Die for Me (Killing Eve #3) - Luke Jennings Page 0,38

better now. Oxana, red in tooth and claw, is my Violet. She is how the world is, when you look at it without blinking, or flinching. She needs to hunt.

Richard taps his glass with his knife, and I open my eyes. I’m so tired, so utterly exhausted, it’s as much as I can do to stop myself sliding under the table. “Can we all just stand up a moment and walk to the window?” Richard asks.

Lara helps me to my feet. They seem to believe that we’re pals now.

Loosening his tie, Richard starts to talk. With an expansive sweep of his arm, he indicates the blazing expanse of the city. After the dilapidated grandeur of St. Petersburg, Moscow is fortress-like and monolithic. It’s impressive, but too inhuman in scale to be beautiful. I feel myself swaying. Lara steadies me with a hand on my arm.

“Everything that you see before you is dead or dying,” Richard says. “Nothing works. There are no big political ideas, no great leaders, nothing to give people hope. I’m not just talking about Russia, but Russia is the perfect illustration of what I’m saying. Everything that people value, everything that once made them proud, belongs to the past. Communism was flawed as a system, but there was an ideal there, once upon a time. An aspiration. People understood that they were part of something, however imperfect. Now there is nothing. Nothing except the systematic looting of the nation’s assets by a rapacious, self-appointed elite.”

His words have the sheen of frequent usage. He’s spoken them before, perhaps many times. Oxana is listening with a slight frown on her face, Anton is expressionless, and Lara, who has let go of my arm, is examining their fingernails.

Sensing my eye on them, Lara inclines toward me. “What do you think of the name Charlie?” they whisper. “I really like it. Oxana was codenamed Charlie on the Odessa job and I was super-jealous.”

“It’s nice. Suits you.”

“So what does the Twelve propose?” Richard continues, turning away from the window to face us. “What have all our plans and strategies been leading up to? A new world, nothing less. We put the corrupt old men out of their misery, and we rebuild.”

“He likes to talk, doesn’t he?” Lara murmurs.

“Mmm.”

“You really think Charlie suits me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“The old dies, the new is born. That’s how history works. A golden age comes to pass—an era of prosperity, nobility and wisdom—and then over the course of millennia things decline until that golden age is just a folk memory, a set of half-understood stories, a vague longing for what has been lost. And that’s where we are now. Feeling our way through the darkness.”

“Not Alex?”

“No. Charlie’s perfect.”

“You’re right. Everyone’s called Alex.”

“But we can find it again, that golden age, because history is cyclic. All that is needed is a few good people. Men and women with the vision to see that the old must be destroyed to make way for the new, and the courage to do it.”

Richard’s voice continues its urbane flow. I read somewhere that Etonians learn a skill called “oiling,” which is the art of courteously, but firmly, persuading others to your point of view. Richard is oiling us now, but his words are beginning to run together. I pull out my chair, and as I lower myself to the cushioned seat Oxana flicks an irritated glance at me. I’m not very drunk, but I feel heavy-limbed and uncoordinated. It’s as much as I can do not to lie down under the dining table and close my eyes.

“And that, my friends, is where we come in,” Richard says. “We are the advance guard of the new age. And we’re not alone. All over the world there are people like ourselves, aristocrats of the spirit, waiting for the moment to strike. But our task is perhaps the hardest, and the most dangerous. With one decisive action, we have to set the whole process in motion. And so I ask you all—Villanelle, Eve, Lara, and of course you Anton, old friend—are you with us? Are you ready to go down in history?”

Oxana nods.

Anton narrows his pale gaze. “All the way.”

“Sure,” says Lara. “But from now on it’s Charlie. Lara is my deadname.”

Richard gives her the ghost of a bow. “Very well, Charlie it is. Eve, you look… uncertain.”

“It’s been a long day. But let me get this right. This morning you seemed quite anxious to end my life, and now you want me to join your team?”

“Why not?