GEMINI
Mark Burnell

Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Mark Burnell 2003

Mark Burnell asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names,

characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the

author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2012 ISBN 9780007383061

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Dedication

For Ivan with love

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Marrakech

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Marrakech

The first time I came to Marrakech I was a French tourist. I was also one half of a couple in love. Or so it must have seemed to those who saw us together. He was a lawyer from Milan, who told me that he’d been married but was now divorced. He never mentioned his second wife, though, or that she still considered their marriage idyllic, blessed, as it was, with three children, a house by Lake Como and a villa in Sardinia. Then again, I never mentioned that I intended to steal Russian SVR files from the wall-safe in his company apartment in Geneva. Or that having an affair with me might cost him his life.

Dishonesty was the blood that surged through the veins of our brief relationship. Without it there would have been no relationship. Without dishonesty I can never have a relationship because, after the truth, who in their right mind would have me?

The lawyer from Milan knew me as Juliette. The man who will meet me on the roof terrace of Café La Renaissance in seven minutes will know me as Petra Reuter. Around the world my face has many names, none of them real. Long ago, when I was a complete person – a single individual – I was someone called Stephanie Patrick. But almost nobody remembers her now.

Sometimes, not even me.

Dressed in black cotton trousers, a navy linen shirt and a pair of DKNY trainers, Petra Reuter crossed Avenue Mohammed V and took the lift to Café La Renaissance’s roof terrace, which overlooked Place Abdel Moumen ben Ali. Sprawled before her, Marrakech shimmered in the parching heat; eleven in the morning and it was already close to forty centigrade. She took off her sunglasses, swept long, dark hair from her eyes and was forced to squint. Above her the sky was deep sapphire, but the horizon remained bleached of colour. Beneath her, drowsy in the scorching breeze, the city murmured: the rasp of old engines, the squeal of a horn, of a shuddering halt, the bark of a dog from a nearby rooftop. She was surprised how much green there was among the terracotta and ochre, full trees throwing welcome shade onto baking pavements. She put her sunglasses back on.

There were some tables on the roof terrace with cheap metal chairs, their turquoise paint chipped and faded. At one table two soft, pear-shaped women were hunched over a map. Petra thought they sounded Canadian. At another table an elderly man in a crumpled grey suit sat in the shade, reading an Arabic newspaper. His walnut skin was peppered with shiny pink blotches. On a section of roof terrace overlooking Place Abdel Moumen ben Ali there were three large, red plastic letters hoisted on blue poles: b – a – r. Four French tourists were taking photographs of themselves with the reverse side of the letters as a backdrop.

Petra bought a Coke and sat at a secluded table. A fortnight had elapsed since her TGV had pulled into Marseille. She’d felt uneasy on that muggy afternoon, but she felt worse now. She’d arrived in Marseille from Ostend, via Paris. In Ostend she’d gone to the bar where Maxim Mostovoi had once been a regular. A charmless place with bright overhead lights and two dilapidated pool tables, one with a torn cloth. With a shrug of regret the proprietor said that Mostovoi hadn’t been in for at least six months; the traditional first line of defence. But Petra had come prepared, and a phrase contained within a question yielded an address in Paris: an apartment on the Rue d’Odessa in Montparnasse which, in turn, led to Marseille. From Marseille she’d travelled to Beirut, then Cairo. In Cairo two addresses – a Lebanese restaurant on Amman Street in Mohandesseen and a contemporary art gallery on Brazil Street in Zamalek – had finally delivered her to this rooftop terrace in Marrakech.

With each city, with each day, her suspicion hardened: that she was no closer to Mostovoi than she had been in Ostend. Or even in London, for that matter. Not that it made much difference. The pursuit might be pointless, but she knew that she would not be allowed to abandon it.

‘Petra Reuter.’

He’d lost weight. His hair was long, lank and greasy, greying at the temples. The whites of his bloodshot eyes were a sickly yellow, his skin waxy and loose. His red T-shirt hung limply from his skeletal frame, dark sweat stains marking points of contact. Creased linen trousers were secured by a purple tie threaded through the belt-loops. His fingers were trembling. Through cigarette smoke, Petra smelt decay.

She had only met Marcel Claesen twice before. The last time had been in a dacha outside Moscow. That had been less than two years ago, but the man in front of her appeared ten years older.

‘You look sick.’

‘Nice to know you haven’t lost your charm, Petra.’

‘Do you want to know what I really think?’

His feeble smile revealed toffee-coloured teeth. ‘It must be the water here. Or the food, maybe …’

‘Or the heat?’

He missed the subtext and shrugged. ‘Sure. Why not?’

‘What are you doing here?’

They sent me to make contact with you.’

Claesen, the Belgian intermediary. That was what he had been the first time they met. Then, as now, he’d radiated duplicity. He was a man who materialized in unlikely places for no specific reason, a man who didn’t actually do anything. Instead, he simply existed in the spaces between people. A conduit, Claesen was the stained banknote that hastened a seedy transaction.

He sat down opposite her and crossed one bony leg over the other. ‘Mostovoi thought it would be better to have a familiar face. You know, someone you could trust …’

Petra raised an eyebrow. ‘So he thought of you?’

He wiped the sweat from his brow with the heel of his hand, then shook his head and attempted another smile. ‘The things I’ve heard about you, Petra. They say you killed Vatukin and Kosygin in New York. They say you killed them for Komarov.’

‘How exciting.’

‘Others say you killed them for Dragica Maric. That the two of you are in love, each of you a reflection of the other.’

‘How imaginative.’

‘How true?’

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you? The idea of me and another woman. Especially a woman like her.’

Claesen’s shrug was supposed to convey indifference but his eyes betrayed him. ‘You mean, a woman like you, don’t you?’

A black Land Cruiser Amazon with tinted windows was waiting for them at the kerb. Petra sat in the back, keeping Claesen and the driver in front of her. They headed for Palmeraie, to the north of the city centre, where extravagant villas were secreted in secure gardens. Most of the properties belonged to wealthy Moroccans, but in recent years there had been an influx of rich foreigners. At one of the larger walled compounds the driver pulled the Land Cruiser off the tarmac onto a dirt track. Ahead, heavy electric gates parted. Above them, two security cameras twitched.

Outside the compound the ground had been arid scrub between the palm trees. Inside it was lush lawn. Sprinklers sprayed a fine mist over the grass. Men tended flowerbeds, their backs bent to the overhead sun. On the right there were two floodlit tennis courts and a large swimming pool with a Chinese dragon carved from stone at each corner.

The villa was centrally air-conditioned and smelt like an airport terminal. There were two armed men in the entrance hall. Both were fair-skinned, their faces and arms burnt bright red. One carried a Browning BDA9, the other a Colt King Cobra. Without a word they led Claesen and Petra down a hall, the Belgian’s rubber soles squeaking on the veined marble floor. The room they entered had a thick white carpet, four armchairs – tanned leather stretched over chrome frames – positioned around a coffee table with a bronze horse’s head at its centre and, in one comer, an enormous Panasonic home entertainment system. Wooden blinds had been lowered over the windows. A curtain had been three-quarters drawn across a sliding glass door that opened onto a covered terrace. The door was partly open, allowing some natural air to infiltrate the artificial. Beyond the terrace she saw orange trees, lemon trees and perfectly manicured rose beds.

‘That’s far enough.’

He was sitting on the other side of the room, his back to the source of partial light, a man reduced to silhouette. Dark trousers, a white shirt, open at the neck, dark sunglasses. Petra was surprised he could even see her.

‘You want something to drink? Some tea? Or water?’

‘Nothing.’

There were two men to his right. The shorter and leaner of the two had a bony face like a whippet: a mean mouth with thin lips, a pointed nose, sharp little eyes. His hands were restless but his gaze was steady, never leaving her. With Claesen and the pair behind her, the men numbered six, two of them definitely armed.

‘Where’s Mostovoi?’

The man in the chair said, ‘Max has been detained.’

‘Detained?’

Incorrectly, he thought he detected anxiety in her tone. ‘Not in that sense of the word.’

‘I’m not interested in the sense of the word. If he’s not here, he’s not here.’

‘He sent me instead.’

‘And you are?’

‘Lars. Lars Andersen.’

Her eyes had adjusted to the lack of light. Andersen had short, dark, untidy hair, prominent cheekbones and olive skin that was lightly pockmarked; a Mediterranean look for a Scandinavian name, Petra thought.

‘No offence, Lars, but I don’t know you.’

‘You don’t know Max, either.’

‘I know what business he’s in. Which is why I’m here. But I’m starting to think I made a mistake. I’m running out of patience. That means he’s running out of time. It’s up to him. There are always others. Harding, Sasic, Beneix …’

‘They’re not as good.’

‘As good as what? A man who never shows? What could be worse than that?’

Andersen appeared surprised by her contempt. He glanced at the short one and said, in Russian, ‘What do you reckon, Jarni? Not bad, huh?’

‘Not bad.’

‘You think she could play for Inter?’

‘No problem.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere, probably. That’s what I hear.’

Also in Russian, Petra said, ‘What’s Inter?’

Raised eyebrows all round. Andersen said, ‘You speak Russian?’

‘Judging by your accents, better than either of you.’

Andersen grinned. ‘Max said we should be careful with you. Watch out for her, he told us, she’s full of surprises.’

Outside, a lawnmower started, its drone as nostalgic as the scent of the grass it cut. It reminded her of those summer evenings when her father, back from work, would mow their undulating garden. A childhood memory, then. But not Petra’s childhood. The memory belonged to someone else. Petra was merely borrowing it.

‘What’s Inter?’ she asked again.

‘You don’t know?’

‘Should I?’

He shrugged. ‘Inter Milan.’ When she made no comment, he returned to English. ‘You’ve never heard of Inter Milan?’

She shook her head.

‘The football team?’

The name was faintly resonant but she said, ‘I have better things to do with my time than watch illiterate millionaires kissing each other.’

‘Inter is more than a football team.’

‘Is there any danger of you straying towards the point?’

Andersen looked as though he wished to continue. He leaned forward and opened his mouth to speak – to protest, even – but then appeared to change his mind. An awkward silence developed. Petra sensed Claesen squirming behind her.

Eventually, Andersen said, ‘Tomorrow morning, the Mellah.’

‘Mostovoi will be there?’

‘Someone will be there. They’ll take you to him.’

‘If he’s not there I’m going home.’

‘Place des Ferblantiers at ten.’

The Land Cruiser drove her back to the city centre and came to a halt on Avenue Hassan II, just short of the intersection with Place du 16 Novembre. Claesen turned round. An inch of ash spilled down his red T-shirt. His creepy confidence had returned the moment they left the walled compound.

‘Until next time, then?’

‘How did they know that you knew me?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘You didn’t ask?’

‘I received a message, an air ticket and the promise of dollars.’

‘And that was enough for you? It never occurred to you to check it out first?’

His reply was bittersweet. ‘These days that’s a luxury I can’t afford.’

‘You know something, Claesen, I’m amazed you’ve made it this far.’

‘Me too.’ Smiling once more, he waved his Gitanes at her. ‘I used to think I’d never live long enough to die from lung cancer. Now I’m beginning to think I have a chance.’

The Hotel Mirage on Boulevard Mohammed Zerktouni was in the Ville Nouvelle, not far from Café La Renaissance. Mid-range, it mostly catered for European tourists. Which was precisely what Petra was: Maria Gilardini, a single Swiss woman, aged twenty-nine. A dental hygienist from Sion.

There was a message for her at reception. She took the envelope up to her room, at the rear of the building, overlooking a small courtyard, opposite the back of an ageing office block. She sat on the bed and opened the envelope. As expected, there was nothing inside.

Petra had heard of Maxim Mostovoi long before he became a contract. A former air force pilot, he’d emerged from the rubble of the Soviet Union with his own aviation business. His military career had been restricted to cargo transport. At the time, that had been a source of regret. Later it proved to be the source of his fortune.

Among the first to recognize potential markets for the Soviet Union’s vast stockpile of obsolete weaponry, Mostovoi was able to commandeer cargo aircraft from what remained of the Soviet air force. Then he formed partnerships with contacts in the army who were able to supply him with arms. In the early days he based himself in Moscow, taking comfort from the chaos that bloomed in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. There were few laws to contain him. Those that existed were not enforced; bribery tended to ensure that. Failing bribery, there was always violence.

Mostovoi’s first fortune was made in Africa. Rebel factions sought him out, eager for cheap weapons. Using huge Antonov cargo aircraft, he delivered to Rwanda, Angola and Sierra Leone, frequently taking payment in conflict diamonds, depositing the gems in Antwerp. Soon Mostovoi decided he would prefer to be closer to them. In 1994 he moved to Ostend, establishing an air freight company named Air Eurasia at offices close to the airport. As his reputation grew, so did demand for his services. He established an office in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, at the height of the genocide perpetrated by the Hutu militia. He bought a hotel in Kampala, in neighbouring Uganda. The top floor was converted into a luxury penthouse, marble flown in from Italy, bathrooms from Scandinavia, hookers from Moscow. Twice a year Unita rebels travelled from Angola to the hotel in Kampala with pouches of diamonds. The stones were valued by Manfred Hempel, a leading Manhattan diamond merchant, who was extravagantly rewarded for his time. Despite this, Hempel hated the trips to Uganda. To ease his discomfort Mostovoi used his Gulfstream V to ferry the diamond dealer directly from New York to Kampala and back again.

By 1996 his fleet of aircraft, mostly Antonovs and Illyushins, had grown to thirty-eight and had attracted the attention of the Belgian authorities. In December of that year he relocated Air Eurasia to Qatar, opening associate offices in Riyadh and the emirates of Ras al Khaimah and Sharjah. In February 1997 he met senior representatives of FARC – the Colombian rebel army – at San Vicente del Caguan, but failed to come to an agreement. From Colombia he travelled directly to Pakistan. In Peshawar he struck a deal to supply weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Here he was paid in opium, which he sold for processing and onward distribution in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Born in Moscow in 1962, Mostovoi had been destined for mediocrity. An unexceptional pupil, a poor athlete, he longed to fly fighters for the Soviet air force but lacked the necessary skills, and was thus relegated to the cargo fleet. To those who knew him best, this would have seemed entirely predictable. As charming and amusing as he could be, it was accepted by everybody that Max would never amount to much. His wife used to tease him in public, and all Mostovoi would muster in his defence was a resigned shrug. Still, a decade and two hundred million dollars later, the memory of his heavy-hipped ex-wife had been eclipsed by the finest flesh money could buy. As a younger man he’d often dreamed of taking his revenge upon those who had humiliated him over the years. Now that he was in a position to do so, he found he couldn’t be bothered. He didn’t have the time. It was enough to know that he could.

Petra knew that had Mostovoi been content to confine his business interests to Africa, he would never have become the subject of a contract. The reality was that nobody cared about Africa. Afghanistan, however, was different. Through his relationship with the Taliban, Mostovoi was connected to al-Qaeda. Before 11 September 2001 he’d been an easy man to find, confident of his own security, keen to expand his empire. Since that date he’d been invisible.

Dusk descended quickly upon Djemaa el-Fna, the huge square in the medina that was the heart of Marrakech. Kerosene lamps replaced the daylight, strung out along rows of food stalls.

Petra found the café on the edge of the square. The outdoor tables were mostly taken. Inside, she picked a table with a clear view of the entrance. A slowly rotating fan barely disturbed the hot air. To her right, beneath an emerald green mosaic of the Atlas mountains, two elderly men were in animated discussion over glasses of tea.

She ordered a bottle of mineral water and drank half of it, checking the entrance as often as she checked her watch. At ten past seven she got up and asked the man behind the bar for the toilet. Past the cramped, steaming kitchen she came to a foul-smelling cubicle, which she ignored, pressing on down the dim corridor to the door at the end, which was shut. She tried the handle and it opened, as promised. She found herself in a narrow alley, rubble underfoot. At the end of the alley she saw the lane that she’d identified on the town map. She unbuttoned her shirt, took it off, turned it inside out and put it back on, trading powder blue for plum.

At twenty-five past seven she emerged from a small street on the opposite side of Djemaa el-Fna to the café. This time she melted into the crowd at the centre of the square, trawling the busy stalls, until she found one with no customers. She sat on a wooden bench beneath three naked bulbs hung from a cord sagging between two poles. The man on the other side of the counter was tending strips of lamb on an iron rack, fat spitting on the coals, smoke spiralling upwards, adding to the heat of the night. Petra passed fifteen dirhams across the counter for a small bowl of harira, a spicy lentil soup.

The woman appeared within five minutes, a child in tow. Short, dark and squat, she wore a dark brown ankle-length dress and a flimsy cotton shawl around her shoulders. The child had black curls, caramel skin, pale hazel eyes. She was eating dried fruit. They sat on the bench to Petra’s right. The woman ordered two slices of melon, which the man retrieved from a crate behind him.

In French, she said, ‘Someone was in your hotel room today. A man.’

Petra nodded. ‘What was he doing?’

‘Looking.’

‘Did he find anything?’

‘It’s not possible to say. He spent most of his time with your laptop. I think he might have downloaded something. It wasn’t easy to see. The angle was awkward.’

‘From across the courtyard?’

The woman shook her head. ‘That view was too restricted. I had to try something else. A camera concealed in the smoke detector.’

‘I hadn’t noticed there was a smoke detector.’

‘Above the door to your bathroom. It’s cosmetic. A plastic case to satisfy a safety regulation. Actually, I’m surprised. A bribe is easier and cheaper.’

‘Where was the base unit?’

‘Across the courtyard. In the office.’ The woman finished a mouthful of melon. ‘He went through your clothes, your personal belongings. He took care to replace everything as he found it. He searched under the bed, behind the drawers, on top of the cupboard. All the usual hiding places. You have a gun?’

‘Not there. Anything else?’

‘A Lear jet arrived at Menara Airport early this morning. A flight plan has been filed for tomorrow afternoon. Stern wants you to know that Mostovoi has a meeting in Zurich tomorrow evening.’

I lie on my bed, naked and sweating. When I came to Marrakech with Massimo, the lawyer from Milan, we stayed at the Amanjena, a cocoon of luxury on the outskirts of the city. There we indulged ourselves fully. On our last evening we ate at Yacout, a palace restaurant concealed within a warren of tiny streets. We drank wine on the roof terrace while musicians played in the corner. A hot breeze blew through us. Mostly, I remember the view of the city by night, lights sparkling like gemstones against the darkness. Later we ate downstairs in a small courtyard with rose petals on the floor. That was where Massimo took my hand and said, ‘Juliette, I think I’m falling in love with you.’

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.

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.

I know it’s crazy to see Mark, but Alexander should consider the alternative. Mark gives me stability. Through him I’ve made friends; normal people living normal lives coloured by normal concerns. They have become an emotional cushion that makes it easier for me to continue to do what I do for Alexander at Magenta House.

Last night, after too many drinks at the Cunninghams’ house in Clapham, we played the Kevin Bacon game. This is a movie version of the Six Degrees of Separation theory, which suggests you can connect any two people in the world in six moves. It occurs to me that there could easily be a Stephanie Patrick game. I can play Six Degrees of Separation without ever having to leave my own skin.

After a four-hour debriefing Stephanie went to her own flat, a third-floor walk-up on Maclise Road with a view of the rear of the Olympia exhibition centre. There was mail on the floor, dust in the air, nothing in the fridge. She opened several windows but there was no breeze to counter the humid heat. Then she checked the sensors: two micro-cameras, one in the living room, one in the bedroom, connected to an exterior base-unit that sent a coded message to her desktop. The cameras were activated by movement, the sensors detecting changes in air temperature and density. She’d bought the equipment from Ali Metin, a Turk who owned a computer shop on the Tottenham Court Road. According to her monitor, neither camera had been triggered. There were no images.

Later she took the dirty clothes from the leather holdall to the launderette next to the Coral betting shop on Blythe Road. Back at the flat she made green tea, put on a CD she’d borrowed from Mark – Is This It? by The Strokes – and sorted through her post. Circulars and bills, mostly. There were two statements: one from HSBC, the other from Visa, both in Stephanie Schneider’s name. The current account showed two credits from Frontier News for stories filed during the previous three months. The savings account held just less than fifteen thousand pounds. In a box-file beside her desktop computer, there were receipts for hotels she’d never visited, flights she’d never caught.

The flat was run down: a bucket beneath the sink in the bathroom because the pipes leaked, patches of damp on the kitchen ceiling, rotten window-frames. Stephanie never attempted to address these problems. On the contrary. She left dirty plates in the sink, unironed clothes on her bed, used clothes on the floor. There were papers across the table in the living room, books on the carpet, camera equipment in the kitchen.

By inclination, Stephanie was organized and tidy. Stephanie Schneider, however, was by her own admission a ‘domestic slut’, which had the intended benefit of discouraging Mark from spending time at her flat. As the portal connecting her two worlds, it was the one place where she felt uneasy with him. Consequently they spent all their time at his flat. Occasionally this was an issue he attempted to address by suggesting she move into Queen’s Gate Mews.

‘It’s not that I don’t want to live with you, Mark. It’s just that I don’t want to give up my own place.’

‘But we don’t spend any time over there. It doesn’t make sense.’

‘It doesn’t make financial sense. But it makes a different kind of sense. Besides, what about all my stuff? You’ve hardly got enough space for your stuff.’

‘We could convert the garage downstairs.’

‘It’s full.’

‘Only of old climbing gear. I could put that into storage. Or sell it. Or throw it out. Then you could have an office. Or we could sell both flats and get somewhere bigger.’

Which was exactly what one half of her wanted. But the other half wouldn’t permit it. Not yet. Conversations like this offered Stephanie glimpses of a possible post-Petra world, and she’d found them far more seductive than she’d ever imagined.

The evening made way for night. They drank wine and watched a DVD, content not to speak. Later, a little drunk, they made love. Afterwards, damp with perspiration, Mark found the cut on the top of her head.

‘Is it sore?’

‘A little.’

He ran a finger over her bruised ribs, and along parallel grazes over her right shoulder. ‘Do you want to tell me?’

‘We went off the road. Coming back from the Fergana Valley.’

It was impossible to tell what he was thinking. ‘Anyone else hurt?’

‘The driver cut his head quite badly. I had to drive the rest of the way. I think he must have fallen asleep. It was about three in the morning.’

As slick as glycerine. Even now Petra could still surprise Stephanie. She watched Mark get up. He had a climber’s physique. There was no bulk to his strength; his power lay in sinews and suppleness. Naked, he disappeared into the kitchen. He walked as he climbed, moving like liquid, his feet sometimes seeming barely to touch the ground. A smaller man, Komarov’s physique had been equally lean but his had been fashioned by the years lost to the brutal prisons of the Russian Far East.

After Komarov there had been other men before Mark, but no relationships. She’d used them to scour herself. It wasn’t making love, it was barely sex. It was just fucking, as emotionally charged as an hour on a treadmill: aerobic, sweaty, occasionally sore, with only a dull muscular ache for a memory. Mark was supposed to have been the same, the next anonymous man in the queue. When she realized she was falling for him she’d actually resented him for the way he made her feel. She’d never wanted a relationship to replace Komarov. She’d wanted him to be her last.

She could have stopped it, she told herself. But she hadn’t. Lately she’d come to believe that was because she couldn’t.

Mark returned from the kitchen. He was carrying a small box wrapped in silver paper. He handed it to her.

She said, ‘I didn’t get you anything. I wasn’t sure you’d remember.’

Inside, there was an antique watch with a chain. She picked it up. Gold, to judge by the weight. There was a crack across the glass.

Mark said, ‘It doesn’t work. And never will.’

Stephanie wasn’t sure how to react. ‘It’s lovely, though.’

‘The hands are frozen. That is the only time it will ever tell.’

Eight minutes past six. As it had been the first time they kissed.

One year to the day.

Frontier News shared a building on Charlotte Street with KKZ, a graphic design agency. KKZ’s offices were graphite and glass, central air-conditioning and espresso machines. Employees worked at the latest Apple Mac flat screens on ergonomically designed chairs from Norway. Frontier News’s office was an attic with three fans, a leaking roof and second-hand furniture bought at a government auction from a bankrupt insurance company.

Gavin Taylor was on the phone, bare feet on the desk, his tilting chair at a precarious angle. He waved Stephanie into the office. Open-plan was how he described it. In other words, he couldn’t afford partitions.

Taylor’s assistant, Melanie, was at her desk, talking to a broad-shouldered red-headed man as she examined a chipped fuchsia fingernail. A lit Lambert & Butler was going in a green glass ashtray stolen from a pub. The heat hadn’t prevented her from applying her customary mask of make-up. ‘Hiya, Steph.’

The man turned around and Stephanie recognized him. David Craig, a Frontier News regular, for whom no assignment was too hazardous.

‘Haven’t seen you for a while. Been away?’

‘Uzbekistan.’

Craig raised an eyebrow. ‘And how is the brother Karimov these days?’

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 Uzbekistan had been a de facto dictatorship under the rule of Islam Karimov, a man who once claimed that he would personally rip off the heads of two hundred people to protect his country’s freedom and stability.

‘It’s business as usual in Tashkent.’

‘And outside Tashkent?’

She faked innocence. ‘How would I know?’

‘All room service at the Holiday Inn, was it?’

Taylor finished his call and wiped sweat from his forehead. ‘Give her a break. At least she comes back with the goods.’ Turning to Stephanie, he said, ‘Last time out, David came back empty-handed from Pakistan. Made it across the border with nothing more than the clothes he was standing in.’

Stephanie knew the bitterness in Taylor’s voice was genuine. Craig was a reckless glory-hunter, a minor public-school product whose lacklustre army career had left him lusting for some kind of heroic validation. In Taylor’s view, the actions of adrenaline junkies like Craig demeaned the lives of men like Andrew Duggdale and James Hunter, co-founders of Frontier News. There were photographs of each dead man on the far wall.

Taylor stepped into a pair of worn docksiders and took her to lunch at an Italian bistro on Charlotte Street. By the time they were inside, sweat had stuck moist patches of his frayed cornflower blue shirt to his shoulders and belly. They settled into a gloomy corner at the rear, beneath a noisy fan. Taylor struggled to light a cigarette, then ordered a bottle of Valpolicella.

‘How’s business?’

He shrugged. ‘The ponces downstairs don’t want us sharing a communal entrance any more. They even offered to pay for one of our own.’

‘That sounds okay.’

‘Bloody pony-tails and polo-necks.’

‘Let me guess. Articulate to the last, you invited them to reconsider.’

He grinned, smoke leaking from his teeth. As far as Stephanie knew, Gavin Taylor was the only person outside Magenta House who knew what she was. Overweight, profane, a heavy drinker it was hard to see what Alexander saw in Taylor. The only thing they had in common was a taste for Rothmans cigarettes. Taylor’s past was in the military and Stephanie had always assumed that Alexander’s was too but she didn’t know that for certain.

‘I’ll put your Uzbekistan stuff out to tender. We might get a nibble. If not, I’ll give it a week or two before I get him to send the cheque. It’ll be the usual amount, I expect, five to seven. It’ll take about a week to rinse it through our books. Is that okay?’

‘That’s fine.’

Stephanie pushed the bulging manila envelope across the table. Inside were the Uzbek photographs and files that she had received from her Magenta House courier at Heathrow.

‘I heard Marrakech wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.’

‘Alexander told you?’

He nodded, then contemplated the tip of his cigarette. ‘I met Mostovoi a couple of times.’

‘Really?’

‘In Berlin, then Dortmund. I was with John Flynn.’

The name rang a bell but the chime was distant. ‘Remind me …’

‘Sentinel Security.’

An arms-dealing firm. With that, a face returned to the name. ‘He had to leave the country, didn’t he?’

‘That’s right. Lives in Switzerland now. But Sentinel’s still going. Doing well, too. Anyway, we were in Berlin. It was before I started Frontier News. John was putting a deal together with some Russians. Mostovoi was the broker. We met a couple of times. Nothing came of it in the end.’

‘What was he like?’

‘Mostovoi? Nice bloke. Good company, especially after a drink. Mind you, even I’m good company after a drink.’

‘Is that what you’ve been told?’

‘Oh, very funny.’

‘What else?’

‘Nothing much, really. To be honest, I was too busy eyeing his girlfriend. Russian, I think she was. An absolute cracker. Hard as nails, mind, but a real eyeful. Can’t remember her name. Still, no matter. I can remember all her important bits.’

‘Have you ever considered joining the twenty-first century, Gavin?’

He slid the cigarette back between his lips. ‘Now why would I want to do that?’

Maclise Road, four in the afternoon. Stephanie let herself in, dumped two bags of shopping on the kitchen table and checked the answer-machine for messages. Nothing.

‘Hey …’

Rosie Chaudhuri was standing in the living room. Magenta House’s rising star and the only female kindred spirit Stephanie had encountered in Petra’s world.

‘Christ! Don’t do that!’

‘Sorry.’

‘You’ll give me a heart attack.’

She smiled apologetically. ‘Yes, that would be inconvenient.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I didn’t want to give you the opportunity to put the phone down on me.’

‘Why would I?’

‘We need to talk.’

‘About?’

‘Marrakech. Mostovoi.’

‘How did you get in here?’

Rosie went into the living room, reached into her bag and produced a key, which she offered to Stephanie. It looked familiar. She checked the kitchen drawer where she kept the only spare. Which was still there.

Rosie said, ‘When you first started seeing Mark, Alexander had this copy made. He used to have the place swept once a week.’

‘What?’

‘Until I found out about it and insisted that he put a stop to it.’

Stephanie’s own security had only been in place six months. At the time she’d wondered whether she was being paranoid.

‘I don’t believe it.’

Rosie smiled. ‘Come on. What don’t you believe?’

A fair point.

‘What was he looking for?’

‘Anything, I guess.’ Stephanie gave Rosie a look. ‘I promise you, I don’t know.’ She handed over the key. ‘Anyway, here it is.’

The peace offering. Offered in advance of whatever was coming. Stephanie made green tea as Rosie leaned against the sink, her arms folded. She was in a sleeveless chocolate linen dress that she would never have worn when they’d first met. She wouldn’t have had the confidence. The change in shape was pronounced: the curves a little sleeker, breasts merely large rather than huge, legs and arms toned, stomach flat, one chin. not several. Her skin was clear and her hair, now short, framed her face rather than concealing it.

When the tea was ready they went into the living room. Stephanie sat cross-legged on the carpet, in a gentle draught between the door and window. ‘So, what’s on your mind?’

‘Mostovoi. Alexander asked me to come over and run through a couple of things. For clarification.’

‘Go on.’

‘You were in the room with him. You had a gun. He survived.’

‘I thought I’d made it clear at the debriefing. The gun jammed.’

‘At that point the two bodyguards were incapacitated?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘And Mostovoi was doing what?’

‘Nothing. He was sitting there, scared stiff.’

‘What about the spike?’

‘I used it on the trader.’

‘Couldn’t you have used it on Mostovoi?’

‘What’s going on, Rosie?’

Alexander needed to be sure. That’s what she said. Except Stephanie could see that wasn’t it. There was a subtext. With each question, Stephanie grew more evasive, the truth no longer a comfort.

When Rosie had finished, Stephanie said, ‘What now?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing?’

‘Take some time off. Go on holiday.’

‘Am I okay?’

‘You’re fine.’

But Stephanie’s antennae were still twitching. ‘Rosie, if there was something serious you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’

‘It’s nothing like that, Steph.’

‘You know as well as I do, you’re the only one I trust.’

Rosie smiled. ‘I know.’

2

Summer drifted by, long, hot, empty. And, eventually, lovely. Once I’d learnt to relax. It wasn’t easy. The doubt persisted. Was I under review? That was the word they generally used instead of ‘suspicion’. If I found myself on the outside, what would that mean? There’d be no pension or gratitude, that was for sure. I told myself I was being paranoid. But that didn’t mean I was wrong.

However, as the weeks passed, that anxiety receded and I fell into a lazy routine. Late starts, a visit to the gym to maintain fitness, afternoons free, evenings and nights with Mark. For two months I was happy. It was carefree and uncomplicated. The days merged, the weeks lost their shape. I raced through half a dozen paperbacks a week. I went to the cinema in the afternoons. Or slept. Or lay on the grass in Kensington Gardens, listening to Garbage on my Walkman, the volume turned up. When Mark got back from his practice in Cadogan Gardens we’d have a drink on the roof terrace, or make love, or take a bath together. We went out, we had people over. We were a couple.

In late August we went to Malta for ten days. We stayed in a cheap hotel and did nothing, apart from a trip to Gozo and Comino. We sat in the sun and swam in the sea, we read, ate out, drank cheap red wine, went to bed early and got up late.

The day after our return to London I realized I’d missed my period. I didn’t tell Mark. I didn’t take the test, either. Not straight away. I wanted to sort out my head first. If it was positive, what would that mean? Alexander would assume I’d done it deliberately. But what would he do about it? The prospect of telling him had a lighter side – Does Magenta House have an active maternity leave policy? When I come back as a working mum, will the hours be flexible? – but the reality was more chilling. Most likely he’d prescribe an abortion and try to find some way to force me to accept it. Which I never would. That much I knew.

By the time I took the test I wanted it to be positive.

It was negative.

I decided not to tell anyone. What was there to say? Guess what – I’m not pregnant? Mark noticed a change. I said I was feeling down but it was nothing to worry about. Two days later I was with Karen. After a sweltering hour in John Lewis on Oxford Street, we were having a cup of coffee at a nearby café, sitting at a table on the pavement, just in the shade, shopping bags at our feet. We were having a good time when, out of the blue, Karen asked me if everything was all right.

‘I’m fine. Why?’

She looked at me, suddenly serious. ‘I don’t know. I just felt … something.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. Forget it.’

Which was when it hit me. A pain in my chest that began to spread.

She seemed to sense it. She put her hand on my arm. ‘Stephanie?’

When I looked at her, she was blurred.

‘What is it?’

I told her. When I’d finished she hugged me, kissed me on both cheeks and wiped away the wetness from my eyes with her handkerchief.

‘I’m sorry.’

I tried to laugh it off. ‘Don’t be. It’s ridiculous. I don’t know what I was thinking. I mean….’

‘Stephanie.’

I sniffed loudly. ‘What?’

‘You’re not fooling me. Does Mark know?’

‘No.’

‘Are you going to tell him?’

I bit my lip. ‘Not yet.’

‘Later?’

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

The following week Magenta House called. Summer was over.

The subterranean conference room was deliciously cool. Dressed in a maroon T-shirt, black linen trousers and trainers, Stephanie felt goose-bumps on her arms. She sat at the most distant point of the oval table to Alexander.

‘Let’s talk about Lars Andersen. Remind me what he said to you.’

He opened the folder in front of him and began to scan printed pages. She wondered whether it was her debriefing transcript. Such transcripts had short lives. When Magenta House signed off on a contract, all trace of it was erased. That was the nature of the organization: to kill you, then once you were gone to deny you’d ever existed.

‘Any part in particular?’

‘The Russian conversation you had with Andersen and the man you later shot through the knee … what was his name?’

‘Jarni. I’m not sure there’s much I can add to what I’ve already said.’

‘This reference to Inter Milan, could you tell me something about that?’

‘Like what?’

‘The tone of the reference, maybe?’

‘It was just banter, I think. At least, it was until they found out I understood Russian. Even then the atmosphere was relaxed.’

‘Russian speakers but not Russian …’

‘My Russian was better than theirs.’

‘And you told them you hadn’t heard of Inter Milan.’

‘As I understand it, Inter Milan is an Italian football club. What does this have to do with Mostovoi?’

Alexander slid a selection of photographs down the table to Stephanie. There were a dozen, five in black-and-white, none of great quality. She flicked through and saw versions of a younger Lars Andersen: climbing out of a Mercedes with Dutch plates, wearing a leather jacket, faded jeans and trainers; exiting a glass office-block in a suit that was too tight; hunched over a plate in a crowded pizzeria, the photo taken through the window. In three shots his hair was collar-length, in the rest it was shorter. She stopped at the final photograph. He was standing in front of a dark forest in dirty camouflage combats, heavy boots caked in mud, webbing, with an AK-47 in his right hand. His scalp had been shaved more recently than his jaw; he was grinning through a week of stubble. The grain and crop of the image suggested it had once formed part of a larger picture. The irony was not lost on Stephanie.

Alexander said, ‘Ever heard of a man named Milan Savic?’

‘No.’

‘You’re looking at him. He was a Serb. During the Balkans conflict he was a paramilitary warlord. Before that he was a gangster, a black-marketeer in Belgrade.’

‘You said Savic “was” a Serb.’

‘Correct. He was shot dead by the Kosovo Liberation Army during an ambush outside Pristina on 13 February 1999. Three other members of his paramilitary unit were killed. The deaths were confirmed by two UNHCR representatives on a fact-finding mission to Kosovo. Before Kosovo, Savic and his paramilitaries were active in Croatia and Bosnia. Which means he was involved at the start and nearly made it to the end. That’s almost a decade. This photo was taken in woods not far from Banja Luka.’

‘How does Lars Andersen fit into this?’

‘Rumours have persisted suggesting Savic is still alive. We know that Lars Andersen is one of the aliases Savic is supposed to have used since 1999.’

‘And Inter Milan?’

‘It’s the nickname for the paramilitary unit he ran. The true title of Inter Milan – the Italian football club – is actually Internazionale. Savic’s paramilitary unit had an unusually high number of non-Serbs in it. He actively recruited foreigners – mercenaries, mostly – hence the name. Internationals became Inter Milan, Milan Savic’s private armed militia. They even took to wearing the club colours, black and blue.’

Stephanie re-examined the photograph from the woods. Wrapped around Savic’s throat and tucked into the top of his camouflage jacket was a black and blue football scarf.

‘Savic was a real bastard. Not that he was alone in that. There were plenty of others. Some of them have been indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague while others haven’t and never will be. Some died, some disappeared. At the time, Savic’s death was greeted with relief not only because of what he did but because of what he knew.’

‘Like what?’

‘In this matter, the International War Crimes Tribunal operates two types of indictment: the declared indictment, like those issued against Slobodan Milosevic or Radovan Karadzic, and the “sealed” or “secret” indictment, like the one used to bring General Momir Talic to justice. But there’s also a third list. Completely unofficial, it contains names of those war criminals who can never be permitted to see the inside of a courtroom. It’s not a long list, but Savic’s name is on it.’

Stephanie understood the nature of such lists. ‘I can see where this is heading. It sounds like a face-saving exercise.’

‘It doesn’t really matter what you think.’

He pressed a button on the console in front of him. The overhead lights dimmed and the wall-screen to her left flickered to life.

Alexander said, ‘Our arrangement has always been a hideous thing, I’m sure you’ll agree. Then again, we’re hideous people. Ever since New York, you and I have coexisted under the terms of an uneasy truce. As you know, the contract on Komarov was never rescinded. It was merely suspended. Consequently, we left our file on him open, amending it from time to time, when S3 came into possession of relevant material. Such as this …’

An unfamiliar black-and-white face formed on the wall: puffy cheeks, clipped hair, a neat goatee beard, rectangular glasses.

‘This is David Pearson. One of ours, Section 5, Support. In January, under S3 guidance, he went to Turkmenistan to make preparations for an Ether Division contract on Yuri Paskin, a Russian smuggler whose network is particularly strong through Central Asia. For the right fee Paskin will transport anything. Guns, drugs, prostitutes. Or Islamic terrorists. Out of Afghanistan, for instance. Which was what brought him to our attention and earned him a well-deserved contract. Based in Ashgabat, he runs a network that stretches in the east from Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to the western shore of the Caspian Sea. And from Iran and Afghanistan in the south, up through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan into Russia in the north. In the international scheme of things Paskin’s a nobody. Regionally he’s a giant. Which was why I took the decision to retire him discreetly, rather than the blunter approach.’

‘You mean, someone like me.’

‘Precisely. Anyway, Pearson went to Ashgabat. Paskin’s a heavy smoker and drinker – not to mention casual cocaine user – so we’d decided an induced heart attack would be best. Nobody who knew him would have been surprised. We had an Ether Division unit standing by in Baku, ready to cross the Caspian. But at the last minute Paskin was tipped off. He fled to Irkutsk, and Pearson was shot twice in the head in his room at the Hotel Oktyabrskaya. That crucial piece of information came from Komarov.’

Don’t say a word. Not now.

Alexander looked strangely weary, almost resigned. ‘I’ll be frank with you, Stephanie: in the past I’ve activated contracts for less, and I make no apology for it. My choices are based on hard, factual analysis. It can’t be any other way. Which is why Komarov should be dead. Twice, in fact. Once in New York, and once for Pearson.’

‘Killing him for Pearson would be revenge. That’s emotional.’

‘Not true. Revenge is an instrument. It sends a message: kill one of ours and we’ll kill one of yours. Take my word for it, as a policy it works.’

She opened her mouth to speak but he raised his hand to silence her. In the past she would have ignored such a gesture. But not now.

Alexander said, ‘I’m considering closing the file on Komarov.’

For a moment, she didn’t understand. Closing the file – it sounded terminal. But it wasn’t. On the contrary. Like a Caesar, Alexander was granting life. Gradually Stephanie realized what was happening. His tone made sense, the anecdote made sense: it was the carrot and the stick. And so far it had all been carrot.

She chose to probe a little. ‘If that’s true, there’s no reason for me to stay. Not under the terms of our agreement.’

‘I said “considering”. I didn’t say it was done.’

A succession of images filled the screen. Komarov was coming out of the Turkmenistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Magtumguly Prospekt. The date, 5 January, the time, 17:43. Next he was with a shorter man. They were only visible from the shoulders up, their bodies blocked by a black Mercedes. The caption read: Y. Paskin and K. Komarov outside Ak-Altyn Plaza Hotel, 7 January, 19:57. There were two more shots of Komarov in Ashgabat, one walking past the Azadi mosque, the other getting out of a dusty Toyota outside the Russian Embassy on Saparamurat Turkmenbashi Prospekt. The final image of the sequence saw both men either side of a stunning blonde in a sable coat. K. Komarov, L. Ivanova and Y. Paskin, leaving the Lancaster hotel, rue de Berri, Paris, 19 March, 17:08.

‘Technically you’re right, of course,’ Alexander was saying. ‘Without the threat to Komarov, what’s to keep you here?’

Mark filled her mind. ‘I’m sure you could find something.’

‘I’m sure I could. But I’m not inclined to. In fact, quite the opposite. I’m inclined to let you leave Magenta House.’

She wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. ‘Leave?’

‘That’s right.’

There would be a condition. ‘But?’

‘But first, Savic’

‘That’s it? Then I walk?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the threat to Komarov is lifted?’

‘After Savic, yes.’

‘What aren’t you telling me?’

‘I don’t want you to kill Savic. I want you to get close to him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of this.’

From his folder he took a crumpled piece of paper and pushed it across the table. Stephanie had to get up to retrieve it. She sat back down and smoothed the creases with her palm.

The paper had been torn from a notebook. Some of the blue ink had run. There were two dark splashes on the top left-hand corner. It was a list. There were nine names before the rip, which severed the tenth. Six of the names appeared to be from the Balkans. The other three were French, English and German.

‘Recovered by Pearson three days before he died.’

‘What is it?’

‘Before his death in Kosovo, Savic was rumoured to be running an exit pipeline for war criminals. Four of the names on that list have International War Crimes Tribunal declared indictments against them, two have sealed indictments against them and the other two are on the third list. None of them have been seen since 1999.’

‘Savic spirited them away?’

‘It’s possible. One thing’s for certain: they’re not on this list by coincidence.’

‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘Locate Savic and find out if this so-called pipeline ever really existed.’

‘Savic is definitely alive, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘The Far East. We’re still collating. You’ll be fully briefed when we’re ready.’

‘Why me?’

‘Because you have a way in.’

‘Marrakech?’

‘Correct. You were looking for Mostovoi. They know each other. You can make that work to your advantage.’

Stephanie shook her head. ‘This isn’t what I do. You know that. I’m S7, an in-and-out girl. This is something for S3.’

Section 3 was the intelligence section. Section 7 was Operations (Primary), one of two assassination sections. In total, Magenta House had ten sections, including Control, Archive, Resources, Support, Finance, Security (Internal), Security (External), Operations (Invisible).

‘S3 is fully stretched supporting the Ether Division. Besides, this will require an external presence.’

‘There must be somebody else.’

Still staring at her, Alexander said, ‘I’m not asking you.’

The carrot and the stick – it didn’t matter which Alexander used. In the end they came to the same thing. A choice with no alternatives.

I don’t bother picking the fight. In the past I would have. And Alexander would have expected me to. But we’re beyond that now. These days I know what I am and I don’t bother to deny it. I’ve accepted myself. I’m a professional woman of twenty-nine, trying to balance my work with my private life. On the Underground, in the supermarket, at home or in the office, most of my concerns are the same as everyone else’s. It’s only the nature of my work that marks me out.

Upstairs, on the ground floor, I run into Rosie Chaudhuri. I haven’t seen her since she came to Maclise Road after Marrakech. The fact that we’re friends is strange because we’re so different. She truly believes in Magenta House. She heads S10, Operations (Invisible), the newest section, which was established after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. S10 leaves no traces. Its victims die from natural causes, or accidents, or they simply vanish, ensuring they don’t become martyrs. Initially it only targeted Islamic extremists. Not a politically correct remit, to be sure, but then Magenta House has never been too concerned with political correctness. Now S10 targets anyone who merits their talents. Among Magenta House staff, S10 is always referred to as the Ether Division.

‘Hey, Steph. I didn’t know you were due in today.’

‘Nor did I.’

‘Something new?’

‘He wants me to chase a ghost.’

‘Savic?’

‘You knew?’

‘He mentioned it. I wasn’t sure how far he‘d take it.’

‘Apparently your lot are soaking up everyone in S3.’

‘You don’t sound thrilled.’

‘I feel like a three-star Michelin chef who’s been asked to scrub dishes.’

We take the lift to the top floor to Rosie’s new office with its view of the Adelphi Building. When I was first recruited Rosie was a member of the support staff with limited security clearance. It was her talent for analysis that won her promotion. With promotion came full clearance. I’ve never discovered Rosie’s flaw, but I know there is one. Somewhere, lurking in a file, she has a weakness that’s been documented. We all do. Magenta House insist upon it. Personally I have too many to count so it’s never bothered me the way it bothers others. Rosie has never mentioned hers to me. It is, perhaps, the only taboo subject between us.

In her early thirties, Rosie could be the picture of a successful modern woman. Before she started up S10 she spent a spell in S7 with me. That was when she lost weight and toned up. Like me, she was reincarnated.

She moves behind her kidney-shaped desk and settles into her Herman Miller chair. ‘What kind of tea would you like?’

‘Green, if you have it.’

She pushes a button on the phone base. ‘Adam, two teas, when you‘re ready. One green, one lemon and ginger.’

‘What do you know about Savic?’

‘Not much. He hasn’t strayed across my desk. But I’ve heard the rumours, naturally. There’ve been alleged sightings of him in Germany, Belgium and Holland. Some say he runs a chain of call-girls in Prague and Budapest.’

‘How original.’

‘Others say he’s gun-running down to Maputo. Or was it Harare?’

‘That sounds more like Mostovoi’s line of work.’

‘There have been reports of him in Pyongyang, Osaka and Shanghai.’

‘How long can it be before he’s spotted working with Elvis in a fish-and-chip shop in Scarborough? Anything concrete?’

‘Not until you landed Lars Andersen. By the way, I’m sorry about S3. I’ll get somebody to put some stuff together for you. Give me a couple of days.’

‘Thanks.’

‘How’s Mark?’

‘He’s well. We’re starting to plan a big climbing trip for next summer.’

‘Where?’

‘El Capitan.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘It’s in California. What about you? How was your date with that architect? You never said. Did he have any designs on you?’

Rosie winces. ‘Oh Steph, that’s really lame. Even for you.’

‘Couldn’t resist it.’

‘Put it this way. He made me go halves at dinner and then wanted to go the whole way afterwards.’

I laugh loudly. As gorgeous as she is, Rosie has little luck with men. I suspect it’s because she intimidates most of them. She wants to be dazzled and so assumes they do too. If she was more like me she’d understand that most men don’t want a competitor in a woman, or even an equal.

‘Are you taking precautions?’ she asks me.

‘God, you sound like my mother.’

‘You know what I mean.’

I tell her I am. The door opens and Adam, Rosie’s assistant, enters the room carrying two steaming mugs. He’s older than she is, in his mid-forties, perhaps. Stereotypically, it would be easy to imagine that he was Rosie’s boss. But then there’s nothing conventional here.

Rosie’s parents are first-generation immigrants. Both are doctors, both still practising; her mother is a GP, her father is a chest specialist. They live in north London and have three other children, all boys. Two work in the City, one shoots commercials. None of them have any idea what she does. Like me, she lies. Like me, she’s so good at it, it’s as natural to her as telling the truth. They believe she’s a security analyst at the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s College, London. Elsewhere it might seem strange that a young second-generation Indian woman is heading an outfit like the Ether Division. But in our world it seems perfectly normal because we can be anybody we need to be at any given moment.

They drove south-west in Mark’s fifteen-year-old slate grey Saab, reaching the Saracen Arms, a fifteenth-century manor house with a twenty-first-century interior.

Saturday was hot and still. They climbed at Uphill Quarry, a Site of Special Scientific Interest on account of its rare flora. A westerly crag set beneath a village church and a graveyard, Uphill’s challenges were technical rather than strength-orientated. Mark climbed smoothly, but Stephanie felt heavy-limbed and was frustrated to be stumped by A Lesser Evil on the Great Yellow Wall. Mark completed The Jimi Hendrix Experience – the route had recently been bolted – and then both of them completed Graveyard Gate, the arête furthest to the right of the Pedestal Wall.

In the evening they soaked for an hour in the giant freestanding bath in their bathroom, then ordered room service. They ate looking out to sea, as the bloody sun set. They drank a bottle of Mercurey and Stephanie expected they would make love. Instead, somehow, they fell asleep without either of them noticing. When Stephanie awoke she was face down on the bed, cocooned in a white dressing-gown, Mark beside her, snoring and sunburnt.

Sunday was hotter but with a breeze. They drove to Brean Down, a limestone peninsula protruding into the Bristol Channel, not far from Uphill Quarry. Boulder Cove was a five-minute walk across the beach from the car park. They warmed up on Coral Sea and then proceeded up Achtung Torpedo, through the face’s black bulge, before moving on to Chulilla, Casino Royale and Root of Inequity. Stephanie climbed effortlessly, the clumsiness of Saturday falling away from her as lightly as sweat. Mark finished with Anti-Missile Missile, a girdle traverse.

From Brean Down they drove straight back to London, simultaneously spent and energized. They were sitting in a traffic jam on the M4, not far from Heathrow, when Stephanie said, ‘I might have a new job lined up.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘It might be longer term than usual.’

‘Longer than Uzbekistan?’

At three weeks, the journey from Ostend to Marrakech had been her longest contract since she’d started seeing Mark by more than a fortnight. Usually she was only away for two or three days. That made the deception a lot easier.

‘Could be. I don’t know yet.’

‘Where?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘You don’t sound very happy about it.’

‘Well, to be honest, I’m considering a change of career.’

He gave her a quick glance. ‘Really?’

‘After this job, yes. Maybe.’

‘How long have you been thinking about this?’

‘Not long. That’s why I haven’t mentioned it.’

‘What will you do instead?’

Stephanie smiled. ‘That’s the good part. I have no idea.’

Magenta House was two different buildings that had been merged laterally. The building that overlooked Victoria Embankment Gardens had been erected by a wealthy sugar trader who had insisted on a large cellar. When Stephanie had first come to Magenta House the cellar had still housed wines, brandies, damp and dirt. It had been a smaller organization, then. No less venal, but more personal, it had been Alexander’s private fiefdom. Now it was growing and Alexander was more of an anonymous corporate chairman, while the wines in the cellar had made way for an expanded intelligence section.

The staircase had been removed. Section 3 could only be accessed by a lift, which required security clearance on entry and exit. Rosie led her through the main cellar, which was now an open-plan department with state-of-the-art work stations for its permanent staff of five, and into a vaulted sub-cellar made of brick. The original wooden doors had been replaced by sliding glass.

Stephanie sat at a swivel chair in front of a keyboard and three flat screens. ‘Have you seen any of this material?’

‘Just the basics,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s not pretty. I’ll leave you to it.’

The door whispered shut and Stephanie was cocooned in soundproofed silence. She stroked the keyboard and the central screen came to life. She typed in her security code, MARKET-EAST-1-1-6-4-R-P, and the other two screens illuminated. The one on her right subdivided into thirty-six boxed images, the one to her left into sixteen boxes containing text headlines. She started with a general profile.

Milan Savic was an only child. His father, Borisav, left home when Milan was six. A year later his mother committed suicide. Thereafter he lived with his maternal grandparents in Belgrade. A teenage thug, then a black-marketeer, by 1989 Savic was well known to the police in the Yugoslav capital, not only for his criminal activity, but also for the generous bribes he paid to them.

After January 1989 there was a gap in the files. A two-year blackout. When it was over, early in 1991, Savic was running a paramilitary unit in Croatia. The file claimed that in conjunction with the SDB, the Serb secret police, Savic was instrumental in preparing Serb communities within Croatia for insurrection. These activities were coordinated by Colonel Ratko Mladic, commander of the Knin garrison. Despite this Savic remained under the direct control of Franko Simatovic, known to everyone as Frenki, and Radovan Stojicic, known as Badza, numbers two and three at the SDB.

Frenki and Badza – pronounced Badger – were familiar names to her. They’d both known Zeljko Raznatovic, also known as Arkan. As Petra, Stephanie had known Arkan too, if only for a moment. On 15 January 2000 both of them had been in the lobby of the Hotel Inter-Continental in Belgrade. So had Dragica Maric. But Stephanie had only discovered that later, inside the derelict Somerset Hotel on West 54th Street, New York. It had been raining, she remembered, the downpour drowning the sound of Manhattan’s traffic. That was when Dragica Maric had told her that she was there too, watching, as Arkan walked towards Petra Reuter, unaware.

Arkan had founded the Serbian Volunteer Guard, later known as the Tigers, just as Savic had founded Inter Milan, his Internationals, a group of outsiders, hungry for violence and money. Between Arkan and Savic existed Frenki and Badza, on behalf of the SDB.

At first Savic worked in areas of the Krajina, stirring the ghosts of the Second World War, resurrecting the spectre of the dreaded fascist Ustashas. Arkan was doing similar work, as well as making arrangements to arm the local Serb population. Once the Serb Autonomous Region – the SAR – had been set up in the Krajina, Savic’s unit was instrumental in purging it of non-Serbs. This formed a behavioural template that was to last for eight years. In Croatia and Bosnia, then Kosovo, villages were attacked, cattle slaughtered, crops burnt, houses looted, innocents brutalized, then murdered.

From the screen to her left she picked another title: Inter Milan. There were photographs and brief biographies. She scanned them.

Savic’s right-hand man within Inter Milan was Vojislav Brankovic. His name was one of the nine on the list that Alexander had shown her. A native of the Krajina, Brankovic came from the small town of Titova Korenica, not far from the beautiful Plitvica National Park in Croatia. The son of a baker, he’d done military service with the JNA, the Yugoslav National Army, before returning home. In early 1991, when Savic went to the Krajina, Brankovic was apparently contented, working in the family business, living with his parents, surrounded by friends from childhood. His girlfriend, Maria, was a beautiful Croat whose parents lived in a house four doors away. The file did not disclose how Brankovic had been recruited by Savic. It only documented those activities accredited to him.

Brankovic was known as the Spoon because he wore a JNA army-issue canteen spoon on a chain around his neck for good luck. There was a picture to prove it, Brankovic in a tight-fitting olive T-shirt, the battered teaspoon worn like a set of dog-tags. He had a broad, agricultural face, a fuzz of fair hair, pale skin and a physique that radiated power through scale rather than menace. Here was a chopper of trees, Stephanie felt, rather than a baker of bread. Along with Savic, Brankovic had been one of those allegedly killed by the KLA outside Pristina on 13 February 1999.

She looked at some of the internationals. Barry Ferguson, British, from Gateshead, ex-SAS, ex-husband to a battered wife, ex-father of three, ex-inmate of Durham Prison. Troy Carter from Maine – unlike Ferguson, he’d never made the grade as a professional soldier. He’d gone to the Balkans to prove himself. And had failed again. Within a fortnight a landmine had scattered him over his colleagues. Fabrice Blanc, a native of Marseille, had deserted the French Foreign Legion specifically to go to the Balkans.

‘I need to fight to live,’ he’d claimed.

It was a phrase with resonance among the Inter Milan hard core. How did mild-mannered Vojislav Brankovic, the baker’s son, become a vicious murderer? How did a boy with a beautiful Croat girlfriend end up stabbing other Croats in the face simply for being Croat? Stephanie knew part of the answer: in war, some men found themselves.

There was a picture of Harald Gross kicking a severed Bosniak head into a makeshift goal with spent shell cases for posts. In the background there were several blurred onlookers, their grins smudged. The rest of the mercenaries were European apart from a Canadian, two Australians and a South African. At any given moment the internationals accounted for between thirty and forty per cent of the Inter Milan force. Mercenaries they might have been, but one thing was clear: they were there for the fighting, not for the money.

On the screen to her right Stephanie touched a box with a woman’s face. She came to life, her expression as harrowed in motion as it had been frozen. A box of text in the right-hand corner informed Stephanie that the woman was from a small village close to Foca, in eastern Bosnia, a town that had been ethnically cleansed in 1992. Over her testimony, another woman translated into English.

‘They came in the morning. They beat up anybody who got in their way. One of them shot a farmer in front of his wife and children. When the wife attacked the gunman, another one intervened and cut her throat. The children were hysterical. Their mother was in a pool of blood in the dirt. Other men took the children away. The leader told us we were to be transported to Foca, where we would join the people of the town, and then we would all leave the district together. They said we had one hour to make our preparations. We went home. An hour later we gathered in the market square. I had a bag, packed with … I don’t know what … anything … I couldn’t think. My husband carried a sack with bread and clothes. Then there was a delay, a lot of confusion. They made us sit down in the square. It was very hot. We were there for some hours.’

Stephanie reckoned the woman was in her late forties. The interview was taking place in an institutional room: cream gloss walls, a smooth concrete floor with a single table at its centre. She was talking to another woman whose back was to camera. Stephanie paused the footage and checked the directory; the interview had been conducted in a Bologna police cell. When the action resumed, so did the clock in the bottom left-hand corner: 14.14 on 11 April 1997.

‘They asked me what I did. I said I was a teacher. The one with no teeth told me to show him where the school was. He said they would need a place to keep us for the night because we would not go to Foca until the next day. I got up from the ground to take him to the school. That was the last time I saw my husband alive. Four other men came with us. It was a small building with one large classroom and two small utility rooms. The man with no teeth told me to take off my clothes. I refused and one of the others hit me across the cheek with the butt of his rifle. Then they stripped me and raped me.’

The other woman asked a question that Stephanie couldn’t hear. The first woman shook her head defiantly and continued, her voice a sobering monotone.

‘No, it was all of them. The man with no teeth went first. When he was finished, the others followed. I tried not to make a sound because I knew they would hear me outside. Later some of the men went out, then others came in. Sometimes it was one of them, sometimes two or three. They brought in other women. Some of the women were older than me, some were just girls.

‘They brought in the doctor’s wife late in the afternoon. After four or five men had raped her, they brought in her husband. They made him watch as more men raped her. Then they slit his throat in front of her. Like me, she survived the massacre the next day. I know that because she made it to Athens where she had some family. But she’s dead now. She killed herself.

‘During the night they were drinking. We heard screams and shouts in the square. We didn’t know what they were doing until the morning when we saw the bodies. They’d knifed some of the old men and hung some of the boys. One of them was six. By the end I don’t think I felt a thing. I don’t know how many of them raped me, or how many times. It doesn’t matter.

‘When they left they shot some of those who were still in the square. But not all of them. It was the same in the school-house. They murdered a few and let the rest live. To tell others what had happened, to spread the fear. I can’t forgive any of them for anything. But in particular, I can’t forgive them for not shooting me. For letting me live. I don’t care what any of the other survivors say, that was the worst thing they did to me. I think about suicide every day, but I can’t do it. It’s a sin. I want to die, though. As soon as possible so I won’t have to remember.’

She was staring, unblinking. Not at the woman opposite her, but at the camera. At Stephanie.

Another box on the right-hand screen, another face, this one a man’s, an Albanian from Kosovo. The interview was recorded in a community centre in Hamburg on 13 June 2001. There were other immigrants in the frame. The man spoke slow, clear English.

‘They kicked us out of our houses, robbed us, then beat us up. They separated the men of fighting age from the rest and told us they would be taken to a secure camp. They said they would be well treated, but we didn’t believe them. We already knew they were butchers. There was panic, women clinging to their husbands. The terrorists – that is what they were, not soldiers – beat the women back. But there was no controlling them. There was one woman, she was on her knees clinging to her husband’s legs with one arm and her little boy with the other. The leader of the terrorists, a big man with a shaved head, tried to pull her off her husband. I could see how angry this monster was. His eyes were dead. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled but she would not let go. Instead she spat at him. And so he shot her husband. Just like that. As though he was taking the top off a bottle.

‘Before the woman had time to react, he grabbed the little boy, his face splattered with his father’s blood. The savage held him tight, put a gun to his head and threatened to shoot unless there was order. Nobody said anything. Nobody protested any more. The men who had been singled out got on the bus and were driven away. Those of us who were left – the sick, the old, the women and children – we watched, some crying, some too terrified to cry.

‘The man said we had to pay for the trouble we had caused. Fifteen thousand deutschmarks for the boy. I was one of those detailed to collect the cash. He gave us half an hour to find the money. What could we do? They had already robbed us. But they knew we would find cash that was hidden. We went from house to house, collecting what we could. When we returned we had just over ten thousand deutschmarks, much more than I expected. I was the one who handed the money to him. He counted it and said, “Ten thousand is not enough. I said fifteen.” Somebody else said there was no more, that it was all we had. He shrugged and said, “Okay. I’m a fair man. A deal is a deal. You give me two thirds of the money, I give you two thirds of the boy.” He decapitated the child in front of us. When they left they took their third away – the head – and left his little body on the ground next to his father.’

The windows are open. I can hear the distant murmur of traffic on the Gloucester Road, a phone ringing, the dull drum-roll of a helicopter passing overhead. Mark looms over me, enters me and kisses me. I can taste myself on his tongue.

Already flushed, I break into a sweat, our skins soon slippery, the sheets beneath us crushed and damp. I push my fingers through his dark hair and they come away wet. At first I’m content to let his weight pin me to the bed; I snake my arms around his neck and pull him down onto me. Later we roll over and I’m in charge, swiping away his hands from my hips so that I decide how hard we go, how deep, how fast. Which is when I seize up. Suddenly I’m no longer in his bedroom and I have no idea how it’s happened.

I try to escape his grasp but he doesn’t get it. He hardens his grip so I grab the fingers of his right hand and twist violently. I lurch forward and we separate. Still clutching his fingers with a force that amazes both of us, I wrench again, clamping my other hand over his, straining the tendons in his wrist.

‘Jesus … Stephanie …’

He rolls with the pain. He has to, otherwise the wrist would snap. I know that for certain. It’s a move I’ve used often. I let go just in time, but he’s hurt. And in shock. For a second or two neither of us does or says anything. Then I stumble off the bed and scramble to the bathroom, where I lock the door.

I’m trembling but I’m not sure whether it’s anger, sorrow or surprise. I lash out at the shelf above the basin, scattering two plastic mugs, a can of shaving foam and a half-used bottle of Listerine.

I don’t know what to think. Or what I can say to him. Because whatever I do, I can’t tell him the truth. I can’t share my day’s work with him. I can’t say what I’ve learnt after ten hours, or excuse my behaviour by telling him that all I could see was a Bosnian school-teacher being gang-raped by a Serb paramilitary unit. Or a little boy lying in the dirt next to his father, his head severed.

There’s a knock on the door. My breathing is slowing but my skin still gleams with sweat. He murmurs my name. I stare into my reflected eyes – my most potent weapon – and take control again.

Then I turn round and open the door.

Mark had pulled on a pair of cotton trousers. Stephanie was still naked. Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘Do you want me to go?’

‘I want you to talk.’

‘It would be easier to go.’

‘I’m sure it would.’

He offered her an old shirt of his. She pulled it around her damp body. When she said she was sorry, she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye. He asked if she needed a drink. She did but she declined. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him.

‘You know that feeling, when you’re almost asleep but not quite? And you’re not actually sure whether you’re awake or not. And then you picture yourself tripping or falling, and even though it’s your imagination your whole body lurches … that’s what it was like.’

‘I know the feeling. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I can’t. I’m sorry.’

Mark said it was okay. When it clearly wasn’t. Or, at least, shouldn’t have been. He should have asked questions. Or shouted. Something. Anything. But he didn’t because he didn’t have to. He understood without the details.

From the very start there had been a condition, laid down in her bed in the hotel in the Dolomites. Don’t imagine you’ll ever get too close to me, Mark. No matter what happens to us, there are whole areas of my life that I will never be able to share with anyone. He’d said he didn’t care.

Now, despite what she’d said, he had got close. Far closer than she could have anticipated. But not to her past. The condition remained intact.

He opened a bottle of wine to soothe the tension. Later, he cooked for them and they relaxed a little, a second bottle helping.

They went to bed just before midnight. With the curtains open, a street-lamp washed the ceiling dirty orange. They lay tangled together, her head on his chest, his fingers in her hair.

He said, ‘You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met.’

‘I’m not half as strange as you.’

‘I don’t think I’m strange.’

She looked up at him. ‘Do you really think I am?’

‘One moment you’re one person, the next moment you’re somebody completely different. That seems to me to be strange. Then again, it is who you are.’

‘Trust me, Mark. You have no idea.’

3

The first week of September brought the first storm since mid-July. Volleys of rain lashed the carriage windows as the District Line train wheezed to a halt at Olympia. As the doors parted, Stephanie turned up her collar. Maclise Road was just a minute away but she was dripping by the time she kicked her front door shut. She shed her raincoat and draped it over a chair, leaving her in grey sweatpants with a green stripe, a chunky black V-neck over a purple long-sleeved T-shirt and yesterday’s underwear. In other words, the clothes that had been closest to her side of the bed.

She switched on the Sony Vaio in the living room and sent a brief message to a Hotmail address. I’m back from my travels. I’ve got a couple of questions for you. Let’s get in touch.

In the kitchen she made herself coffee and turned on the radio. The news bulletin was finishing with an item of gossip about some soap star she didn’t know. It was five past seven. Mark had been asleep when she’d left him. By contrast, she’d been awake since three. Worrying, wondering.

It had taken several days to absorb Alexander’s deal fully. At first she’d only seen the carrot and that had blinded her to everything else. As intended, she supposed. It took longer to analyse the detail, the reality, the potential consequences. The more she considered it, the more anxious she’d become. Above all, there was one thing she knew: Alexander was not a man who liked to give.

There would be a subtext. There always was. Offering her a future free of Magenta House was not credible by itself. Alexander had prohibited her from seeing Komarov after New York out of nothing more than spite. Why would he let her go now? There was no obvious answer.

And what of the contract itself? It wasn’t what she was trained for. Despite Mostovoi and Marrakech, there were others who’d be better suited to the task. Was it a demotion? Did Alexander feel she no longer had the cutting edge to survive in S7? She’d never heard of anyone being demoted at Magenta House. Those who left did so without fanfare and never returned.

The deal and the contract itself, neither was right.

She checked three Hotmail addresses of her own, as well as her five AOL addresses. Over the years she’d developed a system for e-mail management. The Hotmail addresses were permanent and belonged to Petra. Consequently very few people ever used them, and she couldn’t think of anyone who knew more than one of them. Nearly all her Hotmail traffic was spam: tacky offers for cheap loans, penis or breast enhancement and off-the-shelf diplomas. The AOL addresses were spread across five of her established identities, Stephanie Schneider among them. Finally there were those addresses that were set up for one contract only. Or even one message.

Stephanie Schneider had mail. Steffi – it’s ready for collection, Ali.

At nine she left the flat. After an hour of Pilates with a private instructor at a studio in Earls Court. She found Pilates useful for maintaining core strength and flexibility. Her instructor, an Australian from Adelaide who was also called Stephanie, had become a close friend and they often had lunch together after class.

On her return there was a message waiting. I’ve heard such exciting stories about you. You must tell me everything. Shall we meet at the usual place? I’ll be there for three hours, starting now.

Stern. More than Rosie ever could, Stern belonged to the Ether Division. Or should have. Because that was where he – or she – existed: in the ether. A virtual being, Stern had provided Petra with more concrete information than Magenta House ever had. The ‘usual place’ was a virtual café in the stratosphere. Stephanie checked the time of transmission: two hours and thirty-five minutes ago.

Hello, Oscar.

Stephanie had always used the name Oscar. It personalized Stern, and he’d never objected.

Well, well, all that blood in Marrakech and Mostovoi is still alive. I think I can guess why we’re talking.

I doubt it. What does the name Milan Savic mean to you?

The Serbian paramilitary warlord?

Yes.

I think you’ll find he’s dead.

That’s a popular assumption. What if he wasn’t?

What basis do you have for suspecting otherwise?

Humour me. Call it rumour and conjecture.

Ah, the names of my two most valuable employees. Give me an hour.

It was still raining. Stephanie took a carton of Tropicana from the fridge, then put on a CD, the third. untitled album by Icelandic band Sigur Ros. None of the eight tracks had titles either but she fast-forwarded to the fourth, her favourite. From her wet window she gazed at the rear gates of the Olympia exhibition centre.

She looked at a photocopy of the names on the list that David Pearson had recovered. Goran Simic, Milorad Barkic, Robert Pancevic, Fabrice Blanc, Vojislav Brankovic, Dejan Zivokvic, Milutin Nikolic, Ante Pasic, Lance Singleton. There had been a tenth, but the tear in the paper had rendered the name illegible. And if there was a tenth, why not an eleventh? Why not a hundred? Who could say how many there were?

Alexander had given her his word but she still didn’t trust him. Rather than break his word, which he considered his bond, Alexander was the type of man who redefined the terms of the deal so that he didn’t have to. Which was why Stephanie had maintained Stern. She needed independence. She needed insurance.

Forty-five minutes later Stern was back. Quid pro quo, Petra.

What do you suggest?

No need for cash, a name for a name. And you go first.

Stephanie offered a name provided by Magenta House, an alias that Savic was rumoured to use.

Martin Dassler.

Hong Kong?

Correct.

Carleen Attwater.

Never heard of her. Also Hong Kong?

No. London.

Six thirty in the evening. The persistent rain had rinsed away most of the people who usually clogged Leicester Square. The pub was packed, after-work drinkers unwinding with tourists and the pre-cinema crowd. It had less atmosphere than deep space: bright overhead lights, Linkin Park on the sound system competing with a chorus of cheesy mobile ring-tones and a football match on the screen at the far end.

Ali Metin was at the bar, nursing a pint of lager. ‘Steffi … looking foxy, as usual.’

‘Ali … looking shiny, as usual.’

Metin was proud to be bald by design and ran a hand over his mercury-smooth scalp. Beneath a long leather coat he wore a shimmering silk shirt and pleated trousers with a suspiciously high waist-band, both black. From his coat pocket he produced a silver mobile phone and handed it to her. It was a Siemens.

‘Talk me through it.’

‘It’s a beauty. Two things you got to remember. None of the calls you make can be traced. There are no records in the phone or on the SIM card. Anybody tries to return your call, they get blocked. If they got the facility to bypass, they won’t get the real number. They get a different number. You can use the memory but it won’t show right. The first time you put in the number you want to save, the phone will show you another number. It’s up to you to remember that. There’s no other way of knowing without ringing.’

She took an envelope out of her bag. Metin opened it and fanned through the dirty twenties inside. ‘Fancy a drink? I reckon I could stand it.’

Three days later Carleen Attwater says, ‘So, you’re one of Stern’s …’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve never met one before.’

‘Is that why you agreed to see me? Out of curiosity?’

‘Aren’t journalists supposed to be curious? Or even ex-journalists …’

‘You’re retired?’

Her smile is as enigmatic as her reply. ‘At the moment.’

‘How come?’

‘Burn-out. Too much jet-lag, too much alcohol, too much CNN.’

‘I thought those were part of the deal for war correspondents.’

‘Then too much Balkans.’

‘The straw that broke the camel’s back?’

‘Exactly. Besides, I was never a war correspondent. I was a journalist who just ended up in a lot of wars. Take Croatia. I went to cover a human interest story about murals in a monastery and 1 stayed until the end of Kosovo. The best part of a decade. Or, should 1 say, the worst part?’

We’re standing on the roof terrace of Attwater’s top-floor flat in Poplar Place, off Bayswater Road. She’s watering her plants, which occupy two thirds of the available space.

She’s in pastel blue three-quarter-length linen trousers, a large buttercup T-shirt that falls to the thighs and a wide-brimmed hat. Not quite the flak-jacket she used to wear in Beirut or Baghdad. Or the Balkans. Now in her fifties, her career is etched into her skin but she still exudes an earthy sex-appeal. According to Stern, that was an asset she used to use freely.

‘Who were you working for?’

‘Nominally, I was freelance. But the New Yorker was good to me. So was Vanity Fair, when they could find it in their hearts to squeeze some serious stuff between puff pieces for Hollywood’s latest airheads. Drink?’

‘Thanks, yes.’

‘I hate London when it’s hot. Amman, fine. Damascus, fine. Here it’s horrible. Jim used to feel the same.’

‘Your husband?’

‘Like my career, my ex …’

‘Sorry.’

‘Lord, don’t be. We aren’t. We get on much better now we’re divorced. Of course, it helps that he’s back in New York.’

Her laugh is a sultry smoker’s laugh. Her ex-husband is James Barrie, a foreign correspondent for Time for more than twenty years. They surfed the world’s troubles together.

We go down the iron fire-escape and enter Attwater’s kitchen. She pours me fresh lemonade from a glass jug that has chilled in the fridge.

‘You met Savic?’ I ask her.

‘Many times. Especially during Bosnia.’

‘He trusted you?’

‘I think so.’

‘Why?’

Attwater sighs. ‘Because I don’t think he saw me as an American. In fact, I don’t think he saw me as a journalist. I don’t believe he felt I’d taken a side.’

‘And had you?’

‘By the end, no. With most of the others who were there, I think it was the other way round. They tried to be impartial, then crumbled.’

‘Why was it different for you?’

‘I don’t know. After a while you begin to lose your sense of perspective. Sides don’t seem to matter that much. Who’s right? Who’s wrong? Who cares? You just go from day to day, village to village, carcass to carcass.’

‘Surrendering responsibility?’

‘Give me a break. Nobody takes responsibility for their actions any more. It’s outdated, like good manners, or the slide-rule.’

‘That’s a rather cynical view.’

‘Talking about responsibility in relation to what occurred in the Balkans is the worst sort of window-dressing.’

‘Are you excusing what Savic did?’

‘Not at all. I’m just saying that to judge it against the standards you and I take for granted is absurd. War is a different form of existence. It’s heightened living. Survive or die, hour to hour. I apologize if I’m making it sound glamorous in some way. It isn’t. It’s dirty and disgusting. But every time I tried to leave, something held me back. By the end of Croatia I was already dead. And still I stayed, through Bosnia, through Kosovo. I hated being there. But when I wasn’t there I hated wherever I was even more. It was a kind of addictive madness. Heroin for the soul …’

Heroin for the soul. There’s a phrase that has resonance for me.

‘What about the ones he was supposed to have helped?’

She nods vigorously. ‘The project was called Gemini. It was well organized. Milan was impressed by the Homeland Calling fund run by the KLA. Gemini was financed along similar lines. It had a proper command structure, too.’

I point out that most people dismissed the rumour as a conspiracy theory. She counters by pointing out that none of them were there.

We move into the coolness of her sitting room; heavy plum curtains, dark green damask wallpaper, photographs in silver frames on a piano.

‘How did Savic rise so quickly? One minute he’s a street-thug in Belgrade, the next he’s in with the SDB and Frenki and Badza.’

‘A street-thug? Who told you that?’

‘I thought it was common knowledge.’

Attwater shrugs. ‘He started on the street, but he outgrew it. Quickly, too. Milan was a rich man by the time Croatia started. He had a good business brain.’

‘What was he into? Drugs? Guns? Girls?’

‘Televisions.’

As she has clearly anticipated, that stops me in my tracks. ‘Televisions …’

‘Cheap ones, Chinese made, imported from Hong Kong.’

‘Hong Kong?’

‘In the early eighties he made a contact out there. I don’t know who. But they started with TVs, then moved into other electronic goods: stereos, computers, cell phones. Some legitimate, some fake, all of them cheap enough to find a market in Yugoslavia. That was how Milan made his first fortune. But it wasn’t just financial. It was political, too.’

‘How?’

She pauses for a moment to take a sip from her glass. ‘Okay. I’ll give you an example. On May 29th 1992 a shell killed sixteen people in a bread queue in Vase Miskina Street in Sarajevo. The next day, through resolution 757, the UN Security Council imposed a total economic blockade on Serbia and Montenegro. Total meant total, too. It covered all exports with the exception of medical supplies. Crucially, it included oil. Which Serbia needed desperately. In the end Serbia got round the problem by striking a deal with China, buying Chinese-bound imports at a premium, some of it paid for by barter. It was Milan who put that deal together, acting directly on behalf of Slobodan Milosevic.’

Next I ask her if she thinks Savic is still alive.

‘I know he’s alive,’ she says. ‘I saw him last November.’

‘Where?’

‘Zurich. At the airport.’

‘Did you speak to him?’

She laughs. ‘God no! I made damn sure he didn’t see me. I mean, I guess he could’ve died since then. But then you wouldn’t be here, would you?’

When I phoned Carleen Attwater, I told her I was a journalist. She hasn’t said anything to challenge that since I’ve been here. She doesn’t need to. I can see she doesn’t believe me. Which means she has her own reasons for being so forthright.

‘Do you know where he is now?’

She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’

‘One last thing. Why didn’t you do something on Gemini?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re a journalist. What a scoop Gemini could have been.’

‘Come on. More like a death warrant.’ It was worth a try. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Although that isn’t the reason I didn’t do it.’

‘Oh?’

‘I refrained out of courtesy. Milan knew that I knew about Gemini. The safest thing for him would have been to kill me. And that wouldn’t have bothered him at all, believe me. But he didn’t. He took that risk because he thought he understood me. That we understood each other.’

‘And did you?’

‘Absolutely.’

Barefoot, dressed in scarlet Bermuda shorts and a primrose T-shirt, Karen Cunningham poured two glasses of chilled Pinot Grigio. Stephanie carried the glasses and Karen carried Fergus, her seven-month-old son. The garden was an oval of grass cushioned by well-tended flowerbeds contained within a fence. There was a mature cherry tree at the far end. They sat at a bleached wooden table in the shade of a large red and blue umbrella.

Fergus, on Karen’s knee, gurgled then let out a high-pitched squeal of glee before grabbing a handful of her T-shirt and stuffing it into his mouth.

‘How’s it all going?’ Stephanie asked.

‘It’s wonderful. Knackering but wonderful. We’ve been very lucky, though. He’s been such a good boy. Do you want to hold him?’

‘I’m not sure.’

The sentence slipped out before she could vet it. Karen had already picked Fergus up. Now she settled him back on her thigh. The baby smiled at Stephanie, then turned coy, dribble coming off a fleshy lower lip.

Flushed, Stephanie said, ‘God, I’m sorry, Karen. That sounded awful.’

‘It’s okay.’

Stephanie could see that it wasn’t. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’

‘It really doesn’t matter. Actually, it’s rather presumptuous of mothers to expect …’

‘The thing is, I’ve never held a baby before.’

Karen’s laugh was dismissive. ‘Come on …’

‘I’m serious.’

‘Never?’

She supposed she might have held her younger brother or sister, but she didn’t know. Besides, they belonged to a different Stephanie. The one that Karen knew had no brothers or sisters.

‘Not that I can remember.’

There was an awkward pause before Karen said, ‘Do you want to? I mean, if you’d like to … you don’t have to …’

Stephanie thought of all the reasons she’d never held a baby and felt disgust more than regret. When the moment passed, Karen was offering him to her. Stephanie took Fergus and sat him on her lap. He squirmed a little, looked up at her and broke into another toothless smile. Warm and fat with wisps of gold hair, he clutched Stephanie’s wrist with podgy hands.

‘Did you tell Mark about the test?’

‘I couldn’t see the point.’

‘You must have thought about the possibility before that.’

‘Of course.’

Stephanie had only ever allowed herself to consider the issue in the most conceptual fashion. Of all women, how could she bring a child into the world? More practically, she wasn’t sure she was maternally inclined. Considering the life she’d led, nobody could accuse her of an overdeveloped instinct to nurture.

Mark was lighting a barbeque on the roof terrace – the last of the year, he said – the first oily flames dancing over the charcoal. Stephanie carried a tray of glasses across the decking to the table in the far corner. She put the tray on the table, picked up her glass of wine and plucked a bottle of beer for Mark from the turquoise cool-box.

‘What time did you ask them?’

‘Eight, eight-thirty.’

There were six coming. True friends of his, friends-by-proxy of hers. But they felt real enough most of the time. With a warm evening sun on his shoulders, dressed in a loose navy T-shirt and a pair of faded knee-length cotton shorts, with his hair suitably dishevelled after an active hour in bed, he couldn’t have looked more relaxed.

‘You know who called today?’

‘Who?’

‘Cameron Diaz’s people.’

Said as though this was a common occurrence. Although it wasn’t that unusual. The practice in Cadogan Gardens did attract a number of high-profile clients. In her darker moments Stephanie sometimes wondered whether they were drawn by the quality of the treatment or by Mark himself.

‘Cameron Diaz?’

‘Apparently she’s in town to promote a new movie. Or to start filming one. I can’t remember …’

Right.

His back was turned to her. Quite deliberately, Stephanie knew, though he’d maintain he was tending the charcoal.

‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘I think it’s her hip flexor.’

‘I see. And you’ll be treating that yourself, will you?’

‘It’s my practice. I think I should, don’t you?’

‘Naturally.’

‘It’ll probably require some subtle manipulation followed by some deep, penetrative massage.’

Stephanie picked up a piece of French bread from the wooden bowl on the table and threw it at him. It hit him between the shoulders. He turned round, feigning angelic innocence.

‘Her hip flexor?’

He shrugged. ‘Who knows? If I’m lucky …’

‘I hope you’ll charge her the full rate.’

‘I’ll probably charge her double.’

‘Then it better be a successful movie.’

‘That’s a bit harsh.’

Julian Cunningham, Karen’s husband, had once told Stephanie that chiropractors were like lawyers and bookies: you never saw a poor one. She reminded Mark of that.

He put up his hands in mock defence. ‘All I’m doing is charging the going rate. Same as you.’

‘True.’

Which was why, in a numbered dollar account at Guderian Maier bank in Zurich, Petra had just over three million eight hundred thousand dollars. Not a cent of which had found its way into the life she shared with Mark.

‘I’m going to Hong Kong.’

He took it in his stride. ‘It’s agreed?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘For how long?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘What for?’

‘Organized crime in the Far East.’

That was the cover Gavin Taylor at Frontier News had decided upon. It was a little conventional for his taste, but Stephanie had decided to tell Mark she was going to Hong Kong. Normally she would have lied about her destination, as an added precaution. This time, with the contract open-ended, she was worried about complications. Taylor had agreed; keep it simple and keep it as close to the truth as possible.

‘When are you leaving?’

‘The date isn’t fixed. But soon.’

‘Are you still thinking about quitting afterwards?’

‘Definitely.’

‘So everything’s fine?’

She nodded. ‘Very much so.’

He looked at her, saying nothing. With most people Stephanie was the master of silence. Not with Mark. She never had been.

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’

‘I believe you’re going. And that you’ll come back.’

‘And the bit in between?’

He considered this for a good while. ‘Given the choice between not knowing and being lied to, I’d prefer not to know.’

‘And you’re happy with that?’

‘I’m happy with you.’

‘But?’

‘But nothing. I’ve always accepted you as you are, Stephanie. Other people might find that strange. That there are things about you that I don’t know. That I don’t insist on total disclosure. But it’s just the way I am. You’re different. I’m different. We strike chords in each other. And if we have to make allowances, we make allowances.’

‘Don’t your friends find that odd?’

‘My friends don’t know. Nobody knows. It’s just us.’

Stephanie pressed her palms together, then sandwiched them between her thighs. ‘The thing is, I’m not sure I could do the same, if our positions were reversed.’

Mark shrugged. ‘But they’re not, are they?’

That was the point. She got up, walked over to him and kissed him. ‘Every morning, when I wake up, I look at you and wonder why it’s you. And then I give up. Do you know why?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘It’s because you don’t care why.’

Inevitably, he was right. The more he diminished Petra, the more Stephanie loved him. It was the calmness. At first she’d mistaken it for indifference. And even arrogance. Later she recognized it as strength. Inner strength, not the show of strength that Petra preferred. Only once had she seen a side of him that could have been attractive to Petra.

The previous December they’d been mugged in a poorly lit side-street off Battersea Park Road. It was just after nine on a wet Wednesday evening. They were scurrying back to the Saab when three youths emerged from a soggy patch of waste-land fringing a tower-block.

Stephanie’s first reaction was disbelief. It couldn’t be happening. Not to her. It was such a cliché: black teenagers with their hoods up and gold around their necks. Her second instinct was to let Petra loose on them. Of the two, that proved harder to contain.

Knives out, they demanded money and Mark’s car keys. The one closest to her was glaring at her, his switch-blade glinting in the wetness. For all of her that was Stephanie, the part of her that was Petra would not allow her to give him the fear that he wanted.

Mark was handing over his wallet. The one nearest her wanted her watch. Still staring at him, she unfastened the strap.

Petra was straining at the leash, trembling inside Stephanie.

She held out the watch. The mugger reached for it. Quite deliberately, she let go of it, her eyes still riveted to his. The watch fell to the pavement. She thought he’d tell her to pick it up. Or take a swipe at her. Instead he spat at her.

As a spectator, the seconds that followed seemed to play in slow motion. Mark attacked all three of them. Too stunned to be Petra, Stephanie stood by and gawped, helpless and useless. Even when one of them slashed the palm of Mark’s hand, she did nothing.

They never stood a chance. It wasn’t really self-defence. Not after the first blow to the mugger nearest him sprayed shattered teeth into the gurgling gutter. And certainly not later, when the mugger who’d tried to steal Stephanie’s watch found himself being propelled face first through a rear passenger window, then hauled back to receive a kick in the balls powerful enough to strain the tendons in Mark’s ankle.

When it was over, he took back his wallet and keys, then picked up her watch. Stephanie was completely speechless. As she should have been. Except it wasn’t an act. It was genuine.

Mark drove them home, his hand wrapped in an oily rag they found in the boot of the Saab. Neither of them said anything. In the kitchen at Queen’s Gate Mews, Stephanie examined his hand. She said he should go to hospital. He said he wouldn’t.

‘You can’t afford to damage your hands, Mark.’

‘Just do what you can.’

So she did. Afterwards he opened a bottle of Calvados and collected two tumblers from the draining board. An hour later the mist began to lift and the man she knew started to drift back to her.

He said, ‘I should call the police.’

‘What’s the point? I mean, we were the ones who were attacked. Let’s not forget that. But the way the law works, you’ll be the one who gets charged.’

‘If I don’t call, I’m no better than they are.’

‘I understand that.’

‘What I did – I shouldn’t have …’

‘I understand that too, Mark. And I know that you’re not going to be persuaded by notions of natural justice. But hear me out.’

He drained his glass and poured himself another couple of fingers.

Stephanie played the fear card. ‘If you call the police there’ll be a record. Especially if you’re charged with something. That means names written down, addresses, phone numbers … they could find out where we are.’

Reluctantly, he’d relented. And she’d been more grateful than he could possibly have imagined.

Stephanie shrugged off her leather coat to reveal a lime cut-off singlet that just covered her cosmetic scar but left her stomach exposed.

Cyril Bradfield said, ‘If a daughter of mine dressed like you, I’d ask her what she thought she looked like.’

‘And if a father of mine asked a question like that, I’d ignore it.’

‘I’m sure you would. Tea?’

‘Funny you should ask.’ She reached into the plastic bag she was carrying and handed him a box from Jackson’s of Piccadilly. ‘For you.’

‘Russian Caravan. My favourite.’

‘Of course.’

‘The sweetener before the pill?’

Stephanie nodded.

‘Where to this time?’

‘The Far East.’

They took creaking stairs to the attic; the forger’s lair or the artist’s studio, depending on your point of view.

‘You’ve been fiddling about.’

Bradfield worked off two large wooden benches running down the spine of the attic. The shelves on the far side of the room had been rearranged: solvents, inks and adhesives in their own sections, with documents and reference books also partitioned. There were two shelves of photographic make-up, although Bradfield no longer permitted clients to come to his house. With the single exception of Stephanie.

‘What’s that machine?’

There was a dull beige unit on the bench closest to her, next to two lamps fitted with natural daylight bulbs.

‘You didn’t see it when you were last here?’

‘No.’

‘I used it on your Mary Reid document. Purchased from E.R. Hoult & Son of Grantham, Lincolnshire. Printers, in case you didn’t know.’

‘That doesn’t look like a printer.’

‘It isn’t. It laminates. And with it I can replicate with absolute precision the way the UK Passport Agency laminates all new passports. Including placing a UKPA watermark over the face of the document holder. Which, as you may have noticed, makes identification harder, not easier. It’s connected to my computer so that I can pick up a signature, scan it in and download it to this machine. Then it’s lasered onto the page.’

‘Computers, lasers, machines that laminate – you’re selling out, Cyril. Where’s the art?’

‘In the perfection of the document. As always.’

He switched on the paint-spattered kettle at the end of the other work bench, tore the seal from the box of tea and took two mugs from the sink.

‘So, the Far East – what do you need?’

‘Nothing too fancy. One to get me there and back, one substitute.’

‘Nationalities?’

‘I’m going direct, so the first can be British, if that makes life easier. The second can be anything else.’

‘Let’s keep it within the European Union, then. German?’

‘Fine.’

When the kettle had boiled he warmed the brown ceramic teapot before preparing the tea. Then he rolled himself a cigarette from a pouch of Sampson tobacco.

‘The same as usual, is it?’

Stephanie shook her head. ‘Not this time.’

In the years they’d known each other Stephanie had never actually said what it was that she did. She hadn’t needed to. From the start Bradfield had known something of its nature. Why else would she need him? Gradually the full extent of her profession had become clear. Although his feelings for her bordered the paternal, he’d never moralized. Or tried to caution her against it. As fond of each other as they had become, their relationship was built upon professional foundations. The only other ‘civilian’ who knew of her work was her personal banker in Zurich: Albert Eichner of Guderian Maier. And he differed from Bradfield in one vital respect. In Zurich, with Eichner, she was always Petra, never Stephanie.

Alexander said, ‘As Martin Dassler, Savic has been to Hong Kong seven times in the past year. We know this from immigration records. In that time he’s spent nearly nine months there.’

‘What we don’t know,’ Rosie said, ‘is where he’s been staying, or what he’s been doing. Through the Hong Kong police, S3 has turned up only one Martin Dassler from hotel records: a sixty-five-year old Swiss architect from Lausanne. We’ve checked and it wasn’t him. Dassler has some registered commercial interests in Hong Kong but doesn’t seem to lavish much time on them.’

The Far East was an obvious destination, Stephanie supposed. He’d had contacts in Hong Kong and China for years. Where better to disappear to after the Balkans collapse? With money at his disposal, reincarnation would not have been difficult.

‘Your contact in Hong Kong will be Raymond Chen,’ Alexander told her. ‘Anything you need, go through him. He’s a strange one, but he’s one of ours.’

‘Aren’t they all? Anyway, I wasn’t aware Magenta House ran operatives abroad.’

Alexander shifted uncomfortably. ‘Technically we don’t.’

‘Technically? What does that mean?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘What he means,’ Rosie said, ‘is that we retain him.’

Stephanie looked at her, then at Alexander. She was waiting for him to slap her down. She could barely believe what she’d just heard. But he didn’t. He just sat there, behind his desk, with his recently clipped snow-white hair and his watery blue eyes, staring at her, never blinking, not moving. The buttons of his double-breasted jacket were still fastened; he looked like a waxwork in a strait-jacket. Not for the first time, Stephanie had the sensation that Alexander had become fossilized, stranded in the amber of the era of the dead-letter drop.

‘You mean you pay him?’

Suddenly Alexander was reasserting himself. ‘What she means is that we look the other way. Chen has a variety of business interests in Hong Kong and over here. From a legal point of view, few of them would tolerate much scrutiny.’

‘What a surprise.’

‘There’s a lawyer in Chinatown. Thomas Heung. He has a legal practice on Gerrard Street, on the first floor above a Chinese supermarket. The firm is actually owned by Chen. Heung’s a soft touch with an equivalent in Hong Kong, also controlled by Chen. Between the two of them they provide documents for Chinese wishing to come to Britain.’

‘False documents?’

‘On the whole, yes. But for those who can afford it, legal documents are also available.’ Alexander gave her the thinnest of smiles. ‘As they always have been.’

Which she knew to be true. There didn’t seem much point in arguing about the morality of retaining a contact by contributing to the country’s illegal immigration problem. That was the least of Magenta House’s ethical crimes.

Stephanie had already digested Chen’s profile, as provided by S3, and had come to the conclusion that she needed a contact of her own. The same anxiety had persuaded her not to mention her meeting with Carleen Attwater. Or Gemini.

Alexander said, ‘We believe the list that David Pearson recovered is incomplete. We believe there may be many more names on it.’

‘Why?’

‘During research, S3 came across some of the names on the list but there were also other names. Same context, different identities, suggesting Pearson’s list could be incomplete. We might be talking one, or a dozen …’

‘Or none?’

‘Possibly. But it’s wiser to assume the worst. We also believe that there is another list. A reciprocal list, if you like. A list of new identities for the names on the original.’

She looked at Rosie. ‘Do you believe this?’

‘Of course.’

It was impossible to tell whether she did or didn’t. Her tone and expression could not have been more neutral.

Stephanie turned back to Alexander. ‘Assuming I get hold of these names, then what? Is Savic a contract?’

‘Not yet. He’s on the Limbo list. Nothing happens to him until we know, one way or the other, about the names.’

So many lists. Life was a long list of lists. She wondered how many she was on. And whether she was on one or more of Magenta House’s. Probably. The Limbo list was rather like a credit rating; you never knew there was a problem with your own status until it was too late.

‘Supposing I find Savic but can’t get close.’

‘You’ll think of something, I’m sure.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘If all else fails, use your charm.’

‘The way you use comedy?’

‘A man like Savic will always find a use for a woman like Petra.’

This is the worst part. Before Mark it never bothered me that much. Once I’m Petra I’ll be fine. Rosie once compared it to being an actor preparing for a role. She said that once you are performing you become the character. That’s not true for me. Petra isn’t a role. She’s me. And when I’m her I won’t have time to worry about Stephanie, which will be a relief.

We’re in Kensington Gardens. It’s a beautiful, warm evening. Branches creak and leaves shuffle in the breeze, their tips just beginning to rust. The air cools quickly and has a taste to it, a sure sign of an imminent change in season.

Mark’s arm is around my shoulder. I find its weight reassuring. I’m holding onto his fingers. My hand looks ridiculously small next to his.

‘Will you miss me?’ I ask him, immediately regretting it because it makes me sound needy.

‘From time to time.’

I look up at him. ‘From time to time?’

‘Well, I’ll be pretty busy, I imagine. Pub crawls, football, poker nights …’

‘Not to mention Cameron Diaz’s hip flexor.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Bastard.’

‘Bitch.’

We stop to kiss.

We’ve had an idyllic day: a lazy morning in bed with Bloody Marys for breakfast, lunch at E&O, a restaurant on Blenheim Crescent, then a movie. This evening, when we get home, Mark will cook something simple for me. The wine we drink will be special: Cos d’Estournel 1989. This has become part of the pre-Petra routine. Mark knows how tense I get the night before I leave, even though he has no true idea why. We’ve never talked about it. We’ve never had to.

When I was a child my mother did the vast majority of the cooking at home. Occasionally, though, my father, who was a poor cook, would make my favourite dish, spaghetti bolognese, for us. Except it wasn’t for us. It was for me. And he did it when he knew I was upset. He didn’t do it for the others when they were upset. Just me. And it was never because I’d made a scene. On the contrary. It was always when I was doing my utmost to hide it. Yet he could always tell. And spaghetti bolognese was his way of putting his arm around my shoulder without letting the others know.

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