The Third Woman--A Stephanie Patrick Thriller, page 39
‘Do you know how to use this?’
Julia looked contemptuous. ‘Alexei taught me. He was an expert.’
‘This belonged to him?’
She shook her head. ‘I got it from Club Nitro. There’s a guy there. Kurt…’
‘You know that I know Kurt, don’t you?’
Julia managed a fragile smile. ‘Well, he wouldn’t do it for me at first. But when I said I was going to use it on you he wouldn’t even let me pay for it.’
‘It’s an unusual gun.’
‘Kurt has unusual friends. Anyway, this is Vienna. Everything is available.’
‘So I’ve heard.’
Julia gazed into curls of cigarette smoke. ‘As soon as I had it in my hand, I wanted to go straight over to the hotel and do it myself. When I think of all the lies I tolerated. Girls like me—it doesn’t matter where we are, there’s always some bastard waiting for us.’
‘I wish I could disagree with you. Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know yet. I have a friend in Amsterdam. It would be nice to see her again maybe. What about you?’
‘I’d like to run. But I’m not sure I can.’
‘Which is why I have to run?’
‘I’m afraid so. There can be only one Petra.’
‘But I thought she was supposed to be dead.’
‘She is.’
Julia poured the rest of her armagnac into her coffee. ‘Seems like we have a connection; whatever one of us does affects the other. We’re almost the same woman.’
Stephanie nodded. ‘How can I contact you?’
‘Why would you want to?’
‘To tell you when it’s safe to stop running.’
Julia grinned mischievously. ‘Maybe I’ll get a taste for it. Like you.’
‘If you’re like me, you’ll want to stop. Better to have the option, at least. Do you have an e-mail address?’
‘Sure. Several.’
‘Me too.’
‘See?’
Julia ordered another couple of cappuccinos and they talked. At eleven-forty-five they settled the bill. Which was when Julia said, ‘We’re about the same size, wouldn’t you say?’
‘More or less.’
‘Perhaps we should swap clothes. You should wear what Julia wears when she’s being Petra. Especially the glasses.’ She took them off to show Stephanie. ‘He’ll be expecting this beautiful bruise.’
They changed in the cloakroom. Julia had a slightly fuller figure than Stephanie. As they stepped on to Kärntnerstrasse and exchanged kisses, she said, ‘I guess I’m going to have to lose weight if I’m ever really going to be you.’
Stephanie shook her head. ‘No. The real me is exactly the way you are now.’
‘So what does that make you?’
‘Exactly what I’m supposed to be right now. An impostor.’
DAY TWELVE
‘You are here to see Herr Stonehouse?’
The man at Reception was utterly inscrutable yet Stephanie saw straight through his politeness. You’re a tramp and if Herr Stonehouse wasn’t such a valued guest I’d toss you straight back into the gutter. He picked up the phone, pressed a three-digit number and spoke softly. It was ten past midnight in the opulent lobby of the Hotel Imperial on Kärntner Ring.
‘Room 510.’
Up to the fifth floor, down a long, quiet corridor, one turn to the left, then as far as the room at the end. She looked left and right, took out the Heckler & Koch, held it at her side and rang the bell. She heard the approach on the other side of the door. He was talking. A phone conversation? Or was there someone in the room with him?
The door opened. John Peltor, in the middle of a call, snatched a glimpse of the clothes and sunglasses, then slapped a hand over the mouthpiece and hissed, ‘You’re late. It’s after midnight. What have you done to your hair? I told you never to change anything unless I…’
He didn’t see the gun. Not until Stephanie pointed the weapon at his teeth. He stared into the black hole at the centre of the silencer. And then at the face behind.
‘I’ll get back to you,’ he murmured, before finishing his call.
He reversed into the suite. Stephanie closed the door behind her and followed him in.
‘Take it easy, Petra. Okay? Don’t do anything we’ll both regret.’
‘Unlikely.’
The room was huge. Cream walls with inlaid panels of pale pink-and-cream striped wallpaper, thick gold curtains, a candle-bulb chandelier, antiques, oils on canvas set in generous gilt frames. Peltor put his phone on the coffee table. There was an open attaché case on the sofa beside a small olive canvas knapsack.
‘Nice room,’ Stephanie said. ‘I should have listened to you in Munich. Corporate slaughter clearly pays.’
‘Don’t play the nun, Petra. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘Are you picking up the tab? Or is it on an Amsterdam expense account?’
He was wearing some unpleasant beige slacks and a lime polo-shirt, tightly tucked in to emphasize the narrowness of his waist in comparison to the broad sweep of his shoulders.
‘What are you doing here, Petra?’
It was the first time she’d ever seen him nervous.
‘I’m the one with the gun, I’ll ask the questions.’
‘I got people all over Europe looking for you.’
‘I know. I’ve run into a few of them.’
‘I heard you made a real mess of Grotius.’
‘It was no more than he deserved.’
‘Maybe. Not like Gavras, though.’
‘Who?’
‘Rafael Gavras. Obernai. The guy who stuck a kilo of Semtex under that shit-heap you were driving. For a while there I felt sorry for the poor bastard. Then I found out he was Cuban.’
‘I heard on the radio that he was arrested.’
‘That’s the best thing that’s happened to him lately.’
‘Dead?’
‘Deader than Nixon’s nuts. Can you believe it? The guy gets bailed, six hours later he’s history. A tragic domestic accident. Broke his neck while combing his hair. Something like that.’
Anxiety dressed as bravado. Typical Peltor. Stephanie told him to drag the chair by the desk to the centre of the floor.
‘Gotta hand it to you, Petra. That’s not a bad impression of Julia.’
‘Doing an impression of me?’
‘Right. What did you do to her?’
‘Nothing. Sit down.’
He lowered himself on to the chair. ‘You didn’t kill her?’
Stephanie stared at him. ‘Why would I kill her?’
‘Where is she?’
‘By now? She’s gone. Vanished.’
‘No way. Not without her money. She’s not the type.’
‘I told her to forget the money. I told her who you really are. What you are. After that, she wasn’t too concerned with the money. How’d you find her?’
The chair creaked, barely taking his vast frame. ‘Internet.’
‘Is that the way you meet most of your women?’
‘Fuck you.’
Stephanie took off the glasses so that he could see her eyes. ‘I’ve been on the run for ten days, no thanks to you. I’m tired and I’m upset and I’m a woman with a gun. You’d do well to remember that the next time you open your mouth.’
Peltor knew better than to doubt her. ‘I needed someone who could pass for you. Took me a few days but I narrowed it down to about a dozen. All in Europe, two of them here in Vienna. I swear this city oozes cooze. You can smell it on the street…’
‘Please. Less local colour.’
‘So I contacted this ratty little asshole…’
‘Rudi Littbarski?’
‘You know him?’
‘Not socially.’
‘Littbarski knows every creep under every rock in this town. He found out she was a regular at this sleaze-pit out by UNO City. Club Nitro. So I went out there with him and it went from there. I saw her a few times, then made her an offer. How did you find her?’
‘I’m a big fan of Parisian art-house movies.’
Peltor raised an eyebrow. ‘I guess that means you met my pal Étienne Lorenz.’
‘In a manner of speaking. I’m curious. Munich and our chance meeting at Café Roma—all planned?’
‘No. I was as surprised as you.’
‘You have no idea how surprised I was.’
‘It happens. It happened to us. Remember? JFK?’
Stephanie tightened her grip on the gun. ‘You’re lying.’
Peltor tensed. ‘I swear, Munich was a coincidence.’
‘Last chance.’
Peltor’s eyes widened. ‘Munich was a coincidence.’
‘But?’
He was shaking. Stephanie had never imagined she would see such a thing. She’d assumed a man like Peltor would face the bullet with a tirade of defiance spat through gnashing teeth.
‘But? ’ she prompted him for the final time.
‘After Munich … was not a coincidence.’
‘What was it? Amsterdam? I know Heilmann worked as a consultant for DeMille.’
Peltor looked amazed. ‘Was that why you killed him?’
‘No.’
‘Why, then?’
‘None of your business. Tell me what happened after Munich.’
‘Well … you killed Otto. That’s what happened.’
‘And?’
‘And it didn’t take a genius to figure out who did it. Not after I ran into you. That was how your name came up. We were looking for someone to discredit Brand. I doubt you’d have been a natural candidate. But after Otto you seemed ideal. Nobody could’ve discredited an honourable man better than you and we’d get payback for one of ours.’
‘Let me get this straight: if I hadn’t killed Heilmann, Paris would never have happened.’
‘It would have happened. But not with you. And maybe not in Paris. But Brand was always going to get it. One way or another.’
Stephanie thought briefly of Jacob and Miriam Furst. She took three slow, deep breaths to calm herself.
‘What about what you said to me during our breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental? All that advice you gave me about retirement?’
For a moment Peltor looked genuinely upset. ‘Whatever you think of me, Petra, I never wanted you to go the way of Juha Suomalainen.’
‘You told me he died up a tree in a chainsaw accident.’
‘Dead before his time, Petra. That’s the point.’
‘Since you’ve raised the subject of premature death, let’s talk about you.’
Stephanie raised the gun a little. When he managed to speak, his voice was a low tremble. ‘You don’t have to kill me, Petra.’
‘Technically, that’s true. And generally, I don’t kill for my own amusement. But in your case, I’m going to make an exception.’
* * *
He asked her what she wanted. To kill him in cold blood. That was the truth. Instead, she said, ‘Answers.’
Relief flooded through him.
‘But let me explain something to you. If I think you’re lying, I’ll shoot you. If I think you’re being evasive, I’ll shoot you. Now talk me through Passage du Caire.’
‘You still pissed about that? Come on, Petra, we’ve been in situations…’
‘Don’t play the solidarity card. We’re not the same. Never have been. Why Anders Brand?’
‘People listened to Brand. He was tight with the Arabs.’
‘Could you possibly be any less specific? If I wanted vague generalizations I’d be watching CNN.’
‘There was this deal…’
‘Butterfly.’
‘You know about that?’
‘Broadly.’
‘Brand was vital.’
‘Why?’
‘He was the honest broker. The virgin in the whorehouse. You know where this line goes?’
‘Mosul to Haifa.’
‘Via Jordan. But close to the border with Syria. Jordan has agreed transit rights. Israel has agreed to the new terminal at Haifa. All that remained was for Iraq to sign up.’
‘I can think of a number of sticking points. Israel in particular. Why hasn’t Iraq signed up?’
‘There are too many internal objections to the project. They’re being organized by a number of leading Shia clerics. It started out as one or two dissenting voices. Now it’s gathering momentum.’
‘Frankly, I’m not surprised.’
‘Frankly, neither are we.’
Stephanie looked puzzled. ‘I don’t understand.’
Peltor shrugged dismissively. ‘It doesn’t matter. That’s the point. As long as the contract is implemented. That’s the beauty of it.’
‘Explain that to me.’
‘Look, Brand was in a unique position. He could have delivered the Shia for us. He spoke to the Shia leadership, including al-Sistani. We know they could’ve been persuaded by him. Washington was banking on that. That he’d do the right thing. But he wouldn’t.’
‘Wouldn’t or couldn’t?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘My guess is wouldn’t.’
‘Mine too. Anyway, when he didn’t deliver Washington began to apply pressure. But it backfired. So now they had a situation where not only was Brand not going to deliver but it started to look like he was going to turn round and actively campaign against the deal.’
‘Taking the Shia leadership with him.’
‘Most of it. And bringing on board some of those who were against him before. All in all, a situation the new Iraqi government couldn’t be seen to be going against.’
‘Leaving Amsterdam with a giant problem.’
‘Again.’
‘Again?’
‘This is the second time they’ve been here. They signed a contract in December 2002 for this pipeline.’
‘Before the war?’
‘That’s right. You remember the scandal. Bush was handing out contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq before the invasion. In fact, while he was still telling everyone that he hoped a peaceful conclusion could be reached. Anyway, Amsterdam’s name never entered the public arena but…’
‘How typical. What happened?’
‘They were told to drop it.’
‘Was the agreement signed?’
‘Sure. But they chose not to commit commercial suicide by pursuing it.’
‘Because they knew they’d get another chance?’
Peltor nodded. ‘They were guaranteed it. Which is where we are now. They’re not going to let this go, Petra. They’ve invested too much. Politically and financially.’
‘Which brings us back to Brand.’
‘Exactly. The first priority was to make sure Brand’s mouth stayed shut. Permanently. The second priority was to discredit him. To give the Shia leadership a reason to distance themselves from Brand and to give the Iraqi administration an exit.’
‘Which is where I come in.’
‘That’s right. Brand dies. Then it turns out he’s not the saint everyone thought he was. Turns out he likes fucking hookers and terrorists. Turns out he consorts with Zionist extremists.’
Stephanie frowned. ‘I’m sorry?’
Peltor’s smile was sly. ‘Two of the Sentier dead were Zionist extremists.’
‘I didn’t hear that.’
‘We held it back when things went wrong.’
‘How did you organize it?’
‘The same way we organized you. We took someone they trusted and got them to make the call. Same place, same time.’
‘Same outcome?’
‘Obviously. No loose ends.’
‘How imaginative.’
‘I like to think of it as … garnish.’
‘More like overkill. So, with Brand gone and his reputation in tatters, what was supposed to happen next?’
‘We expected people to distance themselves from him. We wanted old alliances to break down, new alliances to be made. Meanwhile the new Iraqi administration would get to promote the pipeline as a great project to fund regeneration. With the added sweetener of being financed by foreign aid.’
‘And for Amsterdam that means the thick end of $15 billion. Right?’
Peltor said, ‘I’m impressed. But you’re way off the mark.’
‘How come?’
‘Amsterdam’s negotiating other deals that are dependent on the success of Butterfly. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar. If you’ll pardon the phrase, they’re all in the pipeline. It’s kinda like the Domino effect. Once Butterfly happens, so do the others. Fifteen billion? In the long run, it could be fifty plus.’
Stephanie shook her head. ‘You people…’
Peltor smiled a little. ‘You should know, Petra. Amsterdam learned its lesson from the Saudis. They’re conducting themselves the Arab way, not the American way. There’s no policy. No guiding philosophy. Just a series of lucrative commercial marriages.’
‘Corporate polygamy.’
‘Damn right.’
‘I assume Amsterdam’s relationship with the Israeli government would fall into this category.’
‘Very much so.’
‘And they’re happy with this?’
‘Who, the Israelis? Sure. They’re getting a protected oil supply. And that’s not all; they don’t even have to pay for the new oil terminal at Haifa. Don’t tell the US taxpayer but they’re the ones who are going to pick up the tab.’
‘And if there’s violence?’
‘Come on, Petra. This is the Middle East. Who gives a fuck about violence? They deserve each other, all of them. As far as I’m concerned they can carry on killing each other until it’s last man standing. And then I’ll volunteer to take care of that motherfucker personally and the whole goddamned Middle East problem will be over.’
‘Where were you when Rwanda needed you?’
‘You know as well as I do that violence has an upside. The more there is, the greater the need for security. You know what violence is? It’s a big fat number in DeMille’s profit margin. That’s what it is.’
‘And bonus share options for you?’
Peltor nodded. ‘And you. If you want them.’
‘First you try to kill me, now you try to recruit me. What next? Marmalade lessons?’
‘It’s called a changeable business climate. I meant what I said in Munich, Petra. You’re wasted on the small stuff. You’d be great in this environment.’
