Читать книгу Chameleon - Mark Burnell - Страница 12

The first week is the worst. Some mornings, we talk in his office. On other mornings, we use a briefing room, or an office I’ve never seen before. It’s just the two of us. He makes occasional notes on paper, taking care to prevent me from seeing what he’s written. We break for lunch – an hour usually – then continue until five or six. Spending so much time alone with him is a form of claustrophobia.

At first, the questions are general, as he establishes a chronological order for everything that happened after Malta. I don’t mind that so much. Later, when he grows more specific, focusing on detail, I start to lie. Not all the time, only when it matters. I give him some dry bones to pick over, but I won’t give him my flesh and blood.

‘You’re wasting your time,’ I tell him on the fifth morning. ‘You have no idea whether what I’m telling you is the truth.’

‘Believe me, I’ll find out.’

‘Only if I let you.’

Which, on occasion, I do. Despite a general instinct to give him nothing, there are some exceptions. I want him to know that the Petra I became was better than the Petra that Magenta House created. When I describe how I infiltrated Mario Guzman’s fortified villa overlooking Oaxaca and then silently assassinated the Mexican drugs baron, I can hear the pride in my voice. Alexander pretends not to have noticed. And I’m happy for him to know how I lived in a shattered storm drain in Grozny for almost a week, before taking the single sniper’s shot that killed Russian General Vladimir Timoshenko.

I should feel too ashamed to boast about such things but I don’t. Not when I’m with him. Instead, I feel pleasure. That’s the corrupting effect he has on me.

At the end of each day, I try to leave my anger at Magenta House but it’s almost impossible. Another gruesome rush-hour ride on the Underground, a few groceries from Waitrose, an evening in front of the TV, a night of fractured sleep. I miss Laurent and the sound of the dogs barking in the valley. I miss the murmur of the cicadas, the scent of lavender and a glass of wine on the terrace.

On Friday afternoon, Alexander says, ‘Stern handled all your financial affairs, did he?’

‘He’s an information broker, not my accountant or banker.’

‘But he negotiated your contracts?’

‘Yes.’

‘How much money did you make through him?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘I’m making it my business.’

I shrug in an off-hand way. ‘A lot more than I took from you.’

Alexander looks absolutely furious.

I smile slyly. ‘A lot more.’

We move into the second week. Sometimes I’m moody and silent, sometimes I’m ready for a fight. We argue several times a day, which brings out the worst in my vocabulary. On Thursday afternoon, we have a stand-up row in his office. I storm out, slamming the door behind me. I don’t slow down until I’ve left the building. Rosie Chaudhuri catches up with me in Victoria Embankment Gardens.

She approaches me as though I’m a dog that bites. ‘Stephanie?’

I’m pacing but I’ve got nowhere to go. ‘What?’

‘You okay?’

‘What the fuck do you care?’

‘Hey …’

‘What is this? Good cop, bad cop? Are you going to sweet-talk me, then run back inside and tell him what I tell you?’

‘Is that what you think?’

It wasn’t. ‘You work in there, don’t you? For him …’

She looked disappointed, not cross. ‘I thought you knew me better than that.’

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘Christ, Rosie …’

‘It’s okay.’

I put my hand on my forehead, shielding my eyes. ‘No, it isn’t. I’m sorry.’

At the weekend, I decide to strip the flat. I’d sooner it was bare than cluttered with someone else’s idea of personal touches. I take the pictures off the walls and dump them in the storage room in the basement. I empty the photos and paperbacks into black bin-liners. I sift through the CDs to see if there’s anything worth keeping. It’s a collection of chilling mediocrity; Michael Bolton, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Elton John. Not a decent song between them and the rest. I reject all thirty-four albums in the rack.

I spend an hour of Saturday afternoon in Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street, where I buy a few paperbacks of my own. On Sunday afternoon, I buy half a dozen CDs at Tower Records on Piccadilly Circus, including two Garbage albums and Felt Mountain by Goldfrapp. In the early evening, I watch Wonder Boys at the Prince Charles cinema on Leicester Square. When I come out, I go back round to the front and pay to watch the next film on the bill, Buena Vista Social Club.

Wednesday afternoon. The febrile humidity of morning had made way for rain. They were sitting in Alexander’s office. Two windows were open; the downpour drowned the sound of traffic on the Embankment.

Alexander lit a Rothmans and said, ‘Tell me about Arkan.’

Arkan and his paramilitary Tigers. Stephanie’s skin prickled. ‘What about him?’

‘There was a rumour that Petra Reuter killed him.’

‘I never read that.’

‘It wasn’t in the papers.’

Stephanie tilted back on her chair. ‘Arkan was a dog. Not a tiger. And he died like a dog; he was put down, not assassinated.’

‘Did you kill him?’

Stephanie closed her eyes. It was 15 January 2000. Arkan – real name, Zeljko Raznatovic – was striding through the lobby of the Hotel Inter-Continental in Belgrade. For a fraction of a second they’d looked at one another. It had been his last fraction of a second. She’d used a Heckler & Koch submachine gun and had aimed for the head because Stern’s sources had said that Arkan would be wearing a bullet-proof vest. Which turned out to be true. Three of the bullets she fired found the target.

‘Eye-witnesses spoke of two assassins. Who was the other?’

‘It doesn’t matter. He’s dead.’

Stephanie saw something in Alexander’s reaction. Surprise, distaste, consternation? She couldn’t tell. He said, ‘The contract came through Stern?’

‘Yes.’

‘With no indication of the client’s identity?’

‘Not at first. Stern described the job as domestic.’

‘How did you interpret that?’

‘Slobodan Milosevic.’

Alexander reflected for a moment and then nodded. ‘I agree. You never met Milosevic, I assume.’

‘No. But I met his idiot son, Marko.’

‘How did that come about?’

‘Stern set up a meeting with an intermediary. I travelled from Belgrade to Pozarevac –’

‘Milosevic’s home town?’

Stephanie nodded. ‘I met the intermediary – a Belgian named Marcel Claesen – at Bambi Park. It’s a kind of sick amusement park that Marko Milosevic built.’

‘And he was there?’

‘Yes. With Malizia Gajic.’

‘Who?’

‘His partner. They had a child together.’

‘Did she have any connections that you know of?’

‘Only to a plastic surgeon who evidently believed the bigger the breasts the better.’

‘What about Marko?’

‘He thought he was a businessman.’

‘But you didn’t?’

‘I thought he was as thick as elephant shit. He had a peroxide spike for a haircut and wore a lot of Tommy Hilfiger.’

‘Did he appear to know the Belgian?’

‘In a manner of speaking. They were talking but I got the impression that Claesen was embarrassed to be seen with Marko.’

‘Do you think Marko passed on the information to Claesen?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Was Bambi Park simply the rendezvous or was Marko in the loop?’

‘I doubt it. I mean, Claesen was the intermediary. If Marko had been involved, he could have just given the information to me himself. There would have been no need for Claesen.’

‘Yet they clearly knew each other. Suggesting previous associations. Perhaps involving other members of the family?’

‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Then what?’

‘Claesen and I drove back to Belgrade and he provided me with the information.’

‘Which was what?’

‘Where to pick up the weapons, where to meet the second gun, what Arkan’s schedule was.’

‘Why did you pick the Inter-Continental?’

‘It was nice and open, plenty of scope for panic.’

‘Did you kill the bodyguard, Momcilo Mandic?’

‘No. I focused on Arkan. The second gun scattered the protection. And everyone else.’

‘There were suspects arrested, I seem to remember. A man called Dusan Gavric, who was wounded.’

‘Getting shot doesn’t make him guilty. It makes him unlucky. Or careless. Having said that, I wouldn’t have fancied being in his position after he was arrested …’

‘Petra’s name was linked to other murders in the region. What about Pavel Bulatovic?’

‘No.’

Stephanie remembered the details clearly, though. The federal defence minister of Yugoslavia had been eating at the Rad restaurant in Belgrade, an establishment that looked onto a football pitch. The gunman had fired his Kalashnikov through the window in three concentrated bursts, cutting across the room in a diagonal, before using the pitch as his escape route. Following so soon after Arkan, Stephanie had wondered whether both assassinations had been ordered by the same individual.

‘What about Darko Asanin?’

She’d heard the name, a former Belgrade criminal. ‘No.’

‘Anybody else I should know about from that part of the world?’

Stephanie smiled coldly. ‘Arkan isn’t enough for you?’

I can’t face the Underground. It’s a foetid evening. Businessmen sweat into their shapeless suits. I walk beneath Hungerford Bridge, along Victoria Embankment, past the Ministry of Defence, towards Westminster Bridge. Gradually, the noise of the traffic, of the aircraft overhead, of the multitude around me, begins to recede. In my mind, it grows darker, cooler. The open spaces restrict themselves to four walls until I’m in a cramped room in a small hotel. There is a narrow bed with a thin mattress, a single wooden chair between a cupboard and a chest of drawers.

I’m lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. I’m cold but I’m perspiring. I look as though I’m saying something but there’s nothing to hear. I don’t notice when I urinate, soaking the lumpy mattress. I only move when I know I’m going to vomit. But I react too slowly. I fall to my knees and throw up onto the floor. My back arches as I retch, and when it’s over I collapse onto my side and roll myself into a ball. I don’t know how long I stay there.

January 20th, 2000, Bilbao. Five days since Belgrade, five days since Arkan. Three days since I arrived in Bilbao and checked into this black hole. I was only supposed to be here for thirty-six hours. The arrangements were not complicated: pick up the package at the post office, use the new identity to travel to Rabat and then discard it, spend a week relaxing in Morocco as Delphine Lafont – the identity I used to enter Morocco ten days ago – and then return to Paris, as scheduled. Simple, clinical, perfect. Pure Petra.

At first, there was an overwhelming lethargy. My muscles turned to lead, my blood cooled. I imagined it congealing, turning black. With it came a sense of dread. Creeping up on me, smothering me. For two and a half years, I had functioned without fear. In my pursuit of mechanical perfection, I turned anxiety into caution, pain into penalty. I wanted to feel nothing, no matter what I did. And whatever I did, I wanted to do it with ruthless efficiency. I thought I’d eliminated doubt and chance from Petra Reuter’s life.

Now, lying on the floor, drenched in sweat, my head a sandstorm of emotion, I know that I’ve snapped. For two days, I’ve been unable to eat or drink. My body has rejected everything I’ve put into it. My body and also my mind. I can see that in some ways I’m rejecting myself. Seen from another perspective, however, I’m rejecting an intruder.

Later, I told myself that this was the moment I chose to stop being Petra Reuter. But the truth is, my body had already made that decision for me. Two and a half years of Petra had poisoned me.

She didn’t recognize the room, which now belonged to the Thurman Mining Company. Through the window, she saw the monumental Adelphi Building on the other side of Robert Street. One wall of the office was covered by two huge maps, one of Brazil, the other of Mongolia. Small areas on each had been staked out in blue, black and red ink. Lists of hectares had been pinned next to selected areas. On the desk, a paper Brazilian flag sat in a mug that had Ordem e Progresso stencilled around it. There were framed photographs on the wall beside the window; miners in hard hats at the mouth of a mine, men in short-sleeved shirts in front of a wasteland of felled forest, the horizon smudged brown by smoke.

The door opened. A skinny man in khaki combat trousers and a blue Nike T-shirt entered. His light brown hair was clipped short. He wore glasses, the grey frames with a matt finish, the lenses with a tint.

‘Hey, Steph. Sorry to keep you waiting.’ Stephanie stiffened; the familiarity of strangers had always had that effect upon her. His accent sounded mildly Lancastrian. He offered a hand. ‘Martin Palmer.’

She didn’t think he looked any older than she did, which – with the exception of Rosie Chaudhuri – made him the youngest person she had seen at Magenta House. Palmer had a grey nylon satchel slung over his left shoulder. He took it off and sat in the swivel chair behind the desk, relegating her to the plastic seat opposite. He produced a pad of paper and a pencil, and then apologized for not being able to offer her coffee.

She said, ‘I’ve never seen you before.’

He looked coy. ‘I’m new.’ He offered her a conspiratorial smile that she didn’t reciprocate. ‘I’ve got a few questions I need to ask you. It’s just routine.’

‘What kind of questions?’

‘Personal, mostly. If that’s all right?’

‘What are you, a psychologist?’

‘Something like that.’

‘You look nervous.’

‘Well, I’m not.’

‘I didn’t say you were nervous. I said you looked it.’

Now, he looked embarrassed. ‘Do you mind if we start?’

The balance shifted, Stephanie shrugged. ‘Sure. What do you want to ask me?’

‘Well … let’s see. You’ve been coming in here for … what is it? Three weeks?’

‘And two days.’

‘For debriefing?’

‘That’s not what I’d call it.’

A soldier had once told Stephanie that debriefing was therapy. That it helped him to come to terms with the things he’d had to do – and the things he’d had to see – during active undercover service. Each mission had always been followed by intense analysis; what went wrong, what went right, the lessons for the future. Some of the scrutiny was technical, some of it personal. By the end of the process, he’d always felt mentally exhausted but, crucially, he’d also felt that no element had been overlooked, that every aspect had been examined and rationalized in the minutest detail. And that no matter how draining the experience, it had left him better equipped to cope with his memories.

Stephanie understood what he’d meant but did not feel the same way. As the soldier had pointed out, to succeed as therapy, it was important to place one’s trust in those conducting the sessions. Over three weeks, the more Alexander probed, the more violated she’d felt, and the more she’d reacted against it. From sullen silence to outright hostility, she’d felt unable to stop herself.

Palmer jotted something onto the pad. ‘What are you doing away from here?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘In the evenings, for instance.’

‘I just stay in the flat. I buy something to eat on the way home, cook it, watch TV, read a book.’

‘You haven’t gone out at all?’

Only once, during the second week, after a long day lying to Alexander about a contract she’d taken in New York. She’d felt she needed a drink so she’d stopped at a bar on St Martin’s Lane. She’d picked a small table by the door and watched the pavement traffic for half an hour, letting alcohol soften the ache. The place had been busy, the after-work crowd unwinding; groups at tables and around the bar, laughter, gossip, cigarette smoke.

He wore a cheap pin-stripe, she remembered. Thick around the waist, growing a second chin. Pink cheeks and ginger stubble. He emerged from a crowd at the far end of the glass bar, a pint in one hand. He offered to buy her another drink. She smiled and declined but he sat down opposite her.

She said, ‘I’m waiting for someone.’

He grinned, revealing smoker’s teeth. ‘Me?’

Stephanie said nothing.

‘Seriously, love, sure you won’t have another?’

She glanced at his group. ‘Am I part of a bet?’

‘Don’t worry about them.’

He was slightly drunk. She could smell the beer on his breath.

‘I’m not worried about them.’

‘I’m Charlie.’

‘I’m not interested.’

When he offered his hand, she took it, rolled the fingers into the palm and crushed the fist against the table-top. He sucked air through his teeth, his eyes widened and perspiration sprouted instantly across his pale forehead. Stephanie felt as though she was watching someone else hurt him. But when she thought of how she’d turned on Olivier, she was filled with self-disgust. She let go of him and he sprang up from the chair, backing away from her, bumping into other customers, muttering something she couldn’t hear.

Martin Palmer was waiting for an answer.

Stephanie said, ‘I’m not much in the mood for partying at the moment.’

‘Are you drinking?’

‘What?’

He kept his eyes on his notes. ‘Are you drinking alcohol?’ Now, he looked up. ‘At night, when you go home?’

Beneath the anger ran a current of sadness. ‘Not enough.’

She was aware of her defences rising, which made her aware of how quickly they’d been lowered. Not by Palmer’s crafty questions – she was surprised by his clumsiness – but by something within her. She recognized the feeling. It was the desire to unburden herself. But Palmer wasn’t the right confessor. For two hours, they talked. There were many questions she wanted to answer honestly but couldn’t, not to him. To have done so would have been to cheapen the truth.

She was disappointed, then frustrated and eventually bitter.

‘Let me see,’ Palmer murmured. ‘This Turkish arms dealer, Salman Rifat. According to Mr Alexander, you told him that you had to sleep with Rifat in order to gain his trust and earn yourself access to files he kept at his villa.’

‘Sleep with?’

Palmer looked annoyed by the semantic distinction. ‘Have sex with.’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, how did you feel about that?’

‘How did I feel?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sore.’

He blushed. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘I know what you meant,’ Stephanie snapped. ‘But sore is what I felt. And do you know why? Because Rifat had a dick as thick as your wrist and there wasn’t a part of me he didn’t like to force it into. And I let him do that to me because that was part of the job.’

Palmer tried to convey control and began to scribble notes. ‘Fine. I see. Okay …’

‘Okay?’

He winced. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that.’

‘What did you mean it to sound like? Compassion? Comprehension?’

‘Look, I’m trying to help here …’

‘Let me tell you about Salman Rifat. He’s an arms dealer. A charmer. A monster. And he has his pleasures.’ She hesitated, then looked at her feet. ‘His favourite thing was to make me strip for him, usually in a living room, never in a bedroom. While I stripped, he’d tell me to do things and I’d do them. But the end was always the same. He has this estate in Greece. It produces olive oil. And wherever he is in the world, he has these small bottles of home-made olive oil with him. Dark blue glass, a miniature cork in the top. What he liked to do most was to make me bend over something – the back of a sofa, a table – and he’d pour a little of this oil onto the centre of my spine. He liked to watch it run over skin. That was his thing. He’d tell me to move this way or that. And the more turned on he became, the more aggressive he became. Finally, when the oil ran over my backside, he’d fuck me. One way or the other.’

She looked up. Palmer was staring at her and appeared to have stopped breathing.

‘So when you ask me what I felt and I say I felt sore, you can bloody well write that down. Along with all the other shit that’s going to tell Alexander what he wants to know.’

‘Look, Steph …’

She snorted contemptuously. ‘Steph? You make it sound as though we’ve known each other for years.’

‘I’m only trying to be friendly.’

‘Don’t waste your time. Or mine.’

‘There’s no need to be so hostile.’

‘Why are you asking me these questions? What do you think my answers are going to tell you?’

He averted his gaze. ‘It’s just a routine evaluation.’

Stephanie smiled and it was enough for both of them to understand the lie. ‘Have you ever wondered what it feels like to kill somebody? I mean, as a psychologist – or whatever you are – I imagine you must have considered it. From a professional point of view.’

Palmer couldn’t find anything to say.

‘To look into someone’s eyes – both of you fully aware of what’s coming – and then to pull the trigger. Or to stick the blade in, to feel the hot blood on your fingers and around your wrist. Because I could tell you, if you like. I could describe these things in as much detail as you could take. But it wouldn’t mean anything. Not by me telling you. My answers to your questions won’t tell you anything about me. You’re theory, I’m reality, and the difference between us is something you will never understand.’

Stephanie rose to her feet and began to circle the table, drawing closer to him.

‘Look at you, all dressed up in your street-cred gear, trying to be someone I can relate to, not someone remote. You read my file and picked this as a look, didn’t you? Did you get your hair cut like that especially?’

There was an affirming silence. She rested against the edge of the table, her leg almost touching his. Now, she felt the icy calm that came with full control. Palmer was pale.

‘You’re in a conflict zone,’ she whispered. ‘You’re hiding among a pile of dead bodies. You see conscript soldiers rape a young girl, then decapitate her. From start to finish, they’re laughing, these bakers, teachers, farmers. Once seen, never forgotten, it’s tattooed onto your memory. The only question that remains is this: how do you cope with it?’

His eyes were grey, she noticed. And unblinking.

‘You’re the psychologist. Do you know?’

He shook his head.

‘Exactly. I don’t know, either. You just do. Most of the time. Until there comes a time when you don’t. And that time does come.’ She turned her back on him. ‘Don’t take it personally – it’s not your fault – but I won’t answer any more of your pathetic questions. As for Alexander, tell him what you like. I don’t care.’