The Third Woman. Mark Burnell

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      > Oscar. Need to speak. CRV/13. P.

      She’d followed Pierre Damiani’s escape route without a problem. What more could they have done for her? Our cameras are recording us – I hope you understand. A plea more than anything else, meaning perhaps: our cameras are recording us … and who can say who will see this? Some entity with powers to sequestrate such recordings?

      Yesterday she’d had security in numbers: Stephanie, Petra, Marianne, the Magnificent Seven. Now she was down to one. But which one? Or was it worse than that? Perhaps she was no one at all.

      Generally, the deeper the crisis, the deeper she withdrew into Petra. Which fuelled the contradiction at the heart of her; Stephanie was only ever extraordinary as Petra and the more extraordinary Petra was, the more Stephanie resented it. Now, however, Petra seemed marginalized, her confidence faltering.

      Helen Graham was useless to her now. That meant the rest of her Magnificent Seven were contaminated by association. Which prompted an unpleasant thought: Cyril Bradfield was the only other person who’d been aware of their existence. She tried to think who might have penetrated their secret. And, more worryingly, how. Through Bradfield himself? What other way could there be? The possibility made her nauseous. Magenta House had to be the prime candidate. Which was faintly ironic, since the identities were designed to protect her from them.

      Magenta House was the organization for whom she’d once worked. Based in London, if an entity that doesn’t exist can be based anywhere, it had no official title; Magenta House was the nickname used by those on the inside. Created to operate beyond the law, it had never bothered to recognize the law. In that sense, it was a logical concept, especially if one accepted that there were some threats that could not be countered legally. Somebody has to work in the sewers, Stephanie. That’s why people like you exist.

      They’d created her, they’d tried to control her and, in the end, they’d tried to kill her. Which, paradoxically, made them unlikely candidates now. They’d let her go. There had been a change. One era had ended, another had begun, and Petra had been consigned to history.

      Nothing that had happened in the last twenty-four hours bore any trace of Magenta House. They shied away from spectaculars. They didn’t plant bombs in public places. Instead, they liquidated the kind of people who did. Quietly, clinically, leaving no trace, and sometimes no body. They deleted people from existence. If they’d wanted to kill her and they’d discovered where she was, they wouldn’t have bothered luring her to Paris.

      On the screen, a reply directed her to a quiet confessional in the ether.

      > Hello Oscar.

      > Petra. Bored already?

      The cursor was winking at her, teasing her.

      > I’m in Paris.

      > Not a good choice for a vacation at the moment.

      > Especially not in Sentier.

      > You were there?

      > Yes. Has anybody been looking for me?

      > You’re always in demand.

      > I need help, Oscar. I’m running blind.

      There was a long pause and Stephanie knew why. This was the first time Stern had encountered Petra in trouble.

      > What do you need?

      > Something. Anything.

      > Give me two hours. We can meet here again.

      She terminated the connection. Out on the street she buttoned her denim jacket to the throat and pressed her hands into the pockets. Which was where her fingers came into contact with the keys that Adler had given her. In the other pocket was Marianne Bernard’s mobile phone. She cursed herself for not dumping it earlier; when a mobile phone was switched on, it was a moving beacon. But she’d heard a rumour that it was now possible to track a mobile phone when it was switched off. She dropped the handset into the first bin she passed.

      Five-to-one. Stephanie was back with Stern through a terminal at Web 46 on rue du Roi du Sicilie.

      > I have a name for you, Petra.

      > How much?

      > This is for free.

      > You must be going soft in your old age.

      > Has it ever occurred to you that I might be younger than you?

      > Only in my more humorous moments.

      >This isn’t sentimentality. This is business. If anything happens to you, I’ll lose money.

      > That’s more like it. Who is it?

      > Leonid Golitsyn.

      > Don’t know him.

      > An art-dealer. Very rich. Very well connected.

      > What’s his story?

      > He has a gallery in Paris on avenue Matignon but he’s based in New York. He goes to Paris three or four times a year, usually on his way back to Moscow. Golitsyn is old school. Chernenko, Gromyko, even Brezhnev – he was cosy with all of them. In those days he was a virtual commuter between the United States and the Soviet Union. He’s always been close to the Kremlin. Even now.

      > Putin doesn’t strike me as an art collector.

      > I think it’s safe to say that Golitsyn’s been carrying more than canvas over the years. He’s one of those strange creatures who knows everybody but who nobody knows. A friend of mine once described him – rather memorably – as a diplomatic bag. An insult and a truth rolled into one.

      > Why is he relevant?

      > Anders Brand.

      > What’s he got to do with this?

      > He was one of the thirteen who were killed yesterday.

      Stephanie was amazed. Anders Brand, the former Swedish diplomat, fondly known as The Whisperer. A man who spoke so softly you began to wonder if your hearing was impaired. A peerless mediator during his time at the United Nations. Stephanie remembered seeing him on BBC World’s Hard Talk. He’d only been half-joking when he’d said that being softly-spoken was one of the keys to his success at mediation: ‘It forces people to listen more carefully to me.’

      She pictured Brand as he was usually seen – on a conference podium, in a TV studio, disembarking from an aircraft – and realized that his face matched a face she’d seen at La Béatrice. The face she thought she’d recognized but hadn’t been able to name.

      > How come this isn’t headline news?

      > It will be this evening. As I understand it, his death won’t be officially confirmed until later this afternoon.

      > After more than twenty-four hours?

      > I wasn’t there, Petra. But I’ve seen the pictures.

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