Luke Jennings: Codename Villanelle

“You both fired at the same time,” Lara says. “And luckily for you, he fired high.”

The sixth guard is lying on his back in the doorway. The ragged, sucking sound of his breath indicates a lung shot. With Villanelle covering her, Lara runs up to him, an automatic in her right hand.

“Where’s the hostage?” she asks in Russian.

The guard looks upwards.

“Next floor up?”

The faintest of nods.

“Anyone guarding him?”

The eyes flutter and close.

“No one?”

The reply is an indistinguishable mumble. Lara leans closer, but all she can hear is the sucking of his chest. Levelling the handgun, she fires a single round between his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Villanelle says.

“The same as you.”

“That wasn’t the plan.”

“The plan has changed. I’m your back-up.”

Villanelle hesitates for a moment, and then biting back her doubts, leads Lara up the last few stairs. At the top, facing her, is a door. Taking out the fibre-optic scope, Villanelle slips the flexible 1mm cable over the carpet and under the door. The tiny fish-eye lens shows a brightly lit room, empty except for a figure trussed to a chair.

Silently, Villanelle tries the door. It’s locked. A single round from the KRISS Vector blows out the cylinder, she kicks it open, and she and Lara burst into the room.

Together, they attend to the figure on the chair. There’s a black cloth bag over his head, stiff with dried blood. Underneath it, Konstantin’s face is battered. He has been gagged, and his breathing rattles through a broken nose.

As Lara removes the gag, Villanelle draws her combat knife and severs the PlastiCuffs binding Konstantin to the chair. He slumps to one side, his bruised and bloodied head thrown back, working his swollen fingers and drawing air into his lungs.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Lara tells Villanelle. “You’re thinking that you’ll never be safe as long as I’m alive, because I know who you really are. You’re thinking about killing me.”

“This would be the perfect moment,” agrees Villanelle.

“You can also see how that puts me in the same position. How I’ll never be safe as long as you’re alive.”

“True again.”

“Oxana? Lara?” Konstantin whispers through lips dark with dried blood. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

Both women turn to him. Neither removes her balaclava.

“I never told them anything. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know that,” says Villanelle. She glances at Lara, notes the deceptive casualness of her stance, and the tautness of her index finger on the trigger guard of the automatic.

Konstantin’s eyes move to Lara. “I heard what you said. You two have no cause to fear each other.”

Lara’s gaze narrows, but she doesn’t speak.

Villanelle genuflects, so that her face is level with Konstantin’s, and her body shielded from Lara by his. Reaching behind her back, she draws the Glock from its holster.

“Something you once told me,” she says to Konstantin. “I’ve never forgotten it.”

“What was that?”

“Trust no one,” she says, and placing the barrel of the Glock against his ribs, squeezes the trigger.

Gaining entry to the Cradles’ house is something of an anticlimax. After disabling the burglar alarm with a signal-jammer, Lance lets himself and Billy in through the front door with a set of skeleton keys. Helpfully, the Cradles have left their lights on, to discourage intruders.

Eve drives away, doubles round the block, and pulls up beneath a street light fifty metres away. In the shadowed passenger seat she’s almost invisible, but she can see pedestrians and traffic coming from both directions. She knows what the Cradles look like. She’s seen Dennis often enough at Thames House, and Penny at a couple of the rather grim drinks parties that the Service feels moved to organise each December. She’s confident that she’ll recognise them.

She’s instructed Lance and Billy to go straight to the study and concentrate on the computers. To download everything on every drive that they can find, and copy any documents that they think might be relevant with handheld laser scanners. Both men seem to be experienced burglars; presumably this was what Richard Edwards meant when he described them as “enterprising.”

Eve sits in the car, her mood switching between acute anxiety and boredom. After what seems like a dangerously lengthy interlude, she sees Billy sauntering along the pavement towards her.

“We’re pretty much done,” he says, subsiding into the passenger seat. “Lance wonders if you’d like to take a quick shufti.”

Confidence, Eve tells herself. Look respectable, press the bell, march in through the front door. Lance lets her in and hands her a pair of surgical gloves. The front hall is narrow, with a tiled floor and white gloss woodwork. There’s a sitting room to the left, and a kitchen beyond the staircase. Eve feels her heart pounding. There’s something profoundly shocking about trespassing in this way. “Fancy some toast and Earl Grey?” Lance asks.

“Don’t joke, I’m starving,” says Eve, steadying her voice. “What’ve we got?”

“This way.”

Dennis Cradle’s office is a neat, rather smug little room, with built-in shelving and bookcases, a desk in the same pale wood, and an ergonomic office chair. On the desktop is a powerful-looking computer with a twenty-four-inch monitor.

“Assuming Billy’s gutted that,” Eve says.

“If it’s on there, we’ve got it. Plus an external drive and various memory sticks we found in the drawers.”

“Is there a safe?”

“Not in here. There might be one somewhere else in the house, but even if we found one, I doubt we’d have time to crack it before they get back.”

Eve shakes her head. “No, if there’s anything we need, it’ll be in here. I very much doubt he’d share the kind of information we’re looking for with his wife.”

“Sensible bloke,” murmurs Lance.

Eve ignores him. “So looking round here, what do you see?”

“Controlling type. And pretty pleased with himself, I’d say.”

The photos, mounted in a group on the wall above the desk, show Cradle with friends in a university dining hall, shaking hands with a U.S. Army general, catching a salmon in a mountainous river, and posing with his family on holiday. The shelves hold a mix of bestselling thrillers, political memoirs, and titles related to security and Intelligence issues.

Lance’s phone buzzes. “It’s Billy. The Cradles are outside. Getting out of a taxi. Time to go.”

“Shit. Shit .”

Lance moves fast and silently. Eve follows, her heart pounding so hard she thinks she’s going to vomit. In the kitchen Lance slips the garden door latch, hurries Eve out, and quietly closes the door behind them. They’re on soft ground now, some kind of lawn. Shit . Why are the Cradles back so early?

“Into the lane,” Lance orders. Overhung by bushes, this leads to the road. Eve swings a leg awkwardly over the low fence, thorns tearing at her clothes. Desperately, she wrenches herself free, and Lance follows her.

“OK, lie down.” He presses a hand between her shoulder blades. The ground is hard, uneven and wet.

“The lights,” she hisses, struggling to control her breathing. “We left the fucking lights on.”

“They were on when we went in. Chill.”

Angry noises issue from the Cradles’ kitchen. A banging of cupboard doors. Utensils slammed onto hard surfaces.

“When I say the word, make for the road,” whispers Lance.

“What are we waiting for?”

“Dennis. He’s still in front, paying the taxi driver.”

Eve wills Penny to stay in the kitchen. She doesn’t. Eve hears the garden door pushed open, and a thumb flicking at a cigarette lighter. Moments later, she smells smoke. Penny can’t be more than a couple of metres away. Rigid with the fear of discovery, Eve barely dares to breathe.