Another two steps and he is across the room, moving as lightly as he can, cheap deck shoes noiseless against the worn carpet. Still he feels no sense of exhilaration, no impending release for his grief: only a specialists expertise, an absolute focus on the job in hand. Moving silently between the books on the floor, his eyes fix on the space ahead of him: the narrow, well-lit corridor, the bedroom door to his left. On this he trains the gun, stopping now, his mind a spin of instinct and calculation. For years he has imagined killing the Englishman in his bed, watching him cower and writhe in a corner. It has been planned that way. But he is suddenly uncertain of making that last move into the room, of opening the door into a place where his opponent may hold the upper hand.
The decision is made for him. He hears a single heavy footstep, then the sound of a light switch being pressed and the rattle of the bedroom door handle as it drops through forty-five degrees. Instinctively the Russian takes two steps backwards, hurried now, stripped of control. Light flares briefly into the passage and he blinks rapidly as he looks up, the pale face etched with shock.
The intruder had words to say, a speech prepared, but the first shot punctures the left side of his victims chest, spinning him to the ground. Blood and tissue and bone shower against the walls and floor of the corridor, one colour in the pale bathroom light. But he is still conscious, his blue cotton pyjamas blackened and viscous with blood.
In his own language, the Russian says, Do you know who I am?
And the Englishman, propped up by a pale thick arm, shakes his head as the colour drains from his eyes.
Again, in Russian: Do you know who I am? Do you know why I have come?
But he sees that he is passing out: his neck is suddenly loose and falling. In the moments before the second shot the Russian tries quickly to summon a sense of fulfilment, a closure to the act. He looks directly into a dying mans eyes and tries to feel something beyond the basic violence of what he has done.
The effort is hopeless, and as the second bullet rips into his chest, he is already turning, experiencing little more than the basic fear of being discovered. He just wants to be out of this place, to be away from London. And then he will go to the grave in Samarkand and tell Mischa what he has done.
2
Dont move. Hold it right there.
The girl stopped immediately, her hand on the nape of her neck.
Now look up at me.
Her eyes met his.
Without twisting your head.
She moved her chin back towards the mattress.
Good, he said. Is that comfortable?
Yes.
And youre warm enough?
Yes, Ben, yes.
He leaned forward, out of sight now. She heard the itch and whisper of the brush as it moved across the canvas. He said, Sorry, Jenny, I interrupted you.
Thats OK. She coughed and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. You said you were six when it happened? When your father walked out?
Ben took a long drag on his cigarette and said, Six, yes.
And your brother?
Mark was eight.
And you havent seen your father since?
No.
Outside on the street, three floors down, a distant child was imitating the sound of a diving aeroplane.
Why did he leave?
When Ben did not answer immediately, Jenny thought that she might have offended him. That could happen sometimes, with sudden intimacy. When a model is lying naked in an artists studio with only a thin white sheet for company, conversation tends towards the candid.
My father was offered a position in the Foreign Office, in 1976, he said finally. The voice betrayed a controlled resentment, the glimpse, perhaps, of a quick temper. The idea of it went to his head. The work meant more to him than his family did. So he took off.
Jenny managed a compassionate smile, although there was nothing in her own experience to compare with the concept of a parent abandoning his own child. The thought appalled her. Ben continued to paint, his face very still and concentrated.
That must have been awful, she said, just to fill the silence. The remark sounded like a platitude and she regretted it. I mean, its difficult to recover from something like that. You must find it so hard to trust anyone.
Ben looked up.
Well, you have to be careful with that one, dont you?
What do you mean?
Blaming everything on the past, Jenny. Were the therapy generation. An explanation for every antisocial act in our damaged adolescence. Make a mistake and you can always write it off against a shitty childhood.
She smiled. She liked the way he said things like that, the smile that suddenly cracked across his face.
Is that what you believe? she asked.
Not exactly. He stubbed out the cigarette. He was trying to capture the play of light on her body, the darkening hollows of skin. Its what my brother thinks.
Mark?
Ben nodded. Hes a lot more forgiving than I am. Actually works with my father now. Doesnt see it as a problem at all.
He works with him?
Yeah.
How did that happen?
Freak coincidence. Ben blew hard on the canvas to free it of dust. He didnt feel much like opening up and telling Jenny all about big brothers dream job; running a top London nightclub and flying business class around the world. She was a student, just twenty-one, and would only want to know if he could get her into Libra for free or source her some cheap CDs. Mark and my dad go on business trips together, he said vaguely. Have dinners, that kind of thing.
And you dont mind?
Ben rubbed his neck.
Nothing to do with me.
Come on. She rolled over and drew her knees up tight against her chest. A very faint tremor of cellulite appeared on her upper thigh. Yesterday you told me you guys were close. Hasnt it affected your relationship?
Ben decided to kill the subject.
Are you bored, Jenny? he asked. How come youve moved position?
She sensed his annoyance, but pressed on, using her body as a decoy. With her legs in the air, cycling for balance as she leaned over the bed, she began looking for a cigarette.
I just need a break, she said. Come on. Dont be so mysterious. Tell me.
He was looking at the naked base of her spine.
Tell you what?
About your brother. About the way you feel about him.
The way I feel about him. Ben repeated the phrase quietly under his breath.
Yes. She was sitting up again now, still without a cigarette. Tell me how this thing between Mark and your father has affected you.
This thing?
He was picking at words, escaping her. She knew that he was being clever and shrugged her shoulders in an exaggerated gesture of mock surrender. Just tell me if youre still as close as you were before.
Closer, he lied, and looked her right in the eye.
Good.
Then he paused, adding, Im just angry with him.
She seized on this like a piece of gossip.
Angry? About what?
For forgiving our father so quickly. For welcoming him back into his life. Ben found that he was sweating and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Mark gives the appearance of being streetwise and cool, but the truth is hes a diplomat, the guy who smooths things over. He hates confrontation or ill-feeling of any kind. So Dad comes back after an absence of twenty-five years and his attitude is conciliatory. Anything for a quiet life. For some reason Mark needs to keep everything on an even keel or he gets unsettled.
Maybe thats how hes learned to deal with hard-ship in the past, Jenny suggested confidently, and Ben tried to remember if the girls he had known when he was twenty-one had been half as self-assured and insightful as she was.
Maybe, he said.
And you? she asked.
Im just the opposite. I dont want simple answers to complicated questions. I dont want to welcome Dad back with open arms and say it didnt matter that he ruined my mothers life. Mark thinks this is stubborn, that Im locked in the past. He thinks I should let bygones be bygones.
Well, you have to deal with it in your own way.
Thats what I keep telling him.
Out on the road, the child was making the noise of a machine gun, a sound like a flooded engine swooping up and down the street. Bens eyes twitched in annoyance and he stood up to close the window. Jenny renewed her search for a cigarette, rummaging around in a handbag amongst old tissues and bottles of scent. When a pair of sunglasses spilled out on to the wooden floor, he said, Have one of mine, and threw her a packet from his shirt pocket.
Ben was slightly annoyed, as if she was not seeing his point of view, and went through with an idea. Walking across the studio from the window, he withdrew a scrapbook from the drawer of a cupboard and handed it to her, flicking to the second page before returning to his easel.
Whats this? she asked.
Read the cutting.
A wedding announcement from The Times had been pasted on the open page.
The marriage took place on 10 April between Mr Benjamin Graham Keen, youngest son of the late Mrs Carolyn Buchanan, and Alice Lucy McEwan, only daughter of Mr Michael McEwan of Halstead, Essex, and Mrs Susan Mitchell, of Hampstead, London. Mr Mark Keen was best man.
This is about you and your wife, Jenny said.
Yes, but you notice the omission? There was a small note of childish rebellion in Bens voice that surprised her. He didnt seem like the type to hold a grudge.
No.
Theres no mention of my father.
You just left him out?
We just left him out.
Why?
Because of what hes done. Because hes nobody. The words were unconvincing, like something Ben had learned by heart many years before. Its like this, he said. As far as Im concerned, the day my father walked out on Mum was the day he ceased to exist.
3
Ian Boyle stood in the vast, air-conditioned barn of Terminal One arrivals, waiting for the plane. He was cold and tired and wished he was on his way home. Arsenal were playing Champions League at Highbury against a team of third-rate Austrians: thered be goals and a hatful of chances, one of those easy nights in Europe when you can just sit back and watch the visitors unravel. Hed wanted to have a shower before kick-off, to cook up a curry and sink a couple of pints down the pub. Now it would be a race to get home after the rush-hour M4 trudge, and no time to chat to his daughter or deal with the piles of post.
Two young boys five and eight, Ian guessed swarmed past him and ducked into a branch of Sunglass Hut, shrieking with energy and excitement. A woman with a voice not dissimilar to his ex-wifes made a prerecorded security announcement on the public address system, pointless and unheard in the din of the hall. Ian wondered if there were other spooks near by, angels from fifty services waiting for their man in the stark white light of Heathrow. His own people, working other assignments, would most probably have holed up in Immigration, getting a kick out of the two-way mirrors at Passport Control. But Ian had spent four years working Customs and Excise and was anxious to avoid spending time with old colleagues; a lot of them had grown smug and set in their ways, drunk on the secret power of strip search and eviction. Hed go through only when the plane had touched down, not a moment before, and watch Keen as he came into the hall. It was just that he couldnt stand the looks they gave him, those fat grins over weak cups of tea, the suggestion of pity in their trained, expressionless eyes. When Ian had left for the Service in 1993, he could tell that a lot of his colleagues were pleased. They thought it was a step down; Ian was just about the only one who felt he was moving up.