by T. M. Parris
“Too many hackers. Too many nuclear warheads.” Too many bugs, cameras, FSB snoopers.
“That’s the kind of thing I mean.” He stood. “If you’re worried about the incursions we can transfer you, you know. If this isn’t right for you. Some people find it difficult. Understandably.”
Great, thought Rose. When did I say I wanted out? This was exactly why she kept her feelings to herself. A man wouldn’t have got that.
“Not at all. I’m fine. Enjoying the challenge. As you say, it matters.”
She hoped she didn’t sound too cold. Peter was old school, but she’d worked for worse.
9
The fluttering of tattered material told Fairchild he’d arrived: a string of prayer flags across the path, their colours almost entirely faded. Beyond that a clearing, outhouses, steps up to large wooden doors, and a man sweeping the steps with short sharp strokes, head bent, intent on the task.
Fairchild called out a greeting. The man stopped and turned. He stared. His jaw hung open.
“I’m looking for a monk called Dimitri.”
The man’s eyes widened. His mouth clamped shut and he backed away, stumbling on the steps.
“It’s all right, Sasha. Carry on.” At the top of the steps stood a monk, an older man, the colours of his robes suggesting authority. He didn’t move when Fairchild approached and repeated his request.
“We don’t have visitors here. This is a closed community. How did you even find us here?”
“Dimitri told a friend of mine. He wanted me to come here. He wanted me to find him.”
The man’s lips pursed. “That’s hard to believe.”
“I’ve been looking for him a long time. Please, I just need to talk to him.” How wheedling his voice sounded, like a child’s.
“And what do you call a long time?” Said with something like contempt.
“Thirty years.”
The man’s eyes focused on him. Fairchild stared back. The sweat on his neck and forehead from the long walk was already chilling his skin.
“Wait here.” The man came down the steps and walked away.
Fairchild stood in the cold air and watched the sweeper at work, listening to his regular brush strokes. Some time passed. A peal of laughter cut through the quiet. Two young men shot out from behind a building and ran giggling across the clearing between them. Fairchild looked back, and the air stuck in his throat. The figure now standing where the boys had emerged; the shape of his head; his hand, oddly-formed; a slow recognition in his gaze; all this meant that Fairchild had, miraculously, found what he was looking for.
The figure approached.
“You are Dimitri,” said Fairchild. It wasn’t a question; they both knew. His cheeks were more hollow, his eyes, examining Fairchild, much, much older.
“I thought you would come here eventually. Let’s go into the forest.”
He walked in a lugubrious, sedate way, as if it were a form of meditation. The woodland path led steeply upward then opened out on a slope opposite a rise of forest, dark green pine lined with fresh snow. Dimitri bent slowly to sit on a log pile. Fairchild joined him. Dimitri, gazing round, nodded to himself, contented recognition on his face: his favourite view.
Fairchild had waited a long time to speak to this man, the greatest part of his life. But now, he couldn’t think where to start.
“What happened to your fingers?” he asked eventually. It was something to say at least.
Dimitri looked down at his hand resting on the log, two ugly stumps.
“My sister chopped them off with an axe. If it weren’t for that, I’d still be in my village. I’d be herding pigs and rearing horses, living in a cottage with pretty patterned curtains. With a family maybe. But…”
He flexed his remaining fingers, as if it helped to remember. “It was an accident, of course. I was teaching her to swing the handle over her head, and it slipped. I screamed and shouted like a child half my age. The blood spattered in the snow.” He looked down at the ground as if he could still see it. “She ran off into the forest. The village men searched for days. When they carried her out, she was stiff and cold. Ice crystals on the tips of her eyelashes.” He stared unseeing across the valley. “I stayed for the funeral, then left for Moscow. That was a long time ago.”
He looked at Fairchild, waiting. Eventually Fairchild persuaded himself to ask.
“You remember me, don’t you?”
Dimitri gave him the kind of smile a grandfather gave a grandson. “Oh yes, I remember you! You were not supposed to be there. You were not supposed to exist. I didn’t know what to do, when I saw you. How old were you? Nine, ten?”
“Ten,” said Fairchild. It came out as a whisper.
“And you were their child?”
He nodded. Dimitri’s brow creased. “And why were you out so late on your own?”
“We were playing cards. The three of us. With forfeits. Questions and riddles. I didn’t know one of them. I got angry. I left.”
“You ran away! Like I did.” In Dimitri’s face Fairchild saw indulgence, empathy for his ten-year-old self. “But you came back.”
“But they were gone by then. I’ve been looking for them ever since.”
Dimitri’s grand-paternal smile faded. “Well, my friend, please don’t search for them any more.”
Everything around him seemed to magnify, draw closer; the snow balanced on the branches, the faint pine-scented breath of wind, the roughness of the logs under his thighs. Dimitri, talking softly as if to himself.
“It felt like survival, the things I did in Moscow. I was a child. Those men protected me, fed me, kept me from harm. So I did as they asked. But sometimes… they were serious men, hard men. One in particular. A KGB man but a criminal too, a man of the street. Even the toughest of the fighters was afraid of him. He sent us on a special job across the border, through Slovakia to Vienna. It was exciting for me, the West. The cars, so modern-looking! I was young, you understand. There were four of us, in a van and a car. I was the car driver. My job was to stay outside the place and keep the street clear.”
He was rubbing his palm with his thumb, as if feeling every callus and wrinkle, calling to mind what those hands had done.
“I waited outside and smoked a cigarette while the other three went in. There were two of them up there, he told us, a man and a woman, to be taken alive. He gave us things to leave hidden in the flat, a radio, documents. We would never ask why; that wasn’t our concern. I stood in that street for how long I don’t know, gripping my gun every time I thought I heard something. Finally they emerged. The couple were bound up. They didn’t struggle or shout, but I could see fear in their eyes. They were messed up, bleeding. They hadn’t come easily. The men pushed them into the back of the van and drove off. I was just about to put out my cigarette to follow them when you appeared.”
Fairchild was there, in the wide street, walking in the road between symmetrical grey buildings, patches of street light, no sound except his own footsteps. Crossing the road and glancing across, he saw a man standing next to an old car holding a pack of cigarettes. Something strange about his hand. It was just a passing thought.
Dimitri was still speaking. “I could see you clearly in the street light. You looked at me as you walked past, then you pressed the bell. Of course there was no answer, but you had a key. You disappeared inside. I didn’t know what to do.” The panic was there in his voice. “I didn’t know if I should – forgive me – you were a loose end, not part of the plan. But I was on my own. We only had a few minutes to get back to the border. So… I got in the car and drove off. It was some time before I could speak to the others. And by then, I’d decided to say nothing.”
He pulled his robe closer and rubbed his arms. Everything he did was slow and thoughtful.
“Our business was with two adults, not a child. No one else saw you. If anyone asked I would say I saw nobody. With him it’s a feeling, in here,” – pressing his palm to his chest – “him know
ing about you would not have been good for you. I have often wondered what became of you.”
A clump of snow fell from a tree and pattered onto the ground. Fairchild didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to hear the answer. But he had to.
“What happened to them?”
Dimitri clasped his hands and drew breath. “There’s a place just outside Moscow. We often took people there. It was a secret place, a government place. It’s not there now. I went to look for it once, much later. Nothing left. Flat ground. A field.”
“Could they have got out? Been released?”
Dimitri shook his head. “Nobody ever came out of that place. I heard rumours about it, stories. People who’d been there to clean up. It was not on any map. You understand what I’m saying.”
Fairchild stared at the old man’s face, his sad watery eyes, but there was no doubt, no softness, no place for hope. “They died in there, my friend. You can be sure of that.”
Tears stung him. This was ridiculous. Of course they were dead. Thirty years and no sign of them anywhere? He expected this. He’d told himself this. He knew this. But still, his lungs heaved for air as he wept like a boy. He couldn’t remember when he’d last cried. Dimitri was staring across the valley now. Eventually Fairchild managed to speak.
“This man, the man who sent you. What was his name?”
“His real name I don’t know. The men in the street, they called him Grom.”
“Grom?” It was the Russian word for thunder.
“A street name. Like the gangsters. They saw him as one of them.”
“But he was KGB.”
“They would say that he stood apart. That he was his own man. He could be different things to different people. He still is.”
Softly said, those last three words, but they grabbed Fairchild by the neck and shook the breath out of him. He’d been watching the film of his past, grainy images from the eighties, faces and sounds seen and heard by a ten-year-old. Those three words froze the screen, yanked him up and slapped him in the face, sent him crashing down right into the present day.
“This man is still alive? Still active?”
Dimitri blinked, uncertain now. “Perhaps I’ve spoken unwisely. I don’t know what your parents did to draw his attention, but I do know that Grom is not a man who forgets.”
“Where can I find him?”
“You should be more worried that he will find you. You were lucky, all those years ago. You’ve evaded his notice. You have a chance to live your life. My advice: find somewhere far away to live. Do the things you want to do, that your parents would want you to do. Treat this chance you have as a gift. Me, many times my life could have ended in the streets of Moscow, but somehow it didn’t. I came here and found peace. You could do the same. Think about it.”
Dimitri was right. It was Dimitri who had saved him all those years ago. And what had Fairchild done? Turned his entire life into a quest for truth. He’d sacrificed every personal link, every chance of happiness, to search for answers. Every book he read, every journey he took, every friendship he made, one way or another was to further this end. All the things he could have done, and he’d twisted himself up, become this cynical, driven, ruthless machine. Dimitri had given him a life and he’d wasted it.
Dimitri put his hands by his sides and levered himself up. He rested a hand on Fairchild’s shoulder.
“I can see you need to be alone. If you want, come back. We can talk again. I’m glad to have met you. It somehow makes things better.”
He turned and paced away. Fairchild sat alone, black clouds gathering around him.
10
Gold letters shone on the freshly painted wall above windows that looked out onto a slushy pavement. Formerly Moscow’s Gulag museum (now in a remote suburb), the place was just another Gucci now, as the gold letters spelled. Rose went inside and waited, watching the traffic rumble past and people standing at the trolley bus stop by the church opposite.
A car pulled in, long and black with smoked windows. Out of the back door rose a figure in a tight fitting thigh length coat and high heels, with a glimmer of gold. Kamila stared up at the church and lifted her fur-lined hood, even though she was only walking a few steps. The car purred off to sit somewhere and wait, its engine ticking over to warm up the dozing driver who had no purpose in life while awaiting the return of their client.
A man stepped out of the shop door to greet the visitor as she approached. No one else was in the shop. It had been closed for this exclusive ‘private viewing’, a new habit of the super-rich, emptying a shop of all other customers before deigning to visit themselves. Kamila barely reacted at all to the smartly-dressed salesman’s profuse welcome. It must have been something she’d experienced many times. Rose was standing well back as Kamila stepped through the door, eyes already travelling along the racks of clothing in front of her. But she turned sharply at the sound of the door locking behind her. The salesman didn’t catch Rose’s eye as he slipped past her into a back room. He was trustworthy and had been paid handsomely to provide these few minutes of privacy.
Rose stepped forward. Kamila’s startled eyes narrowed in recognition.
“What is this? What do you want?” That low, intense voice again, more powerful than her light frame would suggest.
“Nice to see you, Kamila,” said Rose pleasantly, as if they had met by accident. “How did you enjoy the reception? Russian culture is so rich and distinctive, isn’t it? I have to say I find it all a little excessive sometimes. The champagne, the caviar, the gold everywhere. But of course I’m a foreigner. Just like you, in some ways. Don’t you find? This must all be very different from home.”
Kamila’s eyes hardened. Rose stepped forward and stroked the sleeve of a fur coat on the rack.
“How did Alexei enjoy the evening? It can be embarrassing, can’t it? They like a drink, but then they can’t handle it. I’ve met a few of those, believe me.” Kamila’s stare became more curious. “And those two women he left with. You know what people say. You can put as much silk and jewellery on a woman as you like but you can still tell a prostitute when you see one. I think it’s a bit unfair myself.”
Kamila’s neck straightened and she pulled her coat more closely round her body, even though the shop was warm.
“Don’t you get lonely,” asked Rose, “when he doesn’t come back at night? In that empty apartment with nothing to do but look out at the canal from that huge bed?” Kamila’s eyes started to widen. “Don’t you long for company? Someone with time for you, who accepts you as you are? I don’t blame you. Family, friends, all far away. Your husband’s out satisfying himself with a couple of hookers. It’s not right, is it? He can do that, but if you did, it wouldn’t be the same at all. These things are always different for a woman.”
Rose threw out a regretful look and moved to a table and chairs set in the middle of the store, a hospitality area for VIPs. The laptop was open and ready. She typed the password and the screen opened to reveal a frozen image of the open-mouthed, bare-chested Kamila through the window, just as they’d captured it. Rose pressed Play and the room filled with Kamila’s cries of passion at the loudest volume setting, while the body on the screen started moving in time. Kamila stepped forward red-faced and smacked the lid of the laptop down. The sound stopped.
“If he sees that,” she said, breathing heavily, “he will kill me.” Her lips were trembling.
Rose maintained a pleasant smile. “Well, we’d better make sure he doesn’t see it then. That can be done. I do understand it’s important to you.”
The skin around Kamila’s mouth had formed stress lines. “Who are you?” she asked.
“I work for the British Embassy, as I said the other night.”
“And what else?”
“Would you like to sit?” Rose sat. Kamila perched. Her skin was white.
“Alexei is a fascinating man,” said Rose. “Very different from his father. He seems to be taking the business in quite a new directi
on. We’re very interested in that.”
Kamila looked up, then her eyes glazed over. “How would I know?”
“But you go to his business meetings sometimes. That’s what I’ve heard. Maybe you could go to a few more. Or keep an eye on his diary. Or take a look at some of the company files. We can help you. It’s the kind of thing we do. We don’t want Alexei to suspect anything. It’s in our interests to protect you. We want to know a bit more about the operation, that’s all. Nothing needs to change. We can help each other here.”
Kamila shifted her weight back a little. She looked very sad. It was a difficult position to be in, but she knew who Alexei Morozov was when she got involved. And Rose was genuine. There really was no need for him to find out, if she could coach this woman to be subtle enough.
“They are boring,” said Kamila. “The meetings. He takes me because he wants to show me to people. Like his new car. I sit there and smile.”
“They’ll be more interesting from now on,” said Rose. “Now you can listen and observe, and tell me about them afterwards. People will think you’re just sitting there but you can fool them.”
Did she sound too enthusiastic? She’d always enjoyed being devious and was good at it. Kamila might take a liking to it as well. Was it wrong to feel protective towards this lonely young woman?
Kamila seemed to have calmed down as things sunk in.
“I am not sorry,” she said. “A woman has needs, a person has needs. Loneliness is an illness that kills you bit by bit from the inside. If we never feel the heat of another body we will grow cold.” She looked up. “Don’t you think?”
Rose hesitated. Kamila stared at her, then carried on.
“He was a fine man, my lover, a strong man. You could rely on him. Not falling over himself with vodka.” She was half-smiling. “Oh, he is a good lover. He made me feel more human, that we were two human beings, adults, taking pleasure in each other as is natural. It is better to risk everything and be human than safe and locked inside yourself. You agree?”
