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RUBY PARKER TOOK THE lift to the twentieth floor and stepped into the corridor. Just as she remembered it. The walls needed a new coat of paint, but there was no graffiti and the floor tiles looked clean. She knew how many steps to the flat by heart, because she’d lived here herself, an age ago. She knocked and took a carton of grapes from her bag. It was one in the afternoon, he’d have to be up by now, however ‘unwell’.
The door opened. Bronstein stood holding the latch fully dressed plus a yarmulke and a pair of phylacteries. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want – oh, it’s you. Sorry, boss. Okay, enter. I don’t normally answer the door looking like this.”
She followed him inside. He’d kept the place looking nice: no clutter, just his suitcase and a few old newspapers. The sofa, the armchair and carpet still looked as they might in an estate agent’s catalogue. She gave him the grapes. “Gavin tells me you reported in sick. I brought you these.”
“Thank you. The vine shall give her fruit and the ground shall give her increase, and the heavens shall give their dew and I will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things. Zechariah eight-twelve.”
“That’s okay. The branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine. John fifteen-four.”
He showed her the grapes label. “See this? ‘Product of Israel’. Some of this stuff comes from Gaza, but the Israelis won’t even let them sell it under their own name.”
“I thought that was tomatoes.”
Bronstein sat down. He unwound the straps on his arm. “I don’t know. All I know is this. In all vineyards shall be wailing, for I will pass through thee, saith the Lord. Amos five-seventeen.”
“You’re not actually unwell, are you?”
He looked at the floor. “Not really.”
“It’s about last night, isn’t it?”
He clicked his tongue and turned himself into a sigh. “I didn’t realise it had affected me at first. Joking around as usual. Then it sank in.”
“What? Anything I should know about?”
“I killed a man.”
“Go on.”
“Not just anyone. I went and turned him over, see if it might not be fatal. No such luck. Valdim Yakinterev.”
She nodded, inhaling. “Yes. I saw him on the list of casualties this morning, your bullet.”
“All that time he was watching me in Green Park, just looking. He could have put a slug through me any time he felt like it, but he didn’t.”
“Did you shoot him in self-defence?”
“He was aiming for one of the soldiers. I got him first. I was aiming for his shoulder, but, well, there you go.”
“And when you turned him over he was covered with blood, yes?”
“Look, I don’t want to make too much of this, okay? I realise it’s an occupational hazard. It just – shook me a bit, that’s all. I joined the NYPD because I like puzzles. That, and I wanted to shave my beard off. I’m not really the OK Corral type. But I knew the day would come, had to.”
“So you thought you’d stay at home today and pray, yes?”
“Pretty much sums it up, yeah.”
She smiled. “I find it quite touching that there are still people left who believe in a god.”
“Hey, until I was twenty-five, I thought everyone did.”
She crossed her legs and leaned back. “Lieutenant Bronstein, I didn’t come here to bring you grapes or check you were really ill. I came here because I put two and two together and I want to put your mind at rest.”
“Tall order, but go ahead.”
“Valdim Yakinterev didn’t die from a gunshot wound. He died from ingesting a capsule, probably when he saw he was going to be captured. Your bullet entered his shoulder. In other words, you saved a man’s life – Lance-Corporal Geoffrey Smith’s of the 23rd Pioneer Regiment, to be precise. And Smith has two devoted parents, a wife and a baby daughter.”
Bronstein said nothing for a moment. His mouth wobbled. Then he went to the window and threw it open and leaned out over London. “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands!” he yelled. “Serve the Lord with gladness! Come before his presence with singing!”
Ruby Parker got up. “So, er ... can I take it you’ll be back at work tomorrow?”
He looked at her as if she was mad and picked up his jacket. “What do you mean? Let’s go.”
The report lay on the desk between them. Orlov sat as if there were such things as sit to attention, sit at ease, sit easy and he’d been ordered to do the first. Ruby Parker sat at ease. Bronstein sat easy. They were in her office being fragranced by a plug-in.
“Your written style is very elegant,” she told Orlov.
“I spent a lot of time at the Russian Ministry of Defence perfecting it. My accent also.”
“Although you’d save yourself a bit of time if you cut down on the adjectives. Well done for finishing it so quickly. And ... for taking on board what I said last night.”
“I would be failing in my duty if I was to backtrack from my view that had you sent men with me, some would be dead.”
“They’d have been under your command, Colonel. If you wanted to keep them in the background while you took the lead that would be up to you. But at least they’d have been there.”
“Yes, I see.”
“Now let’s go through what we’ve got. We took four bin bags from that house, most of it very interesting, some of it - though it pains me to have to admit it - pure gold. They seem to have been using it as an ad hoc operational command centre, although – fortunately for you, Colonel - not a barracks. We’ll begin with the letters to and from Ross Henshall. Bronstein, you’re going to see him this afternoon. You’ve an appointment at four outside the National Theatre. You’ll approach as a journalist from The New York Times who’s received a copy of the letters from an anonymous source. Buy him a coffee and a flapjack and see what you can get him to divulge.”
“Will do.”
“The mere fact that he agreed to meet you at such short notice speaks volumes. Unite is Britain’s biggest union. As its leader, I would imagine his diary’s fairly full.”
“Even more so on the eve of a general election,” Bronstein said.
“And don’t forget: this is of marginal interest in the US. You can offer to sit on his story for a while in return for a little more openness.”
“I don’t know why we don’t just go in as MI5,” Orlov said. “Offer to keep his name clean in return for all the information he can offer.”
“That’s Plan B. Since he’s obviously compromised on some level, I’d rather not commit us to protecting him in the first instance. He knows the game’s up anyway. Bronstein could be wearing a hidden microphone for all he knows, or he could have a colleague snapping away with a telephoto. We’re probably turning up to hear his swansong.”
“Understood.”
“The real question is, what are we going to do with the man we captured, Ivan Ryazantsev? Because so far, he’s not talking.”
“Maybe he just needs more time.”
“Whatever this is, gentlemen, it’s big. We’ve got the police working on it full time now as well. As you rightly say, Lieutenant Bronstein, there’s a general election just around the corner and your theory, if I understand it correctly, Colonel Orlov, is that there may be assassinations in the offing. ‘More time’ is the one thing we don’t have.”
“Your tone of voice suggests a decision has already been made,” Orlov said.
“The Russian embassy’s been very cooperative since day one, and for our part we’ve kept a lid on those aspects of the case that might result in a kind of Russophobia. They’re very alarmed by what we found at the Manor House. They think – and I believe they’re right – it may have implications for their own national security.”
“But not everyone we killed was Russian,” Bronstein said. “There were two Georgians, two Ukrainians - ”
“What does that remind you of?”
“You mean ... the Soviet Union?”
“Perhaps better described nowadays as ‘Greater Russia’. I said at the beginning of this case that we might be dealing with some sort of mystical Slavophilism. I’m more convinced of that now than ever.”
Orlov raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you think it’s coincidental that it’s precisely the building of ‘Greater Russia’ that Chairman Putin’s often accused of? Economic dependence for the CIS countries, the Orange revolution, the invasion of Georgia, etcetera? It must have occurred to you that maybe we’re being taken for a ride?”
“And yet I don’t think we are,” she said. “The Russians’ cooperation is too complete. And one could argue that Vladimir Putin is hardly more than a monkey on a red carpet, that virtually anyone’s better qualified to carry through the Greater Russia programme than he is. Don’t you think that’s likely to make him feel a little scared?”
Orlov shrugged.
She smiled. “Of course, I’m not ruling anything out.” She pushed a small black and white photo across the desk towards him. “What do you make of this? We found it in Ryazantsev’s pocket.”
Orlov looked at it. It showed Vera Gruchov in a long coat and a smile shaking hands with Ryazantsev. He sucked air. “I honestly don’t know. It seems incredible the leader of Vosstanovlenie could be knowingly connected to a den of killers.”
“And yet, first Tebloev, now this.”
“Tebloev’s no killer.”
“All I’m saying is, that young lady keeps turning up.”
“‘Keeps’ is an overstatement. Tebloev genuinely supports her. As regards that fundraiser, he didn’t foresee the opprobrium his name would inspire. This is ... well, I don’t know what it is.”
She took the photo back. “Let’s put it to one side for now then.”
“Interlude,” Bronstein said. “A question I keep meaning to ask. This ‘Anna Politkovskaya’. Is she worth reading? Ruby.”
Ruby Parker smiled. “Her, ‘How to misappropriate property with the connivance of the government’ is probably the most significant piece of journalism since Voltaire took a liking to Jean Calas. You ought to read it. In fact, I require it.”
“How do the Russians propose to deal with Ryazantsev?” Orlov asked.
“How do you think? They propose to do the one thing we’re not permitted to do under human rights legislation.”
Orlov scowled. “Presumably the idea is that standing by while someone else commits an atrocity is morally better than committing that atrocity yourself.”
“We’re probably talking about lives here, Colonel, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands. Ryazantsev’s free to talk whenever he wants. The longer he holds out, the more serious things probably are. It’s no time for squeamishness.”
“Orlov shook his head. How do you know that once the Russians have Ryazantsev they won’t just ‘lose’ him?”
“There will be hell to pay if they do.”
“Maybe they don’t believe in hell,” Bronstein said.
“Apart from anything else, it would be incredible if we hadn’t considered the possibility of their spiriting him away, and if they hadn’t considered we would. No, they’ve offered to take four of our personnel as observers of everything that happens to him.”
“On strict condition they don’t intervene,” Orlov said.
“On strict condition they don’t intervene.”
“I’m as uneasy about this as the Colonel is,” Bronstein said. “And I accept your point that if we say no, and six weeks down the line we’re looking at a pile of corpses, we’ll wish we’d waterboarded him ourselves.”
“But?”
“There may be a third way.”
“I’m willing to listen to any suggestion within the limits of reason,” she said.
Bronstein folded his hands. “It’s a shame we didn’t think of this earlier – while he still had an open wound somewhere - but what say we bury a location transmitter under his skin somewhere, then he ‘escapes’ on the way to being tortured, and we watch and see where he ends up. I’ve got a map with every Slope business address on. We simply look for a match.”
Ruby Parker put her thumb on the corner of her mouth and stroked her cheek.
“If we don’t get one,” Bronstein added, “we might even be able to pick him up again.”
“What if he jumps straight off a cliff?” she said.
“Psychologically unlikely that he’d run that program when there’s still a possibility he could be useful to the organisation – whatever it is.”
Orlov nodded. “If we hand him to the Russians, they could easily end up torturing him to death or disability.”
“Because he’s obviously trained to keep schtum,” Bronstein said.
“If he ends up unable to walk and he hasn’t talked,” Orlov said, “and six weeks down the line we’re looking at a pile of corpses, we’re going to wish we’d followed Lieutenant Bronstein’s plan.”
Ruby Parker let out a long breath. “Very well ... very well, let’s give it a try. Bronstein, put a copy of that map on my desk before you set off to interview Henshall, understood?”
Her phone began to ring. She picked it up. “Gavin, I thought I gave instructions we weren’t to be disturbed.” She paused and her expression changed. “Ah ... Yes, that’s different ... Yes, put them on then, please.”
Orlov and Bronstein looked at each other.
“Thank you,” she said into the receiver. “Yes, that’s very interesting. Yes, you were right to. If you leave an address at reception, I’ll send a member of staff round right away. Of course, of course.”
“The Russians?” Bronstein said when she put the phone down.
“Scotland Yard.”
“You’re looking ... pleased?” Bronstein said.
“Nichole Moore’s disappeared. She was due to meet her friends last night but no one’s seen her. Her boyfriend says she left in a taxi with a Russian woman yesterday afternoon. We’ve located the taxi driver and he’s confirmed that story. Here’s the crux, gentlemen. Nichole Moore jettisoned herself from his car just after our mysterious woman revealed exactly who she was. Russian mafia.”
Bronstein and Orlov toasted each other with raised eyebrows and smiled.
“Finally progress,” Orlov said. “I suggest that’s Vera Gruchov absolved too.”
“And I guess it puts your Slavophile theory to rest,” Bronstein said.
She smiled. “To be honest, that’s one I won’t be sorry to see the back of. Profit and loss we can deal with. Ideas and ideologues – no thank you. Especially when we don’t even know what their ideas are. Bronstein, I want you go and see Henshall right away. Ring his office and ask for an earlier time, he won’t say no. Orlov, you go and see this taxi driver. Get a full description and get someone to produce an E-FIT then wire it to the Russian embassy priority. I’ll launch a full-scale search. If we can find Nichole Moore before the mafia do, we might be able to close this case fast.”
