Moskva (26 page)

The bike grinding its way up the darkened track was a 1970s Ural 650, with its famously awful K301 carburettor swapped out and the original 6-volt dynamo replaced by a 12-volt model. Other than that, the machine was original. A bit rusted in places, particularly on the chrome. The black plastic band sealing the seam around the two-part petrol tank had rotted but it didn’t leak, at least not enough to be dangerous. The gearbox leaked though. There hadn’t been a Ural built where the gearbox didn’t leak, and that included the model built by workers wearing white gloves and delivered to Stalin.

The man riding the bike regretted not buying the sidecar model.

It would have given him better balance. On the other hand, what with only 40 horsepower to the flat-twin, the sidecar’s weight would have made the track in front of him impassable. It wasn’t the ice that made the going hard, it was the frayed edges to the road and the sharpness of the bends that had the engine thumping and forced him to change down and down again.

Between a drop in revs and the unhealthy thud of gears meshing, he heard a shot from the woods and flinched, bringing his motorbike to a slithering halt, even as he wondered if he should have accelerated for all he was worth, which obviously enough wasn’t much. At best, he’d give the shooter a slowly moving target.

The woman who stepped from between trees trained her rifle on him almost casually as she crossed the track, twisting slightly to keep it sighted while she lifted a snow rabbit from the ditch where it had tumbled. It kicked twice and then she had it by its back legs, and swung it so the back of its skull caught the edge of her raised heel. She glanced down to check it was properly dead and then she shifted her attention to the Ural, jerking her rifle to indicate that the rider should climb off.

He shook his head.

Working the bolt, she slotted another round into the rabbit rifle, raising its muzzle enough to aim at his knee, which still hugged the petrol tank. The leg out of sight kept the motorbike balanced on the slippery ground.

‘Get off,’ she ordered.

He looked at her and they both knew he’d refuse.

But then the early sun came up from behind the trees and brightness filled a patch of forest that had been dark and Dennisov looked at the young woman holding the rifle and felt his heart lurch as she stared back at him.

She had a serious face.

A face that belonged, it seemed to him, to someone who’d never stopped to wonder if she was plain or attractive, and was all the more attractive for that. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been shot before. It wasn’t that there hadn’t been days he’d have happily shot himself. It was simply that it would be a pity to be shot, even only in the leg, by the girl from his childhood poster, because that was obviously who she was.

So he shrugged to show that sunlight on her braids had changed his mind, considered which leg to swing over the tank, what he should do with the bike afterwards and whether the track was too slippery to let him pull the bike on to its centre stand.

The answer to the last was probably.

As to which leg, he should probably use the one that worked. So, twisting, more clumsily than he would have liked, he stepped back from the bike, decided he definitely wouldn’t manage to get it on to its centre stand, and lowered it as far as he could, before letting it drop.

Stepping away, he watched her eyes widen and saw not only the moment she noticed his metal leg but also the moment she jacked the unspent round into her hand without even noticing. Pushing up his goggles, he said, ‘Dennisov, captain, retired.’

‘Major Milova.’

The man sketched an unorthodox salute. ‘You’re going to have to help me right the bike, I’m afraid.’

They looked at the Ural together. The machine was heavy and hot enough to melt snow on the track beneath. ‘Did you have it adapted?’

Dennisov shook his head.

‘Then isn’t it hard to ride?’

He grinned. ‘Damn near impossible.’

Coming closer, she wrinkled her nose. ‘You’re drunk.’

‘For me, this is sober.’ He was shivering with cold as he took his hip flask from inside his flying jacket and watched her realize he was wearing only a stained singlet beneath. It made him wish he’d found a clean one.

‘Army issue?’ she asked.

‘How did you guess?’

It wasn’t a serious question, although the question her eyes asked when she glanced down at his leg was serious enough.

‘We crashed,’ he said.

‘I know.’

He looked at her slightly oddly, as if wondering how she knew, and she stared back, perhaps balancing what she’d read
in the files with the cripple in front of her. If she’d read the files, then he knew what she’d be thinking: he was less handsome than his official photograph. He hoped she’d think him more real. She could probably see him killing his own CO for incompetence. Regretting it afterwards maybe. Suffering sleepless nights.

But she could see him do it. That was fine. He had.

He could see her not minding that much. That was fine too.

‘Crash?’ she asked, nodding at a scar beneath his stubble.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘This one too?’ She touched a star-shaped pucker at the edge of his eye.

‘Shrapnel,’ he told her.

‘You could have been blinded.’

He shrugged, and smiled as her mouth twisted. He wondered what else was in his file. Whatever it was, he’d found the right place. Looking at Marshal Milov’s granddaughter, Dennisov decided that simply seeing her walk out of the trees into sunlight had been worth the ride.

‘You’ve been shot?’ she asked him.

‘Oh, yes. And crashed, obviously.’

‘Heavy calibre?’

‘Of course.’

‘How many times?’

‘A real man never tells.’

He liked her laughter. He liked the way she walked round to the other side of his Ural without being asked and gripped her end of the handlebars, bending at the knees to lift the machine properly.

They came up the track towards the dacha together, with Dennisov’s bike between them, Sveta with her rifle now
slung across her back, and Dennisov limping on the side with his prosthetic leg. He wore leather jeans, cut off on that side at the knee and bound with twine to make them windproof. In the dawn light, they looked as if they’d wandered in from another era.

‘Thought you couldn’t ride that thing any more?’

Dennisov looked at Tom and grinned, his smile wide and his eyes crinkling at the edges. There was a sense of achievement, of pride in the way he patted the tank as if the Ural was alive. He glanced sideways at Sveta before he answered.

‘Wasn’t sure I could.’

His eyes flicked beyond Tom and he straightened up, coming almost to attention before Tom even had time to turn. Tom knew who was there. The commissar stood in his doorway, wrapped in a patched dressing gown, white hair almost to his shoulders, and the gap between door and frame narrow as possible to keep in the warmth.

‘From Moscow?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘For me, for her, for him?’ He glanced between them and waited for Dennisov’s answer.

‘You, sir.’

‘Any idea why they didn’t telephone?’

‘I believe it’s off the hook, sir.’

The commissar smiled. ‘Any trouble getting through?’

‘The guards at the bottom stopped me. My papers convinced them. Comrade Vedenin’s signature probably helped.’

‘Vedenin? Nothing good then. In you come.’ Looking at Tom, he said. ‘If you could put that thing round the back …’

By the time Tom returned, the others were gone. The churned-up snow in front of the dacha was silent and deserted. Two rabbits hung on a hook by the door. A second later, a shot from the woods told him where Sveta was.

He imagined Dennisov was inside the house.

Not wanting to disturb the commissar or interrupt Sveta’s hunting, Tom stayed where he was, settling himself on the front steps and digging in his pocket for a papirosa. He had three cardboard filters at his feet and a fourth about to go that way when he heard the front door open.

‘The old man wants you.’

‘You okay?’

‘Sure.’

‘Do I ask why you’re here?’

‘He’ll tell you.’ Dennisov clapped him on the arm as he edged past, made unsteady by the ice below the steps rather than alcohol. In the forest beyond, wood pigeons rose from frosty trees at the sound of a shot and one fell fluttering.

‘That is his granddaughter, right?’

‘It is.’

‘Guess I’d better fetch her back.’

The old man’s desk looked like an old man’s desk: a letter opener in the shape of a sabre, an enamel mug with pens in it. A telephone, with the receiver now back on its cradle. Untidy piles of memos probably forgotten even by those who had written them. A fountain pen left open and dried.

Tom doubted that even the commissar knew what half the papers were.

Perhaps it didn’t matter. Or perhaps hydroelectric dams went unbuilt, regiments undispatched and prisoners unreleased, unquestioned or unexecuted, awaiting his approval. The commissar was examining what looked like a shopping list, occasionally crossing an ingredient out, when Tom came in.

Leaning closer, Tom saw names.

Under the list, flapping loose, a second sheet, filled with
so many overlapping circles it looked like a travesty of the Olympic logo. The commissioner sighed. ‘I miss the days when we fought enemies we could see.’

He nodded towards a photograph of a girl holding a rifle.

She was blonde, with a country girl’s shoulders. She looked so like Sveta that for a moment Tom thought it was her. Only the girl’s uniform was older, her sniper rifle had a fat scope and looked far heavier.

‘Seventeen,’ the commissar said. ‘Seven kills. Hadn’t even kissed a boy, never mind anything else.’ He smiled fondly. ‘So fierce. So determined.’

‘Sveta’s grandmother?’

‘Yes. She was young. Too young, really. Although not as young as her daughter, poor child. They were bad times. In a way I’m glad she’s not alive to see what we’ve become.’

He answered the question without Tom asking it. ‘Weak, corrupt, soft …’

‘That was taken at Stalingrad?’

‘We fought because we believed. We really believed. And because we were outnumbered and because we’d be shot if we didn’t. But we believed.’ He turned one piece of paper over on top of the other, hiding both.

‘Stalingrad or Berlin. Blood and iron. The Motherland destroying their Fatherland. Everything comes back to that. For better or worse, that clash was where this world was made. We became monsters. Our only defence is that they were worse. Now they’re gone and we remain and you’re ashamed to admit we were allies. Without us, you’d be speaking German. Without us, you’d have a swastika on your flag. Do you doubt that?’

‘I’m a soldier,’ Tom said. ‘I’ve had men die. I looked at your casualty rates. I’ve no idea how a country could take that level of damage and survive.’

‘Ask your friend Dennisov.’

‘He says you’re a bunch of alcoholics.’

‘He’s right. But there are worse things to be. Hypocrites, for a start. We fought. We died. What did Erekle Gabashville tell you about us?’

‘Nothing,’ Tom said.

The old man’s gaze was hard, as if trying to find the lie inside that word. He glanced beyond Tom to the window and Tom turned to watch his friend and Sveta walking from the trees. Another rabbit hung from Sveta’s hand and Dennisov was carrying her hunting rifle. The old man sucked his teeth. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I hoped it wouldn’t come to this. They’ve found Alex’s body. Your friend brought the message.’

‘Found her where?’ Tom managed finally.

‘Opposite my apartment. At Patriarch’s Ponds.’

Tom’s shoulder hurt so brutally he pulled the Ural off the road at a food stall and let the Zil disappear into the distance. Wolfing down half of what in England would be called a vegetable pasty, he tossed the rest into a bin, wiped his fingers on its paper wrapper and washed down four codeine with sour coffee.

About ten miles down the road a pain in his gut joined the one in his shoulder and neither came even close to the ache in his heart. Catching up with the Zil, he tucked himself into its slipstream and went back to mourning Alex. He was trying to remember the party.

What she looked like.

Exactly what she’d said.

He could remember the bloody ballroom, its absurdly ornate chandelier hanging from a duck-egg-blue ceiling like a crystal-wrapped chrysalis. The heavy moulding of the cornices. The plaster panels, some bare, others filled with gilt stucco or dark paintings. All hideous.

He could remember those well enough.

He was doing his best not to cry.

He could remember the balcony door creaking, Alex taking her place beside him, leaning on the stone balustrade and staring at the frozen river.

Got a cigarette?
she’d asked.

So young. How in God’s name had he not realized she was
that young? The harshness she’d put on the G of
Got
. The studied insouciance with which she’d taken her place beside him and stared where he stared.

He’d passed her a cigarette without comment.

I’ll need a lighter.

He’d put his Bic on the balustrade and watched it wobble in the wind until she closed her fingers around it. Black nails, he remembered. That jade ring.

These are foul.

She had that right.

With its stub of tobacco only half gone, she’d flicked the papirosa over the edge and they’d watched it plummet to the snow below.

You don’t say much, do you?

Too much and not enough. Always was his problem.

What had brought her out there in the first place? Had she known the balcony was occupied? Had it been as simple as seeing him slip away for a fag break and wanting to cadge a cigarette for herself? Had she expected him to refuse? Had she expected to find herself alone? Or was it all part of winding up her mother and stepfather?

Tom hadn’t asked if they knew, if they’d been told about the body.

In the back of his head, like a video loop, Vladimir Vedenin endlessly smiled and touched her arm. That was what Tom remembered. That was what he remembered most clearly.

Vladimir Vedenin touching her arm.

Not the wind on the balcony and the discarded cigarette. Not her comment about his swearing, which had been made only to force a confrontation.

Vladimir touching her arm.

And the strange, strange expression on his face before she turned to see who it was, when he thought she wasn’t looking.

Had she already made her plans to run away?

Had Vladimir already made his plans to kill the boy she ran to?

For mile after mile, wind whipped tears from Tom’s face and the grey road unravelled in a flat ribbon leading him back to Moscow and the horror waiting for them all at Patriarch’s Ponds. As the very outskirts became simply outskirts, and their little convoy crossed the motorway used almost as a character in Tarkovsky’s
Solaris
, Tom kept trying to remember Alex.

Dark hair and a wide face, high cheekbones and slightly pointed chin.

How much of the remembering was he making up? How much came from simply having seen photographs of her afterwards? And that conversation? Why would Alex force a confrontation about nothing in a room full of ballgowns and uniforms, people there out of politeness, duty or because it was their job.

Why him? Why then?

Tom struggled to remember who’d been watching.

Mary Batten, certainly. She’d started moving across the moment he grabbed Alex’s arm, then made herself simply watch how the confrontation played out. And below Alex’s cuffs, barely visible in the dim light, raw welts marking both wrists, made by a metal comb, the edge of a steel ruler or the back of a knife.

He’d told her how to do it properly if she was serious.

You didn’t need to persuade your parents to buy you a Mini.

You didn’t need to find a moonlit night and a long straight road. You didn’t need to tell your college friends you had gastric flu and you were going home. There were simpler ways. Kinder ways. Ways to make your intentions obvious.

‘Wrist to elbow, if you’re serious.’

That conversation was no accident.

If it hadn’t been for his benefit, then whose? Unless it was sleight of hand. In which case, what had she been so busy hiding in plain sight? That she was already packed and ready to run? Tom knew he was missing something. Not that it mattered much now, not really. But he’d been missing something.

They all had.

The Zil was already parked when Tom turned in under an arch, narrowly missing an old woman sheltering in its shadow. A
militsiya
guard stepped in front of the Ural, then stepped back at a shout from behind. A sergeant hurried over, hissed something at him and the guard took the bike as Tom climbed off, and was pulling it on to its centre stand before Tom even had time to remove Dennisov’s gauntlets.

They were behind the House of Lions, which the locals gave other, less kind names. The Zil emptied and Tom watched Sveta and her grandfather make for a narrow set of steps, while Dennisov strode over to meet him. Jerking his chin at the Ural, Dennisov said, ‘Okay?’

‘Crap engine. Hideous shocks. Steers like a dead cow.’

‘Soviet engineering at its finest.’

They smiled sadly at the lameness of the joke.

‘I’m sorry about Alex, okay? Really sorry.’

Tom shrugged, and Dennisov thanked him for riding the bike back, saying he’d have done it himself had his leg been up to it. Tom wasn’t sure the commissar would have let him. From what he could see looking in through the Zil’s rear window, the old man had been questioning Dennisov most of the way.

Questioning him intently.

Sveta’s grandfather growled something from the steps.

‘Be careful,’ Dennisov said. ‘He’s furious.’

‘With me?’

‘With everyone. He’s taking the girl’s death as a direct challenge.’

Storerooms and small offices, tired linoleum and institutional green paint – it was obvious this part of the House of Lions wasn’t meant to be seen by anyone important. Its corridors were rank with ghosts and memories. Every room they passed through had that mustiness found in houses where no one lived. Heavy radiators warmed only damp air. When they reached the bottom of a set of concrete stairs, Tom looked at his friend. ‘I’ll manage,’ Dennisov said shortly.

Hand to the rail, the Russian dragged himself up, the steel tip of his leg scraping each step in turn. Ahead of him, Sveta and her grandfather kept going for another two flights before halting on a landing.

‘Shouldn’t have ridden that bloody bike,’ Dennisov muttered.

‘Stump hurts?’

‘Bastard’s bleeding.’

‘Codeine,’ Tom said, dragging a packet from his pocket.

Dennisov swallowed a couple dry, shrugged and swallowed a couple more. When they came up behind Sveta, the commissar was saying, ‘We’ll get the best view from here.’ The window he’d chosen was tall and wide, and so badly fitted Tom could feel the cold wind before he was close enough to see the chaos below. The
militsiya
had cordoned off Ermolaevsky Lane, the road on the north-western edge of Patriarch’s Ponds, and the only vehicles inside were military. Beyond the wrought-iron railings, the snow-covered grass was thick with uniforms.

What looked like a tent turned out to be lacking a roof.
They’d used a windbreak to cordon off the crime scene. Sveta’s grandfather was glaring down and as his gaze slipped sideways, he swore. It was fluent and brutal.

A British embassy Jaguar was trying to enter Ermolaevsky Lane.

As they watched, the driver climbed from his seat and began to remonstrate with the officer barring his way. A thin strip of police tape was all that divided their worlds. The
militsiya
man was shaking his head when Anna Masterton pushed open her door.
It would be Anna,
Tom thought. Turning back, she said something to someone inside the car and slammed her door hard.

The commissar said, ‘Fox. Deal with it.’

‘I’ll go with him,’ Dennisov said.

‘Take the lift then.’

At the lift doors, Dennisov stopped, looking back to check he was out of the commissar’s earshot. ‘You and Sveta …?’

‘
Dennisov.
’

‘Just wondering.’ The man’s face was unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, his hair cropped so badly it looked like tufts on a peat bog. His vest was the one he’d arrived in and it had needed a wash then. He was almost sober, though. A sheen glazed his skin and one eye was twitching. By anybody else’s standards, he looked terrible.

For Dennisov, he looked good.

‘You can tell me,’ Dennisov said.

‘This isn’t the time.’

‘When is?’ he demanded crossly. ‘For people like us?’

‘Like us?’

‘Broken,’ Dennisov said. ‘Buggered. Running on the wrong voltage. In need of new parts.’ He was reaching for the button when Tom stopped him.

‘You like Sveta?’

Dennisov nodded, something close to anguish in his eyes. Something that made Dennisov glance down and away so that Tom couldn’t see anything more. ‘Yes,’ he said, sounding sad. ‘I like her. But if you and Sveta …’

The truth came easily.

‘There is no me and Sveta.’

They made a strange enough pair coming out of the House of Lions for the
militsiya
guard by the tape to turn to see what had made the Englishwoman stare. When Sir Edward and Mary Batten climbed from the Jaguar it was to try to intercept Tom before he could reach Anna. They’d left it too late.

Dennisov straightened his jacket and Tom found himself rearranging the collar of the coat he’d borrowed. When the guard put up his hand, Dennisov produced a Party card from his pocket and flicked it open. The man’s salute was an instinctive, unthinking reaction.

‘Is it Alex?’ Anna demanded.

‘Anna. How do you know about the body?’

‘Is it Alex, damn you?’

‘We had a call,’ said Mary Batten, coming up behind her, ‘from a Welsh girl at the university. She was given a message for you. We’re trying to find out who asked her to pass it on. Now, unless you’re being intentionally cruel, is it Alex?’

Tom took a deep breath. ‘So I’m told. I’m really sorry.’

‘I don’t believe you. It can’t be. They wouldn’t …’ Sir Edward stepped around him, scowling as the guard blocked his way. The guard looked to Dennisov for instructions.

‘One only,’ Dennisov said. ‘It’s a crime scene.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Anna said.

‘Anna …’

‘I said I’ll do it.’ She didn’t look at her husband again.

Leaving Dennisov to handle Sir Edward, Tom led her into the park.

KGB officers watched them approach, their gazes suddenly flicking to the House of Lions as one of the heavy doors creaked open and Sveta’s grandfather appeared on the steps. He nodded abruptly to a thin man in a sable coat just outside the entrance to the windbreak and the man nodded back.

‘Is that Marshal Milov?’ Anna asked.

‘Yes,’ Tom said.

Anna’s eyes were ringed, her face hollow. She’d lost weight and new lines had etched themselves into her face. All hope had gone out of her. ‘Edward says we can’t trust you any longer. There’s no proof you haven’t gone rogue.’

When he put his hand on her arm, she jerked away.

‘Let’s get this done,’ Tom said.

This time, when he offered his arm, she took it, gripping his flesh so hard it hurt. Together they walked towards the windbreak hiding the scene from the skaters still laughing and shouting on the ice beyond. A loudspeaker bolted to a nearby tree deafened them with a waltz, soon replaced by something softer.

‘She looked forward to coming here,’ Anna said.

‘Moscow?’ Tom said, surprised.

‘To skate. Alex was good at skating. We used to do it back home.’

Did she realize that she’d already begun talking about her daughter in the past tense?

‘Major Fox,’ Tom told the man in the sable coat. ‘This is Anna Masterton, the British ambassador’s wife. We’re here with …’

‘I know,’ he said. He nodded to Anna. ‘Lady Masterton.’

His English was barely inflected, his suit immaculate. It
wasn’t Soviet, unless those at the top of the Party had special tailors to go with their special shops.

‘I was in our embassy in London. A long time ago.’

‘A military attaché?’ Anna asked.

He smiled. ‘How did you guess? I am a general, these days, for my sins.’

She must have known what he was a general of …

‘If you’re ready?’

She’d been ready the entire time they were talking. She would never be ready. She made no answer. The man held back the canvas and Anna walked through, Tom following close behind. She stumbled, caught herself and Tom and the general hastily stepped back, both watching her fight for control.

A marbled body lay in the middle of trampled snow.

‘My God,’ Anna whispered. ‘What have they done?’

‘Frozen her,’ the general replied. ‘Probably bled her first.’

The killers or killer had also shaved her head and eyebrows and body hair before freezing her. She looked as perfect as a statue, her face turned slightly to one side, her upper lip slightly raised, revealing the tiniest sliver of teeth. She looked so young, so innocent, so unbearably naked.

Dropping to his knees, Tom touched her shoulder. Her skin was hard as glass and white as marble. Not caring that a Soviet general was watching him, he made the sign of the cross over her body. The action was too instinctive to be denied.

When he stepped back, Anna took his place, putting out her hand to touch the girl’s cheek. Tears streamed down her face.

‘Why would anyone do this?’

‘Anna …’