Younger (15 page)

Anna drained the dregs of her cider. “So, Pierre, all this work—the Madame X campaign, the diary, the coaching—no more than a charade the whole time? Helping out the good ol’ MI6, Miss Tanya Moneypenny?”

“No. Not at all! Everything I’ve told you is true. Do you think I hired someone to play my mother? Don’t be absurd. If you don’t believe me, go to Paris. Visit her!”

“I might do that one weekend.” Anna stood up. “Do you need me back at the office? If not, I’ll just head home now.”

He checked his watch. “You go ahead,” he said. “I might have another before I move on.”

She knew he’d be on his cell phone to Kelm as soon as she was out the door. But SIS, MI6, or not, she had no desire to stick around and spy on anyone.

Barton had booked Friday’s dinner at Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s, and as she entered, Anna understood why he’d said to tone it down. This was what her grandmother would have called “Hoity-Toity Heaven.” She arrived wearing newly acquired “grown-up” clothes. Her midnight-blue faille dress wasn’t scandalously short or low-cut, and she wore it with a matching long-sleeved shrug. Her hair was brushed back and left unspiked, her makeup simple. Her skin glowed.

A maître d’ led her across the elegant Art Deco dining room to where the Bartons were already seated. Pierre stood as she approached, and his wife swiveled around discreetly, then cast a head-to-toe look so appraising that it wouldn’t have surprised Anna if she’d been ordered to open her mouth to have her teeth checked. “Hello, Pierre. And you must be Marina.”

“I was hoping to meet you sooner, but I had family obligations,” Marina said as Anna sat on the chair Pierre held out for her between the two of them. “My mother likes to see the twins frequently, so I am often going to Moscow.” She turned to her husband. “Pierre, order an aperitif for Tanya.”

She had only a trace of an accent, which to Anna’s ears could have been Czech or German as easily as Russian. As with many foreigners who’d spent a lot of time abroad, Marina’s English speech retained an odd formality.

She looked extremely good for a woman just a few years younger than Anna and was obviously more than a rich man’s bimbo. Her style was the simply elegant kind carried off so beautifully by the rich because, for starters, they flash real jewels. Marina’s deep lilac silk sheath had a scoop neck showing just enough cleavage to position her amethyst and diamond necklace to best advantage. On one hand, she wore stacks of amethyst and diamond skinny bands, and on the other, a simple white-gold or platinum wedding band, all the better to set off the engagement ring above it: a diamond as big as the Ritz or, considering present circumstances, a sparkler the size of Claridge’s. A man’s diamond-faced Rolex seemed a calculatedly quirky maneuver to pile on more diamonds, as well as highlight her delicate bone structure, making her seem even more petite and feminine, while her diamond studs, about two carats each, were neither ostentatious nor modest. Her long hair was professionally upswept, teased to be full, then loosely held with combs, so it came down over the tops of her ears and the back of her neck in a style reminiscent of an old-time Gibson Girl.
Very Anastasia,
Anna thought. Not surprisingly, her hair’s shade was Well-Off Bolshevik Blonde.

Anna’s flute of champagne arrived, and they opened their menus. The
prix fixe
was seventy pounds, over a hundred bucks a head. Anna had a feeling what mattered most to Mrs. Barton was being in the “right” place—and was proven correct when Marina ordered steamed fish, the simplest dish on the menu
. Screw that,
she thought, opting for the richness of duck preceded by sautéed scallops with Sevruga caviar. Who knew when she might ever eat this well again?

Since Anna had never been to Moscow, it was easy to draw out Marina about the city. “It’s not so beautiful as St. Petersburg, but there is something very strong, very firm about Moscow.”

“Muscular,” Pierre suggested.

Putinesque,
Anna thought, but she said only, “You grew up in the city?”

“My family always kept a flat in Moscow and a house in the country. Pierre and I like being in town while my mother prefers the house. When I go on my own with the boys, I stay there. Mama spends time with the boys while I go to the factory.”

“The factory?”

“My office is at the factory. I am now—how do you say?—titular head of Sybyska Chemicals, my father’s company. I assumed this position on his death. I am a chemist, you know.”

“No spoiled housewife here.” Pierre chuckled.

So Marina Barton was a chemist
and
head of a chemical factory? How handy for BarPharm.

“I met Pierre at the Sorbonne. But we didn’t realize until later that we were connected in this way.”

“Marina’s father was one of the top chemists in the USSR,” Barton explained. “He came to London with Khrushchev on a trade delegation under the Soviets, and one of the factories he visited was Barton Pharmaceuticals, where he met my father.”

“After perestroika, Papa took over the company and changed the name to Sybyska. He started supplying raw ingredients to the Bartons.” Marina leaned in toward her. “And so Pierre came to our factory and remembered me from the Sorbonne. Fate brought us together. It was my idea for BarPharm to expand into cosmetics to launch
YOU
NGER. Which you so perfectly named. So, you see, fate brought you to us. We were all destined to do this.”

Pierre’s laugh sounded nervous. “Russians love drama, you see.”

“And the Franglais?”

“The French side of me is a romantic. The British side’s more pragmatic.”

Marina suddenly seemed bored and spoke little after the food arrived. While Anna and Pierre made comments on the excellence of the cuisine, she ate her fish with silent, forensic precision.

When the plates were cleared and their waiter came bearing dessert menus, Marina said abruptly, “We’ll have a mix of sorbets. Yes, Tanya?”

She would’ve liked a peek at the menu, but Marina’s tone told her to be happy with what she got. “That’s fine.”

“Now come with me.” Her small, cold hand grasped Anna’s wrist. “We’ll go to the ladies’ room and freshen up.”

A woman accustomed to giving orders, Anna thought as she followed meekly. She doubted she and Mrs. Barton would be emerging from the toilets as BFFs.

As they were washing their hands at adjoining sinks, Anna snuck a sideways look down at Marina, who was bent over, scrubbing away with a surgeon’s diligence. As her eyes drifted up she saw, running into Mrs. Barton’s hairline at the nape of her neck, a Korean-peninsula-shaped port-wine stain like Mikhail Gorbachev’s and then, almost hidden in the shadow of an ear—exposed for a moment by the upswept tortoiseshelled hair held in place by real tortoiseshell combs—the telltale sign of a real surgeon, the hairline scar of a face-lift. She looked away.

They stood side by side freshening their makeup, Anna towering over the petite Marina, who, as they turned to leave, again gripped her wrist. “My husband tends to take on too much,” she said neutrally, like a doctor discussing a troublesome patient. “I depend on you to move ahead. Even if Pierre doesn’t pressure you, please make sure you get him what he needs in a timely fashion.”

“Yes, of course.” She fought the impulse to pull her arm free.

Marina’s grip remained tight, and she leaned in so close Anna was almost overpowered by her cloying gardenia perfume. “A great deal is at stake with
YOU
NGER, Tanya. But I know I can count on you because it’s our destiny.”

Marina wasn’t dramatic, Anna decided.
No,
melodramatic
’s a better word
. And why would she say, “I know
I
can count on you” when it was Pierre who Anna worked for? “Do you use it?” she asked, curious to see if the other woman would lie. “I mean, you look so youthful. You look great.”

The other woman dropped her wrist, and her eyes narrowed. “Me?” She sounded appalled. “Russians don’t need this product. Russians look good because of the genes.” Then she turned on her heel and walked off, leaving Anna to trail in her wake once again.

Friday, July 22

Whew, am I glad that week’s over.

Too many changes too fast for me to grasp who’s on first base here.

So . . . I now work for MI6 and, by virtue of doing so, I’m also aiding the CIA—all of which seems incredibly important to one Marina Barton, a melodramatic Muscovite who lies about her face-lift, has eyes like ice chips, and treats her World’s Most Desirable Husband like an irritating child.

I have two more days in which to decide: Do I go or stay?

If I go, I walk away from close to a million dollars and probably the dregs of my career. And I walk away from David forever. Am I strong enough to do that? But I don’t plan to see David again anyhow . . . do I? He shouldn’t be part of this equation.

Why did I drink all that wine after the champagne? And why the schnapps? So I could pretend I was having a normal dinner with the boss and his wife? So I could pretend I really was a svelte twentywhatever-year-old rather than a world-weary AARP prospect?

Who do I want to be? Anna or Tanya?

I wish I’d fully appreciated the joys of being Lisa when I was.

Fuck, I’m drunk.

Chapter 12

Anna woke up Saturday to a beautiful summer’s day. She felt remarkably decent considering the amount of wine she’d put away the evening before, and, after carefully deleting her inebriated diary draft—and thanking the gods she had retained enough sobriety not to have sent it—she left for the fitness club.

So I don’t especially like the boss’s wife,
she thought as she pounded along on the treadmill.
So what?
It was silly to get worked up about things—she should be thrilled she was helping Britain and her own country as well as her bank account. And it shouldn’t concern her that she now saw Pierre as a man under the thumb of his wife, MI6, and maybe even his chauffeur. He was still her boss.

If she told Barton to tell Kelm she wanted out, it would be a reverse Cinderella, as she turned back into an unemployed, late-middle-aged woman whose business had, for all intents and purposes, failed. The money she’d earned so far wouldn’t last very long once she was back to being Anna “Unemployable” Wallingham. She risked ending up a loser in everyone’s eyes, including her own. And David? She shook her head briskly, as if to dislodge him from her decision making.

Back at the apartment, she showered and changed into skinnies, her Vans, and a black T-shirt she’d ordered online that had “NYU” printed on the back and “Property of New York University” on the front. She’d always wished she’d gone to NYU, so why shouldn’t Tanya be a grad? Then she grabbed her bag and went off to the Tube and an exhibit of Martin Parr’s photographs at a little gallery in Covent Garden. After a quick salad at Pret A Manger, she got back on the Underground to go the Victoria and Albert Museum for another photo show, this one of glamour shots from the 1930s.

The Tube was packed with tourists. Few riders looked noticeably English. Of course, the two women in headscarves and the young blond Slavic couple could have been born in London, as might the tall, ebony-skinned teenaged boy and the older Japanese couple whispering together. No, she thought, not the blonds or the Japanese. The latter looked too anxious, clutching hands and keeping their eyes down, while the blond man had suddenly pulled out his phone and was snapping a photo of his girlfriend or wife. Boring one’s friends on Facebook obviously held universal allure.

The V&A was crowded—it was a well-reviewed show that everyone seemed to want to see today—but Anna was glad she’d made the effort. She’d worked too hard back home; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone to a museum there. That was one thing she’d change when she returned.

The blond man from the Underground was snapping his wife standing by the exhibit’s poster of Greta Garbo as she went out. Beauty icons like Garbo, she thought, were famed all over the world.
May Madame X end up among them.

What next? A walk down to Harvey Nichols, she decided. Most of its stock was priced way out of Tanya’s range, but it had been ages since she’d done any upscale browsing. She could also look for jazzy earrings in the cheap accessory shops on Knightsbridge to wear tonight, when she’d be having dinner with Rob, the guy from Pacha. Before entering, she stopped to admire an outrageous Vivienne Westwood outfit in the window. Off to the side behind her, reflected in the glass, she spied the high-cheekboned blond couple from the Tube again. Was the man taking
her
picture?

As if she had simply changed her mind, Anna turned on her heel and retraced her steps, going back the way she’d come, up a few blocks to Harrods, where she hurried straight to the so-called Egyptian escalators, from which she could look down and see who was behind her. When she saw Mr. and Mrs. Blondie get on and start excusing themselves to pass on the left, she leapt off at the second floor and, heart thudding in her chest, wove a winding path from one department to another, then up two more floors on other escalators before jumping into an express lift to the ground floor just as its doors were closing. Outside, she jumped into a black cab and went straight to South Kensington, looking behind her in fear of seeing two heads of thick blond hair.

At home, she ran upstairs and locked the door. Then, not bothering with the diary format, she sent an email directly to Barton: “I think I was followed today. Please call.”

The phone rang soon after. Her employer sounded concerned, but when he asked, “Are you feeling all right?” she realized he was more concerned about her state of mind than any stalkers.

She was fine, she assured him, but she was certain she’d been followed by a couple, Russian or Eastern European, on the Underground and then to the V&A, Harvey Nichols, and Harrods.

“Anna, there are thousands of people on the streets today. You weren’t exactly blazing a trail, being on some of the main tourist routes.”

“But when they saw me
not
going into Harvey Nichols, they did just what I did—went to Harrods, even though it was in the direction we’d come from!”

“Did you see them follow you from the museum?”

“No,” she admitted.

“So for all you know, they took a taxi to Harvey Nichols, then realized they’d meant to go to Harrods instead and had to walk back that way.”

The explanation was so logical, his voice so patient, Anna felt foolish.

“You mustn’t let the meeting with Kelm lead you to imagining things that aren’t there,” he warned.

He was right. When they’d hung up, she felt annoyed at herself for not having bought those earrings she’d had in mind.

When Rob had called her midweek to ask about dinner, she had jumped at the chance to socialize, already suspecting her dinner with Marina and Pierre wasn’t going to be one of the best times she’d had in any of her lives.

He said he shared a place with “some fellow nerds” in Fulham, so he wasn’t far from her neighborhood. “Have you ever eaten in a Tootsie’s?” he asked. “In case you’re craving an American burger, there’s one near you.” When she said that sounded great, they agreed to meet there at eight.

Only after she had hung up did it sink in that this wasn’t getting together with some friend’s kid for a bite. This was, in Rob’s mind, probably a date. Anna had forgotten how to dress for
any
date, much less one with a man who could be her son.

She settled on her black treggings with the big white shirt and her Vans, aiming to look neither sexy nor boring. “I am hot, hip, young, and at the top of my game,” she told her reflection in the mirror as she went out the door. “I am woman. I am invincible.” She winked, as much to check her deep violet–shadowed, kohl-rimmed eyes as to affirm her self-confidence.

Rob was waiting for her in front of Tootsie’s. “Just stealing a last fag,” he said, inhaling deeply. “I know it’s a filthy habit, and I plan to stop. Not an addict, I see?”

“Not me. Smoked. But it was a long time ago.”

“What’s a long time ago? When you were twelve?” He laughed.

“Not much older.” She covered up her blunder. “I quit before high school graduation.”

“Around the time I started. You look great, by the way.”

In spite of herself, she blushed with pleasure.

When they were seated waiting for their drinks, he asked about her life in the States and she regurgitated her porridge of truth and lies, sugared with tales of the aunt who’d loaned her the flat and her on-again, off-again boyfriend back home.

Her cheeseburger hit the spot, and Anna found it easier than she’d expected to talk to Rob—maybe because his specialty was security, and she’d recently acquired a serious interest in aspects of it. “So, how can you keep someone from hacking your phone or your computer?” she asked.

“Some bloke bothering you?”

“No. Not really, but”—she had practiced this—“let’s just say some guy I’m not interested in has become a little overamorous. Not a stalker or anything. But I should know what to do if he turns into one.”

“First, call me, and the Nerd Squad will beat the shite out of him. No, seriously, there are a few things you can do now.”

He suggested some free computer virus and malware programs with good firewalls, as well as a couple books and websites that would help her make her computer more secure. What about cell phones, she asked. Could a computer track her from hers?

“I hope you don’t want to get away from me yet,” he teased, then went on to suggest she buy a couple of cheap cell phones and SIM cards she could use to escape detection. “And, in the meantime, turn off location apps or services so your phone won’t show anyone where you are. I’d get an iPhone or BlackBerry because they’re harder to hack into than a regular cell. Don’t use voice mail as it’s not always secure, and erase all texts immediately after you read them. The easiest way to protect yourself anywhere is to be sure to have a different password for every single account you have—phone, computer, email, banks, everything.”

“Sounds like a lot to remember.”

“Nah, it’s easier than most people make it. See, first they screw up by creating blindingly obvious passwords begging to be hacked: birthdates, phone numbers, even their own passport or pension fund numbers. Or they go the other way and make up complicated stuff they can’t remember. Then they do the worst thing anyone could do: store password lists in obvious places or on their mobiles. Mobile gets stolen when it’s not locked. Boom—some gangsta gets it all.”

“How do you come up with good passwords you can memorize, then?”

“Well, I use stuff no one else would ever guess. For instance, dates with the numbers and letters scrambled, the name and birth date of my girlfriend when I was fourteen—hey, don’t laugh, I was in love.” He thought a second. “Simple phrases or movies but using letters for numbers, numbers for letters, and varying letter cases. I used to use ‘EyeH8Werk,’ written like this.” He scrawled it on a napkin. “And I once used ‘DwanOtheDead.’ Just be creative. And use symbols, too—like the hash mark or the ‘at’ sign.”

“Got it.”

“You sure nothing’s wrong, Tanya?”

“No, I’m just interested in all this stuff.” She shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

Most men her own age would have insisted on paying, but Rob blithely accepted money for Anna’s share of the bill. She found it cute when he insisted, “Now we’re going to go have a drink at a secret place I like a lot. Just two things: you can’t tell anyone I go there, and it’s my treat.”

“How can I refuse? You know how to get a girl’s attention.”

He led her through a few side streets to Harrington Gardens and the Bentley Hotel. “Here?” She laughed. “Isn’t this like one of the most expensive hotels in town?”

“Eight hundred quid a night. Yeah, it’s pretty piss-elegant, which is why my mates don’t know about it. Come on, I’ll show you the bar.”

Anna didn’t have to fake Tanya’s awe. Gleaming wood, overstuffed sofas and chairs in rich malachite green and deep ruby velvet—every American’s fantasy of what a prewar English gentleman’s club should be. “I can see why you like it.”

They sat down, and Rob ordered two cognacs with the élan of a connoisseur. “How do you know the hotel?” Anna asked.

“My uncle stays here when he’s in town.”

“Your uncle must be seriously rich.”

“Yeah, he’s an earl, actually. Why are you grinning?”

“Because I had an Uncle Earl, too. Only, mine drove a truck.”

He grinned. “Well, my uncle
the
earl got the money, mansion, and title, while my father—aka the Younger Son—got the gatekeeper’s house. He’s no pauper, but he doesn’t stay in places like this when he travels.”

“And you?”

“Hostels all the way. Not that I travel much these days, what with work and all. Prague, when I have the time.”

“You like Prague? I’ve never been.”

“You should go. Real old-world Europe. And there’s a girl—I mean, not a real serious thing at this point, but I go there to see her.” He shrugged. “That’s my story.”

“Sounds good.” She hoped she didn’t sound too relieved. She’d been flattered that Rob was attracted to her, but she couldn’t be jumping into bed with a guy in his twenties.

Still, when he walked her to her door an hour later, he seemed to have forgotten that girl in Prague. “I had fun,” she said. “Thanks for asking me—and for showing me the bar.”