by T. M. Parris
“I’m surprised you’re still in Moscow,” said Rose. “You know Roman Morozov is looking for you? He thinks you stole money from the business.” No change of expression. “And possibly, that you killed his son.” Her chin lifted but she said nothing. She opened a filing cabinet and stashed the dockets inside.
Rose looked around. The tiny office had just enough space for two chairs, one rammed between the loaded desk and the wall, the other piled up with boxes.
“What is this place?”
“It’s my place. Bought with Morozov money.” She spoke with pride. “Roman doesn’t know about it.”
“And Alexei didn’t either?”
“Alexei didn’t know anything. You are alone, like I asked?”
“Yes. And no one followed me here.”
“Well. Let’s walk.”
She locked the door behind them but the gate was wide open as they walked out together. They paced slowly with no destination, just for the sake of moving.
“Your village in Chechnya,” said Rose. “It was destroyed during the war. Did Alexei know that?”
“Nobody knows that. No one wants to know. Once you’ve been a prostitute, there is nothing more worth knowing. Everything before is irrelevant.”
“Alexei served in Chechnya.” She let the question ask itself. Kamila continued in the same tone.
“It was his battalion. These people are called Russian Heroes here. They had no need to overrun our village. Grozny was already taken. The officers let them as a reward. They stood by, smoking, seeing nothing. Their soldiers went from house to house, rounding up the men and taking them off to shoot them. Then they helped themselves to what was left.”
“You were there?”
“Yes, I was there. Why not?”
“You worked in Grozny. For a company. As a book-keeper.”
Kamila looked at her. “You know that?”
“We do our research.” Eventually, she could have added, after I persuaded them. But she didn’t.
“I went back to my family home often. To see my mother and father, my sister and brothers. They were all killed. All of them. I got away. I ran into the woods. I was lucky.”
“And Alexei was there?”
Her voice tightened. “When I saw him in Moscow, I knew it was him. I remembered his big stupid mouth and his hands all over everything that wasn’t his. Pushing his way through the doorway. He didn’t remember me.”
Rose neck prickled. This was much more personal than she’d thought.
“So it was a long term plan, to come to Moscow and find him?”
Kamila smiled thinly. “No, no plan. I came to Moscow to survive, like so many lost people do. I saw Alexei in a night club. I recognised him. He didn’t recognise me. I had an idea. It all fell into place. It was easy. I stole from him. Roman is right. Alexei couldn’t manage things. He was going to lose all the money anyway. I helped, like a secretary, so he thought. But I kept a track of where the money went.”
“Did you kill him?”
Kamila glanced over again, but looked away unfazed. “Alexei was shot in the head. I read that on the news. A good death, tidy and quick. In the village, my mother was raped three times. My sister five. My brothers had to watch. When one of them broke in to intervene, a Russian Hero shot his hand off. He bled to death. It took hours.”
“You said you ran away.” Rose spoke gently.
“I did. But not straight away. I was one of the goods the Russian Heroes handled. My mother, my sister and I. Much later, when those glorious soldiers were sleeping it off, I broke out and ran off. The others were too badly injured. I had to abandon them.”
“Was Alexei…?”
“He was one of them. He had all of us. He didn’t remember me. He was drunk, they all were! He never remembered me at all.”
“You married a man who raped you?”
“I have thought many times about how I would kill Alexei Morozov. I wanted to punish him. Humiliate him. Bleed him dry. If I decided to kill him, I wouldn’t do it with a simple bullet in the head. You believe me?”
Rose thought she probably did. “And the FSB? You knew of their involvement in the business, didn’t you?”
“That fool Alexei would strip naked in Red Square in return for flattery. Once they’re in, you can never get them out. Once they know your secrets they will take whatever they want. They win everything in the end.”
“The information on the zip drive. Where did it come from, exactly?”
Kamila went quiet. She was weighing things up.
Rose pushed. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew all along. You knew in St Petersburg that we were watching the flat.” Kamila had a mischievous smile on her face. “You knew that Alexei was being set up. Who told you?”
Kamila fell silent again. They were walking in a big circle through the industrial zone, past storage depots, empty lots, piles of tyres. Try not to sound needy, Rose. But this is important. Whoever this person is, they made a fool out of me and my colleagues, my country actually. I want to know who and I need to know why.
She prompted once more. “How did it happen, Kamila? You can tell me now, can’t you?”
Finally Kamila spoke. “The man who came to Alexei. The man Alexei admired so much. He came to find me, when Alexei wasn’t around.”
“Khovansky? Mikhail Khovansky?” It was the name on the notepaper in Fairchild’s jacket. But Kamila shook her head.
“That’s not what people called him.”
“Grom? Was it Grom?”
“That’s what Alexei called him. A silly name, like his father the Bear. This man, he told me he’s been working in the FSB for years. An important guy. But he’s from the old time. The KGB. He doesn’t like all this, what Russia is becoming. All the wealth being squandered by boys like Alexei, just interested in clothes and cars and women. Russia could be a powerful nation like the USA, but it’s too decadent and corrupt. It’s rotten, this man says. No ambitions now except for money and power for the few. And they don’t like him any more. He’s too old. They want younger people who will do anything without questioning. He’s important now, but it will not last. He will soon be gone. That’s what he said to me.”
Rose was working it through in her head. “He deliberately played into our trap to weaken the Kremlin?”
“Yes. And to show you what he knows. What he can do. To show you.”
Her emphasis was clear. “Me? What do you mean?”
“He wants to meet you. He wants to help you more. To talk to you directly. Me, I’m no longer involved in Morozov. I have to run now, hide away. He says he will help me do that. He knows I stole. He will keep that a secret from his colleagues, keep this place hidden from Roman. If I contact you. If you meet him.”
This was big news, a rare thing. A senior FSB officer wanting to pass on secrets. If it wasn’t a hoax. “Why us? Why the British?”
“Because you came to the reception, you wanted information about Alexei. This man Grom realised what was happening. He’s clever like that.”
“He was in St Petersburg?”
“Yes, he was there, watching. Watching and listening. He understood everything. He gave me my instructions.”
“Which you followed because he promised to keep quiet about how you were stealing.”
“Yes. And now he wants to talk to you. You tell her, he said. Tell her to come and meet me. Only her, no one else. He is very careful who he trusts.”
Rose’s mind was in overdrive. “When and where?”
“Not Moscow. Not Russia. Abroad.”
“Abroad?”
“To be safe. Away from his so-called colleagues.”
“Where abroad?”
“Tbilisi.”
“Tbilisi? Georgia?”
“Yes. Georgia. He is going there for work. He can meet you there safely. You should go immediately. He will send instructions when you arrive.”
It was a long way to go. But this man knew how the FSB operated. If he thought they had t
o get out of the country to have a private conversation, it said a lot about Russia.
“I’ll need to speak to my boss.”
“You should hurry. He may not be there long. They could call him back. Any day they might get rid of him. Some day they will, but he doesn’t know when. So hurry. Then tell me. I will pass on to him.”
“I can’t contact him directly?”
“In Tbilisi, yes. Not until then. He is a careful man.”
They reached the dead end of an access road and turned to walk back again, at the same steady pace. Kamila was wearing flat-soled leather boots and a padded winter coat. Without the glamour she had in St Petersburg and Moscow, she looked more at home here.
“Why are you still here, Kamila? Why not go back to Chechnya?”
“What’s in Chechnya? All my family is dead. It’s run by Russians. And it’s so backward. I can’t do there what I can do here. I like business. I’m good at it. I just need a little help to get started. But who would help me? That’s why I help myself. Besides, after what I’ve done, what was done to me, I would not be accepted now in Chechnya. I am tainted. You know how it is.”
Rose had to ask what was on her mind. “The man you were with in St Petersburg. Your lover. Was it John Fairchild?”
Kamila glanced across. “The man at the reception? The businessman with the car company? I remember him. He is an attractive man, very charming. But he was not my lover.”
She seemed amused. Rose felt herself flush. After a pause Kamila continued.
“When I first came to Moscow I knew nobody. The other girls, we all stuck together, but that’s not the same. Then I met someone. Just a guy working in a bar. Serving rich people. Calling their cabs, being discreet, wiping their mouths when they couldn’t hold their drink. Not so different from what I was doing. He had nothing, just like me. He came to Moscow to survive. He didn’t care about my past, and I didn’t care about his. He’s Russian, I’m Chechen, but we are just two people. We fell in love.” She was smiling. “What I did with Alexei, getting married, taking his money, that’s for both of us. We will set up together. We will build a life together.”
“He doesn’t live in St Petersburg?”
“He has family there. He goes there often. If I went there without Alexei, we used the flat. This time we were going to meet somewhere else, but Grom told me to go to the flat. My lover, he didn’t want to, but if we hadn’t done what Grom wanted, we would have lost everything.”
They were back at the warehouse. They stopped by the gate and Kamila looked her up and down. “You are too thin. Losing weight. All bones. It’s not healthy. You should eat more.”
Did it show that much? She probably didn’t look her best; she’d been up all night after all.
“You will go to meet him, this man?” It was the old Kamila again, vulnerable, small. “If you do, maybe we can be together, my lover and I. Live as we want to. Make something good from all of this. If not…”
She didn’t have to finish. With both Roman Morozov and the FSB after her, it was clear what would happen if Grom gave her away.
“I’ll try,” said Rose.
34
“So he’s cautious. But he’s reaching out to us, Peter. We need to consider it at the very least.” Rose heard her boss sigh. “Come on, Peter. How many people must have thought Penkovsky was a hoax, when he came along? But he wasn’t, and with him we prevented the Cuban missile crisis becoming Armageddon. Sure, it might be a set-up, but they all might. We go in and investigate, check it out. It’s our job, isn’t it?”
She took a sip of coffee from the paper cup she was holding, but it was already cold. She’d come back to her flat after leaving Kamila, hopefully to pack and set off for Tbilisi. To speak to Peter she came out to a tiny park a block away, next to a busy road creating useful background noise and not-so-useful fumes. A mobile van sold hot drinks and snacks. A handful of people had come out for a quick smoke. Not a place you’d spend a lot of time, but it had enough space to talk without being overheard. She hadn’t forgotten the watchers. Any of these people could be FSB.
“But going all that way without any kind of verification whatsoever?” Peter was saying. “You don’t even have a name for the guy.”
Rose hadn’t actually mentioned Grom. Naming someone Peter thought didn’t exist wouldn’t have helped her argument. “There’s a name associated with Morozov, though. A possible connection. It might be the same person but I can’t be sure. Mikhail Khovansky.”
“Okay.” Peter was making a note. “We’ll see what comes back. Where did this come from?”
“John Fairchild.” She said it lightly.
“Oh, I didn’t know you two were talking directly.”
“It was a chance encounter. I can explain more later, but if we’re going to do this we need to hurry, Peter. The last flight to Tbilisi leaves in two hours.”
“There are more flights tomorrow, Rose.”
“If he’s still there. He could be called back at any time, Kamila said. Look, I’m ready to go. If it’s a wasted journey, so what? I’ll just come back again.”
“There are worse things than wasted journeys. Look, stay by the phone. I’ll see if we can check on this name. And calm down!”
Rose pocketed her phone and paced to the nearest bin to throw away the cold coffee. Another night in Moscow spinning her wheels? Please, no. She should be tired after her sleepless night but it hadn’t kicked in yet. She left the park and walked along the street. She went into a tiny grocery store and bought a couple of lurid candy bars just to be seen to have a purpose for the journey. Back at the park she joined the small queue at the mobile kiosk and had a careful look around.
Bingo. The man sitting on the bench was still there. All the other faces were new. And it was faces she was looking at, not hats or hoods or coats. The guy on the bench had no hat, or hood, or coat. No cigarette, no hot drink, no phone. White hair, a dark suit and tie. He was just sitting, hands on his knees, as if contemplating the meaning of life. Pretty cocky, not to even try to blend in. That or just unprofessional.
She bought cigarettes and was fumbling around lighting one when her phone rang. It was Peter again. His voice sounded different.
“Where did you say you got that name from?”
“John Fairchild.”
“And where did he get it from?”
“I assume through his investigations into Morozov. Beyond that I don’t know.”
A pause. “And what are the chances that this is the guy who wants to talk to us?”
“I don’t know for sure. He’s connected in some way. That’s all I know.” An even longer pause. “This is someone we’d be interested in?”
“Yes. It is.” She’d never heard him sound so emphatic. “He’s a very senior figure, Rose. He’s been there for years, since before the regime change. His name has come up numerous times.”
“That ties in completely with what Kamila said about Grom. Sounds like it may well be the same guy.” Silence from the other end. “Come on, Peter. Do you really want to miss out on this? If it’s a ruse we’ll find out. But if it’s not, it could be a game-changer for us.”
More silence. Then, eventually: “Okay, get your flight. Make contact with the Tbilisi Head as soon as you get there. They’ll be expecting you. I’ll talk to them about getting a team together for you. And take care!”
It was all Rose could do not to punch the air. They’d struck gold, by the sound of it. This Khovansky must be quite someone. But she kept her euphoria well hidden. She had a flight to catch.
She set off for home. The man on the bench was still there. Not only that, but he seemed to have given up all attempts at subtlety and was staring straight at her. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second. His blasé behaviour was unsettling.
But she had no time to worry about that. She had to get moving.
35
Fairchild didn’t have to wait. He knew exactly which room Walter was staying in, but chose to sit in an arm
chair in the plush lobby and wait for the man to make an appearance, as he no doubt would about now, since he’d booked a table for dinner in half an hour’s time. Iconic city hotels were something of a specialism of Fairchild’s. Particularly for keeping tabs on people of interest. Watching the watchers. Impressive what you could learn with a friend or two on the front desk.
He stared up at a heavy chandelier feeling sick. Sick? No, sick didn’t cover it. Ill, diseased, poisoned. Pain whenever his eyes moved, guts twisted, senses floating, disconnected, disoriented, like his brain was detached and moving around inside his skull. The session with Roman started twenty-four hours ago, but he felt just as bad as he had this morning. Bloody vodka. Bloody Russians. And here was Walter now, looking typically old-school British, although his jawline was shadowed and his waistcoat creased. He slowed when he saw Fairchild. Not so much surprised as wary. Possibly even a little afraid.
“I don’t suppose this is a coincidence, is it, John?”
“Good to see you too, Walter. Fancy a pre-prandial?” Fairchild nodded towards the bar, though the mere idea of alcohol made his stomach catapult. Walter sighed.
“Would I regret it if I asked how you knew I was here?” he asked as they settled at a table. Fairchild had already checked out the bar for possible eavesdroppers, and the waiter had been paid generously to alert him to any suspicious newcomers.
“You always stay here when you come to Moscow.”
“Yes, but it’s rather more about knowing that I’d be coming to Moscow. I only arrived three hours ago.”
“Scotch?” Fairchild suggested. The waiter was hovering.
“Anything but Johnnie Walker.” Walter addressed the waiter directly. He spoke Russian, of course; back in his era it was obligatory. Fairchild ordered a tonic water.
“I’m surprised you’re not more pleased to see me, Walter. You were very keen to speak to me a few months ago. So much so that you sent Rose Clarke to track me down.”
