‘Of course. We should do that. But with respect, I need you to trust me on this, because I’m getting to understand our assassin and how she operates. She gives an impression of recklessness, giving me that bracelet, for example, but actually she takes very calculated risks. She guessed that I’d follow her to Venice, sooner or later, and that I’d figure out that she killed Yevtukh. That’s all part of her plan. Because knowing I’m there, just a couple of steps behind, gives the game its edge. She’s a psychopath, remember. Emotionally and empathetically, her life is a flatlining blank. What she wants, above all, is to feel. Killing gives her a rush, but only a temporary one. She’s good at it, it’s easy, and the thrill diminishes each time. She needs to jack up the excitement. To know that her wit and her artistry and the sheer horror of what she’s doing are appreciated. That’s why she’s drawing me in. That’s why she told me her name, using the perfume. She likes setting me these perverse little puzzles. It’s intimate and sensual and hyper-aggressive, all at the same time.’
‘Assuming that this is true, why you?’
‘Because I’m the one who’s after her. I’m the source of the greatest danger to her, and that excites her. Hence the provocations. All that erotic bait-and-switch.’
‘Well, it’s clearly working.’
‘By which you mean what, exactly?’
‘I mean that she’s calling all the shots.’
‘I acknowledge that. I admit that she’s been fucking with my head. What I’m suggesting is that we get ahead of the game. Let me go to Russia. I agree that it’s possible that Villanelle and Orlov have no connection, that their lives don’t intersect at all, but let’s just look and see what we find. Please. Trust me on this.’
Richard is expressionless. For perhaps half a minute he stares out of the window at the busy street below. ‘We share a birthday. Shared, I should say.’
‘You and Konstantin Orlov?’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you the same age?’
‘No, he was a couple of years older. He fought as a conscript in the Soviet-Afghan War. Served under Vostrotin and was wounded, quite badly, at Khost. Won a medal, a good one, which must have brought him to the attention of someone with a bit of pull, because a couple of years later he turned up at the Andropov Academy. That’s the finishing school for spies outside Moscow. It used to be run by the KGB, but by the time Orlov left they’d become the SVR.’
‘So this was all . . . when?’
‘Khost was in 1988, and Orlov graduated from the Academy in, I’d guess, 1992. One of Yevgeny Primakov’s brightest and best, by all accounts. There was a posting in Karachi and then another in Kabul, which is where I met him. Very clever, very charming, and I’d guess completely ruthless.’
‘He was declared?’
‘Yes, diplomatic cover. So he was on the circuit. But he had fast-track SVR written all over him. And he knew exactly who I was too.’
A staff member, name-tagged ‘Agniezka’, appears at their table. ‘I take?’ she asks, nodding at Richard’s abandoned shepherd’s pie.
‘Thank you, yes.’
‘Don’t like?’
‘No. Yes. Just . . . Not hungry.’
‘You want feedback form?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘I give you anyway. You’re welcome.’
‘Why, in a free world, would you choose to have a tongue piercing?’ Richard asks when Agniezka has gone.
‘I have no idea.’
‘Is it a sex thing?’
‘Truly, I don’t know. I’ll ask Billy. Go on about Orlov.’
‘I’ll tell you a story about him. We met at a reception at the Russian embassy – this was in Kabul – and after directing me to the best vodka, he introduced me to a colleague of his whom he described as a secretary although we both knew she was no such thing. Anyway she was attractive, and obviously clever, and laughed at my jokes despite my far-from-brilliant Russian, and when she went it was with a backwards glance that lasted just that moment longer than it needed to. It was all done with a very light touch, and when I told Konstantin that I’d love to see her again but just couldn’t face the paperwork, he laughed and gave me another glass of Admiralskaya.
‘Anyway, I reported the encounter in the usual way and the next day I got a couriered message from Konstantin. He remembered that I’d said I liked bird-watching, and wondered if I’d like to go on a short drive with him outside the city. So I logged the approach, and a couple of days later I met Konstantin in Dar-al-Aman Road outside his embassy, where two vehicles turned up with Afghan drivers and half a dozen wild-looking locals armed with AKs. We drove out of the city on the Bagram road, past the airport, and half an hour later we turned off in the middle of nowhere, drove round a low hill, and there were all these parked vehicles, and tents, and the smoke from fires. There were thirty or forty people there. Arabs, Afghans, tribespeople and a team of heavily armed bodyguards. So I asked Konstantin, rather nervously, what the hell was this place? And he said, don’t worry, it’s all fine, look closer.
‘And that’s when I saw these lines of perches, and on them, these superb birds of prey. Sakers, lanners, peregrines. It was a falconry camp. I followed Konstantin into one of the tents, and there, hooded and ready to fly, were half a dozen gyrfalcons, the most beautiful and expensive hunting birds in the world. There was also a white-bearded guy there, extremely fierce-looking, who Konstantin said was a local tribal chieftain. He introduced us, someone brought us lunch, Coca-Cola and some kind of meat on skewers, and then we drove further into the desert and the falconers flew their birds at bustard and sand-grouse. It was truly spectacular.’
‘I would never have had you down as a bird-watcher.’
‘I wasn’t one until I
