Man on Edge

by Humphrey Hawksley

  ‘We think they’re dead.’ Stephanie’s cadence wavered. ‘Harry had four people on you. One is missing. Three bodies have been found.’

  ‘Bodies. Where?’ Carrie tried to absorb. The watchers were meant to be protecting her, and they were murdered.

  ‘Still clarifying.’ Stephanie checked her watch. ‘It came through about an hour ago, after your escape.’

  Carrie looked out at blurring lights, the wide, busy road, exhaust mist. ‘But how come you didn’t know until then? Weren’t they meant to report back?’

  ‘Not blow-by-blow. Harry didn’t want to risk intercepts. They clocked your airport arrival and your leaving the hotel. They were to call in after Semenov got to the embassy, then again when you were back at the hotel. Between your leaving the hotel and your uncle’s murder, they were taken.’

  ‘Who shot the guy who killed my uncle?’

  ‘One of us. We had your back and we still have it.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you bring me in? Why leave me swinging in the fucking wind?’

  ‘It wasn’t safe. They have infiltrated the embassy. They took Alan, got his uniform, and did all that—’

  ‘Why didn’t they kill me?’

  ‘Your uncle must have been the target. Not you.’

  The more Stephanie tried the explain, the more Carrie struggled. ‘But how come it went to shit, Steph? Harry had a plan. I did exactly what he told me to do. Meet my uncle and bring him in, so how come you weren’t there, how come—’

  ‘I was. We all were. What we didn’t know was that Alan was missing, and Harry didn’t know he had been compromised.’ Stephanie let out a long sigh. ‘We thought this was about a Russian naval officer defecting. It’s much more. Harry’s convinced it’s connected to the shooting in Washington.’

  ‘Me here. Rake there. People getting killed.’

  ‘Never overestimate a coincidence. That’s what my father told me, and he was a conman and used-car salesman who would have handled this mess a lot better. My take, for what it’s worth, is that the Washington shooting and your uncle’s murder are separate symptoms of a deteriorating relationship with Moscow. That’s the connection. Nothing more. This thing against Rake seems to be a crazy revenge attack. Your uncle was a naval engineer with information to sell and that involved intelligence and governments.’

  Stephanie’s phone lit, Cyrillic script on the message screen. She took the call, listened, and said in Russian, ‘I could make seven thirty, eight.’ She heard the reply, shook her head. ‘What’s so urgent?’ She listened again. ‘It’s difficult … OK … No. Not the Foreign Ministry … Not the Duma … Your suite at the Four Seasons.’

  She ended the call and opened the dividing screen. ‘Craig, we need to divert to the Four Seasons, the one next to the State Duma.’

  Slaughden shifted round to face Stephanie. ‘Ma’am, we need to get you to the residence. This isn’t—’

  ‘It’s Foreign Minister Grizlov. It’s the Four Seasons. It’s safe. Drop me, get Dr Walker to the residence, then come back for me.’

  ‘I’ll get a second team in.’

  ‘Now, Craig,’ snapped Stephanie. ‘Have the chase car wait for me. You head back with Dr Walker.’ She sank back into her seat. They were heading south down the massive Garden Ring which encircled central Moscow. The driver turned off taking them south-west back toward Red Square. ‘Grizlov wants to see me now,’ explained Stephanie.

  ‘The Foreign Minister? About this?’ said Carrie.

  ‘He wouldn’t say. Said it couldn’t wait.’ Her face was taut. ‘I tried to put it off an hour. He was adamant and that it had to be in person. Sergey’s a friend.’

  ‘I know. You told me, since you were in your twenties.’

  ‘The only guy in Moscow I begin to trust, even then only a fraction. If he knows what’s behind this cluster fuck, I need to see him.’

  Carrie had no idea the forces Stephanie was juggling. The pit of her stomach churned. Just as she was picked up, Stephanie got the call. Just as she was outside the British Embassy, her uncle was murdered. If Stephanie could track her movements, so could the Russian government. She did not want to be in an SUV with two military-style guys in the middle of Moscow. She would prefer to have stayed in the bar, where she had a measure of control.

  ‘I don’t like it, Steph. Maybe, I’m overreacting—’

  ‘I don’t like it either.’ Stephanie’s voice hardened. ‘We’ve lost five people, Carrie. I have obligations to their families, to find out what is going on and put a stop to it. If Grizlov can help in that—’

  ‘Two minutes out,’ said Slaughden.

  ‘You called me, Steph,’ said Carrie. ‘You yelled at me to disappear and hide.’

  ‘They’re not after you. If it were about you, you would be dead by now. It’s about something else.’ Stephanie opened the armrest cover between them to reveal a revolver. ‘My weapon of last resort.’ She gave Carrie a quick smile. ‘The button underneath the lid automatically releases the safety. If someone’s coming in to get me, I’m meant to pick it up and shoot them. Never had to. Love that it’s here.’

  She snapped the cover closed. Carrie slipped her fingers under the lid, which sprang up. She shut it back down. Stephanie checked her face in a compact mirror. She pushed back her hair and put on the hat, pulling down the earflaps. The SUV swept into the hotel forecourt, the chase car behind. Slaughden got out and opened Stephanie’s door. Sergey Grizlov appeared, raised hand, a confident wave. He came forward, flamboyantly opening his arms to greet her. A concierge opened the main hotel door. Craig got back in the vehicle. The SUV pulled off into the Moscow traffic. With his hand resting on her back, Grizlov guided Stephanie inside.

  Ruslan Yumatov had gone straight to the Four Seasons after intercepting Grizlov’s call and hearing that two British diplomatic vehicles had been located through automatic number-plate recognition on Prospekt Mira near the Sklifosovsky clinic, parked outside a bar frequented by medics, a natural sanctuary for a terrified Dr Carrie Walker. Facial imaging recorded her in the bar watching news footage of the violence in Washington. It failed to detect the person with whom Carrie had walked out until, on the sidewalk, gait recognition suggested this was Stephanie Lucas, the British Ambassador to Moscow.

  Surprisingly, at the Four Seasons, the British protection unit separated. The Ambassador’s vehicle with Carrie Walker continued its journey to the British residence. Stephanie Lucas, without protection, went into the hotel with Grizlov.

  The Pentagon, Arlington County, Virginia

  ‘We’ve found her,’ Harry Lucas told Rake quietly. He shifted his chair so Rake could move in to get a closer look at a center screen showing a live feed from a hotel forecourt. ‘She’s with the British Embassy. This is the Four Seasons in Moscow. The British Ambassador has gone in for a meeting with Foreign Minister Grizlov.’ He pointed to a black suburban pulling out of the driveway. ‘Carrie is in this vehicle. She has armed protection. Within half an hour, she’ll be at the ambassador’s residence.’

  A wave of relief flooded through Rake. He had watched with admiration as Lucas had taken control of the room. First, the technician had deferred to him. Then came dissent and turf pitching. Calls were made to head offices asking who was in charge. Messages came back to stand aside and let Lucas handle this side of the investigation. Stephanie had notified Lucas about the meeting and he activated cyber-cracking software to break into the hotel’s surveillance.

  ‘Can you play it back?’ Rake asked Lucas, who glanced up curiously.

  ‘Keep the live feed,’ explained Rake. ‘Play back the Ambassador’s arrival.

  Lucas complied. Mikki leaned against a wall in a place from which he could see everyone. Rake studied the feed, the driveway ramp, the columns, the porter’s desk, the wide hotel doors to the lobby, the flow of vehicles and people. His eyes squinted to cut out peripheral vision, improve depth of field, ensuring his retinas would only receive what he needed to see. Rake read the screen like he woul
d something lit by sun reflected off ice.

  A green circle settled on the British Embassy vehicle as it drove into the Four Seasons’ forecourt. The occupants were identified as Stephanie Lucas, Ambassador, Dr Carrie Walker, passenger, Craig Slaughden, principal protection officer, and Peter Eklid, driver. Rake examined eye directions of people around the front of the hotel. Heads turned to look at Foreign Minister Grizlov greet Ambassador Lucas outside the front door. People craned to see.

  Far from being sidelined by the Kremlin as before, the Foreign Ministry’s profile had been lifted by Grizlov’s appointment. He was a political superstar, in the frame to succeed the lackluster Lagutov as President. But why was he seeing the British Ambassador? Britain was of indeterminate quantity. Germany and France were the powers in Europe. So why today of all days does Russia’s Foreign Minister entertain the British Ambassador in the luxury of Moscow’s Four Seasons Hotel?

  ‘Carrie’s still on the road in Moscow,’ said Rake. ‘She’s not yet safe.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  The Four Seasons Hotel, Moscow

  ‘What the hell are you guys doing with this insane military exercise?’ Grizlov smiled broadly as he steered Stephanie through. Bodyguards spread around the lavish lobby area, inelegant men among softly decorated pastel beige and white.

  ‘Two hundred aircraft, seventy ships, fifteen thousand military vehicles.’ Impeccably dressed and mannered, Grizlov walked with the assured air of a man who understood the contradictions of power and how to deploy its nuances. Not only had he survived every Russian regime since Gorbachev, he had grown with them, collecting favors, sharing influence, promoting, protecting, mentoring, showing the way, apparently clean, but impossible in today’s Russia, to get to where he had without dirty hands.

  Stephanie smiled back. ‘Routine exercise, Sergey. Proportionate and transparent.’

  Gas flames roared around a replica log fire underneath a high marble mantelpiece. A camera flashed, which might be exactly why Grizlov had asked her, to be photographed objecting to a military exercise inside Russia’s backyard. NATO called it Russia’s Bastion of Defense, an area that led off its coastal waters and stretched down to a line that ran diagonally across the North Atlantic from Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom. Operation Dynamic Freedom was designed to make sure things worked. Russia didn’t like it.

  Grizlov directed her toward the elevator bank. ‘The West is being deliberately provocative. You need to understand how dangerous this is.’

  Stephanie did. But the United States led the charge and picked off governments one by one. One day China. The next Iran. A swipe at Europe and this month, Russia. She and Grizlov had discussed it many times. ‘Nothing unusual, Sergey, and you didn’t bring me here with such urgency to protest against NATO military exercises.’

  Two of Grizlov’s people stood at either side of the end elevator, door open. They rode up in silence. Grizlov led the way into the suite. His men stayed outside.

  ‘They’ve swept it,’ said Grizlov. ‘It’s clean.’

  Clean for him, perhaps. Not for her. The suite carried a similar decor to the lobby, low tertiary colors, light shades, comfortable but unobtrusive furniture. From a narrow balcony, there was a view across Red Square, the GUM shopping arcade lined with lights like Harrods in London and St Basil’s Cathedral, a spangle of contradictory colors. Stephanie rested her handbag on the arm of a sofa and pulled loose her scarf.

  ‘You’re looking good, Steph,’ said Grizlov.

  ‘That caps one hell of day,’ Stephanie replied grimly. ‘How are you bearing up?’

  ‘If you had agreed to marry me when I asked, we might not be where we are now.’

  That bought a smile. ‘I recall you dumped me and headed off to a mining deal in Siberia and if we had married, I would be tearing out walls as the wife of a Russian oligarch or you would be a bored billionaire in London running soccer clubs, getting burned by your mistresses and sanctioned by my government.’

  She let her answer run because she needed time to gauge what was going on. Grizlov was tense. Usually, when alone, catching up, he would flop into a comfortable chair, curious as to what she had been doing, telling her his latest theory of Russia’s plight, where it was heading, why it would be a disaster. Today, he stood arms folded, conversation light, body language rigid.

  Three years older, Grizlov was fifty-six. They had known each other since she had gone to Moscow to practice her business skills in Russia’s 1990s’ chaos. She taught him Western business tricks. He guided her through post-Communist anarchy, keeping her and her money safe. Nothing had prompted them to become lovers or to end their affair. They were young, attractive, ambitious, on the move, no acrimony, no fidelity questions, no discussions of a future. When Grizlov made her a partner in a tech venture, he said he would take out ten times more than her because he needed that to fund his survival. Stephanie believed him. She made her first million because of him and, as he maneuvered through the mood swings of Russian politics, she made sure they stayed friends. Stephanie grew her businesses, entered British politics, and, mistakenly, married Harry Lucas, a counterpart politician in America, although for a reason she had never yet worked out, she still kept his name.

  However high Grizlov rose or rich he became, he kept in touch, often with a joke. He made chairman of the State Duma, was now Russian Foreign Minister and poised in the minds of many to be the next President, the West-facing candidate with comparisons to the eighteenth-century’s Peter the Great, who made Russia a European power and embraced Western culture and science. In today’s environment, Grizlov was a cheerleader for those fed up with the embrace of China and enmity toward America. As he became more popular, his dress sense had become snappier, more expensive. Unlike in Britain, Russians respected style more than they begrudged wealth.

  Stephanie circled the suite, pushing open doors to the two bedrooms and two bathrooms, making sure, as much as she could, it was just the two of them. The place was freshly cleaned, the bed made, flowers on coffee tables, gels and soap in the showers.

  ‘You summoned me at a moment’s notice, and I came,’ said Stephanie. ‘Whatever it is, NATO, those shootings in Washington, anything else, just spit it out.’

  Grizlov’s eyes bore into Stephanie in way she had learnt to read over the years, half reprimand, half warning. From his suit pocket, he drew a dark-blue British passport and handed it to her. She opened it. A British driver’s license dropped out together with a British Airways gold club card. They fell on the floor. Grizlov picked them up. Stephanie looked at the passport.

  ‘Do you know him?’ asked Grizlov.

  A white male with blotched red cheeks stared out from the passport. The picture was laminated with symbols, birds, a compass, shapes, half circles, stars, signs that told immigration officers more about a person than eyes, nose, lips, and hair. As a diplomat, Stephanie knew some of the tells, but only from a half-day course some years back and she had no idea if there was anything obviously wrong. It was passport type ‘P,’ which everyone carried; code GBR which meant Great Britain; a nine digit passport number; surname Cooper; given names, Gerald Malcolm; nationality British citizen; date of birth, Cooper would turn thirty-four in the New Year, sex, male; place of birth, Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, an expiry date nine years on. Stephanie flipped through the pages and saw only the Russian visa and stamp, a new passport, unused apart from this single entry.

  ‘I don’t know him,’ said Stephanie.

  ‘He’s dead,’ said Grizlov. ‘Murdered.’

  ‘In Moscow?’

  ‘His body was found in a place called Kola, a southern suburb of Murmansk, hit badly as if run over by a truck. Was he one of yours?’

  ‘Not one that I know and what do you mean “as if run over?”’

  Grizlov stepped across to the dining table. He pulled open a drawer, brought out a transparent plastic folder, tipped out photographs, and spread them out. Cooper’s killers had left him a mess. His head lolled i
n a way that meant his neck must have been broken. His right leg was bent double, his foot on his torso, looking as if it had been wrenched from its hip socket. He wore a black down jacket which bore the imprint of a vehicle tire. His pants were torn at the top revealing exposed skin, turned black.

  ‘The vehicle didn’t kill him.’ Grizlov separated off two pictures. The first was a close-up of Cooper’s head and neck: a line of frozen blood where a knife had cut his throat curved around the neck.

  ‘My God!’ Stephanie gasped.

  Grizlov moved the photograph away and slid in the other one. The corpse lay on a gurney, head arranged to the left. Light and focus were bad. Stephanie couldn’t work out what she was seeing. Grizlov picked up the print, held it between them, and pointed to the side of skull. She looked down again at the photograph. Cooper’s killer had cut off his ear. She leant on the table, both hands, arms supporting her. ‘Why?’ she whispered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Grizlov.

  Stephanie ran her gaze over the photographs, about a dozen. She separated them so they were not overlapping. She turned each over. There were two types, those at the scene where she could see a sidewalk, lights of a gas station, buildings. They bore what looked like a regular local police stamp. The second were Cooper on the gurney, closer shots in a controlled setting, showing the ear and the neck. They were stamped with the logo of a gold-handled sword and gray-lined shield that carried a yellow and red double-eagle motif in its center, the symbol of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, the successor agency to the Communist KGB.

  ‘FSB’s involved.’ Stephanie tapped her finger against the logo.

  ‘The FSB control the border. Cooper was a British citizen. I’m only guessing. I got this stuff less than an hour ago.’

  Stephanie perched on the arm of a sofa, the passport open on her lap. ‘Let’s work through normal consular procedures. British citizen is murdered in Russia. We inform the family. We identify the body—’