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‘So … who is this?’ Kroshtov asked Pallesson, pointing at Corbett as he banged his vodka glass on the table hard enough to make it quite clear that he expected a straight answer.
Pallesson would have liked to have been able to lie. It didn’t look good, getting followed to a drop by one of his own. But it wouldn’t be hard for the Russian to discover who Corbett was. Dead or alive.
‘He’s one of ours,’ Pallesson admitted. ‘He must have followed me.’
‘Why are you here? Who sent you?’ Kroshtov asked the hooded Corbett, who was still lying sprawled on the terrace.
‘Pallesson asked me to cover his back.’
‘He’s full of shit. Oleg can dispose of him,’ said Pallesson.
Kroshtov took orders from no one. He picked up his hunting rifle, made sure there was a shell in the breach and handed it to Pallesson.
‘Your problem. You solve it. Take him down to the jetty.’
Kroshtov clearly welcomed an opportunity to demonstrate that he was in command. Barry Nuttall knocked back the rest of his vodka as he watched Oleg frogmarch Corbett out on to the jetty. He wondered how Pallesson could be so sure their gatecrasher was working alone. The last thing they needed was MI6 crawling all over them. He admired the man’s balls, though, even if he did dress like a Hampstead queer.
Max laid completely still behind the rocks he was using as cover. He knew there was every chance they’d be scouring the hillside, looking for any sign of movement. If he didn’t attract attention, they’d probably miss him. Unless they had heat-seeking equipment.
Small, sharp stones were sticking into his elbows, and the undergrowth was clawing at him through his thin trousers. He tried to push all discomfort from his mind. The slightest movement would expose him.
This situation really was an utter shambles. That was the problem with instinct. The fact that your instincts had proved right counted for nothing if you didn’t have the ability to deal with the scenario facing you. Max challenged whatever was stabbing his thigh to hurt even more. It focused his mind.
One of the Russians led Corbett halfway along the jetty and left him there. Max could see Pallesson was following closely behind with the rifle. It was pretty clear what was going to happen next.
‘You bastard,’ Max muttered under his breath.
It crossed his mind that he could create a diversion to buy Corbett time. But putting himself at such risk went against his training. His heart was telling him to do one thing; his head another.
He assumed that Corbett would be talking to Pallesson through the hood. Whatever he said made no difference. Without warning, Pallesson raised the rifle to his shoulder.
Max saw Corbett’s head explode before he heard the shot echo off the other side of the lake. The body slumped on to the jetty.
Pallesson walked back up to the dacha and handed the rifle to Kroshtov.
‘Good thinking, getting him on to the jetty. Very messy,’ he said coolly. ‘Now, let’s get this show on the road, shall we?’
Kroshtov issued some more orders. A man emerged from the dacha with a small metal case, followed by another carrying kilo bricks of heroin wrapped in heavy black plastic.
Pallesson had felt fear many times in his life; not least when his father used to come into his bedroom to beat him with his belt for not being asleep. But he had learnt to mask his fear by focusing on a particular spot on the carpet. He’d never let his father see that he was afraid.
As he walked over to the table and opened the metal case his hands were shaking. By placing his body in the way, he made sure Kroshtov couldn’t see his fingers fumbling with the catches. He’d killed before, of course. Not that anyone had ever pointed the finger at him when his brother died. It had been accepted as a tragic accident. Two young boys ragging in a pool. The elder hit his head and drowned. After that the beatings stopped.
He tore himself back to the present and opened the metal case. Inside gleamed the Fabergé egg that he’d lodged with Kroshtov as collateral. A show of good faith that he and Barry Nuttall were good for the two million euros. Once the deal was completed, he would resume ownership of the treasure.
Pallesson was momentarily transfixed by the forbidden treasure. It had been made in 1894 and on the top of the egg was the image of Nicholas II, encircled by rose-cut diamonds. It was covered by translucent, dark-red enamel patterned with diamonds and was lined with off-white velvet. Sadly the ‘surprise’ inside the egg had long gone.
Until recently, it had been stored in a vault under the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. But its presence had now been erased from the records.
Pallesson took the egg out of its box and held it in front of him. He wanted to see it glint in the sunlight.
‘Two million euros?’ Pallesson confirmed with Barry.
Barry Nuttall nodded and opened his cases. He fondly ran his hand over the two million euros, giving them a paternal parting pat. Then he walked over to the bricks of ‘gear’ and picked one of them up.
‘A hundred kilos?’ he checked. Kroshtov nodded.
‘Well, if it’s okay with you, I’ll get this lot loaded up and be on my way back to Blighty. Budem zdorovy, as they say in Essex.’
Pallesson snapped the Fabergé egg’s metal case shut and turned to Kroshtov.
‘Looks like we’re done. Nice doing business with you, Sergei.’
Max lay on his back and focused on the clouds. He’d just witnessed his nemesis blow off the head of his colleague in front of a bunch of Russians of whom he knew nothing. He had no idea what had been going on outside the dacha. He didn’t even know whether either Pallesson or Corbett were on official business. His instincts told him Pallesson was working for himself. And that he’d just murdered a British agent.
Max had known for too long that Pallesson was an evil son of a bitch. It was time to stop him. Time to get revenge. But he also knew that Pallesson was a master of compromise and blackmail. If he reported what he’d witnessed to someone under Pallesson’s spell, it would be he who would be destroyed, not Pallesson.
He wasn’t sure he could even risk confiding in Tryon, the man who’d recruited him into ‘the Office’.
1 (#ulink_64ed1a14-5ce8-5758-a9e0-e6890a3867fd)
Monaco
Max Ward had to get out of bed when room service arrived with their breakfast. Gemma was pretending to be asleep. He slipped a ten-euro note into the waiter’s hand and asked him to park the trolley by the window.
Max wanted to have breakfast with Gemma, so he poured her some coffee, added the exact amount of hot milk that she expected and took it through to the bedroom.
She was lying with her back to him, welded to the sheets in semi-slumber.
‘Coffee?’ he asked, sitting on the bed. She made an appreciative noise and rolled on to her back, keeping her eyes shut. Max slid his clenched hand under the sheet and found her knee. Then he started to stroke the inside of her thigh with the back of his fingers. She pulled the pillow over her face. Max opened his hand and rubbed an ice cube up her thigh.
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she said as her head jolted up from under the pillow.
‘Breakfast then?’
While Gemma headed for the bathroom, Max sat down at the small table and gazed across the harbour. A wooden water taxi struggled from one side to the other, dwarfed by the super yachts.
Gemma barely bothered to do up her dressing gown as she ambled towards him. Max thought about grabbing her and taking her back to bed, but his boiled eggs were getting cold. And they’d cut his toast soldiers half an inch wide, exactly as he liked them.
As she sat down, Gemma looked out of the window. Two women were power-walking down the Parcours Princesse Grace – followed discreetly by a bored minder. She wondered when they’d last had sex with their husbands.
Max leant over and kissed her. Then he set about his eggs.
‘Why did they do that?’ Max wondered aloud as he returned his attention to the window. ‘Why did they cover this place in higher and higher concrete boxes? Jesus, you’d be pissed off if they’d trashed your view with that monstrosity, wouldn’t you?’ he asked, pointing at a recent erection that had blocked the sea view – any view, in fact – from the equally offensive apartment blocks behind it.
‘Greed,’ suggested Gemma.
‘No one lives in them anyway,’ Max said as he decapitated one of his eggs. ‘They’re tax bolt-holes. As long as you get your cleaner to run the taps every day and turn on the lights, they can’t prove you’re not living here.’
‘Fine, I suppose, as long as you don’t have to live in this ghastly place.’
‘It’s not that bad. And of course you have to pay someone to drive your car around too. But it’s cheap living here, compared to paying tax anywhere else.’
‘Could you live here?’
‘Well, if you came to visit me every weekend, I might think about it.’
‘Really? Where would you put your other girlfriends at the weekend then?’
‘I’d send them back to Saint-Tropez, of course,’ Max replied without missing a beat.
He looked around the room. Everything was so perfect. The orchids proudly erect in their pot, the imposing gilded mirror frame that perfectly matched the candle holders and standard lamps. Even the rails holding the thick, white curtains were coordinated. And yet everything wasn’t perfect. It never was in Gemma’s life.
‘I get frightened sometimes, staying in places like this,’ she said pensively. ‘It reminds me, in a weird way, of what it’s like to have nothing. Look at those little pots of jam. We’re just going to send them back, even though we’ve paid for them. I didn’t have any fucking jam when I was a kid.’
Max stood up, put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. She was haunted. He wished he could do something about that. But she’d chosen someone else.
As they stepped into the lift, Max pressed the first-floor button for the spa and the ground floor for himself. He held the leather document holder loosely in one hand, deliberately keeping his eyes off it.
‘Aren’t you a bit overdressed for a massage?’ he asked flippantly.
‘Very funny. Actually, I’ve ordered a male masseuse who’s going to strip me naked, cover me in chocolate and lick it off. It’s a hotel speciality. Then I’m going shopping. What time will you be back?’
‘Oh, I’d say about three o’clock. Then we can explore together.’
As the lift ground to a halt, Max kissed Gemma’s neck under her long auburn hair.
‘Stop it,’ she said, taking a step away, but giving in to a wide smile. ‘Or I’ll drag you back upstairs. And then you’ll be late for your mysterious meeting. Go on, tell me. What’s in your holder?’
‘You know I can’t. Or I’d have to kill you with my bare hands.’ With that he gave her neck a small bite.
‘Call me to say where you want to meet.’
She waved as she exited down the corridor.
Max watched Gemma walk away. He wondered whether she swung her arse in that rolling manner for him. She still took his breath away. Her long flowing hair falling down her back, her dress clinging to her body just enough to be tantalizingly sexy, and best of all those exquisite calf muscles.
She was such a confused soul. Spoilt and self-centred on the one hand, and yet generous and insecure on the other.
He wondered why she half turned and took her sunglasses off in that mock-coquettish manner. Maybe she wanted to be sure that he was still watching her.
Max marvelled at the main reception of the Hôtel de Paris as he walked across the multicoloured marble floor. It was twelve o’clock in London, according to one of the clocks above the concierge’s desk.
They built things beautifully in the eighteen hundreds. The high ceiling, the aged mirrors lining the walls and the glass atrium that flooded the whole area with natural light.
He looked at the old ladies sitting on the delicate Louis XV chairs and wondered what they did all day. They made him think about his mother. Was she sitting around in some hotel in Spain? Maybe she’d moved on? After all, she wouldn’t have bothered to let him know. As usual, he cast her from his thoughts as quickly as she’d invaded them.
Max stopped in front of the wooden revolving door to let a woman in an apron come past. She was carrying a huge bunch of red and yellow roses, all perfectly coming into flower. Some guy must have been caught swimming outside the ropes, he thought to himself.
As he waited, he admired the magnificent bronze of Louis XIV on horseback, waving his sword around with an air of imperious egotism. The French had probably been all right, Max mused, until they had a revolution and became ridiculous socialists. Since then, they’d been nothing but trouble.
Max nodded to the doorman, bid him ‘bonjour’ and stepped into the revolving door. It was a beautiful February day in the Casino Square, but the fresh, cold air made him reach for his coat buttons. He was a bit early and he knew he only had a couple of hundred metres to walk.
He had time to nip into the casino. Just to have a look around. No harm in that, although he knew he’d win if he had a crack. No one would know. It could pay for dinner. But a sign at the foot of the steps said: Ouvert tous les jours à partir de 14 h. Maybe that was a good thing.
Max’s mind flashed back to his last ‘gambling’ dressing-down on the Embankment in London from his then immediate superior Colin Corbett.
Max had been leaning on the black railings watching the seagulls, opposite Vauxhall Cross.
‘Do you have any idea why we’re having this conversation here, and not in that building?’ Corbett had asked, pointing across the river.
Max felt like saying, ‘The weather?’ but thought better of it.
‘Well, I’ll tell you why. We’re here because I have to decide whether we let you go, or stay with you. And I’ll be honest with you. Your file doesn’t make particularly good reading. So I didn’t want this conversation on the record. For your sake, Ward.’
Corbett was referring to the incident in Saudi Arabia that had led to Max being sent back to London in disgrace.
‘My file?’
‘Your file. History’s repeating itself, isn’t it?’
‘No. What are you talking about?’
A squat Filipino woman walking a Yorkshire terrier had shuffled slowly past them. Corbett had instinctively shut up until she was out of earshot.
‘Thrown out of Eton for gambling. Thrown out of Saudi for gambling. Any pattern revealing itself there?’
‘I was trying to make some contacts.’
‘We’re not idiots, Ward. Don’t think we don’t know what happened. You let some card game compromise your work. And we had to bail you out of there.’
‘I told you, I was trying to make a few contacts.’
‘No. You weren’t. You got sucked in like a mug. Because you have a weakness. Just like your father …’
‘That isn’t fair. He was a bookmaker.’
‘He shot himself, Ward. Because he lost all his money.’
‘That’s cheap. Very cheap,’ Max had said, watching the seagulls float on the air above the Thames. He hadn’t known whether to smack Corbett in the face or just walk away. A seagull had perched on the railings a couple of feet away from them.
‘They have a knowing look, don’t you think?’ Max had asked, buying time to compose himself.
‘Fuck the seagull. Do you actually want this job? According to Nash, not that much.’
Max had paused, as if making up his mind. In truth, he was trying to control his anger.
‘My father made a big sacrifice to send me to Eton. I wish he hadn’t, because it killed him, one way or another.’ Max’s voice had wavered. ‘So of course I want this job. Otherwise it was all for nothing. This bloody job is all I have to show for his sacrifice.’
