there is something else…'
'What?'
'Max wasn't wearing his jacket when he died. And it wasn't where he'd left it, the last time I saw him, hanging on the back of his chair. Carver could have dumped the black jacket and taken Max's. It's a gray one, same fabric as the trousers.'
'Okay. And the woman?'
'All I know is her reputation. She's meant to be a blond model type.'
Papin raised his eyebrows knowingly. 'Now we have a reason why Carver might want to be with Petrova. But if she was Kursk's partner, what is she doing on the back of a motorcycle with the man who killed him? Why is she running in and out of apartments with Carver? Why is she joining him in a gunfight?'
'How the hell would I know? She's a bloody woman. Maybe she fancies him. Maybe she changed her mind.'
'Or maybe she hasn't.' Papin smiled. 'What is it you English say about the female of the species?'
'It was Kipling. He said the female of the species is more deadly than the male.'
'Alors, an Englishman who understands women. Incroyable!'
22
They were sitting in an all-night bistro, tucked between the sex shops and tourist traps of Chatelet-les-Halles. It was a quarter past five. Even the local hookers had given up for the night and come inside for a nightcap.
Alix looked exhausted, her adrenalin rush long gone. Carver got her a cappuccino with a double espresso and a pain au chocolat to dip into it. It wasn't exactly a healthy diet, but she needed the energy the fat and sugar would provide. Alix ignored the pastry, took a sip of the coffee, then lit a cigarette.
Carver leaned across the table like a lover. 'Who was he, that man in the club, the one who sent his goons after us? What's his name? What's his interest in you?'
She took another drag on her Marlboro, made a show of blowing a stream of smoke up toward the ceiling, but said nothing.
'Come on, Alix, don't jerk me around. You knew him. He certainly knew you. Why? And why did he send his men after us?'
She shrugged. 'His name is Ivan Sergeyevich Platonov. Everyone calls him Platon. He belongs to what you would call the Russian mafia. But the gangs-we say 'clans'-are not just Russian. They come from every race- Chechen, Azeri, Kazakh, Ukrainian. They have names, like rock groups or football teams. The Chechens are Tsentralnaya, Ostankinskaya, Avtomobil'naya. The Russians are Solnt sevskaya, Pushinskaya, Podolskaya-that is Platon's gang. Every gang hates all the others, but when you are a woman, they are all the same. They all want to fuck you, or beat you, or both. They are all pigs.'
'So how do you know so much about this Platon, then?'
'Everybody knows about him. He is a gangster, but the newspapers talk of him like some kind of superstar: how many houses he has, what new car he has bought, who his mistress is this week. And you must understand, he is not the boss of Podolskaya. There are others, much higher up than him. And they have bosses too, men who belong to no gangs, but who control them like, like… puppets.'
'Okay, so what's Platon doing in Paris?'
'It could be anything. He could be doing a deal for Podolskaya. He could be paying off a French government minister. He could be taking his girlfriends shopping in Paris. You know, I was looking at them in the ladies' room. I couldn't decide: Are they twins, or did they just have the same surgery? Platon would like that. Take two girls and turn them into Barbie dolls. He would think it was funny.'
Carver heard the bitterness in her voice. It sounded personal.
'One more time: How do you know him?'
'How do you think? How does any woman ever know a man like Platon?'
Carver thought of the fat man in the nightclub, his body pressing down on Alix. It wasn't a nice image. 'Who was he calling?'
'The man who sent me here.'
'Who is?'
'I don't know. Why should I know? You don't know who sent you. My connection is Kursk.'
'Was. He's dead.'
Alix shook her head, a mirthless smile playing at the corner of her mouth. 'You think? Did you see the body?'
'No.'
'You don't know Kursk. Many people have tried to finish him before now. Some even thought they had succeeded. But he is like Rasputin. You have to kill him again and again before he will die.'
'If you say so. But in my experience, people only die once. You work together all the time?'
'No. Not before tonight-not as partners.'
'What changed?'
She gave another exhausted, heavy-eyed smile. 'It was like The Godfather. He made me an offer I could not refuse.'
'How do you mean?'
'Oh, long story. And I am not going to tell it now.'
Carver looked at his watch, then turned to catch the waitress's eye and made a gesture, as if signing a bill. He turned back to Alix. 'I don't need to hear the story, but I need to know how it ends. I need to know if I can trust you. Whose side are you on now?'
She stubbed out her cigarette. 'Honestly? I don't know. I am trying to decide that myself. It is the same for me, Samuel. I too need to know who to trust. I will be thirty in September. I left home when I was eighteen, so I have lasted twelve years on my own. I am not a drug addict. I am not on the streets, giving myself to drunks for a handful of worthless rubles. I am not raising three children in a rat-infested apartment. Do you understand what I am saying?'
'That you know how to survive?'
'Exactly. So the question I am asking myself when I look at you is, do I trust this man to keep me alive? Or do I go back to Moscow and take my chances with men like Platon?'
'It's not Platon you have to worry about,' Carver pointed out, 'it's whoever planned this job tonight. And if you're even thinking of going back to Moscow, you must believe you've got a connection, someone who might be able to keep you safe.'
'Possibly. But as you say, they 'might' be able to keep me safe. If I have guessed right. If they want to help me. You see, that is the calculation I have to make.'
'Is that all it is-a calculation?'
'When you are trying to stay alive, that is all it ever is.'
She was right, of course. Carver knew that. Yet he also knew that he had passed the point where the justifications he gave for her presence weren't much more than a pretense. Sure, they stood a better chance together than apart. He didn't want her running off and telling the world about him. And she might yet give him a lead to the people who'd sent them on their fatal mission. But in the end, he just wanted to be with her. It was as simple as that.
He left money for the bill. 'Come on. The metro starts running soon. That's the safest place for us.'
'And then?'
'Then we're going to take a train, leaving at seven fifteen.'
'Where to?'
'Home,' he said.
The direct line from Chatelet-les-Halles to the Gare de Lyon takes exactly three minutes, but Carver went the scenic route, riding all over Paris, switching trains every few stops. It took them over an hour.
He didn't think that the Russians had picked up their trail after they'd left the nightclub. They'd left the back
