seven minutes will know me as Petra Reuter. Around the world my face has many names, none of them real. Long ago, when I was a complete person – a single individual – I was someone called Stephanie Patrick. But almost nobody remembers her now.
Sometimes, not even me.
Dressed in black cotton trousers, a navy linen shirt and a pair of DKNY trainers, Petra Reuter crossed Avenue Mohammed V and took the lift to Café La Renaissance’s roof terrace, which overlooked Place Abdel Moumen ben Ali. Sprawled before her, Marrakech shimmered in the parching heat; eleven in the morning and it was already close to forty centigrade. She took off her sunglasses, swept long, dark hair from her eyes and was forced to squint. Above her the sky was deep sapphire, but the horizon remained bleached of colour. Beneath her, drowsy in the scorching breeze, the city murmured: the rasp of old engines, the squeal of a horn, of a shuddering halt, the bark of a dog from a nearby rooftop. She was surprised how much green there was among the terracotta and ochre, full trees throwing welcome shade onto baking pavements. She put her sunglasses back on.
There were some tables on the roof terrace with cheap metal chairs, their turquoise paint chipped and faded. At one table two soft, pear-shaped women were hunched over a map. Petra thought they sounded Canadian. At another table an elderly man in a crumpled grey suit sat in the shade, reading an Arabic newspaper. His walnut skin was peppered with shiny pink blotches. On a section of roof terrace overlooking Place Abdel Moumen ben Ali there were three large, red plastic letters hoisted on blue poles: b – a – r. Four French tourists were taking photographs of themselves with the reverse side of the letters as a backdrop.
Petra bought a Coke and sat at a secluded table. A fortnight had elapsed since her TGV had pulled into Marseille. She’d felt uneasy on that muggy afternoon, but she felt worse now. She’d arrived in Marseille from Ostend, via Paris. In Ostend she’d gone to the bar where Maxim Mostovoi had once been a regular. A charmless place with bright overhead lights and two dilapidated pool tables, one with a torn cloth. With a shrug of regret the proprietor said that Mostovoi hadn’t been in for at least six months; the traditional first line of defence. But Petra had come prepared, and a phrase contained within a question yielded an address in Paris: an apartment on the Rue d’Odessa in Montparnasse which, in turn, led to Marseille. From Marseille she’d travelled to Beirut, then Cairo. In Cairo two addresses – a Lebanese restaurant on Amman Street in Mohandesseen and a contemporary art gallery on Brazil Street in Zamalek – had finally delivered her to this rooftop terrace in Marrakech.
With each city, with each day, her suspicion hardened: that she was no closer to Mostovoi than she had been in Ostend. Or even in London, for that matter. Not that it made much difference. The pursuit might be pointless, but she knew that she would not be allowed to abandon it.
‘Petra Reuter.’
He’d lost weight. His hair was long, lank and greasy, greying at the temples. The whites of his bloodshot eyes were a sickly yellow, his skin waxy and loose. His red T-shirt hung limply from his skeletal frame, dark sweat stains marking points of contact. Creased linen trousers were secured by a purple tie threaded through the belt-loops. His fingers were trembling. Through cigarette smoke, Petra smelt decay.
She had only met Marcel Claesen twice before. The last time had been in a dacha outside Moscow. That had been less than two years ago, but the man in front of her appeared ten years older.
‘You look sick.’
‘Nice to know you haven’t lost your charm, Petra.’
‘Do you want to know what I really think?’
His feeble smile revealed toffee-coloured teeth. ‘It must be the water here. Or the food, maybe …’
‘Or the heat?’
He missed the subtext and shrugged. ‘Sure. Why not?’
‘What are you doing here?’
They sent me to make contact with you.’
Claesen, the Belgian intermediary. That was what he had been the first time they met. Then, as now, he’d radiated duplicity. He was a man who materialized in unlikely places for no specific reason, a man who didn’t actually do anything. Instead, he simply existed in the spaces between people. A conduit, Claesen was the stained banknote that hastened a seedy transaction.
He sat down opposite her and crossed one bony leg over the other. ‘Mostovoi thought it would be better to have a familiar face. You know, someone you could trust …’
Petra raised an eyebrow. ‘So he thought of you?’
He wiped the sweat from his brow with the heel of his hand, then shook his head and attempted another smile. ‘The things I’ve heard about you, Petra. They say you killed Vatukin and Kosygin in New York. They say you killed them for Komarov.’
‘How exciting.’
‘Others say you killed them for Dragica Maric. That the two of you are in love, each of you a reflection of the other.’
‘How imaginative.’
‘How true?’
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you? The idea of me and another woman. Especially a woman like her.’
Claesen’s shrug was supposed to convey indifference but his eyes betrayed him. ‘You mean, a woman like you, don’t you?’
A black Land Cruiser Amazon with tinted windows was waiting for them at the kerb. Petra sat in the back, keeping Claesen and the driver in front of her. They headed for Palmeraie, to the north of the city centre, where extravagant villas were secreted in secure gardens. Most of the properties belonged to wealthy Moroccans, but in recent years there had been an influx of rich foreigners. At one of the larger walled compounds the driver pulled the Land Cruiser off the tarmac onto a dirt track. Ahead, heavy electric gates parted. Above them, two security cameras twitched.
Outside the compound the ground had been arid scrub between the palm trees. Inside it was lush lawn. Sprinklers sprayed a fine mist over the grass. Men tended flowerbeds, their backs bent to the overhead sun. On the right there were two floodlit tennis courts and a large swimming pool with a Chinese dragon carved from stone at each corner.
The villa was centrally air-conditioned and smelt like an airport terminal. There were two armed men in the entrance hall. Both were fair-skinned, their faces and arms burnt bright red. One carried a Browning BDA9, the other a Colt King Cobra. Without a word they led Claesen and Petra down a hall, the Belgian’s rubber soles squeaking on the veined marble floor. The room they entered had a thick white carpet, four armchairs – tanned leather stretched over chrome frames – positioned around a coffee table with a bronze horse’s head at its centre and, in one comer, an enormous Panasonic home entertainment system. Wooden blinds had been lowered over the windows. A curtain had been three-quarters drawn across a sliding glass door that opened onto a covered terrace. The door was partly open, allowing some natural air to infiltrate the artificial. Beyond the terrace she saw orange trees, lemon trees and perfectly manicured rose beds.
‘That’s far enough.’
He was sitting on the other side of the room, his back to the source of partial light, a man reduced to silhouette. Dark trousers, a white shirt, open at the neck, dark sunglasses. Petra was surprised he could even see her.
‘You want something to drink? Some tea? Or water?’
‘Nothing.’
