Jack Grimwood - Moskva

The stallholder told Wax Angel to join the line.

‘He needs a lift into town.’

‘Tell him to take the metro like everyone else.’

‘He’s a foreigner.’

‘Dollars or roubles?’

‘Which would you like?’ She hoped the Englishman had dollars. But he was foreign. All foreigners had hard currency of some sort.

‘I’ll just dump these.’ Hefting his sack, he headed for his stall, dropping the sack at the feet of a woman.

‘Follow him then,’ Wax Angel said.

Tom nodded. A few minutes later, it occurred to him that he should have thanked her but when he looked back she was gone.

The Niva was rusty, with broken lights, and looked like the bastard offspring of a Jeep and a Landrover designed by someone who’d seen neither.

‘Where to?’ the man demanded.

‘How much?’

‘Depends.’

Tom chose the route.

He had intended to be dropped on the corner where the Embankment began but the Niva was warm and he was fighting sleep, so he had the driver pull up outside the embassy instead. Both the militsiya and the British guard inside watched with interest.

Dragging a five-rouble note from his pocket, Tom handed it to the man, who opened his mouth to protest and shut it again when his passenger pointed at the floor. Ten dollars lay in the footwell of the Niva, held down by the rubber mat.

The man scrawled a number on an old copy of Pravda . ‘Any time,’ he said. ‘Ask for Pyotr. Say you’re the foreigner.’

The snow-covered cobbles between the gate and the steps were as unsteady as a ship’s deck in a storm. Climbing the steps was even worse. Having reached the top, Tom was terrified that if he let go of the doorknob he’d fall over.

‘Christ, you look bad.’

He peered at the man who came out to meet him.

‘Andrew,’ the man said. ‘I’m helping you settle in. Are you drunk, sir?’

‘In the line of duty.’

His mouth twitched. ‘Can you prove that?’

‘Yes,’ said Tom. ‘Probably.’

‘Just as well. You’re not popular at the moment.’

‘Sir Edward?’

‘More all the people he’s been shouting at since you weren’t here to be shouted at yourself. It’s been a bit of an afternoon. This morning wasn’t great either. He’s demanded to be told the moment you arrive.’

‘Is the medical officer around?’

‘You mean the doctor? Yes. Usual place.’

When Tom just looked at him, the young attaché sighed.

Tom left the surgery an hour later, having confirmed there was nothing worse than Georgian chacha in his system. He’d drunk what felt like his body weight in soda water, napped for forty minutes, had a partial blood transfusion and swallowed tincture of Hovenia dulcis . He’d also washed his face, brushed his teeth and rinsed his mouth with Listerine. The embassy doctor was ex-medical corps.

He’d been in Belfast too.

Andrew was coming out of the ambassador’s office when Tom appeared in the outer doorway. The woman with him looked away. ‘Ah, I’d heard you were still in the sick bay.’

‘How is Sir Edward?’

‘Incandescent.’

‘No, I mean confident, worried, reticent?’

Tom realized the ambassador’s secretary was listening. She looked back down at her work when he looked over.

‘He’s the ambassador,’ Andrew said.

‘I assume you have a good excuse, Fox.’

‘What did the note say?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The note, sir. What did it say?’

‘We’ve had this discussion. You know what Alex said.’

‘I’m talking about the other note.’

For a second, Sir Edward hovered on the edge of denying there had been another note. Tom watched it happen. Then the fight went out of the man and he sat back, his anger deflating like a ruptured balloon.

‘Who told you about that?’

‘A Georgian. May I ask what the note said?’

Tom knew it was the wrong question the moment the words left his mouth, for all he’d guessed right about there being a second note. A flintiness returned to Sir Edward’s face and his gaze hardened. ‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘you may not.’

‘Too personal?’

The man almost rose to the bait. Then he caught himself and bit down on his anger at Tom’s impertinence. When he sat back, he was in control. ‘What it said is none of your business.’

There were two ways to read that.

The note was personal and Sir Edward was damned if Tom was going to know the contents. Or it was beyond Tom’s competence and pay scale. Either way, the man had known for a while his stepdaughter hadn’t simply run away to sulk.

‘Have you told London, sir?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Who here knows?’

‘About the second note? Nobody.’

‘Who knows about the first?’

‘My wife, and Mary Batten.’

‘With respect, sir, perhaps you should tell Mary Batten about this one.’

‘Wait there,’ Sir Edward said.

He vanished into his outer office and shut the door. All Tom could hear was muted conversation. How much of the embassy was bugged by the Russians? How much, if any, by us? The Americans had found a Soviet bug behind their great seal, that damn eagle in a circle behind their ambassador’s desk.

There was something fitting in that.

On a side table was a photograph of Anna and Alex. Anna looked younger and Alex untroubled, barely into her teens. Both were smiling in the shadow of the Colosseum and their smiles seemed real, despite the tourist backdrop.

‘Rome,’ Sir Edward said. ‘They liked Rome.’

He retook his place behind his desk and said, ‘Mary will join us.’

There was an awkward silence. Sir Edward picked up a file and hid himself in whatever was inside. Mary Batten entered without knocking. She was wearing a blue skirt suit that looked almost mockingly smart. Her dark eyes met Tom’s, and some question was asked that Tom failed to answer, because she looked at him coldly and waited for Sir Edward to put down his file.

‘Thank you for dropping by.’

Her face tightened at the ambassador’s careful politeness.

‘Major Fox has something to say.’

That wasn’t the way Tom would have put it. All the same, he sat back in his chair to order what thoughts he had and looked up to find Mary Batten watching him.

‘This is about being forced into that car?’

‘You know about…?’ Of course she did; she’d just mentioned it. ‘You’ve been having me followed?’

‘We’re following the man following you.’

Sir Edward stopped reading his memo.

‘You were told about that, sir.’

‘If you say so.’

‘The question,’ Mary Batten said, ‘is why do the Soviets have a KGB colonel shadowing a British major? One who, without wishing to be rude, is expected to retire as a result of recent difficulties.’

‘Difficulties?’ Sir Edward asked.

Tom had an instant picture of two men dead on the floor of a Boston bar. One was an IRA commander, the other black ops for army intelligence and so far under cover Tom doubted even he remembered where his true loyalties lay.

Tom could still hear the crack of his own Browning and the sudden shocked silence of the customers, with only the commentary to a Red Sox game and the rise and fall of a distant cop siren to break it.

Then the breeze from the door as he left.

‘The best that can be said,’ said Mary Batten, ‘is that nothing can be proved. It’s probably wise not to go into it now. Still, I can see why London decided to park you here to decompress. What did Erekle Gabashville want?’

‘You know him?’

‘Of him, certainly.’

‘His sons were kidnapped. One was left dead at the Kremlin Wall, the other is still missing…’ Tom watched Sir Edward glance at Mary, who shook her head. Obviously neither had heard about the body. ‘Gabashville wants his revenge. But mostly, at this point, he simply wants his other boy back.’