Mark Burnell

The Third Woman


Скачать книгу

ection id="uce6a4910-054a-5ba5-b9dc-e3a597767d6e">

      

      MARK BURNELL

      THE THIRD WOMAN

       Copyright

      HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      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.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

      Source ISBN: 9780008339203

      Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2012 ISBN 9780007369904

      Version: 2019-07-24

      HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

       Dedication

       For Greta with love

       Epigraph

      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

       Cover

       Title Page

       Day Four

       Day Five

       Day Six

       Day Seven

       Day Eight

       Day Nine

       Day Ten

       Day Eleven

       Day Twelve

       Day Thirteen

       Early February

       Acknowledgements

       Keep Reading

       About the Author

       Also by Mark Burnell

       About the Publisher

       Early October

      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