From then on, she’d worked by the manuaclass="underline" the smile, the eye contact, the gestures that would both arouse a man’s interest and signal her availability, the conversational gambits that ended in a question, inviting the man to agree. Ask any top-class pickup artist: If you start the other person saying yes, they don’t stop, all the way to the bedroom.
She’d been tempted to see if she could work her magic without any chemical assistance, but seducing Leclerc was just a means to an end. They had to get him talking as well. So when he went up to the bar, she’d reached into her bag and taken out her cigarettes and lighter. Anyone watching would have seen that. They wouldn’t have noticed the little capsule she palmed, nor seen her snap it in two and deposit its contents into Leclerc’s glass as she reached across and idly toyed with the olive on its black plastic stick.
The powder settled on the surface of the martini, but disappeared with a couple of stirs of the stick. Leclerc returned to the table to find Alix looking up at him with a guilty look on her face, saying, “Oops! You caught me! I was just about to steal your olive. I’m sorry. I can’t resist them!”
He tried to give her his smoothest smile. “Well, here’s one of your very own.”
Alix took the olive from the glass Leclerc had placed in front of her and slipped it into her mouth, between her glossy red lips. “Mmm, delicious!” she said, then playfully ran her tongue along her upper lip. She told herself to stop fooling around. If she were too obvious, too easy, Leclerc might get suspicious. Time to be a bit more respectable.
She looked at him slightly wide-eyed, like an eager, respectful pupil sitting at her favorite professor’s feet. “I’ve always been fascinated by Swiss banks. They sound so powerful and mysterious. You must tell me all about your work. I’d really like to know.”
The bartender’s name was Marcel. He’d spent more than thirty years serving drinks, watching the games that play out when men, women, and alcohol collide. He thought of himself as a connoisseur of the art of seduction. So the moment the girl stepped into his domain, then shone her smile at the man in the corner, Marcel’s interest was piqued.
He was reasonably certain that this was some kind of con. The man was a mark and she was playing him. After the second martini, she’d discreetly switched to sparkling water, but the man had stayed with his liquor. Marcel chuckled to himself and looked forward to the evening’s entertainment.
The bar was beginning to fill up now. A group of businessmen had come in, each in turn checking out the brunette and smirking to one another as they ordered their drinks. Then a bizarre figure strode up and perched on one of the long-legged chairs by the glossy wooden countertop. He was almost two meters tall, dressed in battered, patched jeans and a T-shirt printed in lurid shades of yellow and purple. He had hair like a black man, except it was a pale, sandy color, and his eyes were Nordic blue.
Marcel sighed, sadly, bemoaning the loss of proper standards. Nowadays it was impossible to tell the difference between the beggars and the millionaires. A man in tratty denims could be a rock star, an actor, or one of those American computer tycoons people kept talking about. Maybe he was the hippie son of a wealthy family. When he ordered a Heineken, he gave the number of a junior suite. His watch was a Breitling Navitimer – an expensive chronograph, but also a serious, functional one. He had good manners too. Businessmen tended to place their orders brusquely, without a please or a thank you. But this white Rastaman took the trouble to converse a little in a calm, easygoing voice. He showed respect for Marcel’s job and his dignity. Maybe the clothes could be forgiven.
“Would you like some matches, monsieur?” Marcel said, nodding at the Camel cigarettes on the counter, next to the beer glass.
The man smiled. “No thank you, I’m trying to give them up. Keeping them there is like a test. If I can have a couple of beers without smoking a cigarette, I’ll know I’m getting somewhere.”
He glanced across to the corner of the room, turned back to Marcel, and said, “Have you seen the couple in the corner? She just stroked his face. Then he took her hand and kissed it. Isn’t love great?”
Marcel winked. “L’amour, toujours l’amour…”
In the earpiece hidden beneath his dreadlocks, Thor Larsson could hear Carver’s voice. “Yeah, I saw it. It’s almost scary how good she is at this.”
Inside the Camel pack there was a miniature video camera pointing through a pin-size aperture, with a signal transmitter linked to a video monitor and recorder in Carver’s room. A microphone and an audio transmitter were hidden in Alix’s bag. Everything she and the banker did, every word they said, was all going down on tape.
“I wonder what she’s like in bed,” mused Larsson, apparently for the bartender’s benefit.
Carver laughed. “Well don’t expect me to tell you.”
“If only I could hear what they’re talking about.”
“Don’t worry. I’m getting the audio feed from Alix, clear as a bell.”
“Could you get me another beer, please? And some nuts, if you’ve got them. I think I’ll stick around.”
47
Grigori Kursk was a patient man. He’d learned that lesson in Afghanistan. Too many of his comrades had rushed into combat, hoping to overwhelm the mujahidin guerrillas with sheer weight of firepower, only to be outsmarted, ambushed, and sent straight to hell. Kursk could wait for hours, days, as long as it took to make the other man move first and expose his position. Only then would he strike.
So he did not care whether it took Carver all night or all week to return to his apartment. He would be ready for him whenever he came.
The two men he’d sent up to the apartment had reported that the door was steel-framed and secured with deadbolts to the top and bottom as well as the side. The hinges were reinforced. The only way to force entry would be with a bomb or a bazooka. Kursk himself had examined the windows through his binoculars. The glass was extra thick, almost certainly bulletproof.
It was no more than he had expected. Carver was no fooclass="underline" He was bound to take precautions against men just like himself. In the meantime, Kursk needed to take some safety measures of his own. A call to Moscow gave him the contact number he needed, a Swiss-registered mobile.
“I work for Yuri,” he said. “I need to dispose of a car, a BMW 750. It has something in it. That has to go too, you understand?… I’ll send a man with the car. Also, I want a van, like a phone company or a delivery van, something like that. My guy will pick it up. Twenty minutes. You’d better have what we need. You don’t want Yuri to hear you let me down.”
Kursk sent Dimitrov away with the car. Papin was still in the passenger seat, kept upright by a tightly strapped seat belt. Now Kursk was alone in the street. It was quiet, respectable, a place where he stuck out like a bear in a china shop. He needed to escape the prying eyes that lurked behind all those flower baskets and net curtains. A sign caught his eye a little way up the road: Malone’s Irish Pub. Perfect.
He took his beer and a whisky chaser to a seat by the window where he had an unobstructed view down the street. No one could get in or out of Carver’s building without him seeing. Kursk savored his drink and looked around the pub. He’d known places just like this in Moscow. He guessed there were a million like it, all around the world. But it was okay. Compared to some of the places he’d sat and waited, this one was a palace.