Mark Burnell - The Third Woman

Back in the living-room, she switched on the computer and accessed Petra’s e-mails. Spread over six addresses, split between AOL and Hotmail, Petra hid behind four men and two women. She checked Marianne Bernard’s mail at AOL; one new message. Roland, predictably. Gratitude for the best night of the year. Not the greatest compliment, Stephanie felt, in early January.

She sent one new message. To Stern, the information broker who also acted as her agent and confidant. It had to be significant that almost the only person she truly trusted was someone she had never met. She didn’t even know whether Stern was a man or a woman, even though she called him Oscar.

> Back from the Soviet past. With love, P.

She left the laptop connected, then took her dirty clothes to Wash Club on place Saint-Géry. She bought milk and a carton of apple juice from the LIDL supermarket on the other side of the square, then returned home to find two messages waiting for her. One was from Stern. He directed her to somewhere electronically discreet and asked:

> How was it?

> Turkmenistan? Or Sullivan?

> Both.

> Depressing, dirty and backward. But Turkmenistan was fine.

Eddie Sullivan was a former Green Jacket who’d established a company named ProActive Solutions. An arms-dealer with a flourishing reputation, he’d been in Turkmenistan to negotiate the sale of a consignment of weapons to the IMU, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The hardware, stolen from the British Army during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, was already in Azerbaijan, awaiting transport across the Caspian Sea from Baku to the coastal city of Turkmenbashi.

Petra’s contract had been paid for by Vyukneft, a Russian oil company with business in Azerbaijan. But Stern had told her that the decision to use her had been political. Made in Moscow, he’d said. Hiring Petra meant no awkward fingerprints. It wasn’t the first time she’d worked by proxy for the Russian government.

The final negotiation between Sullivan and the IMU had been scheduled for the Hotel Turkmenbashi, a monstrous hangover from the Soviet era. Hideous on the outside, no better on the inside, she’d eliminated Sullivan in his room, while the Uzbek end-users gathered two floors below. She’d masqueraded as a member of hotel staff, delivering a message with as much surliness as she could muster.

Distracted by the imminent deal, Sullivan had been sloppy. He’d never looked at her, even as she loitered in the doorway waiting for a tip. When he’d turned his back to look for loose change, she’d pulled out a Ruger with a silencer and had kicked the door shut with her heel. The gun-shot and the slam had merged to form one hearty thump. Two minutes later she was heading away from the hotel on the long drive back to Ashgabat and the Lufthansa flight for Frankfurt.

> Are you available?

> Not until further notice.

> Taking a vacation?

> Something like that. Anything on the radar?

> Only from clients who can’t afford you.

> Then your commission must be fatter than I thought.

> Petra! Please. Don’t be cruel.

The second message, at one of the Hotmail addresses, was a real surprise. No names, just a single sentence.

> I see you chose not to take the advice I gave you in Munich.

Petra Reuter was sipping a cappuccino at a table close to the entrance of Café Roma on Maximilianstrasse. It was late September but winter had already made its presence felt; two days earlier there had been snow flurries in Munich.

The man rising from the opposite side of the table was Otto Heilmann. A short man, no more than five-foot-six, with narrow sloping shoulders, he wore a loden hunting jacket with onyx buttons over a fawn polo-neck.

‘We will meet again, Fräulein Jaspersen?’

‘I expect so, if you wish.’

‘Perhaps you would consider coming to St Petersburg?’

Petra wondered where this stiff courtesy came from. Probably not from two decades with the Stasi. Nor from the last fifteen years of arms-dealing. She didn’t imagine there was much call for Heilmann’s brand of politeness in Tbilisi or Kiev. Or even in St Petersburg. Yet here he was, dressed like a benevolent Bavarian uncle, hitting on her with a formal invitation that fell only fractionally short of stiff card and embossed script.

She gave him her best smile. ‘I’d certainly consider it, Herr Heilmann.’

‘Please. Otto.’

‘Only if you promise to call me Krista.’

A small inclination of the head was followed by a reciprocated smile that revealed a set of perfectly calibrated teeth. ‘This could be the beginning of something very good for us, Krista.’

She watched him leave, a navy cashmere overcoat folded over his right arm. Outside, a Mercedes was waiting, black body, black windows, a black suit to hold open the door for him. Perhaps that was why he’d chosen Café Roma; black wooden tables, black banquettes, black chairs. Crimson walls, though. Like blood. A more likely reason for Heilmann to choose the place. Her eyes followed the car until it faded from view.

The remains of the day stretched before her. Nothing to do but wait for the call. More than anything, Petra’s was a life of waiting. Like a movie actor; long periods of inactivity were intercut with short bursts of action.

She drained her cappuccino and decided to order another. Twenty minutes drifted by. It grew busier as afternoon matured into evening; shoppers, businessmen and women, mostly affluent, mostly elegant.

‘Jesus Christ, I don’t believe it. Petra, Petra, Petra …’

She looked up and took a moment to staple a name to the face. Not because she didn’t recognize him but because he was out of context.

He misunderstood her silence. ‘Or are we not Petra today?’

John Peltor. A former US Marine. Still looking every inch of his six-foot-five.

‘Is this bad timing?’ he asked.

‘That depends.’

He glanced left and right. ‘Am I intruding?’

‘No.’

Clearly not the answer he was expecting. ‘You’re alone?’

‘Aren’t we all?’

‘Always the smart-ass, Petra.’

‘Always.’

‘I wasn’t sure at first. The hair, you know.’

It was the longest she’d ever worn it. Halfway down her back and dark blonde.

‘Kinda suits you,’ he said.

‘Do you think so?’

She didn’t like it: although it went well with her eyes, which were now green. She wasn’t sure Peltor had noticed that change.

He looked into her cup, which was two-thirds empty. ‘Want another?’

‘I’ve got to go,’ she lied.

‘You sure? It would be good to catch up again.’

Perversely, that was true. Social opportunities in their solitary profession were rare although it wasn’t the first time they’d run into each other by chance. Peltor wasn’t her type but that hardly mattered. How many of them were there in the world? Not the cheap battery-operated types, but those rare hand-crafted precision instruments. Less than a hundred? Certainly. Whatever their respective backgrounds they were bound by the quality of their manufacture and they both knew it.

‘How long are you in Munich?’ she asked.

‘Leaving tomorrow, around midday. How about tonight?’

‘Busy.’

Another lie.

‘Can you make breakfast? At my hotel. Say nine?’

Petra tilted her head to one side and allowed herself a smile. ‘You won’t be sharing it with some lucky lady?’

Peltor feigned wounded pride. ‘Not unless you say yes.’

Petra arrived at the Mandarin Oriental on Neuturmstrasse at nine. When she asked for Peltor at the front desk – ‘ Herr Stonehouse, bitte ’ – her instructions were specific: he was running a little late so could she take the lift to the sixth floor, the stairs to the seventh and then proceed up to the roof terrace.