Icon (53 page)

Grishin watched him push at the revolving doors of the hotel and disappear inside. Nigel Irvine, the colonel had been happy to notice, carried no attaché case. If he had one, it would be in his room.

“Move,” he told his driver. The Mercedes eased away from the curb and closed to within a hundred yards of the walking men.

“You know we are being followed,” said Vincent conversationally.

“Two walkers up ahead, two behind, a crawling car on the opposite side of the street,” said Sir Nigel.

“I’m impressed, sir.”

“My dear boy, I may be old and gray, but I hope I can still spot a tail when it’s that big and clumsy.”

Because of its supreme power, the old Second Chief Directorate had seldom bothered to dissimulate on the streets of Moscow. Unlike the FBI in Washington or MI5 in London, the cult of the unspottable tail was never really its specialty.

After passing in front of the illuminated splendor of the Bolshoi Theatre and then the smaller Maly Theatre, the two walkers approached a narrow side street, Theatre Alley.

There was a doorway just before the turning, and a bundle of rags trying to sleep there despite the biting cold. Sir Nigel stopped.

Ahead and behind him the Black Guards tried to pretend they were studying empty shop windows.

In the doorway, dimly lit by the streetlamps, the bundle stirred and looked up. He was not drunk, but old, the tired face beneath the woolen comforter pinched and lined with years, hard work, and deprivation. On the lapel of the threadbare greatcoat hung an array of faded medal ribbons. Two deep-set, exhausted eyes looked up at the foreigner.

Nigel Irvine, when based in Moscow, had taken the time to study Russian medals. There was one in the stained row of ribbons he recognized.

“Stalingrad?” he asked softly in Russian. “You were at Stalingrad?”

The bundle of wool around the old head nodded slowly.

“Stalingrad,” croaked the old man.

He would have been less than twenty then, in that freezing winter of 1942, fighting Von Paulus’s Sixth Army for every brick and cellar of the city on the Volga.

Sir Nigel dug into the pocket of his trousers and came up with a banknote. Fifty million rubles, about thirty U.S. dollars.

“Food,” he said. “Hot soup. A slug of vodka. For Stalingrad.”

He straightened up and walked on, stiff and angry. Vincent caught up. The followers moved away from their shop windows and resumed the patrol.

“Sweet heaven, what have they come to?” Irvine said to no one in particular, and turned into the side street.

Grishin’s car radio crackled as one of the walkers used his walkie-talkie.

“They’ve turned off. They’re going into a restaurant.”

The Silver Age is another completely traditional old-Russian restaurant, situated in a recessed alley around the back of the theaters. It was formerly the Central Russian Bathhouse, its walls covered in tiles and mosaics depicting rustic scenes of long ago. Coming from the bitter cold of the street, the two visitors felt the rush of warm air wash over them.

The restaurant was crowded, almost every table taken. The headwaiter scurried forward.

“I’m afraid we are fully booked, gentlemen,” he said in Russian. “A large private party. I am so sorry.”

“I see there is one table left,” replied Vincent in the same language. “Look, over there.”

There was indeed a single table for four standing empty against the back wall. The waiter looked worried. He realized the two tourists were foreigners, and that would mean payment in dollars.

“I shall have to ask the host of the dinner,” he said, and bustled away. He addressed a handsome olive-skinned man who sat surrounded by companions at the largest table in the room. The man gazed thoughtfully at the two foreigners near the door, and nodded.

The headwaiter came back.

“It is permitted. Please follow me.”

Sir Nigel Irvine and Vincent took their seats side by side on the banquette along the wall. Irvine looked across and nodded his thanks to the patron of the private party. The man nodded back.

They ordered duck with cloudberry sauce and allowed the waiter to propose a Crimean red wine that turned out to be reminiscent of bull’s blood.

Outside, Grishin’s four foot soldiers had sealed the alley at both ends. The colonel’s Mercedes drew up at the entrance to the narrow street. He got out and had a quick conference with his men. Then he returned to his car and used his phone.

“How is it going?” he asked.

From the corridor on the second floor of the National be heard a voice say, “Still working on the lock.”

Of the four men who had been posted inside the hotel, two had remained. One was now at the end of the corridor, close to the elevators. His job was to see if anyone got out at the second floor and turned toward Room 252. If someone did, he would overtake the person, whistling a tune, to warn the thief to leave the door and move on.

His colleague was with the thief, who was bent over the lock of 252 doing what he did best.

“Tell me when you’re in,” said Grishin.

Ten minutes later the lock gave a low click and yielded. Grishin was informed.

“Every paper, every document, photograph and replace,” he said.

Inside Sir Nigel Irvine’s room the search was fast and thorough. The thief spent ten minutes in the bathroom, then emerged and shook his head. The drawers of the chest revealed only the to-be-expected array of ties, shirts, undershorts, handkerchiefs. The drawers of the bedside table were empty. The same applied to the small suitcase stacked on top of the wardrobe, and the pockets of the two suits within it.

The thief went onto his knees and gave a low, satisfied “Aaaaah.”

The attaché case was under the bed, pushed right to the center where it was well out of sight. The thief retrieved it with a coat hanger. The numbered locks needed his attention for three minutes.

When the lid came up, he was disappointed. There was a plastic envelope of traveler’s checks, which normally he would have taken but for his orders. A wallet with several credit cards and a bar bill from White’s Club in London. A silver hip flask whose liquid gave an odor with which he was not familiar.

The pockets inside the lid yielded the return half of an airline ticket from Moscow back to London and a street map of Moscow. He scoured the latter to see if any sites were marked, but could find none.

With a small camera he photographed them all. The Black Guard with him reported their finds to Colonel Grishin.

“There should be a letter,” came the metallic voice from the street five hundred yards away.

The thief, thus forewarned, reexamined the attaché case and found the false bottom. It contained a long cream envelope, and inside it a single sheet of matching paper with the embossed heading of the Patriarchate of Moscow and All the Russias. This was photographed three times, just to make sure.

“Pack up and leave,” said Grishin.

The two men restored the case to exactly the way it had been before, with the letter back in its envelope and the envelope in the hidden compartment beneath the base of the case. The case itself, relocked with the numbers on the rollers in exactly the same sequence as found, was pushed back beneath the bed. When the room looked as if no one had entered it since Sir Nigel Irvine left, the two men departed.

¯

THE door of the Silver Age opened and closed with a soft hiss. Grishin and four men crossed the small lobby and pushed aside the heavy drapes that led to the dining area. The headwaiter trotted over.

“I am so sorry, gentlemen …”

“Get out of my way,” said Grishin without even looking at him.

The waiter was jolted, looked at the four men behind the tall man in the black coat, and backed away. He knew enough to recognize serious trouble when he saw it. The four bodyguards might be in civilian clothes, but they were all heavily built, with faces that had been in a few brawls. Even without their uniforms, the elderly waiter recognized them for Black Guards. He had seen them in their uniforms, on television, strutting battalions flashing their arms up to the leader on the podium, and was wise enough to know that waiters did not tangle with the Black Guards.

The man in charge of them swept the room until his gaze fell on the two foreigners dining in the banquette against the rear wall. He nodded to one of his men to accompany him and the other three to give support from the door. Not, he knew, that he needed any. The younger of the two Englishmen might try to give trouble, but he would last a few seconds.

“Friends of yours?” asked Vincent quietly. He felt nakedly unarmed, and wondered how far the serrated steak knife by his plate might get him. Not very far, was his mental answer.

“I think they are the gentlemen whose printing presses you dented a few weeks ago,” said Irvine. He wiped his mouth. The duck had been delicious. The man in the black coat walked over, stopped, and looked down at them. The Black Guard stood behind him.

“Sir Irvine?” Grishin spoke only Russian. Vincent translated.

“It’s Sir Nigel, actually. And to whom do I have the pleasure?”

“Do not play games. How did you get into the country?”

“Through the airport.”

“Lies.”

“I assure you, Colonel—it
is
Colonel Grishin, is it not?—my papers are in perfect order. Of course, they are with the hotel reception, or I could show you.”

Grishin experienced a flicker of indecision. When he gave orders to most of the organs of state, with the necessary bribes to back them up, those orders were obeyed. But there
could
have been a failure. Someone would pay.

“You are interfering in the internal affairs of Russia,
Anglichanin.
And I do not like it. Your American puppy, Monk, will soon be caught and I shall personally settle accounts with him.”

“Have you finished, Colonel? Because if you have, and since we are in the mood to be frank, let me be equally candid with you.”

Vincent translated rapidly. Grishin stared in disbelief. No one talked to him like that, least of all a helpless old man. Nigel Irvine raised his eyes from staring at his glass of wine and looked straight at Grishin.

“You are a deeply loathsome individual, and the man you serve is, if possible, even more repugnant.”

Vincent opened his mouth, shut it again, then muttered in English: “Boss, is this wise?”

“Just translate, there’s a good chap.”

Vincent did so. There was a vein tapping rhythmically in Grishin’s forehead. The thug behind him looked as if his collar would soon cease to contain his throat.

“The Russian people,” resumed Irvine in a conversational tone of voice, “may have made many mistakes, but they do not deserve, nor indeed does any nation deserve, scum like you.”

Vincent paused at the word
scum,
swallowed, and used the Russian word
pizdyuk.
The tapping vein increased tempo.

“In summary, Colonel Grishin, the chances are even that you and your whoremaster will never rule this great land. Slowly the people are beginning to see through the facade and in thirty days’ time you may find that they will change their minds. So, what are you going to do about it?”

“I think,” said Grishin carefully, “that I shall begin by killing you. Certainly you will not leave Russia alive.”

Vincent translated and then added in English: “I think he will, too.”

The room had fallen silent and the diners at tables on either side had heard via Vincent the Russian interchange between Grishin and Irvine. Grishin was not worried. Muscovites out for an evening dinner were neither going to interfere nor recall what they had seen. The Homicide Division was still aimlessly looking for the killers of the London journalist.

“Not the wisest choice you could make,” said Irvine.

Grishin sneered.

“And who do you think will help you? These pigs?”

Pigs
was the wrong word. There was a thump at a table to Grishin’s left. He half-turned. A gleaming switchblade had been jammed into the tabletop and was still quivering. It might have been the diner’s steak knife, but he already had one of those. To the left another diner removed his white napkin from in front of him. Lying underneath it was a Steyr 9mm.

Grishin muttered over his shoulder to the Black Guard behind him.

“Who are these?”

“They’re Chechens,” hissed the guard.

“All of them?”

“I’m afraid so,” said Irvine gently as Vincent translated. “And they really don’t like being called pigs. Moslems, you see. With long memories. They can even remember Grozny.”

At the mention of the name of their destroyed capital, there was a rattle of metallic clicks as safety catches came off among the fifty diners. Seven handguns were pointing at the three Black Guards by the curtains at the door. The headwaiter was crouched behind his cash desk praying that he would see his grandchildren again.

Grishin looked down at Sir Nigel.

“I underestimated you,
Anglichanin.
But never again. Get out of Russia and stay out. Cease interfering in her internal affairs. Resign yourself to never seeing your American friend again.”

He turned on his heel and stalked toward the door. His guards followed him out.

Vincent let out a long exhalation.

“You knew about the people around us, didn’t you?”

“Well, I hoped my message had got through. Shall we go?”

He raised his glass with the last of the strong red wine to the room.

“Gentlemen, your very good health, and my thanks.”

Vincent translated and they left. They all left. The Chechens staked out the hotel through what remained of the night and escorted the visitors to Sheremetyevo the next morning where they boarded their flight for London.

“I don’t care what the offer, Sir Nigel,” said Vincent as the British Airways jet banked over the Moskva and turned west. “But I am not, repeat
not,
going back to Moscow.”

“Well, that’s fine, because neither am I.”

“And who’s the American?”

“Ah, I’m afraid he’s still down there somewhere. Living at the edge, right at the edge. And he’s rather special.”