Mark Burnell - Gemini

She pushed the second button on the intercom, which was marked Adelphi Travel. The lens on the overhead camera turned before she heard the click of the lock. She pushed open the door and entered a parallel world. In the aftermath of 11 September 2001 Magenta House’s area of responsibility had been expanded. So had its budget, which was bled from the military. Some of the changes were macro, some micro; the new smoke detectors, for instance, were a precaution with a difference. They functioned conventionally but were also capable of delivering an anaesthetic gas to counter hostile intrusion.

Soft pools of muted light fell onto the reception area: two sofas, two armchairs, newspapers and magazines in half a dozen languages spread across a coffee table, fresh flowers in a china vase on an antique sideboard. The paintings were nineteenth-century landscapes, oil on canvas, each individually lit. Even the receptionist had been overhauled: gone was the weary middle-aged chain-smoker of years gone by, replaced by a younger model with good cheekbones, a chic grey suit and cold zeal for eyes.

Stephanie said, ‘Which room are we in?’

‘Mr Alexander wants to see you before you go down.’

Alexander’s large, rectangular office overlooked Victoria Embankment Gardens. In the winter he had a view of the river and the south bank. Now all he could look onto was the lush foliage of the trees in the garden.

The room was persistently old-fashioned: parquet floor, Persian carpets, a Chesterfield sofa, wooden shelves groaning beneath the weight of leather-bound books. At the centre of this office stood Alexander, in a navy chalk-stripe suit, a pair of black Church’s shoes, a white shirt with a double-cuff secured by gold cufflinks, a silk tie. Which, appropriately, was magenta. When Mark wore a suit, Stephanie saw an animal trapped in a cage. Alexander, by contrast, wore a suit as naturally as skin. And in this environment he looked at home. But it was an environment that belonged to another era.

‘I wanted to see you alone before we meet the others for the debriefing.’ He was standing by the window, smoking a Rothmans, his back to her. The windows were open, rendering recently installed mortar-proof glass redundant. ‘Were you injured?’

Not the first question she would have expected. It almost sounded like concern. Which made her suspicious. ‘Nothing serious.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘They knew. He knew.’

‘Mostovoi?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he saw you.’

‘I know. When he agreed to see me, he must have thought the deal was valid. Or, at least, potentially valid. In the end, though, the deal was too big. It wasn’t realistic. Not for Petra.’

‘That was the point. He’d been invisible for a year. It needed to be something extraordinary to draw him out. To be honest, I was beginning to wonder whether he was still alive.’

‘Well, now you know. Was and still is.’

‘How close did you get?’

‘Closer than I am to you.’

He turned round. ‘You were in the same room as him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Face to face?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you didn’t manage an attempt of any sort?’

Stephanie resented his tone. ‘Actually, I did. After I’d handled his protection.’

‘What happened?’

‘The gun jammed.’

‘You fired at him?’

‘I tried to.’

‘Then what?’

‘There wasn’t time for anything else. I had to exit immediately.’

Alexander shook his head in disbelief, then sat down at his desk. ‘How can you be so sure about Mostovoi?’

‘They had me tagged from the start. The day before yesterday they went through my hotel room while I was out and …’

‘How do you know?’

‘It was witnessed.’

‘By?’

‘Independent cover.’

‘Presumably you didn’t go back there.’

‘I didn’t need to. I’d already established a second identity.’

Alexander frowned. ‘Was that sanctioned?’

‘Under the circumstances I thought it better to act on instinct.’

‘You’re supposed to respond to instruction, not instinct.’ He took a final drag from his cigarette, then ground the butt into an onyx ashtray. ‘Let me guess. The independent cover and second identity were provided by Stern.’

Stern, the information broker, the ghost in the machine. His business was conducted over the internet. Nobody knew his – or her – identity, but Stephanie had used him since her days as an independent and he’d never let her down. Nor she him. In Stern’s virtual world, information was both product and currency. Sometimes, as Petra, Stephanie had bought information with information. Alexander hated the idea of Stern because he was beyond Magenta House’s control and because his electronic existence allowed Stephanie a form of freedom.

‘As fond as you are of Stern, has it ever occurred to you that he might not be reliable?’

‘Compared to?’

He stiffened, then tried to shrug it off – a pointless victory, perhaps, but sweet nonetheless – before changing tack. ‘You didn’t go home last night.’

‘That’s not home. It’s a film set.’

‘Did you go straight to his place after you left the courier?’

‘None of your business.’

‘If it concerns your professionalism, then it’s my business.’

‘We made a deal after New York. I gave you my word. Since then I’ve never given you any reason to worry.’

‘Your private life is a worry.’

‘Grow up.’

‘One of us should, certainly. You don’t just place yourself in jeopardy, Stephanie. You place everyone who comes into contact with you in jeopardy. That includes Hamilton.’

‘Leave him out of it.’

‘I’d love to. Really, I would. But your behaviour won’t allow me to.’

‘I’ve taken precautions.’

‘Not good enough.’

‘You have no idea whether they’re good enough.’

‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘But what I do know is this: one slip is all it’ll take.’

The first time I met Alexander he held the power of life and death over me. He saved me, then turned me into the woman I am today. Before him I was a drug-addict, a prostitute, a grim statistic waiting to happen. He could have hastened the predictable end. But he didn’t. Instead he let his people loose on me. Now you can drop me anywhere in the world and, like a cockroach, I’ll thrive, no matter how harsh the environment. I am any woman I need to be at any given moment, fluent in four foreign languages and able to scale a building like a spider. I can kill a man with a credit card … and not by shopping. I’m more than a woman, I’m a machine, and the man who made it happen – Alexander – is the man I detest most in this world.

The feeling is mutual. He can’t abide me, despite the fact that I am probably his greatest technical achievement and his single most potent asset. Like magnets, we repel but are also drawn together. The deal we made after New York ensured that. At the time I could have walked away from Magenta House. Nothing would have given me greater pleasure. But I chose not to.

His name was Konstantin Komarov, and I was completely in love with him. Even though I am now with Mark, there is a part of me that is lost to Kostya and always will be. A complicated man, certainly. A man with a past, most definitely. But where Magenta House saw a threat, I saw a future. Alexander had promised to set me free after New York and was true to his word. But Kostya was a Magenta House target. I pleaded with Alexander to let him live even though I knew it was pointless. In the end I had only one thing to offer him. So we struck a deal.

A truly Faustian pact it was, too. I returned to Magenta House and Alexander suspended the order on Komarov. As long as I remain here, he’s alive. The moment I leave, he dies. It’s hard to imagine anything more perverse: I kill people to keep alive the man I used to love.