Jack Grimwood - Moskva

‘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.