Читать книгу Chameleon - Mark Burnell - Страница 11

Stephanie had never imagined that the sight of Brentford would trigger any kind of emotion within her. But there it was, a tightening in the chest. She pressed her face to the window as the aircraft ducked out of the clouds. Terraced streets, crumbling tower blocks, storage depots. Her first sight of London in four years and she hadn’t missed it at all. What she felt was not some misplaced sense of nostalgia. It was anxiety.

She took the Underground into London, changed from the Piccadilly Line to the District Line at Gloucester Road, rising to the street at Embankment. It was hot and humid, the sky a dirty grey smudge. Tourists swarmed around hot-dog stands, the smell of fried onions corrupting the air. Across the Thames, the Millennium Wheel turned slowly. Stephanie slung her rucksack over her shoulder and entered Victoria Embankment Gardens. Through a veil of leaves, she saw Magenta House; a network of company offices housed within the single shell of two separate buildings. The main entrance was on the corner of Robert Street and Adelphi Terrace, where she recognized the thing she liked most about Magenta House: the brass plaque by the front door. Worn smooth by years of inclement weather and pollution, the engraved lettering was still legible. L.L. Herring & Sons, Ltd, Numismatists, Since 1789. She glanced up at the old security camera above the door. On the intercom next to the plaque, she pressed the button marked Adelphi Travel.

The voice was terse and tinny. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m here to see Alexander.’

‘Alexander who?’

‘Very funny.’

‘I think you must have the wrong –’

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. It’s been four years.’

‘I’m sorry, madam, but –’

‘And you can drop the “madam” thing.’

‘There’s no one of that name –’

‘Just tell him Stephanie Patrick is here.’

Inside, the reception area was as she remembered it. On the wall to her right, there was a polished wooden board listing the names of companies. Some existed, others didn’t, and the relationship between them and Magenta House was as complex as the maze of corridors and staircases within the building. She remembered a few – Galbraith Shipping (UK), Truro Pacific – and saw others that were new: Galileo Resources, WB Armstrong Investments, Panatex Ltd. A bored-looking woman sat in front of a ten-year-old computer terminal, playing Hearts, smoking. Middle-aged beneath a crumbling mask of make-up, she was designer-shabby. Just like the security camera over the front door, the worn carpet and the faded blue-and-grey striped wallpaper. Each was a brick in the façade behind which Magenta House hid. Stephanie knew there were miniature security cameras concealed within the lights over the paintings, that the quaint front door was actually grenade-proof, that the weary harridan had a fully-loaded Glock attached to the underside of the table.

She spoke out of one corner of her mouth, the cigarette wedged in the other. ‘Down the hall, take the stairs and –’

‘I know the way.’

Margaret Hornby, Alexander’s secretary, was not at her desk. Stephanie opened the door and saw him standing by the window.

‘Don’t you believe in knocking?’

‘I don’t believe in anything. Not any more.’

‘You’re too old to play the teenage rebel, Stephanie.’

‘But too young to retire?’

She didn’t think anything had changed; the shelves crammed with leather-bound books along opposite walls, the Chesterfield sofa, the parquet floor and the Persian carpet, the antique Italian globe in the corner. She remembered how disappointed she’d been to learn that it wasn’t a tasteless drinks trolley.

‘What happened to your hand?’ asked Alexander.

‘I cut myself flossing.’

He let it pass and moved away from the window. Curiously, on home ground, he seemed more cautious.

‘You’ve made the right decision, you know.’

‘It had to happen some time.’

He slid an envelope across his desk. She picked it up and felt keys inside. There was an address on the front. Alexander said, ‘This is where you’ll stay. It’s a furnished rental. We start on Monday morning at nine. That gives you the weekend to get settled.’

Stephanie smiled without a trace of humour or warmth. ‘That’s going to take more than a weekend. That’s going to take years.’

The two-bedroom flat was on the top floor of a five-storey Victorian red-brick building on Bulstrode Street, just off Marylebone High Street. The communal entrance hall was dust and junk mail. The staircase grew narrower and darker with each floor. The locks on the front door had been changed. Inside, the air was still and stale. Stephanie dumped her rucksack in the hall and opened windows in a futile attempt to encourage a cleansing breeze.

The floors were sea-grass, except in the kitchen and bathroom, which were tiled. The walls were all painted off-white and the windows had blinds, not curtains. She ran a tap in the bathroom; there was hot water. In the kitchen, the stainless steel fridge was cool but empty. She looked through the cupboards. Nothing except a jar of Marmite and half a bag of long-grain rice. The main bedroom had a low double bed, a mattress as hard as concrete, and a pristine white duvet.

In the sitting room, there was a TV in one corner, a black leather sofa, a table with a top that was a large disc of etched glass. There were paperbacks on the shelves, CDs in a rack, framed black-and-white prints of pouting models down one wall. Definitely a man’s flat, Stephanie decided, but a real man? There were some framed snapshots on the mantelpiece above the Victorian fireplace. She picked one up; a shot of a pretty girl with long, light brown hair. She was smiling. Stephanie turned it over, released the clip and opened the back. The cosy, family photo had been culled from a glossy brochure. She examined the paperbacks. Not a single crease along a single spine.

Stephanie recognized the signs; the clumsy, artificial human touches that only served to underline the place’s cold sterility. Pure Magenta House.

After the rank heat of a Monday morning rush hour on the Underground, the cool air conditioning of the subterranean conference room was welcome. The walls and carpet were the same dark grey as her T-shirt. There were sixteen screens set into the wall on her left, in a four-by-four arrangement. At the centre of the room, there was an oval cherry table with ten chairs around it, black leather over graphite frames.

‘Hey, Stephanie.’

Stephanie turned round. Rosie Chaudhuri was standing in the doorway. She was slimmer than four years ago and it made her look younger. She wore a tight dark red knee-length skirt and a black silk shirt. Her lustrous black hair was gathered into a thick ponytail.

‘Rosie.’

‘I’m sorry to see you again.’

‘Me too.’

They smiled at each other.

‘Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? A ticket out of here?’

‘Sounds good.’

‘You look well.’

‘So do you.’

When Alexander entered the room, Rosie left, taking the warmth with her. He sat at one end of the table, Stephanie sat at the other. There was no small talk. He pressed a button on a silver remote control and a single picture appeared over four screens; a black-and-white portrait of a dour-looking man with a long face, a craggy brow and thinning hair swept over the scalp from one ear to the other.

‘This is James Marshall. A former SIS employee who came to work for us and then retired early.’ Alexander shifted awkwardly. ‘Unfortunately, he developed a drink problem that … well, it got out of hand and affected his reliability.’

‘I can’t imagine how that could’ve happened working here.’

‘In the past, he’d proved to be an effective field operator. Which partly explains why, out of some misguided notion of loyalty, we continued to employ Marshall on an informal, part-time basis. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement; he got a little extra cash to supplement his disgraceful pension, we got someone we could rely upon for the odd job that was better handled by an outsider. Which was why, in April, I chose Marshall to run an errand for me in Paris. It seemed perfect since he chose to live in Paris after leaving us.’

Marshall’s face was replaced by some footage from a security camera. Run in slow motion, it showed a man moving through a customs hall before being beckoned by officials. The footage then froze to focus on him; tall, with sandy hair slanting across the forehead down towards the left eye. The next images were stills; head-and-shoulder shots from the front and side.

‘Hans Klepper, a Dutch career criminal based in Amsterdam, heroin his speciality, all of it through Indonesia, the routes secured by influential friends bribed in Jakarta. The video footage we’ve just seen was taken at Heathrow on December the sixteenth last year, as Klepper stepped off a flight from Baku. Acting on an SIS tip-off from Moscow, but originating in Novosibirsk, customs officials intercepted Klepper, who was travelling on a false Belgian passport. Being well aware of Klepper’s reputation, they expected to find him carrying heroin. Instead, they found Plutonium-239. Seventeen hundred and fifty grams of it with a purity of ninety-four per cent. Do you know why that’s significant?’

Stephanie shook her head.

‘Anything above ninety-three per cent purity is weapons-grade. What’s more, you only need about eight kilos of it to make a nuclear weapon. Klepper was carrying the Plutonium-239 in protective canisters inside two suitcases. He was also carrying quantities of Lithium-6, which enhances bomb yields, even though it’s not radioactive itself.’

‘What’s a heroin dealer doing with nuclear material?’

‘The obvious question.’

‘What was Klepper’s answer?’

‘He didn’t have one. He died.’

Stephanie raised an eyebrow. ‘There and then?’

‘Within an hour.’

‘How?’

‘Heart attack.’

She glanced at the stills. Klepper looked as though he was in his late thirties or early forties. ‘Heart attack?’

Alexander nodded. ‘Artificially induced. Klepper would’ve known that once his case was marked for examination he was in trouble. He’d have known that in the custody suite he’d be stripped and searched. The postmortem revealed a pin-prick on his left wrist. An examination of his clothes and effects revealed a Mont Blanc pen that had been adapted to act as a syringe, attached to a cartridge of chemically doctored Alfentanil. The pen acted as a delivery device, like those gadgets used by diabetics. As a weapon, it was not unlike the umbrella tip used on Georgy Markov, the Bulgarian dissident, here in London in September 1978.’

The slow-motion footage resumed. Klepper approached an examination bench, hauled both cases onto it and handed his passport to an official. Then he reached inside his jacket pocket and took out his Mont Blanc pen. The most mundane action imaginable. He appeared to adjust the pen, holding it with one hand, twisting with the other. He was looking the officials in the eye, giving silent answers to their silent questions. They never noticed the jab. Discreet but firm, he never flinched.

Stephanie shook her head. ‘Without a care in the world.’

‘Or maybe with every care in the world.’

‘But to be so casual about it?’

‘Perhaps suggesting that he was under the impression that he was injecting himself with something else. Something that would provoke a reaction but which wouldn’t kill him. In any event, it’s unlikely we’ll ever find out what he thought he was doing.’

Stephanie continued to look at Klepper. ‘Still, no great loss, I suppose …’

‘We now know that he was the first of five couriers, two of whom were UK-bound. We don’t know about the other three. We do know that the action was abandoned after his death but SIS was unable to discover the target or the identity of the end users. As for the suppliers of the Plutonium-239, the intelligence community looked no further than the former Soviet Union. One name emerged. Or rather, an alias. Koba. But that was the end of the line. Until March. Then, out of the blue, SIS were contacted by Oleg Rogachev, head of the Tsentralnaya crime syndicate, an organization that has been strongly linked to nuclear smuggling in the past.’

‘How was the contact made?’

‘Through a Kazak investment company. Almatinvest. They have an office here in London but the contact was made through their Moscow office. An Almatinvest representative got in touch with the British Embassy on Rogachev’s behalf. The request was for a secure face-to-face with a senior SIS official. The job of evaluating that request fell to Roger Stansfield, a man I know personally. He concluded that the approach was bona fide. The representative said that Rogachev wanted to give SIS Koba’s real name.’

‘What did Rogachev want in return?’

‘Nothing.’ Alexander saw her expression change. ‘I know what you’re thinking. But maybe fingering Koba was some reward in itself.’

‘Or maybe Rogachev saw SIS coming and figured that he could get them to eliminate a rival on his behalf, at no risk to himself. Koba probably doesn’t even exist.’

‘That thought did occur to Stansfield. Which was why he didn’t want anyone from SIS involved. Not directly.’

‘So he asked you.’

‘Exactly. The plan was simple enough. Masquerading as a senior SIS officer, Marshall met Rogachev in Paris. At the meeting, Rogachev was supposed to hand over a disk containing information on the terrorists, the end users and the couriers. The two men met at a brasserie on the rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré. As far as we know, the meeting went to plan. However, as they stepped out of the café …’

Alexander changed the picture. There were two bodies lying face-down, one splayed across the pavement, the other crumpled in the gutter. The blood looked black. Although Stephanie was looking at the screens, she could tell that Alexander was staring at her.

‘No disk was recovered from either body. Nobody recalls the assassin frisking either man. It’s possible the disk was removed later. It’s also possible that the disk had already been lifted – perhaps in the brasserie. The only thing we know for sure is that it’s now in the possession of George Salibi.’

‘Never heard of him.’

‘A Lebanese banker. Lives in New York. Founder of First Intercontinental.’

‘How does he fit into this?’

‘The way he fits into everything else. Money. God knows how he got hold of the disk but you can be sure he’ll use it.’

‘How?’

‘He’ll auction it or use it as leverage. Either way, the disk is now currency. And that’s not a situation we can tolerate.’

‘Salibi’s a target?’

‘The disk is a target. If Salibi gets in the way … well, that’s his problem.’

‘So that’s the job, then? The disk.’

Alexander’s glance was scathing. ‘James Marshall’s murder cannot go unpunished.’

‘Sounds a bit Old Testament to me.’

‘It’s not purely a question of revenge. It also sends out a message. Then there’s Koba. We don’t know whether Klepper’s consignment of Plutonium-239 was destined for Britain or whether it was merely in transit. And because we don’t know, we have to assume the worst. That being so, we need to find out who Koba is, who he’s supplying and what their target is.’

‘And then?’

‘As long as Koba’s alive, he’s a threat. The problem is, if we simply wanted to find a Koba, that would be easy. There are plenty to choose from. But we need to find the Koba.’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘There’s a tradition of Russian criminals adopting aliases. The original Koba was a Georgian robber who protected the poor from their oppressors. A sort of Caucasian Robin Hood, if you like. The legend has lasting appeal. Criminals today are still calling themselves Koba. Even Stalin fell for it, adopting the name while he was robbing banks in Georgia at the beginning of the twentieth century.’

‘So you have no idea who you’re looking for.’

‘On the contrary. We’ve narrowed our Koba down to two. By the time you’re ready, we’ll know which one he is.’

‘And what if you don’t?’

‘There’s always the fail-safe option.’

‘Both men?’

‘There would be no other way to be sure.’

‘Cute.’

‘Believe me, the world wouldn’t miss either of them.’

‘Which makes it okay?’

‘If you spared yourself the pretence of a conscience, you’d see that it makes it better.’

Stephanie couldn’t be bothered to argue the point. ‘Could Koba have killed Marshall and Rogachev?’

Alexander shot her a withering look. ‘I don’t know. You tell me.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

He looked back at the images of the dead men on the screen. ‘There was one assassin, two shots per victim. Neither had time to react. In the panic that followed, the assassin escaped easily. There were witnesses but their accounts varied wildly. It was raining hard at the time. It was a dark afternoon. The killer was dressed in black or blue or grey, and wearing some kind of dark jacket with a hood to obscure the face. An anorak, maybe. There might have been an umbrella for extra cover. Physically, we have almost nothing to go on. A slim build, between five foot six and six foot tall – let’s say five foot nine, for the sake of argument. In other words, about your height.’

With the conference room lights dimmed, part of his face was hidden in shadow. She could see the flickering screens reflected on his eyeballs.

‘Might have been a man.’ He held her gaze completely. ‘Could have been a woman.’ Alexander leaned into a cone of pale light. ‘Is any of this starting to sound familiar?’

Stephanie was incredulous. ‘You think I had something to do with this?’

‘There’s a rumour going around …’

‘You’re out of your mind.’

‘Really?’

‘If you provided me with the date, I could probably tell you.’

‘Let me guess. Masson would vouch for you. I was with her the night before and the night after. But from where you live, Paris is a day trip.’

‘You’re serious?’

‘Always.’

‘You can’t prove it, though, can you?’

Alexander’s smile was cold. ‘I don’t need to. You’re the one with something to prove.’

The hijack at Malta was my last job for Magenta House. In the chaos of its aftermath, I vanished. That should have been it. Instead, for the next two and a half years, I was Petra Reuter, more than I ever was before. Life imitated art and I became the professional assassin.

Today, sitting in this room, I can look at the way Magenta House originally transformed me into Petra Reuter and I can understand that process, even though I’m repelled by it. What I don’t understand is why I chose to embrace her so completely once I was free of her. Alexander doesn’t understand it, either. Which is why he’s wondering whether I killed Oleg Rogachev and James Marshall. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated, as long as the contract was right. So why not now?

I can see where this is leading. I need to find the culprit in order to prove that it’s not me. Although Alexander says he needs Koba and the disk, what he really wants is the Parisian assassin. He craves revenge because he feels responsible for Marshall’s death and this is the only way he can deal with that. Somebody else must pay. A life for a life. That’s what Magenta House trades in.

‘You chose to learn Russian. Why?’

‘For professional reasons. I was led to believe there’d be plenty of work for me – for Petra – in Russia. Or at least from Russian criminals.’

‘And was there?’

‘Actually, no. I never took a contract from a Russian, although I came into contact with quite a few.’

‘Where?’

‘Serbia, Cyprus, Latvia. In Paris and Zurich, too.’

‘Who led you to believe that learning Russian might be a good idea?’

‘Stern.’

‘You were in contact with Stern?’

The surprise in his voice was, itself, a surprise to Stephanie. ‘Yes.’

‘Do you know who Stern is?’

‘Of course not. That’s the whole point of him.’

Stern, the information broker. A man who existed only in the ether of the Internet, trading secrets and rumours for cash. Some said he was Swiss, others thought he was German. Or Austrian. Or even American. Like Alexander, a man with no first name. Or perhaps with several. Stephanie had always called him Oscar when they communicated. It had been his suggestion but she’d never believed that was his real name. He might once have been a spy although no one could agree for whom. Others said he’d been a journalist, or a mercenary. Stephanie had heard a theory that Stern didn’t exist at all, that he was a collection of people. Or perhaps a single woman.

‘Tell me about him.’

‘After Malta, I scanned all the old websites looking for messages for Petra. I didn’t expect to find anything but there he was, casting into the dark. I replied and we began to correspond, both of us cautious at first. Eventually, he told me he had work for me, if I was interested.’

‘How did your relationship evolve?’

‘We came to an arrangement. I agreed to let him act on my behalf. Essentially, he became my agent. It worked well because it meant I never met the client face-to-face. And no one ever met Stern. Everyone’s anonymity was protected. Stern used to joke that it was a perfect example of practical e-commerce. He said the Internet was invented for people like us.’

‘Sounds as though you two were made for each other.’

‘It was a relationship with no downside.’

‘You paid him, I suppose?’

‘He took fifteen per cent of the fees he negotiated on my behalf. On top of that, he offered other services, which I bought separately.’

‘Such as?’

‘Information, general or specific. Or reliable contacts in strange cities. That kind of thing.’

‘You never worried about that?’

‘Not unduly. If anything happened to me, he stood to lose money. And Stern hates to lose money.’

‘Don’t we all?’

His tone took her by surprise, so she stayed silent.

‘You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?’

She knew perfectly well. ‘No.’

‘One million and eighty thousand dollars, give or take some loose change.’

Stephanie felt herself harden. ‘I earned that money.’

‘It belonged to us.’

‘It belonged to Petra.’

‘Petra belonged to us.’

‘Petra belonged to nobody. Not then, not now.’

The colour began to drain from Alexander’s face. ‘You will return it.’

‘Are you a betting man?’

‘Petra was our creation. You were playing a part. Nothing more.’

‘What about after Malta?’

‘We’re talking about money earned before Malta.’

‘Well, guess what? Before Malta, after Malta, I don’t give a toss what you think. I was Petra. I’ve always been Petra. If you want the money, sue me.’