The Eleventh Commandment (1998) (21 page)

‘You’re lucky, Jackson. I was born in St Petersburg, and there’s nothing I don’t know about the place. But remember, I charge double outside Moscow.’

‘You know, Sergei, if you go on like this, it won’t be long before you price yourself out of the market.’

M
AGGIE DROVE OUT
of the university parking lot at one minute past one. She swung left onto Prospect Street, braking only briefly at the first stop sign before accelerating away. She only ever took an hour for lunch, and if she failed to find a parking spot near the restaurant it would cut down their time together. And today she needed every minute of that hour.

Not that any of her staff in the Admissions Office would have complained if she had taken the afternoon off. After twenty-eight years working for the university - the last six as Dean of Admissions - if she had put in a backdated claim for overtime, Georgetown University would have had to launch a special appeal.

At least today the gods were on her side. A woman was pulling out of a spot a few yards from the restaurant where they had arranged to meet. Maggie put four quarters in the meter to cover an hour.

When she entered the Cafe Milano, Maggie gave the maitre d’ her name. ‘Yes, of course, Mrs Fitzgerald,’ he said, and guided her to a table by the window to join someone who had never been known to be late for anything.

Maggie kissed the woman who had been Connor’s secretary for the past nineteen years, and took the place opposite her. Joan probably loved Connor as much as she had any man, and for that love she had never been rewarded with more than the occasional peck on the cheek and a gift at Christmas, which Maggie inevitably ended up buying. Though Joan was not yet fifty, her sensible tweeds, flat shoes and cropped brown hair revealed that she had long ago given up trying to attract the opposite sex.

‘I’ve already decided,’ Joan said.

‘I know what I’m going to have too,’ said Maggie.

‘How’s Tara?’ asked Joan, closing her menu.

‘Hanging in there, to use her own words. I only hope she’ll finish her thesis. Although Connor would never say anything to her, he’ll be very disappointed if she doesn’t.’

‘He speaks warmly of Stuart,’ Joan said as a waiter appeared by her side.

‘Yes,’ said Maggie, a little sadly. ‘It looks as if I’m going to have to get used to the idea of my only child living thirteen thousand miles away.’ She looked up at the waiter. ‘Cannelloni and a side salad for me.’

‘And I’ll have the angel-hair pasta,’ said Joan.

‘Anything to drink, ladies?’ the waiter asked hopefully.

‘No, thank you,’ said Maggie firmly. ‘Just a glass of water.’ Joan nodded her agreement.

‘Yes, Connor and Stuart got on well,’ said Maggie once the waiter had left. ‘Stuart will be joining us for Christmas, so you’ll have a chance to meet him then.’

‘I look forward to that,’ said Joan.

Maggie sensed that she wanted to add something, but after so many years she had learned that there was no point in pressing her. If it was important, Joan would let her know when she was good and ready.

‘I’ve tried to call you several times in the past few days. I hoped you might be able to join me at the opera or come for dinner one evening, but I seem to keep missing you.’

‘Now that Connor’s left the company, they’ve closed the office on M Street and moved me back to headquarters,’ said Joan.

Maggie admired the way Joan had chosen her words so carefully. No hint of where she was working, no suggestion of for whom, not a clue about what her new responsibilities were now that she was no longer with Connor.

‘It’s no secret that he hopes you’ll eventually join him at Washington Provident,’ said Maggie.

‘I’d love to. But there’s no point in making any plans until we know what’s happening.’

‘What do you mean, “happening”?’ asked Maggie. ‘Connor’s already accepted Ben Thompson’s offer. He has to be back before Christmas, so he can start his new job at the beginning of January.’

A long silence followed before Maggie said quietly, ‘So he didn’t get the job with Washington Provident after all.’

The waiter arrived with their meals. ‘A little parmesan cheese, madam?’ he asked as he placed them on the table.

‘Thank you,’ said Joan, staring intently at her pasta.

‘So that’s why Ben Thompson cold-shouldered me at the opera last Thursday. He didn’t even offer to buy me a drink.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Joan, as the waiter left them. ‘I just assumed you knew.’

‘Don’t worry. Connor would have let me know the moment he’d got another interview, and then told me it was a far better job than the one he’d been offered at Washington Provident.’

‘How well you know him,’ said Joan.

‘Sometimes I wonder if I know him at all,’ said Maggie. ‘Right now I have no idea where he is or what he’s up to.’

‘I don’t know much more than you do,’ said Joan. ‘For the first time in nineteen years, he didn’t brief me before he left.’

‘It’s different this time, isn’t it, Joan?’ said Maggie, looking straight at her.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘He told me he was going abroad, but left without his passport. My guess is that he’s still in America. But why …’

‘Not taking his passport doesn’t prove he isn’t abroad,’ said Joan.

‘Possibly not,’ said Maggie. ‘But this is the first time he’s hidden it where he knew I would find it.’

A few minutes later, the waiter reappeared and whisked away their plates.

‘Would either of you care for dessert?’ he asked.

‘Not for me,’ said Joan. ‘Just coffee.’

‘Me too,’ said Maggie. ‘Black, no sugar.’ She checked her watch. She only had sixteen minutes left. She bit her lip. ‘Joan, I’ve never asked you to break a confidence before, but there’s something I have to know.’

Joan looked out of the window and glanced at the good-looking young man who had been leaning against the wall on the far side of the street for the past forty minutes. She thought she had seen him somewhere before.

When Maggie left the restaurant at seven minutes to two, she didn’t notice the same young man take out a mobile phone and dial an unlisted number.

‘Yes?’ said Nick Gutenburg.

‘Mrs Fitzgerald has just finished lunch with Joan Bennett at Cafe Milano on Prospect. They were together for forty-seven minutes. I’ve recorded every word of their conversation.’

‘Good. Bring the tape in to my office immediately.’

As Maggie ran up the steps to the Admissions Office, the clock in the university courtyard was showing one minute to two.

It was one minute to ten in Moscow. Connor was enjoying the finale of
Giselle,
performed by the Bolshoi Ballet. But unlike most of the audience, he didn’t keep his opera glasses trained on the prima ballerina’s virtuoso performance. From time to time he would glance down to the right and check that Zerimski was still in his box. Connor knew how much Maggie would have enjoyed the Dance of the Wilis, the spirits of thirty-six young brides dressed in their wedding gowns, pirouetting in the moonlight. He tried not to be mesmerised by their
plies
and arabesques, and to concentrate on what was going on in Zerimski’s box. Maggie often went to the ballet when he was out of town, and she would have been amused to know that the Russian Communist leader had achieved in a single evening what she had failed to do in thirty years.

Connor studied the men in the box. On Zerimski’s right was Dmitri Titov, his Chief of Staff. On his left sat the elderly man who had introduced him before he gave his speech the previous evening. Behind him in the shadows stood three guards. Connor assumed that there would be at least another dozen in the corridor outside.

The vast theatre, with its beautiful tiered balconies and its stalls filled with gilt chairs covered in red velvet plush, was always sold out for weeks in advance. But the Maggie theory had also applied in Moscow - you can always pick up a single ticket, even at the last minute.

Moments before the conductor was due to arrive in the orchestra pit, a section of the crowd began to applaud. Connor had looked up from his programme to see one or two people pointing towards a box on the second tier. Zerimski had timed his entrance to perfection. He stood at the front of the box, waving and smiling. A little under half the audience rose and cheered loudly, while the rest remained seated, some clapping politely, others continuing their conversations as if he wasn’t there. This seemed to confirm the accuracy of the opinion polls - that Chernopov was now leading his rival by only a few percentage points.

Once the curtain had risen, Connor quickly discovered that Zerimski showed about as much interest in ballet as he did in art. It had been another long day for the candidate, and Connor was not surprised to see him stifling the occasional yawn. His train had left for Yaroslavl early that morning, and he had immediately begun his programme with a visit to a clothes factory on the outskirts of the town. When he left the union officials an hour later, he had grabbed a sandwich before dropping in to a fruit market, then a school, a police station and a hospital, followed by an unscheduled walkabout in the town square. Finally he had been driven back to the station at speed and jumped onto a train that had been held up for him.

The dogma Zerimski proclaimed to anyone who cared to listen hadn’t changed a great deal from the previous day, except that ‘Moscow’ had been replaced with ‘Yaroslavl’. The thugs who surrounded him as he toured the factory looked even more amateurish than those who had been with him when he delivered his speech at the Lenin Memorial Hall. It was clear that the locals were not going to allow any Muscovites onto their territory. Connor concluded that an attempt on Zerimski’s life would have a far better chance of succeeding outside the capital. It would need to be in a city that was large enough to disappear in, and proud enough not to allow the three professionals from Moscow to call the tune.

Zerimski’s visit to the shipyard in Severodvinsk in a few days’ time still looked his best bet.

Even on the train back to Moscow, Zerimski didn’t rest. He called the foreign journalists into his carriage for another press conference. But before anyone could ask a question, he said, ‘Have you seen the latest opinion polls, which show me running well ahead of General Borodin and now trailing Chernopov by only one point?’

‘But you’ve always told us in the past to ignore the polls,’ said one of the journalists bravely. Zerimski scowled.

Connor stood at the back of the melee and continued to study the would-be President. He knew he had to anticipate Zerimski’s every expression, movement and mannerism, as well as be able to deliver his speech verbatim.

When the train pulled into Protsky station four hours later, Connor had a sense that someone on board was watching him, other than Mitchell. After twenty-eight years, he was rarely wrong about these things. He was beginning to wonder if Mitchell wasn’t just a little too obvious, and if there might be someone more professional out there. If there was, what did they want? Earlier in the day, he’d had a feeling that someone or something had flitted across his path that he’d noticed before. He disapproved of paranoia, but like all professionals, he didn’t believe in coincidences.

He left the station and doubled back to his hotel, confident that no one had followed him. But then, they wouldn’t need to if they knew where he was staying. He tried to dismiss these thoughts from his mind as he packed his bag. Tonight he would lose whoever was trailing him - unless, of course, they already knew exactly where he was going. After all, if they knew why he was in Russia, they had only to follow Zerimski’s itinerary. He checked out of the hotel a few minutes later, paying his bill in cash.