Killing Eve: Resurrection (3)

The third instalment of a new Killing Eve story, published exclusively on Substack

The rain stops as Oxana gets onto the bus to central St Petersburg. She feels giddy, reckless, intoxicated by possibility. She doesn't normally much enjoy nightclubs; as an environment they're too uncontrollable, and she's not one to abandon herself to dance music. But after all these months of vigilance and austerity she feels like being spoilt. She's hungry for the touch and feel and taste of luxury.

            It's a five minute walk from the stop on Nevsky Prospekt to the Griboyedov embankment. Near the Demidov Bridge, Patriot and Tiger SUVs disgorge sharply tailored men and willowy, disdainful women outside a canopied doorway. The evening air is muggy: exhaust fumes cut with the tang of high-end cologne. As the men greet each other, the female guests pick their way across the wet cobbles like high-wire artists, tiny handbags swinging. Photographers wait in the shadows, alert to the possibility of an inadvertantly exposed nipple or thong. Ponytailed and inconspicuous, Oxana watches this unfolding ballet with interest.

I know myself in every sense superior to these long-limbed tyolki, with their pillowy lips and affected, far-focused gazes. Mine is the truer beauty. If God exists, and recently I have come round to the view that he does, then he made me as I am because that is how he wants me to be. I am his creature, and he loves me. There is something profoundly corrupt about these overfed, overfucked, overprivileged civilians spilling from their huge, ugly vehicles, and looking at them I feel myself as luminescent and as pure of heart as the sword-bearing archangel in the icon that I bought in the Udelnaya street market. It was only a cheap thing, a printed reproduction, and Eve, poor sweet, was mystified. She didn't understand that - as my idiot fellow students would say - I felt validated.

Oxana strolls twards the club entrance, where she’s stopped by a security guard. ‘Invitation?’ he demands, placing his considerable bulk in her path. Oxana shows him the APOKALIPSIS card, but he shakes his head, and there’s a moment’s stand-off.     

The pale-skinned woman from the park appears in the doorway. She's wearing a black cocktail dress adorned with silk straps and gilt buckles, at once fetishistic and chic. Oxana stares, momentarily transfixed by the soft scoop of the woman's throat and the delicate modelling of her collarbones. She gives Oxana a quick, sharp smile, and nods to the guard, who steps back deferentially. 'Follow me,' she murmurs.

            They descend to a mezzanine. Below them, guests are circulating in a high-ceilinged space washed with rose-coloured light. Uniformed staff move amongst them, dispensing flutes of champagne. There's an animated buzz of conversation, overlaid with the smooth whisper of lounge music.

            The man is waiting at a table in a curtained alcove. He rises, hand outstretched, as they approach. 'I'm glad you've come,' he says, taking in her casual attire at a glance. 'It was the right decision.'

            Oxana smiles obliquely. 'Let's see'.

            'Absolutely. I'm Max. And you've met Maria.' His Russian is flawless, but some faint inflexion tells Oxana that he is not a native speaker. He raises a hand, and a waiter brings a silver ice bucket. In it lolls a bottle of 2012 Mercier champagne.

            Oxana's eyes narrow a fraction. In Paris, vintage Mercier was her drink of choice. The waiter uncorks and pours. 'Santé,' Maria murmers, fixing Oxana with an unfathomable gaze.

            'À la vôtre,' Oxana replies coolly.

            There's brief small talk. The cold April winds which lasted well into May; the reappearence of pavement cafés on the bank of the Neva; the upcoming White Nights festival. Maria says little, but watches Oxana as intently as a sparrow-hawk. Oxana, meanwhile, waits as Max circles around the reason that they are all here.

            'You know who we are,' he says eventually.

            'I've no idea.'

            'We are who we always have been.' He touches the label of the champagne bottle, partly covering the date of the vintage, so that only the figure 12 is visible.

            Oxana affects not to notice this reference to the organisation which, some years earlier, recognising her peculiar talents, sprung her from prison and transformed her into a professional assassin. 'And who is that?' she asks.

            'You know who we are, Villanelle.'

            She does, but it's still a shock to hear her former codename spoken out loud.

            So this is the new face of the Twelve. Suave, fashionable, and not at all the type I once knew. Old-school intelligence professionals like Konstantin, who were happy to live invisibly and die in secret. There's a confidence about these two. A sense that they're ready to step from the shadows, to claim the world as their own. And they want me back. They need me.

            'We have a proposition.' Max glances at Maria, who leans in closer.

            'Paris,' Maria says softly. 'You must miss it so much.'

            Oxana frowns. Maria opens a pleated silk purse, and takes out a key, which Oxana recognises instantly.

            'Your apartment overlooking the Bois de Boulogne. It's waiting for you, exactly as you left it. Champagne in the fridge, Sig Sauer 9mm in the ice-box...'

            'Tikhomirov is finished,' Max says. 'It will end badly; it's just a matter of time. And then there will be a re-ordering, for which we are positioning ourselves.'

            Oxana gazes at the crush of avidly conversing guests, just meters away. 'So what do you want from me?'

            'What we've always wanted, Villanelle.' Maria's small hand covers Oxana's. Her fingers flutter softly, almost absently, across Oxana's knuckles

The story continues…