6
Miranda waited, hovering in the dining room, and stepped forward as I appeared. She wore a blue wool suit with rows of bronze-coloured beads and would have fitted un-remarkably into the London business scene. Her hair was clean and well-shaped, and she had the poise of one accustomed to organising.
"You can sit here," she said, indicating a stretch of tables beside a long row of windows. "Mrs Chase will be joining you shortly."
"Thank you."
"Now," she said, "tomorrow…."
"Tomorrow," I said pleasantly, "I thought Mrs Chase and I would walk around Red Square before we meet with deputy prosecutor general Ozdoyev."
"But we can add you on one of the guided tours," she said persuasively. "There is a special two-hour tour of the Kremlin, with a visit to the armoury."
"We'd rather not," I said, "this is difficult enough for Mrs Chase as it is."
She looked annoyed, but after another fruitless try, she told me that our lunch was at one-thirty when the Kremlin party returned. "Then, at one-thirty, there is the bus tour of the city."
"We're catching our flight back the day after tomorrow, and I don't think we'll have time."
I sensed the release of tension within her. Visitors who made their way were a problem, and from past experiences, I clearly understood why.
The tables began to fill. Amber joined me, looking very glamourous, a middle-aged couple from Suffolk accompanied us. We exchanged the sort of platitudes that tourists throw together by chance to demonstrate non-aggression, and the Suffolk lady commented on the extent of the airport search.
Continuing with our small-talk, without giving anything away, we all shaped up to some greyish meat of indiscernible origin. Of course, the ice cream coming later was better, but one would not, I thought, have made the journey for the gastronomical delights.
Duty done, we set off to the Hotel Metropol in overcoats and our woolly scarf's, with sleet stinging our faces and wetting our hair and a sharp wind invading every crevice. Pavements and the roads glistened but were not yet icy, but the cold was still piercing, and I could feel it sense it inside my lungs. All it would take to abort would be a conclusive bout of pneumonia. For a minute, I wanted to open my arms to the chill: but anything was better than the isolation of looking at hotel bedroom walls.
The bar of the Hotel Metropol was a matter of shady luxury, like an Edwardian pub gone to seed. Rugs covered the floor, four tables with eight each, and a few separate small tables for three or four. Most of the chairs appeared occupied, and a two-deep row in front of the bar stretched across one room. The voices around us spoke English, German, French, and many other tongues, but no one enquiring of every couple whether he was Quintus Noone or Amber Chase, newly arrived from England.
After an unaccosted few minutes, we turned to the bar, and I bought two whiskies in due course. It was by then nine-fifteen. We drank for a while standing up, and then, when one of the small tables became free, sitting down, but we drank alone. Making small talk like nervous newlyweds. At nine thirty-five, I bought another drink for both of us, and at nine-fifty, I joked with Amber that every mission would be as successful. I wouldn't need pneumonia to have me withdrawn.
At ten o'clock, I looked at my watch and finished my drink. A man separated himself from the row of drinkers at the bar and put two new tumblers on the table.
"Mrs Chase?" he said, pulling up an empty chair and sitting down. "And you must be Quintus Noone. Sorry to keep you two both waiting."
He had been present, the whole time, standing at the bar, exchanging platitudes with a group of men and women, or looking down into his glass in the way of habitual drinkers, as if find solace at the bottom of a glass.
"Why did you?" Amber asks. "Keep us waiting?"
The only response was a grunt and an expressionless look from a pair of hard grey eyes as he pushed the tumblers our way as if that would be enough to appease us. He was solid and in his thirties and wore his jacket open. He had black hair going a little thin on top and a neck like a strong tree trunk.
"You two want to be careful in Moscow," he said.
"Is that right?" I say. "Do you have a name?"
"Lewis Barfield," he paused, but I'd never heard of him. "I am a London-based private investigator with a direct line to the Russian government."
"How do you do," Amber said politely but didn't offer a hand and nor did I.
"This is no kid's playground," he said, "I'm telling you for your good."
"What do you want, Mr Barfield?" I pressed with a hint of impatience.
"I'm here to suggest that Mrs Chase makes a trade with deputy prosecutor general Ozdoyev."
Amber frowns. "What sort of trade?"
"You will tell prosecutors about your ex-husband's business dealings in Russia and his connection to Igor Akinfeev, and the prosecutors will tell you what they know about your ex-husband's money."
"How come you're their intermediary?" I ask. "And how did you know we were here, and on what errand, and staying at the Majestic? And were you able to telephone me within sixty minutes of my arrival?"
Barfield gave me a flat, stiff, expressionless stare.
"Your reputation proceeds you, Mr Noone." He took a mouthful of his drink. "But you're on my turf now, and I make it my business to know things. So, for example, I know Robbie Chase had to answer questions about his multi-financed Moscow project in court, and files found relating to his deal are on a hard drive seized on the judge's orders. The ruse to funnel Akinfeev's money into the development with Chase characterising the secret payment as a private loan to help him keep the scheme going. So now I am hoping that Mrs Chase has brought the hard drive along because, without it, Ozdoyev won't do a deal."
"Thank you for giving us the heads up," I say. "If we need anything else, how can we contact you?"
He pulled a spiral-bound notebook out of his pocket and wrote down his number, ripping off the page and handing it to me.
"If you need to contact me, use a public telephone. Not the ones in your rooms."
Barfield went back to his group at the bar, who had now turned their attention to a woman well over six- feet tall, with white-blonde hair, sharp-angled features, and penetrating dark eyes, drinking what looked to be champagne.
We finished our drinks and left, hurrying the two hundred yards back to the Majestic in heavier sleet, turning to snow. We collected our keys and went up in the lift, going our separate ways after a kiss on the cheek once we reached the eighth floor.
I said good evening in English to the skinny woman who sat at a desk to keep an eye on the corridor. Anyone coming from the lifts or the stairs had to pass her. She gave me a quick inspection and said what I was supposed to be goodnight in Russian.
My room overlooked Gorky Street. Drawing the curtains, I switched on the bedside light.
Something was indefinably different in the way my personal belongings lay tidily around. I pulled open a drawer and felt my skin contract in fear and ripple down my back and legs. While we had been out, someone had searched my room.
7After breakfast, the receptionist summoned us, where two prominent men stood with impassive faces, flat uniformed caps, and long grey coats.One of them handed Amber a stuck-down envelope addressed to her. Inside there was a brief hand-written note, saying simply. "Please, accompany my officers," and below that, "Deputy Prosecutor General Ozdoyev."During our progress through the foyer, there were several frightened glances. The bulk and intent of our two escorts were unmistakable. No one wanted to be involved in our situation.They had arrived in a large black official car with a uniformed driver. They gestured to us to sit together in the back, and I gave Amber a reassuring squeeze of her hand as the vehicle set off and made unerringly for Dzerzhinsky Square.The long façade of the Lubyanka loomed one side, looking like a friendly insurance-company building if one didn't know better. Finally, however, the car swept past its large sides a
8Unsurprisingly, Ozdoyev did not offer a lift, and after collecting our coats, shuddered out into the saturated air. As darkness fell, it seemed to be colder than ever, and Amber linked her arm in mine and moved closer to me so that we could share our little body warmth.There were even fewer cars than usual to mow one down and not another pedestrian in sight, let alone a policeman."Did I do the right thing?" Amber asked in due course."Of course, you did," I answer. "The Russian's want that hard drive as much as you want to know the whereabouts of your ex-husband's money."The Majestic Hotel lay in the distance down the hill, with its canopy stretching out over the street. I turned up my coat collar, wondering why most of the centre of the top was an intentional hole rectangular hole, like a skylight without glass, open to every drop of rain or snow which care to fall. As a shelter for people arriving and departing, the canopy was a non-starter.
9My room looked calm and sane to reassure me that tourists were safe to roam the city's main streets.It could happen in London, I thought. It could happen in New York and Paris, and Rome. What was so different about Moscow?I threw my coat and room key onto the bed, poured a large reviver from the duty-free whisky, and sank onto the sofa to drink it.The attack had been, perhaps, an abduction attempt. Without glasses, I could have been a pushover. They could have got us in the car. And the drive? To what destination?Did Amber expect me to stick to the task until I was dead? Probably not, I thought, but then I don't think Amber underestimated the whole situation.More than anything, I could be lucky again. But, failing that, I had better be careful. My heart gradually steadied, breath quietened to normal.I drank the whisky and felt better.After a while, I put down my glass and picked up the box containing a pay-as-you-go mo
10A limousine collected us about seven o'clock that evening, and we sped down the Komsomolsky Prospect, and I looked two or more three-times out of the window. A black car followed us faithfully, but we were on the main road where that would happen anyway.We arrived outside a restaurant ten minutes late because more snow falling clogged the public transport and taxis almost to a standstill. There was a short queue outside shivering, but the chauffeur led us past the row and opened the firmly shut door.The place was packed, and somewhere there was some music. Led to the one empty table, a bottle of vodka materialised within five seconds."Of the two decent restaurants in Moscow," a voice said behind us, "I like this the better."We turned to find Ozdoyev, standing there accompanied by a tall, slim, and beautiful young woman, wearing a deep-blue velvet jumpsuit and high-heels which made her taller than me, and I am over six-foot."This is m
11The flight home was met at Gatwick at three in the afternoon by Blanche, who, after dropping Amber off to re-join her children, whisked me off to another crime scene."What's happened?" I asked as we headed towards Ascot."Igor Akinfeev died this morning," she replies, her eyes fixed on the road ahead."Don't tell me, suicide," I say, without feeling."Police have been quick to announce that there is nothing suspicious about the death," she says."Who found him?""Avron Cohen, his bodyguard, returned from running errands early this morning. When he knocked on the bathroom door, there was no reply. The missed calls on the oligarch's mobile, which he rarely left unattended, was another reason for concern. So finally, Cohen, an ex-Mossad agent who had guarded Akinfeev for six years, kicked down the door. Inside, Akinfeev was lying on the bathroom floor on his back. A length of a scarf tied tightly around his throat. Overhead, another
12Elena Koshka did not believe that her ex-husband Igor Akinfeev committed suicide. However, when Akinfeev and his wife Elena divorced five years ago, he was ordered to pay her up to £200 million, making it the costliest marriage split in British legal history.She lives in Kensington, west London, in a penthouse overlooking Hyde Park on the first floor of a Georgian row that has probably featured in every BBC period drama since television began. I half expect to see horse-drawn carriages outside, and women are parading in hats.Elena isn't wearing a hat. Instead, her short blonde hair is off in her face with a headband and clad in black spandex shorts, a white sports bra, and a light blue T-shirt with a looping neckline.A gym membership card dangles from a bulky set of keys that must help burn calories simply by being lugged around."Excuse me, Miss Koshka. Do you have a moment?""Whatever you're selling, I'm not buying.""It
13My answering machine is flashing. There are two messages.The first is from Blanche Bradbury:Hi Quintus, it's Blanche. I'm at the mortuary. Can you meet me there? Clunk!Detective Inspector Brooks.Mr Noone, I need to speak to you. Would you mind giving me a call?Just after eight, I dress in casual clothes and make my way to the mortuary. Someone followed me.I didn't know by who, but I just sensed it. Unrecognisable faces in everyday places.Blanche Bradbury wore a dark-blue jumpsuit beneath a surgical gown and a bright yellow face mask covering her mouth and nose. Without any apparent awareness of how lovely she looked, she moved nimbly around the table, taking measurements, her white tennis shoes protected by green plastic covers.She crosses to the whiteboard to scribble up the initial statistics, talking all the time above the squeak of her felt pen. "Alexi Zelenyy weighs one-hundred-f
14Blanche is driving her Mercedes.The suspension is soft; it's like a waterbed on wheels."What do we know about Kayla Zelenyy?" Blanche asks."Kayla Zelenyy is a Georgian businesswoman and philanthropist and now the widow of Alexi Zelenyy. Last year the Sunday Times estimated her wealth at £650m, making her the 196th wealthiest person in the UK. She is the founder and President of the Zelenyy Foundation that supports education initiatives in Georgia. She has two daughters, Marina and Sasha. The death of her husband will spark one of the biggest estate battles ever. Kayla has extensive business and property interests in Georgia and across the rest of the world."She raises her forefinger from the steering wheel. "This is the place."We pull up outside a twelve-foot-high gate attached to a couple of pillars. A perimeter wall stretched around the estate on either side, topped with broken bottles that sprout from the concrete.Th