She paused as a thought struck her. “I guess that was the last time I ever spoke to Carver. Spoke properly, I mean. . . .”
Zhukovskaya nodded sympathetically.
“He touched you deeply, this Carver. After all these years, finally someone got through. . . . And now you blame yourself for his suffering?”
Alix gave an exhausted shrug.
“I don’t know what I think anymore.”
While they’d been talking, the taxi had headed out of town, along the northern shore of Lake Geneva. Mansions clustered along the shoreline displayed the insignia of nations represented at the United Nations headquarters in the city. One set of gateposts bore the double-headed eagle of the Russian Federation. The gates swung open and the taxi swept into the graveled forecourt of a magnificent waterside villa.
The driver walked around to open the two passenger doors.
“Why don’t you go and freshen up?” said Olga Zhukovskaya. “Your room has everything you will need.”
Upstairs, a sable-trimmed mink coat had been hung up next to dresses by Chanel, Versace, and Dolce & Gabbana: Alix’s coat, her dresses. She ran her fingers through the soft, luxuriant fur, then rippled her hand over a multicolored flutter of silk, sequins, and lace. Below the clothes, shoes were arranged in a line across the cupboard, each higher and flimsier than the last.
Here were the trophies of a Moscow mistress, the pretty little fruits of her labors.
Her underwear, blouses, and tops had been folded away in a mahogany chest of drawers, her makeup arranged on the dressing-table, her soap and body oil left in the bathroom that opened off the bedroom, her favorite photograph of her parents placed on the bedside table. Alix sat on the edge of her bed, still dressed in her absurd Heidi outfit, looking around at all the luxury laid out before her, contemplating this womanly power play.
Yuri and Carver had fought each other like men, in brutal, physical conflict. Olga Zhukovskaya, however, had chosen a very different form of attack. She had entered Alix’s Moscow apartment, removed her most intimate possessions, and brought them some fifteen hundred miles to a particular room in Geneva, Switzerland, in the absolute certainty that Alix would also end up there.
And now she was tempting her: Just give in, bend to my will, and all this can be yours once again.
Zhukovskaya must have known that Alix would feel violated by the penetration of her home and the seizure of her property. That effect, too, would have been calculated: Resist me, and I will remove you as easily as I removed those dresses.
Alix undressed and showered. Afterward, she got dressed again in her working uniform. She went barefoot. She didn’t put on any makeup.
She left the room and walked down a great baronial staircase. A white-jacketed servant was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. “Madame Zhukovskaya is waiting,” he said, leading her into the main reception room.
The deputy director was sitting in an armchair by a mighty, open fireplace filled with blazing logs. She was wearing reading glasses and examining the contents of a ring-bound folder. An identical chair had been arranged next to hers.
As Alix drew closer, Zhukovskaya closed the file, took off the spectacles, and looked her up and down with a faint grimace of distaste.
“Could you not decide what to wear?”
Alix let her look, without reacting in any way, then sat down in the empty chair.
Zhukovskaya watched her for a few more seconds, then nodded to herself.
“I see. Well, then, let us get down to business.”
She reopened the file and put her glasses back on. There was a photograph paper-clipped to the inside cover of the file, a color portrait of a U.S. Army officer in full dress uniform. He looked strong, determined, golden-haired, and square-jawed. She passed the photo to Alix, who looked at it for a few moments, then handed it back.
“A handsome man,” she said, without any hint of enthusiasm.
“His name is Lieutenant General Kurt Vermulen,” said Zhukovskaya. “This picture was taken three years ago. At the time, he was leading the U.S. Special Forces Operations Command at Fort Bragg, having previously commanded the First Battalion of the seventy-fifth Ranger Regiment and served a tour of duty at the Defense Intelligence Agency.”
“An American hero,” murmured Alix dryly.
“Oh, yes,” Zhukovskaya continued, “he is a true soldier. He began his career as part of the Americans’ imperialist adventure in Vietnam. He won a Distinguished Service Cross there, one of the very highest awards for gallantry the American army can bestow. One should respect a man, even an enemy, who possesses such a decoration.”
Alix pursued her lips dismissively. Zhukovskaya continued, regardless.
“Vermulen retired from the army in May 1995, age fifty, soon after that picture was taken. His wife was dying of cancer and he wanted to be with her in the final months. After that, like a good American, he began to make himself rich.”
“So why are you telling me all this?”
“Because of this.”
Zhukovskaya removed another photograph from her file. It was a grainy, long-range shot of Vermulen, now dressed in civilian clothes, talking to a middle-aged man with a mustache.
“That is Pavel Novak, a former officer in Czech military intelligence.”
“What is he doing with Vermulen?”
“That is precisely what we want to know. Twenty-five years ago, Novak became a double agent, passing secrets to the Americans. He did not know that we were aware of his treachery, so we used him as a means of passing false, misleading information. He was, in effect, working for us all the time. For part of that period Novak’s American handler was this Vermulen. In recent years, Novak, like Vermulen, has become a businessman, but perhaps a less respectable one. Today, he trades our secrets to Arabs, Asians, and Third World countries. And of course, we still know and monitor what he does.
“But never before has he had any business dealings with the Americans. So why is he making contact now? What can he offer them that they could possibly want? Novak may wish Vermulen to be some kind of middleman. Or maybe the Americans are playing another game we don’t even know about as yet. This is what you must find out.”
Alix frowned.
“Me? How?”
“By doing what you do best, my dear. Since his wife’s death, Vermulen has only had one or two casual affairs. It is time he fell in love once again.”
“Not with me. I won’t do another trap—not with him or anyone else.”
The good humor vanished without trace from Zhukovskaya’s voice, replaced by a Siberian chill.
“You will do exactly what I order you to do, and I will tell you why.”
She started flicking through the pages in the file.
“You currently owe the Montagny-Dumas Clinic a sum of, let me see . . .”
She found the page she was looking for. “Forty-seven thousand, seven hundred and thirty-two francs. That was the total at six o’clock this evening. It will be more by tomorrow morning, once they’ve added another night to the total.”
Alix hissed, “You bitch.”
“Come, now. Is that any way to speak to someone who is about to solve all your problems? If you agree to target Vermulen, we will arrange for payments to cover Mr. Carver’s medical bills for as long as he requires. Believe me, you will hardly notice the expense. Yuri was very appreciative of your services.”
“What if I say no?”
“Then you and your boyfriend will have to accept the consequences of killing my husband. The penalty for murder is death. Maybe you are ready to sacrifice yourself for your principles. But would you sacrifice your man as well?”
“I need to talk to Samuel, to let him know what is happening.”
“No,” snapped Zhukovskaya. “That will not be possible. You will spend the night here. Your flight to Washington, D.C., leaves at nine in the morning.”
“But . . .” Alix began to speak, but was instantly silenced.
“Do not argue. These are your orders. You remember orders, don’t you . . . Agent Petrova?”
Alix lowered her eyes submissively.
“Yes, Madam Deputy Director. May I ask how I am supposed to approach General Vermulen?”
“You will be hired as his personal assistant. Your cover, full legend, and job application have already been prepared. By Wednesday, you must be ready for your job interview. You will have excellent references. There are still many powerful men who know that it is in their interest to help us.”
“As ever, you have thought of every detail,” said Alix. “But there is one thing I do not understand. How do you know that Vermulen needs a new assistant?”
“That is being dealt with. . . .”
Zhukovskaya consulted her watch.
“Correction. It has just been dealt with.”
MARCH
28
T
en minutes on the treadmill and already Carver was exhausted. Dr. Geisel was sympathetic, too, which made it even worse.
“Don’t worry—this is normal,” he said, standing beside the apparatus, as calm and immaculate as ever. “You have been sick for many months. You cannot expect to be fit right away. The main thing is, you are making great progress.”
Carver just about managed to speak between gasps for breath.
“How much longer before I’m ready to be discharged? I’ve got to find out what happened to her.”
“I understand, Mr. Carver, but you must appreciate that you are a long way from being cured. When you were admitted, you had suffered a very serious psychological trauma, a rift cutting you off from your own identity. Normally, in a case such as this, I would expect an additional trauma, such as Miss Petrova’s departure, to have set you back, maybe worse than ever. And yet now, Mr. Carver, it is as if the shock has dislodged some kind of obstacle. The boulder has rolled away, the cave is open, your consciousness is free. Really, it is a kind of psychic resurrection.”
“Well, if I’m so much better,” Carver wheezed, “why won’t you let me out?”
“Because nothing in psychology is ever that simple. Yes, you are recovering your long-term memory, but chaotically, randomly, and traumatically. Your prognosis is still unclear. You might, indeed, continue this remarkable progress. But, equally likely, the shock of these recovered memories could push you back over the edge, even deeper than ever before.”
“So when is it safe for me to leave?”
“When the odds are not so equal. Now enjoy the rest of your work-out. I strongly recommend physical fitness as an aid to your mental recovery.”
When Geisel had gone, Carver stepped off the treadmill. His thighs were quivering, his legs barely able to support him as he walked across to the weight machines. He managed forty pounds on the lat pull-down and sixty on the bench press, low reps and feeble weights on the leg extensions and curls, sit-ups in sets of six.
Carver could now remember when he possessed the extreme levels of fitness required of an officer in the Special Boat Service. For him to be struggling with a routine like this was like a professional soccer player getting beaten in a kids’ scrimmage. But just to sweat, to feel the burn, and to keep driving himself onward, made him feel alive again.
He accepted that his mind was still balanced on a knife edge between recovery and relapse, just as Geisel had warned. He had a feeling some of his mental doors would stay firmly locked for a while yet. But after the terrible nonexistence of the past few months, he refused to countenance the prospect of failure.
“Come on,” he panted, stepping back onto the treadmill. “Go faster.”
And so he ran, and the memory came to him of another time he had run, a dash down a street in Geneva, late one night. In his mind’s eye he saw a white van, painted with the logo of the Swisscom telephone company. He could not see the man at the wheel, but he knew who he was: Kursk, one of the Russians. Carver felt his stomach tighten with tension at the memory of that name. He knew, too, who had been in the back of that van. Alix had been Kursk’s prisoner. The Russian had driven her away. But Carver had gone after her, though he still could not recall precisely what had happened.
He knew one thing, though. He’d got her back. How else could she have been sitting by his bedside for all those months?
With his awakening had come a profound conviction of his love for her, and hers for him. Carver was certain that Alix would never willingly have left him without even saying good-bye. Wherever she had gone, it had not been her choice. He would not rest until he had found her and made her his again.
One of the gymnasium staff was walking toward the treadmill, a look of concern on his face as he ran his eyes over Carver’s scarlet face, his heaving chest, and his pale-gray T-shirt, darkened with puddles of sweat under his armpits and down the small of his back.
“Maybe you should stop now,” he said.
“No,” said Carver. “I want to keep running.”
Across town a man was steeling himself to make a difficult call. He was way over six feet tall and beanpole-thin. His milk-skinned, freckled face, illuminated by gentle blue eyes, was topped by a starburst of red-blond dreadlocks.
Thor Larsson took a deep breath and started pressing the buttons. He waited a few moments until the clinic’s switchboard had answered and then said, “Monsieur Marchand’s office, please.”
He paced up and down, waiting to be put through to the finance director.
“It’s about Monsieur Carver’s account . . .” Larsson began. “Please, can you just give me another few days? I think I may be able to get some money. Maybe not all the bill, but a lot of it, I assure you.”
To his amazement, the voice on the other end of the line was reassuring, almost obsequious.
“Monsieur, please, do not derange yourself,” said Marchand. “There is no need to be concerned. Monsieur Carver’s account has been settled in full and instructions have been left for any future expenses. He is welcome to stay as long as he likes.”