“What is worrying you, then, if your life is so good?” Willy said, interrupting her thoughts, bringing her back to the present.
She didn’t reply, but looked into his eyes.
“Tell me,” he said. “I see a cloud.”
“Someone came to the house,” she answered finally. “On Saturday. A neighbour saw him.”
She saw Willy immediately become practical; no anxiety, no sympathy, just analysis.
“Not a caller, then?” he said.
“No. He just looked, came right up to the gate and looked through.”
“Maybe noting your car?” Willy said.
“Possibly, yes.”
“You have a description?”
“Not a useful one.”
“And in the village? A car? How did he get there?”
“I haven’t asked anyone, and the man who told me didn’t know.”
“Someone will likely have seen it,” Willy said. “In these villages, that’s what they do, look out for invaders. That’s what they’ve been doing for a thousand years. It’s in their blood.”
“I only heard just before I came to see you,” she said.
“You’ve told your French security?”
“No.”
“You should have.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Yes, there is. I’m coming back with you, staying there tonight. Maybe we can find out more.”
“That will certainly set tongues wagging,” she said, and laughed.
“Hell, we’re married! I claim my rights!” he joked. “And I want to see my little godson. I have something for him. Just a small present.”
They drove back after lunch, across the low, olive-rich hills of the Alpilles with their neat stone farmhouses and perfect villages.
They didn’t talk much as she drove. Willy saw she was carrying the gun and simply nodded approvingly. Anna felt tense. She realised she was anxious being away from her son with the unsolved knowledge of this unwelcome visitor. Willy spoke once, when they were nearing the village. It was as if he’d been unwilling to raise the subject.
“Have you told them about Mikhail, Anna?”
“Them?”
“The French? Or anybody else?”
“No, Willy. Mikhail is all I have to keep me safe.”
“And all you need to get you into deep shit too,” he said.
She didn’t reply.
She had told nobody about Mikhail. Mikhail… Finn’s great source, who couldn’t be discredited, no matter what they said in London. Mikhail was true.
And she had told nobody—not even Willy—that she alone knew who Mikhail really was. Alone in the world, she knew Mikhail’s identity, and only Mikhail knew she knew it. That was trust, trust on a scale that dwarfed even her trust in Willy, and in Finn himself. Mikhail was so big, so important. He walked such a narrow tightrope at the heart of Putin’s elite.
She’d wondered more than once why Mikhail hadn’t killed her the one time they’d met, and she’d seen who he was. That was trust on a scale that was unimaginable to her.
Back in Germany, it was Mikhail who had found Finn, when she had been unable to. She had told nobody this. And she had told nobody that after Mikhail found Finn, he’d found her too, in the pink house in Germany, so that she could see Finn one last time before he died.
Finn had never told her Mikhail’s true identity. It was for her own protection, he said. And then, on the night of his death, she saw Mikhail.
Mikhail was the gold seam for whoever found him; his enemies in Russia, or his so-called friends in the West. And when Mikhail had revealed himself to her, he had somehow known that she would never reveal his identity. He knew she could have had anything she wanted by revealing that, even her route back to Russia, if she’d wanted it.
That was a trust never to be broken, even with Willy.
When they reached the village, they saw the children playing in the sun-browned garden at the rear of the crèche. She saw her son, and her heart slowed. As they’d approached the village, she realised she’d become increasingly afraid, imagining everything.
But he was there, falling off a red plastic structure into the sand, over and over again, laughing more and more, and urging his friends to do the same. She recalled that he’d told her in complete seriousness, three days before, that he was going to marry Amandine, aged three.
She and Willy took him from the teachers, who were reluctant to give him up. Willy hoisted him onto his shoulders, and he waved good-bye to the women. They loved him, Anna saw. Sometimes he was painfully like his father.
The three of them walked back up the lane to the house.
“Call them now,” Willy said. “The first thing you do is call your security. You won’t get rid of me until they’re here.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. But she was angry that after so many months of freedom from anxiety, it should all have washed back into her life—into their lives.
Willy had given Little Finn an ant house. While they played with it in the garden, she called her contact in Paris.
The man listened to her story. He didn’t seem to feel any urgency. That was how the French were, she thought. Unlike the British, who injected urgency into anything, the French sucked it out. She wasn’t sure at first if he was taking her seriously, but she’d come to know the way they worked.
“When will you send a team down here?” she asked.
“A team? I don’t know. But someone will come today—I promise you. We’ll take care of everything.”
She went out into the garden. Willy went inside to fetch a bottle of wine.
“So they don’t know,” Willy said, when he’d poured himself a glass. “Listen, Anna. If the French knew about Mikhail, they’d give you permanent security, not this excuse for it. Maybe you should tell them.”
“I’ve already told you. No, Willy. They’ll be all over me forever if I tell them about Mikhail.”
The afternoon idled into evening. The air was completely motionless, the trees like statues. Movement became an effort.
“Even the weather is waiting for something,” Willy complained.
He clumped off around the enclosed courtyard, inspecting everything for the third or fourth time. It was completely enclosed, with two-storey walls and high metal gates on three sides, and the house and high wrought iron railings where the palm tree stood on the fourth. Once again, he seemed satisfied.
He dozed off for an hour in the evening shade of the sycamore tree.
Anna went into the house and began to make supper. Willy appeared and began to make phone calls, until she asked him to stop. The French might be trying to reach her, she said, and there was no reliable mobile network in the village. Little Finn had gone back into the garden to play with his ant house. Anna heard him singing from time to time, and every so often she went outside, just to make sure he was there.
At seven thirty, Willy poured them both a glass of wine. She called Little Finn in from the garden for supper. He didn’t come at first, and she sent Willy out to get him. When he didn’t return either, Anna went into the garden.
Willy was looking under an open shed, calling the boy’s name. She felt a flutter of fear. She could see from the doorway that Little Finn wasn’t in there, so why was Willy calling for him? When he turned around, she saw the look on Willy’s face. And she saw that Little Finn had disappeared.
Chapter 10
BURT MILLER WAS A large, ebullient man, full of loud self-confidence. This expressed itself in numerous ways, but could be summed up by an almost profligate attitude of general largesse. He doled out ladlefuls of life to all comers, and in equal proportion to the magnanimous bounty he habitually awarded himself.