you.”
She laughed. She liked it when he called her “sweetheart” in his own language.
“You’ll frighten men away with that kind of talk,” he insisted. “You want to be the Virgin Queen?”
“If the alternative is frightened men, yes. Finn was never frightened of anything.”
“Ah, Finn.” Willy shook his head, suddenly quiet, and made no attempt to hide his deep sadness from her. She liked that about him too, that he was honest with his feelings and didn’t try to protect her from them. “Finn was a beautiful man,” he said.
“And a fool in almost equal amounts,” she added.
“I understand. You’re not over him. I apologise.”
She smiled and held his hand.
“You have nothing to apologise for, Willy. You’ve loved us both.”
A waitress brought them a
It was true. She wasn’t over Finn; he was never far from her thoughts. How could she be over him? Finn was the reason she had left everything—Russia her home, her past, her roots, her people. Her Year Zero was 1999—the year she’d met Finn. She’d made the most of the men in her life up to then, but Finn was the only one she’d ever truly loved.
And Finn was never far away, even two years after his death. He had been a part of her life for just seven years, until they’d finally got to him. She and Finn had seven years of almost permanent tension, some of it bad, but most of it was good, the beautiful tension of being in constant awareness of each other.
They’d met in a setup, an arrangement between the KGB on her side and MI6 on his.
In 1999, he had been encouraged by his station head in Moscow to strike up an affair with her, while she in turn had been instructed by her SVR boss to do the same. Up to then, the KGB had failed at all their attempts to entrap Finn, and so she, the youngest female KGB colonel—a beauty in her own right, she was accustomed to hearing—had, much against her will, taken the job. She was no honey-trap, but a senior officer at the heart of the KGB’s foreign operations. She had worked inside the SVR, and right at the heart of the SVR itself, in the highly secret Department S.
But after 2000, when Putin became president, she had been told why Finn had remained in Moscow for so long. There was a mole, a double agent—a traitor—close to power in Putin’s circle, and Finn was believed to have sole access to him. Find the traitor—that was her patriotic assignment.
She recalled Finn’s last conversation with Adrian, his recruiter in London; how Adrian had threatened and cajoled and finally issued an ultimatum to Finn to stop his investigations. But Finn had pursued his own line, and met with his death in Paris, after he was betrayed.
She looked across the table at Willy. It was Willy who had saved them, before Finn chose to take his final step. She and Finn had hidden out in a beach hut at Willy’s driftwood restaurant on the most unwanted, unattractive stretch of sand near Marseille. Only the hippies and drifters went to Willy’s beach, and even they had to be vetted by him.
Those were the happy days, hot in summer, cold in winter, in a windswept hut hidden behind the dunes, which themselves were hidden across miles of unwelcoming salt flats. Willy had kept them successfully away from prying eyes.
“What is worrying you, then, if your life is so good?” Willy said, interrupting her thoughts, bringing her back to the present.
She didn’t reply, but looked into his eyes.
“Tell me,” he said. “I see a cloud.”
“Someone came to the house,” she answered finally. “On Saturday. A neighbour saw him.”
She saw Willy immediately become practical; no anxiety, no sympathy, just analysis.
“Not a caller, then?” he said.
“No. He just looked, came right up to the gate and looked through.”
“Maybe noting your car?” Willy said.
“Possibly, yes.”
“You have a description?”
“Not a useful one.”
“And in the village? A car? How did he get there?”
“I haven’t asked anyone, and the man who told me didn’t know.”
“Someone will likely have seen it,” Willy said. “In these villages, that’s what they do, look out for invaders. That’s what they’ve been doing for a thousand years. It’s in their blood.”
“I only heard just before I came to see you,” she said.
“You’ve told your French security?”
“No.”
“You should have.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Yes, there is. I’m coming back with you, staying there tonight. Maybe we can find out more.”
“That will certainly set tongues wagging,” she said, and laughed.
“Hell, we’re married! I claim my rights!” he joked. “And I want to see my little godson. I have something for him. Just a small present.”
They drove back after lunch, across the low, olive-rich hills of the Alpilles with their neat stone farmhouses and perfect villages.
They didn’t talk much as she drove. Willy saw she was carrying the gun and simply nodded approvingly. Anna felt tense. She realised she was anxious being away from her son with the unsolved knowledge of this unwelcome visitor. Willy spoke once, when they were nearing the village. It was as if he’d been unwilling to raise the subject.
“Have you told them about Mikhail, Anna?”
“Them?”
“The French? Or anybody else?”
“No, Willy. Mikhail is all I have to keep me safe.”
“And all you need to get you into deep shit too,” he said.
She didn’t reply.
She had told nobody about Mikhail. Mikhail . . . Finn’s great source, who couldn’t be discredited, no matter what they said in London. Mikhail was true.
And she had told nobody—not even Willy—that she alone knew who Mikhail really was. Alone in the world, she knew Mikhail’s identity, and only Mikhail knew she knew it. That was trust, trust on a scale that dwarfed even her trust in Willy, and in Finn himself. Mikhail was so big, so important. He walked such a narrow tightrope at the heart of Putin’s elite.
She’d wondered more than once why Mikhail hadn’t killed her the one time they’d met, and she’d seen who he was. That was trust on a scale that was unimaginable to her.
Back in Germany, it was Mikhail who had found Finn, when she had been unable to. She had told nobody this. And she had told nobody that after Mikhail found Finn, he’d found her too, in the pink house in Germany, so that she could see Finn one last time before he died.
Finn had never told her Mikhail’s true identity. It was for her own protection, he said. And then, on the night of his death, she saw Mikhail.
Mikhail was the gold seam for whoever found him; his enemies in Russia, or his so-called friends in the West. And when Mikhail had revealed himself to her, he had somehow known that she would never reveal his identity. He knew she could have had anything she wanted by revealing that, even her route back to Russia, if she’d wanted it.
That was a trust never to be broken, even with Willy.
When they reached the village, they saw the children playing in the sun-browned garden at the rear of the creche. She saw her son, and her heart slowed. As they’d approached the village, she realised she’d become increasingly afraid, imagining everything.
But he was there, falling off a red plastic structure into the sand, over and over again, laughing more and
