The Third Woman. Mark Burnell
Читать онлайн книгу.
flat off Chichele Road in north London, she was already awake. She’d fallen into bed at one, exhausted, a little drunk, unhappy. The alcohol was supposed to have soothed the pain but hadn’t. An inexperienced drinker, the very least she’d hoped for had been a deep sleep but she’d been awake by half-past-three.
Her first night out in a month, her first as a single woman in more than a year. Her friend Claire had insisted upon it. Time to move on. Time to consign him to history. Reluctantly, Rosie had capitulated. A poor decision, as it turned out. There had been no balm for the hurt, no boost for the self. Just a large bill and a hangover.
When her relationship failed, Rosie did what she always did: she buried herself in work. An easy solution which, for a week or two, seemed to deliver. Then came the familiar sensation; the weight in the chest, the suspicion of a greater malaise lurking at the heart of her. How could a smart, attractive woman continue to stumble from one third-rate relationship to another?
A second-generation Indian, Rosie ran an organization at the cutting edge of global intelligence. From any point of view – race, gender, age – she was a success. But she didn’t feel like one. Never had, if the truth be told, and now, at five-past-four on a dismal winter morning, she felt a total failure.
What good was her position – her power – if she couldn’t hold down a relationship? Dumped by an out-of-work actor because he was intimidated by her professional success. He thought she worked for the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s College, London. That was the lie by which she was universally known among her family and friends.
The actor was a lovely man; kind, funny, good-looking. But not much of an actor. When he’d complained about the hours she kept she’d seen straight through him; he’d resented her work because it fuelled his own sense of professional inadequacy. Which, in turn, she’d resented. It wasn’t amusing to come home after a sixteen-hour shift to be criticized by a man who’d spent the day lying on a sofa watching Countdown and Neighbours, waiting for Steven Spielberg to call.
She picked up the phone. ‘Yes?’
‘This is Carter, S3.’
S3 was the intelligence section. ‘What is it, John?’
‘There’s a car on its way. It’ll be with you in eight minutes.’
‘Give me the bare bones.’
‘Last night, Paris. The Lancaster hotel. A shooting, two victims: Leonid Golitsyn and Fyodor Medvedev.’
The first name was vaguely resonant, the second meant nothing. ‘Go on.’
‘S9 has intercepted communication between DST and DGSE.’
Both agencies formed part of France’s intelligence community. The DST, the Directorate for Surveillance of the Territory, was concerned primarily with counter-espionage, counter-intelligence and the protection of classified information, and was under the direct control of the Ministry of the Interior. The DGSE – Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure – was responsible for terrorism, human intelligence and industrial-economic intelligence.
Rosie asked for a brief reminder of Golitsyn’s significance and then said, ‘So what’s the problem?’
‘Stephanie Patrick.’
A sequence of syllables to rob the breath.
Impossible, she thought. Well, no, not impossible. But as close to impossible as unlikely could ever be.
Carter said, ‘They’re looking for Petra Reuter. There’s been positive identification.’
‘Photographic?’
‘We’re not sure. There’s something else, though. The two Algerians fingered by DGSE for the blast in Sentier – they’re a smokescreen. She’s the one they want.’
‘A bomb?’
The closest Petra had come to using a bomb was an exploding mobile phone that had decapitated an American lawyer in Singapore. As glib as it sounded, bombs weren’t her style.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Carter said, ‘but they seem very confident.’
‘They usually do. Are we sure she’s real?’
Like every star, Petra Reuter had her cheap imitators.
‘As sure as we can be.’
Rosie put down the phone, hauled herself from the bed and entered the bathroom. She was still wearing most of her eye-liner, smudged like bruises. No time for fresh clothes, she dressed in yesterday’s suit. In the sitting-room, she found her briefcase on a packing crate.
Six months on and she still hadn’t settled into the apartment. She’d sold her place just off the Seven Sisters Road but had been part of a buying chain that had collapsed. This place, a short-term rental, had been a stop-gap. She’d been looking for something small and comfortable in the heart of the city. Now she wasn’t sure what she wanted.
Her predecessor had installed a small bedroom at Magenta House. Towards the end, he’d never gone home. Rosie considered that symptomatic of much that had gone wrong within the organization; it had become too self-absorbed. Which, in turn, had led to levels of paranoia that had begun to affect its operational integrity.
In every walk of life, one needed interests outside of work in order to maintain a balance. Rosie believed that was especially true for the employees of an organization like Magenta House. Within a fortnight of replacing him, she’d had his bedroom dismantled to make way for a new debriefing suite.
The trouble was this: now that she was in his position, where would she find the time to achieve that balance herself?
She was outside her front door seven minutes after the call. The dark green BMW was already there. On the leather back seat was a slim briefing folder.
After Berlin, the future had assumed an obvious shape. Rosie would replace Alexander. His death had spared Magenta House’s trustees an awkward dilemma: how to substitute a man who had become utterly synonymous with the organization to its ultimate detriment? As for Stephanie, she was to disappear for good, sending the legend of Petra Reuter into permanent retirement.
False reports of Petra’s activities had always existed. Some were simply wrong, others were deliberate mischief. Several times she’d been accredited with assassinations that Magenta House knew to be the work of others. It didn’t matter. Any rumour, true or false, added to the legend. So Rosie hadn’t been surprised when new rumours began to circulate after Berlin; since nobody had ever suggested that Petra was dead there was no reason for stories about her to dry up.
Stephanie had spent most of her adult life seeking a divorce from Petra. Now that she’d got it, any form of reconciliation seemed inconceivable. Nobody at Magenta House knew Stephanie the way Rosie did. They’d been friends. They’d been the outsiders in an organization of outsiders.
Stephanie, can it really be you?
‘I need to go to the bathroom.’
Stephanie knew the procedure. Let him urinate or defecate in the chair. Reduction was the road to compliance. Yet even as she thought it, she knew she wouldn’t do it. She released his hands again and told him to tear the tape from his ankle.
He rose awkwardly. His thigh muscles and hip flexors were stiff, hamstrings tugging at his lower back. He had to place a hand on top of the chair to complete the movement. His first few steps were clumsy, as pins and needles began to work the nerves.
The bathroom door had a bolt instead of a key.
Stephanie said, ‘Don’t shut it.’
‘You’re going to watch?’
She tossed a hardback on to the floor, steered it into the doorway with her foot, ushered him in, then pulled the handle, leaving a six-inch gap. At the flush she pushed the door open. Newman was fastening his trousers.
‘Can