motorcycle and flash a camera. If it works, then maybe I can think of further assignments.'
Carver could imagine Alix being driven crazy by a life that required nothing of her except a futile fight against time. She was approaching thirty. Zhukovski might start looking elsewhere. She would see other, younger girls examining her, waiting for the first wrinkle, the slightest thickening of her waist or drooping of her breasts, the first sign that her power was waning. She was smart enough to plan another life. But would that life have to be within Zhukovski's organization, or had she been telling the truth when she talked of wanting to escape?
Stupid question. She'd made her feelings perfectly clear on that score. A boot in the face wasn't exactly a subtle hint. Forget her, she didn't want to be rescued. If she wanted to be part of Zhukovski's crew, she could go to hell with the rest of them. He could still turn things around.
He measured the distance between him and Zhukovski. He could cover the gap in a single leap, he was sure. Zhukovski would be hampered, being in a soft armchair. He'd find it tougher to get to his feet.
Carver let his head sag on his shoulders, then mumbled, 'It's over, isn't it?'
'Yes,' said Zhukovski. 'For you it is.'
The Russian relaxed, confident that Carver was a broken man. He reached his right arm out toward the vodka sitting on the table beside the chair, turning his head toward the glass as he did so. And in that moment of vulnerability, Carver leaped.
He had tensed his feet against the ground, pressing his toes into the carpet, bunching the muscles on his upper thighs and sucking in his stomach. Then he'd pushed up and away from the chair with every remaining ounce of his strength, aiming to smash headfirst into Zhukovski's face.
He stopped dead in midair as fifty thousand volts jack-knifed his body for the fourth time, crashing him down to the carpet, leaving him groveling in agony once again.
'Did you really think I would be that careless?' asked Zhukovski, getting up from his chair. He stood over Carver. 'Well, did you?' he repeated. Then he kicked Carver in the guts, driving the breath from his body.
'Don't you understand who I am?' Zhukovski did not raise his voice so much as refrigerate it, delivering every word with a frozen, deliberate matter-of-factness. 'I was a colonel in the KGB. I made dissidents watch as their entire families were burned alive: wives, children, mothers, fathers, everyone. I made prisoners place their hands in boiling water, then peeled their skin off like a tomato. Do you want me to do that to you?'
'No,' groaned Carver. 'Please. I beg you. I'll help you. I can do that. I know the password to the consortium's computer. I have the key to decrypt all the files. I'll tell you. Just, please… just stop hurting me.'
'Well now…' Zhukovski was almost whispering to himself. He was walking around Carver, circling his body. 'Why would I want to do that?'
He kicked Carver again, this time at the base of his spine, making him arch backward as the wounded muscles went into spasm. As Zhukovski kept moving around him, Carver shrank into a fetal curl. He was dry retching, unable to speak.
Zhukovski stamped on his ankles.
'I'm not impressed,' he said. 'I had expected a former member of the special boat service to have a greater resistance to physical pain. Perhaps you have gone soft. Or perhaps you are merely pretending to give in. What do you say?'
Carver's face was lying to one side on the floor. He was resting the weight of his head on the undamaged side of his jaw. Zhukovski could clearly see the angry red swelling that marked the area where Titov's punch had connected, so he ground his heel into the center of the bruising, gradually increasing the pressure on Carver's face, pinning his battered head while his body writhed helplessly. Carver let out a muffled howl of pain.
'No, that was not pretense,' said Zhukovski. 'But still, you might have set a trap for me. For a man of your skills, it would be no problem to booby trap a computer. Replace the battery with explosives and one strike of a single key would set it off. I have used that method of assassination myself. Perhaps we will finally discover what secrets are hidden in this ridiculous machine. But if it really is a trap, you will be the one who dies.'
77
When Alix had said that the sight of Carver was making her physically sick, she was telling the truth. As he lay naked and defeated at her feet, slobbering over her boots, it was all she could do not to retch. She had to kick him away before she vomited right over him.
But she was not nauseated because she held Carver in contempt, she was sickened with herself. She had delivered the only man who truly loved her into the hands of the man who could do him the most harm-a monster. She had played one game too many, told one too many lies. And now Carver was paying the price for her treachery.
She had been furious with him, that last night in Geneva. At first it had just been the sulky irritation that follows a lovers' tiff. That had given way to sullen frustration at his refusal to take her with him when he went to investigate what was happening. She felt patronized, the little woman left behind while the big strong man went off to work. And then, when Kursk appeared and turned the peaceful cafe into an slaughterhouse, she had felt the helpless rage that comes with fear and abandonment. She blamed Carver for her seizure and she stoked her anger against him in order to fortify her for what she had to do next.
She would die, she knew, if Yuri Zhukovski ever suspected that her relationship with Carver had been anything other than a professional deceit. Her survival depended on persuading him that she had simply gone back to what she did best: using her powers of emotional and sexual manipulation against a helpless man. So she'd laced her account of the previous three days with sneering mockery. She'd portrayed Carver as a deluded fool, capable enough at combat or sabotage, but a fumbling amateur when he held a woman, rather than a gun, in his hands.
There was a certain truth in that, of course. But that was why she'd liked him so much, why she knew now that she could have loved him, if only she'd let herself. It was Carver's unexpected emotional vulnerability that made him a complex, lovable human being, not just a killing machine.
She'd told herself that as long as she was alive, there was always hope that somehow she might be reunited with Carver. She did not know how or when, but she felt sure he would try to find a way to get her back. Until then, all she could do was convince Yuri that he had nothing whatever to worry about. So she'd turned off her true feelings and given herself to him, letting him use her as he wished, paying her penance by prostituting herself more utterly than ever before in her life.
Finally, she had done one last service, the one for which she could least forgive herself. When Carver had called, shortly after lunch-less than twelve hours ago, though it seemed like a different age-she played the part of the helpless kidnap victim, crying out to him and squealing in fake pain when Yuri pretended to slap her.
When the telephone had been put down, and Carver set on his way, Yuri had grabbed her by both arms and looked directly into her eyes as if searching for any last sign that she had betrayed him. He did not appear to find any.
'You are a good girl,' he'd said. 'I always had faith in you and you did not give me cause to regret it. That was very sensible. I should have hated to have to punish you. But now…' his face cleared and his mood lifted. 'Now you deserve a reward. Go into town, one of the men will drive you. Buy whatever you like. Make yourself beautiful again.' He'd ruffled the short, black hair with almost fatherly affection. For once there was a trace of warmth, even affection in his voice. 'I miss my pretty, golden girl.'
Alix did as she was told. She'd spent hours trying on the shortest skirts, the highest heels, and the brightest jewels the boutiques of Gstaad-a town well used to expensive women-had to offer. But that was just the start.
Her body was massaged. She had manicures and pedicures. Her face was caked with masks, then soothed with creams. Her hair was lengthened with extensions ('From Russian women, just like you!' the hairdresser had squealed, thinking this would make her happy rather than deepen her self-loathing), then dyed back to blond, then artfully styled and sprayed. Finally her face and limbs were painted to the absurdly artificial, beauty-queen perfection that a man like Zhukovski would understand best, and she was ready to be delivered into his presence again.
Alix had teetered into the chalet's vast living room in her stiletto-heeled boots and Stella McCartney microdress
