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by Frederick Forsyth

  “Do you know where he is staying?”

  “No, but he used the same limousine.”

  The National, thought Grishin. The old fool has gone to the same hotel. He was still bitterly conscious that he had lost the old spymaster the last time because Mr. Trubshaw had moved too fast for him. This time there would be no mistake.

  “Where are you now?”

  “In the street, using my portable.”

  “It’s not secure. Go to the usual place and wait for me there.”

  “I should get back, Colonel. I will be missed.”

  “Listen, fool, ring the residence and tell them you are feeling unwell. Say you have gone to the pharmacy for medication. But get to the meeting place and wait.”

  He slammed down the phone, picked it up again, and ordered his deputy, an ex-major of Border Guards Directorate, KGB, to report to his office immediately.

  “Bring ten men, the best, in civilian clothes, and three cars.”

  Fifteen minutes later he spread a photograph of Sir Nigel Irvine in front of his deputy.

  “That’s him. Probably accompanied by a younger man, dark-haired, fit looking. They are at the National. I want two in the lobby, covering the elevators, the reception desk, and the doors. Two in the downstairs café. Two on the street on foot, four in two cars. If he arrives, watch him go in, then let me know. If he’s there, I don’t want him to come out without my knowing.”

  “If he leaves by car?”

  “Follow, unless it’s clear he’s heading for the airport. Then arrange a car crash. He does not reach the airport.”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  When the deputy had gone to brief his team, Grishin phoned another expert he had on the payroll, a former thief specializing in hotels who reckoned he could unlock any hotel door in Moscow.

  “Get your kit together, get to the Intourist Hotel, sit in the lobby, and keep your mobile phone switched on. I want you to take a hotel room for me, tonight, hour unknown. I’ll call you when I need you.”

  The Intourist Hotel is two hundred yards from the National, around the corner in Tverskaya Street.

  Colonel Grishin was at the church of All Saints of Kulishki thirty minutes later. The worried priest, beaded with sweat, was waiting for him.

  “When did he arrive?”

  “Unannounced, about four o’clock. But His Holiness must have been expecting him. I was asked to show him straight up. With his interpreter.”

  “How long were they together?”

  “About an hour. I served a samovar of tea, but they ceased talking while I was in the room.”

  “You listened at the door?”

  “I tried, Colonel. It was not easy. The cleaning staff were about, those two nuns. Also the archdeacon, his private secretary.”

  “How much did you hear?”

  “A bit. There was much talk of some prince. The Englishman was proposing a foreign prince to the Patriarch, in some capacity. I heard the phrase ‘The Romanov blood’ and ‘extremely suitable.’ The old man speaks softly, not that it matters; I can’t understand English. Fortunately the interpreter speaks louder.

  “The Englishman did most of the talking, His Holiness most of the listening. Once I could see him studying a plan of some sort. Then I had to move.

  “I knocked and went back in to ask if they wanted the samovar replenished. There was silence because His Holiness was writing a letter. He said no, and waved me away.”

  Grishin was pensive. The word prince made perfect sense to him, if not to the valet.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, there was one last thing. As they were leaving, the door opened a fraction. I was waiting outside with their coats. I heard the Patriarch say, ‘I will intercede with our acting president at the first suitable moment.’ That was quite clear, the only whole sentence I heard.”

  Grishin turned to Father Maxim and smiled.

  “I’m afraid the Patriarch is conspiring with foreign interests against our future president. It is very sad, very unfortunate, because it will not work. I’m sure His Holiness means well, but he is being most foolish. After the election, all this nonsense can be forgotten. But you, my friend, will not be forgotten. During my time with the KGB I learned to recognize the difference between a traitor and a patriot. Traitors may in certain circumstances be forgiven. His Holiness, for example. But a true patriot will always be rewarded.”

  “Thank you, Colonel.”

  “Do you ever have time off?”

  “One evening a week.”

  “After the election, you must come and dine at one of our Young Combatants camps. They’re rough-hewn lads but good-hearted. And of course extremely fit. All fifteen to nineteen. The best of them we take into the Black Guards.”

  “That would be very ... agreeable.”

  “And of course after the election I shall suggest to President Komarov that the Guards and the Combatants will need an honorary chaplain. Certainly the rank of bishop will be necessary.”

  “You’re very kind, Colonel.”

  “You will find I can be, Father Maxim. Now back to the residence. Keep me informed. You had better take this. You will know what to do with it.”

  When the informer had left, Colonel Grishin ordered his driver to take him to the National Hotel. It was time, he thought, that this interfering Westerner and his American troublemaker learned some of the facts of modern Moscow.

  CHAPTER 17

  COLONEL GRISHIN ORDERED HIS DRIVER TO PARK A hundred yards down Okhotny Ryad, Hunter’s Row, which makes up the northwestern side of Manege Square where the National is situated.

  From inside his car he could see the two vehicles of his watcher team parked near the shopping mall facing the facade of the hotel.

  “Wait here,” he told his driver, and got out. Even at seven in the evening it was almost twenty below zero. A few huddled figures shuffled past.

  He crossed the street and tapped on the driver’s side window. It creaked in the cold as the electric motor brought it down.

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He must be inside, if he was in there before we arrived. No one has left that even looks like him.”

  “Call Mr. Kuznetsov. Tell him I need him here.”

  The propaganda chief arrived twenty minutes later.

  “I need you to play your American tourist again,” said Grishin. He pulled a photograph from his pocket and showed it to Kuznetsov.

  “That’s the man I’m looking for,” he said. “Try the names of Trubshaw or Irvine.”

  Kuznetsov was back ten minutes later.

  “He’s in there, under the name of Irvine. He’s in his room.”

  “Number?”

  “Two-five-two. Is that all?”

  “That’s all I need.”

  Grishin returned to his own car and used his mobile phone to call the professional thief he had stationed around the corner in the lobby of the Intourist.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “Stay on listening watch. When I give the command, the room I want searched is two-five-two. I want nothing taken, everything searched. One of my own men is in the lobby. He will come with you.”

  “Understood.”

  At eight o’clock one of the two men Grishin had posted in the lobby came out. He nodded across the road to his colleagues in the nearest car, then drifted off.

  Minutes later two figures in heavy winter coats and fur hats emerged. Grishin could see wisps of white hair escaping from under one of the hats. The men turned left, up the street toward the Bolshoi Theatre.

  Grishin called up his thief.

  “He’s left the hotel. The room is vacant.”

  One of Grishin’s cars began to crawl slowly after the walking men. Two more of the watchers, who had been in the National’s ground-floor café, came out and turned after the Englishmen. There were four walkers on the street, four more watchers in two cars. Grishin’s driver sp
oke.

  “Shall we pick them up, Colonel?”

  “No, I want to see where they go.”

  There was a chance Irvine would make contact with the American, Monk. If he did, Grishin would have them all.

  The two Englishmen paused at the lights where Tverskaya Street leaves the square, waited for the green, and crossed. Seconds later the thief came around the corner from Tverskaya.

  He was a thoroughly experienced man and always looked the part of a foreign executive, almost the only breed who could still afford the top Moscow hotels. His coat and suit were from London, both stolen, and his air of self-confident ease would fool almost all hotel employees.

  Grishin watched him push at the revolving doors of the hotel and disappear inside. Nigel Irvine, the colonel had been happy to notice, carried no attaché case. If he had one, it would be in his room.

  “Move,” he told his driver. The Mercedes eased away from the curb and closed to within a hundred yards of the walking men.

  “You know we are being followed,” said Vincent conversationally.

  “Two walkers up ahead, two behind, a crawling car on the opposite side of the street,” said Sir Nigel.

  “I’m impressed, sir.”

  “My dear boy, I may be old and gray, but I hope I can still spot a tail when it’s that big and clumsy.”

  Because of its supreme power, the old Second Chief Directorate had seldom bothered to dissimulate on the streets of Moscow. Unlike the FBI in Washington or MI5 in London, the cult of the unspottable tail was never really its specialty.

  After passing in front of the illuminated splendor of the Bolshoi Theatre and then the smaller Maly Theatre, the two walkers approached a narrow side street, Theatre Alley.

  There was a doorway just before the turning, and a bundle of rags trying to sleep there despite the biting cold. Sir Nigel stopped.

  Ahead and behind him the Black Guards tried to pretend they were studying empty shop windows.

  In the doorway, dimly lit by the streetlamps, the bundle stirred and looked up. He was not drunk, but old, the tired face beneath the woolen comforter pinched and lined with years, hard work, and deprivation. On the lapel of the threadbare greatcoat hung an array of faded medal ribbons. Two deep-set, exhausted eyes looked up at the foreigner.

  Nigel Irvine, when based in Moscow, had taken the time to study Russian medals. There was one in the stained row of ribbons he recognized.

  “Stalingrad?” he asked softly in Russian. “You were at Stalingrad?”

  The bundle of wool around the old head nodded slowly.

  “Stalingrad,” croaked the old man.

  He would have been less than twenty then, in that freezing winter of 1942, fighting Von Paulus’s Sixth Army for every brick and cellar of the city on the Volga.

  Sir Nigel dug into the pocket of his trousers and came up with a banknote. Fifty million rubles, about thirty U.S. dollars.

  “Food,” he said. “Hot soup. A slug of vodka. For Stalingrad.”

  He straightened up and walked on, stiff and angry. Vincent caught up. The followers moved away from their shop windows and resumed the patrol.

  “Sweet heaven, what have they come to?” Irvine said to no one in particular, and turned into the side street.

  Grishin’s car radio crackled as one of the walkers used his walkie-talkie.

  “They’ve turned off. They’re going into a restaurant.”

  The Silver Age is another completely traditional old-Russian restaurant, situated in a recessed alley around the back of the theaters. It was formerly the Central Russian Bathhouse, its walls covered in tiles and mosaics depicting rustic scenes of long ago. Coming from the bitter cold of the street, the two visitors felt the rush of warm air wash over them.

  The restaurant was crowded, almost every table taken. The headwaiter scurried forward.

  “I’m afraid we are fully booked, gentlemen,” he said in Russian. “A large private party. I am so sorry.”

  “I see there is one table left,” replied Vincent in the same language. “Look, over there.”

  There was indeed a single table for four standing empty against the back wall. The waiter looked worried. He realized the two tourists were foreigners, and that would mean payment in dollars.

  “I shall have to ask the host of the dinner,” he said, and bustled away. He addressed a handsome olive-skinned man who sat surrounded by companions at the largest table in the room. The man gazed thoughtfully at the two foreigners near the door, and nodded.

  The headwaiter came back.

  “It is permitted. Please follow me.”

  Sir Nigel Irvine and Vincent took their seats side by side on the banquette along the wall. Irvine looked across and nodded his thanks to the patron of the private party. The man nodded back.

  They ordered duck with cloudberry sauce and allowed the waiter to propose a Crimean red wine that turned out to be reminiscent of bull’s blood.

  Outside, Grishin’s four foot soldiers had sealed the alley at both ends. The colonel’s Mercedes drew up at the entrance to the narrow street. He got out and had a quick conference with his men. Then he returned to his car and used his phone.

  “How is it going?” he asked.

  From the corridor on the second floor of the National be heard a voice say, “Still working on the lock.”

  Of the four men who had been posted inside the hotel, two had remained. One was now at the end of the corridor, close to the elevators. His job was to see if anyone got out at the second floor and turned toward Room 252. If someone did, he would overtake the person, whistling a tune, to warn the thief to leave the door and move on.

  His colleague was with the thief, who was bent over the lock of 252 doing what he did best.

  “Tell me when you’re in,” said Grishin.

  Ten minutes later the lock gave a low click and yielded. Grishin was informed.

  “Every paper, every document, photograph and replace,” he said.

  Inside Sir Nigel Irvine’s room the search was fast and thorough. The thief spent ten minutes in the bathroom, then emerged and shook his head. The drawers of the chest revealed only the to-be-expected array of ties, shirts, undershorts, handkerchiefs. The drawers of the bedside table were empty. The same applied to the small suitcase stacked on top of the wardrobe, and the pockets of the two suits within it.

  The thief went onto his knees and gave a low, satisfied “Aaaaah.”

  The attaché case was under the bed, pushed right to the center where it was well out of sight. The thief retrieved it with a coat hanger. The numbered locks needed his attention for three minutes.

  When the lid came up, he was disappointed. There was a plastic envelope of traveler’s checks, which normally he would have taken but for his orders. A wallet with several credit cards and a bar bill from White’s Club in London. A silver hip flask whose liquid gave an odor with which he was not familiar.

  The pockets inside the lid yielded the return half of an airline ticket from Moscow back to London and a street map of Moscow. He scoured the latter to see if any sites were marked, but could find none.

  With a small camera he photographed them all. The Black Guard with him reported their finds to Colonel Grishin.

  “There should be a letter,” came the metallic voice from the street five hundred yards away.

  The thief, thus forewarned, reexamined the attaché case and found the false bottom. It contained a long cream envelope, and inside it a single sheet of matching paper with the embossed heading of the Patriarchate of Moscow and All the Russias. This was photographed three times, just to make sure.

  “Pack up and leave,” said Grishin.

  The two men restored the case to exactly the way it had been before, with the letter back in its envelope and the envelope in the hidden compartment beneath the base of the case. The case itself, relocked with the numbers on the rollers in exactly the same sequence as found, was pushed back beneath the bed. When the room looked as if no one had entere
d it since Sir Nigel Irvine left, the two men departed.

  ¯

  THE door of the Silver Age opened and closed with a soft hiss. Grishin and four men crossed the small lobby and pushed aside the heavy drapes that led to the dining area. The headwaiter trotted over.

  “I am so sorry, gentlemen …”

  “Get out of my way,” said Grishin without even looking at him.

  The waiter was jolted, looked at the four men behind the tall man in the black coat, and backed away. He knew enough to recognize serious trouble when he saw it. The four bodyguards might be in civilian clothes, but they were all heavily built, with faces that had been in a few brawls. Even without their uniforms, the elderly waiter recognized them for Black Guards. He had seen them in their uniforms, on television, strutting battalions flashing their arms up to the leader on the podium, and was wise enough to know that waiters did not tangle with the Black Guards.

  The man in charge of them swept the room until his gaze fell on the two foreigners dining in the banquette against the rear wall. He nodded to one of his men to accompany him and the other three to give support from the door. Not, he knew, that he needed any. The younger of the two Englishmen might try to give trouble, but he would last a few seconds.

  “Friends of yours?” asked Vincent quietly. He felt nakedly unarmed, and wondered how far the serrated steak knife by his plate might get him. Not very far, was his mental answer.

  “I think they are the gentlemen whose printing presses you dented a few weeks ago,” said Irvine. He wiped his mouth. The duck had been delicious. The man in the black coat walked over, stopped, and looked down at them. The Black Guard stood behind him.

  “Sir Irvine?” Grishin spoke only Russian. Vincent translated.

  “It’s Sir Nigel, actually. And to whom do I have the pleasure?”

  “Do not play games. How did you get into the country?”

  “Through the airport.”

  “Lies.”

  “I assure you, Colonel—it is Colonel Grishin, is it not?—my papers are in perfect order. Of course, they are with the hotel reception, or I could show you.”

  Grishin experienced a flicker of indecision. When he gave orders to most of the organs of state, with the necessary bribes to back them up, those orders were obeyed. But there could have been a failure. Someone would pay.