Cold (24 page)

‘And then the rest of the family, ten now, were made to walk to the railway where they were shoved into an old cattle train. Me, I was so young and soft for Evgeny, I followed them at a distance and as the carriage was about to be shut I ran forward and threw in a sausage and a loaf of bread for my family. A policeman picked me up, bodily, and pushed me into the carriage and slammed the door shut. Outside I could hear screaming, it was my mother, she had run after me, and she had found her uncle, the policeman, and eventually the door was opened and the uncle got me out, and I didn’t want to leave my papa and Evgeny and the rest of the family, and the uncle hit me, hard, then threw me off the train and my mother caught me and shrieked at me and the train started to move and blew its whistle and I can’t hear that sound without remembering the worst day in my whole life.

‘And if people say Stalin was good, or Stalin was strong, say nothing but take it from your mother, Stalin was a bad man. With all the good farmers shot or sent to Siberia, there was no food. I ended up so thin my arms and legs were like sticks. God knows how many people died in the war against the kulaks – they called it collectivisation– and the famine that followed. Nine of my family died. Only Evgeny came back, bald, half blind, with no teeth. And by the time he came back, after Stalin died, I had married your father. And, officially, there was no famine.’

That was the first moment when Gennady realised that history was one thing in books, in school, and another thing from the lips of your own mother who lived it.

His phone rang. Yellow Face, as good as her word.

‘Five cops came to the morgue tonight to talk to Malevensky,’ she said. ‘An inspector general, another guy – a real weasel, a bit important – and three ordinary cops. Two had hard faces, nothing doing, but the third seemed soft, a bit fat, flabby. Scared, like he knew something but was desperate for no one to find out. He left the meeting in the morgue to go for a piss. When he came across me in the corridor, he almost fainted. I explained what had happened, that I had drunk the wrong kind of moonshine, but that the people who made money out of it were well connected and nothing would happen to them. He felt sorry for me, said it was wrong, gave me five hundred roubles.’

‘That won’t keep you from being hungry for long.’

‘No. But he was a nice cop. If you’re trying to find something out, he’s the one I would go to.’

‘Did you get his name?’

‘No.’

‘Well, what good is that?’

‘I drew him. Before, before . . .’ Her voice dried up a little and then she came back, stronger, harder: ‘I studied art at college. I was going to be an artist. It’s not a bad likeness.’

‘So?’

‘He’s a cop. He may be based out in the sticks for all I know, but he’s got to go see the boss every now and then. You hang out outside the police station, you see the cop in my drawing, you ask him what’s going on.’

‘That’s a good idea.’

‘What did you use to do?’

‘I was a general.’

‘Keeping the Czechs down, beating up the Poles?’

‘No. Angola, Cuba, Afghanistan.’

‘Well, get with it, General.’

He chuckled. ‘Hey, I’ll see you tomorrow morning, first thing, say nine o’clock. I’d better not go inside the hospital. They might be waiting for me.’

‘Yeah. Everybody’s talking about you, the crazy old guy who beat up the useless pathologist.’

‘Nice. I drive a black Volga with furry dice. By the way, thank you very much for all that you’re doing to help. I don’t even know your name.’

‘Iryna.’ And she rang off.

Gennady hadn’t been able to sleep when the phone had rung. Now that coincidence had drummed in his loss, everything was grim – grimmer than before.

LONDON HEATHROW AIRPORT

A
t twelve noon on the dot, an inconspicuous green van drove up to a bay in the airside cargo warehouse section of Heathrow Airport. A vast, corrugated metal door, big enough to welcome a passenger jet, started rising, and when the height was sufficient, the van drove into the bay. Close to an office built in the cargo bay’s wall stood three black Range Rovers, beside them thirteen men in black. On the far side of the bay stood a Gulfstream jet with Red Cross signs on its fuselage; by its steps, a uniformed nurse guarded two stretchers on wheels.

The green van screeched to a stop close to the Gulfstream, its rear doors opened and a big wooden box, the size of two coffins side by side, was shoved out and landed on the concrete with a great clap. The van accelerated and swung out of the bay, sashaying out onto the exit road.

Reikhman was the first to the wooden box. One of the toughs threw him a crowbar; he caught it smoothly and began to prise open the lid. Inside were two plastic mannequins and a stuffed toy dog. Reikhman picked up the toy and squeezed it with iron fingers. It cried out:
Woof! Woof!

He used his phone to take a photograph of the contents of the box, emailed it, then punched in a number.

The phone answered: ‘Weaver speaking.’

‘Look what you sent me. Two dolls and a toy dog. The deal is off.’

‘The deal stays on. We had an unexpected internal problem that can easily be rectified.’

‘How?’

Weaver said two sentences and Reikhman, smiling, said, ‘The English are so sentimental. OK. Tomorrow, same time.’ He hit disconnect, then his phone rang.

‘Reikhman speaking.’

‘Where is my little nephew?’ It was Grozhov. ‘You’re two days late. Come home to uncle. Come home. Or things may not go well for you.’

Reikhman turned his back on his men, standing by their vehicles, and walked off a few steps to try and get some privacy for this, the trickiest of phone calls. ‘Grozhov, I have something to attend to. It’s important.’

‘Important to you. But not to us. Come home.’

‘Give me twenty-four hours.’

‘Little Anatoly, you have been trying to trade things you do not own, without authority.’ Reikhman’s heart pumped fast, faster. How on earth did Grozhov know? ‘Anatoly, turn around.’

He did so, to face his men training their weapons on him, seven shotguns and five light machine pistols. He’d left his bazooka in the lead Range Rover. The voice of his old master through the phone was seductive, reassuring, calming: ‘Little Anatoly, we can sort this out, but your loving uncle needs to see you in person, here, at home. Do you see the nurse? She has something for you.’ The call died.

Helpless, tears in his eyes, Reikhman was immobile. The nurse, antiseptically attractive in a white uniform, dark hair pinned severely, walked up to him, gently rolled up his right sleeve and delicately inserted the tip of a hypodermic needle into his skin. Reikhman leant his weight against one of the stretchers and, still conscious, lay down, his eyes closed.

The pilot of the Gulfstream started the checklist sequence, prior to firing up the engines. On his laptop manifest he deleted
Two passengers and one animal
, and filled in
One passenger, requiring medical attention
.

LONDON

T
he Special Forces Club was tucked away in a back street not far from Knightsbridge, in between a dodgy private bank and an anonymous, high-end brothel. Of the three institutions, the club’s clientele was the seediest, the most ill at ease, and had the manner of men and women most in need of a quiet bung and a quick screw. As he approached the club, Lightfoot knelt down to fix an already beautifully tied shoelace, did an inconspicuous 360-degree inspection of anyone who might be following him – mainly, but not entirely, for old time’s sake – stood up, walked up a couple of steps and pressed a buzzer. The door sprung open and he was greeted by a young woman reading
Gazeta Wyborcza
on her iPhone and eating a packet of cheese and onion crisps. She held a crisp up to her mouth, paused, clocked Lightfoot, nodded at him, then carried on eating the crisp.

In the old days, you would have had an ex-guardsman on the door of the Special Forces Club. No wonder the country was going to the dogs, thought Lightfoot. But as he mounted the staircase lined by a gallery of photographs of former members, many of them in the Special Operations Executive and executed by the Nazis, he regretted his silent burst of petty English chauvinism. Poles, French, Romanians, Russians – White and Red – Czechoslovakians, Albanians, Dutch, Norwegians, Italians, Greeks and Danes . . . every European nation occupied by the Nazis was represented on that wall. Black-and-white photographs of men with Errol Flynn moustaches and women with Vera Lynn hairdos and impossible-to-spell surnames made him straighten his back and smooth his tie.

Lightfoot had a hunch that the Irishman who said he was a special needs teacher wasn’t telling the whole story, and the man he was going to meet over lunch might be able to tell him something more. He was a retired chief superintendent in what used to be the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and something of a talker.

Two hours later, Lightfoot left the club and headed for Hyde Park. He needed fresh air to clear his head. His RUC contact wasn’t completely certain, but his evidence tended to confirm Lightfoot’s instinct, that there was far more to the quiet Irishman than he had suspected on first contact. Lightfoot couldn’t do the easy thing and ask his masters just exactly who it was he was supposed to be babysitting because his security clearance was only so high. Hence the private chat with the RUC man. The word in West Belfast was, he’d told Lightfoot, that Tiplady and chums had been to some kind of terrorist Eton, probably in Libya.
Not bad for a Paddy
, he thought, and ruefully touched the side of his head where Joe had hit him with the tea tray.

Lightfoot was walking parallel with Rotten Row, enjoying the spectacle of a fine black stallion at gallop, when his phone rang. The interruption was not entirely welcome.

‘My name is Crone and I’m told on good authority that you have screwed up a deal that was very important to the safety and security of the people of the United States of America. Is that correct, Mr Lightfoot?’

‘That’s Mr Jed Crone of the Central Intelligence Agency?’

‘It is.’

‘Yes, I’d heard that you were cross. In fact, it seems a lot of people are. I’m most terribly sorry and it won’t happen again.’

‘Are you screwing with me?’

‘What answer would you like me to give to that question, Mr Crone?’

‘OK, answer this – the Irish terrorist, the Russian hooker, where are they?’

‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure who you mean.’

‘I mean Tiplady, Koremedova.’

‘Oh,
Mr
Tiplady and
Ms
Koremedova.’ They had both hit him hard on the head; still, they’d had their reasons. It amused him not to reflect that in this conversation.

‘Where are they?’

‘I’m terribly sorry to say this, Mr Crone, but I don’t know exactly.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t know exactly?’

‘I mean I don’t know exactly. Mr Crone, may I speak frankly?’

The line went silent. Three thousand miles away in Langley, something inside Crone’s head throbbed unpleasantly.

‘You may.’

‘I am naturally concerned that the Central Intelligence Agency is displeased with me. But then it is an organ of the United States, and not every judgement of that country has been for the best. Please note it was created in
Anno Domini
1776. I would point out to you that my local pub, The Bear and Ragged Staff, is two centuries older than your country, and if that’s a problem for you I don’t care, and nor does my boss. And if I knew where
Mr
 Tiplady and
Ms
 Koremedova were – and who knows, I might have a bit of a clue – I wouldn’t tell you. It is true that Her Majesty’s Government has agreed an arrangement with you. However, not everything that Her Majesty’s Government does is necessarily entirely right in the judgement of Her Majesty. And, Mr Crone, I don’t work for it. I work for her.’

A sound crossed the Atlantic, probably some form of telephonic burp, but it may have been a gulp.

NOVO-DZERZHINSKY

Y
ellow Face had real talent. She’d drawn the police officer from memory, but from behind the mask of uniform and peaked hat his character – a knobbly, pobbly-nosed face and kind eyes – timidly peeped out.

Gennady held the drawing to the light. ‘This is a Rembrandt.’

Yellow Face grinned. A police car prowled by but in an old black Volga, driven by a lost generation of the poor, Gennady and Iryna were all but invisible. She tapped the window with a bile-yellow knuckle.

‘Why do you drive this junk?’

‘I am a Soviet nostalgic.’

That earned a snort of derision.

‘Yeah, well, I am an old man. True, a lot of it was shit.’

‘It was
all
shit.’

‘And now? The gangsters who did this to you? In the old days, they would have been squashed like bugs.’

She shrugged. ‘Maybe you’re right. I’d better go. They pretend to try to cure me every now and then.’

‘Iryna?’ His eyes pricked a bit.

‘What?’

‘Iryna, take care. I’m sorry . . . my daughter, she was called Iryna too. It gets to me at strange moments.’ He dabbed away the tear with the back of his hand. ‘Iryna, can I ask you, how long have you got?’

‘They said a year – six months ago. Kidney dialysis is too expensive and even the good doctors, the ones who don’t charge too much, say it won’t help because the damage to my liver and kidneys is too severe. Three of my friends, all Yellow Faces, died last month. The winter is the worst for us. Good luck with the cops today.’ She tapped a finger on her drawing. ‘Find him.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘If you have no luck, I have a friend, he comes to the hospital every now and then. He knows all the cops – the good ones, but better, he knows the bent ones.’

‘How come?’

‘He’s on krokodil.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You don’t want to know. Call me if you have no luck.’