He was, however, speaking to Blanka’s executive officer, agent OhZone 5: Sokol Comarova, over his black tablet-like OhZone Scanner, which was still working. Sokol was another KGB defector, and also Blanka’s best friend; and the lead guitarist in a rock band they had formed.
As Grinin talked to Blanka about chess moves, she felt her mind drifting, thinking about Nearby.
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‘Blanka?’
She vaguely heard Grinin’s heavily accented Russian voice.
It was slightly crazy sounding. Was it a genius or a psychopath?
‘Blanka?’ the voice came again.
Blanka first met Nearby also four years before, on a country lane near Oxford. An MI6 wet job* had been bungled
[*clandestine murder]. The target, a man, had been wounded with a B&Q hedge trimmer: it was difficult to make the killing look like suicide or an accident. Blanka didn’t care about the lies manufactured for the public. She wanted the truth. The clean-up squad had departed; a dozen agents remained disguised as British bobbies. Scanning the surrounding garden and trees, Blanka’s AI vision detected a young white woman—hidden in a tree nearby.
Terrified, the silent woman seemed unworldly. Blanka coaxed her down and took her inside the house. Through the whole process she didn’t say a word.
She’d cut her knuckles in the tree, so Blanka fetched her a Band-Aid along with a cup of tea. When Blanka questioned her, Nearby just stared into the teacup.
Irish looks, Blanka said to herself. Despite cheap shoes and secondhand clothes, she’s strikingly handsome—and strangely familiar.
Her AI Hebe prompted her: No face recognition matches on the grid, but her features fit those of Intel igence officer grade 3, Felicity Robinson, on the South America Desk.
Of course, Blanka replied. Felicity-fast-track!
She’d continued trying to read the Irishwoman. Catholic crucifix, but no Rosary. Hair needs a wash. Has she been
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sleeping rough? She’d thought of her late mother. Trying a more personal approach, Blanka pulled out her own Rosary beads.
‘I was brought up in a Catholic convent,’ she’d said. ‘You remind me of my best friend there.’
‘I went to c-convent school,’ Nearby stuttered, in a Dublin accent, glancing at the armed agents behind her. ‘Wish I was th-there now.’
‘Me too sometimes,’ Blanka said. ‘But we can’t stay in a convent al our lives. It was actual y Bridget, my friend from the convent, who taught me how to swear.’
‘Sure I don’t swear,’ Nearby giggled. ‘At least I don’t th-think I do.’
As an eyewitness to the hit, several solutions were offered to the ‘Nearby problem’ (some more bloody than others). Blanka wanted to protect her, and with perseverance she won out.
Nearby was duly screened, tested and recruited to MI6.
At Nearby’s swearing-in ceremony, a disgruntled C quipped:
‘Keep your friends close but your enemies nearby.’
‘Blanka!’ The Russian was getting irritated. ‘It’s your move.’
Blanka abruptly opened her eyes and focused on a pawn, the red color of normal human blood. She’d been gripping it so tightly her fingers were pale. As she turned it over and over, the thought went through her head: I have purple blood—I’m a freak, a monster.
The orchestral music of Samuel Barber played from the café
stereo; she had always liked the music at the Jericho. When had she picked up the pawn?
‘Blanka, Blanka. Miles away as usual. You’ve been dreaming.’
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She recognized the voice now and returned to the world of Grinin and the Jericho café. She winced when her eyes fel on his stump.
‘Sorry, Grigori, I’m easily distracted. But that’s al . I’ve never real y dreamed.’
‘Just like your mother, dreaming in her own world.
Remember, I knew Kitty when you were in a gym-slip. Of course you dream.’
‘I was never in a fucking gym-slip,’ snapped Blanka.
‘Which ear was your mother deaf in?’
‘The left, don’t start that again.’
At the table behind them, a gay couple were drinking white wine spritzers. One whispered to the other:
‘That’s Grigori Grinin, the Russian defector, I heard him on the radio yesterday.’
At that moment, the ceiling light flickered upon Blanka and Grinin’s chessboard, the music died, and the cafe settled into semi-darkness.
‘Now the lights go out,’ Grinin exclaimed. ‘How can anyone concentrate? Not that anyone needs to concentrate when they play you.’
‘Enough already,’ exclaimed Blanka draining her wine glass,
‘Jesus Joseph and Mary.’
‘Perhaps you have a bit of your mother’s temper too,’ said Grinin, running his huge hands through his bushy beard. He lifted the bottle of Burgundy and refil ed Blanka’s glass. ‘Come, let’s drink again to International Women’s Day.’
‘Z a zhén-shsheen,’ [to women] Blanka said in Russian, chinking glasses.
‘Z a zhén-shsheen, Nancy Drew,’ replied Grinin, winking.
Blanka put the pawn down and frowned at her white pieces.
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Her AI hearing was picking up a faint humming sound, and she looked around. Snow was falling in the street, glowing eerily in the afternoon gloom.
It sounds like bees, she thought.
But Blanka kept bees. It couldn’t be bees, it was far too cold.
Or could it be a harmonica playing? She clocked the shops and restaurants, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.
They were al dark. She picked up from the grid that electricity and mobile signals were out for a few blocks.
She studied the snow as it fell on the street. Some of the snowflakes seemed unusual. She used her AI to freeze their motion; they were like crystal sparks, moving randomly.
Curiouser and curiouser, she said to Hebe. Analyse?
The snowflakes show aberrant structure and behaviour, said her AI.
Can you clarify please?
I have insufficient data to clarify.
Blanka’s mind checked her OhZone Scanner connection—
she was stil connected.
‘This never happens,’ she said, turning to Grinin.
‘Britain feels like a third world country,’ Grinin grumbled.
‘Your National Rail system is a disgrace. A 50 year backlog of essential engineering work. And what do they do? As a KGB
man, I can tel you! They hide it!’
‘From the public?’
‘From the public, from each other! From God! Who knows?
Now, what about my soufflé? Where’s that hiding?’
The gay couple toyed with their iPhones in vain, ‘There’s no signal,’ said the first. ‘There’s no battery,’ said the second.
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Blanka signalled an employee who was peering out of the kitchen door.
‘This gentleman wants to know about his soufflé,’ she told him.
The middle-aged sous chef seemed particularly flustered by the power outage.
‘My soufflé, young man!’ Grinin growled, squinting at him.
‘I am here in the dark playing chess with my nitwit friend and the only thing that wil save this afternoon is a good soufflé!’
As the sous chef scrambled to the kitchen, Blanka leaned over and whispered.
‘You don’t have to frighten him.’
Grinin assumed an outraged and dignified pose.
‘When one l ooks like Rasputin, one must sometimes act like Rasputin. ’
‘Yes,’ said Blanka. ‘But my Rasputin dances on the tables.’
‘You tricked me,’ Grinin said smiling.
‘No, Steve Wright made you a celebrity here. I only encouraged you to dance.’
&nbs
p; Blanka’s brainchild had been to introduce Grinin and Diana to two of her most interesting friends—at the exclusive nightclub Wilion, around the corner from Novikov in Berkley Square.
One friend was Oxberry, and the other was the MI6 psychiatrist, Fox, both in their 70s, as was Grinin.
Steve Wright, a London radio personality, arrived as Blanka asked the night’s DJ to play the 1978 hit Rasputin by the black German group Boney M.
In her sets, Blanka played the twelve-inch single, which had greater dynamic range. Here it is, al seven-and-a-half minutes
of it.
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There lived a certain man in Russia long ago He was big and strong, in his eyes a flaming glow Most people looked at him with terror and with fear But to Moscow chicks he was such a lovely dear.
Using his cel phone, Steve Wright filmed the whole thing. The sight of the three bearded academics serenading the heavily pregnant Diana with stylized Russian dancing, had been an instant hit on YouTube.
Grinin started appearing weekly in a spot called
‘Grandmaster Four Gs’ on Steve’s BBC radio show—with Rasputin as his theme. He spoke about his love of chess and helping his wife with her efforts for animal conservation, and chose a favourite hit. He also talked about the robbery, praising the NHS (Britain’s public health service) and playing down his heroics and the trauma of his arm.
‘My wife likes to play nurse,’ he declared. ‘Though she, like me, is a doctor of biology. So we put on a record, and play doctors, nurses, anything!’
‘Serious jockin’, ’ commented Wright, using his catch phrase.
‘With no G. And my Monday guest is Grandmaster Grigori Grinin—serious jockin’, with four Gs.’
How strange it was,’ Grinin told Blanka, recalling club Wilion.
‘Boney M, of all people, had three hits in the UK Top 20 when you were born in 1978. Rasputin, as well as Rivers of Babylon and Brown Girl In The Ring.’
‘I did not know that,’ said Blanka.
As she struggled to make her move, Grinin pondered the mysteries of synchronicity.
Blanka’s mother, Kitty, who—with the help of himself and Dr Oxberry—had cheated death in St Petersburg, was
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murdered only a few days later, in Rome—on Thursday December 30th—the anniversary of the 1916 assassination (by MI6 agents) of Grigori Rasputin in St Petersburg.
Boney M’s front man, Bobby Farrel , had died of a heart attack 10 years after Kitty’s murder, also on Thursday December 30th! Also in St Petersburg.
Ra—Ra—Rasputin lover of the Russian Queen
They didn’t quit, they wanted his head
Ra—Ra—Rasputin Russia’s greatest love machine And so they shot him ‘til he was dead.
Two murders, three unexpected deaths. What were the odds of these synchronicities happening at random in the universe?
365 in eight hundred thousand million, Grigori Grinin told himself. Approximately. And Valentina wants me back in Petersburg?
He studied Blanka. Thursdays for dying, he mused.
The sous chef approached their table.
‘Where’s my soufflé?’ Grinin growled.
‘It was ruined,’ replied the sous chef (with an Australian accent). ‘When the power went.’
Blanka wondered if Grinin knew the sous chef was the fifth agent in her undercover team: Crusoe, agent OhZone 3—the elder Robinson brother. He probably did.
‘You cook on gas,’ Grinin roared. ‘You don’t need electricity.
Make me another!’
Deeply unhappy with his cover, Crusoe frowned and retreated to the kitchen.
‘I wil checkmate you in two moves,’ Grinin said, waving the stump of his arm at the chessboard. ‘In the remix for your AI, Oxberry might have included a chess program.’
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‘I’l make a note of it,’ Blanka snapped back.
As she returned to the board, her AI-enhanced sense of smell picked up the fragrance worn by Nearby, sitting in the window: Robert Piguet Fracas. Nearby had a paperback of James Joyce’s Ulysses open in front of her, and was sipping a drink.
Ulysses.
As she sipped her Virgin Mary, Nearby checked the Scanner in her bag again. 20/20 clear in all directions, a message from Adele displayed on the Scanner. Next to it were: her Robert Piguet Fracas fragrance; a multicolored umbrel a; a green leather Filofax, embossed with a shamrock and the word
‘Erin,’ and her Sig pistol.
It was chambered for the smal est rounds; she didn’t carry a spare clip, and had never had to aim it outside the firing range.
Arms had modified it with a Dak (Double Action Kel erman) mechanism. If she ever had to fire it in anger, it ensured she couldn’t jam the gun by not squeezing the trigger hard enough.
After 50 hours coaching by Arms, she’d gotten used to carrying a pistol on duty, and the extra 25 ounces weight in her handbag.
Unusual y, Nearby had done her nails, which were adorned by pale green polish with gold bits. She was practicing for the Grinin children’s birthday party the coming Saturday—when her nails would be silver and gold and, for the first time in her life, she would wear a bal gown!
Nearby imagined Arms taking her there. In her fantasies, Arms and her handsome Russia Desk bosses, Russia and Jude—
appropriately dressed as the Three Musketeers—swirled around her, defending her honour from sinister assailants, as she ascended white marble steps, into an elegant bal room!
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At various times, The Jericho Café had been frequented by Helena Blavatsky, W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde—and James Joyce.
But Nearby was only pretending to read his novel, Ulysses.
Sure everyone must pretend to read Ulysses, thought Nearby.
But she pretended to read it not because of its difficulty (it was difficult to read, but she had a degree from Trinity Col ege and had read it several times, studied it in fact) but because she carried it with her on Ops to relieve the boredom. It was foolish to read on the job, especial y when the job was to observe the world around her for signs of hidden threats. But with Ulysses she could simply dip into a phrase or two and immediately connect to the richness of Joyce’s Dublin, and her home.
Her gaze took in the street. In the cab of the Grenson’s delivery van, Adele sat impassively, so she returned to the novel.
The power was stil out but, being in the window, she could stil see the page she had randomly turned to, page 32.
The character on the page, Mr Deasy, had been pinching the wings of his nose, and slagging off Jews and women: A woman brought sin into the world.
For a woman who was no better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus,
ten years the Greeks made war on Troy.
Nearby checked on Grinin and Blanka’s game. Grinin was capturing Blanka’s white bishop with his characteristic Russian zest.
A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore here.
Misogynist and anti-Semite, thought Nearby. Done my research: Diana’s part Jewish—therefore so are the twins. Emma and Olga
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are so sweet, can’t wait to see their faces on Saturday.
Nearby slipped her hand into her purse, and squeezed the grip of her Sig P320.
They won’t be without a father if I can help it.
She closed Ulysses, drained her glass, and returned her thoughts to Felicity—and Jude, her poor husband.
A faithless wife: that suits Felicity Robinson to a tee. But she got into the Academy.
40 days in the purple-blood machine; what a long time it takes to transform one of God’s creatures. Is Felicity God’s creature? Are humans God’s creatures? Or are we some infection of the Earth, like Metapox.
Maybe Felicity is one of Cain’s descendants. A slug goes into
a pupa to come out a butterfly, a beautiful thing. Are Cain’s descendants beautiful too? Is there a beauty, a saving grace in them?
As she looked at Blanka, beautiful in her prime despite the kidney disease, and Grinin, stil handsome and vigorous in his old age, she thought about her own life before meeting Blanka.
As a girl, she’d been sexual y abused by a nun, and had stuttered ever since. In the early years of her adulthood, young women like Felicity had always had the social poise, the quick one-liners, to put her down so easily.
Felicity’s a slug, sure there aren’t enough days and nights to turn her into a butterfly, Nearby told herself.
Blanka was quite different, she’d made her feel good about herself, encouraged her to sing in a choir again, and now she intoned the Credo. Her stutter had lessened too.
Nearby turned, made eye contact with Adele in the van, and checked the Scanner again. She eyed Grinin intently.
And here is this tricksy man, Mr Novichok. Or should I say,
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here is Mr Metapox?—the creator of a sickening monster, a smart bio-weapon—just a few tables away.
It was the topic in Wonderland at the moment. She’d heard it referred to as a ‘W.N.D.’—a Weapon of National Destruction.
And it came in a perfume bottle!
She checked on her Fracas fragrance. It was safe. She loved it! It was, without qualification, the most iconic fragrance in history—devised by a Frenchwoman, Germaine Cel ier, at the end of the Second World War.
Nearby’s attention returned to Major Grinin. Did he wear scent? Would his weapon be the most iconic in history? Would it start the Third World War? From Genghis Khan to Rasputin.
Grinin’s a grand old fel a, who would have thought it? how could he do such a thing?
She watched Blanka pondering where to move her white queen, trying so desperately to make a difference. Heard Grinin complaining in his gruff Rasputin voice.
‘Third world country… My soufflé ruined… Power cuts in 21st century London… And in Bloomsbury!’
Girl Who Fell 1: Behind Blue Eyes. Offbeat Brit spy series-cum-lesbian love triangle. Killing Eve meets female James Bond meets Helen of Troy returns (HAIL THE QUEEN series) Page 4
