Luke Jennings: Codename Villanelle

“She cut his throat,” says Lance flatly. “To send you a message.”

“Yes. You heard me right. So you might want to think quite carefully before agreeing to join this team.”

Lance looks at her for a moment. “Where exactly do you see us going with all this?”

“We have a lead. The name of an individual who might be on the payroll of the organisation that runs our target. It’s a long shot, but it’s all we’ve got. So we follow the money, and we follow the man, and maybe, just maybe, we get to our killer.”

“Any chance of borrowing some A4 surveillance people from Thames House?”

“None whatsoever. This is a closed-circle operation, and no whisper of it leaves this room. Nor will you make any further contact, social or otherwise, with any Security Services personnel, on either side of the river. If anyone checks your files, you’re both on official secondment to Customs and Excise. And I repeat, this could be dangerous. All the indications are that our target is not only highly trained and well-resourced, but a narcissistic sociopath who kills for pleasure.”

“I’m assuming the money’s shit,” Lance says.

“You both stay at present pay-grades, yes.”

The two men look at each other. Then, very slowly, Billy nods, Lance shrugs his shoulders, and for the first time since their arrival Eve senses a flicker of common purpose.

“So,” Billy says. “This lead you mentioned.”

As Villanelle runs, she feels her body relax into the familiar rhythm. Her back and thighs are still sore from the previous afternoon’s ju-jitsu session at the Club d’Arts Martiaux in Montparnasse, but by the time that she’s completed the circuit of the lake and the Auteuil racecourse, the stiffness has vanished. On her way home, she picks up a takeaway sushi order from Comme des Poissons and a copy of the financial paper Les Echos .

Back at the flat she showers, runs a comb through her dark-blonde hair, and pulls on jeans, a T-shirt and a leather jacket. Sitting on her balcony, she eats the sushi with her fingers and works her way through Les Echos . By the time she’s finished the last mouthful of tuna, she’s scanned every page and processed the information she needs.

Looking out over the city, she checks her phone. But there’s no text from Konstantin. No new target. Turning on the Grundig shortwave radio, as she is required to do at least twice a day between actions, Villanelle keys in a search code. As usual, it takes a moment or two to find the number station, which tends to skip from frequency to frequency. Today it’s broadcasting at 6840 kHz. There’s a faint crackle, followed by the first fifteen notes of a Russian folk song, whose name Villanelle once knew but has long forgotten. The music’s electronically generated, with a thin, tinny sound that’s at once sad and faintly sinister. The notes repeat for two minutes, and then a woman’s voice, distant but precise, begins to recite a five-digit Russian number group.

This is the call-up code, identifying the individual for whom the message is intended, and the voice has repeated the numbers three times—“ Dva, pyat’, devyat’, sem’, devyat’… ” Two, five, nine, seven, nine—before Villanelle realises that the call-up code is her own. The shock momentarily takes her breath away. A number station call-out entails immediate action. She’s been checking in with the station for more than two years without ever hearing her number.

The call-up repeats for four minutes, then six electronic chimes announce the message. Again, this consists of five-digit groups, each voiced twice. Then the chimes again, the opening notes of the folk song, and the hiss of empty air. It takes Villanelle ten minutes to decrypt the message using the one-time pad that she keeps, along with a SIG Sauer P226 automatic and €10,000 in high-denomination notes, in a concealed safe. It reads:

Re-locking the safe, Villanelle grabs a baseball cap and sunglasses and leaves the flat. Location seventeen is the heliport at Issy-les-Moulineaux. Taking the ring road as fast as the traffic allows, whipping from lane to lane in the silver-grey Roadster, she makes it in fifteen minutes flat. At the entry gate to the car park, two men in high-visibility vests are waiting. They look vaguely official, and as Villanelle slows to a halt one of them holds out a placard printed with the words NORTH STAR. When Villanelle nods he beckons her out of the Audi and takes her car keys, then the second man leads her up an unmarked side road to a rectangle of tarmac enclosed by warehouses. At its central point, an Airbus Hummingbird helicopter is waiting, rotors idly turning.

Villanelle climbs into the seat beside the pilot, straps herself in, and places a noise-reducing communications headset over her baseball cap. She is carrying no luggage, money, passport or identifying documents.

“OK?” asks the pilot, his eyes invisible behind mirrored sunglasses.

Villanelle gives him a thumbs-up, and the Hummingbird lifts off, hovers for a moment above the heliport, and swings eastwards. Below them, briefly, is the serpentine glitter of the Seine, and the crawl of traffic on the Périphérique. And then the city falls away and there’s just the thrum of the engine. Only now does Villanelle have time to wonder why she’s been called out via the number station. And why there’s been no word from Konstantin.

It’s late afternoon by the time they touch down at Annecy Mont Blanc airfield in south-eastern France, where a lone figure is waiting on the tarmac. Something about her severely cropped hair and over-tight suit tells Villanelle that the woman is Russian, and this is confirmed when she speaks, directing Villanelle towards a dusty Peugeot parked fifty metres away. The woman drives with brisk efficiency, making a fast half-circuit of the airfield before pulling up with a screech of brakes in a hangar beside a Learjet bearing the North Star insignia.

“Inside,” she orders, slamming the car door, and Villanelle climbs the steps into the Learjet’s climate-controlled interior and straps herself into a seat upholstered in arctic-blue leather. Following her, the woman retracts the steps and seals the exit door. The engines start immediately. There’s a flare of late-afternoon sunshine at the window as the jet exits the hangar, and then, with a muted roar, they’re airborne.

“So where are we going?” Villanelle enquires, releasing her seat-belt buckle.

The woman meets her gaze. She’s got broad, high-cheekboned features and eyes the colour of slate. Something about her is familiar.

“East,” she says, snapping open an overnight bag at her feet. “I’ve got your documents.”

A passport, Ukrainian, in the name of Angelika Pyatachenko. A worn leather wallet containing a driving licence, credit cards, and a reception pass identifying her as an employee of the North Star corporation. Crumpled receipts. A wad of ruble notes.

“And clothes. Please change now.”

A leather-look jacket, limp angora sweater, and short skirt. Scuffed ankle boots. Underwear, much washed. Cheap tights, new, from a Kiev department store.

Conscious that she’s being scrutinised, Villanelle takes off her cap and sunglasses and begins to undress, laying her clothes on the blue leather seat. When she removes her bra, the other woman gasps.

“Shit. It really is you. Oxana Vorontsova.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I wasn’t sure to begin with, but…”

Villanelle stares at her blankly. Konstantin promised her that the cut-out was total. That nothing like this could ever happen.

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t remember me? Lara? From Ekaterinburg?”

Fuck, it can’t be. But it is. That girl from the military academy. She’s cut her hair off, and looks older, but it’s her. With a supreme effort of will, Villanelle keeps her face expressionless. “Who do you think I am?”