‘The
siloviki
,’ he said slowly. He looked around for a match. ‘They are the—how would you call them?—the bogeymen of the Kremlin.’ He struck the match and lit his cigarette. ‘Do they exist as an organised circle with members and specific goals? I don’t know. Are there men within the government who serve only their own interests, who are morally bankrupt, who have links to organised crime, and who are efficiently ruthless in the pursuit of what they want? Yes. Are there men who still believe in a system of government that relies on personal conceptions of power? Incredible as it may seem, yes.’ He exhaled a long column of smoke. ‘You can give these men a name—the
siloviki
—perhaps it makes them somehow more manageable. But I see them only as the locus of a cancerous corruption that has spread nationwide. As it was before, so it is now: no one can be trusted.’
Irina and Vadim left the room. They were probably not in the mood to hear about their country’s problems when they were being crushed under the weight of their own anguish.
Kozkov glanced at the doorway his wife had just walked through, then leaned forward on his elbows. ‘I’m being torn in two directions. On the one hand I have my integrity, my refusal to be pressured; then there is this most terrible strain . . . this horrible concern, and love I feel for my daughter.’
He reached for the vodka bottle then thought the better of it. ‘I can’t speak to Irina about this. I don’t think she would understand—or could bear to have the conversation.’
Stevie kept her voice low, not wanting to be overheard, but she had to ask. ‘What are you going to do, Valery, if the kidnappers ask you to compromise your ideals?’
Anya’s father stubbed out his cigarette, screwing the butt viciously into the ashtray. ‘Everything I have fought for for Russia’s future—Russia’s future itself perhaps—is at stake. To give in is almost unthinkable.’ He gave a bitter smile. ‘The incorruptible Kozkov crumbling, yet another betrayal of Russia’s chances.’
He looked up at Stevie. The fire leaving his face abruptly. ‘And yet there is a little space, Stevie, between unthinkable and possible, and in that little space lies for me all the world.’ His voice was almost a whisper. ‘Does that answer your question?’
They joined the others by
the fire in the next room. Stevie sat on the floor in front of it, warming her toes. Saskia lay at Irina’s feet, her own delicate paws stretched towards the flames.
‘Can I ask you,’ Stevie turned to Anya’s father, ‘does the name Felix Dragoman mean anything to you?’
Kozkov drew his eyebrows together. ‘The name is familiar . . .’
It was Vadim, flushed, who spoke. ‘I know the name—he runs smuggling rings all over the continent, Japan, the UK, Siberia, Turkey, and everywhere else. We all knew about him in the army.’ He glanced across at his father. ‘Some officers were making a fortune on the side, selling stuff on the black market. They would be assigned to guard a defunct nuclear facility or a pharmaceutical plant and they would sell uranium or plutonium or drugs or whatever out the back door to Dragoman and his men.’
‘How high up did this go?’ Stevie hugged her knees to her chest.
‘I would guess all the way to the top.’ Vadim shrugged. ‘There was too much money changing hands for it have remained of no interest to the higher-ups.’ Stevie nodded, hugging her knees tighter and staring at the flickering flames in front of her. ‘The trade in fake or expired pharmaceuticals is a huge business. And I can think of at least three rogue governments who would pay fortunes for nuclear materials or even weapons, not to mention any number of terrorist organisations, provided they could afford it.’
‘Surely it’s not that easy . . .’ Kozkov looked horrified and Stevie was surprised he didn’t seem to be aware of it.
‘The beauty of this black market,’ she explained, ‘lies in its deniability: the army report, say, a nuclear warhead as stolen and then launder the proceeds through Niue or Nauru or Tuvalu or some other Pacific Island micro-state, for example. Even if the warhead is found and traced, no one can be held officially responsible for the “stolen” goods, and there is no money trail to follow.’
‘And that’s where the banks come in,’ Kozkov said, the pieces coming together in his mind.
‘And therefore you.’
He sat forward, his eyes too drawn by the flames. ‘Trouble is, there are so many banks, so many under investigation, so many I have already closed down. It just doesn’t narrow it down enough.’
‘Maxim Krutchik was certain that Dragoman has binding ties to the
siloviki
, that they’re taking cuts of his profits in exchange for favourable legislation, or for turning a blind eye,’ Stevie informed Kozkov, her voice quiet. ‘He thinks a man like Dragoman might be interested in influencing you.’
Kozkov frowned in concentration. ‘If this Dragoman is tied to the
siloviki
in that way, then they would both have an interest in making sure a system of laundering profits through the banks was in place. It widens the circle of suspicion even further.’
‘So, is Maraschenko working for Dragoman?’ Vadim’s eyes were glowing in the firelight.
Kozkov replied, his voice hollow now. ‘We don’t even know Dragoman is in this picture yet.’ He directed his next words to Stevie.
‘He is just a name you tell me is being whispered in the underworld.
You also say that Maraschenko is most likely an opportunist. He saw his chance with Anya and took it off his own initiative. But is all this guesswork helpful?’ He pulled his forelock, staring into the fire. ‘How do we know Dragoman or the
siloviki
have anything at all to do with Anya?’
From the corner, Irina spoke, her eyes fixed on the tapestry in her lap. ‘We are not investigating. I don’t care who took Anya. All that matters is that we follow the instructions and get her back safely.’
Irina was right. Anya’s safe return was the only thing that mattered. The rest—truth and justice—was garnish.
Suddenly, Irina stopped sewing and looked up. ‘Listen. Shh . . . can you hear that?’
They all stilled. There was only the crackle of the fire. Saskia stood up, the hair on her neck rising.
‘What is it, Irina?’ Stevie barely whispered. Could the house be under surveillance? Had Rice kept his men on after all? Was someone else out there?
Then it came, the long hollow howl of a wolf. The sound crept in around them like a low wind. It was, even as they sat safe around the house fire, a lonely and frightening sound. They listened as the invisible wolf howled in wave after wave, building up to some sort of crescendo.
‘She’s hungry.’ Vadim spoke normally. ‘I’ve heard the howls before, when we were in the Caucasus. It’s a hungry she-wolf. She’s probably calling the pack to help her hunt. She must have found tracks.’
Vadim kept his face turned to the window, staring at nothing. ‘This area was known for its wolf packs. In particularly hard winters, the wolves would get so hungry they would try to bring down the horses pulling the sleighs.
‘The sleigh would flee as fast as it could from the pack,’ Vadim continued, his voice as flat as the white plains outside, ‘hoping to outrun it. The horses would get too tired to outrun the wolves, no matter how frightened they were. So the footman would begin to throw some of the luggage off to lighten the load. Still the wolf pack would gain on the fleeing sleigh.
‘When all the luggage was gone and there was nothing left to throw, they would pick the most dispensable person—usually a young servant girl, or perhaps the footman—and thrown them off the back of the sleigh. The person would fall straight into the path of the wolves.’
No one could speak when the story finished, and Stevie knew she was not the only one in the room who saw Anya’s face on Vadim’s servant girl.
‘How far away do you think she is?’ Stevie’s voice was as soft as the falling snow.
Kozkov poked a fallen log back into the fire. ‘Not very.’
Stevie was woken the next
morning by sweet Saskia sniffing her chin.
She reached out and stroked the gentle hunter’s sleek head. Outside it was still dark. The starlight, reflected and magnified ten thousand times in the ice crystals of the snow, cast an eerie glow in the pre-dawn. Stevie lay still, wishing today was not the day that they would take the life of a teenage girl into their hands.
After dressing, she made a pot of strong coffee and re-set the fire, then stared out into the grey snow. A low-lying fog surrounded the dacha like a petticoat, creeping up the windows and hovering there.
With a start, she noticed a man walking towards her through the snow. He was carrying a torch and his lower body was obscured by the fog. The flames lit the mist around him and he seemed almost to float, legless, through it. It was Valery Kozkov.
A raven began to caw, then another. Stevie was surprised that birds would sing (could you call it that? They sounded more like angry children . . . ) in the darkness. Perhaps the star-lit blush of the snow had been enough to disturb them. She caught sight of one perching in the bare branches above Kozkov, watching him. It was as big as a cat.
Kozkov stamped his boots on the verandah. ‘I couldn’t sleep— went out to look for wolf tracks,’ he explained. ‘I wanted to take Saskia but she was hiding from me. Didn’t like the idea of wolves, I suppose.’ He cast a reproving eye on the animal, lying happily at Stevie’s feet by the fire. Stevie did not blame Saskia.
‘She was keeping me company. Did you find any tracks?’
Kozkov shook his head. ‘But it snowed a little last night, enough to cover them a bit, and the fog makes them harder to spot.’
Stevie poured him a cup of boiling coffee; Kozkov filled it with sugar. ‘I can’t seem to shake the feeling that we are being watched,’ he said.
‘Is that why you went out?’
He nodded. ‘I wanted to see if I could find anything but—nothing . . . I hate feeling trapped, helpless. I am never powerless but in this . . .’
‘It’s exactly what the kidnappers want you to feel, Valery,’ Constantine said, entering the room with soft steps. ‘They want to make you feel powerless so that you will do whatever they say and not think you have any choice.’ Stevie was grateful for Constantine’s presence and poured him his coffee. He drank, seeming not to notice it was scalding hot. ‘From what you and Stevie have told me, these men may not just want money. The persuasion factor is even more important to them.’
Stevie stood by the door and watched Saskia run out into the snow to sniff about and do her morning business. It was breathtakingly cold, the frozen purple landscape could have belonged to the moon or a distant star. The magic of nature was on display and Stevie had never seen anything like it. It helped her faith to gaze out upon the frozen crystals, the pale silver trees, the happy dog.
Things will be alright in the end.
Saskia came bounding up the steps and dropped something with a clunk at Stevie’s feet. It looked like a stick of wood. Stevie bent to pick it up and throw it. As her hand touched it, she realised it was a dead mole, frozen solid. The poor creature, its little body stiff under the soft fur, tiny eyes welded shut—it must have somehow got caught outside its burrow. You didn’t usually find moles out in winter. Stevie picked it up carefully between two fingers and buried it in the snow at the bottom of the verandah. As she patted down the snow, she hoped that it wasn’t a bad omen.
At midday the satellite phone rang. Everyone was ready, but it startled them nonetheless. Kozkov let it ring twice then picked it up.
‘
Ya slushayu
. I’m listening.’
Constantine pushed a pad of paper and a pencil closer to him.
Kozkov was to write down what was being said so Constantine could see. Clues to whom he might be speaking to could be important. He picked up the pencil and wrote:
Ukrainian
.
So, not Maraschenko on the phone.
‘Let me speak to Anya—how do I know she is still alive? That you even have her?’
Good, thought Stevie, Kozkov’s voice was calm.
‘I can’t continue this without the proof. You will understand my position, surely.’
‘Be reasonable,’ Constantine had urged him. ‘Don’t show anger or fear.’
Kozkov wrote:
Voice odd—out of breath?
Constantine returned:
Top guy?
Kozkov nodded.
Good!
This Constantine underlined.
‘Please, just let me hear Anya’s voice. It’s not an unreasonable request,’ Kozkov repeated.
This would help ascertain if Anya was being held elsewhere or wherever the speaker was.
Unexpectedly, Kozkov’s face cracked, lit up in pain and eagerness.
‘Anya! Have they hurt you? My darling . . .’
She’s there!
he wrote frantically.
‘We’re going to get you home, I swear on my life, Anyushka—’ Stevie felt relief. They had a proof of life—the girl was still alive.
Kozkov looked at Constantine, the knuckles of his hand white where he held the phone. ‘Will you speak with a friend of the family? He is acting on my behalf in this—’ Kozkov waited for the answer and shook his head at Constantine.
They would speak only to Kozkov.
He was listening intently, then he said, ‘I understand.’
Impossible!
he wrote on the pad.
‘These measures . . . I’m not sure they can be reversed. It takes time but—’ Kozkov listened some more, then his whole face hardened like a ghastly plaster cast.
‘You can’t do that.’ His voice had shrunken to a whisper now.
‘My God. You can’t do that.’ He went to write on the pad but the pencil snapped in his fingers and they began to shake uncontrollably.
‘Please, no.’
The receiver went limp in his hand. The man on the other end had terminated the phone call.
Nobody could move.
Then, ‘Irina?’ Valery’s voice was hoarse. ‘I spoke to her.’
Tears were running down Irina’s face.
‘She sounds alright.’ He was trying to reassure his wife but the blood had not returned to his face and he wouldn’t meet Irina’s eyes. He looked awful.
Kozkov placed the telephone, the only connection he now had with his daughter, back on the table with heartbreaking gentleness. ‘The man sounded . . . he seemed to be panting for breath . . . asthmatic.’