Chameleon. Mark Burnell

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СКАЧАТЬ ask.’

      ‘I am asking. Just like I’m asking what happened here.’

      ‘I can give you answers, if you want. But they’ll be lies.’

      ‘You owe me more than this.’

      ‘I don’t owe you anything,’ she snapped. ‘No commitments, remember?’

      ‘Don’t you think this is different?’

      ‘I think we all have our secrets, Laurent. Pieces of the past that are better left in the past.’ She let him consider that for a few seconds. ‘What do you think?’

      He turned away from her. ‘I think I’ll start to clear up some of this mess.’

      She reached out and put her good hand on his arm. ‘Not now. It can wait.’

      They ate bread and cheese. Masson opened a bottle of wine. They sat at the table on the terrace listening to the chorus of cicadas. When they’d finished, he cleared away their plates and returned with coffee and a dusty bottle of Armagnac. She said she didn’t want any. He said it was medicinal, so she relented and he poured an inch into a dirty tumbler.

      When she’d decided not to run, she hadn’t had a reason. It had simply been instinct. Now, she saw why. Alexander had been unarmed. Subconsciously, that fact had registered. No gun, no accomplices, no protection at all. Under the circumstances, an incredible risk. She could have killed him in a moment. He would have had no chance at all. Hindsight prompted the question: why?

      Masson poured a glass for himself. ‘Look, about before. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay. But if you do, you can trust me.’

      ‘I know.’ She gathered her tumbler in both hands and stared at her stitches. ‘Someone came to see me today.’

      ‘Who?’

      ‘A man from my past.’

      ‘What did he want?’

      ‘A bit of my future.’

      ‘What are you going to do?’

      ‘I don’t know yet.’

      Masson avoided eye contact and made a show of picking at a thread on the seam of his trousers. ‘That gun … I mean, if you’re in some kind of trouble … if you need help, there are people I used to know who …’

      ‘I know.’

      He looked up at her. ‘You know what?’

      ‘Why you’re a mechanic.’

      ‘I’m sorry?’

      ‘I know you like cars, Laurent. You like them a lot.’

      They sat in silence for a minute before Masson spoke again. ‘Anyway, like I was saying, I know some people who –’

      ‘It won’t make a difference.’

      ‘Well, if you change your mind …’

      ‘Thanks.’

      He lit a cigarette. ‘The people in those photographs in the kitchen. Who are they?’

      Stephanie shrugged. ‘Just a family I used to know.’

      The struggle lasted through Tuesday and Wednesday. She barely slept, barely ate. Sometimes she panicked, sometimes she was almost catatonic. All her arguments seemed circular; her new life was worth fighting for, worth revisiting the past for, except nothing was worth that, nothing except the chance to leave it behind permanently.

      On Wednesday, she spent the whole day in the hills, beneath a fierce sun, among the jagged rocks and thorny bushes. She could run, she knew that. And perhaps she’d stay ahead of Magenta House but for how long? If she stopped, they’d find her again. She saw now that it would only be a matter of time. And even if they didn’t find her, the possibility would linger. No matter how hard she tried to pretend it hadn’t, the threat had always been there.

      More than anything, she wanted to stop running. The life she’d created for herself at the farmhouse had taught her that, if nothing else. Ultimately, she didn’t know where she was destined to settle. But that didn’t matter. It was the act that was important, not the location. To abandon the dream was to let Alexander win. That had been the insurance against the risk he’d taken in approaching her unarmed. He hadn’t offered his word as a guarantee because he knew she’d reject it – there could never be trust between them – but perhaps the risk had been a gesture of good faith.

      By dusk, her feet were blistered, her skin burnt, her mind scorched.

      The pretence was over, the memories resurrected. That night, she couldn’t sleep. Repulsion, fear and anger kept her awake. Later, at dawn, there were moments when she almost convinced herself that it wouldn’t be too bad. It’s just one job. But she knew that wasn’t true. Eighteen months of a real life had seen to that. No amount of effort would ever reclaim the edge she’d once had. Despite everything, that made her happy because it made her human.

       Magenta House. An organization that doesn’t exist, run by people who don’t exist. An ironic consequence of the modern era. In a time of greater openness, somebody still has to get into the sewer to deal with the rats.

       I don’t know how many assassins Magenta House operates – four or five, I should think, perhaps six – but I do know that I was unique among them. They were simply trained in the art of assassination. I was trained for more. Operating under the alias Petra Reuter – a German student turned activist turned mercenary terrorist – I was taught to infiltrate, seduce, lie, eavesdrop, steal, kill. I learnt how to withstand pain and how to inflict it.

       It’s been four years since I vanished and I’ve been running ever since, first as Petra, then as me. Even now, after more than a full year living here, I’m still on the run. Alexander’s terms represent an opportunity to stop.

       On paper, it’s an easy choice. One job buys any future I want. But I’ve changed since I stopped being Petra. I think I’m becoming the person Stephanie Patrick should have been. And that’s the problem. She might be difficult and selfish – she might be a complete bitch – but she’s not an assassin. Not like Petra, who was never anything else.

       I find myself thinking about people like Jean-Marc Houtens, Li Ching Xai, John Peltor, Zvonimir Vujovic, Esteban Garcia. Like Petra Reuter, they are names without faces. I wonder what they’re doing at this precise moment, wherever in the world they are. Petra’s was never a large profession. Sure, you can find a killer on a street corner in the run-down district of any city. You can even find self-styled assassins relatively easily; in the Balkans, or the Middle East, you can’t move for enthusiastic amateurs. But those of us who formed the elite numbered no more than a dozen. Our backgrounds were diverse but we were united by the quality of our manufacture.

       I used to imagine meeting other members of the club. I pictured us around a table in a restaurant, trading industry secrets, putting faces to names, assessing the competition. I’d hear gossip from time to time. Usually from Stern, the information broker, who’d offer a morsel in the hope that СКАЧАТЬ