‘Well, if it’s okay with you, I’ll get this lot loaded up and be on my way back to Blighty. Budem zdorovy, as they say in Essex.’
Pallesson snapped the Fabergé egg’s metal case shut and turned to Kroshtov.
‘Looks like we’re done. Nice doing business with you, Sergei.’
Max lay on his back and focused on the clouds. He’d just witnessed his nemesis blow off the head of his colleague in front of a bunch of Russians of whom he knew nothing. He had no idea what had been going on outside the dacha. He didn’t even know whether either Pallesson or Corbett were on official business. His instincts told him Pallesson was working for himself. And that he’d just murdered a British agent.
Max had known for too long that Pallesson was an evil son of a bitch. It was time to stop him. Time to get revenge. But he also knew that Pallesson was a master of compromise and blackmail. If he reported what he’d witnessed to someone under Pallesson’s spell, it would be he who would be destroyed, not Pallesson.
He wasn’t sure he could even risk confiding in Tryon, the man who’d recruited him into ‘the Office’.
Monaco
Max Ward had to get out of bed when room service arrived with their breakfast. Gemma was pretending to be asleep. He slipped a ten-euro note into the waiter’s hand and asked him to park the trolley by the window.
Max wanted to have breakfast with Gemma, so he poured her some coffee, added the exact amount of hot milk that she expected and took it through to the bedroom.
She was lying with her back to him, welded to the sheets in semi-slumber.
‘Coffee?’ he asked, sitting on the bed. She made an appreciative noise and rolled on to her back, keeping her eyes shut. Max slid his clenched hand under the sheet and found her knee. Then he started to stroke the inside of her thigh with the back of his fingers. She pulled the pillow over her face. Max opened his hand and rubbed an ice cube up her thigh.
‘Oh no, you don’t,’ she said as her head jolted up from under the pillow.
‘Breakfast then?’
While Gemma headed for the bathroom, Max sat down at the small table and gazed across the harbour. A wooden water taxi struggled from one side to the other, dwarfed by the super yachts.
Gemma barely bothered to do up her dressing gown as she ambled towards him. Max thought about grabbing her and taking her back to bed, but his boiled eggs were getting cold. And they’d cut his toast soldiers half an inch wide, exactly as he liked them.
As she sat down, Gemma looked out of the window. Two women were power-walking down the Parcours Princesse Grace – followed discreetly by a bored minder. She wondered when they’d last had sex with their husbands.
Max leant over and kissed her. Then he set about his eggs.
‘Why did they do that?’ Max wondered aloud as he returned his attention to the window. ‘Why did they cover this place in higher and higher concrete boxes? Jesus, you’d be pissed off if they’d trashed your view with that monstrosity, wouldn’t you?’ he asked, pointing at a recent erection that had blocked the sea view – any view, in fact – from the equally offensive apartment blocks behind it.
‘Greed,’ suggested Gemma.
‘No one lives in them anyway,’ Max said as he decapitated one of his eggs. ‘They’re tax bolt-holes. As long as you get your cleaner to run the taps every day and turn on the lights, they can’t prove you’re not living here.’
‘Fine, I suppose, as long as you don’t have to live in this ghastly place.’
‘It’s not that bad. And of course you have to pay someone to drive your car around too. But it’s cheap living here, compared to paying tax anywhere else.’
‘Could you live here?’
‘Well, if you came to visit me every weekend, I might think about it.’
‘Really? Where would you put your other girlfriends at the weekend then?’
‘I’d send them back to Saint-Tropez, of course,’ Max replied without missing a beat.
He looked around the room. Everything was so perfect. The orchids proudly erect in their pot, the imposing gilded mirror frame that perfectly matched the candle holders and standard lamps. Even the rails holding the thick, white curtains were coordinated. And yet everything wasn’t perfect. It never was in Gemma’s life.
‘I get frightened sometimes, staying in places like this,’ she said pensively. ‘It reminds me, in a weird way, of what it’s like to have nothing. Look at those little pots of jam. We’re just going to send them back, even though we’ve paid for them. I didn’t have any fucking jam when I was a kid.’
Max stood up, put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. She was haunted. He wished he could do something about that. But she’d chosen someone else.
As they stepped into the lift, Max pressed the first-floor button for the spa and the ground floor for himself. He held the leather document holder loosely in one hand, deliberately keeping his eyes off it.
‘Aren’t you a bit overdressed for a massage?’ he asked flippantly.
‘Very funny. Actually, I’ve ordered a male masseuse who’s going to strip me naked, cover me in chocolate and lick it off. It’s a hotel speciality. Then I’m going shopping. What time will you be back?’
‘Oh, I’d say about three o’clock. Then we can explore together.’
As the lift ground to a halt, Max kissed Gemma’s neck under her long auburn hair.
‘Stop it,’ she said, taking a step away, but giving in to a wide smile. ‘Or I’ll drag you back upstairs. And then you’ll be late for your mysterious meeting. Go on, tell me. What’s in your holder?’
‘You know I can’t. Or I’d have to kill you with my bare hands.’ With that he gave her neck a small bite.
‘Call me to say where you want to meet.’
She waved as she exited down the corridor.
Max watched Gemma walk away. He wondered whether she swung her arse in that rolling manner for him. She still took his breath away. Her long flowing hair falling down her back, her dress clinging to her body just enough to be tantalizingly sexy, and best of all those exquisite calf muscles.
She was such a confused soul. Spoilt and self-centred on the one hand, and yet generous and insecure on the other.
He wondered why she half turned and took her sunglasses off in that mock-coquettish manner. Maybe she wanted to be sure that he was still watching her.
Max marvelled at the main reception of the Hôtel de Paris as he walked across the multicoloured marble floor. It was twelve
