The Samurai Inheritance (23 page)

‘So, we are done,’ the Russian said. ‘The only concern now is how I dispose of you.’

XXVI

‘I’m glad Comrade Berzarin’s English wasn’t entirely up to scratch,’ Jamie said as he and Magda shared a table at the internet cafe near the hotel. ‘Just for a moment I thought we were going to end up buried in a Siberian bog with a bullet for company.’

He accompanied the observation with a wry smile that wasn’t reciprocated. In fact, there was something quite intimidating about the way his companion was playing with her bread knife. Almost as intimidating as the scowl she’d worn for the past hour and the silence that had accompanied it.

He sighed. ‘You’re not still angry about the Sergei thing? I told you,’ he carried on with what he considered was impeccable logic, ‘it was nothing to do with the Bougainville head. An entirely separate issue. A loose end left over from a previous commission. In any case,’ he sought out her hand, but she whipped her fingers away, ‘there are some things it’s better not to know. I didn’t want you involved.’

‘I can look after myself, Jamie.’ The brown eyes skewered him. ‘But don’t you think I deserved to be kept informed after the visit from your Chinese
acquaintances
?’ She let her eyes drift across their fellow customers. ‘If I’d known someone like that was taking an interest it might have explained the familiar faces I keep seeing from the train.’

‘What familiar faces?’ He followed her gaze.

‘Not here.’ She shook her head. ‘On the streets. They’re mostly men, but at least one woman. I think one of them might have been the drunk who questioned me on the way from the bathroom on the train.’

‘Coincidence.’ He ignored her withering look. ‘Krasnoyarsk is one of the more scenic attractions on the Trans-Siberia route. You’d expect tourists to stop off here for a couple of days.’

‘These men aren’t tourists. I think they’re following us.’

‘It might have been helpful if you’d mentioned it before.’

‘I didn’t know then that a very intimidating person was in partnership with my travelling companion.’

‘Would it help if I apologized again?’

‘No.’

‘Not even if the good news is that I’ve booked us first-class tickets to Tokyo.’

Her eyes turned suspicious. ‘If that’s the good news, what’s the bad news?’

‘The flight’s at four tomorrow morning.’

‘I suppose that puts paid to my beauty sleep again.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a pity this was all such a waste of time.’

‘Not at all,’ Jamie said cheerfully. ‘It’s how the business works. Sometimes you end up chasing shadows, but you don’t know it’s a shadow until you’ve caught it. We might have walked into that room and found the Bougainville head on the mantelpiece between his Jackson Pollocks. “Take it away, Mr art dealer Saintclair, Berzarin is fed up with it and needs to make room for a Ming vase.” All right, it didn’t happen, but we’d never have known without being here.’

She smiled at his passable imitation of Berzarin’s voice. ‘So tomorrow night we’ll be in Tokyo and out of the clutches of Sergei’s annoying followers.’ The knowledge clearly invigorated her because her eyes glittered with excitement and Jamie reflected that she appeared to have as much invested in this quest as he did. The thought gave him another twinge of guilt.

‘Look, I really am sorry I didn’t tell you …’

‘You’re forgiven, but from now on we’re proper partners. No more secrets, right?’

‘No more secrets.’ He stood up and went to pay the bill, hoping she was right about the minders, but not entirely convinced. That wasn’t the way it usually worked out for Jamie Saintclair.

They walked back to the hotel along one of the city’s broad avenues and she linked her arm through his, suggesting he really was forgiven. Even through the padded jackets he could feel the curve of her breast against his bicep and he tried to think of Fiona back in Sydney or wherever she would be at this time, which reminded him he still needed to phone her. If it was 8 p.m. in Krasnoyarsk what time did that make it in Australia? He was still trying to work out the time difference when the drunk stumbled into him with a slurred ‘
yob tvoyu mat
’ and it wasn’t until the man was past that Jamie realized he’d felt a sharp sting in the hip at the exact moment of collision.

He stopped and looked back in confusion as the man disappeared into an alleyway.

‘Is something wrong, Jamie?’

‘I don’t know.’ He pulled up his jacket and shirt and in the light of a streetlamp tried to check the area of flesh where he’d felt the sting, but the angle and the bulk of the coat made it too awkward. ‘Can you see anything?’

Her face was already pale in the artificial light, but he could have sworn it went even whiter. The dark eyes filled with concern. ‘I think …’

‘What?’ he demanded.

‘It looks like a puncture mark.’

For a moment Jamie’s head spun and he felt like vomiting. Breath became hard to come by and Magda acted as a prop as she helped him to a nearby doorway. It was a combination of shock and fear – or was there something coursing through his system turning his blood to tar? Pull yourself together, idiot, it was just a drunk. But a drunk on the train had harassed Magda. Was it the same man? After what she’d said earlier surely she’d have recognized him? But this one had been wrapped up in a winter coat with a cap low over his face. Jamie had an image of a bald man lying back on a hospital bed, patches on his chest and tubes and electrical leads hanging from his emaciated body. What had his name been? Litvinenko, that was it. Alexander Litvinenko. A former FSB officer who’d fled to London seeking asylum, he’d accused his former masters of arranging the Moscow theatre siege that had left a hundred and thirty people dead, along with forty Chechen terrorists. He’d also accused high-ranking members of the government of complicity in the death of a prominent Moscow journalist. Someone had poisoned him with a radioactive isotope and it had taken him three painful weeks to die.

‘Can you walk?’

Christ, he’d forgotten where he was. ‘I think so.’ Magda took his arm and they stumbled in the direction of the hotel. What reason could anyone possibly have for …? He thought back to his conversation with Berzarin. If the FSB had somehow managed to get a bug into the aluminium mogul’s living room had he revealed too much to Sergei’s sworn enemy? No, it wasn’t possible. But what about their new friend Berzarin? For all his comradely bonhomie –
Do you understand how difficult it is to be both honest and rich in today’s Russia? –
he was a ruthless tycoon who’d built his fortune on the bodies of lesser men, some of them undoubtedly in the ranks of the Russian mafia. Maybe Berzarin had decided it would be more convenient to get rid of the nuisance away from his home?

Jamie’s head had cleared a little by the time they reached the hotel and he was able to walk up the steps unassisted. They took the lift up to the third floor and Magda opened the door to the twin room. When they were inside Jamie staggered to the toilet and was sick into the bowl.

‘I’ll get the front desk to call a doctor,’ Magda said as he emerged, wiping his mouth with a paper towel.

‘No. I don’t think so … If you do that I’ll end up in hospital where they’ll want to do tests and keep me under observation. I could be there for a week and I don’t fancy a week in a Russian hospital. I’m feeling much better now. We have to get out of here tonight.’ He saw her face harden and shook his head. ‘I think it’s only shock and over-reaction. Get them to book a taxi to the airport and set the alarm for one a.m.’ He stripped off his jacket and threw it over a chair, pulling the tail of his shirt and opening his jeans so he could study the mark she’d seen. There it was: a tiny dark spot surrounded by about an inch of reddened skin. A thin line of watery blood wept from the puncture. No dark lines reaching out from it, which had to be good news. He returned to the bathroom and washed the wound before applying copious amounts of antiseptic cream. His vaccinations were up to date, which should rule out hepatitis and tetanus. If the needle had been infected with HIV there wasn’t a lot he could do about it, and if someone had injected him with Polonium or whatever they’d used on Alexander Litvinenko, he was already dead, which was a cheerful thought. There was only one thing for it. He lay down on the left-hand bed and closed his eyes. ‘In the meantime, I’m going to try to get some sleep.’

Magda stood over him, waiting for his breathing to regulate. When she was certain he slept, she went to the door and silently opened it before slipping out into the corridor. She returned a few minutes later and contemplated the two beds for a moment before lying down fully clothed beside Jamie and pulling a coverlet across both their bodies.

XXVII

They arrived in Tokyo two days later after an overnight stop at Beijing airport. Jamie’s hip throbbed and he barely registered the low descent over the grey waters of Tokyo Bay with the city’s soaring skyline a spiky, gap-toothed rampart painted stark against the low hills beyond, and both dwarfed by the snow-dusted vastness of Mount Fuji in the far distance.

When they reached the multi-storey Hyatt hotel in Minato, Magda insisted on sending for an English-speaking doctor to examine him and a young Japanese man arrived at their suite within thirty minutes. He probed the area around the puncture mark with a gloved finger and frowned at it for a while before asking Jamie to remove his shirt and checking his heart and lungs. Then he wrapped an inflatable bandage around the Englishman’s arm to take his blood pressure. Another study of the wound was necessary, this time with the help of what looked like a pair of binoculars, before he made his prognosis.

‘I think you’ll live, Mr Saintclair,’ he announced, with what Jamie felt was a rather casual air given the circumstances. ‘Your blood pressure is a little low, which would account for the lack of energy you’re feeling, but that’s probably a result of the shock you had and I’ve no doubt it will pass.’

‘You’d have been shocked too if you’d been stabbed by a hypodermic syringe of unknown origin.’

The doctor picked up his odd-shaped binoculars again. ‘I don’t think either the dimensions or the characteristics of the wound would suggest a syringe. It’s also quite shallow. You’re worried about HIV, I take it?’

‘Wouldn’t you be?’ Jamie said.

‘I suppose it’s possible that someone could contract HIV from something like a nail, or more likely the pin of a belt buckle.’ He shrugged. ‘On balance, I’d say the odds are against it. I’ll take a blood test, of course, but …’

With a wince, Jamie remembered the jacket the drunk had been wearing when he barged into him – the one festooned with straps and buckles. He ignored Magda’s raised eyebrow.

‘That won’t be necessary …’

‘Oh, I insist,’ the young man said gravely. ‘I wouldn’t be doing my duty as a medical practitioner otherwise. It won’t take long. If you’ll just roll up your sleeve again.’

Magda waited until the doctor was gone. ‘Buckle?’

‘You were the one who said it looked like a puncture,’ Jamie complained. ‘How was I to know what caused it, especially with all that stuff about people following us?’

‘You should be glad someone is keeping their eyes open on this trip.’ She tilted her head to study him. ‘Am I right in thinking the patient is about to make a remarkable recovery?’

‘Oddly enough, he is.’ He smiled. ‘All down to the wonders of medical science and your nursing skills.’

‘In that case, we should get back to business,’ she said decisively. ‘I noticed they had some decent maps of the city down in reception. Why don’t you give Fiona a call while I get one? She must be wondering what’s happened to you?’

Jamie looked at his watch. It would be early evening in Sydney. Worth a try. He punched in the mobile number, but the phone immediately went to a disembodied voice that informed him the person he was attempting to call was not available to answer. Disappointed, he tried again, with the same result. Given that Fiona had probably had similar problems phoning him in Russia, the lack of communication didn’t seem anything to worry about. Still, he thought he’d mention it to Devlin. He called the Australian to let him know they’d arrived in Tokyo and a secretary informed him the mining tycoon was in an important meeting. She promised to call Jamie back as soon as Devlin was available.

The phone went while he was still in the shower and he shrugged on a robe.

‘Saintclair.’

‘What have you got for me?’ Jamie detected an abrupt edge to Keith Devlin’s voice, but he replied in his usual amiable tone.

‘Russia was a dead end, I’m afraid. We’ve just arrived in Tokyo.’

‘Why am I just hearing this now?’

‘Because we had a few problems in Krasnoyarsk.’ Jamie explained about the drunk and his fears he’d been attacked.

‘And that was all?’

The disbelief in Devlin’s voice was clear. Jamie frowned; this was beginning to feel like an interrogation. ‘Why should there be anything else?’

‘I had this Berzarin bloke checked out.’ The other man didn’t hide his anger. ‘It turns out he’s in the same business as Devlin Metal Resources. If he happened to get wind of why we really want the head he could be a problem.’

‘I think you’re over-reacting, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Well I bloody do mind,’ Devlin was plainly unconvinced. ‘I didn’t get what I have today by letting other people make the running. From my point of view he’s like a little bit of grit under the eyelid. You always feel better when it’s removed.’

A long silence followed while Jamie contemplated the significance of the word ‘removed’. ‘Look, Mr Devlin,’ he said slowly, ‘I’m sensing an undercurrent to this conversation I don’t very much like. If you don’t trust me all you have to do is say and I’ll be on the first plane back to Sydney.’

‘Don’t get all shirty with me, son.’ The tone changed instantly and the old chirpy Devlin reappeared. ‘I apologize if I’ve been abrupt, but it’s been a tough day. Remember, you owe those little ladies of yours a bit of pampering.’

Jamie frowned. ‘By the way, I haven’t been able to get in touch with Fiona. Do you know how she is?’