The Third Woman
In a world where everyone and everything has its price, who do you trust? The Third Woman is a powerful and fascinating thriller following the adventures of Burnell’s unique heroine Stephanie Patrick. From conspiracy to terrorism, Vienna to Paris, will she find the truth?
The world isn't run by governments. It's run by corporations. In other words, everything and everyone has a price.
Stephanie Patrick operates under a number of names; Petra Reuter, known as a gun for hire, is probably the one she uses most frequently. She used to work for the government. Now she works for herself.
Robert Newman, who spends more nights at 35,000 feet than in his own bed, is an international troubleshooter. But twenty years at the top have still not purged for him the ghosts of the past.
A plea for help from an old friend draws Stephanie to Paris, where she narrowly survives a terrorist attack, an outrage that according to the authorities was masterminded by Petra Reuter. Betrayed in every way, pursued ruthlessly by a faceless enemy, her identity stolen from her, Stephanie seizes a hostage to give her a slim possibility of escape. But is the encounter with Robert Newman really just chance?
Hunted from Paris to Vienna, Stephanie and Newman are forced together to survive. Yet the more she learns, the closer Newman seems to be to the heart of the conspiracy. Stephanie becomes sure of only one thing: that the answers will lie with the person who she knows as The Third Woman.
‘The Third Woman’ is vividly contemporary, with a welcome return for a unique heroine
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MARK BURNELL
THE THIRD WOMAN
HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollinsPublishers 2005
Copyright © Mark Burnell 2005
Mark Burnell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007152674
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2012 ISBN 9780007369904 Version: 2015-12-14
For Greta with love
The true religion of America
has always been America.
NORMAN MAILER
Most people are other people. Their thoughts
are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
OSCAR WILDE
Contents
He loved the ritual. It was as essential to his enjoyment of the countryside as the open space or clean air. A final stroll around the property before bed, the last of a cigar to smoke, the glowing embers of a good cognac warming his stomach. His only regret was that he didn’t come here often enough. Otto Heilmann stepped out of his dacha onto brittle grass; five below zero, he estimated, perhaps even ten.
His guests had gone to bed. Their cars were parked beside the boat-shed; a black Mercedes 4x4 with dark glass, and an Audi A8 with an auxiliary engine and armour-plating. Frost had turned both windscreens opaque.
Heilmann wandered to the edge of the lake, trailing clouds of breath and smoke. The silvery light of a three-quarter moon shone on the ice. He saw buttery pinpricks in the blackness of the far shore; two dachas, one belonging to a senior prosecutor from St Petersburg, the other to a Finnish architect.
There was no cloud and only the faintest whisper of a breeze. Heilmann smoked for a while. As Bruno Manz, a Swiss travel consultant based in St Petersburg, he felt a very long way from the grim years of the German Democratic Republic. A long way from Erich Mielke, his Stasi boss during those years, and a long way from Wolfasep, the ubiquitous industrial-strength detergent that was the defining odour of the Honecker regime for millions of East Germans. Once smelled, never forgotten, a scar of memory.
He tossed his soggy cigar stump onto the ice and continued his circuit. Along the lake shore, past the creaking jetty, up towards the wood-shed.
‘Hello, Otto.’
A female voice. He thought he recognized it. Except she was supposed to be in Copenhagen. But it was her face that emerged from the darkness of the birch forest.
Heilmann clutched the coat over his chest. ‘I hope you know what to do if I have a heart attack.’
Krista Jaspersen stared deep into his eyes and smiled. ‘Don’t worry, Otto. I’ll know exactly what to do.’
He wasn’t reassured.
She was wearing thick felt boots, a great overcoat and the sable hat he’d given her two nights ago at the Landskrona restaurant on top of the Nevskij Palace Hotel in St Petersburg.
He tried to recapture his breath. ‘What are you doing, Krista?’
‘Waiting for you.’
‘Out here?’
‘I remembered your routine.’
An answer of sorts, Heilmann conceded, yet hardly adequate. ‘You could have phoned to say you were coming. Like normal people do.’ He glanced over one shoulder, then the other. ‘How did you get here?’
‘By car.’
‘I mean … here.’
‘The men at the gate let me through.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that.’
She looked the same – long fair hair, dark green eyes, a mouth of invitation – but she was radiating a difference that Heilmann couldn’t quite identify.
‘It’s freezing,’ he said. ‘Let’s go inside.’
‘You have guests.’
‘They’re asleep.’
‘I’m not staying, Otto.’
‘The mystery is why you’re here at all. You should be in Copenhagen.’
Krista reached inside her coat and pulled out a gun. A SIG-Sauer P226. Moonlight glittered on a silencer.
There was no outrage. That surprised her; Heilmann had a notoriously fragile temper. Instead, after a digestive pause, he simply nodded glumly and said, ‘Let me take a guess: you’re not even Danish.’
