Their feet crunched on through the snow. Stevie kept glancing over her shoulder at the hungry dog. He looked a little crazed, his tongue hanging out. She was glad to have Vadim with her. He went on with his story unperturbed.
‘Galina then lost one of her sons in Chechnya. A rocket attack, the military said. Could have been anything. She only ever got half of Alyosha’s body back.’
‘Poor Galina.’
‘And Masha.’ Vadim looked down at Stevie. ‘Her son was seven years old when he first looked under the family car for a bomb.’
As they walked on through the snowy ruins, Stevie thought about the staggering load that had been brought to bear on the people of Russia, and how it had crushed down with the weight of eternity, ground them into gunpowder and sand, and about how that same pressure produced, every now and then, a diamond of extraordinary brilliance.
They reached the university gates and stopped. Vadim let go of Stevie’s arm.
‘You are safe from the dogs here. They won’t follow you outside the grounds.’
But was she safe from whoever she was sure was following her?
Vadim hurled his stick into the trees. ‘I can’t get that man’s voice out of my head,’ he confessed to Stevie. ‘I wanted to crawl into that tape machine and break his throat.’
‘We’ll find him, Vadim.’
‘It seems crazy that we know what his voice sounds like, and who he is, and yet . . .’
‘It’s not certain that Gregori Maraschenko took Anya.’ Stevie was suddenly worried Vadim might do something rash.
‘No? Looks pretty likely to me.’
Stevie could only agree with silence.
As if he could read her thoughts, Vadim leaned in and kissed her cheeks. ‘I won’t do anything. Don’t worry.’
Stevie wanted to say something reassuring but managed only an enormous sneeze, then another. Her eyes were streaming. Vadim considered her, head cocked to one side. ‘You need
gorchichniki
, mustard pads—you stick them to the soles of your feet and to your kidneys. Trust me. They’re the only thing that works.’
The security guard at the
pharmacy door (this was Moscow) scowled at her. Inside, there were three windows with a pharmacist—like tellers at an old-fashioned bank—long queues in front of each. Stevie joined the shortest.
The customers were all old, or old before their time, bundled and wrapped and swaddled to the point of impaired mobility, their faces incurious and impenetrable. No one spoke. Finally, it was Stevie’s turn at the window.
A stocky young woman in a white coat looked up. ‘
Gavaritye.
’
Speak.
Stevie asked politely: ‘
Izvinite pozhaluista
, I need some
gorchichniki.
’
The pharmacist just looked at her blankly. Nothing. Stevie tried again, more in the pharmacist’s style, ‘
Gorchichniki!
’ This time there was the slightest relaxation deep in the rigid cognitive functions of the pharmacist’s brain.
‘
Ah. Gorchichniki!
’ Stevie knew her Russian pronunciation was not good, but she could have sworn there could have been only the smallest difference in her version of
gorchichniki
, such as might have been produced by an old man with loose dentures, say, or a swaddled
babushka
mumbling through her layers. The pharmacist pointed to the window next to hers and proceeded to read her papers.
Stevie, burning with frustration, went to the back of another queue and waited. She had been there twenty minutes already. The elderly had played a vital role in the Era of the Long Queue. Looking around, Stevie wondered if some of them missed the days when they had been indispensable, and the respect that came with that. It appeared that perhaps, in this pharmacy at least, those days were not quite over.
Shifting her weight from foot to foot, Stevie tried to harvest patience from the most barren of fields.
The same conversation was waiting for her.
‘
Gavaritye.
’ ‘
Gorchichniki.
’ The pharmacist stared at her with deep suspicion.
Stevie scowled back, refusing to smile. The woman pointed to the third window. Stevie could see the packet, a yellow-and-red box, just within the pharmacist’s reach. This was too much. Quite aside from the time it had taken her so far, and the sheer perversity of the pharmacists and their system, Stevie had her dignity. A stand had to be taken.
Stevie assumed the expression of a brick.
‘
Gorchichniki.
’
The pharmacist pointed. Stevie repeated her request. A psy-ops guy had told her once that asking the same question over and over again was the quickest way to getting what you wanted. Stevie betrayed no impatience, no anger, only her brick face. She prepared her final assault on the pharmacist’s obstinacy.
‘
Gorchichniki.
’ The pharmacist crumbled and finally reached for the yellow-and-red box. Stevie all but danced away in victory, and walked smack bang into the swinging door.
She felt her tooth slice into her soft bottom lip, knew it would hurt in a millisecond, bleed into her mouth. But there was no question of stopping. The pharmacist could be watching. So she launched herself into the street, hoping the cold would numb everything, including her embarrassment.
Stevie surfaced like a penguin
from under the ice and snow. The warmth of the metro car had brought on a throbbing of her damaged lower lip. She was tired and her head was heavy, aching; she would have liked maybe to cry a little. But Masha wouldn’t cry. This was exactly why she, Stevie Duveen, would never be heroic.
Heroes didn’t cry because they walked into a door; heroes struggled against evil, not pharmacists. In the end though, Stevie thought, even if you couldn’t be a hero, you could certainly try to be a part of the solution rather than part of the problem. This, she felt, was perhaps a more manageable expectation, considering her temperament.
Coward.
There was a car park right in front of the station. A black 4WD sat idling, its exhaust pipe steaming, tail-lights turning the snow around it a festive red. The windows were completely tinted, as opaque as the doors. Stevie noticed it from the corner of her vision: the sort of vehicle to stay away from.
She began to scurry, rapid small steps like a cockroach. It was a gait that, in her experience, usually discouraged all approach. There were a few other people about puffing steam; Stevie could see two
mil-itzia
strolling through the car lot and this time the sight of them was comforting rather than unnerving.
There was nothing to be afraid of, she told herself. It was just a car waiting for a parking spot. But there were plenty of vacant spaces. It was obviously waiting for somebody to come out of the metro station, it was too cold to walk home. But Stevie couldn’t help it. She was nervous, and she had made an inconvenient bargain with herself a long time ago that she would always trust her instincts over reason.
There were no shops to duck into and the metro was now quite far behind her. Stevie scanned the area. About a hundred metres ahead was a large intersection, people, some restaurants, safety. The car park ended with a wall about twenty metres before the intersection. The car would not be able to proceed further, the intersection was the best bet for safety.
Two men walking ahead of her stopped to light cigarettes. One laughed and slapped his friend on the shoulder. Behind her, a
babushka
built like a bear toddled along carrying heavy shopping bags. Stevie slowed her pace so the old woman could come closer and felt a little safer.
The 4WD started crawling along behind her. Stevie could hear it, feel it at her shoulder like some malevolent bird of prey. Faster she scurried; faster crawled the black car, speeding up. Stevie was frightened now.
Had Kozkov’s enemies come after her?
Stevie and the
babushka
were maybe five metres from the men when the 4WD pulled up alongside. The front window lowered all the way down.
There was a man in the passenger seat, shaven head, fat gold chain, leather overcoat and a tattoo creeping up his thick neck. There were others in the car. Stevie couldn’t help but look at him, and he looked right back at her. She saw he had a mouth full of gold teeth. The tip of a handgun was resting on the door.
The thug raised the gun to the height of Stevie’s head and jerked it sideways twice, as if urging her back. The
babushka
saw the gun, cried out and skidded on the ice, slammed into Stevie, knocking her to the ground. Four shots rang out. Tyres screeched, filthy grey snow sprayed out over her. The 4WD reversed through the parking lot at speed, spun around and disappeared off down the main road. The two men ahead lay dead.
Stevie didn’t dare get up yet, but she turned her head slowly to get a clear view. The two
militzia
had seen the whole thing from the other side of the parking lot. They remained standing there. One was talking into a radio. Neither looked in a particular hurry to get involved.
Stevie stood cautiously and made herself walk up to the two bodies. The
babushka
who had knocked her over had disappeared.
One victim was in his forties, the other much younger. They seemed to be of average means—strong cheap shoes, clean hands, gold rings on the older man—unremarkable in any way. Stevie removed her right glove, then knelt over the older man and checked for a pulse below the ear. The skin was warm and soft to her touch but there was no pulse. A neat bullet hole above the ear was visible. Unsurvivable. The other man had fared no better: no pulse, a wound in the cheek, the forehead and the neck—a disorganised cluster of bullet holes, but effective nonetheless.
Blood was pooling in the snow, spreading through the ice crystals to form a huge stain like a big red balloon, floating over the heads of the victims. As much as Stevie wanted to flee, she had seen the assassin’s face and it was her duty to describe it to the
militzia
.
A pair of tiny
babushki
hurried past the bodies without even giving them a second glance. The men were obviously not sleeping there on the street, but the old women’s studied incuriosity came from a long history of lessons in self-preservation:
see nothing
.
The two
militzia
men sauntered over and stood over the bodies. They took no notice of Stevie.
‘I saw the man who did it, bald with tattoos on his neck. He had gold teeth,’ she told them.
The policemen stared at Stevie, then went back to looking at the bodies. One bent down and began to search the older man’s pockets. He pulled out a wallet with an identity card. The wallet was empty. The policeman tossed it to the ground.
‘They were driving a black 4WD—you must have seen it. It was waiting in the car park,’ she pressed on.
The men in uniform paid as much attention to Stevie as the dead men in the snow. They began thoroughly searching the younger man’s pockets.
‘If you need a statement, I’m staying at the Metropole.’
One
militzia
made a hissing noise, jerked his head twice at Stevie, just like the thug had with his gun.
Get out of here
, the gesture said,
this
is not your business
.
Stevie was only too happy to oblige and she resumed her scurry down the boulevard, into the fading frozen light, her cut lip forgotten.
Back at her hotel, Stevie
called down for a bucket of ice. As she went to replace the telephone receiver, her hands began to shake so violently that it took her several attempts to sit it back in its cradle.
In her mind, she saw the small flecks of brain sitting on snow crystals; the neat bullet hole encircled by singed skin; she remembered the smell of gunpowder and exhaust fumes; the taste of fear like metallic electricity in her mouth. Bile rose in her throat but she fought it down and was not sick.
Pull yourself together, Stevie, for goodness sake. You have to be stronger
than this.
Considering the adventures of the day, Stevie thought a medicinal afternoon cocktail would not be inappropriate. Not wanting to be alone, she decided on the Metropole bar.
She floated in, having changed
into an emerald-green silk kimono coat covered in birds of paradise, small gold birdcages hanging from her earlobes, and ordered a Brandy Crusta. It was a good drink for dealing with death: brandy, cream and brown sugar on the rim of the glass. Her grandmother’s friends served them at wakes.
A small television was on behind the bar. Stevie fixed on it, hoping to distract herself from the vivid blood balloon in her thoughts. It was broadcasting a story about Sokolniki Park. The park at this time of year was virtually abandoned, the fun fair, under tarpaulin drapes, sad as only once-happy places can be.
During the Cold War it had been a famous meeting place for spies and their sources. People thought that had all ended with the thaw, but the activity, if anything, had intensified. Only a few months ago, the British secret service had been discovered planting fake rocks under park benches in Sokolniki. These plastic rocks contained transmitters that could either scramble and send information in lightning bursts (therefore reducing the chances of interception) or record nearby conversations. It had been a major gaffe, a source of much amusement among Muscovites. Children had hunted the park for the plastic rocks and jokes grew up in bars: ‘Ssh, the rocks might hear you’ was particularly funny after a few drinks.
Stevie placed a cigarette carefully between her damaged lips and reached for the matches, but her fingers were still shaking and she put the box down. Instead, she concentrated on a breathing technique she’d learned on one of her training courses. It was designed to calm the central nervous system.
A news programme was starting. Stevie held her breath, but there was nothing at all about the shooting. Perhaps it was too soon, but news crews were usually pretty good at sniffing out crimes as visually arresting as the one she had witnessed. There was nothing about Anya Kozkov on the news, not about a disappearance—nor a body, Stevie forced herself to add.