49

Alix stood in the shower trying to scrub away the memory of Leclerc’s hands on her body. The hotel provided two plastic bottles of mint-flavored mouthwash. She used them both. They had not even kissed, let alone had sex, but still she felt defiled. By the time she walked back into the bedroom, Carver was silently packing away the video gear. Leclerc was sitting on the side of the bed, slumped and deflated.

Alix collected her own possessions, then helped Carver as he untied and dressed Leclerc, though the blindfold stayed on. The banker was led out into the corridor, down the emergency staircase, and out through a door at the rear of the building. Thor Larsson was waiting to greet them in his battered Volvo.

“Got everything?” asked Carver, still maintaining Vandervart’s accent.

“Sure,” said Larsson. “And don’t worry. The sound and picture quality is superb.”

Ten minutes later, Leclerc was bundled from the car in a quiet side street. By the time he’d untied the blindfold, the Volvo had rounded a corner and was out of sight.

Larsson dropped Carver and Alix on the Pont des Bergues, leaving them to walk up to the Old Town while he returned to his own apartment. Within minutes of getting there, he’d gone online, and started hacking into the hotel mainframe. He wanted to erase any sign of their presence. It took half an hour and all of Larsson’s expertice, but finally, it was as if Mr. Vandervart, Miss St. Clair, and Mr. Sjoberg had never reserved a room or crossed the threshold of the building.

As they walked back across the river, arm in arm, Alix asked Carver, “Would you really have hurt Leclerc?”

“If I had to. If that was the only way of making him talk.”

“It’s scary seeing you like that. It seems so natural to you.”

“Not really. I was just getting the job done. And if you think I’m a natural, you should see yourself. I was pretty freaked-out sitting in front of the video watching you and him. Made me wonder what someone would think watching us.”

They were on the far bank of the river now, walking for a while in companionable silence, still carrying the overnight bags they’d taken to the hotel in their spare hands. Then Carver spoke again.

“Why did you really go to Paris?”

There was no aggression in his voice, none of the menace he’d directed at Leclerc. He was asking a straight question, just as if he were curious.

“It was like I told you,” Alix replied, just as straightforwardly. “Kursk wanted a woman to help him on a job, and he was willing to pay ten thousand dollars.”

“But there’s no doctor, is there, no respectable fiancé?”

Alix opened her mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it. She sighed and looked away.

Carver’s voice hardened a fraction. “No, and I don’t see you working at a hotel reception desk, either. People like you and me don’t hold down normal jobs. We’ve been out of that world too long. So, what have you really been doing?”

Alix pulled her arm away and stopped walking. “For God’s sake, isn’t it obvious? The same thing I always did. My clients were Russian, very rich, very powerful. Sometimes I was more like a girlfriend, staying with the same man for months at a time.”

Carver wanted to stop. He knew there was nothing to be gained by digging deeper. But he couldn’t help himself. “Like that guy in the club, with the two blonds?” he added, and now there was an edge to the question.

Alix looked at him with the sort of acid contempt he had not seen since that first night in Paris. “Yes, like Platon. Before those girls it was me sitting next to him in clubs, laughing at his jokes, letting his hands grab my tits, going down on him, fucking him. Okay? Are you satisfied now? Or would you like me to be humiliated a little more?”

“No, I get the picture.”

“Do you? Do you understand what it is to be a woman in Moscow today? There is no law, no security. The choice is not between a good life or a bad one, it is between surviving or dying. I did what it took to, as you say, get the job done. Then Kursk came to me, talking about a job in Paris, saying he needed a woman. I thought maybe there was a chance to escape and start again, a new life.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

There was real pain on her face now, anger giving way to resignation. “How could I tell you the whole truth? I invented my respectable lover and my respectable job because I hoped maybe you would respect me a bit more. But I lied. I am not respectable. Are you happy now?”

Carver took her shoulders in his hands. “Alix, I don’t give a damn whether you’re ‘respectable.’ Of all the people in the world, I’ve got the least right to judge you. I just want to know what’s true.”

She looked up at him. “Does it matter? Can it ever be any different than this, between you and me?”

They were all talked out now, nothing left to say as they walked up the hill, lost in their own thoughts.

From the Swisscom van, Girgori Kursk saw them come up the final block. Alexandra Petrova wore a brown wig and clothes he’d never seen on her before, but it made no difference. He’d seen her in so many wigs, so many disguises, he could see right past them, recognize her purely from the set of her body and the way she walked.

He smiled when he saw the man next to her. The Englishman had hurt Kursk’s body and his pride alike. He had let himself get suckered into a high-explosive trap, and though he hadn’t let a hint of discomfort or vulnerability show to his men, every breath he took sent a sharp pain stabbing into his cracked and bruised ribs. Now he was going to enjoy his revenge.

He called Dimitrov, who’d taken his place in the Irish pub, and the two other men he’d left near Carver’s apartment. His message was the same. “They’re here. Be ready for action. And remember, we take them both alive.”