Grabbing a couple of paper towels, Bourne moistened them, then scooped up the glass fragments, pushed them down into the waste disposal hopper. He ran the water repeatedly until all the glitter had washed down the drain.
“We need to get back to our seats,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“You can,” he said, “and you will.” He turned her to him. “You have a life to live, Anjelica. A long one.”
At the sound of the name her mother had called her, her lips formed a tentative smile. “That sounds good coming from you.” The smile never reached her eyes. “Not that you’ll believe me. I know I’ve used up all my credibility with you.”
“Come on,” he said, reaching for the door. “Someone has to believe in you.”
Reaching out, she held his movement in abeyance. “Not you, Jason. Anyone but you.”
He glanced down at her hand and she snatched it away.
“Don’t you see? I’m like a scorpion. No matter what I say, no matter which way I twist or turn, in the end I’ll sting. It’s my nature.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He opened the accordion door, pressing them up against each other in the process. She flinched away, as if stung or burned, but in the end she followed him back to their seats. As with, it seemed to her, everything else in her life, she had no choice.
—
“Come on now, smarten up, Morgana. You have no choice.”
Morgana regarded Françoise with a look of vague bewilderment, which was now calculated, rather than blindly innocent.
“Go with the flow,” Soraya had said. And: “You’ll think I’ve thrown you to the dogs.” She thought that part was behind her, but now she was further along in her brief, burrowing deeper down, and the dogs—the real dogs of war—were heading toward her with teeth bared.
“Why don’t you do it, then?”
“It’s you he’s after. I need to stay out of it.”
They were at breakfast the next day, Françoise knocking on her door at daybreak, the sky still in the process of throwing off the veil of night. Hours before Larry London would wake and come to her with room service breakfast, as was his habit. In a rickety café habituated by local fishermen come in with their catch or on their way out onto the choppy gray water. The stench of fish, both fresh and smoked, was only partially watered down by the fug of cigarette smoke.
“Or seem to stay out of it,” Françoise added, as she poured another packet of sugar into her coffee, stirred in cream.
It was all Morgana could do to keep her gorge down. Her breakfast lay before her. It was no more appetizing now than when it had been brought out of the kitchen.
“I’m not saying…I mean, there must be another way out.”
“There isn’t. You know there isn’t.” Françoise’s voice was clipped, her tone hard, the better to emphasize the finality of her words.
“Okay, well.” Morgana’s gaze slipped sideways as the door opened to admit a couple more fishermen in their thick rubber slickers and high, gum-soled boots. The fish stink grew stronger than Morgana thought possible. “I’m not saying I’ll do it, but what’s your plan.”
“It’s simple,” Françoise said, “like all the best plans. The less moving parts the better.”
Morgana could agree with that. She nodded. “Fire away.” She winced at her choice of words.
“The plan takes advantage of Larry’s weakness.”
“What weakness?”
“Women. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“It’s hard to miss,” Morgana said. “I just didn’t see it as a weakness.”
“Neither does Larry. That’s the best part. It’s hiding in plain sight.”
Françoise took some coffee, made a face, then set the cup down in its saucer. The café was packed and noisy, which is why she’d chosen it for their early-morning rendezvous.
“Larry’s always wanted to bed me despite my bad treatment of him back when. I haven’t let him, of course, but the key thing here is I haven’t cut him off at the knees either. So…”
“So what? You’re going to seduce him? How does that help us?”
“Do you know how to handle a handgun?”
“Not really, no,” Morgana lied. The moment she discovered that Françoise was a Russian spy, she had quit telling her the truth about anything. The tricky part was to act natural, not to give her former friend the slightest hint of the change in their relationship. She had enough to worry about with Larry ordered to kill her without being afraid Françoise might beat him to it.
Lions to the left of me, lions to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you. She sang this to herself to take the edge off the fear and loathing, the claustrophobic sensation of being trapped.
Françoise tossed her head. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll be so close to Larry you couldn’t miss if you tried.”
Morgana’s stomach gave a lurch, her heart rate increasing. “What are you talking about?”
“Just this.” Françoise leaned over the table, lowering her voice, though in the good-natured din there was no need. “Tonight I’m going to let Larry seduce me. I’ll pretend to get a bit drunk. Then I’ll lean over the table, like I am now. Only tonight my shirt buttons will be open enough for him to see the tops of my breasts. That’s all the invitation he’ll need, believe me.”
Morgana had trouble breathing, as if the air around her had turned gelid, as if she were submerged beneath a dark and ominous sea. “And then?” She could scarcely get the words out.
“And then you’ll come out of the closet with the handgun I will provide and kill him.”
“What?”
“One shot to the back of his head.” She cocked her hand like a gun. “Blam!”
“That’s crazy. Forget it.”
“Don’t worry, Morgana, I’ll make sure he’s on top. His back will be toward you.” Françoise smiled winningly. “He won’t know what hit him, I guarantee it.”
Through the smeared windows the sun was burning off the last of the early morning’s gray mist.
—
“Honesty is inefficient,” Mala said.
“In our world, at the edge of civilization.”
“No, I mean anytime, anywhere. Honesty reveals too much, leaving you feeling defeated.”
They were back in their seats. Bourne had drifted off a bit, but it was the kind of surface sleep he’d learned at Treadstone. He made sure he was sensing Mala; if she had left her seat again he would have been right behind her. She had ordered a vodka with plenty of ice, drinking it slowly, methodically, in the way people do when they’re determined to get drunk. Bourne wasn’t about to let that happen; he’d cut her off before she got halfway there. But he didn’t stop her now, sensing that she needed the fortification to tell him whatever it was that was burning its way through her mind.
It was a time of loss for Bourne. Boris was dead, Sara was who knew where, in whatever kind of dangerous situation, and he was sure he was losing Mala, though in what way he could not yet discern. But then what had been their connection? Maybe it had been spun of spider’s-web silk, apt to be broken at a moment’s notice, or with a wrong turn. Perhaps their connection was an illusion; she wasn’t like any other woman he had met or would likely meet. Like the Sphinx in the desert outside Cairo she was a complete enigma. And, quite possibly, therein lay her allure.
Mala stirred beside him, the ice cubes tinkling against the glass as she took another sip. She held the vodka in her mouth a moment, savoring its icy bite before swallowing it.
“Having said that, I’m going to tell you a story. It will be up to you to decide whether or not it’s true.” She took another sip, settled back in her seat. “For some time after my convalescence, after you left, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. You had so kindly and generously put my sister into ballet school, and she took to it like a duck to water; her life path was set. But me…?” She shrugged. “I know you believe that I contacted Keyre, that he has some magical or
psychic hold over me. I suppose that would have made a good tale, but it’s not true. I felt nothing toward him—not hate, not fear, not attraction—nothing at all.
“I needed to get away from the family you put me with. They were nice enough and very helpful to me, but in that house, late at night, or even in the early morning over breakfast, the stench of burning flesh would come to me. I’d have to push my chair back, run to the bathroom and vomit. As if that could rid me of the smell. It couldn’t, of course it couldn’t. That stench will be with me until the moment of my death.”
She pressed the call button, and when the attendant arrived, she shook her empty glass to ask for another. She remained silent until the second vodka arrived and she’d taken several slow and deliberate sips, moving further along the road to getting drunk. Bourne watched her like a hawk.
“So I had to leave,” Mala continued as if there had been no interruption. “I missed my mother; I had to find her—it was a kind of fever. I went home to Estonia. I spent six weeks looking for her, but there was no sign of her. It was as if the earth had swallowed her whole. Words are inadequate to express my despair. I was an orphan. Worse, I didn’t know whether my mother was alive or dead.
“I wandered, then, to Prague, don’t ask me why, then Rome, and ended up in Paris. I was grieving, and more importantly, considering how my life turned out, I was angry—angry at my father for selling us out, at my mother for not stopping him, even Liis, for having a life I did not, could not have.”
She pursed her lips, her eyes heavy-lidded, as if these memories still weighed mightily on her. “Paris in the springtime, with the horse chestnuts in bloom and the couples young and old holding hands and kissing as they strolled along the banks of the Seine. What was there for me in Paris, you may ask? I had remembered that my mother spoke to me about Paris when I was little; she even taught me some French. I looked for her there, too, but, of course, it was impossible, like looking for a needle in a haystack. Then, one afternoon in the Tuileries, while I sat on one of those green metal chairs, feeling the sun on my face, I met Françoise. She stepped, rather rudely, between me and the sun, to get my attention, I suppose.
“It was clear from the first moment of our meeting that afternoon, and confirmed soon after as we sat at a café, drinking espressos, that she had meant to meet me. Someone had told her about me, and I imagine you can guess who that someone was.
“As soon as you had placed me with that family and left, Keyre began monitoring me, my movements from city to city, and he had sent Françoise after me. She’d just missed me in Rome, but, despite the lovers all around me, I was comfortable enough in Paris, feeling closer to my mother, hearing French spoken, to give her the chance to catch up.
“Of course, she didn’t tell me this right away. She had a way about her—ingratiating without being in the least condescending. Gradually, as we spent more time together, I formed the impression that her background, like mine, was something she wished to forget. That formed a bond, you see. That it was a false bond was something I learned much later, after she had indoctrinated me into her way of life, had trained me. She became my mentor and me her willing acolyte. Under her tutelage, I began to make money—lots of it. I became a go-between, taking a rake-off from both sides. That the deals were shady, that the principals were on the wrong side of the law—often as far on the wrong side as you could get—was of no interest to me. The money was. I was addicted.” Her smile was rueful. “You see, Keyre’s Yibir magic worked on me, after all.”
She was drinking faster now, as if her impending inebriation could save her from herself. Almost finished with her second vodka, she was about to hit the call button like a hospital patient in pain who keeps giving herself intravenous doses of morphine, when Bourne stopped her.
“Go on,” he said softly. “Where did it all go wrong?”
Mala closed her eyes for a moment. “I suppose you could say that it all went wrong the moment Françoise came between me and the soothing warmth of the Parisian sunlight. But I know that’s not what you meant.” She took a breath, stared into the cubes in her glass. “What happened was this: I discovered that Françoise was not what she appeared to be—no, that’s not quite right. She was precisely what she appeared to be. On the surface. But underneath, down where it counted, she was someone else. She wasn’t French as she purported to be; she was Russian. Her name wasn’t Françoise Sevigne, it was Alyosha Orlova.”
The name sent a lightning bolt through Bourne. “She isn’t, by any chance, related to Dima Vladimirovich Orlov, the man we’re going to see, is she?”
Mala nodded. “His granddaughter.”
“And Katya, the older woman you were once friends with, is Alyosha’s mother.”
Mala nodded. Bourne sat very still, thinking that this woman was like an onion—the more layers you peeled away, the more intense the experience.
“Alyosha has been long lost to Orlov; she’s the black swan of the family.”
Bourne shifted in his seat, as if his mind, working at light speed, made it impossible for his body to remain still. A skein was forming, but he had yet to make out its final shape.
“And that’s when you found out that she was working for Keyre.”
“Yes and no,” Mala said. She seemed calmer now, as if, having broken, the storm or the fever that had gripped her had become a shadow of its former self. “Yes, she was working for Keyre, but at the same time she was working for the Russians. To be more specific, her half brother, Gora Maslov.”
Revelation after revelation; strand after strand working itself into a pattern. “So she’s the black swan for a good reason. She’s the illegitimate daughter of Katya Orlov and Dimitri Maslov. And she’s more loyal to the Maslovs?”
“She grew up with the Maslovs but never took the name. I doubt Alyosha knows the meaning of loyalty.” Mala glanced at him. “And, yes, I’m fully aware of the irony of that.” She ran a hand through her hair. “I should tell you something about Keyre and Gora Maslov: they’ve been doing business together.”
“Gora is Keyre’s Russian arms supplier.”
“Correct. Until a week ago, that is. Suspecting that Keyre was skimming profits, Gora sent a team in to infiltrate Keyre’s cadre. Keyre found out and executed them all. Alyosha was the facilitator linking them, but now that they’re the bitterest of enemies, they no longer require her services. I don’t know where Alyosha is or what she’s up to.”
—
Crouched in the clothes closet in Françoise’s hotel room, Morgana lay the compact 9mm Beretta Nano across her thigh. According to plan, Françoise had left the door ajar so Morgana could see a sliver of the bed, but more importantly hear how the plan was progressing and when to emerge.
Morgana had to hand it to the bitch—she’d come up with an excellent plan. As she had said, very few moving parts. The question was whether everything would go according to the plan; there was no trust left inside Morgana when it came to Françoise. She had snapped on latex gloves, had already checked the ammo in the Beretta’s magazine to make sure she wouldn’t be firing blanks. But what if both Françoise and Larry London were waiting for her to emerge to shoot her to death? But why wait for her to emerge? Which is why she tensed when she heard voices, the door swinging open. Françoise’s high laugh. Only now it occurred to her that she was a sitting duck. If they were going to kill her it would be now; stuck in the darkness, amid Françoise’s scent and her clothes, there was no escape for her. She lifted the spare pillow she had been clutching, stupidly using it as a shield. Of course it wouldn’t stop a bullet, but the gesture was automatic, a very human response to imminent danger.
A line of sweat popped out at her hairline, and the back of her neck felt hot, as if she had come down with a sudden fever. She licked her lips; her mouth was dry, with an unpleasant taste she identified as bile. At any moment she was afraid she might piss herself.
“No you don’t,” Françoise was saying. “There isn’t a man in the world capable of th
at!”
“Why don’t we find out?” Larry’s voice was in a deeper register, furred with sexual desire. A good sign; at least the bitch had told the truth about seducing him.
Another high laugh from Françoise, followed by a squeal of delight as the two of them passed through the narrow view afforded Morgana. The bedsprings reacted as the pair launched themselves onto it.
Several moments passed while Morgana heard the rustle and slither of clothes being stripped off, then an excited “Oh!” from Françoise and an answering “Mmmm” from Larry.
The sounds of lovemaking, so much a part of the experience for the participants, vacillated between frightening and ludicrous when heard by an outsider, like Morgana, who cringed as the pace increased.
When she heard Françoise cry out, “Oh, please!” which was their agreed-upon signal, she pushed the closet door open and slowly stood up. As Françoise had promised, Larry was on top, humping away in that animalistic manner endemic to certain men for whom their own pleasure was paramount.
She crossed the pile carpet, silent as a cat, carefully stepping over strewn clothes or sidestepping them altogether. Close up, the grunts and groans seemed even more absurd, the rising and falling of Larry’s body, the hard thrust of his pelvis seeming to her a kind of violence that made her shudder.
She was almost close enough now, and she lifted the Beretta, her right arm straight, her left hand clutching the pillow. As she advanced, she felt her heart rate exceeding normal levels. To counteract it, she slowed her breathing. While she had extensive training with guns, she had never killed or even shot at a human being. Now, at the last minute, she felt as if her resolve might fail her. True, she had seen with her own eyes that Larry London had orders from Russia’s spetsnaz to terminate her, but still the taking of a life, even in self-defense, was no small matter. It was not an act to take easily, or without regret. But she also knew that regret was a shooter’s worst enemy—her father had told her as much the first time he had taken her deer hunting and she had missed the clear shot. “You hesitated,” he’d said. “Your hesitation was a manifestation of remorse. You weren’t sure you wanted to kill that buck. Morgana, you cannot fire your weapon unless you’re sure. When you pull the trigger your mind must be clear, your intent certain. Otherwise you may as well put your weapon away.”