December. James Steel

and rested his head on one side on his folded hands with closed eyes, as if asleep. Then he woke up suddenly. ‘Often, when we are tired and spiritually dead, it is like when the tide is out, the sea seems a long way away, we cannot even see the water; the dry beach goes out for ever.’ He stretched an arm out, looking across the room with a far-off gaze. Then he jabbed his finger insistently as he spoke. ‘But at other times, like this, the sea is a crashing wave that pounds against us, forcing us to move! That is what it is like for me now. I cannot ignore it!’ He clutched his head. ‘The spirit has spoken to me at this time—and what must I reply with? I must reply with magnificence! A magnificent spirit, a great heart, Russkaya dusha!’

      He calmed down and looked at Alex questioningly. ‘Maybe every country has a soul—I don’t know. What is the British soul?’

      Alex shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well…I hadn’t really thought about it,’ he said evasively. He was actually impressed with the fury of Sergey’s feelings but he hated being pressed on his own thoughts. He had always found it safer to keep them to himself.

      Sergey continued regardless, ‘Well, Russia has a soul, a magnificent soul. If you could know the warmth of its people, the strength of its fathers, its mothers, its families…But, it has two sides to its soul. Just as it has a magnificence so it also has a subservience. Its governments…’ He held up a hand in despair. ‘I have to be honest with you, Alexander Nikolayevich. We have had the longest history of…’ he paused to get the right words and then spat each one out, ‘brutal, oppressive, corrupt, useless governments of any country!’ He listed them on his fingers. ‘Mongols—psychopaths! The Tsars—fucking idiots! Stalin—the second greatest mass murderer in history! Russia deserves better than this! Krymov wants to turn us back the way we came. Ever since the Mongols our freedom has been suppressed by these autocrat sons of bitches! But we were not meant for it! We are not born into slavery! You see…’

      He had a sudden moment of inspiration, stopped and then bounded over to one of the huge bookshelves lining the room. He hunted along the shelves, muttering to himself, ‘Come on, you fucker, where are you?’

      ‘Ah!’ He pulled a large volume out.‘This is Chekhov, writing to his publisher.’ He opened the book where a piece of paper was stuck in it. ‘He was the same as me before all this bullshit,’ he waved a hand around to indicate the house and his riches, ‘a humble provincial lad. So he’s explaining how he developed from being a cowed boy to a freedom-loving adult.’

      He paused as he hunted for the right passage and then carefully read out: ‘“Write about how this young man squeezes the slave out of himself drop by drop and how, waking up one fine morning, he finds that the blood coursing through his veins is no longer the blood of a slave, but that of a real human being.”’

      He nodded in agreement, put the book down, came back to the table and sat down at the head of it.

      ‘So the question he is asking is the same one I am facing today: which part of the Russian soul will win? Its slave soul or its free soul? You see, this is why I love Russian literature! In Russia we explore our soul through our novels. Every one is an expedition into our unconscious and you must read them to know us! To do this mission!’ he cried enthusiastically.

      ‘And how many people share your enthusiasm for this mission?’ Alex made a circular motion with his hand to indicate the people who had been in the room.

      Sergey ticked them off on one hand. ‘Well, I know Lara understands me, Grigory and all the TV people care about human rights and press freedom, Fyodor…’ he made a tipping gesture with his hand and then sighed. ‘Alexander, I may look like a lunatic but I am not naïve enough to believe that Lieutenant-General Fyodor Mostovskoy is doing this because of his love of the Russian soul or his humanitarian concern for the people of Russia. He couldn’t give a fuck about them. All Fyodor cares about is himself and money. He hates Krymov because when they merged Mikoyan and Sukhoi and all the other Russian aircraft manufacturers into the United Aircraft Corporation, he and the airforce didn’t get nearly the share of control on the board that he feels they deserved. That’s why he is able to get us the support of the airforce as a whole, because they want the entire military-industrial complex restructured in their favour and away from Krymov’s cronies.

      ‘So I have promised him that when we win, he will be very well rewarded. So then he’ll feel happy.’ Sergey paused, then grinned and flicked an eyebrow. ‘Until he decides he wants something else, but we’ll deal with that later.’

      His mood became very serious. He leaned close and laid a hand on Alex’s forearm. ‘Alexander, I am speaking to you alone for a reason. I have to tell you something that the others can’t know at this stage…’ He looked down for a moment. ‘I may require you to carry out another…mission, when we get to Moscow.’

      ‘Riiight,’ said Alex warily. He withdrew from Sergey’s grasp and folded his arms as the Russian outlined the extra requirements.

      Sergey concluded with, ‘I don’t know what missions you have done before but this one is going to be a motherfucker! You will need a big heart to get through it.’

      He clutched Alex’s arm again with one hand and pointed at him with the other. ‘You are my man in this! You are leading the fight! Vasily Grossman said that when he was in Stalingrad only those with quiet at the bottom of their souls survived. You will have to find that quiet place in your soul—where the wolf drinks from the river at midnight—and then you will find your courage!’

      Alex stared back at him, trying to take it all in.

      By the time Sergey had finished his rambling explanation of the plan he had forced a lot of food and drink down Alex, so that he was feeling somewhat befuddled when he eventually left.

      He stood on the pavement, swaying slightly as the large electronic gate clicked shut behind him. He shook his head and looked around the darkened street, trying to remember which way was home.

      His senses were definitely not working well. After he stumbled away, a man in the patch of gloom across the street muttered into a lapel mike on his heavy parka, detached himself from the shadows and followed him.

      Sergey continued pacing up and down his meeting room for some time after Alex had left.

      He talked animatedly to himself, waved his arms around, pulled books off the shelf and flicked through them; lovingly reacquainting himself with favourite passages, nodding or frowning as he did so. His mobile phone rang several times and each time he glanced at the number, grunted and ignored it.

      As he sat down on his day bed with a copy of Sholokov’s And Quiet Flows the Don, it rang again.

      He grimaced, looked at the screen and saw the word: ‘Vozhd’.

      The Boss.

      It was Stalin’s old nickname and Sergey used it for the secret, secure communication channel that Krymov had insisted on having with him.

      He hurriedly put his book down, stood up and became very animated as he answered the call.

      ‘Yo, Comrade!’ he began.

       Chapter Seven

      From: firstclassdrycleaning.com

      To: Customer 39789G

      Date: Saturday 6 December

      

      Customer notice: First Class Dry-Cleaning regrets to inform you there has been a problem with your order. Please contact our Customer Service division immediately for details.

      ‘Fuck,’ Alex muttered to himself as he stuffed his BlackBerry back into his jacket pocket.

       What the hell was going on now?

      This project already had him on edge, without their emergency contact route being used already. It was only the morning