East of the Sun (21 page)

Nick’s face froze when she told him. He got up, walked the single step to the kitchen window and looked out for a long time before he turned back to her.

‘It’s too dangerous. You can’t go.’

‘How can I not go?’ Amelia countered.

‘It’s most likely a trap.’

‘That may be so, but—’

‘Amelia,’ Nick said, leaning his hands on the table, a flash of impatience in his eyes, ‘have you forgotten the notes? Someone knows you’re here, they don’t like it and you’ve been warned off. What do you think their next step will be?’

Amelia fell silent, knowing that, no matter what he said, and no matter how convincing his arguments were, she would go to the meeting. Whether he was in agreement or not.

‘How can I not go?’ she said gently. What other argument could she offer? ‘I promised myself that I would pursue every possible lead.’

‘With the emphasis on “possible”, meaning every lead that holds a measure of promise.’

‘I think this does.’

Nick didn’t reply. There was no time for a long impasse.

Amelia came up with a compromise. ‘Fine then, you come too. You can arrive well ahead of me and wait near Molotov’s grave. If it is a trap, you’ll be there to help. But you cannot let anyone see you.’

He shot her a look, but didn’t argue further. Time was limited and they made brief plans. When he got up to leave an hour later, she felt a stab of fear, both for him and herself. He must have seen it, because he simply said ‘See you,’ as if nothing big lay ahead before he disappeared down the stairs.

‘See you,’ she echoed. She certainly hoped she would.

Novodevichy Convent and Cemetery lay to the southwest of the Moscow city centre. It had been one of the places Amelia and Robert had explored together when they’d first arrived. Not only was it an obvious place of worship, but also a site of particular beauty. Less popular than the churches in the Kremlin, and therefore less overrun by tourists, it had always managed to retain its calming, peaceful quality. Here visitors actually obeyed the unspoken request for silence, mainly because the spirituality of the complex of cathedrals and chapels compelled them to do so.

As Amelia arrived at the convent, her thoughts returned to the message delivered by Yuri, the kind old Canadian embassy security guard. She could only imagine how petrified he must have been to be visited by a stranger in the middle of the night. He would have realised immediately that there would be no choice but to act as the stranger’s messenger. She only hoped the old man’s senses hadn’t deserted him and that he’d relayed the message correctly.

She was far too early for the meeting with the so-called Mikhail, so instead of heading to the cemetery immediately, she entered the walled-in convent through the tall Transfiguration Gate-Church.

In this weather, there were even fewer visitors than on a normal day. Since the snow had started the previous night, it had only let up for brief periods. Now a wet greyness hung over the cluster of white buildings lining the western perimeter wall. Amelia bought a ticket from the attendant in the steamed-up kiosk and headed to Smolensk Cathedral in the centre of the convent complex. Its relative simplicity compared with many other Russian churches had always appealed to her. It was the oldest building on the convent’s grounds and had been Amelia’s favourite from the first time she’d seen it. Until now.

Today the onion domes, high walls and striking sixteenth century frescoes did nothing to calm her nerves. All she could think about was the impending meeting, the possible danger, but above all, the answers she might find.

Now, several hours after her conversation with Nick, she was glad about the compromise. It was good to know that Nick would be out there somewhere, even if he would be hidden from view. She glanced at her watch. She still had half an hour to kill before she had to leave to meet Mikhail. She touched the wad of cash through the leather of her handbag, making sure for the hundredth time that it was still there.

Most average Russians would still consider sixty thousand roubles a large sum of money, but it was far from the excesses the Russian crime world sometimes dealt in. Depending on the exchange rate of the day, it was somewhere around two thousand dollars. Money she would happily part with if she could gain useful information in doing so.

Like Nick, she’d been unsure of how to view the demand for money and the relatively modest amount that was stipulated. Did it mean this was just an amateur who had somehow learnt of her situation and wanted to extort money? Or was there a bigger force at work, trying to confuse her by hiding behind this demand for money? Or could the message really be from someone who’d been involved in Robert’s disappearance, perhaps a member of the Russian Mafia, who now wanted to sell his two cents’ worth of information?

Apart from the attendant seated on a chair inside the doorway and a huddle of old ladies silently lighting candles and whispering their urgent prayers, Amelia was the only other person in the cathedral. Once more she did a slow 360-view of the frescoes, her hand resting on a massive column to her left. It was truly beautiful and beyond impressive.

‘Why are you early?’ a voice spoke suddenly at her shoulder.

She whirled around. He was leaning against the column and was slightly turned away, as if he was a casual visitor viewing the frescoes on the wall behind her. She hadn’t heard or seen him come in. His face was half-hidden, courtesy of a thick scarf and a hat pulled low over his eyes.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You are early. Why?’ he asked again, more impatiently. He spoke English, although his accent was heavy.

‘Did you bring the money?’ he asked when she didn’t answer, still keeping his face away from her and the light.

She ignored his question. ‘Who are you?’

‘Mikhail,’ he replied with heavy sarcasm, implying that surely she had to know it was just a name plucked out of the air.

Amelia cursed her own nervousness. She was supposed to be demanding facts and cooperation, but instead she was making one nervous blunder after another. She took a breath, mentally calming herself down, and tried again.

‘Who sent you?’

‘No one,’ he replied very quickly. He glanced at her for a brief second and all she could make out were dark eyes and thick eyebrows, perhaps a slight central-Asian element to the shape of his eyes.

‘Follow me in five minutes. Come to the cemetery.’ He turned away and disappeared behind the column as noiselessly as he had appeared. Amelia stood frozen to the spot. This was it. It was actually happening.

Nervously she glanced at her watch, noting the time. The old women had finally lit all the candles they’d wanted to and were on their way out too. Soon she was alone. She counted the slow seconds and when it was time, raised her eyes to the icons lining the wall, hoping their presence would have a positive influence on the meeting to come.

She retraced her steps, exiting again through the Transfiguration Gate-Church, turned right and took another right onto Luzhnetsky Street. It wasn’t far, but the time it took to walk the 400 metres or so to the cemetery’s entrance, felt like an eternity.

What an eerie place, she thought and shivered in her coat. She knew from the cemetery’s map she’d found in an old guidebook in Nick’s friend’s apartment that she had to walk straight down the central path for a while, then take a sharp right to get to the graves next to the boundary wall. This was where Molotov’s grave was located, where she would have her meeting with the stranger.

As she walked through the gates, a hand gripped her elbow tightly, painfully.

‘Come,’ the voice she recognised as Mikhail’s commanded. ‘Come, faster!’ he snarled again. She had no choice but to follow him. His steely grip was impossible to shake off. He marched her down the central path and soon yanked her roughly to the left and into a row of old graves. With sudden, horrible dread Amelia realised that Nick would be waiting at the opposite end of the vast cemetery. He would never see or hear her from his hiding place. How stupid they had been!

In her panic, she kept stumbling, but Mikhail showed no mercy and simply pulled harder on her arm. She struggled to move her feet quickly enough over the uneven, snowy surface.

‘Please, slow down,’ she gasped, her throat burning.

Just as suddenly as he had gripped her elbow, he pulled her to the right, behind a tall headstone, and released her arm. Amelia glanced around frantically. They were hidden from view by the enormous headstone. In different circumstances she might have been able to laugh at the overly dramatic angular stone pointing to heaven and the incongruous angels perched on its corners, but right now all she could focus on was her cold fear at Mikhail’s apparent rage.

‘Give it to me!’ he demanded and made a movement for the bag that was still, miraculously, despite the feverish run over the bumpy terrain, slung over her shoulder.

Amelia stepped back, fear churning in her chest. She wasn’t about to surrender it without a fight.

‘No, stop!’ she shouted at him, holding a hand out in front of her. The gesture was absurd, but to her surprise he stopped his approach. ‘I need information before you can have the money. That’s the deal. What do you know?’

Mikhail sneered at her false bravado. She knew she had very little bargaining power. He could so easily hurt her and simply snatch her bag, and yet she couldn’t stop herself from pushing just a little more.

‘I have only half of it here,’ she said, scarcely believing what she heard herself say. ‘I’ll tell you where the rest is if you tell me what you know and if you answer my questions.’

His scarf had loosened and she could now see that there was indeed a faint but unmistakeable trace of central-Asian ancestors in his features. He was clearly angry about her claim that half the money was elsewhere, but she decided to take another gamble anyway.

‘Who sent you?’ she asked again, and injected as much condescension into her tone as she could. It was a considerable risk to hope for the normal sensitivity about race in Russia. ‘Was it some arrogant white guy who thinks he’s better than you, who thinks you’re only good enough for running his errands, or for intimidating women like me?’ Amelia was breathless, but continued. ‘Is that all you’re good for?’ she added with a sneer matching his own. ‘Don’t let them do that to you,’ she said and played her final card. ‘I’ll pay you more if you tell me everything.’

He took a step closer to her, his face tight with anger. ‘You know nothing!

There was suddenly nothing more to say to tempt him. She’d run out of tricks. He was clearly not tempted by her offer of more money and her effort to manipulate his inferiority complex about race hadn’t paid off.

She could merely watch as Mikhail came closer and closer, but at the last moment she found the question she wanted to have the answer to so desperately. ‘Is he dead? Please tell me.’

Mikhail’s eyes hardened and he delivered his answer with icy scorn. ‘Yes, he’s dead, what did you think? He’s dead. Long gone. When a man disappears in Moscow, he is never seen alive again.’

Amelia gulped with horror, but the vagueness of his answer bothered her. She tried one last time. ‘Did you see him . . . his body?’

‘I saw his empty car. That was enough. When I arrived, he was gone. An empty car and blood on the seat. It’s just a pity I wasn’t there in time to do it myself!’

Amelia stared at him, her chest suddenly closing. She gasped for air and took a blind step backwards as Mikhail narrowed the space between them to inches. She felt something give way under her left foot. She staggered backwards, trying unsuccessfully to regain her balance, and fell with a muffled thud. The thick snow had broken her fall, but still a sharp pain shot up her spine. When she opened her eyes, Mikhail’s menacing figure loomed over her.

‘But why?’ she cried, feeling the horror of her own tears running down her face.

He laughed. ‘It was just a job. Don’t ask me. Ask them,’ he said, gesturing towards the city centre, ‘ask all of them! You people know nothing about us and less about yourselves!’

‘Who?’ Amelia struggled to get the question out, but he cut her off, seeing, enjoying her desperation.

‘Who did it?’ he echoed her question. He threw his head back and took in a deep draught of cold air. ‘I’ll tell you who did it. It was all of them, everyone who’s ever wanted something for themselves. Everyone in their expensive clothes and cars, everyone who’s ever wanted power, especially that guy with the eyes.’

Amelia stared at him, unable to comprehend his angry words. Then she heard something else – what sounded like shouting and rapidly approaching footsteps coming from somewhere behind her. Had Nick finally found them?

She glanced at Mikhail and could see on his face that he too had registered that something was happening, that perhaps he’d run out of time.

He cursed, looked at her and for a moment the air became still between them. What would he do? Then he dropped his gaze and for another moment his eyes rested on something else. She followed the direction of his eyes and saw the edge of the bag that held the money protruding from underneath her.