Invited by Anne-Laure to balance the numbers, Villanelle is bored senseless. The junior minister, whose knee has nudged hers more than once under the table, is questioning her about her activities as a day-trader, and she is answering in evasive generalities.
“So how was London?” he enquires. “I was there in November. Were you very busy?”
“Yes, work’s always murder. But it was lovely to be there. Hyde Park in the snow. The Christmas lights, the pretty shop windows…”
“And in the evenings?” He allows the question to hang suggestively in the air.
“In the evenings, I read and went to bed early.”
“Alone? In your Primark pyjamas?” This time it’s his hand that finds her knee.
“Precisely. I’m afraid I’m a rather dull girl. Married to my work. But can I ask you, who does your wife’s hair? That layered style looks lovely on her.”
The junior minister’s smile grows fainter, and his hand moves away. The minutes tick by, glasses and plates are filled and refilled, Élysée Palace rumours and fifty-year-old Armagnac circulate. Finally the evening winds down and the guests are brought their coats.
“Come on,” says Anne-Laure, grabbing Villanelle by the arm. “Let’s go, too.”
“Are you sure?” murmurs Villanelle, eyeing Gilles, who is corking bottles and issuing instructions to the caterers.
“I’m sure,” hisses Anne-Laure. “If I don’t get out of this flat right now I’m going to scream. And look at you, all dressed up. If ever I saw a girl who needed an adventure…”
Five minutes later, the two of them are rounding the Arc de Triomphe at speed in Villanelle’s silver Audi Roadster. It’s a cold, clear night with tiny flecks of snow silvering the air. The Roadster’s roof is lowered and Héloïse Letissier is blasting from the sound system.
“Where are we going?” Villanelle shouts, the icy wind whipping at her hair as they swing onto the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
“Doesn’t matter,” Anne-Laure mouths back. “Just drive.”
Villanelle puts her foot down, and whooping and laughing, the two women race into the glittering darkness of the Paris night.
On the penultimate day of her enforced leave, an envelope bearing Eve’s name falls through the letterbox of the flat. The writing paper is headed with the imprint of the Travellers Club, in Pall Mall. The unsigned message, handwritten in slanting italics, is short and to the point:
Please come to the office of BQ Optics Ltd. Second floor, above Goodge Street Underground station tomorrow (Sunday) at 10.30 a.m. Bring this letter with you. Confidential.
Eve reads the note several times. The Travellers Club writing paper suggests that the correspondent has Security Services or Foreign Office connections, the fact that it is handwritten and hand-delivered suggests an entirely sensible distrust of email. It could of course be a hoax, but who would bother?
At 9.30 the next day she leaves Niko sitting at the kitchen table amid a sea of pamphlets. He’s assessing the costs and benefits of converting the attic into a miniature hydroponic farm, sustained by low-energy LED lighting, and producing pak choi and broccoli.
The entrance to the BQ Optics office is on Tottenham Court Road. Noting it as she exits Goodge Street tube station, she crosses the road and watches the place for five minutes from outside Heal’s, the furniture store. The tube station and the first-floor offices are faced with brown glazed tile, and surmounted by a dingy residential block. The second-floor offices appear deserted.
But when she presses the bell at the side of the entrance, she is buzzed in immediately. A staircase leads to the first floor, the headquarters of a recruitment agency, and thence by narrower stairs upwards. The door to the BQ Optics office is ajar. Feeling a little foolish, Eve pushes it open and stands back. Nothing happens for a moment, then a tall figure in an overcoat steps into the dusty light.
“Miss Polastri? Thank you for coming.”
“It’s Mrs. And you are?”
“Richard Edwards, Mrs. Polastri. My apologies.”
She recognises him, and is astounded. Former station chief in Moscow, now head of the Russia desk at MI6, he is a very senior figure indeed in the Intelligence world.
“And the cloak and dagger. Sorry for that, too.”
She shakes her head, bemused.
“Come in, take a seat.”
She walks through. The office is unheated and dusty, its windows almost opaque with grime. The only furniture is an elderly steel desk, with two takeaway cups of Costa coffee on it, and a pair of rust-scarred folding chairs.
“I guessed milk but no sugar.”
“Thank you, perfect.” She takes a sip.
“I’ve become aware of your situation at Thames House, Mrs. Polastri.”
“Eve, please.”
He nods, his gaze austere in the dim light of the window.
“Let me save time. You are being held responsible for failing to prevent the murder of Viktor Kedrin at the hands of an unknown female. Your initial judgement was not to request Metropolitan Police protection for Kedrin, but you then changed your mind, and found this decision blocked. Correct?”
Eve nods. “Substantially, yes.”
“My information, and you’re going to have to take my word on this, is that this was not due to administrative inflexibility or departmental budget issues. Certain elements at Thames House, and indeed at Vauxhall Cross, were determined that Kedrin should be unprotected.”
She stares at him. “You’re saying that officers of the Security Services conspired to assist in his murder?”
“Something like that.”
“But… why?”
“The short answer is that I don’t know. But there has definitely been pressure brought to bear. Whether this is an issue of ideology, corruption, or what the Russians call kompromat—essentially blackmail—it’s impossible to say, but there’s no shortage of individuals and institutions who would have liked to see Kedrin silenced. What he offered was the blueprint of a new, fascist superstate, implacably hostile to the capitalist West. It wouldn’t have come into being tomorrow, but look a little further downstream, and the prospects are grim.”
“So you think those responsible might belong to some pro-Western, pro-democracy group?”
“Not necessarily. Could easily be another hard-right outfit, determined to do things their own way.” He stares at the traffic on Tottenham Court Road. “I contacted the Russian foreign minister last week via… let’s call it the old spies network. I promised him that as Kedrin was murdered on British soil, we would find his killer. He accepted this, but made it quite clear that until such time as we did so, a state of diplomatic hostility would exist between our respective nations.”
He turns to face her. “Eve, I want you to go to Thames House tomorrow morning, and offer your resignation, which will be accepted. Then I want you to work for me. Not from Vauxhall Cross, but from this office, which we appear to own. You will receive an SIS executive grade salary, a deputy, and full tech-com support. Your mission, which you will prosecute by any means necessary, is to identify the killer of Victor Kedrin. You will discuss this with no one outside of your team, and you will answer only to me. Anything you need in the way of extra personnel—watcher teams, armed backup—you will clear through me, and only through me. In effect, you will operate as if in hostile territory. Moscow rules.”
Eve’s thoughts are ricocheting all over the place. “Why me?” she asks. “Surely you’ve got—”
“To be brutal, because you’re the one person that I know not to be compromised. How far the rot spreads, I can’t say. But I’ve looked pretty closely at your record, and my judgement is that you’re equal to the task.”