“I’d like to know why I’m here. It would have been easier for you to kill me when we were in Boltino.”
“Don’t think I wasn’t tempted. As it is, it may be that I’ve made a bad mistake. We’ll see.” He drew on the cigarette. “The only reason I didn’t kill you is because I owed you. It was stupid of me not to see the second bodyguard. I don’t usually make mistakes and I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you. But before you get any fancy ideas, we’re quits. The debt is cancelled. From now on, you’re nothing to me. You’re not going to work for me. And I don’t really care whatever happens to you.”
“So why am I here?”
“Because the people I work for want to see you. We’re going there now.”
“There?”
“The Widow’s Palace. We’ll get a boat.”
From the name, I expected somewhere sombre, an old, dark building with black curtains drawn across the windows. But in fact the Widow’s Palace was an astonishing place, like something out of the story books I had read as a child, built out of pink and white bricks with dozens of windows glittering in the sun. There was a covered walkway on the level of the first floor, stretching from one end to the other, held up by slender pillars with archways below. And the palace wasn’t standing beside the canal. It was actually sinking into it. The water was lapping at the front door with the white marble steps disappearing below the murky surface.
We pulled in and stepped off the boat. There was a man standing at the entrance with thick shoulders and folded arms, wearing a white shirt and a black suit. He examined us briefly, then nodded for us to continue forward. Already I was regretting this. As I passed from the sunlight to the shadows of the interior, I was thinking of what Zelin had said as he left the helicopter. You don’t know these people. They will kill you. Maybe three long years of taking orders from Vladimir Sharkovsky had clouded my judgement. I was no longer used to making decisions.
It would have been better if I had run away before breakfast. I could have sneaked on a train to another city. I could have gone to the police for help. I remembered something my grandmother used to say when she was cooking: out of the latki, into the fire.
A massive spiral staircase – white marble with wrought-iron banisters – rose up, twisting over itself. Rykov went first and I followed a few steps behind, neither of us speaking. I was nervous but he was completely at ease, one hand in his trouser pocket, taking his time. We came to a corridor lined with paintings: portraits of men and women who must have died centuries before. They stood in their gold frames, watching us pass. We walked down to a pair of doors and before he opened them, Rykov turned and spoke briefly, quietly.
“Say nothing until you are spoken to. Tell the truth. She will know if you’re lying.”
She? The widow?
He knocked and without waiting for an answer opened the doors and went through.
The woman who was waiting for us was surely too young to have married and lost a husband. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-six or twenty-seven and my first thought was that she was very beautiful. My second was that she was dangerous. She was quite short, with long, black hair, tied back. It contrasted with the paleness of her skin. She wore no make-up apart from a smear of crimson lipstick that was so bright it was almost cruel. She was dressed in a black silk shirt, open at the neck. A simple gold necklace twisted around her neck. She could have been a model or an actress but there was something that danced in her eyes and told me she was neither.
She was sitting behind a very elegant, ornate table with a line of windows behind her, looking out over the Grand Canal. Two chairs had been placed in front of her and we took our places without waiting to be told. She had not been doing anything when we came in. It was clear that she had simply been waiting for us.
“Mr Grant,” she said, and it took me a moment to realize she was talking to Rykov. “How did it go?” Her voice was very young. She spoke English with a strange accent which I couldn’t place.
“There was no problem, Mrs Rothman,” Rykov – or Grant – replied.
“You killed Sharkovsky?”
“Three bullets. I got into the compound, thanks to the helicopter pilot. He flew me out again. Everything went according to plan.”
“Not quite.” She smiled and her eyes were bright but I knew something bad was coming and I was right. Slowly she turned to face me as if noticing me for the first time. Her eyes lingered on me. I couldn’t tell what was in her mind. “I do not remember asking you to bring me a Russian boy.”
Grant shrugged. “He helped me and I brought him here because it seemed the easiest thing to do. It occurred to me that he might be useful to you… and to Scorpia. He has no background, no family, no identity. He’s shown himself to have a certain amount of courage. But if you don’t need him, I’ll get rid of him for you. And of course there’ll be no extra charge.”
I had been struggling to follow all this. My teacher, Nigel Brown, had done a good job – my English was very advanced. But still, it was the first time I had heard it spoken by other people, and there were one or two words I didn’t understand. But nor did I need to. I fully understood the offer that Grant had just made and knew that once again my life was in the balance. The worst of it was that there was nothing I could do. I had nothing to say. I’d never be able to fight my way out of this house. I could only sit there and see what this woman decided.
She took her time. I felt her examining me and tried not to show how afraid I was. “That’s very generous of you, Mr Grant,” she said, at last. “But what gives you the idea that I can’t deal with this myself?”
I hadn’t seen her lower her hand beneath the surface of the table but when she raised it, she was holding a gun, a silver revolver that had been polished until it shone. She held it almost like a fashion accessory, a perfectly manicured finger curling around the trigger. It was pointing at me and I could see that she was deadly serious. She intended to use it.
I tried to speak. No words came out.
“It’s rather a shame,” Mrs Rothman went on. “I don’t enjoy killing, but you know how it is. Scorpia will not accept a second-rate job.” Her hand hadn’t moved but her eyes slid back to Grant. “Sharkovsky isn’t dead.”
“What?” Grant was shocked.
Mrs Rothman moved her arm so that the gun was facing him. She pulled the trigger. Grant was killed instantly, propelled backwards in his chair, crashing onto the floor.
I stared. The noise of the explosion was ringing in my ears. She swung the gun back to me.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” she asked.
“Sharkovsky’s dead!” I gasped. It was all I could think to say. “He was shot three times.”
“That may well be true. Unfortunately, our intelligence is that he survived. He’s in hospital in Moscow. He’s critical. But the doctors say he’ll pull through.”
I didn’t know how to react to this information. It seemed impossible. The shots had been fired at close range. I had seen him thrown off his feet. And yet I had always said he was the devil. Perhaps it would take more than bullets to end his life.
The gun was still pointing at me. I waited for Mrs Rothman to fire again. But suddenly she smiled as if nothing had happened, put the gun down and stood up.
“Would you like a glass of Coke?” she asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“Please don’t ask me to repeat myself, Yassen. I find it very boring. We can’t sit and talk here, with a dead body in the room. It isn’t dignified. Let’s go next door.”
She slid out from behind the desk and I followed her through a door that I hadn’t noticed before – it was part of a bookshelf covered with fake books so as not to spoil the pattern. There was a much larger living room behind the door with two plump sofas on either side of a glass table and a massive stone fireplace, though no fire. Fresh flowers had been arranged in a vase and the scent of them hung in the air. Drinks – Coke for me, iced tea for her – had already been served.