And then there was Alix, sitting in a soft white armchair at a table for two, a posy of yellow flowers in a small glass vase in front of her, waiting for him.
He had a couple of seconds to pause in the doorway and look at her before she spotted him. She looked fantastic: not wearing anything fancy, just being the woman he loved.
There was something that nagged at him, something out of place. But the thought vanished as she heard him coming across the marble floor, looked up, and for a fraction of a second the expression on her face was . . . absolute horror. Shock. As if she’d seen a ghost. As if she weren’t just surprised to see him, but appalled.
She forced a smile across her face.
Carver had seen Alix play a part before. He’d seen her pretend and dissimulate. But he’d never seen anything as phony as that smile.
He didn’t have any time to think about it, because she’d got to her feet and put her arms around him, like one old friend meeting another, air-kissing either side of his face and whispering two words. “I’m wired.”
They sat down. Carver hadn’t been sure how it would be when the two of them finally met, but he hadn’t expected this terrible discomfort, almost embarrassment, a tension filling the air between them.
“So . . . Natalia.” He put a heavy emphasis on the name, thinking himself back into the part of Kenny Wynter, remembering Vermulen would be listening somewhere. “How’s life with the general? Hope he doesn’t work you too hard . . .”
“No, he doesn’t. . . . In fact, I don’t really work for Kurt at all anymore.”
“Really? Has he fired you?”
He didn’t have to fake the sly grin on his face as he said the words, or the gently teasing note in his voice.
“No,” she said, and the next words were so quiet that Carver thought for a second that he hadn’t heard them properly. “He’s married me.”
“I’m sorry . . . ?”
“My name is now Natalia Vermulen,” she said, in a voice whose cheerful intonation was utterly contradicted by the devastation in her eyes. “We were married this afternoon . . . by the mayor of Antibes.”
Carver wanted to be sick. He felt as though someone had stuck a fork in his guts and was twisting his intestines like strands of pasta. Still, he had to be Kenny Wynter, the callous thief who couldn’t care less if a Yank general was daft enough to marry his sexy secretary just to get into her knickers.
“Congratulations, love,” he said, and then glanced at the ring—the one he’d refused to acknowledge when he first set eyes on her. “Nice rock.”
“Thank you . . . Kenny.”
“Don’t thank me, darling. Keep flashing that around much longer, I might be tempted to nick it.”
She giggled politely.
“I’m sure you’re not really like that.”
Her voice had the sound of casual conversation, but her eyes were pleading. For what? Understanding? Forgiveness? As if Carver should be considering her problems, putting himself in her position.
She was still talking.
“We only decided to get married on the spur of the moment.”
“Good of you to waste your wedding day on me.”
“Well, I’d promised Kurt . . .”
“And you didn’t want to let him down. He’s an impressive bloke, your general, got a bit about him. Special, right?”
“Yes he is, very special.”
Carver assumed that was for Vermulen’s benefit, and now she was trying to explain what had happened.
“Spending so much time together, over the past few weeks, I’ve got to know Kurt very deeply. He’s a remarkable man, and he was so kind to me. You see, I was told that someone close to me, someone I loved, had died. Kurt was there for me. He made me feel life was worth living.”
Suddenly Carver realized that he’d only half understood. She was trying to explain, all right. But she wasn’t explaining a terrible mistake they could find a way to put right. What he heard now was: You’re history.
He felt humiliated, stripped of all pride. The anger and hurt were filling his skull, building up pressure that must surely crack him open, till he just lashed out at something, anything—smashed the glasses from the table and threw the bottles at the bar; took out his gun and started firing at everyone around him, going for body shots, so they’d all hurt as much as he did. He wanted to kill Alix. He wanted her back. He didn’t know what he wanted. . . . Somehow he summoned up a faint trace of professionalism.
“Yeah, that must mean a lot, a bloke doing that for you . . .” he said, responding the way he always did to emotional pain, by forcing himself to detach, shutting down his emotions.
“Tell you what—why don’t I tell you what I’ve been up to while you’ve been busy getting married. I’ve found a property that’s well worth investing in. I reckon your old man’d be interested.”
She could play that game just as well as him. In an instant she was Natalia Vermulen, the untroubled new wife of a wealthy, powerful man.
“Really? That sounds fascinating. Do you have anything you could show me?”
“Here, check it out . . .”
He handed over the file and she examined the Russian script on the cover and the seal keeping it closed, the design a simple cross of Saint George: the symbol and the saint shared by Georgia and England alike.
“That certainly looks like something that Kurt would want to get involved in,” she said. “Let me call him.”
She took out her phone and pressed the speed dial. “Hello, darling . . .”
She smiled, and stifled a giggle at something Vermulen said.
“Yes, I’m looking forward to that, too, darling. . . . Anyway, Mr. Wynter is right here. He has something to show me that I think you’d like to see. Why don’t I hand you over to him?”
“Evening, Wynter.”
It was obvious from Vermulen’s tone that he’d not picked up the undertones of Alix and Carver’s conversation. He gave no sign of the arrogance of a man talking to his defeated rival, nor the insecurity of a lover under challenge. He was just doing business.
“Good evening, General,” Carver replied. “And congratulations—your new missus is certainly an extraordinary woman . . . full of surprises.”
Now it helped to be Wynter. He’d not bother to be polite for long.
“You got the money? Let’s just get it done so we can all get out of here.”
The money was transferred. Carver’s bank confirmed receipt of half a million pounds sterling, then immediately moved the money to another account. Carver had made a million pounds in less than a week. He’d have happily lost it all, and every penny deposited in every one of his accounts around the world, just to have arrived back at the hotel a couple of hours earlier, before Alix had walked into that mayor’s office, when there was still a chance to change her mind.
Maybe even now it wasn’t too late? He took her face in his hands, gazed longingly into those intoxicating blue eyes, and put his lips to her ear.
“Come with me—please, I’m begging you . . .”
She pulled her face away from his, and when she looked at him again it was as though a transparent barrier had descended between them, as if he were a prisoner and she his visitor, separated by bulletproof glass.
“It’s been a pleasure seeing you, Kenny,” she said.
The worst moment of his life, his heart being broken, and he couldn’t even be himself.
She was looking him right in the eye, without a trace of emotion.
“I must go now. Good-bye. . . .”
At some point in their conversation, more of Vermulen’s men must have slipped into the bar, because now they were forming a protective group around her as she walked from the room. When Carver tried to follow her, Reddin blocked the door and prevented his getting out.
“Wherever you think you’re going, man, you ain’t,” he said.
Reddin was big, he had a voice like Barry White, and he looked as if he could handle himself. Even so, Carver felt sure he could take him down, and chase after Alix as she left the hotel. But what was the point? He could beat up as many bodyguards as he liked, shoot them if he had to, but they weren’t the problem. She was. And she was gone for good.
As he sat down, Carver thought of the car that was waiting for him and Alix outside. His mission for MI6 had failed; the document had not been secured. Jack Grantham would not be a happy camper. Right now, that was the least of his worries.
77
M
any months ago, overwhelmed by guilt at her part in a murder, and shocked by Carver’s apparently callous indifference to what he had done, Alix had cried out, “Don’t you think at all about what you’ve just done?”
He replied, “Not if I can help it, no.”
Carver saw no point in worrying about things that had already happened and couldn’t be changed. He believed that sort of thing could drive you crazy—far better to deal with the here and now. As one of Reddin’s men drove her away from the Hotel du Cap, Alix thought about that conversation and realized Carver had been wrong. Sometimes you could change the past. Sometimes you had no choice.
The knowledge that Carver was alive and well, that Olga Zhukovskaya’s claim he had died was nothing but a vicious lie, had all but overwhelmed her. She had found herself telling lies of her own, leading Carver to believe that she no longer loved him. Her mind had been reeling: confused, uncertain, barely conscious of what she was saying, torn apart by the pain she was so cruelly inflicting upon him. And it had to be that way.
She knew that if she had given Carver any reason to hope, he would have tried to take her there and then. She also knew, because she had been present when Vermulen gave his orders, that her bodyguards would not have hesitated to use lethal force against the man they knew as Kenny Wynter. There were four of them against one of him. Carver would always favor himself against those odds, but she could not afford to take the risk that he would lose. She had suffered the pain of his death once. She could not bear it again, nor the guilt of knowing that she had been its cause.
Somehow she had to find a way of letting Carver know the truth: She was his, she always would be, and she would find a way of getting back to him, no matter how long it took. If he knew that, he would wait for her—she was sure of it.
Meanwhile, she had another, more immediate problem to resolve. As of this afternoon, she was committed to Vermulen. She had sworn a vow of her own free will. Now she had to be seen to keep it.
“You all right, Mrs. V.?” the driver said, looking at her in the rearview mirror. “You don’t mind me saying, you look a bit shook up. Don’t blame you, doing a pickup like that. Must be kinda stressful if you’re not used to it.”
“Yes, it was,” she said, without thinking. All she’d really heard was the name “Mrs V.,” and it came as such a shock, the reality of it, that the rest of his words had been little more than an indistinct blur.
She forced a smile and added, “I’m all right now, thank you.”
“Don’t you worry, ma’am. We’ll get you back to the general safe and sound, so you can enjoy the rest of your wedding night. You know what I’m saying?”
The driver’s name was Maroni. He’d given her a saucy smile and a wink with that last remark. Then he looked more serious, almost embarrassed by what he was about to say.
“Just want you to know, I served under the general, and it’s great to see him looking good again, y’know, like the old days. That’s because of you, ma’am. All of us guys, we appreciate what you’ve done for him. Anything you need, you name it—you only have to ask.”
“Thank you, Mr. Maroni,” she said. “That’s very kind of you.”
He gave her a little nod of the head, as if it were nothing, but she could see he was delighted by the fact that she’d acknowledged him, remembered his name. She was suddenly struck by the bitter irony that her new husband did not even know her real name. He had fallen in love with a woman named Natalia, and so, for the time being, she would have to become Natalia Vermulen for him.
In a way that made it easier. Natalia didn’t know Samuel Carver.
78
T
he MI6 agent in the car behind Alix had finally got through to headquarters. His boss didn’t bother with pleasantries. “Have you got the document?” Grantham asked.
“ ’Fraid not. Carver never left the hotel. The woman, Petrova, came out with a group of men. She didn’t appear to be under any duress. She was holding a sealed file. I presume that was what we were after.”
“Sod it . . . where are you now?”
“Trailing Petrova. She’s in a car with one of Vermulen’s men. The rest are in a van, immediately ahead of her. Hang on . . . they’re turning off the road, entering Cannes Mandelieu Airport. Most of the traffic here is private, or charter aviation. Do you want me to follow them in?”
“Absolutely. If she’s flying out, I want the registration number of the plane. We’ll track it from here.”
The agent ended the call and drove into the airport complex.
In London, Grantham put a call through to the assistant cultural attaché at the Russian Federation Embassy. Regular diplomatic and consular business ended at 4:30 p.M. on weekdays, but the assistant attaché wasn’t a regular diplomat. As the FSB resident in London, his country’s most senior agent in the United Kingdom, he was open all hours.
“Koyla,” said Grantham, “I need you to do me a favor. Get me a number for Deputy Director Zhukovskaya. Tell her we need to speak personally. It’s a matter of extreme importance for our two services. And it requires immediate action.”
79
V
ermulen’s yacht had left Antibes thirty-six hours before, bound for southern Italy, but he was waiting for her by the plane that would take them to meet it. Alix ran to him, wrapped her arms around him, and pulled their bodies tight, crushing her breasts against his chest, feeling him hard against her. She looked up at him, eyes half closed, lips fractionally parted, and he kissed her with a fierceness that filled her senses with the smell, the taste, the feel of him.