“Fine, it’s more than satisfactory. It’s…rapturous,” she said, grinning suddenly.
I grinned back. “I’m happy for you.”
She sobered just as fast as she’d smiled. “It’s just that, lately, I’ve begun to wonder if I wouldn’t like something more. Not necessarily from Benoit. Or maybe from Benoit. I don’t know.”
Her fingers plucked at the bedspread, pleating and unpleating.
“What’s holding you back?”
She shrugged, but when she looked up, her eyes were fearful. “What if he doesn’t want that? What if I think I want it and I really don’t? How do you even start something permanent with someone at our age? I mean, when you get together for—what does Natalie call them? Butt dials?”
“Booty calls,” I corrected. “And nobody says that anymore. I think it’s ‘Netflix and chilling’ now.”
She flapped a hand. “Whatever the kids are calling it these days. The point is, I know when I’m going to see Benoit. I have time to prepare. I take care of stray hairs and the callus on my big toe. But a relationship is different. Someone who’s around all the time is going to notice I wear my glasses on a chain around my neck and spend my morning with theNew York Timescrossword.”
I patted her arm. “Any man who loves you is going to love you even when you look like a demented librarian with glasseson a chain and crossword in hand. I don’t know what to say about the big toe except maybe book your pedicures a little closer together.”
She gave me a gentle shove and I grabbed her shoulder, peering closely at her face. “And don’t worry about that mustache. Some men have a kink for that.”
“That lip is as smooth as a baby’s ass cheek,” she told me. “I waxed just last week.” She grabbed the last piece of toast, and I was glad to see she was looking more like herself. Helen’s widowhood had brought with it a crisis of confidence that had paralyzed her at a particularly inopportune moment. But she’d redeemed herself, and the time since seemed like it had done her a world of good. Throwing herself into a project had been the best possible thing for her grief, although I suspected getting stuck into more than just the Farrow & Ball tins had been the real magic.
She picked up the list again and read it through, over and over again, just like we’d been taught, until she’d got it memorized. “I’ll let the others know and then I will get the things on the list that we need from the shops.”
“Get them to put everything in a big bag,” I called after her. “We’re going to need it.”
Chapter Nine
By late evening, we wereready. The preliminaries had gone perfectly. Natalie was still the best at legerdemain, so she was the one who tipped a bottle of eye drops into the bodyguard’s tea. It’s a common misconception that eye drops cause diarrhea, but tetrahydrozoline generally doesn’t upset the stomach—it goes straight for the heart. First, the rhythm changes. A steady, regular beat will start to thrum erratically. Then the blood pressure drops, and sleepiness sets in. That’s the sweet spot. Too much in the system and you get breathing difficulties, and the last thing we wanted was a bodyguard wheezing his way into the infirmary. Tetrahydrozoline is unpredictable as a means of inducing cardiac arrest, but as a makeshift sedative, it’s cheap, easy, and generally effective. In a pinch, I’ve used it to take the wind out of a target’s sails before getting down to business. A mark is less likely to fight back when they’re half-conscious. Natalie will argue that Rohypnol is far more reliable,but she’d used the last of her supply on a final job in Marrakech and hadn’t restocked. She’s also usually packing molly, a joint or two, and some industrial-grade accelerants in case she needs to burn something down, but then she was a Girl Scout and I suppose that kind of preparedness training sticks with you. In any case, her fanny pack didn’t have anything we needed, so we ended up going with eye drops from the ship’s gift shop, a more discreet option than a vial of GHB anyway.
I could never admit this to anyone else, but I actually like it when a job goes slightly wrong. There’s something exhilarating about walking that razor’s edge between success and complete failure and then sticking the landing in spite of the odds. In this case, it meant dealing with the security cameras and coming face-to-face with Lazarov. But security cameras are not as foolproof as everybody thinks, mostly because cameras are only half of the equation—the guards that monitor them are the other half. Every image has to be monitored, and an absent or inattentive guard is just as bad as not having a camera at all. Worse, actually, because many people rely too much on them instead of investing in better training for their guards. Movies love to show people hacking into security systems, but that’s like using a sledgehammer to hang a picture nail—too much trouble and potentially disastrous. Most systems have an alert built in to flag somebody trying to gain access through a back door, and even if you manage to get the tech right, there’s no guarantee it won’t be traced. Far better and much easier to take care of the human element instead. Well-trained observers can penetrate the best disguises, but only if they know they should be looking in that direction.The trick is to get them to look past you. Hide in plain sight and you’ll never be seen.
From across the Chart Room, I monitored the bodyguard’s condition. He fought the sleepiness hard, pulling himself up with a jerk each time he seemed about to nod off. When his body language indicated he was about to get up, I opened the latest copy ofHarper’s, snapping it slightly. That was the signal for Mary Alice to totter by, stumbling slightly against him as he got to his feet. Under other circumstances, he wouldn’t have even felt it. She would have gently bounced off him. But in his current state, he swayed, putting out his hands and grasping Mary Alice’s shoulders. She gave a merry little laugh as they untangled themselves, chattering brightly, and unless you were watching carefully, you’d never have seen two fingers dip into his pocket and retrieve his key cards. We figured he’d have two—his own and Pasha’s. Rich people are used to people coming and going all the time, and the very last thing they want to do is keep getting up to open doors for their own staff. We needed only Pasha’s key, but there was no way to tell without looking at the room number to see which was which. The hardest part of Mary Alice’s job was purloining the keys, choosing Pasha’s, and slipping the other back into the bodyguard’s pocket. We needed to avoid the bodyguard figuring out he’d lost both keys and heading to the purser to have them reissued.
But Mary Alice was a pro. She chattered a moment longer, just enough for her to dart a look at the keys, then slide the extra key into the bodyguard’s jacket. The bodyguard, clearly woozy, flopped back into his seat and was staring into themiddle distance with a goofy grin on his face. Mary Alice shuffled on to the next seating area, settling herself into an armchair and taking out her knitting. I got up, collecting my tote, and walked in her direction. Just before I reached her, she dropped a ball of yarn. I picked it up and returned it with a smile, pocketing the key card she’d tucked inside. Maneuvers like that are a ballet of sorts, each of us knowing exactly where the others will be and how they will move. With the key in my pocket, I strolled from the room. The bodyguard didn’t register me at all.
As soon as I left the Chart Room, I picked up my pace. I was on deck three and I had to get myself up six levels as quickly as possible without making it seem like I was in a hurry. I was also somewhere midship with Lazarov’s suite at the very back of the liner. I jumped into an elevator and rode up to deck eight, hopping out long enough to head down the long, narrow central corridor. Across the back of the ship, the Verandah restaurant overlooked the pool terrace, but just before this was a public ladies’ room. The vanity area was empty, and I locked myself into a cubicle. I was already wearing black trousers and flats with a sharply tailored white shirt. I exchanged my glittery red cardigan for a cutaway white jacket—a piece of the cabin staff uniform Mary Alice had lifted during a lucky trip to the laundry. Helen had sacrificed a black silk scarf to make a bow tie, and with the addition of a dark wig pulled into a neat ponytail, I looked the part. I added a pair of nondescript tortoiseshell readers from the gift shop and headed out.
Natalie met me in the lift with a tote of her own—this onestuffed with pillows. I pulled them out and handed over my bag for safekeeping. She had already hit the buttons for decks nine and ten and when we stopped at nine, I got out alone, holding the pillows up on my shoulder to obscure my face from the cameras. To anybody watching, I looked like any other room attendant delivering an order from the pillow menu. I passed two doors before I reached Lazarov’s, pausing to tap discreetly. I waited, then swiped the key card to enter.
I stopped inside the door, listening and running a mental inventory of the whereabouts of all the principal players. Helen was surveilling Lazarov as he took his after-dinner drink in the Commodore Club. It was on the same deck as his cabin but the opposite end of the ship. The bodyguard was either still dozing in the Chart Room or had stumbled off to the bed in his sad little cabin on deck two. Either way, Mary Alice would keep an eye on him until she had the all clear. Natalie was hiding out in the ladies’ room on deck ten with my bag. Here, Lazarov’s suite was quiet, the hum of the engines far below barely detectible. The wi-fi on board was crap, but I’d managed to pull up full floor plans of the suite as well as a video tour on YouTube thanks to CruiseLuvr2251. I’d studied it until I knew the layout so well, I could have made my way around in the dark. Everything in the suite was exactly where I expected. Just inside the main door was a narrow hallway with a shower room on one side and a small kitchenette on the other. It was really more of a glorified wet bar, but Lazarov’s butler kept it stocked with all kinds of treats, I noticed. Fruit baskets, packets of Fortnum & Mason tea, bottles of English perry and cider—even some Devonshirefruit wine which in my opinion is taking Anglophilia a step too far.
I passed into the living area which included a dining table and credenza as well as a full entertainment unit. The door to the terrace was closed, the blinds drawn. In the middle of the room was the staircase curving upwards to the second floor. I vaulted up the steps two at a time, my flats silent on the deep pile of the carpet. At the top was a landing with a stationary bike, the area serving as a mini–exercise room. Double doors opened to a bedroom which was furnished with a king-sized bed, pristinely made with the teddy bear taking pride of place in the center.
“I’m sorry you have to see this,” I said to the bear.
I dumped the extra pillows at the foot of the bed and paused. I needed to be hidden when Lazarov arrived. On either side of the bed were doors leading to dressing areas. Beyond those were a shower room on one side and a tub room on the other along with a back door from the suite. The shower and tub compartments connected through separate toilet areas, making a semicircle around the bedroom. Handy for my purposes, but not if I guessed wrong as to where Lazarov would head when he arrived.
I studied the two dressing areas. The one leading to the tub held navy pajamas from Turnbull & Asser marked with his monogram in Cyrillic letters along with two silk robes and a pair of needlepoint slippers with a teddy bear pattern.
The other dressing area was full of more Turnbull & Asser—shirts this time—with a selection of exquisitely tailored suits and handmade shoes. No wonder he wasn’t a powerplayer with the other oligarchs. He spent the equivalent of the GNP of a small industrial nation just on his wardrobe. I peeked into the area that held the tub. The toiletries on the vanity were, predictably, Penhaligon’s. But I wasn’t complaining. My sheets smelled like Penhaligon’s thanks to Taverner, although he preferred Endymion to Lazarov’s choice of Sartorial.
Given that the pajamas were on the bathtub side, it seemed a reasonable gamble that Lazarov would take a bath before bed. If I chose wrong? I didn’t want to think about that. It took only a few seconds to make the necessary preparations. First, I spread the bathtub with a thin layer of cuticle oil I’d borrowed from Helen’s toiletry bag. I poured the rest into the bottle of bubble bath on the vanity. After I carefully recapped it, I edged into the adjoining shower room and slid the door almost closed, noting the fact that it was noiseless. I left it open just half an inch, enough for me to keep tabs on what was happening in the tub room, and settled down to wait.
I was prepared to hang out for a while until Lazarov showed up, and I was amusing myself by constructing a mental crossword puzzle with the names of my favorite poisons when I heard voices. For one terrible moment I thought Lazarov had brought back a guest, but it was just him singing—something Gilbert and Sullivan which made me rethink giving him a painless death. I suffered through the entirety of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” as he got ready for his bath. There was little chance he’d notice the cuticle oil. It had the advantage of being colorless and any faint scent would be masked by the bubble bath. Curls ofsteam rolled into the shower room where I was hiding, bringing with it the aroma of more Penhaligon’s. I listened to him pee and grimaced when he didn’t flush. I was crossing my fingers he wasn’t about to do worse—the toilet was about two feet away from me with just the thin pocket door protecting my delicate sensibilities—but he was finished. I heard the soft sounds of clothes being shed and dropped to the floor, then the swoosh of a body displacing the water in the bathtub. I slipped both hands through the gap between the door and the jamb. I began to exert pressure, very light and even, coaxing the door open further. From where I stood I could see Lazarov reclining in the tub. The back of his head was facing me, and there were no mirrors opposite, nothing reflective to give me away as I crept nearer. He was the perfect sitting duck.
I moved forward, but just when I would have stepped into the bathroom, there was a soft knock on the door opposite. The butler. I jumped back like a scalded cat as Lazarov called out a reply. There was no time to pull the door into place, so I kept still and hoped he wouldn’t be suspicious. From where I crouched, I could see a slice of the bathroom, about half of the bathtub and a patch of floor next to it.
“Your chamomile, sir,” the butler said, setting a cup and saucer on the marble surround of the bathtub. It wasn’t Stephen; the largest suites had their own attendant, which was good news for me. The last thing I needed was to be spotted by the guy who had unpacked my underwear and carried in my morning tea.