Robert Harris - Archangel

'Girlfriend?'

'No girlfriends either.'

She shivered and thrust her hands deep into her pockets. It had stopped snowing, and now that the metal door had closed behind them the night was silent.

She said, 'What's your hotel?'

'The Ukraina.'

She rolled her eyes.

'Listen,' he began, but he had no name to ease the conversation. 'Listen, I don't want to sleep with you. Or rather,' he corrected himself, 'I do, but that isn't what I had in mind.'

Was that clear?

'Ah,' she said, and looked knowing - looked like a whore for the first time, in fact. 'Whatever you want, it's still two hundred.'

'Do you have a car?'

'Yes.' She paused. 'Why?'

'The truth is,' he said, wincing at the lie, 'I'm a friend of your father's. I want you to take me to see him -'

That shocked her. She reeled back, laughing, panicky. 'You don't know my father.'

'Rapava. His name's Papu Rapava.'

She stared at him, slack mouthed, then slapped his face -hard, the heel of her hand connecting with the edge of his cheekbone - and started walking away, fast, stumbling a little: it couldn't have been easy in high heels on freezing snow. He let her go. He wiped his mouth with his fingers. They came away black with something. Not blood he realised: lipstick. Oh, but she packed a punch, though: he was hurting. Behind him, the door had opened. He was aware of people watching, and a murmur of disapproval. He could guess what they were thin king: rich westerner gets honest Russian girl outside, tries to renegotiate the terms, or suggests something so disgusting she can only turn and run bastard He set off after her.

She had veered on to the virgin snow of the pitch and had stopped, somewhere near the halfway line, staring into the dark sky. He trod along the path of her small footprints, came up behind her and waited, a couple of yards away.

After a while, he said, 'I don't know who you are. And I don't want to know who you are. And I won't tell your father how I found him. I won't tell anyone. I give you my word. I just want you to take me to where he lives. Take me to where he lives and I'll give you two hundred dollars.'

She didn't turn. He couldn't see her face.

'Four hundred,' she said.

FELIKS SUVORIN, IN a dark blue Crombie overcoat from Saks of Fifth Avenue, had arrived at the Lubyanka in the snow a little after eight that evening, sweeping up the slushy hill in the back of an official Volga.

His path had been eased by a call from Yuri Arsenyev to his old buddy, Nikolai Oborin - hunting crony, vodka partner and nowadays chief of the Tenth Directorate, or the Special Federal Archive Resource Bureau, or whatever the Squirrels had decided to call themselves that particular week.

'Now listen, Niki, I've got a young fellow in the office with me, name of Suvorin, and we've come up with a ploy ... That's him . . . Now, listen, Niki, I can't say more than this:

there's a foreign diplomat - western, highly placed - he's got a racket going, smuggling... No, not icons, this time, wait for it - documents - and we thought we'd lay a trap

That's it, that's it, you're way ahead of me, comrade -something big, something irresistible . . Yes, that's an idea, but what about this: what about that notebook the old NKVDers used to go on about, what was it? . . . That's it, "Stalin's testament" . . . Well, this is why I'm calling now. We've got a problem. He's meeting the target tomorrow .

Tonight? He can do tonight, Niki, I'm certain - I'm looking at him now, he's nodding - he can do tonight...'

Suvorin hadn't even had to repeat the tale, let alone elaborate upon it. Once inside the Lubyanka's marble hall, his papers checked, he'd followed his instructions and called a man named Blok, who was expecting him. He stood around the empty lobby, watched by the silent, uncurious guards and contemplated the big white bust of Andropov, and presently there were footsteps. Blok - an ageless creature, stooped and dusty, with a bunch of keys on his belt - led him into the depths of the building, then out into a dark, wet courtyard and across it and into what looked like a small fortress. Up the stairs to the second floor: a small room, a desk, a chair, a wood-block floor, barred windows -'How much do you want to see?'

'Everything.'

'That's your decision,' said Blok, and left.

Suvorin had always preferred to look ahead rather than to live in the past: something else he admired about the Americans. What was the alternative for a modern Russian? Paralysis! The end of history struck him as an excellent idea. History couldn't end soon enough, as far as Feliks Suvorin was concerned.

But even he could not escape the ghosts in this place. After a minute he got to his feet and prowled around. Craning his head at the high window he found he could see up to the narrow strip of night sky, and then down to the tiny windows, level with the earth, that marked the old Lubyanka cells. He thought of Isaak Babel, down there somewhere, tortured into betraying his friends, then frantically retracting, and of Bukharin, and his final letter to Stalin ('I feel, toward you, toward the Party. toward the cause as a whole nothing but great and boundless love.~ I embrace you in my thoughts, farewell forever . . .') and of Zinoviev, disbelieving, being dragged away by his guard to be shot ('Please comrade, please, for God~ sake call Josef Vissarionovich...')

He pulled out his mobile phone, tapped in the familiar number and spoke to his wife.

'Hi, you'll never guess where I am . . . Who's to say?' He felt better immediately for hearing her voice. 'I'm sorry about tonight. Hey, kiss the babies for me, will you ...? And one for you, too, Serafima Suvorina...

The secret police was beyond the reach of time and history. It was protean. That was its secret. The Cheka had become the GPU, and then the OGPU, and then the NKVD, and then the NKGB, and then the MGB, and then the MVD, and finally the KGB: the highest stage of evolution. And then, lo and behold!, the mighty KGB itself had been obliged by the failed coup to mutate into two entirely new sets of initials: the SVR - the spies - stationed out at Yasenevo, and the FSB - internal security - still here, in the Lubyanka, amid the bones.

And the view in the Kremlin's highest reaches was that the FSB, at least, was really nothing more than the latest in the long tradition of rearranged letters - that, in the immortal words of Boris Nikolaevich himself, delivered to Arsenyev in the course of a steam bath at the Presidential dacha, 'those motherfuckers in the Lubyanka are still the same old motherfuckers they always were'. Which was why, when the President decreed that Vladimir Mamantov had to be investigated, the task could not be entrusted to the FSB, but had to be farmed out to the SVR - and never mind if they hadn't the resources.

Suvorin had four men to cover the city. He called Vissari Netto for an update. The situation hadn't changed: the primary target - No. 1 - had still not returned to his apartment, the target's wife - No. 2 - was still under sedation, the historian - No. 3-was still at his hotel and now having dinner.

'Lucky for some,' muttered Suvorin. There was a clatter in the corridor. 'Keep me informed,' he added firmly, and pressed END. He thought it sounded like the right kind of thing to say.

He had been expecting one file, maybe two. Instead, Blok threw open the door and wheeled in a steel trolley stacked with folders - twenty or thirty of them - some so old that when he lost control of the heavy contraption and collided with the wall, they sent up protesting clouds of dust.

'That's your decision,' he repeated.

'Is this the lot?'

'This goes up to sixty-one. You want the rest?'

'Of course.

HE couldn't read them all. It would have taken him a month. He confined himself to untying the ribbon from each bundle, riffling through the torn and brittle pages to see if they contained anything of interest, then tying them up again. It was filthy work. His hands turned black. The spores invaded the membrane of his nose and made his head ache.