‘Afghanistan?’ he asked.
‘No. The only women there are nurses, cooks, support staff. They do their duty on their backs comforting our glorious troops. No woman but a fool would go to Afghanistan. These are campaigns you won’t know about.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because we don’t talk about them.’
It took Tom a moment to realize she’d switched to English, and very good English at that. ‘Where did you learn?’
‘London. Where did you learn Russian?’
‘School, then a refresher course before I came out.’
‘Your schools teach Russian?’
‘Mine did.’
‘One of those expensive ones for aristocrats?’
‘State-run, boarding school. For children from problem families.’
The car’s headlights revealed a town ahead. Falling snow reduced its main street to shapes glimpsed through fog every few seconds, when the wipers scraped the windscreen clear. The heater gave off little heat and a stale, bar-fire smell. After a while, the major reached without looking to turn it off. The Zil grew chillier.
‘You’re shivering,’ she said after a while.
‘I’ll survive.’
At a roadside stop – little more than an awning over a cart, with a brazier up front to warm patrons – she halted long enough to let Tom stamp his feet, eat a baked potato, drink harsh coffee from a tin mug and vanish behind a canvas screen to piss. It was too dark for Tom to see how yellow he made the snow. Very, from the size of his headache. It was always the dehydration that got him.
‘I’d like to ask you something,’ said Major Milova, once the huge black Zil was back on the road. ‘Why didn’t you tell us sooner about the girl?’
‘You’re telling me you didn’t know?’
‘That’s not the point.’ The major hesitated. ‘Although I personally didn’t know until yesterday.’
‘Should you have done?’
‘Only if the cult element is true. You realize she could just be hiding out in the countryside with her boyfriend? Young girls do that. Especially spoilt Western ones. We have people watching the building. They’ll be able to tell us more.’
‘Who told you yesterday?’
‘The minister briefed me himself.’
‘Vedenin?’
‘He had it from the local militsiya. They found the location when looking for something else.’
Tom spent the next ten minutes trying to work out what Alex or anyone else would get out of joining a cult, while the road became a ragged twist of rapidly unfolding hedges on either side. A sense of belonging, maybe? It was easy to see what cult leaders got out of it: money, sex and power. The things everyone wanted. They just got more of them. Tom’s thoughts stalled there. Largely because Major Milova glared at a lorry blocking their way and overtook it on the first clear stretch, her wheels bouncing on pitted tarmac at the road’s edge. Adjusting for black ice on a bend without seeming to notice, she settled back, the headlights of her Zil revealing the now empty road.
‘You stink of alcohol,’ she said after a while.
‘Last night’s. You don’t drink?’
‘My grandfather drank. You need to stop for vodka?’
Tom shook his head.
‘That’s something.’
Her words left Tom wondering when one beer had become three, and three five. At what point had drinking in bad bars stopped being part of his cover and became his preferred way of life? When the cracks with Caro appeared? The first time he realized she’d taken a lover? It would be easy to blame her for what he’d become. It was always easier to blame someone else. Dennisov was his perfect drinking partner. Next to Dennisov, he was practically teetotal. And Becca … He’d been absent for half her life and back just in time for her death. He’d been drunk for a week after that.
‘Did your grandfather ever give up?’
‘After my grandmother was arrested.’
‘What happened?’
‘He lived. She died.’
The set of Major Milova’s mouth and the intensity with which she stared at the darkened road made it clear that further questions were unwelcome. So much hurt compressed into so few words, Tom thought.
He knew he was guilty of that.
Half an hour later, when the snow finally stopped falling and the night sky cleared, and the moon suddenly became visible, and lights of a lorry they’d overtaken were so far behind they appeared only occasionally, looking like the single headlamp of a distant motorbike, she asked how he had met Gabashville.
‘He asked me to dinner.’
‘You met him before that,’ she said firmly.
‘If you know, then why ask?’
‘To see how much we can trust you.’
‘I thought you said you didn’t?’
She sucked her teeth in irritation and drove on.
She drove fast, using all of the road, taking the middle line through corners and overtaking anything in their way. Tom had been told a Zil produced insane amounts of torque but this was tuned to a higher spec than he’d thought possible.
‘BMW,’ she said, when he told her that.
‘You swapped the blocks?’
‘Of course not. 7695cc, 315 hp, 120 mph. The Zil has an excellent engine. However, 0 to 100 km in 13 seconds. A West German diplomat was caught …’ She shrugged. ‘Being indiscreet in his choice of friends. He went home hurriedly and left his car. It was a nice car. We borrowed a few parts.’
She took the next corner so fast Tom braced himself as the snow tyres skittered, although she pulled out of the skid before it really began. ‘Combat driving?’ he asked.
‘You did the same course?’
‘Something similar.’
‘You use live ammunition in training?’
‘Thunderflashes and blanks.’
‘I don’t know why we haven’t overrun you yet.’
Villages, a town and then a lone garage loomed out of the darkness and Major Milova pulled on to its forecourt without indicating, edging her way to the head of a five-vehicle queue and parking diagonally across the front of a Moskva that had been about to reach the pump. The young man inside didn’t even seem surprised.
‘You want cigarettes?’
Tom dug in his pocket for roubles.
‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘The Soviet Union will pay.’
Clambering out, she tramped to a hut lit by a dangling bulb. Through the wide window, Tom watched her point at a phone, say something and pick up its receiver without waiting for an reply. She listened, talked a little, then listened some more. When she came back she looked thoughtful.
‘You know Dennisov?’ she said.
‘I thought your interest was Gabashville?’
‘I’m told you drink in his bar. You’re friends.’
‘We share a taste in music. He’s a good man.’
‘Did this good man tell you he killed his commander?’ The stiffness of her shoulders told him she expected a reply.
‘What should I call you?’ Tom asked.
She glanced over at his question. Waited.
‘Just, if we’re going to be working together …’
‘Since I have more combat experience, you could try “sir”.’
Tom couldn’t tell if she was joking. ‘If Dennisov killed his CO, why isn’t he under arrest? Come to that, why is he still alive?’
‘You know who his father is?’
‘That’s the only reason?’
‘It helped. His father is a Soviet Hero. Dennisov hates the man. For some people … serious people … that’s more valuable than any patronage his father could give.’ Major Milova hesitated. ‘Also, his CO was not a good man. He was not even a good CO. Dennisov’s report said the man died on impact. Dennisov and his sergeant survived, the sergeant dying of his wounds soon afterwards.’
‘Then how do you know he killed his CO?’
‘Before he died, the sergeant told a nurse.’
‘What
does she say now?’
Major Milova’s mouth soured. ‘She insists she didn’t hear anything like that. As for the colleague she confided in … there was an unfortunate incident involving some of Dennisov’s troop who thought she talked too much. They decided to fill her mouth for her. She’s retired. Gone back to the Crimea, I believe.’
‘I’ve worked with COs who should have been killed.’
‘Mine have always been outstanding …’
He couldn’t tell if that was a joke either.
The major went back to positioning her car for corners and sliding through bends at speeds that had Tom discreetly gripping the door and wondering about the state of her tyres. It wasn’t malicious. He wasn’t even sure it was conscious. She was simply enjoying herself.
‘Svetlana,’ she said finally. ‘You call me Svetlana.’
‘Tom.’
She took her hand from the wheel and they shook awkwardly.
The major’s fingers were so close to frozen Tom turned on the Zil’s heater without asking. The thing still stank like an electric fire but the interior was almost warm by the time she flicked the car on to a side road and hugged a tight turn that took them on to a narrow track up a hill. The track had been gritted, which was just as well given the black rock rising on one side and the ditch on the other. She brought the Zil to an abrupt halt at a barrier, winding down the window at a gesture from a guard who stepped from the trees.
‘Major Milova,’ she said.
A torch played across her face while a second guard stood directly in front of the Zil with his SLR at the ready.
‘And him?’
‘Major Fox. He’s with me. We’re expected.’
They knew that already, because the bar came up and the first guard rolled away a cement-filled barrel to let the Zil through. The snow banks beyond were pristine and the birches ghostlike. Neat wooden houses stood amongst the trees, each one a hundred paces from the next. The further they drove, the bigger the dachas and the wider the gaps between them. By the time the road turned to climb again, the dachas had high fences and heavy gates protecting wide snow-covered lawns. The last of them had its gates open.
‘Vedenin’s?’
‘Of course. He’s expecting us.’
The door opened just as they reached it, and it took Tom a second to recognize the grinning young man standing there. ‘Come in,’ Vladimir Vedenin said, opening his arms as if he intended to embrace them both. ‘The old man’s waiting.’
Stepping hurriedly aside, Svetlana indicated that Tom should go first.
Vladimir Vedenin led them through a cluttered hall, past a wall hanging that seemed to show a squat Viking couple standing side by side, and into a kitchen, where Minister Vedenin stood in the middle of an admiring crowd.
Tom recognized three men from the minister’s group at the embassy party. A woman whose face he recognized from Pravda, astronaut-turned-politician, if he remembered rightly. What he couldn’t see was the young man who’d been running Vedenin’s security on New Year’s Eve. ‘Dmitry left us,’ Vladimir said.
His father shot him a sharp glance.
Vladimir grinned. ‘Look what I’ve found you.’
‘Welcome to my humble holiday home,’ said Minister Vedenin.
His heavy fingers gripped Tom’s hand for just longer than was comfortable, then his arm came round Tom’s shoulders and he began steering him through the crowd and towards a door beyond. ‘Vladimir will look after Svetlana. You come with me. We should talk.’ They went out on to a small wooden terrace with white painted rails. ‘Valentina doesn’t like me smoking indoors.’
‘Your wife?’ asked Tom, watching the man shake a Cohiba Robusto from a branded leather case. The minister lit the cigar and shook his head.
‘My wife’s dead, sadly. Valentina’s a friend.’
He offered Tom a cigar and winced when Tom held up his papirosa. The back door opened behind them. Vedenin scowled, until he saw it was his son.
‘We’re just having a quick word.’
‘I thought our visitor might like a drink.’ Vladimir held up a goblet of mulled wine. ‘He must be cold after the drive.’ Smiling, as if he’d only just noticed Tom was there, he added, ‘It was my mother’s recipe …’
‘My son makes it every winter,’ said Vedenin.
Vladimir smiled again. ‘Every year since she died.’
The wine was hot and sweet and spiced with cloves. There was brandy in there somewhere. Some kind of spirit certainly. The overwhelming taste was of honey though. Tom could feel its stickiness on his lips.
‘You like it?’ Vladimir asked.
‘Very much,’ Tom told the young man.
‘I’m glad.’
The door to the kitchen closed on the noise inside and left Tom and the minister to the creak of firs, the slight whistle of the wind in the bushes and the sudden hoot of an owl. The minister laughed as Tom froze. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘a cigar is simply a cigar and an owl is simply an owl. You should have called us earlier, you know. When her trail was still warm. We could have acted before this.’
‘It wasn’t my decision.’
‘All the same. You must start thinking of us as friends.’
‘You knew, though? You must have done.’
‘Not officially.’
The man drew deep on his Cuban cigar, held the smoke for a second and let it trickle into the chilly air. ‘Officially I don’t know now. The KGB knows the ambassador’s stepdaughter has run away. The local militsiya know delinquents are squatting a deserted house twenty miles from here. The Vnutrenniye Voiska know they have to clear a house of cultists using minimum force. I alone know these things are linked. I would be delighted if you’d join me. The others will stay here.’
‘The others?’ Tom asked.
‘It’s my son’s birthday,’ Vedenin said. ‘How could I break up his party? We’ll be back soon enough and most of my friends are so drunk on sbiten they’ll barely notice we’re gone. How did you find Major Milova?’
‘Impressively professional.’
The minister smiled. ‘Good. She can drive us.’
19
Night Attack
White trucks parked in the depths of a lay-by, a bank of Scots pine screening them from the road. An empty stall with its back to a ditch showed where someone local sold provisions in the summer to lorry drivers on the road between Moscow and Leningrad. Major Milova pulled in and parked behind the last truck.
The drive from Vedenin’s dacha to the lay-by had been slow to the point of sedate and conducted in absolute silence, on her part at least. Vedenin had talked non-stop, pointing out landmarks, roadkill and types of local tree. She’d opened her window only once, when smoke from her boss’s cigar had made it briefly impossible for her to see the road ahead.
Suddenly Vedenin said, ‘We’re here.’
Major Milova took it as a question instead of a statement of the obvious. ‘Yes, sir. We’re here.’
‘You should know,’ Vedenin told Tom, ‘these men aren’t aware that one of the cultists they’re retrieving is English. Let’s leave it that way.’
A knock on the major’s window made Tom jump.
The ghostlike figure’s uniform was entirely white, down to his facemask and goggles. He held an AKSU-47 wrapped in pale sacking. What little showed of its barrel was wound with white tape.
Tom got the minister’s door.
The ghostlike figure’s report was brief and to the point.
A ruined house stood a quarter of a mile back from the road, hidden by forest. His men, an elite force of Spetsnaz within the VV, had it surrounded on all sides. They’d been in position since mid afternoon without being spotted. There had been no movement since dusk and no lights currently showed. Delinquents or gypsies would have lit lamps or built a fire. Since none were visible, they were obviously dealing with those intent on staying hidden.
The man stared at Tom once. He ignored Svetlana.
‘Very good,’
Vedenin said. ‘Now, what’s your plan?’
The first part seemed to involve asking the comrade minister if, once they neared the ruined house, he’d be prepared to stay back as he and his guests weren’t in camouflage. Tom didn’t hear the second part, because the man took Vedenin to one side. Their conversation was short but intense.
Ice made climbing the path difficult, and the hundred yards through firs and dead brambles had Comrade Vedenin gasping. They followed the glow of the Spetsnaz officer’s torch, which had been taped to leave only the narrowest beam. The minister slipped so often that Tom ended up taking his elbow. The man was trembling by the time he reached the edge of a frozen lake.
‘Where do you want me?’
‘We’ve prepared a hide, sir.’
White netting had been thrown over a frame. Inside, fold-out stools, a huge Thermos flask and heavy night-vision binoculars waited on a tarpaulin that was acting as the floor. The makeshift hut felt like a shooting hide of the kind Tom’s in-laws used. The Spetsnaz officer looked relieved when Vedenin slumped on to the nearest of the stools.
‘As little fuss as possible,’ Vedenin said.
‘We understand, sir.’
‘Go, then.’
The air inside the hide was clean and cold and tinged with smoke trapped in the minister’s jacket. Tom was reminded of Guy Fawkes Night and the last time he’d seen Charlie. Then it had been back to boarding school for the boy and a refresher course in Russian at a country house in Surrey for him. A quick telephone call on Christmas Day, cut short because lunch was beginning, had been their only contact since.
Tom had written, of course. Charlie had asked him to write. But Tom’s own letters were stilted and Charlie’s read as if a housemaster checked them first.
Picking up the binoculars, Vedenin stared across the lake. ‘Hope they’re right,’ he said. ‘That place looks deserted to me.’
He handed the glasses to Tom, who looked in turn. The house was wooden and had three storeys. An octagonal turret rose from one corner. Several windows were smashed. Darkness and the night-vision lenses of the glasses made it impossible to tell what colour the walls had originally been.
Moskva Page 12
