The Troika Dolls

by Miranda Darling

  Stevie was frightened at the prospect of being even partially responsible for Anya’s safe return. She would feel a lot better once Constantine Dinov arrived to take over.

  ‘Do you want to hear her play?’ Irina got up and put a new disk in the CD player. ‘Anya recorded this in the summer. It’s the melody from Adagio in G minor—Tomaso Albinoni.’

  Stevie and Irina sat smoking in the pale daylight as a violin began to sing of fathomless longing as plaintively as any human voice. It was as if Anya was there in the room with them, speaking to them, telling them of all the things she felt and dreamed and still wanted to do and see.

  Backlit by the winter light from the window, white snakes of smoke curled in the air above their heads, writhing in exquisite agony with every note drawn from the invisible bow. They expressed all the things that the two women had no words for.

  ____________

  Stevie tumbled, literally, into her hotel room. Her Slavic virus had made her slightly light-headed and Irina’s whisky tea seemed to be wrestling it with vigour. The velvet curtains had been drawn but Stevie pulled them back. She wanted to watch the snow spiral out of the sky.

  She had never seen such flakes, the size of a baby’s palm.

  By the orange light of the street lamps, it seemed like the snow would never stop falling. It ought to have felt like Christmas, with sleigh bells and singing and cinnamon biscuits shaped like angels and stars. But tonight, in Moscow, the interminable fall that covered everything in white felt like an erasure. It was obliterating and obscuring—white, as black, impenetrable. It was burying everyone alive, imposing silence. Each snowflake absorbed the words, the noises, swallowed them, left nothing. Like evil. Stevie wondered if it would ever be summer again.

  Melancholy and a weeping nose were bad signs. Stevie ordered room service—vodka, black toast, and Salade Russe, for one.

  When in Russia . . .

  Her grandmother made Salade Russe on every Sunday after October the twentieth, the date she claimed as the day the ‘indoor season’, as she called it, officially began: diced carrot, potato (boiled, waxy, hard), peas and a mayonnaise dressing, the odd gherkin if she was feeling particularly spry.

  Stevie pulled out her phone and rang Zurich. There was still no answer. On a whim, she tried Didi’s mobile. Stevie had bought it for her two years ago, despite great resistance on her grandmother’s part. Stevie had tried to reason with her: ‘It’s all very well to be independent, Didi, but do you also have to be unreachable?’

  ‘I don’t need to be monitored, Stevie darling. I’m quite capable of taking care of my own old bones. I’ve done it for eighty-two years.’

  Stevie tried a different line. ‘Well, what if I need you? What if it’s me who needs help and I can’t find you?’ At that, Didi had relented and agreed to carry the phone with her. It was rarely switched on.

  However, tonight, after six long rings, Stevie’s grandmother answered, a cautious ‘Yes?’

  ‘Didi! It’s Stevie. Where are you?’

  ‘In the mountains, darling. I thought Peter could do with a rest cure, so we left Zurich this morning and now we’re snug in Im Heimeli.’

  Didi owned a tiny wooden chalet outside Sils Maria, in the Enga-dine valley. Im Heimeli, the chalet, had an enormous wood-burning stove—a Kachelofen—and goose-down duvets on little wooden bucket-beds. But it had no phone. That was something Stevie loved about it when she was there, but it used to worry her when her grandmother was there alone. If she needed to speak to Didi, Stevie used to have to ring the post office and they would send a man through the snow or the mud or the wildflowers to deliver the message. Her grandmother would then walk to the post office and place a call. Now Didi had the mobile it was a little easier to get in touch.

  ‘How is Peter coping?’

  ‘Asleep on the Kachelofen as we speak. He hasn’t moved from there since we arrived.’

  Stevie smiled. Being involuntarily hairless, he would be feeling the cold.

  ‘And how are you, Didi?’

  ‘Couldn’t be better! Mountain air does wonders for the constitution. I’m going to see if I can persuade Peter to come langlaufing with me around the lake tomorrow morning.’

  Stevie laughed. ‘I don’t like your chances!’ The vision of Peter floundering after her grandmother through the snowdrifts as she swooshed past on her ancient cross-country skis was charming. Stevie found she was missing both the lady and the cat terribly. Her grandmother and some gold-tinted memories were everything that she had left of life with her parents.

  ‘I hope I’m just like you, Didi, when I’m eighty.’

  ‘Eighty-two, darling. It’s been a good long life—I can’t complain.

  Well, there’s only one thing I would change, but then, if I changed that, I might not have you so close to me, so . . .’

  ‘You mean my mother.’

  Of course she did.

  Stevie’s mother—Didi’s daughter—Marlise had been Swiss, a beautiful bohemian who smiled at the world and wore bangles on each wrist that tinkled whenever she moved. Stevie’s father, Lockie, was Scottish, a charming, disarming bon vivant, at home everywhere and anywhere, full of curiosity, the life of every party. They travelled the world with great style and flair, collecting rare and beautiful furnishings from all over the globe for their rich and discerning clientele.

  Sometimes Stevie went with them. She had memories of sitting on a bathing elephant in Sri Lanka, flying a kite in Rajasthan, monkeys in a Moroccan bazaar. Other times she stayed at home with her grandmother, and her parents had brought something back for her: a Bedouin lamp made of camel skin, a ceramic tiger, a small dragon from Bhutan. These precious objects had made her long for the world. She still had them all.

  When Stevie was five years old, she had gone with her parents to Algeria. It was hot—she remembered the heat burning her lips with every breath, scorching her feet through her thin rubber-soled shoes. They were driving through the desert in their jeep, the rush of the wind felt good on her face and she grew sleepy with the jolting of the dirt road and the sound of her parents’ muted chatter.

  Little Stevie lay down on the back seat and stared at the empty white sky above. The sun was still high and it hurt her eyes. Her mother pulled an embroidered crimson shawl from her bag and covered her, shielding her from the glare. Stevie felt safe and happy under the shawl and soon fell asleep.

  She woke with a jolt, unsure what had disturbed her. She heard a thundering by her head—horses’ hooves galloping—and there were shouts. The jeep stopped abruptly, the momentum shoving Stevie’s body forward and off the seat. She landed heavily on the floor, smashing her elbow.

  Loud bangs like firecrackers, then her mother screamed. It was the most frightening sound Stevie had ever heard.

  Everything went still and quiet.

  Her elbow throbbed but she was too afraid to move. Better not to move or breathe; if she stayed still enough, the bad thing might go away.

  Stevie lay there for hours. The sunlight filtered through the cover over her eyes and made it glow red like blood. It was so hot and it was hard to breathe. Mamma and Pappa weren’t talking anymore and she didn’t want to know why. She was too afraid of what her little instincts told her was the truth.

  The sunlight faded and it grew cold. Stevie knew she was all alone in the desert and no one was coming to find her. She let her bones absorb the stillness and the silence and the cold, and surrendered to the universe.

  But Stevie survived. She was found semiconscious three days later by the French Foreign Legion, although she couldn’t remember any of it.

  She was told she was lucky to be alive and sent to live with her grandmother in Switzerland.

  For six months, Stevie didn’t speak. Her grandmother took her to the mountains and set about trying to piece back together her granddaughter’s tiny shattered heart.

  She remembered David Rice visiting occasionally. He and Didi would talk late into the night in serious voices. One sprin
g, he brought news: the Algerian investigating authorities found that Marlise and Lockie had been mistaken for important symbols of European power and assassinated. The area was thought to have been safe. The motive for the killing was later changed to ‘robbery’ by the officials. The killers were never found.

  Stevie had been too young to be more than horribly confused at the time, but the light in her little life went out. The confusion had remained until she grew old enough, then it was replaced by a sense of waste. The sadness had never eased.

  The murder of her parents had made her very aware of the possibility of sudden death as a child. She would still climb that tree or ski off the cliff anyway, but she always did it with a full calculation of the dangers involved. She became fascinated with both random and strategic— and strategically random—violence.

  It was only natural, she supposed, that she had been drawn to the field of risk assessment. She felt she needed to keep people safe so that what had happened to her never happened to someone else’s child. Those hours alone under the shawl in the back seat had hot-fused into her brain. She never forgot how alone you could be, how terrifying it felt to be abandoned and surrounded by the violence of strangers.

  Her grandmother’s voice on the phone brought her back to the present. ‘And how is London?’

  Stevie paused a moment before answering. ‘Actually, I’m in Moscow, Didi. Doing a favour for a friend.’

  Silence on the line. Then, ‘I’m sorry, Stevie. I’ll never stop worrying about you, no matter how much faith I have in you. I’m not a nervous woman, but I do know the world.’

  ‘I’m safe, Didi, I promise. There’s nothing at all to worry about.’

  When Stevie hung up the phone, she hoped to goodness it was true.

  Room service arrived under a silver dome, a baby bottle of vodka chilled in a silver bucket of ice. The kind concierge had thought that a woman staying alone in a Moscow hotel room—however luxurious— might be in need of solace and had added a copy of Hello magazine.

  What Stevie saw on the cover should not have surprised her. In fact, it didn’t really. It was more that the existence of the Hammer-Belles and their baby Kennedy-Jack had completely slipped her mind. All three beamed in hyper-colour from the front cover, glazed and perfect like candied fruit.

  Rice had put Owen Dovetail on their job and she couldn’t imagine this going down too well with the soft-spoken, knuckle-dented Welshman. Dovetail was the perfect man to coordinate their protection programme because he was utterly phlegmatic and no amount of gyronisers or mushroom tea or male nannies would ever disrupt his detached cool. Being fiercely patriotic, he had room only for one media personality and that was Catherine Zeta-Jones. The photo was of the three stars (because surely now Kennedy-Jack had become public property) on one of the Kensington Palace lawns. Stevie recognised the Romanian embassy in the background, with its mysteriously barred attic windows. The Hammer-Belles had undoubtedly befriended some of the lesser Windsors by now and they would want everyone to know it. Things like Windsors went down very well with Americans, especially in Hollywood.

  Stevie shifted the armchair so that it faced the big dark window. The snow was still falling and, illuminated by the outdoor lights of the hotel, the flakes were a shower of sparks.

  Stevie poured herself a little vodka. The salad, in its elaborate red-and-gold porcelain dish, looked appetising. She raised her fork and of course, the hotel phone rang.

  It could only be Henning.

  Stevie was disconcerted to find her first reaction was a flutter of nervousness.

  It’s just Henning! she told herself firmly. She took a sip of vodka and picked up the receiver.

  ‘Rice here, Stevie. Where in God’s name are you?’

  ‘The Metropole—you just rang me here.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. I mean what are you doing in Moscow?’

  ‘I’m on leave, like you ordered.’

  ‘And you need Constantine Dinov? What’s going on there, Stevie?’ Rice sounded furious and Stevie was glad there were miles between them.

  ‘A friend needed my help.’

  ‘Valery Kozkov is a friend of yours?’ There was more than a hint of sarcasm in his question.

  How did he always know everything?

  ‘Henning. My friend Henning is close to Kozkov. I’m just giving the family some advice, nothing more.’

  ‘I hope you haven’t got up to your neck in Moscow just so you can avoid Joss Carey.’

  Rice had found her tearing up in the corridor, two days after she’d found the primrose. He had known exactly why and immediately taken her to lunch in a dark pub where she could be as invisible as she liked. Stevie had been very grateful . . .

  The photo in the papers that morning had ambushed her—Joss out clubbing with Norah Wolfe—and the two were described, in an accompanying piece celebrating the event, as ‘giggling like schoolyard crushes’.

  Stevie was sure Joss had never giggled with her. Her heartache had been hard even for Stevie to hide.

  ‘I’m not trying to avoid anyone. I’m taking a holiday,’ she told Rice.

  Rice on the other end was silent. His scepticism hummed down the line.

  Stevie took another large sip of vodka. She had a sudden mental image of lipstick on a jam jar in Joss’ studio—why had she not suspected anything then?—and the way he had looked at Norah that night . . .

  ‘How are the Hammer-Belles?’ she asked as a way of changing the subject.

  ‘Actually, that’s why I’m ringing, not just to harass you.’ Stevie smiled. She liked the way David Rice always emphasised the first part of the word: har-–ass.

  ‘They are planning a trip to St Moritz. They want you with them.’

  ‘Oh no.’ Stevie put her glass down carefully on the table.

  ‘Afraid so.’

  ‘Can they be discouraged?’

  ‘Afraid not. They’re planning to attend some sort of society function up there.’

  ‘David, I really don’t know if I can take this on. When are they going?’

  ‘They’ve been vague on details. I’ll have the necessary information in the next day or so.’ He shuffled some papers, obviously still in the office. ‘And while you’re in Moscow, Analysis would like a security situation report from you—the word on the street, as they say.’

  ‘No problem. I’ll put something together.’

  There was a pause in the conversation.

  ‘Stevie, I know why you asked for Dinov. I know Valery Kozkov’s daughter is missing.’

  The words sank down the line like pebbles in a pond. How?!

  ‘I hope you’re not up to anything. It’s the sort of thing you might be tempted to try to put right.’

  Stevie said nothing.

  ‘It’s too dangerous, Stevie. A negotiator is not a safety net for you.

  He won’t be able to protect you if things go wrong. Russia is a law unto itself—I don’t need to tell you that.’

  Stevie did not reply. If the line was bugged, if someone was listening, she would have to be very careful what she said.

  ‘I appreciate the advice, David, and the concern. Actually, I have seen Kozkov but he is a friend of Henning’s, you see, that’s all.’ She spoke brightly and cheerfully. ‘He made no mention of his daughter.’

  A brief silence on the line as Rice got the message.

  ‘Well, that’s good to hear, Stevie.’ His voice was as hard as an iron bar. ‘We wouldn’t want Marlise and Lockie worrying.’

  He rang off.

  The reference to her mother and father was Rice code for ‘I don’t want to see you shot dead in some godforsaken place’. Stevie appreciated David Rice’s protective instincts. No doubt it came from some sense of responsibility to her parents. Rice had spent a lot of time with their little family—a bachelor with nowhere to go for Sunday lunches, Easter feasts and snowy Christmas Eves.

  Stevie wanted his admiration more than anything, maybe his love. Were the two not tied? He
was her boss and her parents’ friend, but he was also the man she most admired in the world, and her anchor. She wanted so much to prove herself to him, but somehow he made her feel that, deep-down, he still doubted she was really up to the job.

  Would Rice ever decide she was good enough to be at the centre of things? Celebrities and situation reports were one thing, but the really exciting clients were the ones the public rarely heard about. The Hammer-Belles fell into the ‘celebrity hand-holding’ category and she was rather dreading them. She hoped she could get Anya back before Rice called her away to Switzerland. What would she do then?

  Stevie gave up on her dinner and lit a cigarette, touching the vodka to her lips to warm them.

  And what about Henning?

  Changing into the hotel robe, which was man-size and completely overwhelmed her, Stevie wondered what her friend was up to.

  She looked in the mirror: her head was a tiny pale dot in a mound of white towelling, her small hands poking out of the rolled-up sleeves.

  That’s it. I’m ringing Henning.

  And the phone rang, just as if he had heard.

  ‘Well? Is it the sultan’s secret diary?’ Stevie struggled onto the bed and lay back on the pillows, cradling the receiver.

  Henning gave a low chuckle. ‘Close, Stevie. It’s a book of flowers.’

  ‘Oh. Is that a disappointment? I suppose you would have preferred something rather bloody, with warriors, and scimitars parting heads from infidel necks.’

  ‘It’s actually a tremendous find from the sultan’s harem. You would love it. It’s a code book really, but the cipher is floral.’ Henning sounded incredibly excited.

  ‘All the sultans had at least one hundred wives. That much I know. So what was the code for?’ Stevie was genuinely intrigued, and the subject was a good distraction from her own thoughts.

  ‘The sultan’s wives used flowers to send secret messages to their lovers. Each flower had a different meaning. They could compose quite elaborate messages in bouquets and send them out. And then they would receive the most innocent-looking reply: a bunch of beautiful flowers.’ Henning laughed again. ‘Gives a whole new meaning to “flowery language”, doesn’t it?’