“Man, she looked good,” Larsson had said wistfully. “I was seriously jealous of you. I mean, I could tell what you’d been doing!”
Larsson had laughed out loud and Carver had laughed along with him. But though he could recall a vague image of Alix in that hotel room, and though he knew, as a historical fact, that they had made love that afternoon, the memories were fleeting and insubstantial, unreal ghosts of a time that had vanished beyond recovery.
And then he saw the picture of Alix on the yacht, being grabbed by another man’s hands, and all the emotions that had been hidden out of his reach burst through, and the pain he felt was like a branding iron on his heart.
“Sit down,” said Grantham. “I’ll get you a drink. You look like you could use it.”
He flicked a finger at one of his men, as if summoning a waiter. “Whiskey, chop-chop.”
Carver looked at Grantham’s smug features.
“You don’t give a toss, do you?”
Grantham let the anger wash over him.
“On the contrary-I certainly give a toss about the job I do, and the country I do it for. That’s why I’m here. Someone assigned Alexandra Petrova to do a honeytrap on Kurt Vermulen. And I’m sure you’ve worked out, same as I have, that she’s gone back to her roots, working for the Russians. I don’t know why. Maybe she got bored sitting around, waiting for you to wake up-”
“She was paying my bills,” said Carver.
“How admirable. Sacrificing her somewhat tarnished virtue for the man she loves.”
Carver looked at Grantham, glanced across at his men, then leaned forward.
“It’s a funny thing, the way my memory comes back. You talking like that reminds me of the last time we met. You made another one of your smart-arsed remarks, and I pointed out that I could kill you with your own pen. Do you remember that?”
“Point taken,” said Grantham. “It was a cheap shot. So let’s get down to business. Do you know how they got to Petrova, put her up to this escapade?”
“It was Yuri Zhukovski’s widow. She went to the place where Alix was working. Alix tried to escape. Obviously, she didn’t make it.”
“Ah, yes,” murmured Grantham appreciatively. “We thought this had the touch of Deputy Director Zhukovskaya-a very powerful, impressive lady, that one. Call me a cynic, but it strikes me Miss Petrova may well have been working for her all along.”
“I doubt it. Alix was screwing her husband.”
“Exactly. Zhukovskaya was controlling her husband’s mistress. That’s the kind of woman she is. Brilliant…”
For a moment Grantham seemed lost in admiration. Then he recovered himself.
“Anyway, let me tell you what Petrova has been doing since you last saw her. We think she got her hooks into Vermulen in Washington -that’s his normal base-but they’ve been in Europe the past few weeks, charging about like demented honeymooners. I can see why the Russians are curious, because Vermulen is certainly on some kind of a mission. He had a meeting in Amsterdam, though we don’t yet know who with. Next he went to Vienna to see a chap called Novak, who makes a murky living trading arms and information. His Venice contact was a former U.S. Army colleague, name of Reddin. As you can see from the picture, Mrs. Reddin came along, too, so it’s conceivable that was just a social encounter, though I doubt it. After that was Rome. We tracked him to another meet there, but the pictures were hopeless and we couldn’t identify the other party. Now they’re on a yacht that Vermulen has rented, ostensibly for a Mediterranean holiday.
“Those last shots I showed you were taken a couple of days ago, off the Corsican coast. My interpretation is that they’re having some kind of an argument. Or maybe she’s getting cozy, calming him down. Look, she’s operating alone, without backup. She has to do whatever it takes to keep him sweet. But the closer she gets, the more pissed off he’ll be if he ever discovers she’s been deceiving him. She can’t try to run for it, because then he’ll know for sure. She’s in the shit, Carver. And it’s all because of you.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Grantham opened up a new file on his laptop. This time the photographs showed a U.K. passport photo of a man in his mid-thirties, with sandy hair and a defiant, uncompromising expression.
“That,” said Grantham, “is Kenny Wynter. And two days from now, he’s due to meet Kurt Vermulen for lunch at the Hotel du Cap, on the coast between Nice and Cannes, down in the South of France.”
“Sounds very civilized.”
“I doubt it. Vermulen has a job for Wynter. We intercepted a call. It’s a blind date. The men have never met before, but evidently Wynter has been recommended.”
“What’s the job?”
“Vermulen wouldn’t tell him. Said he’d give him the details in person. But there’s only one reason you call Kenny Wynter, and that’s to steal something. The man’s spent the past fifteen years doing jobs to order: confidential documents, industrial plans and prototypes, financial papers, the occasional safe-deposit box. And he’s not fussy about his clients. He’s stolen military secrets for the Russians, the Chinese, the Iraqis, and the IRA, and we’ve lost good men and women because of it. The man is an unscrupulous shit, with blood on his hands. But he’s never once been caught. Arrested, of course, countless times, but there’s never been enough evidence to convict. Kenny Wynter has bought himself a flashy house up in Totteridge and a box at the Arsenal. He drives fast cars, screws gorgeous women-”
“Now him I could kill,” said Carver, sarcastically.
“Good,” said Grantham, dead serious. “Because you’re going to.”
53
“Have we heard from Petrova yet?” asked Olga Zhukovskaya.
The FSB colonel standing before her shook his head.
“Not since that meeting in Rome, Madam Deputy Director. I have ensured that the standard notice is placed in the classified advertisement section of the International Herald Tribune, but she has not responded.”
“Do we even know where she is?”
Another shake of the head, almost sorrowful this time.
“No. We have reason to believe that Vermulen might have chartered a yacht, but we have been unable to confirm that, and we would not be able to track it, even if we had. As you know, ma’am, our resources are not what they used to be. We have not launched a single reconnaissance satellite since September 1995. We have been completely blind since it ceased to function a year later.”
He sighed, somewhat theatrically.
“We used to impose our will across the globe; now the best we can hope for is to steal pictures off Western commercial satellites…”
Zhukovskaya was not in a mood for self-pity. It was not an emotion for which she’d ever seen any need.
“That may be. The fact remains: We need to find them. Vermulen is planning something. I can feel it.”
The colonel stayed silent, letting his boss think in peace. It did not take long for her to come to a decision. Olga Zhukovskaya was a woman who knew what she wanted. It was one of the qualities that made her such an effective leader.
“Whatever Vermulen is doing, it involves Pavel Novak. He will know what is happening. And very soon we will know, too.”
54