Robert Harris - Archangel

Ah! That was the thing. She hadn't died.

'Vavara Safanova?' repeated Kelso. He couldn't believe it. He exchanged a look with O'Brian. 'Anna Safanova's mother? Still alive?'

Still alive last month, said Tsarev. Still alive at eighty-five! It was written here. They could take a look. More than sixty years a faithful member - she had just paid her Party dues.

IT WAS MORNING in Moscow.

Suvorin was in the back of the car with Zinaida Rapava. Militia liaison was sitting up front with the driver. The doors were locked. The Volga was wedged in the stream of sluggish traffic on the road heading south towards Lytkarino.

The militia man was complaining. They should have come in a different car - to force their way through this lot needed revolving lights and sound effects. And who do you think you are? thought Suvorin. The President?

Zinaida's eyes looked bruised and puffy from lack of sleep. She wore a raincoat over her dress and her knees were turned towards the door, putting as much seat leather as she could between herself and Suvorin. He wondered if she knew where they were going. He doubted it. She seemed to have gone off somewhere into the heart of herself and barely to be aware of what was happening.

Where was Kelso? What was in the notebook? The same two questions, over and over, first at her place, then upstairs in the front office that the SVR maintained in downtown Moscow - the place where visiting western journalists were entertained by the Service's smiling, Americanized public relations officer. (See, gentlemen, how democratic we are! Now what can we do to help?) No coffee for her and no cigarettes, either, once she had smoked the last of her own. Write a statement, Zinaida, then we tear it up and we write it again, and again, as the clock drags on till nine, which is when Suvorin can play his ace.

She was as stubborn as her father.

In the old days, in the Lubyanka, they had operated a system called The Conveyer Belt: the suspect was passed between three investigators working eight-hour shifts in rotation. And after thirty-six hours without sleep most people would sign anything, incriminate anyone. But Suvorin didn't have back-up and he didn't have thirty-six hours. He yawned. His eyes seemed full of grit. He guessed he was as tired as she was.

His mobile telephone rang.

'Go ahead.'

It was Netto.

'Good morning, Vissari. What do you have?'

A couple of things, said Netto. One: the house in Vspolnyi Street. He had established that it belonged to a medium-sized property company called Moskprop, who were trying to let it for $15,000 a month. No takers so far.

'At that price? I'm not surprised.'

Two: it looked as though something had been dug up in the garden in the past couple of days. There was loose soil in one spot to a depth of five feet, and forensics reported traces of ferrous oxide in the earth. Something had been rusting away down there for years.

'Anything else?'

'No. Nothing on Mamantov. He's evaporated. And the colonel's agitated. He's been asking for you.'

'Did you tell him where I was?'

'No, lieutenant.'

'Good man.' Suvorin rang off. Zinaida was watching him.

'You know what I think?' said Suvorin, 'I think your old papa went and dug up that toolbox just before he died. And then I think he gave it to you. And then I reckon you gave it to Kelso.'

It was only a theory, but he thought he saw something flicker in her eyes before she turned away.

'You see,' he said, 'we will get there in the end. And we'll get there without you, if necessary. It's just going to take us more time, that's all.'

He settled back in his seat.

Wherever Kelso was, he thought, the notebook would be. And wherever the notebook was, Vladimir Mamantov would be as well - if not now, then very soon. So the answer to one question - where was Kelso? - would provide the solution to all three problems.

He glanced at Zinaida. Her eyes were closed. And she knew it, he was sure of it.

It was so infuriatingly simple.

He wondered if Kelso had any idea how physically close Mamantov might be to him at that moment, and how much danger he was in. But of course he wouldn't, would he? He was a westerner. He would think he was immune.

The journey dragged on.

THAT’S it,' said the militia man, pointing a thick forefinger.

'Up there, on the right.'

It looked a grim place in the rain, a warehouse of dull red brick, with small windows set behind the usual cobweb of iron bars. There was no nameplate beside the dingy entrance.

'Let's drive round the back,' suggested Suvorin. 'See if you can park.'

They swung right and right again, through open wooden gates, into an asphalt courtyard glistening in the wet. There was an old green ambulance with its windows painted out parked in one corner, next to a large black van. Big drums of corrugated metal were piled with white plastic sacks, tied with tape and stamped SURGICAL WASTE in red letters., Some had toppled off and split open, or been torn open by dogs, more like. Sodden, bloodied linen soaked up the rain.

The girl was sitting erect now, staring about her, beginning to guess where she was. The militia man levered his big frame out of the front seat and came round to open her door. She didn't move. It was Suvorin who had to take her gently by her arm and coax her out of the car.

'They've had to convert this place. And there's another warehouse out in Elektrostal, apparently. But there you are. That's the crime-wave for you. Even the dead are obliged to sleep rough. Come on, Zinaida. It's a formality. It has to be done. Besides, I'm told it often helps. We must always look our terrors in the eye.'

She shook her arm free of him and gathered her coat around herself and he realised that actually he was more nervous than she was. He had never seen a corpse before. Imagine it: a major of the former First Chief Directorate of the KGB and he had never seen a dead man. This whole case was proving an education.

They picked their way through the refuse, past a goods lift, and into the back of the warehouse - the militia man in the lead, then Zinaida, then Suvorin. It had been a cold store originally, for fish trucked north from the Black Sea, and there was still a slight tang of brine to the air, despite the smell of chemicals.

The policeman knew the drill. He put his head into a glassed-in office and shared a brief joke with whoever was inside, then another man appeared, shrugging on a white coat. He held back a high curtain of thick black rubber strips and they passed into a long corridor, wide enough to take a fork-lift truck, with heavy refrigerated doors off to either side.

In America - Suvorin had seen this on a video of a cops and robbers programme Serafina liked to watch - the bereaved could view their loved ones on a monitor, comfortably screened from the physical reality of death. In Russia, no such delicacy attended the extinct. But, there again~ in fairness to the authorities, it had to be said that they had done their best with limited resources. The viewing room - if approached from the street entrance - was out of sight of the refrigerators. Also, a couple of bowls of plastic flowers had been placed on a covered table, on either side of a brass cross. The trolley was in front of these, the outline of the body clear beneath the white sheet. Small~ thought Suvorin. He had expected a larger man.

He made sure he stood next to Zinaida. The militia man was beside his friend, the morgue technician. Suvorin nodded and the technician folded back the top part of the sheet.

Papu Rapavis mottled face, his thin grey hair combed back and neatly parted, stared through blackened eyelids at the peeling roof.

The militia man intoned the formal words in a bored voice, 'Witness, is this Papu Gerasimovich Rapava?'