Things felt better after hot
showers and fresh clothes. They were sitting in Stevie’s tiny kitchen, around her even tinier kitchen table. Her flat was above the lake, by the edge of the woods. The floors were polished parquet and the shared garden below was full of apple trees—naked in the winter light. In the summer, pots of red geraniums flowered on the balcony.
Stevie made Anya a warm Ovomaltine with milk then lit the gas under her metal coffee pot.
Henning had called Irina and Vadim. Aware that the telephone of Kozkov’s widow and son might be monitored, Henning had merely called to offer condolences for Valery’s passing, then added ‘but there are so many reasons to be happy,’ and urged them to visit him and see for themselves. They had understood from this that Anya was safe and they were on their way to Zurich on the first plane out of Shermetyevo airport.
Anya had not been able to speak to her mother, but that would come later. Everyone was just happy to be alive.
Stevie toasted slices of Walliser mountain bread under the grill and put butter, a pot of blueberry jam, and a large slice of Emmenthal cheese on the table.
Anya, warmed by the shower and the hot drink, was beginning to relax a little. Stevie and Henning asked her gentle questions, not wanting to press too hard, knowing she would be exhausted from her ordeal.
She told them how she had gone with Petra to Zima in Moscow and they had been offered work as models. Petra had pressed her to meet the men the next day at GUM. She had ordered a tea with lemon, and the next thing she could remember she was locked up and blindfolded. Stevie guessed the kidnappers had probably been drugging Anya’s tea with Rohypnol, which would explain why she could not remember much, just this series of confusing and terrifying images.
Mostly, Anya said, she had been worried for her family. She remembered she cried a lot, and read the magazines her captors sometimes gave to her. She had liked the interviews at home with the stars the best. She had no idea how long she had been captive.
Stevie then told Henning about the nurse, the syringe of Midazolam and the ginger barbarian, then their flight to the boot room.
She jumped up as the coffee pot boiled. ‘Dragoman must have been looking for us when he ran into the car park.’
‘I left in a bit of a hurry,’ Henning added. ‘They must have got suspicious.’
‘Well, the men from GROM were a good distraction.’
Stevie sipped her coffee—too hot—and felt a glow of pleasure. After so many days on the horrid ‘green’ diet it was heaven to slather butter on toast and drink hot coffee.
Anya looked up from her breakfast. ‘Were the men there to rescue me?’
‘No.’ Stevie poured out another cup of coffee and thought how beautiful the wintery trees looked gathered at her doorstep. It felt so good to be home. ‘They were there to kill Felix Dragoman. And me. They thought I had your father’s secret list and that I had passed it on to him, that Dragoman and I were working together. Actually Valery didn’t tell me anything, but the
siloviki
weren’t to know that.’
‘But why would Dragoman want the list anyway?’ Anya asked, her eyes deep and round with fatigue. ‘Doesn’t he know who his partners are?’
Stevie shot a look at Henning. He was particularly attractive that morning, she thought, all freshly shaved and full of purpose.
‘Of course,’ she nodded to Anya, ‘but he doesn’t have the meticulously gathered evidence of their corruption that would be his most powerful bargaining chip. The list would have been hugely valuable to him.’
Stevie opened the kitchen window and put a handful of toast crumbs on the window sill. It was still freezing outside and she noticed icicles hanging from the eaves of her building.
The image of the man in the snow, neck snapped like a sapling, ambushed her and Stevie suddenly felt a little sick.
‘The man that was killed in the snow was from GROM, too,’ she added, closing the window. ‘The insignia on the knife was a bat on a blue globe. At the time I couldn’t remember which special forces group use the bat as their emblem. Dragoman recognised it straight away.’
‘He must have radioed Moscow before he was killed.’ Henning was watching her closely, concern in his still-bloodshot eyes. ‘Orlikov would have leapt to the conclusion that little mysterious Stevie Duveen had already killed two of his men.’
Stevie smiled at him, happy that Henning was with them—with her—in the little kitchen.
‘It must have made them wonder who on earth I was really working for . . .’ Stevie turned her empty cup in circles. ‘Until they saw Dragoman appear. That would have been quite a surprise.’
Anya was buttering her third piece of toast, the colour returning to her cheeks. ‘That man told me no one was coming to rescue me, that he had power over the Kremlin. I don’t know why he said these things to me. I guess he thought I was going to disappear forever.’ Anya smiled happily.
Stevie shuddered at the thought of how close she had come to doing just that.
Henning refilled Stevie’s coffee cup, a hand lightly on her shoulder. ‘Dragoman would have been convinced his friends in the Kremlin had turned on him when Orlikov jumped out. We know he recognised his face because he pointed him out on the television. Stevie saw him through the window.’
Anya’s eyes opened wide and stared at Stevie in wonder. ‘It was you on the roof? Dragoman went so crazy after that.’
Henning grinned. ‘I bet he did—it was quite a show.’ He squeezed her shoulder and Stevie felt herself blushing, but she left his hand there, enjoying the warmth of his touch.
‘So,’ Henning asked, ‘will Dragoman pursue his vendetta against the
siloviki
?’
Stevie nodded. ‘I’m guessing he will—he survived, didn’t he? And he’s not a man who forgets. I think we’re going to start seeing a series of accidents and mysterious deaths, possibly a small epidemic of suicides . . .’
‘How grim.’
‘Maybe, but without the list, Dragoman’s probably the only one outside the circle who knows who the bad guys are.’ Stevie put her cup down and looked at Henning, her clear green eyes steady.
‘It’s as close to justice for Anya and for Valery Kozkov as we’re going to get.’
They both glanced at Anya but she seemed not to be listening, her attention caught by two sparrows flitting on the window sill, pecking happily at the toast crumbs Stevie had put there for them.
Good, thought Stevie. The sooner Anya put all this behind her, the better. A quest for a justice that would as likely never come, given the current administration’s track record, would only poison what was left of her childhood.
Stevie didn’t think this made her a cynic. She was far from being that. She believed strongly in the power of good to triumph, and in the responsibility of the individual to do what good they could. But she was no fantasist. Ideals were important, but they meant nothing if they didn’t have a human face; and sometimes the person was more important than the concept.
Stevie also suspected Vadim might feel differently. She hoped he wouldn’t do anything silly.
Their heads appeared amongst the
crowd at the Bahnhof and Anya ran to meet them. Irina’s face was awash with tears as she held her daughter close, the pause button in her life now released. Vadim held Anya’s hand tight, wouldn’t let it go, not even when they ordered five celebratory glasses of champagne and drank them standing, as was fitting, in the bustling anonymity of the railway bar. They would be safer in a crowd.
For a few minutes amongst the little group, there was only pure and unmitigated joy.
Stevie herself couldn’t stop smiling. Although Kozkov was dead, nothing could change that. The time to mourn the dead would come, but Anya was alive and right now it was about rejoicing in the living.
While Anya and her mother chattered away, Vadim said very little. Stevie watched his face closely. He was so pale she could see the faint blue veins under his skin. She doubted he would ever be the same again, and moved closer to the boy.
She held out a cigarette. ‘Sometimes you have to let it go or it consumes you. My father was murdered too, and my mother.’
Vadim took the cigarette and fixed haunted eyes on Stevie. ‘Didn’t you want revenge?’
‘I still have no idea who did it. I’ll find out one day . . . It was a case of mistaken identity.’ She shrugged her shoulders at her young friend. ‘What was I going to do, run around killing people at random to satisfy my rage? Then the assassins would have destroyed me as well as my parents. I suppose I went into this line of work instead.’
Vadim stared past her and out at the milling crowds on the platform. ‘I saw Gregori Maraschenko, you know, one day in Moscow. I went looking for him at The Boar and I followed him for three days. I wanted to kill him. I carried my knife in my jacket and walked the streets.’
This was exactly what Stevie had been afraid of.
‘On the third day,’ Vadim continued, ‘he went to the
banya
and I followed him in. It was so steamy in there. I managed to get very close, on the same bench. We sat there sweating together for half an hour. My mind was crazy.’
Vadim drew heavily on the cigarette. ‘I wanted to kill him for what he had done to Anya. I wanted to slit his throat. But my knife was in the locker. I think I was almost glad it was—then I told myself I was a coward for feeling glad. What brother wouldn’t avenge his sister? I wasn’t worthy of being called a brother. My heart wanted to shrivel and die. I was so angry and so powerless.’
His free hand was shredding a paper napkin into snowflakes. ‘I even thought about killing myself. Idiot,
neh
?’
Stevie smiled back. ‘Idiot.’
‘Then I saw another man come in. Even in the mist I could see he had the most frightening eyes—black and small and cold. Maraschenko got up and went to sit on a stone slab in the centre of the
banya.
When a new burst of steam filled the room the man with the eyes got up too. He walked over to Maraschenko. I thought maybe they were friends.’ Vadim’s voice grew hoarse. ‘Suddenly he grabbed him by the hair and cracked his skull against the stone. He did it twice. It made a sound like billiard balls.’
Vadim was shaking and Stevie wasn’t surprised. ‘Then he dropped his head, wiped his hands on his towel and walked out. Maraschenko was unconscious or maybe dead already, bleeding from the back of the head. The heat in the
banya
made the blood flow faster and faster. It started to drip and pool. I—’ He looked as if he might be sick. Instead he downed his drink. ‘I left after that,’ he whispered.
Stevie was staring at the Bahnhof clock. She didn’t know what to say. Maraschenko’s killer might have been Orlikov himself—Vadim’s description of his eyes was unmistakable. Maraschenko’s link to Dragoman had been enough to get him killed. It was happening already.
Stevie felt so relieved Vadim had not killed the man, but horrified at what had happened. And yet it was all part of the plan she had set in motion.
Was she now a killer, too? Shouldn’t she feel guilty?
She did feel guilty, and sick.
Only by looking across at little Anya’s happy face and Irina’s tears could she numb the horrid feeling in her throat. Every action had a reaction and they were all living out the consequences of their choices, good and bad.
‘How is Masha Ivanovna?’ she asked finally.
Vadim’s face cleared. ‘Very busy saving Russia.’ He shrugged. ‘The eternal optimist. She has finished her book on the lives of ordinary Russians. She didn’t know whether she should leave Gregori Maraschenko’s story in it, out of respect for my family. I told her she must.’ Vadim brushed his hair nervously from his eyes. ‘I think she feels partly responsible for everything because she brought Gregori into our lives, but I told her they would have found another way. It wasn’t her fault.’
‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help,’ Stevie gave a little shrug, ‘tell me.’
‘Masha is writing an article. Apparently my father sent her some papers before he died—I don’t know what they were. Masha is very excited. She won’t say anything more—only that my father asked her to memorise the papers and destroy them if he was killed. Masha wants the article published all over the world. Then the red walls of the Kremlin will tremble like an earthquake, she says. Perhaps you can help us get the article published in England.’
Stevie felt a wild surge of hope. Could the papers Masha was talking about be Kozkov’s list? She would say nothing about it. Masha was right. The less anyone knew, the better.
‘I think I can help with that,’ Stevie said slowly. She could call Rosie for starters, and David Rice knew everyone. He would help. In fact, she ought really to call him back.
She stepped outside the café and dialled his number. Secretly she admitted to herself that she wanted his praise for getting Anya back.
‘Rice.’
‘It’s Stevie.’
‘How and where the hell are you?’
‘Zurich. Anya’s with us. She’s safe.’
‘I heard the good tidings. Thank God,’ he huffed out. There was a brief pause, then he said, ‘Stevie, have you seen the news broadcast this morning?’
‘It’s not on the news is it?’ Stevie was dismayed. ‘I haven’t told anyone—I thought it would be safer for all the Kozkovs if they were just quietly forgotten. I’ll murder whoever blew their cover!’
There was another, longer pause. ‘No, you did a good job with that. I assumed as much. Discretion has always been your virtue in this job.’
The announcement for platform five drowned out most of what came next. Stevie managed to catch—
‘—damn fine.’
Did he mean her? She was too shy to ask him to repeat himself. Anyway, it was too late. Rice had rung off.
Stevie wandered about the station aimlessly. She didn’t feel like going back into the bar. Hadn’t Rice mentioned the news?
There was a screen above the escalators. The daily news was constantly on play, the ticker tape running a foot high beneath it. She stood and watched, all of a sudden feeling very tired.
Just as she was about to turn back to join the others, a bulletin stopped her in her tracks. The television was showing a human shape on a snowy footpath. The snow all around had been stained red. Stevie’s eyes strained to read the words on the ticker tape.