Her grandmother’s voice on the phone brought her back to the present. ‘And how is London?’
Stevie paused a moment before answering. ‘Actually, I’m in Moscow, Didi. Doing a favour for a friend.’
Silence on the line. Then, ‘I’m sorry, Stevie. I’ll never stop worrying about you, no matter how much faith I have in you. I’m not a nervous woman, but I do know the world.’
‘I’m safe, Didi, I promise. There’s nothing at all to worry about.’
When Stevie hung up the phone, she hoped to goodness it was true.
Room service arrived under a silver dome, a baby bottle of vodka chilled in a silver bucket of ice. The kind concierge had thought that a woman staying alone in a Moscow hotel room—however luxurious— might be in need of solace and had added a copy of
Hello
magazine.
What Stevie saw on the cover should not have surprised her. In fact, it didn’t really. It was more that the existence of the Hammer-Belles and their baby Kennedy-Jack had completely slipped her mind. All three beamed in hyper-colour from the front cover, glazed and perfect like candied fruit.
Rice had put Owen Dovetail on their job and she couldn’t imagine this going down too well with the soft-spoken, knuckle-dented Welshman. Dovetail was the perfect man to coordinate their protection programme because he was utterly phlegmatic and no amount of gyronisers or mushroom tea or male nannies would ever disrupt his detached cool. Being fiercely patriotic, he had room only for one media personality and that was Catherine Zeta-Jones. The photo was of the three stars (because surely now Kennedy-Jack had become public property) on one of the Kensington Palace lawns. Stevie recognised the Romanian embassy in the background, with its mysteriously barred attic windows. The Hammer-Belles had undoubtedly befriended some of the lesser Windsors by now and they would want everyone to know it. Things like Windsors went down very well with Americans, especially in Hollywood.
Stevie shifted the armchair so that it faced the big dark window. The snow was still falling and, illuminated by the outdoor lights of the hotel, the flakes were a shower of sparks.
Stevie poured herself a little vodka. The salad, in its elaborate red-and-gold porcelain dish, looked appetising. She raised her fork and of course, the hotel phone rang.
It could only be Henning.
Stevie was disconcerted to find her first reaction was a flutter of nervousness.
It’s just Henning!
she told herself firmly. She took a sip of vodka and picked up the receiver.
‘Rice here, Stevie. Where in God’s name are you?’
‘The Metropole—you just rang me here.’
‘I didn’t mean that. I mean what are you doing in Moscow?’
‘I’m on leave, like you ordered.’
‘And you need Constantine Dinov? What’s going on there, Stevie?’ Rice sounded furious and Stevie was glad there were miles between them.
‘A friend needed my help.’
‘Valery Kozkov is a friend of yours?’ There was more than a hint of sarcasm in his question.
How did he always know everything?
‘Henning. My friend Henning is close to Kozkov. I’m just giving the family some advice, nothing more.’
‘I hope you haven’t got up to your neck in Moscow just so you can avoid Joss Carey.’
Rice had found her tearing up in the corridor, two days after she’d found the primrose. He had known exactly why and immediately taken her to lunch in a dark pub where she could be as invisible as she liked. Stevie had been very grateful . . .
The photo in the papers that morning had ambushed her—Joss out clubbing with Norah Wolfe—and the two were described, in an accompanying piece celebrating the event, as ‘giggling like schoolyard crushes’.
Stevie was sure Joss had never giggled with her. Her heartache had been hard even for Stevie to hide.
‘I’m not trying to avoid anyone. I’m taking a holiday,’ she told Rice.
Rice on the other end was silent. His scepticism hummed down the line.
Stevie took another large sip of vodka. She had a sudden mental image of lipstick on a jam jar in Joss’ studio—why had she not suspected anything then?—and the way he had looked at Norah that night . . .
‘How are the Hammer-Belles?’ she asked as a way of changing the subject.
‘Actually, that’s why I’m ringing, not just to harass you.’ Stevie smiled. She liked the way David Rice always emphasised the first part of the word:
har-–
ass.
‘They are planning a trip to St Moritz. They want you with them.’
‘Oh no.’ Stevie put her glass down carefully on the table.
‘Afraid so.’
‘Can they be discouraged?’
‘Afraid not. They’re planning to attend some sort of society function up there.’
‘David, I really don’t know if I can take this on. When are they going?’
‘They’ve been vague on details. I’ll have the necessary information in the next day or so.’ He shuffled some papers, obviously still in the office. ‘And while you’re in Moscow, Analysis would like a security situation report from you—the word on the street, as they say.’
‘No problem. I’ll put something together.’
There was a pause in the conversation.
‘Stevie, I know why you asked for Dinov. I know Valery Kozkov’s daughter is missing.’
The words sank down the line like pebbles in a pond.
How?!
‘I hope you’re not up to anything. It’s the sort of thing you might be tempted to try to put right.’
Stevie said nothing.
‘It’s too dangerous, Stevie. A negotiator is not a safety net for you.
He won’t be able to protect you if things go wrong. Russia is a law unto itself—I don’t need to tell you that.’
Stevie did not reply. If the line was bugged, if someone was listening, she would have to be very careful what she said.
‘I appreciate the advice, David, and the concern. Actually, I have seen Kozkov but he is a friend of Henning’s, you see, that’s all.’ She spoke brightly and cheerfully. ‘He made no mention of his daughter.’
A brief silence on the line as Rice got the message.
‘Well, that’s good to hear, Stevie.’ His voice was as hard as an iron bar. ‘We wouldn’t want Marlise and Lockie worrying.’
He rang off.
The reference to her mother and father was Rice code for ‘I don’t want to see you shot dead in some godforsaken place’. Stevie appreciated David Rice’s protective instincts. No doubt it came from some sense of responsibility to her parents. Rice had spent a lot of time with their little family—a bachelor with nowhere to go for Sunday lunches, Easter feasts and snowy Christmas Eves.
Stevie wanted his admiration more than anything, maybe his love. Were the two not tied? He was her boss and her parents’ friend, but he was also the man she most admired in the world, and her anchor. She wanted so much to prove herself to him, but somehow he made her feel that, deep-down, he still doubted she was really up to the job.
Would Rice ever decide she was good enough to be at the centre of things? Celebrities and situation reports were one thing, but the really exciting clients were the ones the public rarely heard about. The Hammer-Belles fell into the ‘celebrity hand-holding’ category and she was rather dreading them. She hoped she could get Anya back before Rice called her away to Switzerland. What would she do then?
Stevie gave up on her dinner and lit a cigarette, touching the vodka to her lips to warm them.
And what about Henning?
Changing into the hotel robe, which was man-size and completely overwhelmed her, Stevie wondered what her friend was up to.
She looked in the mirror: her head was a tiny pale dot in a mound of white towelling, her small hands poking out of the rolled-up sleeves.
That’s it. I’m ringing Henning.
And the phone rang, just as if he had heard.
‘Well? Is it the sultan’s secret diary?’ Stevie struggled onto the bed and lay back on the pillows, cradling the receiver.
Henning gave a low chuckle. ‘Close, Stevie. It’s a book of flowers.’
‘Oh. Is that a disappointment? I suppose you would have preferred something rather bloody, with warriors, and scimitars parting heads from infidel necks.’
‘It’s actually a tremendous find from the sultan’s harem. You would love it. It’s a code book really, but the cipher is floral.’ Henning sounded incredibly excited.
‘All the sultans had at least one hundred wives. That much I know. So what was the code for?’ Stevie was genuinely intrigued, and the subject was a good distraction from her own thoughts.
‘The sultan’s wives used flowers to send secret messages to their lovers. Each flower had a different meaning. They could compose quite elaborate messages in bouquets and send them out. And then they would receive the most innocent-looking reply: a bunch of beautiful flowers.’ Henning laughed again. ‘Gives a whole new meaning to “flowery language”, doesn’t it?’
‘But wasn’t that terribly dangerous? They would have had their heads cut right off for the least suspicion I’m sure.’
‘But think, Stevie: one man and over one hundred, two hundred wives. Most of them essentially ignored, given luxury but denied love or acknowledgement. Indignation can embolden the most feeble heart.’
‘And you found their code?’ Stevie smiled into the phone, glad Henning had called.
‘It’s beautifully illustrated, too.’
She could hear Turkish music blaring in the background. ‘How is Istanbul?’ Stevie closed her eyes and dreamed of the city.
‘It’s covered in snow. The minarets have little white caps, and today they were just jutting out from the fog. The light is this soft grey colour, like daylight through a paper screen.’
‘I’ve never been to Istanbul,’ Stevie said wistfully. ‘They say the most romantic sight in the world is the Bosphorous by moonlight.’
‘By moonlight, from the water, when the city is covered in snow.
It would break your heart.’
Stevie sighed. ‘Are you going then, tonight, with raki bottles and daggers, to raid the other boats?’
Henning harrumphed in amusement. ‘Perhaps another night. It’s not something I would want to do alone. Perhaps if you were here with me, the adventure would hold more charm.’
His words stirred in Stevie something tiny, a butterfly wing of undefined emotion. Was it sorrow?
Stevie sat at the table
by the window in her bathrobe and pearls. There was nothing to see outside. A freezing fog was hovering over the boulevards, cloaking everything in a dove-grey tinged with dirty yellow. Out in the nothingness, it was –40 degrees. She had been chewing away at the Moscow situation report for Hazard since the night before.
The headlines of the morning papers carried news of the murder of the programming head of the largest state-run news agency, Itar-–Tass— stabbed multiple times in his flat while his driver waited outside for three hours before anyone was called.
Regular situation reports kept Hazard at peak readiness to meet whatever challenges their clients’ operating environments presented.
Stevie had started from the ground up. Lawlessness was the problems on the Moscow street—skinhead gangs attacking foreign students of Asian, African or Indian descent was big. Fifteen thugs had attacked an African-American student only the other day, screaming, ‘Blacks out of Russia.’ The boy was bashed in broad daylight, in the centre of town, with hundreds of bystanders. No one stopped them. The Russian security services were so unable (or unwilling) to deal with incidents like this that they were becoming diplomatic incidents. It was a symptom of the greater rot.
These gangs had initially stepped in to provide protection in the vacuum left when the judicial and police institutions of Russia had crumbled. Skinheads had allegedly been called to a town three time zones away to punish a man who had raped a girl. The gang flayed the man alive with razor blades.
Tiger kidnappings were also on the rise: bank managers, truck drivers moving precious cargos, jewellers—anyone who had access to valuables—were snatched and ‘persuaded’ to hand over the goods. Kidnap for ransom was a real risk for anyone who was prominent, and executed by professionals and opportunists alike. Companies doing business in Russia faced the conundrum of bribes—to pay or not to pay—and the risk of violence. Organised crime favoured assassinations as a negotiating tool in their ‘business’.
By 1995, after the fall of the Soviet Union, murder figures had tripled. Organised crime gangs became the most stable, most powerful organisations in Russia. As the country privatised, these groups had the cash to snap up properties. This gave them great economic and political clout.
Forty per cent of KGB members left the organisation and many joined criminal groups, or offered personal protection to oligarchs. They took with them their sophisticated training, specialist knowledge, and powerful weaponry and connections. Organised crime gangs were transformed. By this time, crushing them would have destabilised the fragile nation.
As the country slowly stabilised under the iron grip of the government of the new millennium, the crackdown on the criminal gangs had begun.
The ex-USSR had plenty of other security issues. Military-grade radioactive material had become a hot commodity. The moment the Soviet Union had collapsed, criminal gangs of all persuasions had descended like hungry maggots on the abandoned nuclear facilities and research labs dotted around the vast territory and stripped them bare. The high levels of secrecy that had surrounded these projects meant that no one quite knew what was taken.
The Americans spent millions trying to help the Russian government secure these facilities, but the thefts kept happening. The fear was that the materials would be trafficked and used by terrorists to make a dirty bomb. Rumours of missing ‘suitcase bombs’—nuclear devices that the KGB had allegedly constructed, small enough to fit in a suitcase— still circulated although none of the missing suitcases had yet been recovered.
Despite the massive wealth of a handful of men, life for ordinary Russians remained unforgivably grim. Looking out onto the city, Stevie felt the weight of all those crushed generations crowded in the cold fog and the streets outside, and wondered how Russians found the energy to keep on going.