Chapter Twenty Two The dead of night
Anastasia could not sleep, she lay in a four-poster bed in the Dower House, the smaller Georgian building on the estate grounds where the bride’s party was staying and listened to the silence of the countryside.
There were none of her familiar city sounds like traffic or sirens.
No sounds at all, except the occasional creak of old wood settling and the distant call of an owl hunting in the darkness.
Tomorrow she was getting married. Tomorrow she would stand in a chapel and promise to love and cherish James Ashworth-Pemberton for the rest of her life.
Tomorrow, Viktor would try to kill him and then probably her.
She had spent the evening cataloguing threats, mapping vulnerabilities, running scenarios through her mind. The speeches, the cake cutting, the first dance. Every moment of the day was a potential attack vector.
And she had to stop all of it without James ever knowing.
She got up, pulled on a cardigan over her pyjamas and padded barefoot into the corridor.
The house was dark, quiet. The other women in the bridal party; the hen party girls, a pleasant cousin of James’s and the decorator’s assistant who had somehow been conscripted into bridesmaid duty, were all asleep in their rooms.
Anastasia walked downstairs, her feet knowing the way even in darkness. Old habit. You learned to move silently, to navigate unfamiliar spaces without light. The training never left you.
She found her way to the small sitting room at the back of the house, a cosy space with a fireplace and overstuffed chairs and shelves of books that no one had read in decades.
She was not alone.
Granny sat in one of the armchairs, silver hair loose around her shoulders, a bottle and two glasses on the small table beside her. The fire had burned low but still cast enough light to see by.
‘I thought you might be wandering,’ the old woman said. ‘You have that look.’
‘What look?’
‘The look I used to have. Before operations.’
Anastasia stopped in the doorway. The words hung in the air between them: casual, devastating, impossible to ignore.
Granny gestured to the empty chair. ‘Sit. I won’t bite. Not at my age: the teeth aren’t what they were.’
Anastasia sat.
Without asking, Granny poured two measures from the bottle. The liquid was clear, faintly viscous. She handed one glass to Anastasia.
‘I get this from an old friend,’ she said. ‘He still sends a bottle every Christmas. God knows how it gets through customs. I suspect diplomatic pouches are involved, but I’ve learned not to ask questions about what goes in diplomatic pouches.’
Anastasia took the glass. Raised it to her lips and drank.
It burned beautifully. Clean and fierce and honest, nothing like the polished vodkas you bought in shops. This was the real thing, made in someone’s kitchen with love, potatoes and probably a complete disregard for health regulations.
‘This is real samogon,’ she said, before she could stop herself.
‘My friend doesn’t believe in half measures. Never did.’ Granny sipped her own drink, watching Anastasia over the rim. ‘Moscow, 1978. That’s where we met. I was attached to the embassy. He was... well. He was many things. We understood each other.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you?’ Granny’s eyes were sharp, knowing. ‘I wonder.’
They drank in silence for a moment. The fire spreading its warmth around the room. Outside, the owl called again.
Then Granny spoke again, quietly, in Russian. Her accent was impeccable: Moscow formal, the kind you learned in the Foreign Office language schools or in the field, depending on your background.
‘I know what you were. I was something similar, once. The question is what you are now.’
Anastasia’s hand tightened on the glass. She had known, of course, but knowing and hearing were different things.
‘I’m trying to be something different,’ she replied, in Russian, even though she had avoided speaking it since the war.
‘Are you succeeding?’
A long pause. The fire shifted, sending sparks up the chimney.
‘Ask me tomorrow.’
Granny nodded slowly. Poured another measure into both glasses.
‘Tomorrow, then.’
She switched back to English, as if the Russian had been a brief excursion into another world; visited, acknowledged, departed.
‘James is a good man. Not clever, but kind. That’s rarer than people think.’
‘I know.’
‘He needs protecting. From the world. From himself. From people who might take advantage.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you?’
Anastasia met her eyes. Held them. ‘Yes.’
Something passed between them: recognition, understanding, a silent alliance formed without words or promises.
‘Good,’ Granny said. She raised her glass. ‘To tomorrow, then, whatever it brings.’
Anastasia touched her glass to Granny’s and drained her glass.
They sat together in the firelight, two women who had lived in shadows, sharing vodka and silence. Nothing resolved. Nothing explicitly said.
But something understood.
???
Anastasia returned to her room, the vodka had warmed her, but it hadn’t quieted her mind. Tomorrow (today, now) she would marry James. She would stand in the chapel and make promises she intended to keep. She would smile and dance and pretend that everything was perfect.
And she would stop Viktor from killing the man she loved.
She stood at the window, watching the snow begin to fall, light at first, then heavier, covering the grounds in a perfect white blanket. It was beautiful. Peaceful. The kind of scene that belonged on a Christmas card, not at the site of a planned assassination.
She thought about the choices that had led her here. The war, the service, the escape, meeting James and then Viktor’s blackmail, Viktor’s inexorable insertion into her life. Each choice had seemed necessary at the time. Each choice had brought her closer to this moment.
She could still run, but then James would never look at her the same way again. There was no choice really.
So she would stay. She would marry him. She would protect him from the shadows and he would never know.
That was the cost. That was always the cost: the price of keeping the people you loved safe. They couldn’t know. They couldn’t be allowed to see what you really were, what you were really capable of.
She would be the wife James deserved. She would be kind and loving and everything he expected.
But today, just for today, she would also be what she had been trained to be.
A weapon.
She lay down on the bed, willing herself to rest. In a few hours, the house would wake. The preparations would begin. The day would unfold according to Elizabeth’s meticulous schedule and somewhere in the chaos, Viktor would make his move.
She would be ready.
She had to be.
???
In the east wing of the main house, Viktor was making final preparations.
He had laid everything out on the bed with the methodical precision of a professional:
He had surveyed the grounds at first light, mapping possibilities. He only needed one to work.
And then, his escape: the hot air balloon James had arranged, parked beyond the gardens, ready to carry him away before anyone understood what had happened, one thing was certain, James would not be needing it.
Viktor checked the supplies once more, then began packing them away into their various hiding places. Today was going to be busy. Today, he would become a very wealthy man.
He thought briefly of Anastasia, his former asset, his supposed sister, the woman who had been foolish enough to think she could escape him. She had paid the two hundred thousand, thinking that was the end of it. She had accepted his presence, thinking she could manage him.
She had no idea.
After James died, she would inherit. And after she died, Viktor would inherit everything. The London flat, the trust funds, cash and hopefully some insurance policies. Enough to clear his debts ten times over. Enough to disappear, to start again, to become someone else entirely.
It was elegant, really. The forged documents made him her only living relative. British inheritance law, with a little help from some of his friends would do the rest.
He smiled as he hid the last piece of equipment: the smile of a man who had worked hard and was about to be rewarded.
The preparations were ready; this was going to be a wedding to die for.