The Accident Man

22

They were sitting in an all-night bistro, tucked between the sex shops and tourist traps of Châtelet-les-Halles. It was a quarter past five. Even the local hookers had given up for the night and come inside for a nightcap.

Alix looked exhausted, her adrenalin rush long gone. Carver got her a cappuccino with a double espresso and a pain au chocolat to dip into it. It wasn’t exactly a healthy diet, but she needed the energy the fat and sugar would provide. Alix ignored the pastry, took a sip of the coffee, then lit a cigarette.

Carver leaned across the table like a lover. “Who was he, that man in the club, the one who sent his goons after us? What’s his name? What’s his interest in you?”

She took another drag on her Marlboro, made a show of blowing a stream of smoke up toward the ceiling, but said nothing.

“Come on, Alix, don’t jerk me around. You knew him. He certainly knew you. Why? And why did he send his men after us?”

She shrugged. “His name is Ivan Sergeyevich Platonov. Everyone calls him Platon. He belongs to what you would call the Russian mafia. But the gangs – we say ‘clans’ – are not just Russian. They come from every race – Chechen, Azeri, Kazakh, Ukrainian. They have names, like rock groups or football teams. The Chechens are Tsentralnaya, Ostankinskaya, Avtomobil’naya. The Russians are Solntsevskaya, Pushinskaya, Podolskaya – that is Platon’s gang. Every gang hates all the others, but when you are a woman, they are all the same. They all want to fuck you, or beat you, or both. They are all pigs.”

“So how do you know so much about this Platon, then?”

“Everybody knows about him. He is a gangster, but the newspapers talk of him like some kind of superstar: how many houses he has, what new car he has bought, who his mistress is this week. And you must understand, he is not the boss of Podolskaya. There are others, much higher up than him. And they have bosses too, men who belong to no gangs, but who control them like, like… puppets.”

“Okay, so what’s Platon doing in Paris?”

“It could be anything. He could be doing a deal for Podolskaya. He could be paying off a French government minister. He could be taking his girlfriends shopping in Paris. You know, I was looking at them in the ladies’ room. I couldn’t decide: Are they twins, or did they just have the same surgery? Platon would like that. Take two girls and turn them into Barbie dolls. He would think it was funny.”

Carver heard the bitterness in her voice. It sounded personal.

“One more time: How do you know him?”

“How do you think? How does any woman ever know a man like Platon?”

Carver thought of the fat man in the nightclub, his body pressing down on Alix. It wasn’t a nice image. “Who was he calling?”

“The man who sent me here.”

“Who is?”

“I don’t know. Why should I know? You don’t know who sent you. My connection is Kursk.”

“Was. He’s dead.”

Alix shook her head, a mirthless smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “You think? Did you see the body?”

“No.”

“You don’t know Kursk. Many people have tried to finish him before now. Some even thought they had succeeded. But he is like Rasputin. You have to kill him again and again before he will die.”

“If you say so. But in my experience, people only die once. You work together all the time?”

“No. Not before tonight – not as partners.”

“What changed?”

She gave another exhausted, heavy-eyed smile. “It was like The Godfather. He made me an offer I could not refuse.”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh, long story. And I am not going to tell it now.”

Carver looked at his watch, then turned to catch the waitress’s eye and made a gesture, as if signing a bill. He turned back to Alix. “I don’t need to hear the story, but I need to know how it ends. I need to know if I can trust you. Whose side are you on now?”

She stubbed out her cigarette. “Honestly? I don’t know. I am trying to decide that myself. It is the same for me, Samuel. I too need to know who to trust. I will be thirty in September. I left home when I was eighteen, so I have lasted twelve years on my own. I am not a drug addict. I am not on the streets, giving myself to drunks for a handful of worthless rubles. I am not raising three children in a rat-infested apartment. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“That you know how to survive?”

“Exactly. So the question I am asking myself when I look at you is, do I trust this man to keep me alive? Or do I go back to Moscow and take my chances with men like Platon?”

“It’s not Platon you have to worry about,” Carver pointed out, “it’s whoever planned this job tonight. And if you’re even thinking of going back to Moscow, you must believe you’ve got a connection, someone who might be able to keep you safe.”

“Possibly. But as you say, they ‘might’ be able to keep me safe. If I have guessed right. If they want to help me. You see, that is the calculation I have to make.”

“Is that all it is – a calculation?”

“When you are trying to stay alive, that is all it ever is.”

She was right, of course. Carver knew that. Yet he also knew that he had passed the point where the justifications he gave for her presence weren’t much more than a pretense. Sure, they stood a better chance together than apart. He didn’t want her running off and telling the world about him. And she might yet give him a lead to the people who’d sent them on their fatal mission. But in the end, he just wanted to be with her. It was as simple as that.

He left money for the bill. “Come on. The metro starts running soon. That’s the safest place for us.”

“And then?”

“Then we’re going to take a train, leaving at seven fifteen.”

“Where to?”

“Home,” he said.

The direct line from Châtelet-les-Halles to the Gare de Lyon takes exactly three minutes, but Carver went the scenic route, riding all over Paris, switching trains every few stops. It took them over an hour.

He didn’t think that the Russians had picked up their trail after they’d left the nightclub. They’d left the back way; the guy who’d been waiting at the front could not possibly have seen them. But he figured there’d be other goons where the first two came from. There was no point taking chances.

Most of the way, they sat in silence. Then they took the final change, getting on the D train that would take them down to the Gare de Lyon.

“There are closed-circuit TV cameras at the station,” said Carver, “so we shouldn’t be seen together. When we get there, pick up your bag from your locker. Then check the departure board. There should be a train for Milan leaving at seven fifteen. Get on it. Go to the first-class compartment. I’ll meet you there.”

“Why should I come with you?” Alix asked.

Carver couldn’t be bothered to come up with a smart reason. “Because you want to?”

Alix hadn’t expected that. This time her smile was genuine, her voice warmer than it had been at any time since they left the club. “I guess I don’t have any better offers right now.”

“Come on, this is our stop.” He handed her a numbered key. “Your locker. See you on the train.”

Carver let Alix step out of the train ahead of him, then waited on the platform to see if there was a tail following her. When the next train came into the platform, he joined the trickle of passengers who got off and started walking toward the mainline station. He picked up the computer from a separate locker then went to the ticket office. He was wearing the eyeglasses now, the ones he’d picked up at the all-night pharmacy. They didn’t do much to change his face, but every bit helped. He asked for two first-class seats to Milan and paid cash for the tickets.

He left the ticket office and walked across to an automatic ticket machine on the concourse outside. Above him, massive cast-iron beams supported a glass roof, making the whole place seem like a gigantic greenhouse.

A few early travelers were breakfasting beneath the white umbrellas of the station café. Behind them, inside the main station building, was the Gare de Lyon’s magnificent restaurant Le Train Bleu. Compared to the filthy station buffets in England, where surly staff served tasteless plastic slop, Le Train Bleu was a gourmet’s paradise. But Carver had no time to enjoy its pleasures now.

He bought a fistful of tickets to different destinations, all for cash. He reached the Milan train twenty minutes after he had last seen Alix. She was asleep, her head slumped against the side of the carriage.

Carver watched her for a few seconds, taking in the contours of her face. All the tension had slipped away from her features, leaving only vulnerability. He took off Max’s jacket, folded it neatly on the seat opposite Alix, then reached out a hand and gave her shoulder a brisk shake.

“Wake up,” he said. “We’ve got to move.”

Alix came to. She frowned. “You look different. Older.”

“It’s just the glasses.”

“Where are we?”

“We’re still in Paris. But we’re changing trains. First, though, you’ve got to make a call.”

She gave him a puzzled frown as he took her phone out of one of his pockets and dialed a number. A ringing came from his money belt. He pulled out a phone of his own and picked up the call. Then he placed the two phones in the luggage rack above their heads.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Follow me.”

Carver picked up Alix’s bag. He put it over one shoulder and the computer case over the other. He left the jacket behind. Carver took Alix’s hand and practically dragged her out of the compartment, off the train, across the platform, and onto another train. Twenty seconds after they had got onboard, the train started moving.

“Where are we going?” asked Alix.

“Aaah,” said Carver. “That’s a surprise.”