Shrinking into the shadows Simon checks his watch. It’s almost 2 a.m. The temptation to call out to Janie is agonising, overwhelming. But he has to know the truth.
At the entrance to one of the buildings she presses a buzzer. After perhaps half a minute, a figure steps into the dim pool of light, and Simon knows immediately that the scenario is infinitely worse than any he’s imagined. The man’s not Chinese. He looks Russian or Eastern European, and he’s got hardcore intelligence operative written all over him. Even at a distance, he radiates a pitiless authority. I’m fucked, Simon tells himself, as Janie hands the man the MI6-issue phone. I’m totally and utterly fucked.
Too wretched to be afraid, he forces himself to note every detail of the man’s appearance. There’s a brief conversation, and then he and Janie vanish into the building together. After a minute, Simon warily approaches the entrance, looking for a name or a number. There doesn’t appear to be either, but he’s confident he will be able to find the place again.
Briefly, he considers simply telling Eve that he has lost his phone, that it’s been stolen, and not saying anything about Janie. But he knows that it’s not in him to lie. He’ll tell her everything and offer his resignation, effective immediately. Perhaps she’ll accept it and send him back to London for what will undoubtedly be a highly unpleasant debriefing by Richard Edwards. Perhaps—and his heart leaps sadly at the prospect—they’ll decide to keep him in play. Feed him back to Janie to find out who’s running her.
He’s fifty metres from the building when he hears his name called.
He stops, sure that he’s mistaken. But there it is again, low and clear on the warm, damp air. Is it Janie? How could it be? As far as she’s concerned, he’s asleep in her flat.
“Simon, over here.”
The voice is coming from the unlit lane on his left. Heart pounding, he takes half-a-dozen tentative steps, senses movement in the darkness, catches an incongruous hint of French perfume on the night air.
“Who’s there?” he asks, his voice unsteady.
He has a momentary impression of a figure exploding from the shadows, of the whirling arc of the chukabocho, and then the carbon steel blade chops through his throat with such force that his head is almost severed.
Rising on her toes like a matador, eyes demonic, Villanelle sidesteps the black swathe of blood thrown from the falling body. Simon’s limbs shudder, a bubbling sound issues from his neck, and as he dies Villanelle feels a rush of feeling so intense, so icily numbing, it almost brings her to her knees. She crouches there for a moment, waves of sensation coursing through her. Then, wrenching the chukabocho free of the corpse and dropping it into a plastic shopping bag, followed by her bloodied surgical gloves, she walks swiftly away.
Ten minutes later she spots a battered Kymco scooter parked at the foot of an apartment block. Disabling the ignition lock and kick-starting the engine, she heads northwards, keeping to the narrower roads, until she reaches Nan Suzhou Lu, where she drops the plastic bag into the dark swirl of the creek. It’s a beautiful night—the sky purple, the city dim gold—and Villanelle feels vibrantly, thrillingly alive. Killing the English spy has restored something in her. The Zhang Lei action had its professional satisfactions, but the moment itself lacked impact. Taking out Simon Mortimer was a return to first principles. A violent, artistic kill. The chukabocho, weighed in the hand, was not so very different from the Spetsnaz machete her father taught her to use when she was a teenager. Unwieldy to begin with, but a lethal thing when correctly deployed.
The beauty of it is, she had no choice. Konstantin had ordered Janie to make sure that she was never followed to a rendezvous, and to drug the Englishman if necessary. But the little hooker fucked up, and once Simon Mortimer saw Konstantin, he couldn’t be allowed to live. That’s the way she’s going to argue it, anyway. The killing will almost certainly be blamed on the Triads, whose traditional murder weapon is the cleaver. Polastri will get the message loud and clear, but as far as everyone else is concerned—the press, the police—Simon Mortimer’s just going to be a tourist who found himself in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
Villanelle is about to head southwards towards the French Concession when a thought occurs to her. Within minutes, the scooter is puttering to a halt at the foot of a building adjacent to the Sea Bird Hotel. The hotel is unlit except for a small blue neon sign over the entrance. Villanelle knows which room is Eve’s; Konstantin’s surveillance people have watched her come and go since the night she and Simon arrived.
Silently, Villanelle climbs up the side of the hotel, the antique pipework and ironwork balconies offering easy hand- and footholds even in the near-darkness, and slips feet-first through the open, third-floor window.
For almost two minutes she crouches there, unmoving. Then she steps soundlessly towards the bed.
Eve’s clothes have been hung over a chair, and Villanelle gently runs the back of her hand over the black silk cocktail dress before lifting it to her face. It smells, very faintly, of scent, perspiration and traffic-fumes.
Eve’s lying with her mouth slightly open and one arm flung across the pillow. She’s wearing a flesh-coloured camisole, and without make-up looks unexpectedly vulnerable. Kneeling beside her, Villanelle listens to the whisper of her breath, and inhales her warm smell. Noting the faint tremor of Eve’s mouth, she touches her tongue to her own upper lip which has begun, very faintly, to throb.
“My enemy,” she murmurs in Russian, touching Eve’s hair. “Moy vrag.”
Almost as an afterthought, she searches the room. There’s a combination-locked briefcase chained to the bed she decides to leave alone. But on the bedside table, there’s a pretty, gilt-clasped eternity bracelet, and this Villanelle takes.
“Thank you,” she whispers, and with a last look at Eve slips silently out of the window. As she goes she hears the distant siren of an ambulance and the whooping of police cars. But Eve, for now, does not stir.
It’s five weeks later, and at midday the grey sky over the Dever Research Station promises rain. Set in sixty acres outside the village of Bullington in Hampshire, the former Logistics Corps barracks appears from the outside to comprise little more than a cluster of dilapidated red-brick blocks and prefabricated huts. Chain-link fencing topped with razor wire and signs prohibiting photography lend the place a grimly uninviting aspect.
Despite its neglected air Dever is an active station, classified as a top-secret government asset. Among other functions, it acts as a base for E Squadron, a Special Forces unit whose role is to conduct deniable operations in support of the Secret Intelligence Service.
Identifying himself at the gatehouse, Richard Edwards parks his thirty-year-old S-class Mercedes on an area of cracked tarmac. With the exception of a couple of security personnel who are making an unhurried circuit of the perimeter, the place appears deserted. Making his way past the main administration block, Richard enters a low, windowless building. Descending to the underground firing range, he finds Eve field-stripping a Glock 19 pistol under the watchful eye of Calum Dennis, the station armourer.
“So how are we doing?” he enquires, when the slide, spring, barrel, frame and magazine have been neatly lined up on the gun-mat.
“Getting there,” says Calum.
Eve stares fixedly down the range. “Can I try that last drill again?”
“Sure,” says Calum, handing Richard a pair of ear-defenders.
“Ready when you are,” says Eve, putting on her own ear-defenders.