Luke Jennings - Codename Villanelle

“And this, my friends, is my message to you. Spring is coming . In the Russian heartland, there is a yearning for change. And I feel the same thing in Europe. A longing to throw off the dictatorship of capitalism, of degenerate liberalism, of America. A longing to reclaim an older world of Tradition and the Spirit. So I say to you, join us . Leave the U.S. to their pornography, their blood-sucking corporations and their empty consumerism. Leave them to their Reign of Quantity. Together, Europe and Russia can build a new Imperium, true to our ancient cultures, true to the old beliefs.”

Eve scans the ranks of the audience. Sees the rapt gazes, the mute nods of agreement, the desperate yearning to believe in the golden age that Kedrin promises. In the centre of the front row is a young woman in a black sweater and plaid skirt. She is a few years younger than Eve, and beautiful, even at a distance. On impulse, Eve raises her phone, and surreptitiously zooming in on the woman’s face, photographs her. She catches her in profile, lips parted, gazing fervently up at Kedrin.

The speech gathers pace. Kedrin recalls another who dreamt of a new imperium—a thousand-year Reich, no less—but dismisses the Nazis for their crude racism and lack of higher consciousness. He makes an exception of the Waffen-SS, from whose rigorous idealism, he says, much can be learned. This is too much for one audience member, a middle-aged man who stands up and starts shouting incoherently at the stage.

Within seconds, two figures in quasi-military clothing appear from the shadows at the back of the hall, grab the man, and half-lead him, half-drag him towards the exit. A half-minute later, to desultory cheers, they return without him.

Kedrin smiles beatifically. “There’s always one, no?”

In all, he speaks for about an hour, setting out his mystical, authoritarian vision for the northern hemisphere. Eve is appalled but fascinated. Kedrin is charismatic, and satanically persuasive. That he will make true believers out of those assembled here tonight, she is in no doubt. He is not yet well known in Europe, but in Russia he commands a growing following, and has a small army of dedicated street fighters ready to do his will.

“And so my friends, I finish as I started, with that simple message. Spring is coming. Our day is dawning. The rooks have come back. Thank you.”

As one, the audience rises to its feet. As they cheer, stamp their feet, and applaud, Kedrin stands at the lectern, unmoving. Then, with a small bow, he leaves the stage.

Slowly, as Eve watches from the gallery, the hall empties. The spectators have a dazed look, as if waking from a dream. After a couple of minutes, accompanied by the ponytailed master of ceremonies and flanked by the two foot soldiers who ejected the protester, Kedrin appears in the auditorium. He is quickly surrounded by admirers, who take it in turn to address a few words to him and shake his hand. The woman from the front row waits on the outskirts of the group, a faint smile touching her sharp, cat-like features. If I dressed like that I’d look like a librarian, Eve muses. So how come this little fascist princess gets to look like Audrey Hepburn?

Kedrin’s certainly registered her, and gives her a glance as if to say: wait, just let me finish with these people and you’ll have my full attention. Soon, watched with barely suppressed amusement by the shaven-headed foot soldiers, the two of them are deep in conversation. Her body language—the head fetchingly tilted, the neat little breasts out-thrust—makes her availability unambiguously clear. But eventually she settles for shaking his hand, pulls on her parka, and vanishes into the night.

Eve is one of the last to depart the hall. She waits outside at a nearby bus stop, and when Kedrin and his party leave the building, she follows them at a discreet distance. After a couple of minutes the four men turn into an Argentinian steak restaurant in Red Lion Street, where they are clearly expected.

Deciding to call it a night, Eve makes for Holborn tube station. It’s gone 9.30, and she’s too late for the bridge tournament. But she’ll get to the club in time to grab herself a large vodka and cranberry juice and watch Niko play a few hands. She needs to wind down. One way and another, it’s been a weird day.

At a little after 9.45, when she’s satisfied that the Russians are settled in, Villanelle moves away from the doorway from where she’s been watching the steak house, and takes a back route to the hotel. As she moves through the lobby towards the lifts, her face shadowed by her fur-trimmed hood, she directs a smile and a brief flutter of her leather-gloved fingers at the reception desk, where Gerald Watts is still on duty.

Letting herself into Room 416, Villanelle opens the valise, takes out a packet of surgical gloves, and exchanges a pair for the leather ones she’s wearing. Then, from a sealed polythene bag, she takes a micro-transmitter the size of a fingernail, and a pinch of Blu-Tack. Placing this in the pocket of her parka, she leaves the room and takes the stairs up to the fifth floor, where she seems to straighten a picture on the wall outside Room 521. This done, she continues upwards to the sixth floor, where the stairs terminate in an exit to the roof. It’s unlocked, and stepping outside she conducts a quick reconnaissance of the area, noting the placement of chimney stacks and fire-escape ladders. Then, without hurry, she returns to the fourth floor.

Back in her room she switches on an iPod-sized UHF receiver, and inserts one of the in-ear headphones. Nothing, as she expected, just a faint, ambient hiss. Pocketing the receiver, leaving one ear-bud trailing, she takes a waterproof case from the valise. Inside, each component lying in its bed of customised foam, is the weapon she ordered from Konstantin: a polymer-bodied CZ 75 9mm handgun and an Isis-2 suppressor. Villanelle prefers a lightweight action on a combat weapon, and the CZ’s trigger-pull weight has been adjusted to two kilos for double-action firing, and one kilo for single action.

Hotel-room assassination, she knows, is a complex science. Taking down the target is easy; it’s doing so swiftly, silently and without collateral damage that’s difficult. There must be no recognisable gunshot report, no scream of alarm or pain, no bullets smacking through plasterboard partition walls, or worse, through the guests on the other side of them.

So after attaching the suppressor, Villanelle loads the Czech handgun with Russian-made Chernaya Roza —Black Rose—hollowpoint rounds. These are constructed with an oxidised copper jacket whose six sections, on impact, peel back like petals. This slows penetration, initiates a massive and incapacitating shockwave, and causes enhanced disruption of tissue along the wound path. For a 9mm round, the Black Rose’s stopping power is unequalled.

Villanelle waits, her breathing steady. Visualises and re-visualises the coming course of events. Replays every conceivable scenario. Through the headphones, she hears hotel guests bid each other goodnight, snatches of laughter, doors closing. It’s more than an hour and a half before she hears what she’s been waiting for: voices speaking Russian.

“Come in for five minutes. I’ve got a bottle of Staraya Moskva. We need to run over arrangements for tomorrow.”

Villanelle considers. The drunker they all are, the better. But she can’t leave it too late. She hears murmurs of assent, and the sound of the door closing.

Again, Villanelle waits. It’s past 1 a.m. when the security team finally, and noisily, leaves the room. But how drunk is Kedrin? Will he remember the wide-eyed young woman he met at the Conway Hall? She picks up the hotel phone and dials Room 521. A slurred voice answers. “ Da? ”