‘So you had a good day with Orlov?’
‘It was an extraordinary day, and I honestly didn’t care that I was probably spending it with arms traders, opium dealers and the high command of the Taliban. I wouldn’t even have been surprised to have come face to face with Osama bin Laden, who I later learned owned several gyrfalcons.’
‘And Orlov didn’t make any kind of approach?’
‘Lord, no. He was much too smart for that. We talked very little except about the birds and the wildness and strangeness of the occasion. And while he obviously had his professional reasons for cultivating me, I sensed that he took a real pleasure in my enjoyment of the day. I liked him very much, and I meant to return the invitation in some way. I felt that it was important not to be in his debt. But I never got the chance. He was recalled to Moscow shortly afterwards, and we later learned that he’d been appointed chief of Directorate S.’
‘Did you ever see him again?’
‘Once, very briefly. It was in Moscow at a party for Yuri Modin, who fifty years earlier had been the KGB controller for Philby, Burgess, Maclean and Blunt, the Cambridge spies. Modin, by then pretty old, had just written a book about it all, and Konstantin was something of a disciple of Modin’s. They met, I’m guessing, at the Andropov Academy, where Modin was a guest lecturer. He taught a course named “Active Measures”, which included subversion, disinformation and assassination, and from the way that Konstantin ran the directorate, it was clear that he had taken Modin’s philosophy very much to heart.’
‘Then in 2008 Konstantin leaves the SVR altogether. Jumped or pushed?’
‘Put it like this: when you’re running an SVR directorate it’s up or out. And he wasn’t promoted.’
‘So he might be resentful of his old bosses?’
‘From the little I knew of him, that wouldn’t have been his way. Konstantin was an old-school Russian fatalist. He’d have taken it philosophically, packed his bags, and moved on.’
‘To what, do we know?’
‘No. From then to now, when he turns up dead in Odessa, we have absolutely no knowledge of his whereabouts or activities. He vanishes.’
‘You don’t think that’s strange?’
‘I do, and it is. But it doesn’t tie him to our killer.’
‘So what do you think he was doing for the last decade?’
‘Gardening at his dacha? Running a nightclub? Salmon fishing in Kamchatka? Who knows?’
‘How about placing a lifetime’s experience of covert operations at the disposal of the Twelve?’
‘Eve, there is no logical reason in the world to believe that that’s the case. None.’
‘Richard, you didn’t hire me for my logical skills. You hired me because I was capable of making the imaginative leaps that this investigation demands. Villanelle might play with the idea of leading us on, of leading me on, but when it really matters she covers her tracks like a professional. Like a professional who’s been trained by the best. By a man like Konstantin Orlov.’
He frowns, steeples his fingers, and opens his mouth to speak.
‘Seriously, Richard, we’ve got nothing else to go on. I agree with you about the money-trail and the Tony Kent connection, but how long’s that going to take us to untangle? Months? Years? The three of us at Goodge Street certainly don’t have the resources. Or the experience.’
‘Eve—’
‘No, listen to me. I know there’s a chance that Orlov and the Twelve aren’t connected. But if there’s a chance they are, even a small one, then surely we have to follow it up. Surely?’
‘Eve, it’s a no. You can investigate the hell out of Orlov from here, but I’m not sending you to Russia.’
‘Richard, please.’
‘Look, either you’re wrong, and there’s no connection, in which case it’s a waste of your time and my resources. Or you’re right, in which case I’d be encouraging you, in the most irresponsible fashion imaginable, to place yourself in harm’s way. You turn up in Russia and start asking questions about political assassinations and the careers of men like Orlov . . . I don’t even want to think about the consequences. Or, for that matter, about what I’d tell your husband if anything happened to you. We’re talking about a country so traumatised, so abused by its leaders, so systematically ransacked by its business class that it can barely function. You start making enemies in Moscow, and a teenager will shoot you in the face for the price of an iPhone. There are no rules any more. There’s no pity. It’s just havoc.’
‘It may be all those things – and I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear what you said about my husband – but it’s also where the answers are.’
‘Possibly. But you’ve said it yourself. Who do we trust? If we’re to believe Cradle, and in the light of events we’ve got no choice but to believe him, the Twelve are buying up precisely the kind of people we’d need to help us.’
‘That’s what I want to ask you. There must be someone you know over there who’s clean. Some man or woman of principle who can’t be bought.’
‘You don’t give up, do you?’
‘No, I don’t. If I was a man you’d send me, and you know it.’
He nods. ‘Eve, please. We can talk further if you want, but there’s a couple over there staring at us, and I think they want this table. Also, I need to get back to the office.’
Petra Voss yawns and stretches. ‘Well, that was nice. I’m glad I rang for you.’
‘Happy to be of service.’ Villanelle extricates her naked thigh from between Petra’s. ‘Just don’t forget who’s really in charge around here.’
‘Remind me.’
‘Again?’
‘I’ve got a terrible memory.’ Taking Villanelle’s hand, Petra pulls it between her legs.
‘Tell me about Max Linder,’ Villanelle
