than it ever could clinging to the slick underbelly of a precarious overhang.

‘Here we are.’ His fingers stopped, just above the top of her jeans. Very gently, he pressed against a point. Stephanie felt heat bloom beneath. Then he placed a forefinger on either shoulder. ‘Look in the mirror. You’ve dropped a little through the left.’

It was true. She could see a marginal difference.

‘Can you do something about it?’

Mark looked around the room. ‘Well, normally I’d use a bench for something like this, but I’ll see what I can do.’

‘See what you can do?’

He smiled, a fissure forming in the rock-face. ‘I’m joking. You’ll be fine. You don’t have a desk in here, so we’ll use your bed.’

Stephanie felt she ought to say something but couldn’t.

Mark said, ‘Let’s hope it’s not too soft. I’d like you to undo your jeans.’

She raised her eyebrows at him in the mirror.

‘You’re lucky I haven’t asked you to take off your T-Shirt.’

She really couldn’t gauge him at all. ‘Do you want me to?’

‘You don’t have to.’

But she did, before undoing her jeans. ‘Is that better?’

‘That’s fine. But you really didn’t have to.’

He moved closer to her and laid a coarse hand on one hip. Then the other hand settled on the other hip. She felt radiated heat on her naked back.

When he manipulated her, the conversation dried up. She let his hands guide her, let him turn her, position her, let him use his weight against her. His fingertips seemed to carry an electrical charge.

Any moment now …

There was no reason for it. It was just a feeling. An assumption. That whatever was happening was mutual. One part of her felt wonderfully relaxed while another part burned in anticipation. But of what, exactly? She closed her eyes and waited. For a kiss, perhaps. Or for a moment when his fingers deviated from the professional to the personal.

Instead, his hands left her body. ‘That’s it. You’re done.’

She opened her eyes. ‘What?’

‘You’ve been manipulated.’

Said with a grin. Stephanie wanted to be annoyed, but wasn’t. ‘Well … thank you, anyway. Do I owe you something?’

He shook his head. ‘There’s no charge.’

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

He smiled, a little embarrassed, it seemed. ‘I’ll be going.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Stay.’

Mark said nothing.

‘Stay.’

The smile had gone. ‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Why?’

‘I just want to know the time.’

Stephanie looked at her watch. ‘It’s eight minutes past six.’

The first time they made love it was as though the manipulation had never stopped. More than anything, it was his hands that made love to her. Stephanie was almost entirely passive. There were moments when she didn’t feel she had a choice.

Two-thirty in the morning. Stephanie ran her fingers over the scars on his back. With scars of her own and a library of scars inflicted upon others, she had to ask.

‘It was eleven years ago on Nanga Parbat, coming down the Diamir Face. With hindsight, we shouldn’t have been there at all. It was a bad team, no cohesion, no leadership. But, being arrogant, we went up anyway. During the descent there was an avalanche. Afterwards we were all over the place. Two of our group died. I would have died too, but I was lucky. Dom stayed with me. He kept me from freezing to death. As for Keller, our team leader, he was close to us but never tried to reach us. He didn’t even attempt to communicate with us. We watched him disappear.’

‘He died?’

‘We assume so. His body was never recovered.’

‘And you?’

‘Again, in a strange way, I was lucky. Broken ribs, crushed discs, two hairline fractures, muscle separation, some nerve damage, but no permanent spinal damage.’

‘That’s a painful kind of luck.’

‘It led me to my career.’

‘I’m not sure I’d have reacted to a back injury in the same way.’

‘A lot of people say that. For me, I think becoming a chiropractor was a Pauline conversion. It’s what I’m supposed to do.’

‘And climbing again – how hard was that?’

‘It was gradual, rather than hard. I didn’t think about it for three years. Now it’s not an issue. The only thing that’s changed is my ambition. Before the accident I had a hit list of climbs and peaks. These days those things don’t matter to me.’

By the time they fell asleep daylight was seeping through the curtains. When Stephanie opened her eyes Mark was no longer in bed. He was on the far side of the room, almost dressed.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to where I came from.’

‘Where’s that?’

He shrugged. ‘You tell me. You’re the only one who knows.’

Which was true. Although it took her a while to realize it. By then, he’d gone. She’d chosen him, not the other way round. He’d understood that and had accepted it. Had been happy to accept it. She found him after lunch, on the observation deck again, reading his paperback, cloned from the day before.

‘Is that it?’

He put down the book. ‘Wasn’t it what you wanted?’

‘What did you want?’

‘I thought we understood each other.’

‘After one night?’

‘I thought we understood each other yesterday afternoon.’

He was right. ‘We did. But that was then. What about today?’

‘Today?’

‘Yes. And tomorrow.’

Now, standing on Mark’s roof, rather than some remote roof of the world, it was hard to believe a year had passed. As far as Mark was concerned she was still Stephanie Schneider, a lie so slender she could sometimes convince herself it wasn’t a lie at all; Schneider had been her mother’s maiden name. Instead, she had been born Stephanie Patrick. But in a windswept cemetery at Falstone, Northumberland, there was a gravestone bearing her name, date of birth and date of death. Her stone was the last in a row of five that included her parents, Andrew and Monica Patrick, her sister, Sarah, and her younger brother, David. They’d all died together, but there was nothing of them in the cold ground. Their vaporized remains had drifted towards the bottom of the north Atlantic with the incinerated wreckage of the 747 they’d been in. Christopher, the eldest child, was still alive, still living in Northumberland, a wife and family to care for. The last time Stephanie had seen him had been at her own funeral. Through a pair of binoculars she’d watched him cry for her – for the last of his family – and had found that she’d been unable to cry herself.

Her coffee finished, she climbed down the stepladder and went into the bedroom. Mark was stirring. He looked a little groggy. She put the empty mug on a bookshelf and began to undress. He propped himself up on one elbow to watch the performance. And she watched him as she pulled the T-shirt over her head.

‘God, Stephanie, what happened to …?’

‘Don’t ask. Not yet.’

London might have been fifteen centigrade cooler than Marrakech but the climate was far less agreeable with reeking humidity trapped beneath a hazy brown sky. Stephanie reached the corner of Robert Street and Adelphi Terrace, overlooking Victoria Embankment Gardens which, itself, overlooked the Thames. A pair of barges crawled upstream, overtaking the tourist coaches congesting the Embankment.

The brass plaque beside the front door was original: L.L.Herring & Sons, Ltd, Numismatists, Since 1789. The firm still occupied a small part of the building. The other companies fell under the umbrella of Magenta House. An organization without designation, it had no official title and was not registered anywhere. There was no secret code of reference for it. It formed no part of MI5 or SIS, or any of the other security services. Magenta House was the name of the dilapidated office block on the Edgware Road that the organization had first occupied. Subsequently the building had been demolished to make way for a hotel.

Existing beyond existence itself, Magenta House was not constrained by law, by the fluctuating fashions of politics or by scrutiny from the media. It was established as a direct consequence of increased transparency in the intelligence services. Its creators regarded accountability as an alarming intrusion by an ignorant public whose right to know needed to be restricted to information they could digest. They felt that politicians, in thrall to the short term, should be bypassed. They believed there were areas of national security too vital to disseminate, and they knew, with evangelical certainty, that there were some threats that could not be countered by legal means. Stephanie had no idea who these creators were, but they had invested control of the organization in one man: Alexander. If he had a first name, Stephanie had yet to meet anyone who knew it.

She pushed the second button on the intercom, which was marked Adelphi Travel. The lens on the overhead camera turned before she heard the click of the lock. She pushed open the door and entered a parallel world. In the aftermath of 11 September 2001 Magenta House’s area of responsibility had been expanded. So had its budget, which was bled from the military. Some of the changes were macro, some micro; the new smoke detectors, for instance, were a precaution with a difference. They functioned conventionally but were also capable of delivering an anaesthetic gas to counter hostile intrusion.

Soft pools of muted light fell onto the reception area: two sofas, two armchairs, newspapers and magazines in half a dozen languages spread across a coffee table, fresh flowers in a china vase on an antique sideboard. The paintings were nineteenth-century landscapes, oil on canvas, each individually lit. Even the receptionist had been overhauled: gone was the weary middle-aged chain-smoker of years gone by, replaced by a younger model with good cheekbones, a chic grey suit and cold zeal for eyes.

Stephanie said, ‘Which room are we in?’

‘Mr Alexander wants to see you before you go down.’

Alexander’s large, rectangular office overlooked Victoria Embankment Gardens. In the winter he had a view of the river and the south bank. Now all he could look onto was the lush foliage of the trees in the garden.

The room was persistently old-fashioned: parquet floor, Persian carpets, a Chesterfield sofa, wooden shelves groaning beneath the weight of leather-bound books. At the centre of this office stood Alexander, in a navy chalk-stripe suit, a pair of black Church’s shoes, a white shirt with a double-cuff secured by gold cufflinks, a silk tie. Which, appropriately, was magenta. When Mark wore a suit, Stephanie saw an animal trapped in a cage. Alexander, by contrast, wore a suit as naturally as skin. And in this environment he looked at home. But it was an environment that belonged to another era.

‘I wanted to see you alone before we meet the others for the debriefing.’ He was standing by the window, smoking a Rothmans, his back to her. The windows were open, rendering recently installed mortar-proof glass redundant. ‘Were you injured?’

Not the first question she would have expected. It almost sounded like concern. Which made her suspicious. ‘Nothing serious.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘They knew. He knew.’

‘Mostovoi?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he saw you.’

‘I know. When he agreed to see me, he must have thought the deal was valid. Or, at least, potentially valid. In the end, though, the deal was too big. It wasn’t realistic. Not for Petra.’

‘That was the point. He’d been invisible for a year. It needed to be something extraordinary to draw him out. To be honest, I was beginning to wonder whether he was still alive.’

‘Well, now you know. Was and still is.’

‘How close did you get?’

‘Closer than I am to you.’

He turned round. ‘You were in the same room as him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Face to face?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you didn’t manage an attempt of any sort?’

Stephanie resented his tone. ‘Actually, I did. After I’d handled his protection.’

‘What happened?’

‘The gun jammed.’

‘You fired at him?’

‘I tried to.’

‘Then what?’

‘There wasn’t time for anything else. I had to exit immediately.’

Alexander shook his head in disbelief, then sat down at his desk. ‘How can you be so sure about Mostovoi?’

‘They had me tagged from the start. The day before yesterday they went through my hotel room while I was out and …’

‘How do you know?’

‘It was witnessed.’

‘By?’

‘Independent cover.’

‘Presumably you didn’t go back there.’

‘I didn’t need to. I’d already established a second identity.’

Alexander frowned. ‘Was that sanctioned?’

‘Under the circumstances I thought it better to act on instinct.’

‘You’re supposed to respond to instruction, not instinct.’ He took a final drag from his cigarette, then ground the butt into an onyx ashtray. ‘Let me guess. The independent cover and second identity were provided by Stern.’

Stern, the information broker, the ghost in the machine. His business was conducted over the internet. Nobody knew his – or her – identity, but Stephanie had used him since her days as an independent and he’d never let her down. Nor she him. In Stern’s virtual world, information was both product and currency. Sometimes, as Petra, Stephanie had bought information with information. Alexander hated the idea of Stern because he was beyond Magenta House’s control and because his electronic existence allowed Stephanie a form of freedom.

‘As fond as you are of Stern, has it ever occurred to you that he might not be reliable?’

‘Compared to?’

He stiffened, then tried to shrug it off – a pointless victory, perhaps, but sweet nonetheless – before changing tack. ‘You didn’t go home last night.’

‘That’s not home. It’s a film set.’

‘Did you go straight to his place after you left the courier?’

‘None of your business.’

‘If it concerns your professionalism, then it’s my business.’

‘We made a deal after New York. I gave you my word. Since then I’ve never given you any reason to worry.’

‘Your private life is a worry.’

‘Grow up.’

‘One of us should, certainly. You don’t just place yourself in jeopardy, Stephanie. You place everyone who comes into contact with you in jeopardy. That includes Hamilton.’

‘Leave him out of it.’

‘I’d love to. Really, I would. But your behaviour won’t allow me to.’

‘I’ve taken precautions.’

‘Not good enough.’

‘You have no idea whether they’re good enough.’

‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘But what I do know is this: one slip is all it’ll take.’

The first time I met Alexander he held the power of life and death over me. He saved me, then turned me into the woman I am today. Before him I was a drug-addict, a prostitute, a grim statistic waiting to happen. He could have hastened the predictable end. But he didn’t. Instead he let his people loose on me. Now you can drop me anywhere in the world and, like a cockroach, I’ll thrive, no matter how harsh the environment. I am any woman I need to be at any given moment, fluent in four foreign languages and able to scale a building like a spider. I can kill a man with a credit card … and not by shopping. I’m more than a woman, I’m a machine, and the man who made it happen – Alexander – is the man I detest most in this world.

The feeling is mutual. He can’t abide me, despite the fact that I am probably his greatest technical achievement and his single most potent asset. Like magnets, we repel but are also drawn together. The deal we made after New York ensured that. At the time I could have walked away from Magenta House. Nothing would have given me greater pleasure. But I chose not to.

His name was Konstantin Komarov, and I was completely in love with him. Even though I am now with Mark, there is a part of me that is lost to Kostya and always will be. A complicated man, certainly. A man with a past, most definitely. But where Magenta House saw a threat, I saw a future. Alexander had promised to set me free after New York and was true to his word. But Kostya was a Magenta House target. I pleaded with Alexander to let him live even though I knew it was pointless. In the end I had only one thing to offer him. So we struck a deal.

A truly Faustian pact it was, too. I returned to Magenta House and Alexander suspended the order on Komarov. As long as I remain here, he’s alive. The moment I leave, he dies. It’s hard to imagine anything more perverse: I kill people to keep alive the man I used to love.

I haven’t seen him since we kissed goodbye at JFK in New York. That was the final condition that Alexander insisted upon: I could save him but I couldn’t be with him. I’ve thought about this so many times since then and have always come to the same conclusion: there was no good reason for this condition. I believe Alexander imposed it upon me simply to prevent me from being happy. In that, at least, he’s failed. Kostya is alive, somewhere out there, and I’m in love again.

Mark has no idea about any of this. He’s in love with a woman named Stephanie Schneider, a freelance photo-journalist, who is secretive about her past and whose work takes her to some of the world’s riskier regions.

When we were falling for each other, I had no idea how complicated this arrangement would become. When Alexander first discovered that I was seeing someone – as opposed to just having casual sex, which would have been fine – he was furious and ordered me to drop Mark.

‘How do you know about this?’ I’d countered.

His initial silence was confirmation of a suspicion that he tried to justify. ‘Everyone here is subject to periodic security review. You know that.’

‘Even you?’

‘You can’t play this game, Stephanie.’

‘It’s not a game.’

‘All the more reason to call it off, then.’

‘Forget it.’

Eventually Alexander relented, even though he was right. A relationship is completely incompatible with my profession. To make it work I had to create an artificial environment for it. At first I was complacent; a few lies here, a few half-truths there, I thought. And since lying was never a problem for me, I imagined it would be relatively simple.

Now I have two lives. I am Petra Reuter and I am Stephanie Schneider, with Stephanie Patrick stranded in limbo somewhere between them. I have my flat. This is the only interface between the two versions of me. It’s Stephanie’s flat – it contains all the paraphernalia of her life – but it’s where Petra goes to and from. I think of it as an airlock. There are two environments, one on either side, and the airlock allows me to acclimatize from one to the other.

My relationship with Alexander is a balancing act that is constantly tested. Here was a battle he couldn’t win, so, for the sake of the war, he withdrew. He even contributed to the cover. My assignments as a photo-journalist come through Frontier News, an agency that specializes in sending freelancers to the kind of trouble-spots where no one offers you insurance. The company was established ten years ago by three former soldiers. Two of them are dead; the first was beheaded by Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, the second was shot by Chechen rebels in Georgia. Alexander knew the third and put me in touch. Which is not to say he’s happy about it. He’s like a father who hands his daughter a pack of condoms because the idea of her repellent boyfriend getting her pregnant is even more revolting to him than the idea of them having sex.