The Mark of the Assassin Page 18

  “Colin Yardley?”

  “In the flesh.”

  “The top floor confronted him. They demanded to know what the fuck he was doing meeting with a chap like Khalifa. Yardley made up some bullshit story about how he was bored with his desk job and was itching to do field work again. He worked in Paris for a time. Said he was freelancing. The top floor weren’t happy, to say the least. Yardley got his wrists slapped in a very big way.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Now, guess which weapon Farouk Khalifa has in great abundance.”

  “According to our files, it’s Stinger missiles.” Michael drank some of the wine. “I don’t suppose your service passed any of this along to my service?”

  Graham shook his head. “We were a little embarrassed about it. You understand, don’t you, Michael? The top floor just wanted it to go away, so they made it go away.”

  Helen appeared at the top of the stairs.

  “Dinner’s ready.”

  “Wonderful,” Graham said a little too enthusiastically. “Well, I guess the video will have to wait.”

  Helen Seymour cooked elaborately but dreadfully. She believed that “British cuisine” was an oxymoron, and her specialty was the food of the Mediterranean: Italian, Greek, Spanish, North African. Tonight she served a ghastly paella of raw fish and burned shrimp, so spicy Michael felt dampness at the back of his neck as he forced fork after fork into his mouth. He bravely finished his first helping. Helen insisted he have another. Graham choked back laughter as his wife piled two heaping spoonfuls onto Michael’s outstretched plate. “It’s divine, isn’t it?” Helen purred. “I think I’ll have a little more myself.”

  “Once again, you’ve outdone yourself, darling,” Graham said. He had learned long ago how to deal with his wife’s unique brand of exotic cooking. He grabbed takeaway sandwiches and hamburgers on the way home from work and devoured them descending into the Underground. Three years ago he professed a sudden devotion to bread. Each night Helen brought home new and different varieties, which Graham ate in vast amounts. He had grown pudgy around the middle from eating too many carbohydrates late at night. He scheduled important telephone calls at the dinner hour and pretended they were unexpected. Like an impetuous child, he had become a master at distributing uneaten food about his plate to create the illusion of consumption. For a time Graham refused to allow Helen to cook for guests; they entertained in restaurants instead. Now he took a certain pleasure at having friends for dinner, the way the condemned take comfort from companionship in the hours before death.

  Graham dragged a chunk of coarse Spanish bread through a plate of virgin olive oil and shoved it into his mouth. “Helen, Michael and I have a little more work to do. Do you mind if we take coffee upstairs?”

  “Of course not. I’ll bring you dessert in a few minutes.” She turned to Michael, a rapturous smile on her face. “Michael, I’m so glad you enjoyed the paella.”

  “Helen, I can’t remember the last time I had a meal like that.”

  Graham choked on a crust of bread.

  Michael came out of the bathroom. Graham said, “You all right, mate? You look a little green around the gills.”

  “Jesus Christ, how do you eat like that every night?”

  “You ready to watch a movie?”

  “Sure.”

  They sat down on the couch in the drawing room. Graham picked up the remote control from the coffee table. “Mr. Yardley had another problem,” he said. “He liked women.”

  “Did the Service know about this, too?”

  “Yeah, Personnel told him to cool it. He told them to go fuck themselves. He was single, and he had a few years left till retirement, and he was going to enjoy himself.”

  “Good attitude.”

  “The Service discovered the body. We went in before the police and had a go at his house. We discovered the lovely Colin Yardley had installed a secret video taping system in his bedroom so he could record his conquests and replay them at his leisure. Had quite a collection, our Yardley. The watchers have been using them to relieve the boredom between assignments.”

  Graham aimed the remote at the video machine and pressed PLAY. The camera was mounted somewhere above the headboard. Yardley lay on the bed, undressed, slowly masturbating, while a tall woman performed a sultry striptease. She unbuttoned her blouse, ran her hands over her breasts and inside the waistband of her panty hose.

  Graham froze the image.

  “Who is she?” Michael asked.

  “We think she’s Astrid Vogel.”

  “According to our information, she’s living in Damascus.”

  “Ours too. In fact, we thought she’d left the Red Army Faction altogether, which makes her involvement in this affair all the more puzzling.” Graham pressed the remote, and the image came alive again. “Here’s the good part. I won’t spoil the ending.”

  Astrid Vogel’s striptease grew more intense. Her hands were between her legs, her head rolled back, feigning ecstasy. “She’s good,” Graham said. “Damned good.”

  Helen walked in bearing a tray of coffee and apple tart. “Oh, isn’t this lovely. I leave you boys alone for ten minutes and you run out and rent a porno flick.”

  She set the tray on the coffee table, gaze fixed on the screen. “Who is that creature?”

  “A former RAF assassin named Astrid Vogel.”

  A look of terror flashed across Yardley’s face.

  Graham stopped the video. “This part’s a little gruesome, my dear. Perhaps you should go downstairs.”

  Helen sat down on the couch.

  “Suit yourself,” Graham said, and started the video again.

  A dark figure strode into the room, appearance shrouded by a billed hat and sunglasses. He reached behind his back, drew a silenced gun, and shot Colin Yardley rapidly three times in the face. Yardley’s body tumbled from the bed. The woman stepped forward, kicked the corpse in the head, and spit on him.

  Graham stopped the tape.

  “Christ almighty,” Helen said.

  “It’s him,” Michael said.

  “How can you tell? His face was covered the entire time.”

  “I don’t need to see his face. I’ve seen him handle a gun. It’s him, Graham. I’d stake my life on it. It’s him.”

  “I know I needn’t say this, but the usual rules apply, Michael. The information I gave you is for your background purposes only. You may not share it with any member of your service or any other service.”

  “I’ll sign a copy of the Official Secrets Act if that would make you sleep easier.”

  Michael turned up the collar of his coat and shoved his hands into his pockets. The rain had ended, and he wanted to walk. Graham had agreed to accompany him halfway. They drifted through the quiet Georgian canyons of Belgravia, the distant rush of evening traffic on the King’s Road the only sound.

  Michael said, “I want to talk to Drozdov.”

  “You can’t talk to Drozdov. He’s off limits to you. Besides, he says he’s finished talking and wants to live out his days in peace.”

  “I have a theory about the assassin who killed Yardley, and I want to run it by him.”

  “Drozdov is our defector. We’ve shared the harvest with you. If you try to talk to him, you’re going to find yourself in serious trouble with both our services.”

  “So I’ll do it in an unofficial capacity.”

  “What’s your plan? Just sort of bump into him and say, ‘Hey, wait a moment. Aren’t you Ivan Drozdov, former KGB assassin? Mind if I ask you a few questions?’ Come on, Michael.”

  “I thought I’d use a slightly more subtle approach.”

  “If it falls apart, I’ll deny any involvement. In fact, I’ll denounce you as a Russian spy.”

  “I would expect nothing less.”

  “He’s living in the Cotswolds. A hamlet called Aston Magna. He takes tea and reads the newspapers every morning in a café in Moreton, a few miles away.”

  “I know it well,”
Michael said.

  “He’s the one with the corgis and the knotted walking stick. Looks more English than Prince Philip. You can’t miss him.”

  Graham Seymour walked Michael as far as Sloane Street before saying good night and heading back to Eaton Place. Michael should have walked north, toward Hyde Park and his hotel, but instead he went south toward Sloane Square when Graham vanished from sight.

  He crossed the square and drifted through the quiet side streets of Chelsea until he came to the Embankment, overlooking the Thames. The luxury flats above burned with light. The pavement shone with river mist. Michael had the place to himself except for a small bald man, who hurried past, hands rammed inside a battered mackintosh, limping like a toy soldier no longer in good working order.

  He leaned against the railing, looked out at the river, then turned and stared toward Battersea Bridge, the bright lights of the Albert Bridge beyond. He could see Sarah walking to him, through darkness and mist, coal black hair pulled back, skirt dancing across buckskin boots. She smiled at him as though he was the most important person on earth—as though she had been thinking about nothing but him all day. It was the same smile she gave him every time he entered her flat, every time he met her for drinks at her wine bar or for espresso at her favorite café.

  He thought of the last time he was with her. It was the previous afternoon, when he popped by her flat and found her sprawled on the floor in a white leotard, slender torso bent over long bare legs. He remembered how she rose to him and kissed his mouth and pulled her leotard off her shoulders so he could touch her breasts. Later, in bed, she confessed to fantasizing about fucking him to relieve the boredom of her stretching exercises. How it always left her terribly tense and how she always had to solve the problem alone because he was working.

  He fell completely in love with her that moment. He made love to her one last time. She lay on her back, perfectly still, eyes closed, face passive, for as long as she could, until the physical pleasure became too much and she opened her eyes and mouth and pulled his face to hers and kissed him until they came together. It was this image of her, and the sight of her flowing toward him in the light of the Chelsea Embankment, that was shattered by the man with the gun.

  He remembered her face exploding, remembered her body crumbling before his eyes. He remembered the killer—pale skin, short-cropped hair, slender nose. He saw again the way he drew the silenced pistol from his waistband at the small of his back, the way the arm swung straight out, the way he fired three times without an instant of hesitation.

  Michael went to her, even though he knew she was dead. Sometimes, he wished he had chased her killer, though he realized it probably would have cost him his life. Instead, he knelt beside her and held her, pressing her head against his chest so he couldn’t see her ruined face.

  It started to rain. He took a taxi back to the hotel. He undressed, climbed into bed, and telephoned Elizabeth. She must have sensed something in his voice, because she choked as she said good night and hung up. Michael felt a hot flash of guilt pour over him, as though he had just betrayed her.

  21

  LONDON

  Early the following morning, Michael checked out of his hotel and rented a silver Rover sedan from a Hertz outlet north of Marble Arch. He entered the A40 near Paddington Station and drove westward against the early-morning rush. It was still dark, a gentle rain falling. Michael switched on the radio and listened to the 6 a.m. newscast on the BBC. The A40 turned to the M40 as he flashed through the northwest suburbs of London. Dirty dawn light came up as he rose into the gentle hills of the Chilterns. The complimentary Hertz map lay unopened on the passenger seat. Michael had no need for it; he knew the roads well.

  Sarah’s family had owned a large cottage in the Cotswolds village of Chipping Campden. Limestone walls, covered in clematis and variegated ivy, surrounded the cottage. Michael and she spent several weekends there during the months they were together. The countryside changed her. She shed the black leather uniform of her Soho clan. She wore faded jeans and sweaters in winter and girlish sundresses in summer. In the mornings they walked the footpaths outside the village, through pastures thick with sheep and pheasant. Afternoons they made love. In summer, when it was warm, they made love in the garden, concealed by limestone and flowers. Sarah liked it best outside. She liked the sensation of Michael inside her and the sun on her fair skin. Secretly she hoped people were watching. She wanted the world to know how their lovemaking looked. She wanted everyone to be jealous.

  She danced, she modeled, she read many books. Sometimes she acted; sometimes she made photographs. Her politics were atrocious and as flexible as her long body. She was Labour, she was a communist. She was Green, she was an anarchist. She lived in a Soho room above a Lebanese takeaway, strewn with secondhand clothing and leotards. She listened to the Clash and the Stones. She listened to recordings of ocean and forest noises and Gregorian chant. She was vegetarian, and the smell of grilling lamb from the takeaway made her want to puke. To cover the smell she burned incense and candles. The first time she took Michael to her bed he had the uneasy sensation of making love in a Catholic church.

  She introduced him to a world he never knew. She took him to strange parties. She took him to experimental theater. She took him to readings and exhibitions. She picked out different clothing for him. She couldn’t sleep nights unless she made love to him first. She loved to look at their bodies in candlelight. “Look at us,” she would say. “I’m so white, and you’re so dark. I’m good, and you’re evil.”

  His work bored her, and she never asked about it. The idea that someone would travel the world selling things seemed to confound her. She asked only where he was going and when he was coming back.

  Adrian Carter was Michael’s control officer. He was obligated to tell Carter and Personnel about the relationship with Sarah, but they would dig into her past—her politics, her work, her friends, her lovers—and they might very well uncover things Michael would rather not know. He kept Sarah secret from the Agency and the Agency secret from Sarah. He feared she would leave him if he told her the truth. He feared she would tell her friends, and his cover in London would be jeopardized. He was lying to his employer and his lover. He was happy and miserable at the same time.

  He was nearing Oxford. A white commercial Ford minivan had been shadowing him for twenty miles, staying three or four car lengths behind. It was possible the Ford was simply traveling the same direction, but Michael was trained not to believe in coincidence. He slowed and allowed traffic to pass.

  The Ford remained in the same place.

  He approached a roadside café and petrol station. He exited the motorway and parked outside the restaurant. The Ford followed and entered the petrol station. The driver climbed out and pretended to put air in the front passenger-side tire while he watched the Rover. Michael wondered who might be tailing him. Wheaton from London Station? Graham Seymour and MI6?

  He went inside the café, ordered a bacon and fried egg sandwich and coffee, and went to the toilet. He collected the food, paid for it, and went back out. The Ford was still at the petrol station; the driver was preparing to put air in the rear tire.

  Michael went into a public telephone and called his hotel. He told the woman at the desk that he had left a pair of valuable cuff links in the bathroom. He gave her a false address in Miami, which she dutifully took down while Michael watched the Ford. He hung up and climbed back inside the Rover. He started the engine and drove off, slipping into traffic on the motorway. He glanced in the rearview mirror while he ate the sandwich.

  The Ford was there, three car lengths behind.

  The car followed Michael to Moreton-in-Marsh, a large village by Gloucestershire standards, straddling the intersection of the A44 and the A429. He pulled into a carpark outside a row of shops and climbed out. The Ford parked fifty meters away. The café was next to a butcher. Dead pheasant hung in the doorway. Michael thought of Sarah, sitting across from him with a plate o
f rice and beans and yellow squash, glaring at him as he pulled meat from the bones of a roasted Cotswolds pheasant. He went inside the café, ordered coffee and pastry from the plump girl behind the counter, and sat down.

  Michael recognized Ivan Drozdov from Agency photographs. He was bald except for a gray monkish fringe, his tall frame bent over a stack of morning newspapers. Gold reading glasses rested on the end of his regal nose, gray eyes squinted against the smoke of a cigarette poking from thin lips. He wore a gray rollneck sweater and a green field jacket with a corduroy collar. A pair of matching corgis groomed themselves next to Wellington boots caked with fresh mud.

  Michael carried his food to the table next to him and sat down. Drozdov looked up briefly, smiled, and returned to his newspapers. Several minutes passed this way, Michael drinking coffee, Drozdov reading the Times and smoking.

  Finally, without looking up, Drozdov said, “Are you ever going to speak, or are you just going to sit there and annoy my dogs?”

  Michael, surprised, said, “My name is Carl Blackburn, and I was wondering if I might have a word with you.”

  “Actually, your name is Michael Osbourne. You work for the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center in Langley, Virginia. You used to be a field agent, until your lover was murdered in London and the Agency brought you inside.”

  Drozdov carefully folded the newspaper and fed pieces of cake to the dogs.

  “Now, if you’d like to talk about something, perhaps we could take a walk,” he said. “But don’t lie to me ever again. It’s insulting, and I don’t take well to insults.”

  “Do you realize you’re under surveillance, Mr. Osbourne?”

  They were walking along a one-lane track toward the village of Aston Magna, where Drozdov had taken up residence when the Soviet Union crumbled and the threat of assassination from his old KGB masters vanished. He was taller than Michael by a narrow head, and like many large men he stooped slightly to shrink himself. He walked slowly, hands clasped behind his back, head down as if looking for a lost valuable. The dogs walked a few meters ahead, like countersurveillance. Michael, by nature a fast walker, struggled to keep pace with Drozdov’s loping disjointed gait. He wondered how the old man had spotted the surveillance, for Michael had never seen him look for it.