Younger (28 page)

He turned at the door. “The telly has Sky so you can watch films. Enjoy.”

Then he was gone, leaving Anna and David standing awkwardly in the middle of the room with their bags. “I think you should have first pick of the bedrooms,” David said finally. “Just to play the chivalrous gent.”

“Let’s order some lunch first. All this cloak-and-dagger stuff has given me an appetite.” The last thing she needed right now was any thought involving David and a bed. She plopped down at the table and picked up a menu, then handed him the other when he took the seat opposite. “Not a bad selection here at Death’s Door Diner,” she said.

“We won’t die of hunger at least.” David appraised the menu. “I’m doubling down on starches: spaghetti
amatriciana
followed by polenta with sausages. And apple tart after. You?”

“Yes to polenta and sausages. Grilled vegetables to start. And sliced fresh pineapple for dessert.”

He picked up the phone. “I feel I should be saying, ‘Room service, and make it snappy!
’”
Then someone answered at the other end, and he became once again the deferential Englishman. “Hello, we’d like some lunch in the suite, please. Ready?”

While he ordered, Anna checked the bedrooms. The only difference was that one bathroom had a tub-and-shower combo while the other had just a walk-in shower. Remembering that David, in true English tradition, was partial to baths, she opted for the one with the walk-in shower, which suited her American lack of patience. Well, that was settled. She checked her watch. It wasn’t even two o’clock. What in the world were they going to do all day? Her emotions were a blend of feeling trapped by being unable to go outside, giddy with relief at being safe, and nervous as a teenager on a first date about being in such close proximity to David.

“You can have the room with the tub,” she said as she came back into the living room. She grabbed her bags and bustled them into the other room. “Wonder what we can get on the TV?” she called over her shoulder.

“We can check the telly listings after we’ve put away our things and had lunch,” David said when she came back. “Maybe a nap after lunch for me. I didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Me neither. And that was before knowing my own personal MI6 buddy was a lying little sneaky, stalking spyski. ‘Martin Kelm’! Martin Kelm, my ass.” She stomped over to the bar to survey the wine offerings. “Red or white wine?” she called after David, who was walking off with his duffel bag.

“White would be nice. Something cold and crisp.”

Yeah, cold and crisp,
she thought.
Like us
. Part of her accepted their being ill at ease and stiffly polite with each other. It was only natural. Still, another part wondered what his reaction would have been if she’d said, “The beds are big. Who needs two rooms?” And an even bigger part was scared that if she’d said that, he would have told her bluntly that their personal story was over, done with, deader than Olga from the Volga and that he’d preferred her as Tanya. And yet another part of her wasn’t sure if she wanted to be in a bed with him, anyhow. Four parts. Drawn and quartered.

So they got through the day as people thrown together by fate usually do: small talk, lunch, a long break after lunch to nap or read or pretend they were doing both. They took a long time deciding over dinner and a longer time discussing the films on the SKY TV menu before agreeing on possibly the least romantic comedy they might choose. At long last, they chastely bumped cheeks to say good night, enough room between their bodies for someone to drive a tractor through.

At precisely twenty-five minutes past eight the next morning, Malcolm arrived. “Good morning,” he said brightly. “Everyone all right? Food suit you?”

“Yes, fine.”

“Delicious.”

“Off we go. Could you bring your laptops and memory sticks? And all your phones and whatever SIM cards you still possess? Got them? I’ll take them so our tech people can have a look; you’ll get them back today. All right then. We’re all set.”

He took them down to yet another conference room. There was a laptop set up and a wall cupboard’s double doors standing open to reveal a monitor. He smiled. “Show-and-tell today. Help yourselves to the coffee on the sideboard. Sir Charles and Mr. Dexter will be right in.”

“Coffee?” asked David, getting up.

“Yes, thank you. With—”

“Milk and one-and-a-half sugars, right?”

“Very good.” Anna was touched he’d remembered. “Wonder if Our Man in London has hit town.” There were voices outside the door. “I guess we’re about to find out.”

Chips Etherington and Charles Dexter bustled in. Their “Good morning” and “Sleep well?” didn’t seem to require a response and neither Anna nor David bothered with one.

“Barnes is on his way from the airport now,” said Etherington. “In the meantime, we can go over a few things. I’m going to go through some photos I think you might recognize. Please tell me what you know about the people.”

He fiddled at the computer and, one by one, photos of some of her coaches came up, followed by headshots of Chas and Becca and Marina’s brother, Dmitri. “Yes, that’s Rob, the one who told me how to use the phones and computers. I hope he’s not one of the baddies.”

“Rest assured, none of these people are baddies,” Etherington said. “Rob’s a good lad.”

Then the butler from the country house. Mikal. Then Mrs. McCallum. “Oh, that’s the housekeeper, or fake housekeeper, at the country house, isn’t it?”

“Very good. Don’t worry. Most of those people have nothing to do with the BarPharm situation. We’re just keeping tabs, you know. And now I think we can have coffee.” His cell chirped. “Ah, yes, Malcolm’s waiting for you.” He put away his phone. “Andrew’s taxi is pulling up now. Anyone else for coffee?” Anna didn’t really want another cup—it hadn’t been that long since David had poured her one—but she got up and walked over to where Sir Chips stood.

“Can you tell me if Dmitri is part of this? Sorry if I seem like Pollyanna for saying everyone’s ‘nice,’ but I liked him. He didn’t seem at all like his sister.”

“I’ve never met him, but as far as I know, he was declared persona non grata by the old man for being homosexual, so he emerged from the family unscathed.”

She felt relieved. He’d been fun, Dmitri.

She was about to ask how he knew Rob was a “good lad” when she heard the by-now recognizable tap that signaled the arrival of Malcolm. He poked his head around and said, “Mr. Barnes is here.” Then he stepped out of the doorway and another man stepped into it.

Aleksei
.

Chapter 22

She stared. Aleksei was the one person she’d never suspected of being anything other than he seemed to be. Well, she’d long suspected him of not being simply a chauffeur, but it had never occurred to her he might not even be a Russian.

But, sure enough, he came around the table, shook hands with her, then said in perfect upper-crust English, “Ms. Wallingham, well done. You’ve taught me a few tricks.” He turned to David. “And Mr. Wainwright. We haven’t met. I’m Andrew Barnes.”

“English,” she whispered. “You are actually English.”

“Indeed I am.” He raised his eyebrows at Sir Charles, who gestured for him to come take the seat next to him at the head of the table behind the laptop, which he assumed after sticking a flash drive into the computer. “Born and raised in Bristol, in fact.”

“Mr. Barnes has—or I should be saying ‘had’—been one of our top men in Moscow for quite some time.”

Aleksei, now Andrew, nodded. “Russian studies major at Oxford. Recruited by SIS. After graduation, I worked in the London headquarters for several years, then I posed as an English-speaking Russian and went to Moscow as a translator for a company of interest to us. I ended up at another firm, one that sold chemicals throughout Europe and was suspected of working closely with some questionable clients in the Mideast. The company was Sybyska, and that’s how I met Marina Barton.

“Now, let’s see if this is ready to go.” He fiddled briefly with the computer, then clicked the mouse, and a photo of a younger Marina with a slick-looking, ponytailed man filled the screen. “She wasn’t married to Barton then. She was hooked up with the father of her twin boys. He’s now deceased. But you both know this already, don’t you? I read Anna’s notes on the flight over.” He paused to glare at Anna. “It would have been nice to have had them before you came to us yesterday. Yes, Marina undoubtedly would have given the children to her mother in Russia and seen them once a year except that Pierre was fond of them; he liked to pass them off as his own.”

“What on earth for?”

“I don’t know how well you knew him, Mr. Wainwright, but Barton had a penchant for make-believe. He rarely told the whole truth if he could embellish. His father was an inveterate fabricator, a veritable Baron Munchausen, who liked to pretend he was a tycoon. In fact, he lost a great deal of money in hopeless ventures when Pierre was a boy. After that, he just scraped by.”

“But that mansion in Paris!” Anna protested.

“The apartment? It’s always belonged to Marie Héloise. She comes from a wealthy family. There’s not a huge fortune left, but she was too clever to let her son get his hands on much of it.

“After Pierre took over the business upon his father’s death, Marina’s father, who saw the possibility of using BarPharm to his own advantage, invited the son to visit Moscow. Pierre did so and ended up falling in love with Marina, whom he remembered from the old days at the Sorbonne.”

“And this was?”

“Almost eleven years ago, when the boys were toddlers. At Marina’s urging, Pierre signed a contract with Sybyska for BarPharm’s purchase of raw materials and pharmaceutical ingredients.”

“What was in it for Marina, marrying Pierre?” Anna asked.

“Glamour, for one thing. Marina likes the high life. She loved the idea of a pampered life in London. And I think she might have loved Pierre a little at one time, when she thought he was her equal in strength. She was impressed by Pierre’s dream of surpassing his father’s modest accomplishments by becoming massively wealthy, a bona fide one-percenter. When he confessed his dream project, something to turn back the clock, she encouraged his devoting BarPharm’s top chemists to work on it.”

“And this was his dream project because of his mother?” David asked.

“Because of his father,” Anna said, jumping in. “Remember? Marie Héloise told me.”

“Right,” said Barnes. He winked at her, and she saw that, under the bright lights and lacking Aleksei’s dark glasses, he was older than she’d thought, perhaps closer to fifty than forty. “You
have
been busy. Barton
père
talked his wife into having surgery because he pictured himself as a tycoon with a young trophy wife. Unfortunately, he chose a cut-rate hack, and she didn’t fight it. When she came out of it looking more pug than princess, he left her for a genuinely younger model.”

“But why would Marina encourage Pierre to spend so much looking for a quick fix for aging? She’s already had plastic surgery. I saw the scars.”

“Marina cared about what she always cares about: herself and money. When the money seemed wasted on BarPharm’s own research into a new retinol line, she nagged him, even in front of others, about giving it up. Then he found the Taiwanese company that had actually succeeded with what was then Youngskin. And at that point Marina decided rejuvenation was her destiny.” Anna rolled her eyes. “Yes, she can be crazy, but like a fox. She pressured Pierre into paying top dollar, terrified someone else would snatch it up first, and then all that mattered was getting it tested, marketed, and out in the world making money.”

“That sounds straightforward,” David remarked. “Not like something that would result in multiple murders.”

“Yes. If only the
YOU
NGER genie had remained in the bottle and been simply skincare. Having convinced her husband that the product needed to be marketed in the largest anti-aging market in the world, the USA, Marina pushed him to acquire Coscom at the perfect time, before the introduction of Madame X, which they hoped would bring in much-needed revenues to cover BarPharm’s acquisition costs. All was well.” He paused. “And then she bumped into an old friend from home on the street.”

“Olga?”

“No. Grigoriy Komarov. Yes, your Mr. Kelm. London University graduate, more British than Winston Churchill—on the surface, of course. He’d worked with Sybyska on a few things for his SRV bosses and knew Marina. Divorced, lives for espionage and manipulation, a dangerous man we would like very much to have out of our hair. He’d been put in place in London four years ago for use when Russian security services needed a fake Brit. Running into him, Marina had a brainstorm: Why not get even richer and help Mother Russia at the same time? She and Komarov sold Moscow on the prospect of an industrial-strength
YOU
NGER as the future choice of discerning Russian spies.”

“And Barton agreed to basically commit treason?” Anna was astonished.

“Oh, he was a bit of an easy mark, poor Pierre. Marina led him to Komarov like a lamb to the slaughter. He had never met Komarov, so it was a snap for Marina and Grigoriy to cook up Martin Kelm just for him. Marina isn’t a skincare chemist and Pierre was keeping the formula as his little secret, so they needed the BarPharm lab experts. Until shortly before his death, Pierre Barton believed he was going to be a hero for working with MI6; a future knighthood didn’t seem far-fetched. He never suspected Kelm was anything other than what he said he was when he made contact. We’re not sure how that happened, but I suspect Mr. Kelm of SIS simply called him up and suggested a meeting, saying he’d heard through the grapevine something interesting about the Taiwan deal.”

“Where did you and Olga come in, then?” Anna asked.

“Marina had to control both Barton and Kelm, neither of whom she trusted to protect her interests. She decided she needed a smart bilingual boy by her side in London. Keep in mind she thought I was nothing more than a sly bilingual Russian interpreter. Barton couldn’t tell cod Russian from the real thing, so she offered me a nice salary increase and I became her cousin—available as a driver and a bodyguard.”

“I saw him arguing with you one day,” Anna interjected. “Then you seemed to tell him to get in the car and he just obeyed you.”

“Hardly obeying
me
. I was probably reminding him that my cousin Marina didn’t want him going off on his own, for his own safety, that she worried about him. He never wanted to get on her bad side.” He chuckled. “You’ve met her. Would you? I never saw Komarov in the flesh, by the way—both Marina and Pierre kept meetings with him a secret from each other, and she never mentioned him to me. She just wanted me to keep an eye on her husband.”

“Andrew’s Russian is superb,” interjected Etherington. “Don’t fall for his false modesty.”

Blushing slightly, Barnes continued as a photo flashed on-screen of a middle-aged blonde standing next to Marina. “Here’s Olga, as she originally looked. Komarov insisted on someone who could be trusted for testing the safety of the industrial-strength for-your-spies-only product.”

“What safety? Is it not safe?”

“No need to worry on that score, Ms. Wallingham,” Etherington interjected. “It’s as safe as any acid peel or laser. The sole danger would be getting yourself killed, as Olga did.”

Suddenly, the meaning of her contract being “paid in full” so she could leave early sank in. Now she was sure no one had ever planned to pay her off and let her go on her merry way with her lifetime supply of
YOU
NGER. It was easy for “Martin Kelm” to offer her anything if he didn’t plan on her being around to collect it. Had Pierre realized that during their last meeting when she’d told him about her conversation with Kelm at the National Portrait Gallery bar?

Barnes clicked the mouse and a smiling, younger-looking Olga replaced the original Olga, followed by a shot of the two Olgas side by side.

“You played the game for them, Anna, and while they probably would have preferred someone docile, they were satisfied enough. But Olga didn’t follow their rules. And therein hangs a tale.”

“And before we have that tale, I suggest we have a break for tea,” said Dexter. He picked up the phone. “Malcolm, we’re coming down to the sitting room now.”

The reason for the break was obviously for the Englishmen to compare notes, as they quickly moved together to the far end of the room after shepherding David and Anna to wing chairs in front of the spacious, elegant room’s unlit fireplace. The woman who’d brought lunch the day before arrived almost immediately to set a small tea service on the table, along with the inevitable plate of cookies.

“Ah, we British. Nothing like a spot of tea before we get to the murderous bits, eh, eh?” David put on a Monty Pythonesque voice. “After we ’ave a nice cuppa, we’ll return to ’omicide most foul!”

“Weirdly cheerful, aren’t they? I keep thinking how Aleksei could pass for a Brit in his flannels and blazer,” Anna said, “rather than how Andrew made a believable Russian with his chilly taciturnity.”

“Was he? Chilly, I mean? He seems so easygoing.”

“A bit smug, no? I think he enjoyed fooling me. He was the strong, sullen type. Very believable and, I guess, all in a day’s work. On the other hand, Kelm, or Komarov, tried to act all pally, but with those hard Putin eyes. Still, other than the fact that he’s almost definitely a murderer, I’d call him downright warm and wonderful compared to Marina. Can you imagine luring your own husband into working for Moscow, thinking it’s for queen and country?”

“Not for nothing did the Bible say money is the root of all evil.”

“Dissatisfaction might be a close second,” she said. “I suspect that’s what lured Olga. And probably the engine behind Marina’s ambitions.” She shook her head reproachfully. “Perhaps mine as well. It’s been a steep learning curve, but this experience has put a lot of things in perspective for me.”

David was regarding her contemplatively.

“Yes?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Just thinking that it’s made me reexamine my life as well. I don’t—”

“I hope I’m not interrupting, Ms. Wallingham, Mr. Wainwright.”

Anna could have slugged the former Aleksei. What had David been about to say?
What?
She smiled thinly. “Call me Anna, please. I was just telling David how credible you were as Aleksei.”

“I had quite a few years’ experience in that role. Unlike your ‘trainers,’ by the way. I saw in your notes that you ran into your fashion coach in a Prague mall. Small world.”

“And you, were you in Prague? Was it you Fleur or Chloe or whoever saw?” She was almost disappointed when he shook his head. “So, not as small a world or as well-spun a web as I’d thought. The coaches were all very believable. What’s amazing is that they thought I was playing a part as well—I mean, I was, but they thought I was an actress pretending to be an actress who was pretending to learn how to be someone else. Like an Escher drawing. Were none of them real?”