by T. M. Parris
Her ankles ached. The champagne tasted metallic, the caviar briny. On the other side of the room, a man was laughing too loud. Peter was ready for her.
She wandered over and joined a circle around an expensively-dressed young Russian man, taller, blonder and louder than those around him. The bottom buttons on his waistcoat were undone and his bowtie was loosened. Large-lipped, he waved his glass around as he spoke, letting the champagne slop over the side. He was the only one talking. What may have started as a conversation had become a monologue.
“They buried the statues, you know? To stop the Nazis getting their hands on them. Spread wax all over them and dug holes in the ground. Now look! The biggest collection in the world. The finest, the richest! This is the real Russia, our glorious history! This is what they wanted to take away, those dogs in Finland and their krout masters!”
The embarrassed half-smiles of his audience reflected the crudity of the man’s language. “One small loaf of bread they had to eat every day, one loaf, one piece even! The size of my finger. For two years!” He seemed to be talking about the siege of Leningrad, not that anyone here would be unaware of the details. “Do you know what it’s like to go hungry? Did you serve in the army? Were you in Chechnya, my friend?” He had turned on one of the men, who humbly shook his head. “No, you see, everyone should do it but people weasel out of it. I was there. I saw men die, women too, children in the street, like they did here. But we survived. We fought back, like we always have. All that Communist nonsense, the collective farming and the purges, that held us back but it’s over now. Russia, the real Russia, is even stronger!”
Russia’s common enemy seemed to encompass the Nazis, the Chechens and the Soviet-era Communists. The woman by his side stood slightly back from him. He didn’t look at her once. She wasn’t looking at him, either, instead staring straight in front, her chin high and her face vacant. When he mentioned Chechnya, she glanced at him but let her gaze drift off again. Her silver satin dress plunged at the front, hung low and loose at the back, pinched around her tiny waist and flowed out over her hips. Heavy pearl jewellery glimmered on her neck and wrists. Her young-looking skin, wide dark eyes and small shapely pink mouth gave her an innocent air, although she was immaculately made-up. She seemed detached, standing in the midst of this group of hangers-on, but somehow apart from them. With that combination of desirability and vulnerability, it was easy to see why a man would be drawn to her.
Rose worked her way round to where Peter was standing. As she stepped up to him, her heel gave way and she stumbled against him, spilling champagne onto his sleeve.
“Oh, crap! I’m so sorry!” she said, too loud. The young man looked round, his monologue paused.
“English?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied, then seeing his hesitation switched to Russian. “I work with Peter. I just came over to give him a message.” She rubbed her twisted ankle. Peter dabbed his sleeve with his handkerchief, his face pursed. The woman’s eye travelled down to Rose’s shoes. Her own shoes were strappy silver, every bit as precarious as Rose’s. The man was glaring at Rose with flat blue eyes.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “I’m Rose Clarke, by the way.”
“Alexei Morozov.” He offered her his hand without changing his expression. It was large, hot and slimy. Sweat beads had formed around his hairline although the room wasn’t overly warm.
“Good to meet you.”
“So, how do you like Russia?”
A test question. Rose answered politely and positively, watched throughout. Then a pause, Alexei appraising her with his head on one side.
“You don’t like us defending ourselves, though. Claiming land stolen from us.” The silence that fell was tinged with embarrassment. Referring directly to an international disagreement was uncomfortably direct for diplomatic circles, provocative in fact. Rose glanced at the woman and caught her eye. It was telling that he hadn’t introduced her.
Peter stepped in. “Well, defence, of course, Alexei. But it’s sometimes a matter of debate, though, isn’t it, what can be considered defence.”
The blue eyes narrowed and Alexei seemed to get taller.
“Let me tell you,” he said, pointing at Rose, even though Peter had spoken, “let me tell you what defence is. Defence is standing knee deep in water all day waiting for terrorist plotters to come out of hiding behind their women and children. Defence is watching your battalion blown limb from limb by infidel tribal wolfhounds…”
He stopped. Rose saw it too out of the corner of her eye. The woman had flinched, but now seemed completely composed as if she hadn’t even been listening. As Alexei turned, she gazed at him calmly. He put his hand under her chin and lifted it, examining her face. She looked back for a few seconds then dropped her eyes. Alexei kept staring.
“There is no need to be ashamed of your birth, Kamila. I took you away from all that. You’re a good Christian woman now. Aren’t you, my love?”
She looked him in the face. “Of course.” A wan smile. “All that is behind me now. You have given me so much, my Alexei.” Her voice was quiet, but deeper than Rose expected. Her hand reached out and touched his waist. He seemed to lose his train of thought for a moment. Then he dropped his hand and turned back to Rose.
“Britain is not a Christian country,” he said darkly. “You allow all those perversions. Men with men, women with women, disgusting.” He took the opportunity to look her up and down. Rose had heard similar sentiments expressed, but not usually so directly.
“Why not live how you want to live, as long as it doesn’t do any harm?” She held his gaze.
“Harm!” Alexei snorted and looked around as his huge mouth widened into a grin. Several in the group smiled or laughed with gentle derision. “You think you can tell the whole world what to do. But your country’s leaders are weak. They tolerate depravity. It will ruin you.”
“Sounds interesting.” Fairchild’s unaccented Russian cut in. “Maybe I should pay a visit to my country of origin. A bit of depravity might be a nice distraction.” He stepped in and held out his hand to Alexei. “John Fairchild.”
Typical, thought Rose. To get Alexei’s attention I have to sprain my ankle and throw fizz all over my boss. Fairchild just shimmies in. Not that Alexei seemed enamoured of Fairchild’s smooth superciliousness. His face took on a sneer when Fairchild mentioned that he knew Alexei’s father.
“Roman. Our paths have crossed. We’ve helped each other from time to time.”
“Doing what? Digging potatoes? Making jam? Selling handbags?” Alexei’s speech had slowed. “Roman the Bear! Such a man! But what he does is women’s work. Morozov is better than that. Some people don’t like it when the world changes, Mr Fairchild. We must change with it. You agree, don’t you?”
Fairchild’s expression remained bland. One of the Morozov retinue approached and muttered something in Alexei’s ear, pointing someone out to him. Rose turned to Peter.
“Sorry about your jacket,” she said.
“Not to worry. It’s not the first time. I’m sure hotel housekeeping will sort it out. I’ll be turning in soon.”
She watched Peter’s eyes scan the room. Alexei moved off with his men, leaving Kamila standing on her own. But not for long: Fairchild approached her. They were standing quite close. Something he said prompted a shy smile, then laughter. Alexei was in a huddle of men, his voice loud and slurred. Kamila looked over at him from time to time, but he didn’t look at her. Charming man, thought Rose. Kamila may have started to think so too. Her gaze rested more and more on Fairchild with a particular expression, an intensity. Still standing quite close. Interesting. But things seemed to be going to plan so far. As Peter slipped away, Rose grabbed another champagne to do one last tour of the room before moving onto the next phase of the evening’s operation.
3
Inside the men’s room Fairchild loosened his tie and leaned over the washbasin. Cold water from a large brass tap filled the basin in seconds.
He scooped it up and splashed his face: cooling and shocking at the same time. He picked up a thick cream hand towel that smelled of detergent. Now was not a good time to lose concentration.
It had taken every effort to act normally. Kathmandu was months ago. He could have come to Russia much sooner, sped up the search instead of leaving it to others. It wasn’t like him. Before he met Rose, his thirty-year search to find out what happened to his missing parents dictated every decision he’d made. As soon as he discovered where he might find Dimitri, the Russian monk who could give him real answers, the strongest lead he’d ever had, he should have come straight here. Instead he’d made excuses. Bits and pieces of work that took him here and there, and he knew why, although he denied it to himself. It was because he didn’t want to see Rose again, wanted her out of his mind.
He wanted to believe his feelings for her were just in the moment, a phase, a leftover from that punishing ordeal they’d both endured. Of course he dwelled on her, but with space, with distance, with time, surely those thoughts would recede? Then Peter nudged him on the arm and he turned round and saw her, stunning in a body-tight dress, and the feelings were back, latching onto him, wrapping themselves around him. It took everything he had not to stare at the curve of her neck and her pale flesh, shoulders, arms: more, so much more than he’d seen before.
He glanced at himself in the mirror. There’d been women in his life of course, liaisons driven by curiosity, gratitude, loneliness, pure attraction. Occasionally he’d felt love but it never lasted. It was simply that other things mattered more. The Morozov wife was an attractive woman; he wasn’t against initiating something to serve a purpose. His feelings for Rose served no purpose. They were highly inconvenient. He tried once more to get his mind away from how her legs disappeared up into her clinging little skirt, the shape of her lips as she spoke to him. Did she notice anything? He’d put everything into trying to ensure she didn’t.
Had anyone else? From time to time that evening he’d felt that someone was watching, not just in the way that everyone observes everyone at these events: someone else. Behind her shoulder somewhere, in the edge of his vision when he turned and saw her, unprepared for the moment, someone was there. But when he looked, he saw no one.
Move on, man. You’ve got work to do.
He switched off the tap and looked at his watch. Idiot! He’d wasted so much time. Back in there was more small talk, more taps on the shoulder, more introductions, even if he were just passing through to get away. He needed to change his plans, do something drastic. He glanced up at the window, calculating. Behind him, a toilet flushed and a cubicle door opened. Fairchild stepped out of the way and dried his hands slowly. The man, a stranger, washed his hands and left. The room was now empty. Fairchild moved to the window, fumbling with the handle. Come on, concentrate. The inner panes opened towards him and he pushed the palm of his hand onto the external metal latch, wincing from the cold. He loosened the outside panes and pushed them open. Raw air flooded in and he stood with his eyes closed feeling his body cool in the sub-zero blast. His head cleared a little. He rocked back on his heels. His waistcoat felt tight around his waist. He flexed his fingers.
The door of the men’s room rattled. Fairchild spun and froze, staring at the handle. Seconds passed. It was the breeze from over the river, nothing more. He took several long breaths and stared out of the window, making out details on the far shore. Then he stepped closer, gripped the sides of the frame, pulled his weight up to get his feet onto the sill, balanced there, squatting, and jumped.
4
From the Winter Palace Rose walked the cobbled pavement alone, dark windows of floodlit imperial frontages like eyes looking down on her. St Petersburg’s canals coiled elegantly through the old town behind decorative iron railings, frozen solid or plated with sheets of ice, attracting a heavy clinging mist.
Things had gone according to plan. Alexei had left the reception staggering and shouting, his drunkenness aided by something that Peter slipped into his champagne earlier on, not that his condition seemed particularly surprising to his retinue. The escorts were waiting outside, very tall, very glamorous, very Russian. An afterparty was offered to Alexei in a nearby hotel suite, courtesy of a local businessman who did Peter the odd favour from time to time. So they bundled into the waiting limo and left Kamila to return home on her own. All of which she withstood with the same bland expression. In the meantime, Fairchild had disappeared, so it seemed. Rose discreetly observed events before slipping away herself.
Kamila was not obviously Alexei’s type. She seemed to have no particular expectation of fidelity or even respect, even though their marriage was still young. An extremely wealthy criminal businessman and a prostitute, it was clear the marriage wasn’t going to be one of equals. Why did Alexei marry her? Maybe his feelings for her were genuine, hard to believe though that was.
Fairchild was a strange one. Walter had formed a view about Fairchild’s feelings towards Rose, and shared this with her when they last met in Kathmandu. But Walter was surely mistaken; she’d seen no sign at all that he had feelings for her. On the contrary, Fairchild seemed far more taken up with Kamila. Old family friend Walter might be, but clearly he could get things wrong sometimes. She fought back the uncomfortable idea that this theory of Walter’s was the reason she was in Russia right now; that was not a role she wanted at all.
She stopped by a large wooden double door under a wrought iron balcony, and pressed a buzzer while looking into the camera. The door clicked open and she entered. She slipped her shoes off and carried them in her hand up two flights of the wide stone staircase. The steps were warm on the soles of her feet. Chunky pipes clanked hot water into squat radiators on each landing, and carved bronze ceiling lights gave the walls a yellow glow. Rose’s ascent was silent and the door of the apartment opened for her without her knocking.
She didn’t recognise the young dark-haired man who let her in, but the older bearded guy in the front room sitting behind an array of audio visual equipment was familiar.
“Hello, Larry.”
“Hi, Rose. Have a good evening?” said Larry.
“We’ll see.”
Larry introduced her to his new technical assistant, Charlie. She looked over the bank of equipment.
“Wow. You could make a Hollywood blockbuster with all this.”
The room was bare except for the equipment, the tables they were on and two chairs. The curtains were drawn except for a small gap in the middle, where a camera on a tripod was positioned. The only light was a dim desk lamp next to the equipment. They’d been setting up for a while; the small space had filled with the smell of unwashed clothes. Outside, on the other side of the street and the canal, stretched a long building which mirrored this one. Peering through the gap in the curtains, Rose could see that lights were on in most of the rooms.
“The whole thing is the Morozov apartment?” asked Rose.
“Yep, seventeen windows. All these were built for the aristocracy. Most have been sliced and diced into smaller units, like this one. We were lucky to find an empty flat right opposite.”
“And she’s there?”
“Yep.”
“Alone?”
“So far. Ah. Hang on.”
Through a small speaker came the distorted sound of a buzzer, like the one Rose had just used. Most of the monitors in front of them were dark.
“No picture?” asked Rose.
“Slight setback,” said Larry. “Someone came up to the flat when we were wiring it up.”
“Tonight?”
“Yeah. Didn’t see who. We had to make a sharp exit. Got most of the bugs in but not the cameras. No visual, except what we can pick up from here.” He nodded towards the camera at the window. “I set it up for the bedroom. Seems the most likely place for a floor show, though you never know.”
“If there is a floor show,” said Rose. They knew Kamila had a lover in St Petersburg, so their plan sought to make it obvious her husba
nd wouldn’t be coming back that night. This was Larry’s specialism, the full sound and video treatment. It gave him a unique perspective on life that seemed, for some reason, to keep him in very good spirits.
Larry and Charlie, seated in front of the equipment, listened intently. Rose stood at the back straining to hear. Kamila and her visitor were speaking Russian but she couldn’t make the words out.
“The sound quality’s awful.”
“We can clean it up later,” said Larry.
The dialogue stopped. Silence. Rose took a step forward and squinted through the gap. She couldn’t see any movement in any of the windows opposite. From the speaker came a single, female moan.
“Ah. Looks like it might be audio only,” remarked Larry. That was a pity. In Rose’s experience the visual part of the package was very influential. There was a long pause. Then came a gasp of breath, very faint.
“Cup of tea?” asked Larry.
“What?”
“Standard equipment. Kettle’s just boiled.” He nodded towards a plastic kettle and two mugs on a tray. She noticed for the first time that Larry and Charlie both had mugs in front of them. She made herself one. They’d even brought a carton of milk. Charlie got up to peer round the curtain. Suddenly he clicked his finger and nodded to Larry.
