It was almost seven in the evening by the time Ros got back to the flat after battling her way through the rush-hour crowds with her bag clutched protectively under her arm. She wanted to open the package at once, but for practical reasons, she forced herself to wait. She was on the night shift at ten, and more important, she was ravenously hungry.
She pulled off her outer garments – the ever-capricious heating was now working overtime, and the temperature rivalled that of a Russian steam bath – heated up some borscht and cut several slices of black bread. There were some things, she reflected, that the Russians did well, and these were two of them. As an afterthought, she prised two pickled cucumbers from a jar and put those on her plate too. There was a radio built into the kitchen, a holdover from Soviet times when government propaganda was served up with the breakfast kasha. Russian folk tunes were playing, and Ros found herself humming along to the ones she knew between mouthfuls. She smiled wryly. All that painful effort to close her mind to memories that her heart wanted against all common sense to preserve, and here she was with that troublesome bloody organ lighter than it had been since she fled from London. All because of a package a few inches square, contents unknown. God, you're a soft idiot, Myers.
She almost choked on the soup. Thank God she hadn't uttered that thought out loud; it had come to her in English and in the wrong identity. She forced her thoughts back into Russian. You are Irina Selesnikova. Ros Myers does not exist. It would be the supreme irony if she betrayed herself now. The unexpected contact from London had raised her spirits in a way that nothing else could have done, but it could also spell danger, and she needed to stay alert. Pyotr had told her that Harry needed her help, so she could be pretty certain the package didn't contain perfume and silk stockings.
She ate the last of the bread and, after a hesitation, poured herself a small glass of vodka. She couldn't help smiling as she remembered that Harry wouldn't touch the stuff, although he always protested vehemently that his objection to it was gastronomic rather than ideological. Potatoes, he maintained, should be boiled, roasted or fried. Not turned into alcohol. Well, he could afford to be choosy, with his favourite single malt always within reach. Ros had already learnt that in Russia you often had to make do with what was available.
She took out the package and opened it to reveal a small box bearing a picture of a mobile phone, and a postcard with a view of the Old Town in Riga. The message read 'Happy birthday! Hope you like the phone, Irochka. Stay in touch!' and was signed Dyedya Vanya. Ros's smile deepened. Millions of Russians must have had an Uncle Vanya, but it also happened to be her – and Harry's – favourite Chekhov play. For a second the words swam in front of her as a tiny piece of Thames House infiltrated the Moscow smog. Impatient with her own sentimentality, and knowing she had no time to indulge it now, Ros examined the phone carefully and noticed the 'message received' icon in the corner of the screen. She clicked the appropriate button, and lifted it to her ear. Harry's voice was crisp and authoritative. He might have been briefing her in his office rather than from thousands of miles away.
"Rangefinder, there's been a notable increase in Russian intelligence activity here in the last few months – intensified industrial espionage, repeated attempts to hack secure computer systems, and Special Branch has evidence that FSB officers have been stirring up our mobile rent-a-mobs. And there's been a huge leap in heavily encrypted communications traffic between the embassy and Moscow. General consensus is that they're working up to something massive and that it could happen soon, but we haven't been able to pinpoint what.' There was a pause. 'We have an asset in the Overseas Intelligence Directorate of the FSB who claims to know more, but he's in a very sensitive position. He's prepared to provide us with information, but only in Moscow, and he'll only communicate through dead drops, no face to face meetings. He'll make the first four days after you meet Pyotr - midday, at the Russian space shuttle model in Gorky Park. At each drop he'll let you know when and where his next one will be. Use this phone only to transmit crucial intelligence. We will contact you only in an emergency. And you're deniable. Absolutely. You're on your own, black op, no official back-up. Delete this message. Another slight pause. Be careful. I'm relying on you, Rangefinder. We need you.'
Ros bit her lip very hard as the message ended, but two rogue tears escaped anyway. It was those last two sentences that did it. She sniffed hard and dried her eyes on her sleeve. No help, no back-up. And no pressure then, Harry? Even as she muttered the words she knew they were hypocritical. She didn't care how deniable she was. What mattered was what she wasn't – adrift, abandoned and alone. Not any more. Now she had a purpose; something meaningful to do, and a reason for doing it that wasn't just keeping herself safe without really knowing what for. At least for the moment, she was wanted and needed. She was an intelligence officer again.
Then behave like one. Decisively, Ros got to her feet. Irina was probably too insignificant to be subjected to a search at the club, but she lived so modestly that carrying a top of the range mobile might arouse curiosity. Ros looked around her, mentally rejecting all the obvious hiding places. The tiles in the bathroom were cracked and uneven in many places. Under the sink, one was inches from falling off completely, and the plaster behind it had partly crumbled too. Ros wrapped the phone in two thick plastic bags. Grimacing with distaste, she scraped out enough of the plaster to make space, wedged it in and pushed the tile back. Hanging crookedly over the gap, it looked just like any other imminent Russian plumbing disaster. Satisfied, Ros washed her hands and touched up her make-up. Irina's reflection looked different from the drab, downtrodden woman she had seen in the mirror a few hours ago. There was a tinge of colour in her face and liveliness in her eyes. Even her posture was more erect than it had been. Ros Myers was beginning to emerge from the shroud of Irina Selesnikova.
And she mustn't. Ros hurried to pull on her outer clothing, yanking her collar high and wrapping her shawl tight as if by doing so she could reverse the process. She heard the nine pm news jingle blaring from the TV in the flat opposite hers and broke into a run down the stairs.
She arrived at the club just before ten and hurried to change into her working clothes. Ros loathed the black satin dress, which she considered too tight, too short, and downright vulgar, and she tugged on her stilettos, for which she would willingly have exchanged the stocks, the rack, and any other instrument of torture you could name by the end of a shift, with even less enthusiasm. She was just pinning her hair up when her colleague came rushing in.
"Ira, davai! Come on, hurry up! Special guests tonight! Dima wants everything perfect!"
So what else is new? Ros looked round with Irina's habitual weary expression. "Stop tearing your hair out, Olya. What's happening?"
"There's a big private birthday party. Upstairs." The young woman, younger than Ros by about ten years and at least, Ros thought irritably, twenty years more naïve, bounced excitedly in front of the mirror.
"Who?" Ros asked.
Olga struck a pose and admired her reflection. "Big cheeses. Chekisti." She dropped her voice almost to a whisper on the last word.
Chekisti. The slang term every Russian used to describe officers of the FSB. Ros's fingers fumbled on her hair-clip and dropped it. She stooped to retrieve it, schooling her face to an expression of indifference.
"Yeah?" She forced a smile. "They'll be spoken for, Olyinka. No pickings for you there."
The younger woman pouted and returned to studying her own reflection.
Coincidence. Nothing to worry about. Moscow was bristling with intelligence and police officers of all shapes and sizes, and they had birthdays like anyone else. Ros knew she was good at counter-surveillance. She had seen no tail this afternoon. There was no reason for the FSB to have sent a welcoming committee to her workplace. Coincidence, that's all. She pressed her mental 'mute' button on the voice of her instructor at MI-6 intoning 'In the field there is safety and there is danger. There is no such thing as coincidence.'
"Ira!" She jumped as Olga's glittering purple nails clawed into her arm. "Come on!"
Ros followed her to the private dining room on the first floor. As they reached the landing the padded door opened and the club's proprietor, Dima, barrelled out. He leered at Olga, looked Ros critically up and down, and then pinched her arm – hard.
"I told you, too thin. Customers don't want to be served by bloody skeletons."
Ros lowered her eyes and muttered the apology she knew he expected, even as her free hand itched to punch him on any one of his several available chins. "Get to work.." As she eased past him he slapped her on the rump. Irina shrank nervously against the wall even as Ros's muscles tensed with the effort to keep her rage in check. One day, you bloody piece of pond scum. One day.
Her eyes watered as a haze of cigarette smoke assaulted them. A dozen men and, from the little she could see through the miasma, about six women, were seated around a table littered with the remains of the zakuski that preceded every Russian meal. Open bottles stood all over it like a disorganized infantry regiment. Four musicians were playing jazz in a corner. Olga was already eagerly diving in to clear the table, and Ros could see two of the unattached officers ogling as the younger woman leaned across it. She sighed inwardly and moved forward to join her, fixing an appropriately ingratiating smile on her face as she did so.
She had expected the shift from hell, and was surprised to find that despite the copious quantities of alcohol imbibed by the party during the endless stream of congratulatory toasts, most of the guests, while boisterous, remained fairly amenable. She had known some of Dima's 'special events' to end with the militia being called in. This time, from what she could observe from behind the mask of Irina's withdrawn timidity, the tone was being set by the birthday boy himself. Ros had noticed him quietly rebuking one of his colleagues for sliding his hand up Olga's skirt, and at one point he had smiled apologetically in her direction when another of the men, made clumsy by drink, had knocked over a bottle that had flooded its contents down the front of her skirt. Irina had stammered an embarrassed 'it doesn't matter' and scurried from the room to try and mop herself up, but she had been aware of the officer's watchful blue eyes following her.
And it's the watchful that bothers me. Once dessert and coffee had been served, she threw on her coat and followed Olga, who had already gone outside for a cigarette, out into the street. Her legs and back ached from the repeated trips up and down the stairs, and although the air struck cold, its sharpness was a blessed relief after the fug in the dining room. The lane's one street lamp wasn't working, and in the near darkness she almost fell over Olga, who was leaning against the wall, entwined in the arms of one of the younger, unaccompanied FSB officers. Ros walked a few paces the other way and stared towards the brighter glow of the main road where it led towards Pushkin Square. Obviously her young colleague didn't feel any reticence about getting cosy. Still, why should she? His uniform didn't inspire the same feelings of apprehension and fear in her as it did in Ros. Ignorance was bliss, and for Olga the officer would be a good catch – young, bright, with a well-paid job and the prospect of a good career. He could offer her a future, and at least, Ros thought with sudden bitterness, Olga - unlike her - actually had one. So why shouldn't she find someone to share it with?
Oh, stop it, you self-pitying fool. Ros glanced over her shoulder at the peal of Olga's laughter. What the hell's making you so bloody maudlin all of a sudden? She re-fastened the clip in her hair. Tiredness, that's all it is. She stamped her feet, which were getting cold. Yeah, right. Much as she wanted to believe that fatigue was the only reason for the melancholy suddenly coiling itself round her, Ros knew better. She hadn't been afraid as such during her time in Moscow, because for all the uncertainty of her situation, she had told herself that there was little to be afraid for. After all, most of what meant anything to her – Adam, her job, her family - she had long since already lost. But she had been desperately lonely, hiding behind a mask, constantly guarding her tongue and mentally questioning everything everyone around her said or did. Ros had never in her life picked up a man in the way Olga was doing now, but suddenly she found herself envying the easy, flirtatious way in which the young Russian could do it, and wishing that she could do the same … just to loosen the strait-jacket of her isolation, just for a while.
Be honest, she chided herself. It wasn't just any man she wanted. The message from London had brought Adam Carter out from the wings of her mind right back onto centre stage. It wasn't just the physical desire for him that kept her from sleep – Ros could have disciplined herself into subduing that. It was everything else they had had together that she missed – the shared passion for their work, their affectionate verbal sparring, even their arguments … all the strands that had been woven together into that wonderful companionship, so that while she had still been alone more often than not, she had never felt lonely.
Damn you, that's enough! She walked quickly back down the street, almost twisting her ankle in an unseen pothole, and hurried back up to the dining room, where the birthday party was now breaking up. Irina's attempt to slip in unnoticed was thwarted by Dima, who broke off his conversation with the officer whose birthday it had been, and bellowed at her across the room.
"Where the hell have you been skiving, you lazy bitch?"
"I – I wasn't – I just went for some air ... I'm sorry." Irina fumbled her coat off and hastily threaded her way through the departing guests to clear the remaining dishes and glasses.
"Get your air on your own time! And get the bloody lead out! Where do you think you are – on the beach at Sochi? I don't pay you to laze around – what do you think I am?"
You're an ignorant, mouthy slob, and one day I'll take great pleasure in telling you so straight to your fat, drunken face - preferably with my fist, to drive the point home. Ros picked up a pile of plates, but as she turned her foot skidded on a patch of something slippery. Thrown off balance, she went sprawling head first in a cacophony of smashing crockery, almost taking one of the FSB officers with her.
She was already automatically cringing and apologising as Dima yanked her roughly to her feet, scraping her legs against the shards of broken plate and laddering her tights in the process.
"Durochka! You clumsy cow, that'll be docked out of your pay!" He gave her a shove that knocked her into the table. "Clear that mess up, you useless Balt!"
"Yes - yes … I – I'm sorry," Irina shrank away from him. "Sorry." She kicked off her other shoe and squatted awkwardly in her tight skirt, picking up the broken pieces, as Dima shouted for Olga.
"You're bleeding." Ros looked up at the voice and saw the FSB officer who had been watching her earlier, standing over her. He pointed at her leg. "And you're going to cut your feet as well in a minute."
"It – it's nothing." Irina managed to summon up a timid smile, although every nerve was flashing warning signals to Ros's brain. She swept the broken crockery into a heap. "My fault … it's nothing, honestly." She could feel his eyes following every movement she made.
"You need a broom," he said.
"I'll fetch one." Anything to get out of your way. Ros stood, but as she did, a wave of dizziness swept over her.
"Easy." His hand was on her arm. Ros wanted to pull away, but she allowed Irina to steady herself first. She looked up into a pair of smiling blue eyes, and as memories flooded back Ros felt the floor rock again.
"You're not having the best of evenings …? "
"Irina Alexeyevna." Ros swallowed; her throat felt as if someone had lined it with sandpaper, and her heart was racing far too fast.
"Bychkov, Alexander Kirillovich, at your service." He inclined his head. "You look a little faint, Irina Alexeyevna. Is anything wrong?" He was watching her closely, and Ros thought she heard a slight emphasis on her name.
Yes. I don't trust you, and I need to get the bloody hell out of here. She shook her head.
"No … thank you. I – I'm just tired. I - er - I need to get home, that's all."
"Allow me to take you." Before she could react, he had crossed to Dima and was speaking rapidly to him. Irina stood, wringing her hands anxiously even as Ros swiftly considered her skimpy menu of options. She could run, but if she did that she would turn Bychkov's attention – which might still be nothing more than a man's interest in an unattached woman - into suspicion. She could decline his company, which might anger him – or she could play along. Instinct urged 'run'. Fifteen years in the Service said 'don't panic.'
The decision was taken from her as Bychkov returned.
"Yours, I believe?" He handed Ros the envelope containing the wages that she was certain that a scowling Dima had been intending not to pay her. "Perhaps you would care to change? My car is parked nearby, and Mr Latushkin has agreed that you can leave."
I'll bet he has. Ros had recognised the flashes on his uniform. Even Dima Latushkin, small-time crook and big-mouth bully, couldn't argue with a major in the FSB.
And neither can Irina Selesnikova. She swallowed, smiled shyly back at him, and went downstairs to change.
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