The Kremlin Device (8 page)

Set back on either side of the road were terrible, drab tower-blocks of flats, nine or ten storeys tall. Closer to the road, old-fashioned hoardings carried advertisements, many for Western products. When I spotted some familiar red and yellow colours and slowly picked out the Cyrillic letters for McDonald's I couldn't help grinning at my own linguistic prowess.

It took us fifty minutes to reach the city centre, the traffic thickening all the time. I noticed several good-looking older buildings, mostly pale yellow with green copper roofs, but the general run of architecture was abysmal. Then, as we were crawling downhill along another broad street, Sasha pointed ahead and announced, ‘There is Kremlin.'

I peered out through the relatively clean area of the windscreen and saw in the distance a red star glowing on top of a steeply pointed tower. Only that one corner of the citadel was in sight, but even so my neck prickled. Here was the centre of Russian power, the focal point of a vast country, the power-base that had dominated world politics for all our lifetimes. If ever there was to be a breakdown of relations between Russia and the West, this was where it would start.

A moment later Sasha pulled the car over in front of a tall, faceless, modern high-rise building on the right-hand side of the road, and parked end-on to the kerb.

‘Hotel Intourist,' he announced. ‘I help you check in.'

Outside the entrance a few rough-looking young men were standing around, all smoking; they were hard to see clearly, but whenever the glow of a cigarette lit up a face, I didn't like the look of it. They could have been taxi-drivers, yet their presence seemed vaguely threatening.

The little glass-walled lobby was full of security men – half a dozen overweight, slovenly guys with pistols in holsters. The women staffing the reception desk were wearing bright red tunics pin-striped with white – a cheerful touch which wasn't matched by any warmth of greeting. One of them gave us forms to complete and moved off towards her office without a word, carrying our passports.

‘When do we get them back?' I asked.

‘Tomorrow.'

Her lack of common civility pissed me off. I can't believe
all
the women in Moscow are having their periods right now, I thought. Then I heard Sasha saying, ‘Programme for tomorrow: eight-thirty, I collect you and drive to Balashika for inspection of camp. OK?'

I nodded.

‘Four o'clock, visit to British Embassy. Meeting with Chargé d'Affaires. Also meet your interpreter and liaison officer. At Embassy, same time.'

‘Fine.'

I thanked him for collecting us, and he was gone.

Our rooms were on the fifteenth floor – 1512, 1513 and 1514. We went up in the lift, sharing it with a couple of overweight Yanks, a man and a woman, obviously on vacation.

‘Been to the Kremlin yet?' the man asked in a southern accent.

I shook my head. ‘Only just arrived.'

‘One helluva monument, that place. Sure is. How long are you guys here for?'

‘Couple of days.'

A quick inspection revealed that all our rooms were the same: small, hot and stuffy, without air-conditioning, and with only the small upper section of the windows openable. In the tiny bathrooms the tiles were cracked and yellowing, the grout between them black with grime. As Sasha had warned us, there were no plugs in the baths or basins . . . and suddenly – fuck it – I realised I'd left mine behind. I took a quick look round the bedroom for signs of hidden microphones, and although I couldn't see anything I felt sure they were there. We'd already agreed that there'd be no shop talk in the hotel.

‘Grotsville,' exclaimed Rick as he emerged into the passage.

‘You said it. Have you got your money on you? Don't leave it in there, whatever you do.'

‘Got it.' He slapped his bum-bag which he had pulled round to the front, over his stomach.

‘You look like that fat git we came up with.'

‘
Spasibo
, mate.'

‘Let's stretch our legs,' Whinger suggested. ‘Eyeball the Kremlin.'

That seemed like a good plan. It was already 9.45 local time, but only 6.45 by our biological clocks, and since we'd eaten on the plane we didn't feel any need for food. Besides, I knew that the British Embassy was somewhere close by, just across the Moscow River from the Kremlin, and I reckoned we might as well suss it out, as I was going to have to report there regularly during our operation.

On our way down in the lift Rick suddenly started shitting himself with laughter.

‘What's so bloody amusing?' Whinger said irritably.

‘Some cunt left a menu from one of the restaurants in my room. The stuff on offer is incredible.'

‘Like what?'

‘“Needles in meat sauce”, for one. Then there was “frog's paws in paste”.'

‘That's frog's legs in batter,' Whinger told him.

‘I know – but think of it . . .'

It was a fine evening for a stroll: the sky was clear and the air cool. Out on the pavement, we elbowed through the scrum of taxi drivers and walked down the slope towards Red Square. The street was so wide and the traffic was moving so fast that the subway seemed the best way to cross. We went down some steps into a concrete tunnel, past young people busking and old women begging, and up the other side. A minute later we were walking uphill on another short, broad thoroughfare and emerging on to the huge open expanse of Red Square.

‘Never realised it was cobbled,' said Whinger.

‘Nor that it was so big.'

It gave me a strange feeling to be looking at buildings I'd seen a thousand times in pictures. As a young soldier, during my early years in the army, I'd spent hours in classrooms doing recognition training, staring at black-and-white slides of Soviet tanks and missiles until we could pick out T54s, T64s and T72s in our sleep and name all the main types of ICBM. The place all these weapons were photographed most often was Red Square, during big parades on the anniversary of the 1917 revolution and suchlike – so now the buildings in the background were like echoes from the past.

Rick's mind was moving on the same lines. ‘Think of all the military hardware that's rolled along here,' he said.

On our right the low, squat hulk of Lenin's mausoleum sat hunched against the wall of the Kremlin. Wherever a light was shining on the wall, we could see it was made of dark red brick.

‘Funny there aren't any guards on the mausoleum,' said Whinger. ‘You'd expect there to be some official presence. Isn't it a national shrine?'

‘Not any more,' Rick told him. ‘I read on the Internet that they're arguing about what to do with the old bugger. The die-hards are all for keeping him, but a lot of people want him out.'

‘Burning'd be too good for that bastard,' said Whinger bitterly, surprising me with the anger in his voice. ‘If anyone sent the Russian government a bill demanding compensation for all the misery he and his bloody ideas have caused, this country'd be bankrupt for the next thousand years.'

‘That's why they're not paying the Regiment anything for our job here,' I said. ‘All the funds are coming from the States or the UK.'

Ahead of us in the distance rose the multi-coloured onion domes of St Basil's Cathedral, some striped horizontally, some vertically, some segmented like the skins of pineapples. Even I, ignorant as I am about church architecture, sensed that there was something wild and barbaric in those amazing shapes and colours.

‘What about that German kid who landed a light plane here?' said Whinger. ‘Some feat, that. I bet it made them cut about a bit. The Russkies must have been fairly shitting themselves when they found out how easily he'd got through their defences without the aircraft even being called.'

‘Rust, his name was,' I said. ‘Mathias Rust. He landed up the slope.' I pointed ahead. ‘That means he must have come in from that direction, towards us. Didn't the cheeky bugger get a job at some travel agency in Moscow, once he'd come out of gaol? I think so. It just shows how times change.'

Soon we were walking down the gentle hill past St Basil's. At the bottom we found a bridge over the river, and decided to cross to the other side, so we'd be able to look back across the water and get a view of the Kremlin. We cleared the steps on the far bank, and had just started walking, the river on our right, when Rick said quietly, ‘We've got a tail.'

‘Sure?' I asked.

‘Pretty much. He's been with us at least since the bottom of the square.'

‘Keep walking, then. When we get to that bench, we'll sit down and see what he does.'

On the embankment a hundred yards in front, a metal bench faced out over the water. When we reached it, I sat on one end, took off a shoe and proceeded to shake out imaginary bits of grit.

Up on Red Square there had been plenty of people wandering about. Down here by the river the wide road was deserted, and our follower stood out like a spare prick.

‘He's stopped,' Rick announced. ‘He's leaning over the wall.'

‘Let's tip the bastard in,' said Whinger.

‘It could be someone Sasha's laid on to keep an eye on us,' Rick suggested.

‘Hardly,' I said. ‘I don't think he'd do that. More likely a common-or-garden mugger. He could have mates waiting up ahead, though. He may be trying to push us towards them. We'd better sort him.'

Whinger agreed – so we strolled forward, slower than before, then suddenly turned and began walking fast towards our pursuer. He'd started after us again, and it seemed to take him a moment to realise what was happening. Then he also turned round and began to scuttle off. By now we were running, and we were on to him in a flash.

Whinger and I each went for an arm and grabbed him, bringing him to a rapid halt. We couldn't see him too clearly in the lamplight, but he looked a swarthy lad of twenty-odd, with a bit of a ragged beard, wearing a check shirt and a thin jacket of some dark material. He was angry, but also scared.

‘What the hell d'you think you're doing?' I snapped.

He let fly a stream of Russian, of which I understood not a word. Rick said something in Russian, and he spat out an answer. Then he started to struggle, and for a moment I was afraid he was going to scream to attract attention. I got my handkerchief scrumpled in a ball, to stuff in his mouth if he opened it any wider, but already Rick was frisking him, and in seconds came up with a nasty, slim-bladed knife which he held in front of the guy's face.

That made his eyeballs rotate and quietened him nicely.

‘Into the river,' I said, and Rick flipped the weapon over the wall. We heard the splash as it hit the water.

‘No mobile phone or radio?'

Rick shook his head. ‘No wallet or money either.'

‘In that case he's probably after ours.'

Suddenly I remembered one of the unofficial phrases Valentina had taught us. ‘
Valite otsyuda!
' told him, and indicated the direction he could go – back the way we'd come.

He got the message, no problem. As we released him, he shook himself like a dog and set off without a word. I saw that he had a bit of a limp, dipping slightly on his right leg. We watched until he had disappeared up the steps by the bridge, then we carried on along the river.

‘What did he say, Rick?'

‘Just that he was out for a walk.'

‘Like hell he was.'

Rick was the most observant member of our party. He had a terrific knack of noticing any small object or incident that was out of line, and his memory for faces was phenomenal: even a year or more after an event he'd remember a person's appearance. Sometimes it took him a minute or two to place them, but then the setting and date would come back. I'm sure his skill derived partly from all the surveillance work he'd done in Northern Ireland, and often it stood us in good stead.

‘Where did he pick us up?' I asked. ‘Was he outside the hotel?'

Rick shook his head. ‘I don't think so. He must have been hanging around on Red Square.'

Away to our right, across the river, the floodlit Kremlin was a magnificent sight, but we were feeling too unsettled by the incident to appreciate it fully.

‘I can see three possible explanations,' I said. ‘One, he was after our money. Two, Sasha detailed him to check where we went. Three, he was a Mafia dicker. I don't like any of them. If he
was
just a mugger, it goes to show how dodgy this place is. If Sasha sent him, it means we're not trusted. If he's Mafia, it means we may have been rumbled already.'

I was getting jumpy. I remembered how the Colombians had had dickers posted at all the airports, photographing people as they arrived off the planes. Someone had told me that the secret police got hold of the flight manifests, and that by using computers they were able to match up passengers with pictures, so they could keep tabs on every single visitor to the country.

We walked on, until we became aware of a handsome, old-style building set back from the road behind a courtyard on our left, and flanked by two matching outliers, evidently part of the complex. Beside the gate, in a grey pillbox, were two Russian guards in uniform, chatting, smoking, looking bored and not paying attention. Behind them, further in, was a stone gatehouse containing a guy in a red jumper who sat at a desk behind a glass screen.

‘Bet that's a Brit,' I said. ‘He's a bit more alert. He'll be controlling the electronic gates and the phones.'

‘Look on the roof,' said Rick, ‘left-hand corner. There's an infra-red light. They must have good security systems.'