The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [91]
Boris thumped on the table angrily with his fists. “Well then, where the hell is he? He must have contacted you.”
Sergei shook his head slowly. “I have no idea where Valentin is. Had he telephoned me, you would have known about it.” He looked coldly at Boris: They both knew he tapped Sergei’s phones. “I think we must just trust that he is getting on with the job, just as he said in his message, brother.”
Boris spun on his heel and stalked to the door. Sergei thought how ridiculous he looked in his tall leather boots and military uniform, like a squat little marionette with the devil pulling his strings. Russia would be better off without a man like Boris Solovsky, and he knew he wasn’t the first to think so. The rumors about Boris’s behavior in his personal life were getting wider and more persistent: worse even than Beria’s, they said. Boris had better watch his little jackbooted step.
Still, as the door slammed, he wondered worriedly where Valentin was and what he was doing. And why he had failed to secure the emerald and with it the identity of the “Lady.” Because the message had not included the code words “best wishes,” which would have told him that Valentin had found her.
Paris
Genie slept the way she had when she was a child, warm, dreamless, secure. For a blissful few hours Markheim was erased from her memory and the beautiful hard warmth of Valentin’s body next to hers comforted her. The room was still dark when she awoke, just a faint gray blur where the window was. She rolled over, smiling, expecting to see Valentin’s sleepy head on the pillow next to her. He wasn’t there. She put a tentative hand onto the sheet on his side of the bed. It was already cold. Had he deserted her because she had screwed everything up and Markheim had been murdered? Was he afraid he would be implicated? Her heart sank as she contemplated the fact that she might have been a one-night stand, the cute American TV reporter playing at spies and the Russian diplomat afraid of a scandal. Then it leapt with hope again at a tap on the door.
“Bonjour, Mademoiselle, le petit déjeuner.”
She shrank beneath the covers as a plump maid bustled in, turned on the lamp, and placed a tray of coffee and brioches on the table. Genie stared at it. There was only one cup.
“Monsieur said to wake you up at nine,” the woman told her, pulling back the curtains. She peered from the window, tut-tutting and sighing. “Another cold gray day.” She turned back to Genie with a smile and took an envelope from her pocket. “Monsieur said you would need a good breakfast. He asked me to give you this.”
Genie waited until the door had closed behind her before she opened it. The note was written on a sheet torn from a Filofax.
“Little one,” it began, “I must leave early on urgent business. You were sleeping so soundly I thought it best not to wake you. I shall never forget last night. I will call you in Washington. Please, eat some breakfast.”
It was unsigned.
Genie sank back against the pillows with a sigh. She supposed it could be worse. At least he hadn’t deserted her totally. But she hoped with all her heart that he would call her in Washington. She stared at the cup of coffee on the table and suddenly she was back in Markheim’s elegant office; her spine was crawling with the feeling of something wrong and fear swept over her again as she remembered his face with the bullet hole between his blank, dead eyes.
After flinging back the bedcovers, she ran into the bathroom and was violently sick. Then she crawled back to bed and lay in Valentin’s place, clutching his pillow and crying.
Later as she stood under the shower, washing away the imprint of Valentin’s body, she decided she would take the next flight to Washington. She had had enough of this crazy amateur spy business. She took out her Filofax, she found the number, dialed Air France, and booked a seat on the Concorde to Washington. She would be home in a