Ros had firmly intended to contact Thames House first thing the following morning to confirm she had a green light for a face-to-face meeting with their informant. So she was exasperated, and then increasingly concerned when her phone, until that point a model of reliability, refused to make the connection. Ros was no geek, and, as Malcolm Wynne-Jones knew to his cost, she quickly became impatient with what she scathingly referred to as 'techno-babble'. Nonetheless, the age of invisible ink and microdots was long gone, and all MI-5 officers had to do regular IT refresher courses. She extracted and examined the SIM card, checked the battery, and finally resorted to the old-fashioned method of cleaning the phone's entrails with a duster. Nothing changed, and she stared at the inert, uncooperative device in frustration.
K chortu. Damn the sodding bloody thing. She resisted the desire to hurl it at the wall. I bet Malcolm would only have to bat his eyelashes at it and it would sit up and bleep. She reassembled it, wishing she had listened more attentively to some of the IT specialist's patter. Then she might know if she had anything more serious to worry about. Because – and her fingers tensed involuntarily at the thought - if there were nothing wrong with the phone itself, the logical inference would be that something was interfering with its transmissions. And it wasn't likely to be British Telecom.
She was sorely tempted to go ahead and keep the meet anyway, and if she hadn't sensed that undercurrent of alarm in Harry's voice when she last spoke to him, she might have done. But that, and his anger with her previous failure to obey her instructions to the letter, stayed her. I'll give it a couple of days. She wrapped the phone tightly back into its protective plastic and returned it to its hiding place – shoved into the bottom of a pot on the balcony containing a half-dead geranium. The phone might not be intending to work today, but Irina had to.
Two mornings later, the mobile was still as dead as the proverbial dodo. Ros's increasing anxiety was making Irina uncharacteristically cutting and snappy as the submissive and nervous illegal immigrant found it increasingly difficult to subdue the tense and authoritative intelligence officer. Finally, Irina confessed tearfully to the bewildered little Tadjik who worked with her that she was worried about her old and frail Uncle Vanya with whom she couldn't get in touch. For a second, Ros almost smiled at the thought of Harry's expression if he heard that description. However unlikely it was, it seemed to reassure Marina, who gave Irina a hug and told her to go home early.
Ros turned automatically towards her flat, but after a few yards, she came to a halt, staring up at the pretentious massiveness of the Yuri Gagarin monument. She usually left the phone at home, but today she had brought it with her in the totally illogical hope that she might be able to will the damned thing to work. She moved into the shelter of the column's surrounding wall and took it from her bag. Still dead. That does it. Ros had flouted rules before, although she had never been reckless – that had always been Adam's prerogative. But she was going to be reckless now. She had the contact's address safely memorised. To delay any longer was more dangerous than to take the risk of visiting it. She turned decisively, and headed for the metro station.
In order to give herself extra time to check for surveillance, she got off a stop earlier than she needed to, at Okhotni Ryad, and ducked into the Alexandrovsky Gardens. Groups of Russian tourists up from the provinces, a symphony of dyed hair and cheap tracksuits, were waiting at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for the next changing of the guard. Irina walked briskly past. While the skill and precision of the ceremony was breathtaking, something about the robotic, blank expressions of the young Presidential Guardsmen always chilled Ros, and there were too many men in uniform in the area for her to want to tarry. Each time she saw an FSB uniform her pulse beat uncomfortably fast.
She was halfway across Kamenny Most, the bridge spanning the Moskva, when a muffled tinkling reached her ear. For an instant Ros thought it was the Spassky Tower bell chiming until she realised the sound was coming from her bag. She slowed her pace and first made Irina turn and lean on the bridge to admire the dazzling spectacle of the Kremlin, its gilded onion domes gleaming in the bright sunshine. She could feel no unwanted eyes, but she still glanced swiftly left and right. Only then did she slip the phone into her palm. The text message read simply 'URGENT. RING. CONTROL.'
Ros forced herself to stand for a moment longer, gazing at Ivan the Terrible's pristine white bell tower. Then she pressed the phone's speed-dial key. Obligingly, as if the last three days of tomb-like silence had been a dream, it responded with the double ring-ring of an English telephone.
"Rangefinder," Connie James's voice said after three rings. Ros began to walk again. "We may have a problem. It seems the Russians know of your presence." Ros's mind darted immediately to Alexander Bychkov. Tell me something I didn't know. "Consider your operation burned and prepare to pull out."
For the benefit of an elderly couple approaching her, Irina crossed herself as she passed the huge, garish bulk of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour looming arrogantly over the other side of the bridge.
"Do you hear me, Rangefinder?"
"No. I'm on my way to the meet." She cut across Connie's exclamation of annoyance. "I'll go in quick and get out quicker. I've been told something's imminent. I've got the agent's code name, Tranquility; I'll have the rest in a matter of hours."
"Rangefinder, your orders are to pull out!"
"When I'm done." Ros stepped off the bridge and waited for the traffic lights to hold up the snarling steel river of cars. "Hold your nerve, Control, and let me do my job."
It was part bravado, and she probably wouldn't have said it if it had been Harry rather than Connie on the line. She could almost see the older woman bridling.
"St Andrew's Church," Connie snapped. "Exit papers and funds in the foot of the cross." The phone went dead again, and Ros hurried on across the Moscow Canal towards Malaya Yakimanka street. Harry would be livid with her, but she knew that her time was running out – Connie's last reference just emphasised the fact - and she was determined that if she were to have any chance of returning to the Grid then she wanted to earn it.
When she came within sight of the address she had been given, she scrutinised it from a safe distance. This was an affluent area, and all the doors had coded entrance systems, but after a minute Ros saw the door open and a uniformed officer emerge. As it creaked slowly closed behind him, she walked briskly past, flashed him a confident smile that was far more Ros than Irina, and ran swiftly up the stairs to the second floor.
She advanced cautiously, checking the flat numbers. The building had obviously been erected in Stalinist times; it had all the typical features, including gloomy, labyrinthine corridors haunted by unsettling memories of the past. It also carried the faint odour of cabbage soup and bad plumbing that was so ubiquitous in Russian blocks of flats that Ros sometimes wondered if a specification was inserted into the building plans.
She listened at the door for a moment, straining for any sound. The building was almost disconcertingly silent. She was about to ring when the door yielded slightly under her hand. Shit. It was open. Very gently, Ros eased it wider, slid through the narrowest crack she could negotiate and pushed it to behind her.
Despite the outside opulence of the building, the flat was surprisingly old-fashioned. Heavy curtains, still drawn, blocked most of the light, and the air was stuffy. A large oriental rug hung on the wall; a hangover from the time when most Russians lived in village izbas and used them to keep out the draughts. As Ros edged tensely into the main room she saw the tenant sitting at a cluttered writing desk – or rather, slumped over it, with his head resting on a mouse mat. He might have been sleeping off the night before.
Might have been. Ros waited, counting to ten as she listened, letting her senses reach out into the rest of the flat. The air was still. So was her contact. Her fingers only confirmed what her eyes had told her as she sought in vain for the pulse in his neck, but the man's skin was still slightly warm. His last visitor hadn't been long gone. She scanned the messy desktop and riffled through the papers. As she straightened, she saw the reflected silhouette of a man in the empty wine bottle that stood at the informant's hand.
Without conscious thought she snatched it up, span round, and swung it at him. The man reeled sideways to avoid the blow, and Ros shoved him with all her strength. As he lost his balance and crashed in a heap into the corner she grabbed a fork from a dirty plate on the table and launched herself on him, stabbing indiscriminately at any exposed skin she could see. When his body at last stopped thrashing she scrambled to her feet, breathing heavily, and returned to the body of her contact. A swift search – conducted with shaking hands, although Ros refused to acknowledge that even to herself – revealed a memory stick hidden in his sock. She buried it in her inside coat pocket and looked around. Other than some smashed glass, a bent fork and an additional corpse, she had left no sign of her presence, and it was high time to remove that too. Time for Irina Selesnikova and Mother Russia to part company.
Back out on the street, she hesitated. There was a chill in the air now, but she felt colder than was actually justified by the temperature, and she was slightly dizzy, too. Snap out of it, Myers! This wasn't the time and it certainly wasn't the place, for a ladylike fit of the vapours. Either she or this flat had been under surveillance. If you stand here any bloody longer you might as well send a text to the Lubyanka and announce your arrival. St Andrew's, Moscow's Anglican church, wasn't that far away, in the back streets off Tverskaya; it was within walking distance, but suddenly Ros's legs felt both heavy and weak at the same time. Nonetheless, she forced herself to start moving. For the first time since she had been mugged all those months ago, she had a suffocating and very real sense of impending danger.
She had reached the bottom of Kamenny Most when she saw the taxi rank. They were a rarity in Moscow, where parking was as anarchic as in any Italian city Ros had ever seen, but there were a few near the main tourist haunts. The taxi driver was reluctant to embark one of his compatriots, so for the first time since she had arrived in Russia, Ros switched to English. It had the desired effect, but immediately she had done so, she wished she hadn't; shedding the protective cover of Irina made her feel strangely exposed, and by the time she was dropped off at the church it was an effort to stop herself trembling. It hadn't helped that the driver had had to pass the British Embassy on Sofiskaya Quay en route. The temptation to seek the safety it offered from the threat she sensed was enormous, but Ros knew the safety was illusory. She was deniable. On your own … no back up from us. And anyway, if the FSB knew who she was, then she could easily be offered a Russian noose around her neck rather than a British helping hand.
When she walked into St Andrew's she silently thanked God that they had chosen it. She might still be in Moscow, but this was a tiny corner of England, and the church was blessedly free of the inquisitive, suspicious Baba Tamaras who populated every Orthodox church in the city. Ros went straight to the cross in front of the altar. Religion, the opium of the people. She remembered sardonically quoting that once to Zaf Younis, and the mocking twinkle in his eye as he retorted 'I thought that was football'. She had got the last word – though God knows what she'd said. It had been spoken in another world … another life … by another person.
A muffled shout beyond the door made her jump violently and brought her back to the moment. Hurriedly, she reached underneath the cross. She was tired, and although she loathed herself for it, shaken by the killing - and losing concentration. The spectre of mistakes, and potentially lethal consequences, lurked in the shadows. It was time to leave.
She withdrew her hand, clutching a sizable wad of rouble notes and a British passport that she spared a second to examine. Lindsay Butler. It bore her photograph and a valid Russian visa with entry stamps. Ros got to her feet. The church clock had told her it was just past six-thirty. She wouldn't make Domodedovo by the time of the last flight out today. Like it or not – and she didn't – she would have to stay overnight and make her escape tomorrow. For now she had to get back to the flat. Irina Selesnikova was still intact, clear of any connection to the death of one – and possibly two – FSB officers, Ros Myers did not exist, and Lindsay Butler was merely a figment of London's imagination - until tomorrow. Get back there and she would be safe until then. She crossed herself – a little puff of opium never hurt anyone – and hurried out.
By the time she got to her building Ros was cold, exhausted, and had a blinding headache. The courtyard was poorly lit, and she was so focused on reaching her hideout that in the gloom she didn't see the two men sitting on a bench on the far side until the flare of a match drew her eye to them. She hesitated. It was dark, cold, and threatening rain. They did not look like your average Moscow bomzhi slumped in an alcoholic daze; one, talking intently, seemed to be hectoring the other. She strained to see better through the shadows. As she did, a light came on in one of the ground-floor flats and illuminated the two men as if they were centre-stage in a Chekhov play. It was Pyotr's red hair that identified him. And despite the fact that he was in civilian clothes, the other man was unmistakably Alexander Bychkov.
For a second, the realisation pinned Ros to the spot. The blood rushing to her head made it pound savagely, combining with the shock to make it almost impossible for her to think straight, let alone move. As she stood, staring in terrified disbelief, Bychkov, like a monster in a child's nightmare, got slowly to his feet, and his head turned until he seemed to be looking directly at her.
The movement broke Ros's paralysis. Instinctively, she turned and fled back towards the main road, stumbling on the ruts and holes in the path, conscious of feet thudding behind her, but not daring to look back for fear of losing her footing. Her lungs were burning, and her breath coming in gasps when she reached Leninski Prospekt, but at least here she could see better.
And so can he. There were few pedestrians about, and the breadth of the avenue left her exposed like a prize exhibit in a lighted display cabinet. Don't panic, Myers! Think! Stupidly, she had run away from the metro station. She would never get across the avenue before she was seen. She was about to run left when she heard a crackling sound from behind her. She glanced round. One of Moscow's ancient trolleybuses was grinding to a halt at a stop about thirty metres away, wheezing almost as much as she was.
Ros took another heaving breath, staggered towards it, and managed to haul herself up the steps just as the doors rattled shut. She grasped a pole for support, fighting to steady her breathing as the vehicle whirred into reluctant life and lurched away down the street. When it cleared the intersection and Ros knew she was out of Bychkov's sight, she slumped into a seat and closed her eyes.
She had no idea where the bus was going, but all that mattered at the moment was what it was leaving behind. She raked her hair back and rubbed her throbbing forehead. She could taste bile in her throat and the barrage of unanswered questions battering at her was intensifying her headache. She tried to adopt Irina's withdrawn, weary expression as she drove her exhausted mind to function with something approaching its usual sharpness. Even with a British passport in her pocket the embassy was too risky; Bychkov would surely have it covered. She could check into a hotel, but hotels kept records of all their guests. Briefly, Ros considered going to Baba Tamara's, but that would involve explanations for Irina's sudden disappearing act. And even Ros Myers wasn't ruthless enough to expose an innocent old-age pensioner – especially one to whom she was already so deep in debt – to the risk of being arrested for espionage by the FSB.
No, Ros thought. The only way was to return to the shadows that were the domain of the deprived and the dispossessed. She shuddered. During her flight from London she had spent time in a dilapidated anarchists' squat in Berlin, and lived briefly on the streets of Gdansk with a group of former prisoners. But that hadn't been in the – albeit early – Russian winter.
Tomorrow I'll be out of here. She resolutely drove from her mind the Bychkov-shaped question mark at the end of that statement. She - and the intelligence she carried - would get out. She had to. Somehow the operation had been compromised. There had been too many close calls. It will only be for tonight. It's not as if you're taking up permanent residence like those poor sodding kids. She looked out of the window as the bus came to a clanking halt at Oktyabrskaya metro station.
The kids. Oktyabrskaya metro station was on the circular line. So was Kievsky railway station, on Komsomolskaya Square. Suddenly, Ros knew exactly where she was going. Irina stood up, jumped off the bus and MI-5's mole slipped unobtrusively back underground.
Thank you, faithful, patient readers! Please review!