Stevie knelt and opened the violin case, took out the elegant instrument. ‘Is she close to her godfather?’
‘She was once. He’s a conductor and he introduced Anya to music.
Neither Valery nor I are musical.’ Irina gave a wry smile. ‘When she was younger, they would listen to music together and talk about it for hours.’
‘Where is he now?’
Irina shook her head. ‘It has been years since any of us spoke to him. He no longer lives in Russia.’ She seemed about to say more but then just bowed her head and reached for the edge of the pink coverlet.
Stevie suddenly felt like an impostor. ‘Irina, Henning tells me your husband doesn’t want to hire anyone local to help.’
Irina shook her head. ‘It’s too dangerous. Everyone is corrupt.’
‘But when we start to negotiate, you need a trained professional. Do you understand?’
‘Yes.’
Stevie replaced the violin with great care and closed the case. ‘I can recommend a man. His name is Constantine Dinov. He has done this many times before. In the meantime, I’m going to try to find out as much as I can about Anya and what happened so we can help Constantine get her back safely. That’s all the help I can offer, I’m sorry.’
Vadim glanced at his mother, then Stevie. ‘Just by agreeing to try, you are helping,’ he said. ‘You give us hope. Without hope you can’t live.’
Stevie bit her lip. ‘We need to go to that nightclub, Vadim. Tonight.’
In the night world of
Moscow the real New Russia is revealed. The winter’s day is short and unconfident. It exists to provide gaps between nights. Daylight is the only sense of order that survives here. The night world is created and inhabited by the night people. These are the thrillseekers, the young, the very newly very rich, and those who serve them. They have been partying apocalyptically since 1993, when the Soviet Union deflated and all things changed beyond recognition.
The early years of freedom brought violence to the streets, assassinations, chaos; it injected energy into the existing desperation, celebratory hysteria, the uncertainty of utter hedonism. It created oligarchs and über criminals and vampire beauties to feed off them. Mostly the age was characterised by a complete lack of restraint. These qualities have remained intact.
Every traveller into the underworld needs a guide. As Dante had Virgil, so Stevie called on her two Italian friends, Diego and Iacopo.
She had met them on her first trip to Moscow and they could always be relied upon to find the best restaurant and the hippest club. Being Italian, they refused to adapt one iota to Russian ways and remained resolutely as they were. Even their tans stayed mysteriously summerish, as though Capri was just around the corner. Their cultural confidence was the root of their charm.
The restaurant Diego and Iacopo chose was called Sushi Fusion.
Henning was under strict instructions to remember anything of interest in the event Stevie got a little too drunk—which she wouldn’t—and not to leave her side. Bathroom breaks were excepted.
Back at the Metropole she had a raging hot bath and emerged bright pink and steaming. Moisturiser—Louis Widmer, because she liked the pink bottle and it smelt of her childhood—massaged into the body, was vital in very cold weather, in heated rooms, or you risked drying out like a twig. Scent, always applied when naked, a very little on the neck and the wrists. Her grandmother, who knew everything, said it should only be detectable when you were being kissed—‘hello’ that is, of course.
Hurry. Dress. You don’t want Henning ringing up from the lobby while
you are still naked.
Obeying her inner nanny, she layered carefully in her Hanro thermals. The Swiss made the best undergarments. These were a wool-silk mix, very fine, and her heavenly Didi swore by them. Then a midnight blue rollneck jumper in medium-weight cashmere, pearls on the outside; a cream woollen skirt, pressed invincibly into tiny pleats that opened like a Japanese fan. It was uncrushable and fabulous for dancing; tight black knee-high boots with a flat heel (you never knew what you might have to run from in a strange city at night; plus there was black ice); her trusty crocodile bag.
Henning stood like a Christmas tree in the middle of the lobby in his herringbone coat, a flat woollen cap, a white silk scarf knotted tightly at his throat and a smile for Stevie.
‘What are you so happy about? This is a work mission.’
‘You look tremendous.’
Stevie frowned. ‘Thank you but that isn’t the idea. I’m blending in. Where’s Vadim?’
‘Buying cigarettes. There.’ Vadim strolled into the lobby. He would be essential for pointing out Petra, and anyone else Anya might have got close to. A brother’s questions were also less suspicious than a stranger’s.
With Moscow restaurants, one never quite knows what to expect. Sushi Fusion was painted a lacquer black, the ceilings red, like an enormous bento box. A bar dimly lit ran the length of one wall. As the three of them disrobed in the entrance and handed in their coats, a family with two young children was being seated.
Sweet, thought Stevie, a little family evening in such a mad city.
She sometimes forgot children existed in Moscow. She so rarely saw any.
Four go-go dancers were gyrating on the bar in feather bikinis, sequined hotpants and over-the-knee boots. Three had long blonde hair that they flicked about like whips with a crack of their necks. A fourth had short dark hair and a severe mouth.
It was an odd combination: family restaurant (Stevie added a couple of grandmothers at a far table to the children) and erotic dance bar. But, she supposed, these were Moscow rules: anything goes.
Sitting at their table, Stevie watched the dancers. It was the hips and breasts that moved, not the feet. That’s how they could dance without falling off. The girls had incredible bodies but no one else in the room appeared to be watching with any interest—not the two children, not Vadim.
He smoked and stared at his glass of rum and coke. The cold air outside had angered the scar over his eye; it stood out livid in his pale face. Stevie wanted to ask what had happened but now was not the time.
Iacopo and Diego arrived with a burst of energy. Iacopo launched into a ridiculous tale of a recent trip to Kazakhstan, involving deep fog, a frozen Kazakh forest and a skidoo running out of petrol. He and Diego worked for a large Italian company that distributed ceramic products all over the former Soviet Union. Basically, their job was to go to the ends of the earth and sell toilet bowls. A sense of humour was vital to the work.
The two spoke absolutely no Russian. They would just speak Italian, gesture as they would among friends, and they made themselves perfectly understood—most of the time.
As she suspected, Diego and Iacopo knew everything there was to know about the model competition run by Zima.
‘Every month they do big promotion night.’ Diego spoke in his waterfall English for Vadim’s benefit. ‘It bring all the girls from everywhere who want to be a model—Almaty, San Pietroburgo, Nizny Novgorod—’
‘And all the men to see them. It is always so so full model night,’ Iacopo added.
‘They take a spotlight. They have these guys who look at the faces—’
‘—All the girl dancing, laughing—’
‘—and they pick them. They put the spotlight like this,’ Diego made a startled face, the girl caught by the light, ‘and they take pictures and the girls go up on
palco scenico
—’
‘—the stage. They do the walking, then they pick the ten best girls. Everyone is taking pictures for promotion.’
‘Then they pick the winning girl, the most beautiful.’
‘What does the girl win?’ Stevie took a sip of her warm sake.
‘She goes with Top Faces agency to New York.’ Iacopo took charge of the sake bottle and refilled everyone’s cups. ‘They have an agent here.
He goes to the club to choose the girls.’
‘The girls are desperate to win. They are very beautiful—
il viso
della Madonna—
the face of a Madonna—but no expression. So cold.’ Diego shivered theatrically. ‘They are good for looking.’
‘Do they keep pictures of the girls anywhere?’
‘Ah
si
. They have a big wall in the VIP room, all the photos of the girls.’
‘So,’ Stevie downed her sake and smiled. ‘When are we going?’
The crowd outside Zima was
huge, a bustling black mass. To get from the car to the entrance, they had to trudge along a wide alleyway of trees, through knee-deep snow. It would not do for the face control—as bouncers are called in Moscow—to see them arrive in their shoddy car. Fortunately Diego and Iacopo had made quite an impression on the head face control (their company employed his sister) and a wait in the freezing night was averted.
Security guards were as thick as a wood inside. Between general drunkenness, organised crime, disorganised crime, and the threat of Chechen rebels, the possibility for mayhem was big. Stevie’s handbag was searched; they passed through metal detectors; no one even considered smiling.
They walked through the heavy felt curtains that kept out the cold and into the club. The space was enormous. The ceiling was five storeys high and four galleries ran along the edges of the room, stepping up to the vaulted ceiling. They were all packed with people, their faces tiny with distance.
Heavy house music pumped through the space. Just to the right of the entrance was a round bed covered in velvet cushions and vaguely veiled by white gauze curtains. On it, four semi-naked girls were romping— romping wasn’t quite the right word . . . it suggested a little too much innocence, a little too much joy . . .
The girls were ‘playing’ very well, rehearsed, with perfect moves drawing eyes to perfect bottoms, perfect breasts, perfectly blank faces on which an audience could project their desires.
Stevie stopped to watch. Men surrounded the round bed, staring. Mostly their expressions were dispassionate, the flames of their fantasy hidden deep enough not to show on their faces. One man, a good-looking guy, young and eager, moved forward to the front of the circle and was drawn in by the nymphs. He rolled about with the girls, taking pleasure from their bodies and from being the envy of the watching men.
Pleasure strips you naked as much as pain. The young stud—Stevie saw it in his face—suddenly realised that he had become part of the show. He became uncomfortable and pulled himself quickly away, out of the circle.
Scanning the faces, Stevie noticed one man, chubby and pale. His desire was right there in his face, on his mouth, his shiny lips. He was videotaping the girls, right up close. He stuck out his tongue—too far, too fat, too pink—in appreciation.
The tongue, his open lust, made Stevie feel a little sick. She had seen dancers and strippers before. It wasn’t that. But this man’s desire and his arrogance were more naked than the bodies of the writhing girls. She had to turn away, plunge deeper into the crowd. It was time to find some answers.
Vadim drew her to a bar. Young girls in tiny tight jeans, little singlets, designer handbags and skeleton heels, were clustered about. Stevie pulled the photo of Vadim’s sister from her handbag. It was a copy of the two of them in front of the birch wood.
The girls stared at Stevie blankly when she spoke to them. They didn’t smile, didn’t reply. They were not interested in Stevie nor what she wanted. She was not a Russian man flush with cash.
The girls didn’t recognise Anya from the photo—but then, they probably wouldn’t. She looked natural, young, on a summer holiday. They might have met her here, in a dark club. She would have been wearing makeup and heels. Stevie needed to get to the VIP room where the photos of the model competition contestants were. She was sure Anya would be among them.
Where is Henning?
‘I’m right here.’ Henning placed his hand lightly on her shoulder, reassuring her. So he had been keeping his promise. He was a good man.
‘Henning, no one is going to talk to me,’ Stevie said, touching his hand lightly with her own, just for a second. ‘We need you. How do we get into that VIP area? I don’t think me going up and shaking my tail feathers and smiling at security is going to work in this place.’
‘Where is it?’ Henning glanced over his shoulder, searching for the room.
Stevie pointed up towards the first gallery. Rather brutal looking men were visible, lithe women, sparkling crystal, bubbles, diamonds on a backdrop of smoke. Henning scanned the crowd for what seemed like a very long time.
‘Maxim Krutchik,’ he said finally. ‘The bald one standing with the blonde.’
‘That doesn’t really narrow it . . .’ Stevie squinted up into the darkness. ‘Oh, yes. I see him.’ A huge man with a perfectly bald pink head and a beautiful blonde on his arm was staring down onto the dance floor below.
‘He’s the head of a logistical services company,’ Henning explained, ‘specialising in Iran, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo.’
‘You mean an arms dealer . . .’ Stevie raised a sceptical eyebrow.
Henning nodded. ‘Unpleasant man, but he doesn’t know I think so. He thinks we’re great friends. He’s our way in.’
They headed up the stairs towards the VIP gallery. The host of the VIP room went to Maxim’s table and whispered Henning’s message in his ear, not daring to lay even a chummy hand on his shoulder.
‘Henning,’ Stevie whispered as they were let in, with beaming smiles this time, ‘I’m very suspicious of you now. There are places where a gentleman should not be well known.’
Henning chuckled. ‘Stevie, you sound like my grandmother.’
‘Well, I am sure she was a very sensible woman.’
When Maxim stood to greet them, Stevie realised he was twice as big as she had originally thought, and he had not one but three blondes on his big arms. He gave Henning a bear hug and they were offered a seat at his table.
Maxim pulled a wildly expensive bottle of vodka from amongst twenty or so bottles clustered in the centre of the table. He began filling shot glasses, insisting everyone drink. Stevie was rather glad to down her shot. She was not sure she could face a man like Maxim without a proper drink.