There was nothing pretty about the Matruska Bathhouse. It had been built in the 1930s with none of the baroque decor that adorned the other two hundred-odd facilities in the city. But even with its brutalist architecture designed to appeal to the commissariat, Stalin’s claim, just before it was due to open, that hygiene was a decadent bourgeois obsession, ensured that it remained mothballed for decades. Dima was fond of it, not only because it reminded him of his youth, but because it was almost entirely patronised by immigrants and gypsies. Despite being at the top of the world’s ‘Most Wanted’ list, he stood as good a chance here as anywhere of going unnoticed.
He gave the steam room ten minutes longer than usual to shift the various layers of grime that had accumulated over the last few days. Then he leapt into the cold pool, did forty lengths and emerged a new man, ready to save the world. He shaved, had a hair cut and a manicure and, after slipping on the special set of clothes Kroll had procured, stepped out into his favourite city.
He had lived in far more places than your average Russian, been a globetrotter — though the term wouldn’t have meant anything to most of his comrades — but this was one city he loved more than any other. And he hoped that when the time came, and in his business who knew when that was, that he would die here in Moscow.
The cab took him to the Liberia Bank of Credit and Commerce. They didn’t do much in the way of credit, and commerce was somewhat on the back burner too, but they did a nice line in security deposit boxes. And that was where Dima kept his spare life. Passports: EU, Brazilian and Egyptian; Cash: Euros, US Dollars, some Yen; Amex and Visa cards; and a Makarov with enough ammunition for a small skirmish.
The concierge gave him an odd look. But Dima’s mind was elsewhere. He went to the desk and asked for access to his box, giving the name Smolenskovitch, a name he only used at this bank. The bank clerk looked uncomfortable, but beckoned him to follow him into the vault. He had a loose sole on his shoe that slapped the carpet as he strutted ahead. He let Dima into the vault and stood at a safe distance while he watched what was about to happen. Having first clocked the security camera, Dima opened his drawer and found — nothing. Not even his spare French birth certificate. He slammed the drawer shut and marched out past the hapless clerk and past the main desk and the concierge, pushing the revolving door so hard that it was still spinning when he reached the pavement.
He felt a blow to his chest and fell straight down. No one said ‘Stop’ or ‘Freeze’. The team leader had decided to shoot on sight, at close range, to avoid other pedestrians. One to the heart. From a GSh-18 pistol, much noisier than the PSS Silent favoured by the Special Forces, but the operator wasn’t interested in being discreet. The twenty-odd pedestrians couldn’t have missed it.
A female onlooker screamed and screamed, almost blotting out the siren of the unmarked GAZ mid-size van that slewed to a halt beside the body. Though it was all over in a matter of seconds, some wiseass had managed to pull out their cameraphone, capture the incident and upload it on to YouTube before the van was gone. For good measure the phone guy did a separate shot of the pool of blood spread across the forecourt of the Liberia Bank.
Inside the van, the shooter pulled off her mask and shook out her hair.
‘I still can’t believe I agreed to this,’ said Omorova.
67
Baghdad Green Zone, Iraq
It was Blackburn’s first time in Baghdad’s Green Zone, not that he saw any of it, blindfolded as he now was. What was the point? He asked the MP who changed his plastic zip cuffs for proper shiny metal handcuffs. ‘The point, son, is that you’re a spy. And we don’t want spies seeing stuff they don’t need to.’
A spy. And a murderer.
They had found Cole’s body. They dug all night and most of the next day, through the rubble, the remains of the chalet and into the bunker until they came upon it. The field pathologist extracted the bullet and the forensic team took about thirty minutes to confirm that the markings on it were consistent with those on several others they had test-fired through Blackburn’s confiscated M4. And just to be sure, they dusted the rifle for prints and found only its owner’s.
Chester Hain Jnr was a different animal from his subordinate, Wes. Hain looked like a well-born Easterner with an Ivy League education. Plus the demeanour of an American who had lived overseas long enough to have learned how to blend in a little and not draw too much attention to himself: handy in his line of work. He had a faraway look in his eyes, which Blackburn imagined had come from a life trying to read between the lines. Perhaps he could read between the lines of what Blackburn had decided to tell him.
He had nothing to lose now.
‘May I talk to you alone, Sir?’
Chester Hain Jnr glanced at the man who Blackburn only knew as Wes, who had never introduced himself, who was chewing on a stick of gum and smacking his lips in a way that Blackburn’s mother had trained him out of before he’d even started grade school.
‘Wesley?’ Hain nodded at the door. Wes stopped chewing, closed his laptop with a firmness that betrayed his humiliation and left without a word.
Suddenly the atmosphere in the room was marginally less stifling, as if fewer people had inhaled and exhaled the air Blackburn was breathing.
Hain poured two glasses of water from a bottle and pushed one towards Blackburn. ‘You’ll get awful dry in these places. Keep your liquids up just like you did on patrol, okay?’
There was something almost parental about his manner. Blackburn picked up the glass with both hands, the cuffs made that mandatory, drank the contents down in one and set the glass back on the grey metal table between them.
‘May I begin?’
Hain folded his arms.
‘Shoot.’
He had expected a laptop or a notebook at the very least. Hain just leaned back in his chair with what seemed like all the interest of a customer being read a list of options from his Buick dealer.
Blackburn described every detail he could remember, from the moment he saw Dima. He repeated their conversation verbatim, how they had pooled what they knew about Solomon and what that added up to for Dima. Blackburn described the beam falling and how Dima had struggled to save him, his gun and knife clearly within Blackburn’s reach. And then he got to the appearance of Cole. He told Hain everything about his commanding officer’s reactions to Harker, to the vault find and to the death of Bashir.
‘I believe Cole was testing me, Sir. He was trying to make a point, that he didn’t believe I was man enough to execute what he believed was the enemy.’
Blackburn thought it was going well. Hain had barely blinked as he listened. He didn’t look away the whole time or change his position. His stillness seemed to be operating like a force field, sucking the details out of Blackburn faster than he could process them. But he’d given up trying to measure his words. He was done for. The best he could hope for was some acknowledgment of the willing co-operation he had given after they’d told him about Cole’s bullet.
After Blackburn had finished speaking, Hain looked at him for a few more seconds.
‘Thank you for being so candid, Henry.’
Then he sighed.
‘Fact is, there are two problems with what you’ve told me. One is the WMDs. We’ve done the analysis. The device you recovered appears to be some kind of dummy. There’s no fissile material. Whoever sold it may have been some kind of con-artist.’
Hain paused while Blackburn took this in. Then he leaned forward and and put his hands together on the desk as if preparing to pray.
‘The other problem you have is that the Russian Federation just issued an international arrest warrant for one Dima Mayakovsky, wanted for the theft of Russian government armaments.’
He got to his feet and went towards the door.
‘You shot the wrong guy, Henry.’
68
Moscow
It was dusk when Kroll surfaced from the Serpukhovskaya Metro Station with a large bouquet of flowers and walked to the apartment building two blocks down. In Brezhnev’s time, accommodation in ‘Serpo’ as it was known was only available to the anointed. Obtaining a toehold was a sure sign to the rest of the commissariat that you were on the up. Today, like many of its ageing inhabitants, Serpo was on the way down, in bad need of a facelift.
Kroll had had a good look round the exterior of the apartment building before entering. Once inside, he flashed a GRU pass which he had helped himself to when they had sprung Bulganov’s daughter. It wouldn’t work for Paliov’s guards but it got him past the concierge. He then proceeded to try to deliver the flowers to one Xenya Moronova. Since Xenya Moronova was the name of his own estranged thirteen-year-old daughter, he knew he wouldn’t have much success, but after pressing many bells and offering the bouquet to numerous residents he had a pretty good idea of the strength of Paliov’s security detail, as well as the layout of the block.
Twenty minutes later, Dima, in a fresh set of clothes, pulled up in the Merc and picked Kroll up.
‘There’s an airshaft that the kitchens open on to. We could put a ladder across from the Kasparovs. They are very old and quite deaf—.’
Dima cut him off with a wagging finger. ‘You said it was only two guys on the outside. I’m not pussyfooting around. I’ll give them the option of legging it or I’ll shoot them.’
Kroll sighed. ‘If you must.’
Dima glared at him. ‘This thing — before we even try to get to Paris — has to move fast now.’
‘Speaking of Paris — how are we getting there?’
Dima ignored the question. His mind was elsewhere.
They mounted the stairs and marched up to the guards. As well as the clothes, Dima had a fresh new PSS Silent that Omorova had procured for him. The guards took one look at it and raised their hands. You could have made a bit of an effort, he thought, as he made them lie down for Kroll to handcuff. Dima lifted the XP-9 semi-automatics from their holsters, chucked one to Kroll, pocketed the other. You never knew when a spare gun might come in handy. Kroll escorted the security men to a servicelift, herded them in, shut the door and disabled it.