Vermulen let go of her, and looked for the nearest one of his men.
“Maroni.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Tell Mr. Reddin that the men can stand easy for the next fifteen minutes. Then come back here and assume sentry duty at the foot of these steps. No one gets in the plane till I say so. You got that?”
Maroni grinned. “Yes, sir!”
Vermulen led Alix up into the plane. In the cramped cabin, he gave a crooked, apologetic smile.
“Not very romantic, I’m afraid. I’ve got champagne and flowers waiting on the yacht.”
She leaned forward, brushed his cheek with her lips, and whispered in his ear, “I don’t care.”
He had no idea she was faking.
80
T
he first sensation that hit Carver once Alix had left the hotel was one of vast, aching emptiness, an absolute loneliness, a chasm in his life where her love for him had been. The second was a sharp spasm of fear. He thought of Dr. Geisel’s warning that a traumatic event could send him back to the hellish limbo of madness. The shock of losing Alix once had jolted him into recovery. If he now had lost her again, would that reverse the effect?
Carver was a brave man. He had faced death more times than he could count. But the prospect of insanity, a lifetime trapped in an unending cycle of forgetting, was far, far worse.
Screw that. He needed a drink.
He headed up to the bar and ordered a double Johnnie Walker Blue Label. Then he remembered the last time he’d drunk it, with Alix, the night of the killing. Christ, why did everything have to remind him of her?
“So it didn’t work out, huh?”
It was a woman’s voice, American. She was sitting a few feet down the bar. Her long, glossy hair, as rich and dark as bitter chocolate, fell to her shoulders and swept across her forehead, almost covering one of her pure brown eyes. She had high cheekbones and her lips were painted with a sparkling pink gloss that made them look as though she’d just licked them. Her dress was draped over one shoulder and then swooped low enough to show off a spectacular pair of breasts. The skirt was slit up the thigh, and she was perched on a bar stool with her legs crossed, leaving plenty on display.
His look was a frank appraisal, the calculation every man makes, balancing the desirability of what’s on offer against the chances of success. As if reading his mind, she held up her left hand to display the diamond on her fourth finger. Then she shrugged in a what-the-hell way.
Carver had to laugh. Every woman he met tonight seemed to be showing off a ring. This one didn’t seem quite so married as the last one, though. He took his drink over to her, absorbing every detail of the way she looked. She smelled pretty good, too, a rich, spicy, super-female scent that made him realize just how long it had been since he’d been laid. Maybe he should remedy that. They could have a few drinks, take dinner in the restaurant down by the sea, and screw each other’s brains out all night—see if that made his pain go away. It wasn’t the most mature response to a broken heart, but it certainly beat going crazy.
“Hi,” he said. “My name’s Samuel Carver.”
She held out a slender hand with long scarlet nails.
“Madeleine Cross—pleased to meet you.”
“And you, Madeleine. So, are you going to introduce me to Mr. Cross?”
“I sure as hell hope not.”
“Don’t tell me he’s left you all alone, in a strange hotel, in a foreign country. That sounds risky.”
She laughed. “Who for?”
“All three of us, quite possibly.”
She looked Carver up and down. “No, I reckon you could handle him.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he said. “But can I handle you? That’s the question.”
It was bullshit; he knew it, and so did she. But it was what he needed, and maybe she did, too. She was a big girl; she could make her own decisions.
He ordered them both another drink and Madeleine told him her story.
Her husband made a fortune selling medical supplies. She’d been a clerk at a hospital that was one of his biggest clients, a girl from Boise, Idaho, ten years in Chicago, still single, struggling to make ends meet. He took her away from all that and stuck her in a fancy house in Winnetka to shop, decorate, and bitch with other bored suburban women. Now here they were on this fancy European vacation and he’d gone off to the casino in Cannes, leaving her behind, all dressed up with nothing to do but get drunk.
“The casino sounds pretty exciting. Why didn’t you go, too?” Carver asked.
“Believe me, it’s not so good. He spends all night at the blackjack table, playing three hands at a time, cursing every time he doesn’t get the right card. He doesn’t pay a bit of attention to anything else. Or anyone else, either.”
Carver looked suitably appalled.
“Any man who’d rather spend a night looking at playing cards when he could be looking at you needs his head examined.”
“Well, you know what? I think so, too,” she said. They laughed and leaned a little closer together. Carver felt her hand on his knee, that lightness of a woman’s touch that feels so good to a man.
“You want to get something to eat?” he said.
She looked him right in the eye.
“I’d rather work up an appetite first.”
Carver woke with the sun streaming in through the windows and the bedside clock reading 9:17.
There was a note on the bedside table, with a telephone number and the message
If you’re ever in Chicago . . . Maddy xox.
Then he noticed the red light flashing on his phone—he must have been woken by the ringing. Carver picked up the handset and pressed the button. He screwed up his face when he heard that familiar, angry voice.
“Carver, you useless sod, it’s Grantham. I’m downstairs in the foyer. Get your lazy arse down here, now, before I come up there and kick the bloody door down.”
“Shit,” said Carver, and heaved himself out of bed.
EASTER SATURDAY
81
C
arver couldn’t see any good reason he should come running, just because Grantham had called. He spent fifteen minutes getting washed and dressed before heading down to the hotel lobby. It was worth the wait, simply to see the irritation on Grantham’s face. There was something else there, too, Carver realized as he got closer: The MI6 man’s normal self-assurance, arrogance, even, had given way to a nervy edginess that he’d never seen before.
“Where’s my document?” snapped Grantham.
“The same place as my girlfriend, cuddling up to Kurt Vermulen,” Carver said, as if it didn’t bother him one bit. “She married him—did you know that?”
That news had been meant to knock Grantham off his stride, but it had the opposite effect. A smug smile crossed Grantham’s face, a look of sheer pleasure that Carver had been dumped in even deeper shit than he had.
“That must have come as a shock.”
“Just a bit,” said Carver.
“Still, you don’t look very heartbroken.”
“What would you prefer, drunk and tearstained?”
“Something like that.”
Carver shrugged. “I thought about it. But I found a better alternative. Nice girl.”
“And you accuse me of not giving a toss?”
“Listen, I loved Alix. That was real; probably still is. But it won’t do me any good now, moping around. I’m just going to forget her, move on, put as much distance between us as I can.”
Carver wondered if he sounded any more convincing than he felt. Evidently not—Grantham looked at him with an expression of profound skepticism before his face cleared, a new thought striking him.
“You got time to grab a late breakfast before you go? There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Carver groaned. What now?
“Come on,” Grantham insisted. “They do a splendid buffet down by the sea. Great food, fantastic view . . . I’m paying. And I think you’ll be interested when you find out who’s flown in to see you.”
Carver followed Grantham across the lobby and out through the doors that opened onto the hotel’s magnificent wooded gardens. As he walked down the path that stretched down to the sea, one tiny hope flickered at the back of his mind and kept him moving toward an appointment he otherwise would have refused. And then he realized it was ridiculous even to consider such a notion. It was another Russian woman sitting at the table, with a bob of black hair framing eyes that were assessing him with cold, impersonal objectivity as Grantham gestured in her direction.
“May I introduce Deputy Director Zhukovskaya, of the Federal Security Service?”
She held out her hand with a smile that was even chillier than her eyes.
“Hello, Mr. Carver. You killed my husband.”
“I was provoked,” he replied, before letting go of her hand.
Grantham ordered coffee, orange juice, and a selection of pastries.
“I think I’ll have a proper cooked breakfast, actually,” said Carver, gesturing toward the buffet. “Feeling quite peckish this morning.”
He took his time getting scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, crisp white rolls and dewy chunks of unsalted Normandy butter. He made a point of tucking in, knowing the other two wanted to talk. But in the end, it was he who cracked first. He couldn’t help himself.
“Did you tell her I was dead?” he asked Zhukovskaya.
“Yes, I gave the order for her to receive that information,” she said, without any hint of embarrassment or apology.
“Why?”
Carver was uncomfortably aware that there was more emotion, even desperation, in that single syllable than he’d intended.
“It was a practical necessity,” Zhukovskaya replied, still quite unruffled. “You killed the man I sent to eliminate you, and then you left the hospital. You were no longer a patient; therefore the payments to cover your bills would have to stop. It was possible Petrova might find out about that, if she checked her financial records. She would naturally want to know what had happened. I simply anticipated that moment.”
“But she only did the job to keep me alive. Why would she stay with Vermulen if I was gone?”
“Self-preservation,” said Zhukovskaya, as if the answer were obvious. “Alexandra Petrova is an agent of the Federal Security Service, under my command. She knows that any agent who leaves an assignment without orders from a superior officer is guilty of desertion, and she also knows the penalty for that offense. In any case, I preferred to look on the positive side. Without you to think about, Petrova was free to concentrate on General Vermulen.”
“Well, you got that wrong. She concentrated on him so much, she married him. She’s not yours anymore, or mine. She’s his.”
Zhukovskaya sipped at her coffee.
“You think?” she asked. “Of course, I have considered that proposition, but I myself am not so certain. Many agents regard marriage as a useful adjunct to their cover; Petrova may well be one of them. That, however, is not my main concern at the moment, and it should not be yours.”
She put the coffee cup down on the table, and when she looked at him again there was finally a sign of real emotion. Zhukovskya was angry.
“You have caused a great deal of trouble, Mr. Carver. The document you stole was the property of the Russian state. It was removed from a state facility approximately ten weeks ago. It would have been recovered yesterday by elements acting on behalf of the state, had you not interfered. They had orders to destroy it, rather than let it fall into the wrong hands.”
“For heaven’s sake, what is this thing?” asked Grantham.
“A list of small-scale nuclear weapons, also property of the Russian state, currently positioned in Europe and North America, a few in South America, Asia, and Australia, their locations and arming codes,” recited Zhukovskaya in a flat voice.
The color drained from Grantham’s face.
“How many weapons?”
“Around one hundred.”
“My God . . . and what about the U.K.?”
She looked at him blankly.
“But they’re all on this list . . .” said Grantham.
“Yes, and thanks to Mr. Carver, it is now in Vermulen’s hands.”
Carver grimaced, uncomfortably aware that his priorities needed a radical reordering.
“Where’s Vermulen gone now?” he asked.
Grantham seemed relieved to be able to answer this question, at least.
“Back to his yacht. It spent the night moored off the Italian coast, right down south, near Reggio di Calabria, slipped anchor shortly before dawn, heading east. We lost it soon afterward, between satellite sweeps.”
“At least you have satellites,” remarked Zhukovskaya wryly.
“So find the boat again,” said Carver. “Send in a few of my old mates from the SBS, or some of your Spetsnaz boys, to board the boat. Seize the document, and Bob’s your uncle.”
Grantham was not impressed.
“No, Carver—in that scenario Bob would actually be a major diplomatic incident in which the Americans went ballistic about the unauthorized hostile seizure of a boat owned by one respected, powerful U.S. citizen and used by another, while the Italian government tried to decide whether this constituted an act of war within their territorial waters.”
Carver tried again.
“All right, then, who’s the other citizen?”
“Sorry?”
“Who’s the other U.S. citizen, the one who owns the boat? See, there’s something odd about all this money Vermulen’s got to splash around. Unless he’s made a shitload since he left the armed forces, someone’s bankrolling him. And if it isn’t the U.S. government, maybe it’s the bloke who owns the boat. So who’s that?”
“Some good ol’ boy from Texas called McCabe,” replied Grantham impatiently, not seeing the value of the question. “Made a fortune in oil and mining. The boat belongs to one of his many corporations. But I don’t see him being interested in bombs. The man’s a born-again Christian, had a dramatic conversion a few years back, devotes his time to philanthropy and good deeds.”