‘I think Eve’s right,’ says Richard. ‘Dennis was always a pragmatist, never an idealist. They recruited him because they needed a senior desk officer in MI5, and whatever he might have told Eve, it would have been the money that he went for, not the ideology. People like Dennis don’t change horses at this stage of their career.’
‘The thing that really clicked for me,’ Eve says, ‘was Cradle saying that Kedrin was killed to turn a liability into a martyr. That confirms what we already know, that their methods are completely ruthless, but it also tells us that Kedrin’s vision was basically the same as theirs. A world dominated by an alliance of hard-right – or as they prefer to put it, “traditionalist” – Eurasian powers led by Russia.’
‘I agree,’ says Richard. ‘And that squares with what we know about the rise of nationalism and identity politics in Europe. That it’s being skilfully mobilised and massively funded by parties we can’t identify, but suspect to be Russian.’
‘Are we talking official Kremlin policy?’ Billy asks, wiping his fingers on his jeans and stuffing the wrapper of his pasty in his pocket.
‘Unlikely. In today’s Russia, the people you read about in the papers and see on TV are mostly figureheads. The real power-players move in the shadows.’
Villanelle hunches into her down jacket as the Super Puma helicopter circles the marine platform. Rain flurries wash the windscreen and, in the sea below, heavy waves rear and fall.
‘Going in to land now,’ the pilot tells her, and she gives him a thumbs-up, removes her headset, and grabs her rucksack.
They touch down, the helicopter rocking in the gale-force wind, and Villanelle jumps out and swings her pack onto her back. The rain lashes her face, and she has to lean into the wind as she runs head-down across the platform deck. Anton, a lean figure in a reefer jacket and submariner’s sweater, gives her a cursory glance and beckons her through a white-painted steel door. As he swings it shut behind her the sound of the roaring wind is muted a degree or two. Villanelle stands there, expectant, rain dripping from her nose.
The platform, some ten miles east of the Essex coast, is one of five built in the Second World War to protect the North Sea shipping lanes. Known as Knock Tom, it originally consisted of an anti-aircraft emplacement supported by reinforced concrete towers. After the war the anti-aircraft platforms were allowed to fall into disrepair. Three of the five were eventually demolished, but Knock Tom passed into private hands. Its present owner is the Sverdlovsk-Futura Group, a company registered in Moscow. SFG have undertaken extensive reconstruction of Knock Tom, and the former gun deck now holds three freight containers that have been converted into offices and a dining unit. The support towers have been divided into living quarters accessed by a vertical steel ladder. Following Anton, Villanelle climbs downward past a humming generator room and into a concrete-walled cell furnished with a bunk bed and a single chair.
‘In the office in ten?’ Anton says.
Villanelle nods, drops her pack, and hears the door close behind her. The room smells of corrosion, and the bedclothes are damp, but of the sea beyond the windowless concrete walls she can hear nothing. Somehow, Knock Tom is perfect for Anton. It’s exactly the sort of remote and brutally functional setting in which she’s always imagined him, and for a moment she wishes she’d brought something wildly inappropriate to wear – a hot pink Dior tulle dress, perhaps – just to annoy him.
He’s waiting for her at the top of the ladder. As they cross the platform deck to the containers, Villanelle looks out over the churning grey sea. The desolation of it makes her think, unexpectedly, of Anna Leonova. She hasn’t seen or spoken to her former teacher for a decade, but when she remembers her it’s with a sadness that nothing and no one else has ever made her feel.
‘I like this view,’ Anton tells her. ‘It’s so indifferent to human activity.’
‘Are we alone?’
‘There’s no one here except you and me, if that’s what you mean.’
The shipping container housing the office is surmounted by a steerable microwave antenna. The only link, Villanelle guesses, to the world beyond the waves. The interior is frugal but well-appointed. On a metal desk are a laptop, a satphone and an anglepoise lamp. A wall-mounted unit holds electronic hardware and several shelves of charts and maps.
Anton motions Villanelle to a leather-upholstered chair, pours them both coffee from a cafetière, and seats himself behind the desk.
‘So, Villanelle.’
‘So, Anton.’
‘You’re bored of routine actions like the Yevtukh and Cradle jobs. You feel it’s time you moved to the next level.’
Villanelle nods.
‘You’ve contacted me to request more complex and demanding work. You think you’ve earned it.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, I applaud your keenness, but I’m not sure that I agree. You’re technically adept, and your weapons skills are good, but you’re reckless, and your judgement’s often questionable. You’re sexually profligate, which I don’t give a shit about, but you’re indiscreet, which I do. Your fixation on the MI6 agent Eve Polastri, in particular, leads you to ignore the very real problems that she and her team could cause us. And cause you.’
‘She won’t give us any problems. I keep an eye on her so that I can keep up with what she knows, but she really doesn’t have any idea what’s going on.’
‘She found out about Dennis Cradle. And she’s not going to go away. I know her type. On the outside disorganised, but inside sharp. And patient. Like a cat watching a bird.’
‘I’m the cat.’
‘You think you are. I’m not so sure.’
‘She’s vulnerable, because of the asshole husband. I
