A. Zander - Moscow City

“I hope you’re right.”

Russell walked back in the room. “He’ll be here in half an hour Sarge. We may as well eat I reckon.”

Cohen gave Lau £20 and he brought them an assortment of piping hot Chinese food as they waited in the small room. Once they’d finished the meal, a pot of Chinese tea was set down on the table and Russell poured three servings into some ornately decorated cups. As Cohen took his first sip, the man from behind the counter walked in and tapped him on the shoulder.

“Your friend is here now.” The long-haired sketch artist walked in and cleared a space among the discarded food containers.

“Shall we get straight to it?” he said

“Go ahead,” said Cohen.

Lau’s memory kicked into gear like a video recording. The sketch artist struggled to keep up as he blurted out the description, regularly turning to a small Chinese-English dictionary he kept in his trouser pocket. The artist added the finishing touches as Lau made sure he had extracted everything he could from the mental image of the man in the car.

“Okay,” said the artist. “Here’s your man.” He flipped his sketch board round and showed Cohen and Russell the face.

“Looks like a wrong ‘un,” said Russell. “But they always do on those things, don’t they Sarge?” Cohen said nothing and just stared at the picture. “Don’t they Sarge? Sarge? Are you okay?”

Cohen took the picture from the artist. “I know who that is.”

“What? Who?”

“His name’s Yuri Gershov. He’s muscle for a guy called Leonid Ashansky.”

“Jesus, Ashansky? You mean the Prince?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t he sitting in Belmarsh prison?”

“That’s exactly where he is. Time we paid His Royal Highness and his little helper a visit.”

Pavel ignored the homeless man lying motionless a few metres away from the entrance to the flat. A strong smell of urine filled the corridor and he held his sleeve to his nose as he stepped carefully around him. Why do people let them in, he thought, as he hurried inside and closed the door behind him. The man stirred as the door slammed. He looked up to make sure no one was around and whispered quietly into a microphone stitched to the inside of his sleeve. “One of them is here.”

Nikolaev and his team got out the car and walked into the building. As they exited the lift, the watcher pointed to the flat and disappeared down the stairs. One of the agents took out a master key and opened the door. Nikolaev walked in and looked around. The door to his right opened and Pavel faced the four men with a puzzled look on his face. The confusion turned to fear as they advanced on him and pushed him back onto his bed.

Nikolaev cast an eye around the room and onto the effeminate foreigner sitting on the bed in front of him.

“You are a gay?” he said, eliciting sniggers from his men.

“No. What do you want?”

“Oh, you speak Russian? That’s good. But you speak Russian like a gay. This is not how Russian is meant to be spoken.”

Pavel lowered his head and hunched his shoulders. “Please, don’t hurt me. What do you want?”

Nikolaev picked up Pavel’s passport from a bedside table. “Paul Murray. Teacher at the Westminster School of English, Pushkinskaya. Tell me, do you like working at this school?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to stay in Russia?”

“Yes.”

“So tell me where is Ryan Evans?”

Pavel looked around the faces in the room. They were all scowling at him while they waited for an answer. “He said he was going to Kazakhstan.”

Nikolaev placed the passport back on the table. “Almaty?”

“Yes, that’s what he said.”

“Which is his room?”

Pavel showed them to the end of the corridor and opened Harper’s bedroom door. The men fanned out and rifled through the cupboards and drawers, but found nothing except clothes and a few teaching materials. Nikolaev picked up a tattered copy of Heart of a Dog from Harper’s pillow and flicked through the pages.

“Mr Literature,” he said, chucking the book to one of his agents.

Pavel looked at the stack of other titles next to Harper’s bed. There was more Bulgakov and several works of Turgenev . There was also Crime and Punishment .

“There is one other thing you might be interested in,” said Pavel.

Nikolaev stepped towards him. “Really? And what’s that?”

“I’ll show you.” Pavel took Nikolaev and one of the agents out of the flat and across the children’s playground to the garbage area.

“I saw him cut up one of his sim cards and chuck it in here the other day. It seemed very suspicious to me.”

Nikolaev smiled at the willingness of the foreigner in front of him to throw his colleague under the bus. “So what are you waiting for?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Find it.”

“What do you…” Pavel let out a small yelp as Nikolaev’s agent grabbed him under his arms and dumped him in the big metal bin. Pavel looked down at the bags of rotting food and old clothes.

“Find it,” said Nikolaev, drawing his pistol and pointing it at his face.

Tears started to stream down Pavel’s cheeks as he tore open the bags and fished around. He felt his hand plunge into something moist and pulled it up to find a baby’s nappy wrapped round his wrist. He kept sobbing as he searched and tried not to throw up. Fifteen minutes passed before he found the four squares of plastic sitting in a pizza box. He picked them up and handed them over.

“This must be it,” he said.

“Put this back together,” said Nikolaev, handing the shards to his agent. “And deport this fucking faggot out of my country.”

Walker snapped a couple of photos as the minibus wound its way up the mountain road. Varndon smiled politely as a father scolded his young daughter for pointing and giggling at the two Europeans. They continued on in silence until they reached the Koktebya, Almaty’s highest point and home to its looming television tower. They came to a stop next to a small fairground. The rides were static and tourists looked thin on the ground. The little girl dragged her father out of the minibus and ran excitedly towards a small carousel. The owners of makeshift market stalls looked hopefully at Walker and Varndon, waving their hands over the collection of horse statues and clothing colored with the blue and yellow flag of Kazakhstan. They both browsed a little before excusing themselves and taking the paved walkway into the small park.

“They’re not very pushy these Kazakhs,” said Walker. “If this was Egypt, he’d still be walking alongside me, waving some piece of tat in my face.”

“Well, it’s not Egypt, I can tell you that for certain.”

The stalls and the rides disappeared as they made their way further into the park. Near to the end, the trees closed in and the path jutted off to the right. They ducked through and emerged out onto a viewing platform. A man in a leather coat stood facing out towards the panoramic view. A nearby office block mimicked the jagged peaks of the snow-capped mountains. The rest of the city stretched off into the distance, a footnote in the Soviet project, polished and modernized by the gushing tap of petrodollars. The man turned around. His Asian features gave him the look of some of the locals. Walker and Varndon hesitated for a second in case he was just that.

“Guys relax,” he said in a New York twang. “The agency thought sending a Korean American out here would have its advantages. Fucking racist huh? I should sue their asses.”

Walker laughed. Varndon said nothing.

“I’m Billy. Lonaghan told me to take you through the operation.”