The door to the room opens, and Max Linder walks in. He hangs the Do Not Disturb sign over the outside handle, and bolts the door from the inside. Rounding the bed, he stoops to pick up the valise, which he places on the bed and unlocks, using a combination code. From inside this, he takes a ginger-coloured garment of some kind, and drapes it from the bed.
He crosses the room. Villanelle can’t see the wardrobe because the bed is in the way, but she hears the creak of its double doors, and then the springing click of the lock as Linder opens the briefcase. Pressing one eye to the narrow aperture between the zips, she feels cold sweat crawling from her armpits to her ribs. A moment later Linder walks back into view carrying the laptop computer and a CD, which he places next to the miniature projector on the bedside table. There’s a pause as he connects them, and then a dim, projected image appears on the wall of the room, runs for a couple of seconds, and stops. Villanelle can only see the image at an acute angle, but it appears to be the countdown timer of an old black and white film.
Touching a wall-switch Linder turns off the overhead light, so that the only remaining illumination is provided by the lamp on the bedside table, and the beam of the projector. Then, unhurriedly, he strips naked, and taking the garment from the bed steps into it. It’s a dirndl, a traditional Alpine dress with a laced-up bodice, a white blouse with puff sleeves, and a frilled apron. White knee socks complete the costume. Villanelle can’t see Linder clearly, but she can see enough to know that the look doesn’t suit him. Bending down, he takes a female wig from the valise, and teases it into place on his head. The wig is neatly coiffed and waved, in a stern, mid-twentieth-century style.
Her back and calf muscles screaming now, Villanelle stares through her tiny viewing slit, and remembers what Petra Voss told her.
He’s turning himself into Eva fucking Braun.
Returning to the briefcase in the wardrobe, Linder takes out the rectangular box that houses the Obergruppenführer dildo. Given that less than an hour ago Villanelle has fitted the Obergruppenführer with a military-grade detonator and a lethal payload of Fox-7 explosive, this is not good news. Briefly she considers bursting out of the suitcase, killing Linder with her bare hands, and then pitching him out of the window into the snowy darkness outside, but quickly dismisses the idea. Discovery would not be immediate, but it would be inevitable. And weirdly, illogically, she feels safe folded into the suitcase. She likes it in there.
Linder switches on the projector, and as black and white images begin to flicker on the wall, he inserts a pair of in-ear headphones and lies down on the bed. Despite the distorted angle, Villanelle can see that the film is of Hitler, delivering a ranting, histrionic speech to a vast crowd, perhaps at Nuremberg. All she can hear of the speech is a faint whisper from the headphones, but the lace apron of the dirndl is soon twitching like a tent in a high wind. ‘Oh mein sexy Wolf,’Linder mutters, clutching himself. ‘Oh mein Führer. Fuck me with that big wolf’s schwanz. I need anschluss.’
Villanelle closes her eyes, presses her forehead to her knees, covers her ears with her hands and opens her mouth. Her neck and shoulder muscles are quivering now, and her heart pounding.
‘Invade me, mein Führer!’
The air ruptures, tearing like fabric, and a roar of sound slams from wall to wall, wrapping around Villanelle so tightly that she can’t breathe, lifting and upending her. For an extended moment she’s weightless, then there’s a hard impact and the suitcase bursts open. Lungs heaving, faint with shock, she rolls into a frozen, singing silence. The room’s half dark, and there’s no plate-glass window any more, just an empty black space. The air is filled with feathers, whirling like snowflakes on the inrushing mountain air. Some, flecked with red, drift to the floor. One settles softly against Villanelle’s cheek.
Effortfully, she raises herself on one elbow. Max Linder is all over the place. His head and torso, still wearing the laced-up bodice of the dirndl, have been thrown back against the headboard. His legs, all but severed, hang loosely over the bed’s end. In between, on the exploded duvet, is a glinting mess of blood, viscera and broken glass from the blown-out overhead light. Above Villanelle’s head, something detaches from the ceiling and splatters into her hair. She brushes it away absently; it feels like liver. The ceiling and walls are glazed with blood-spray, and flecked with faecal and intestinal matter. Linder’s severed right hand lies, palm down, in the courtesy fruit-bowl.
Slowly, Villanelle gets to her feet and takes a few shaky steps. Vaguely conscious that she’s hungry, she reaches for a banana, but its skin is sticky with blood and she lets it fall onto the carpet. Her eyes ache with fatigue, and she’s desperately, mortally cold. So she lies down again, curling up like a child at the foot of the bed, as the body fluids of the man that she has killed drip and congeal around her. She doesn’t hear the splintering of the door, or the shouts and the screaming that follow. She dreams that she’s lying with her head in Anna Leonova’s lap. That she’s safe, and at peace, and Anna is stroking her hair.
Chapter 7
Sleet is spattering against the window of the Airbus as it taxis to the runway. A stewardess with over-bleached hair is giving a listless safety demonstration. Canned music rises and falls in volume.
‘I know the hotel,’ Lance says. ‘It’s on Prospekt Mira, and absolutely bloody enormous. Probably the biggest in Russia.’
‘Are they serving drinks on this flight, do you think?’
‘Eve, this is Aeroflot. Relax.’
‘Sorry, Lance, it’s
