The Accident Man

77

When Alix had said that the sight of Carver was making her physically sick, she was telling the truth. As he lay naked and defeated at her feet, slobbering over her boots, it was all she could do not to retch. She had to kick him away before she vomited right over him.

But she was not nauseated because she held Carver in contempt, she was sickened with herself. She had delivered the only man who truly loved her into the hands of the man who could do him the most harm – a monster. She had played one game too many, told one too many lies. And now Carver was paying the price for her treachery.

She had been furious with him, that last night in Geneva. At first it had just been the sulky irritation that follows a lovers’ tiff. That had given way to sullen frustration at his refusal to take her with him when he went to investigate what was happening. She felt patronized, the little woman left behind while the big strong man went off to work. And then, when Kursk appeared and turned the peaceful café into an slaughterhouse, she had felt the helpless rage that comes with fear and abandonment. She blamed Carver for her seizure and she stoked her anger against him in order to fortify her for what she had to do next.

She would die, she knew, if Yuri Zhukovski ever suspected that her relationship with Carver had been anything other than a professional deceit. Her survival depended on persuading him that she had simply gone back to what she did best: using her powers of emotional and sexual manipulation against a helpless man. So she’d laced her account of the previous three days with sneering mockery. She’d portrayed Carver as a deluded fool, capable enough at combat or sabotage, but a fumbling amateur when he held a woman, rather than a gun, in his hands.

There was a certain truth in that, of course. But that was why she’d liked him so much, why she knew now that she could have loved him, if only she’d let herself. It was Carver’s unexpected emotional vulnerability that made him a complex, lovable human being, not just a killing machine.

She’d told herself that as long as she was alive, there was always hope that somehow she might be reunited with Carver. She did not know how or when, but she felt sure he would try to find a way to get her back. Until then, all she could do was convince Yuri that he had nothing whatever to worry about. So she’d turned off her true feelings and given herself to him, letting him use her as he wished, paying her penance by prostituting herself more utterly than ever before in her life.

Finally, she had done one last service, the one for which she could least forgive herself. When Carver had called, shortly after lunch – less than twelve hours ago, though it seemed like a different age – she played the part of the helpless kidnap victim, crying out to him and squealing in fake pain when Yuri pretended to slap her.

When the telephone had been put down, and Carver set on his way, Yuri had grabbed her by both arms and looked directly into her eyes as if searching for any last sign that she had betrayed him. He did not appear to find any.

“You are a good girl,” he’d said. “I always had faith in you and you did not give me cause to regret it. That was very sensible. I should have hated to have to punish you. But now…” his face cleared and his mood lifted. “Now you deserve a reward. Go into town, one of the men will drive you. Buy whatever you like. Make yourself beautiful again.” He’d ruffled the short, black hair with almost fatherly affection. For once there was a trace of warmth, even affection in his voice. “I miss my pretty, golden girl.”

Alix did as she was told. She’d spent hours trying on the shortest skirts, the highest heels, and the brightest jewels the boutiques of Gstaad – a town well used to expensive women – had to offer. But that was just the start.

Her body was massaged. She had manicures and pedicures. Her face was caked with masks, then soothed with creams. Her hair was lengthened with extensions (“From Russian women, just like you!” the hair-dresser had squealed, thinking this would make her happy rather than deepen her self-loathing), then dyed back to blond, then artfully styled and sprayed. Finally her face and limbs were painted to the absurdly artificial, beauty-queen perfection that a man like Zhukovski would understand best, and she was ready to be delivered into his presence again.

Alix had teetered into the chalet’s vast living room in her stiletto-heeled boots and Stella McCartney microdress to be faced by the hungry, lascivious stares of Kursk and his crew of deadbeat psychopaths. Yuri had greeted her with the flicker of a smile and the words, “Alexandra, my dear, you look magnificent. I cannot wait to see the look on Mr. Carver’s face when he sees you!”

She had been unable to keep the falseness from her laugh.

“Don’t worry,” Yuri had said, taking her reaction as a sign that she wanted nothing to do with the Englishman. “I know how you had to suffer, and I am going to make him pay. We will have dinner first and then he will be brought to us. And then we will be entertained.”

Alix was sitting opposite Yuri in the dining room when she heard the van arrive. It drove past the front door and down the drive that spiraled around the chalet to the basement garage. There was a slamming of doors and a scuffling of feet somewhere down below them in the bowels of the house. When the servants brought in the food, she could not taste it. The vintage champagne was stale on her tongue.

At last, Yuri told the butler, maid, and cook that they could return to their homes in the village. He waited until they had left the building, then rose from the table, took Alix’s arm, and walked her back to the living room. He placed himself in a chair by the fire and patted one of its overstuffed arms, indicating that she should perch there. Alix obeyed. She even forced herself to giggle. “I’m looking forward to this.”

She had expected Carver to walk into the room tall and proud, ready to negotiate with Yuri, man to man. When he was led in like an animal, his body exposed, his head shrouded in black, it was all she could do not to choke, to weep. She forced herself to remain cold and aloof as he suffered the agonies that destroyed his body from within and crushed his spirit before her eyes. And then, at last, she’d been able to escape.

Alix kept her composure until she was out of the room. She’d stifled her sobs until she reached the marble sanctuary of her bathroom, with the door locked behind her. Only then did she weep for her man, for herself, and for the love that had been thrown away.

She ran a bath, partly to cover the sound of her crying, but also as an excuse for her absence. Men took it for granted that women had an almost infinite need to soak themselves in scalding hot water. Besides, she knew that Yuri would have forgotten her by now. She had seen the venom in his eyes when he looked at Carver, and known what that meant.

Alix lay in the bath, breathing the Chanel-scented steam, watching her limbs turn lobster pink in the heat. By the time she rose to her feet, letting the bubbles slide from her body as she reached for her soft, heavy cotton towel, she knew what she had to do. Whatever it cost.