without canvassing every single station along the route.
Before he did that, Papin decided to check the CCTV footage from the cameras dotted around the station. The coverage was patchy, but Papin did spot a bespectacled man in a gray jacket leaving the ticket office at 7:05. He was carrying a black bag over one shoulder: the computer.
'Is that him?' Papin had asked the operations director.
'It could be. Without the glasses that could easily be Carver.'
'Okay. But now look. We have him here at 7:05. The next time we find him he is approaching the gate for the Milan train at 7:09.'
'Yes… He bought a ticket, he got on the train. So?'
'So, where has he been? It only takes a few seconds to walk across the concourse. He did something in the meantime. What?'
'I don't know. Maybe he went to the bathroom. Maybe he bought a newspaper.'
'Or maybe he bought another ticket, to a different destination. Carver is good. He must have known he would be spotted at the ticket office, so he used that to create a diversion. Then he got the other tickets at the automatic machines. Merde! There is no video footage covering them. Someone will have to check the machines for all the purchases made between 7:05 and 7:09. And meanwhile, I will do something else.'
'What's that?'
'Find the girl.'
27
Freshly showered, Alix came into the kitchen, where Carver was fixing them both some food. She had one towel wrapped around her body, another around her hair.
'Do you have an old shirt or something I can wear?' she said, with a self-conscious smile. 'None of my…'
'Shhh.' Carver held up a hand.
Alix was about to argue. Then she saw that there was a small television on a bracket on the kitchen wall. Carver was watching a satellite news program.
'It's unbelievable,' he said. 'There are thousands of people outside the gates of Buckingham Palace. There are more of them laying wreaths outside Kensington Palace, where she lived. There's a book of condolence and people are queuing for, I don't know, hundreds of yards to sign it. The prime minister's calling her the People's Princess. They've had politicians giving messages from all over the world. There are experts talking about everything from whether paparazzi photographers should be allowed to chase people on powerful motorcycles, to how the royal princes are going to cope with bereavement… The actual time of death was four a.m., by the way. Like that makes any difference.'
'We didn't know what we were doing.'
'Like that really makes any difference either. Look, do you want some cheese omelette? It's pretty good. This is the place for Swiss cheese, after all. It's just that I've rather lost my appetite.'
'Sure, thanks,' Alix said. 'But I think I should be wearing some clothes when I eat.'
'Of course. Stay right there.'
He was back a few seconds later, holding a gray T-shirt. It said 'Sandhurst Special Forces Challenge 1987' across the front. 'Is that okay? Afraid I've not done much laundry lately, I've been away. It's crazy… I was in New Zealand when they contacted me. On my bloody holiday.'
She touched his arm gently, sensing the barely suppressed tension in his voice. 'It's okay. This shirt will do fine.'
'Good. On second thought, maybe I will have some of that omelette after all.'
They sat eating and watching the TV for a while. There were cameras at RAF Northolt air base, west of London. The princess's body was expected at any moment. Finally, Carver got up from the table and switched the TV off.
'You know what? I think I've seen enough of that. They're not going to tell me anything I don't already know. And there's not been anything about our part in it all. Nothing about explosions or gunfights in Paris. Either they don't know, or someone is going to great lengths to cover it all up.'
He walked through to the living room. 'I thought you were going to tell me your life story.' He threw himself down on the sofa and waved at the two armchairs. 'Grab a seat. I'm all ears.'
Alix walked into the room. She settled into one of the chairs, pulled her knees up to her chin, then wrapped her arms around her shins in a self-protective embrace. Carver watched her, taking in every detail. He looked at the way the sunlight caught the soft down on her long brown thighs. He looked at the way she ran her hands through her short, damp hair. He was wondering if she would betray him. He thought it might be worth it, just for the chance to have this girl in his apartment, even for a single day. As long as she was there, he could forget about death. Then Alix began to talk.
'Imagine a world without color. The sky is gray. The buildings are gray, and the people too. The grass is gray. In winter even the snow is dirty gray. No one has any money, and capitalism is the enemy, so there is nothing in the shops, no displays in the shop windows. There are no advertisements in the streets, no bright lights. You queue for bread with your mother and wonder how drunk your father is going to be later, and which of you he is going to hit, if the vodka does not make him unconscious first. That is how I grew up.
'We lived in a city called Perm, maybe twelve hundred kilometers from Moscow. I was a good student. I had lots of time for studying because no boys were interested in me.'
'Oh, come on,' Carver interrupted. 'I don't believe that.'
'No, really. I was not a pretty girl, and my eyes they… how do you say it when eyes point in the wrong direction?'
'Cross-eyed?'
'Yes, I was cross-eyed.'
'Oh, that explains it.'
'Explains what?'
'Your eyes. There's something just a tiny bit uneven about them.'
Alix started as if someone had slapped her. Carver cursed himself.
'I'm sorry, that was incredibly stupid of me. What I meant was, I think you have amazing eyes. They're beautiful. And they're kind of hypnotic. I can't stop looking at them and, er, now I know why.'
Carver waited to see whether he would be forgiven.
'You were saying…'
'I was saying that my squint was not so-what did you say?-hypnotic when I was a lonely little girl. I had to wear spectacles with really ugly, thick frames. So the other children made fun of me, the boys, and the girls also. Later, I grew up. My body was good, I knew that, but my face, forget it.'
'So how did the ugly duckling turn into a beautiful swan?'
She gave a quick nod of the head that simultaneously acknowledged and dismissed his compliment.
'I belonged to Komsomol, the Young Communists League. I did not love the Party. I did not care about politics. But you had to join, and there were benefits: summer camps, places at better colleges. You know. So, anyway, they had a literary competition. Even under the Communists it was important to be kulturny…'
'Cultured?'
'Yes, like playing a musical instrument really well, or dancing ballet or, for me, being able to write a long essay on Chekhov. I said he exposed the decadence and emptiness of the bourgeoisie in Imperialist Russia, proving the need for the revolution. Total bullshit! But it won a trip for me to a big Komsomol convention in Moscow. There were young athletes, scientists, artists, and academics. We did not know it, but the state used these conventions to select the best young people to be trained for all the different agencies.'
'Aha!' Carver raised a finger in the air, like some corny old TV detective solving a mystery. 'So this was where they selected you to be a dangerous Soviet spy!' His voice turned more serious: 'What were you, an analyst? Or did you do fieldwork?'
'You could call it that. A woman came up to me at the convention. She said, 'Do you mind?' She took off my
