The words were spoken in Russian.
Alix smiled. “Except in Moscow we wouldn’t have to wear bathing suits. We could be naked-so much more comfortable.”
“What do you expect? This is an American hotel.” The woman shook her head in mock sorrow. “Crazy people.”
“Careful,” said Alix. “My boyfriend is American.”
“Maybe he is an exception!”
The woman looked around, confirming that they were still alone. Then she spoke again, not so chatty anymore.
“So, your boyfriend, what has he been doing?”
“He had a meeting yesterday, with an Italian, he would not say who. But I know they met in a park, on the Aventine Hill. He said it had a magnificent view of St. Peter’s. Maybe there are cameras nearby that you can check. Also, he had a message from Novak. I do not know the significance, but it concerned a particular house, in France.”
She passed over the details. The woman did not seem impressed.
“This is not enough-a meeting, but you do not know who with; a house, but you do not know its significance. Moscow will expect more than this.”
“I’m sorry. I’m doing my best.”
“In any event, I have a message from the deputy director. She regrets to inform you that your friend in Geneva passed away. As a consequence, payments to the clinic have been stopped.”
Alix gasped. She looked wide-eyed at the other woman before bending over, her head in her hands, the sobs shallow at first, then convulsing her whole body.
The other woman made no attempt to comfort her.
“You must understand,” she said eventually, “this makes no difference to your mission. You are to continue as before. That is an order.”
She got up to go.
“Enjoy the rest of your bath.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Vermulen when Alix got back to their suite.
Now there was a good question. Alix was distraught, unable to hide the pain from her eyes. But when she asked herself why, the answer was more complicated than a simple matter of loss.
Of course, she was devastated by the news of Carver’s death. She thought of the man he had been, their time together, the time they might have had. For months she had clung to the hope that somehow he might recover, maybe not completely, but enough that they could have some kind of future together. Now that hope had been dashed forever, and the constant, dull ache of watching him eke out a half-life in the clinic was replaced by the absolute desolation of grief.
And yet, though she could barely admit it, even to herself, she felt another emotion: relief. The burden of responsibility Carver’s incapacity had created had weighed on her, and poisoned her feelings for him. Deep down, she resented him for deserting her, disappearing into his madness and leaving her to cope, forcing her to take the job with Vermulen. Then she’d felt guilty for harboring such terrible, unfair thoughts. And that had made her resent him even more.
Now he was gone, and the weight was lifted. She could remember Carver as the man he had been when they first met. And she could try to rebuild her life, free of the creature he had become. Somewhere on the edge of her consciousness, there was even a sense of excitement, the possibility of being free for something new.
“Oh, nothing, really,” she said. “I just met someone in the lobby, someone I knew from home. She told me about a friend of ours. He’d not been well for a long time and she just heard… he’s died.”
Vermulen had been sitting at a writing desk. Now he got to his feet and held out his arms. His eyes conveyed profound understanding, as though a question had been answered, a problem solved.
She went to him at last, and it wasn’t because she was doing her job, but because he was a living, breathing man and she needed the shelter of his arms. She laid her head on his chest and he stroked her hair as she cried. He lifted her head and dried the tears from her cheeks. They kissed, tentatively at first and then with rising intensity until, without another word, he took her arm and led her into the bedroom.
48
Three days out, one more to go. It was early evening, still a while to go before sunset, and they were traversing a southeastern slope, taking shelter from the wind that had been blowing in from the sea, away to the north and west. The mountains were no more than five or six thousand feet high, but topped by razor-sharp shark’s tooth peaks that made them seem much more imposing. Carver and Larsson were back on equal terms now as they tacked from side to side up the slope, using kick turns to change the angle of their ascent. They weren’t talking much. With the amount of effort they were expending every day, breath was too precious to waste on conversation.
There was a long, exposed ridge up ahead, a spine of rock a few yards wide, which jutted from the main body of the mountain, dropping away almost sheer on either side before it fanned out again into a less precipitous slope that fell, like one side of a pyramid, to the valley floor a thousand feet below. The two men planned to cross the ridge, then ski back down to lower, sheltered ground, where they could pitch their two-man tunnel tent, brew up some water on their gas stove, and mix it with their dried rations. Carver was looking forward to beef curry and rice for supper, a classic piece of dehydrated cuisine from the Royal Marines cookbook-a taste of the old days.
The higher they climbed, the less cover there was around them. They began to feel the wind picking up, snatching at their clothes, pushing against their backpacks, beating the hoods of their parkas against their ears. For the past hour or so, the slope that rose ahead of them and to the left had filled most of their field of vision. Carver had become aware of a gradual darkening of the heavens as the blue sky gave way to thickening gray clouds. But now, as they approached the ridge, the view opened up and they could look out toward the Atlantic.
A few strides up ahead, Larsson was jabbing his arm back and forth, pointing at the horizon, and calling out a single word, “Storm!”
Carver didn’t need telling. Away to the northwest a solid wall of charcoal-colored clouds was bearing down upon them and blocking out the waning sunlight like a giant blackout curtain drawing closed.
The wind was picking up speed with every minute that passed, and flurries of snow were whipping through the air, blowing almost horizontally into their faces. As the temperature dropped, windchill would become an ever-greater threat. Exposed skin could suffer frostbite within minutes.
Carver looked past Larsson at the ridge, then glanced back toward the onrushing weather. There was no way they could make it across the ridge before the storm hit them. If they got caught out there, with no shelter on any side, they would be blown off the mountainside like seeds from a dandelion. Even if they survived the wind, they would have to cope with a whiteout. The windblown snow and diffused, cloudy light would remove all definition from their surroundings, leaving them lost and disoriented. On flat ground a whiteout was dangerous enough. On a narrow ridge, with deadly drops on either side, it meant certain death.
Carver pointed up ahead, then gave a single, decisive shake of the head and drew a finger across his throat. Larsson nodded in response and pointed back toward the main bulk of the mountain. “Make camp-now!” he shouted, barely able to make himself heard over the battering clamor of the wind.
They turned around and skied back a dozen strides to a short, flat shelf in the lee of the mountainside that gave some meager protection from the elements. They took their skis off and jabbed them vertically into the snow along with their ski poles, then slung their packs down next to them. Both men had snow shovels strapped to the outside of their backpacks. They freed them and wordlessly began digging a rectangular hole, shaped like a section of a shallow trench, fighting the wind and snow that seemed as determined to cancel out every effort they made.