Moscow USA. Gordon Stevens

      ‘What about the courier who fell sick in London?’ Jameson spoke for the first time.

      ‘Tomorrow Nik does the security pick-up team and starts on the ConTex staff, and Jack flies to London to interview the courier. You carrying, Jack?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Might be an idea. Fix him up, Nik.’ Gerasimov looked around the table. ‘What else?’

      ‘Might be good to know who runs the mafia at the airport.’ It was Sherenko again.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because if we don’t get anywhere within ConTex, whoever runs the airport mafia might not be too happy that someone else is doing something on his patch. Assuming he had nothing to do with it, of course.’

      ‘I’ll check it out,’ Gerasimov told him.

      They left the conference room and returned to their offices. Gerasimov checked that his driver was waiting, then he and Jameson left.

      ‘Where are they going?’ Kincaid asked Riley.

      ‘Get changed, I guess.’

      ‘What for?’

      ‘Some sort of party.’

      Kincaid waited for an explanation.

      Riley sat forward slightly in his chair. ‘You remember what happened five years ago this week?’

      ‘Yeah. I remember what happened five years ago.’ Kincaid picked up his coat. ‘So why are Gerasimov and Jameson going to a party?’

      ‘Five years ago today it was Gerasimov’s men who were sent to assassinate Yeltsin in the White House. Five years ago tomorrow Gerasimov’s men protected Yeltsin instead of assassinating him, and probably changed the course of history.’ And that’s why he and Jameson are going to a party. ‘Drink?’ he asked.

      ‘Thanks anyway, but not tonight.’ Kincaid dusted his jacket. ‘See you tomorrow,’ he told Sherenko.

      ‘Yeah, see you in the morning.’

      Kincaid left the office, walked down Gertsena Ulica and crossed to the Tverskaya. The evening was warm, there were strands of thin cloud across the sky, and the pavements were busy, cars parked along them and vehicles passing. So what’s this about, Jack my friend? What are you doing and why are you doing it? He stepped between the parked cars and held his hand in the air. The first Lada passed him and the second pulled in.

      ‘Leningradski vokzal.’ The Russian was too much like the language school rather than the pavements of Moscow.

      ‘Twenty thousand roubles.’

      ‘Too much.’

      ‘It’s out of my way.’

      Kincaid stood back, watched the Lada jerk away, and held his hand in the air again. Another Lada swerved in.

      ‘Leningradski voksal.’ Better, he told himself.

      ‘Eighteen thousand roubles.’

      ‘Ten thousand.’

      ‘Fifteen.’

      ‘Okay.’

      He opened the door and slipped into the rear seat. The windscreen was cracked, a fresh air filter was stuck to the dashboard and the back of the driver’s seat was ripped. ‘What time is it?’ he asked. The driver pulled out into the line of traffic without bothering to look and glanced at his watch. ‘Five to eight.’

      ‘Nice watch, what sort is it?’

      ‘Tag Heuer.’

      ‘Christ, you must earn a fortune.’

      ‘Counterfeit. Twenty dollars.’

      They talked about prices in Moscow, where you could get what. You heard the joke about the new Russian, he told the driver. Goes to London and buys a watch for twenty thousand dollars. That evening he shows it to a friend. You’ve been done, the friend tells him: I know where I can get the same watch for thirty thousand.

      The driver laughed and swerved, either to avoid a pothole or another cab, possibly both. New Russian wipes out his Merc, he told Kincaid. Why the hell you crying, a friend says; the car’s nothing; look, you’ve lost an arm. The man looks down. Christ, he says, my Cartier.

      So what are you playing at, Jack, what are you up to?

      The driver pulled in to the station. The building was brown and single-storey, steps going up to its three doors and people packed around it. Kincaid paid the driver and went inside. The hall was small and dark, connecting stairs and passages running off it, a kiosk selling drinks and a man who hadn’t shaved selling pirozhki, small pastries, from a wooden tray. People pushing past and the evening sun breaking through the dust on the windows at the far end. He felt in his pocket and pulled out a handful of notes. Counted them carefully and handed them over, moved to a corner and ate the pirozhki and drank the Coke, and sidled on. Passengers were already gathering for the mid-evening trains, a policewoman clearing a drunk from amongst them. Kincaid left the main station and crossed to the metro.

      So what’s tonight all about, Jack old friend? What game are you playing and why?

      Not Jack – he corrected himself. Jack Mikhailovich Kincaid, because in Russian everyone used the first name of their father as their own middle name.

      Okay, Jack Mikhailovich, so what’s running?

      He stepped on to the escalator, the descent reminding him of the metro stations at Dupont Circle or Bethesda, except in Washington the walls and ceilings were grey and concrete. He came to the bottom and stepped into a different world. Walked through the hallway connecting the various platforms and could have been walking through the Louvre or the Smithsonian or the Hermitage. The floor and walls and ceilings were marbled, marbled busts on plinths and marbled garlands in alcoves.

      At the end of the platform a digital clock indicated how long ago the previous train had left and therefore, by deduction, how long the next would be. Even in mid-evening the platform was crowded. The train pulled in and the doors opened. Those waiting on the platform stood to each side, and those arriving poured off. The moment the last left the train those waiting streamed on. He found a seat and looked up and down the carriage at his fellow travellers.

      So what’s this about, Jack Mikhailovich? Why take a cab, then the metro, and end up less than a thousand metres from where you started?

      His observations over the next hour were footnotes to what had gone before. When he returned to the flat shortly before eleven the message from Riley was on a notepad.

      Nik will pick you up at six. Session at range for six-thirty. You’re on the nine o’clock flight to London.

      Gerasimov’s driver collected Jameson from his hotel at eight. Gerasimov was in the rear seat. He wore a dark blue suit and matching tie. In his left lapel he wore an Alpha pin. The driver cut across the inner ring road, skirted Red Square, and eased down the narrow tree-lined street three hundred yards from the Kremlin.

      ‘Brief me on who’ll be there tonight,’ Jameson requested.

      Gerasimov briefed him.

      ‘Who’s important?’ Jameson asked.

      ‘They’re all important, but the man for the future is Malenkov. He was First Chief Directorate, now he’s a major-general in the SVR.’

      The Omega driver eased to a halt on the right side of the street. They left the car and crossed to the building on the left. The house was three-storey, grey and anonymous, black door and no obvious security. As Gerasimov and Jameson crossed the road another car pulled in behind theirs.

      The doorbell was on the left; before they had pressed it the black door opened and they stepped inside. The reception area was marbled, marbled stairs on the right leading to the floors above and a desk on the left, the monitors of the