The Troika Dolls (43 page)

‘I’ve discovered that you can get a buzz off this if you drink enough—almost like caffeine. In the sanatorium, its use is restricted to narcoleptics and the obese, but I’ve managed to convince them I need it for my mental health.’

She downed two cups in swift succession. She grimaced, then poured a third cup. ‘It tastes worse than it smells.’

Henning wrinkled his nose, offended by the odour. ‘Is that possible?’

They went back to watching the armed guards.

The waiter reappeared, this time with an envelope on his silver tray. He offered it to Henning.

Inside the envelope, the notepaper was embossed with a gold crest—a dragon slaying a knight—and was as thick as cardboard.

‘The reverse of the legend of St George,’ said Henning.

‘And it’s addressed to you.’

Henning read aloud:

Dear Miss Duveen,

I am giving a dinner in the ballroom tomorrow evening for the occasion
of Heinrich Hahanyan’s 65th birthday. All the guests are invited.
It would please him greatly if you and your companion would do us the
honour of joining us.

8 pm.

FD

Stevie took a gold-tipped cigarette from the slim, black box. ‘Surely that man is too hideous for birthdays?’

‘Inviting all the guests.’ Henning raised an eyebrow. ‘How old-fashioned.’

‘It’s rather delightfully “captain’s table” of him, I agree.’ She put a match to the end of her cigarette and drew on the ember. ‘But what does one wear to such a thing? I ought to write in to
Vogue
:
Dear Style Surgery,
I hope you can help. I have been invited to a mass murderer’s birthday party. It
is to be hosted by an arch villain and I am uncertain what to wear. Are feathers
too provocative? Yours sincerely, Stevie Duveen
.’

Stevie took another gulp of her mud root tea to quell the nervous fluttering in her ribcage. She made a face. ‘This needs vodka.’

‘Do we have a plan, Stevie?’

‘Just to get close and see what we can discover—or instigate.’

‘Room for improvisation then?’

Stevie put down her cup and rummaged about in the pocket of her robe. ‘I just had another idea. I’m calling Rosie.’

‘Who’s Rosie?’

‘Josie’s twin. She works on Fleet Street.’

Stevie pulled out her tiny, tiny phone. She saw she had missed a call from David Rice. Her heart sank. How could she explain all this? He would have to wait.

Rosie answered her mobile, snappy and businesslike. She was the less nonsensical of the twins.

Stevie began her buttering but Rosie cut her off. ‘Look, Stevie, I know your tricks. Josie tells me everything and I don’t have the time. What do you want, and what’s in it for me? Simple question, give me a simple answer.’

‘Okay, Rosie. I need you to plant a story in your paper. In return, you will get the scoop on something huge. It’s
quid pro quo
.’

‘Details, Stevie. What’s my scoop?’

She thought fast. ‘Remember the dead infants in Novgorod Oblast?’

‘The contaminated milk powder from China?’ Rosie’s voice was sharp with interest.

‘The powder was made in China,’ Stevie went on, ‘but sold through a broker who specialises in dodgy goods from the People’s Republic. He sets up factories there to make whatever people order. Mainly I think it’s fake pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements. By the time the buyers discover the goods are faulty—or even deadly—this guy has vanished and his factory is already making something else.’

‘So he knew this infant formula was deadly when he sold it?’

‘Put it this way, he didn’t intend for the children to die, but he couldn’t care less that they did.’

‘Name?’ Stevie could hear Rosie tapping away on her computer as they spoke.

‘Heinrich Hahanyan. I think he’s from Chelyabinsk originally.’

‘Is that it?’

‘It’s big, Rosie. And, in return, I need you to run a story on a guy they call “The Man from Chernobyl”. If the story you plant for me—’

‘—will try to plant—’

‘—has the desired effect, you’ll have a much bigger story about another monster.’ She filled Rosie in on the details and hung up.

Now all she needed was a photo of the man.

Valery Kozkov’s funeral was being
televised that evening. Stevie knew Henning felt awful about not being in Moscow for it. She felt she should be there too, to pay her respects to Irina and Vadim. But she and Henning had discussed it and decided that what Kozkov would have wanted, over and above the presence of two more warm bodies overlooking his cold one, was the safe return of his little girl.

Stevie had tried to comfort Valery’s friend. After all, funerals, she had reminded him, were for the living, not the dead.

Now she and Henning sat on the end of his bed, waiting for the broadcast to begin. It was to be a state funeral, with all the pomp and ceremony involved, and a mass of important mourners.

‘I wonder if his killers are watching.’

‘Will we ever know who they are?’ Henning was staring blankly at the television screen, now showing a rose-petal-filled advertisement for a luxury hotel chain in Asia.

He turned the volume down and said to Stevie, ‘Even if we find Anya, justice for Valery won’t have been served. All it will be is damage control—righting one wrong amongst so many.’

Stevie had never seen Henning upset. It stirred her heart and made her want to hold him close. She put her hand on his arm instead.

‘Sometimes that is all we can do, and sometimes that has to be enough. We can’t fix everything that is wrong with the world.’ Stevie had often struggled with the same thoughts herself.

‘Most of the time,’ she went on softly, ‘I can believe that the main thing is to be struggling towards the good, rather than sliding with indifference down the scale towards evil. I cling to that.’

Henning patted her hand but he turned back to the TV and said nothing. Stevie thought she might leave him alone with his thoughts for a moment and stepped into the corridor.

With the tip of her nail, she dialled David Rice and hoped he wouldn’t answer.

‘Stevie.’

He always answered.

‘Where the hell are you? Dovetail told me you were poisoned—’

Trust Dovetail. He had eyes and ears everywhere.

‘—next I hear, Josie tells me you’ve vanished to some sanatorium. What the devil are you playing at?’

‘I’m fine now,’ Stevie tried to soothe the savage beast. ‘Someone slipped a little poison into my coffee. They sugared it to mask the taste but—’

‘You hate sugar in your coffee. Thank God for your fussiness, Stevie Duveen.’

‘By the time I came to, it was too late for the chopper.’

‘There are other ways down the mountain.’ Rice separated each word for emphasis. ‘You think your Russians can’t find you at a sanatorium?’

‘They can find me in London, too. And in Zurich,’ Stevie said quietly, voicing her fears at last.

‘We’ll find a way for you to disappear.’

Stevie looked down at her feet. ‘It wouldn’t work, David, even if I wanted it to. How am I supposed to live in fear for the rest of my life, watching over my shoulder for Russian assassins? Trust me, I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought there was another way out. And then there’s the chance of getting Anya back . . .’

‘Ah. Anya.’

Rice knew the story of Stevie’s parents—and of little Stevie—only too well and he had guessed the impact Kozkov’s assassination might have on her.

‘It’s not the same thing, Stevie.’

‘I know.’

Neither said a word for what seemed like a long time.

Stevie stood in the corridor of the east wing of the sanatorium and stared out of the window. Lights were burning through the small windows in the west wing. Dragoman’s quarters. The windows were too narrow to get a good view, but she saw shapes—people—passing to and fro.

‘You don’t have faith in me, do you, David.’

‘It’s not a matter of faith, Stevie. I promised your mother and father—in that godforsaken mudslide—that I would keep a hand on your shoulder if anything should happen to them.’ There was a pause. David continued, his voice hoarse now. ‘When something did, I tried to keep you safe without crowding you. It’s not been easy, especially not in this line of work. But either you worked for me, where I could keep an eye on you, or you worked for some other firm, where I could not.’

Stevie was touched. He felt the bond, just as she did.

‘I can’t be responsible for losing you, too.’

‘David,’ tears pricked in Stevie’s eyes, ‘what happened to my parents wasn’t your fault. One day I will find the people responsible, count on that, but you are not one of them.’

David coughed. ‘I could say the same to you about Valery Kozkov, about Anya . . . How much difference would that make to how you feel, Stevie? I loved your mother and father. And now I . . .’

The silence of unspoken thoughts buzzed between them, faint static on the line.

Stevie wished Rice would finish his sentence the way her heart wanted him to. Instead, she said, ‘Then let me make my own decision. Trust me enough, David.’

There was another long pause.

‘Can I do anything from here?’

Stevie’s heart flipped with gratitude. ‘Yes. Rosie’s trying to plant a story on Felix Dragoman for me at the paper—can you make sure it does get in and gets a lot of attention?’

‘Done.’

‘David . . . thank you.’

‘I’ll never forgive you if you get yourself killed.’

He rang off.

Stevie, buoyed by her conversation, pulled out her mini-binoculars. The shapes at Dragoman’s windows were definitely people. She could see the backs of their heads. Was Dragoman among them?

Stevie ran from window to window, trying to see more. Looking down, she saw the massive skylight that hung over what was once the castle courtyard and was now the main room of the sanatorium. It was made of glass panels, two metres by one metre, and held in place by steel frames like a giant patchwork quilt. Two storeys below, she could see the deep chairs, the bunches of lilies, the enormous turquoise curtains that hung to the floor.

Looking up, she saw the crenellations of the four towers against the night sky, opaque with cloud. She needed a photo of Dragoman to go with Rosie’s story and for that, she had to get closer to his windows.

It wouldn’t be much of a photo but she needed it quickly, and she knew from her time spent amongst paparazzi fodder just how much could be done with computers to even the poorest picture.

It seemed there was only one way to approach: over the skylight.

Stevie slipped off her shoes. Nothing would be quieter or safer than bare feet. She opened the narrow window on her side. Three times she tried to fit through that tiny gap, then on the fourth she finally managed to wriggle out, head first. She stretched her hands out. It was freezing in the open air.

The lights from the hall below had obliterated the glass panels in the dark. It took all of Stevie’s faith to trust they were still there.

Slowly and silently she put one foot, then two, on the first glass panel, testing it would hold her weight. Then she stepped to the next. Panel to panel she crept along the freezing glass roof, one tender foot at a time, unable to stop herself looking down onto the small waiter leaning at the tiny bar below, the three Lebanese ladies drinking cocktails.

The skywalk seemed to take forever, but finally Dragoman’s windows drew close. She peered in.

The back of Dragoman’s small head protruded—just—over the back of a velvet armchair. He was watching television, his feet in velvet sandals, crossed delicately at the ankles. His shadow stood to the right of the chair, at least two other men—Stevie noted the neat suits—were in the room, also watching the screen.

It was enormous and Stevie could see it very clearly. It was a news channel televising Kozkov’s funeral in Moscow. It was being held in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, on the banks of the Moskva river, just west of the Kremlin. Gold domes capped the white turrets, almost invisible in the snow.

Stevie started as the faces of Irina and Vadim suddenly appeared, almost life-size on the screen. They looked so ghostly and alone, and Stevie’s heart went out to them. Masha Osipova stood by Irina, an arm around the widow, her eyes red from crying.

The ticker tape at the bottom of the screen gave the bulletin as the camera swung slowly and showed the room. Irina and Vadim were walking with other mourners in a procession, down the marble aisle, towards the coffin. Pale faces like almonds in a sea of black dotted the cathedral. Stevie couldn’t hear the music through the window but the silent spectacle was moving enough.

Generals in their full medallion stood, breasts out like tanks, along the aisle. Even the president was there, his fish-lids unblinking, perpetually outlined in red. Everyone looked very sorry, very sombre, very fitting. They would all be expressing their condolences to the widow and her son, saying the right things, and none of it would change a thing.

Stevie thought of something Vadim had told her after Kozkov had left the dacha.

‘He has no real friends,’ he’d said. ‘People feel it’s too dangerous for them to be close to my father.’

Stevie, out on the roof, wondered which of the faces wore only the mask of grief and regret . . . perhaps Kozkov’s enemies were amongst the mourners. In fact, it was more than likely.

As one of the generals stood at the microphone, speaking gravely to the mourners, Stevie thought of Juvenal:
Who guards the guards?

The camera panned the retinue around the president, moving from face to face. The figures painted on the gilded walls seemed to also be watching the spectacle. Suddenly Dragoman pointed to someone on the screen, saying something to the men in the room.

Stevie looked at the face that had excited him. She did not recognise it. Indeed, it was a most unremarkable face, one that would slide through your memory without leaving a trace. Perhaps you might remember the eyes, dark—almost black—and cold as the bottom of a well.

It would be too convenient, unfortunately, to assume that Dragoman had just pointed out his accomplice in the Kremlin in an act of
j’accuse
. He might have, but there would certainly be others, and it did not help Stevie or Anya’s immediate situation. All she could deduce was that Dragoman recognised the faceless man.