The door swings abruptly open. It’s the two pig-men. They beckon to her, and she limps towards them, her hand closed tightly around the little teapot in her pocket. When they lead her past the killing room, her heart is pounding so hard that it hurts. Then, instead of continuing along the corridor, they open a cell door, beyond which is an elevator. Not the filthy service cage that she came down in, but a hotel-style guest elevator with a brushed steel interior. This ascends smoothly and silently to a half-landing, and a short flight of stairs leading to the tiled atrium, where the same two officers in the over-large caps are sitting behind the trestle table. Waiting on the table are her parka jacket and the tray holding her possessions.
Glancing nervously at the officers, who barely acknowledge her presence, she pulls on the parka, glad of its warmth and of the chance to cover up her dirty sweater. Hurriedly, she loads the pockets with her passport, watch, phone, keys and money.
‘Obuv,’ says one of the pig-men, gesturing with his foot to a pair of short winter boots trimmed with rabbit fur.
Gratefully, Eve pulls them on. They fit perfectly.
‘OK,’ says the other pig-man, moving back towards the stairs to the elevator. ‘You come.’
They rise several storeys, and step out onto parquet flooring and a worn carpet the colour of raw liver. At the end of the corridor, a dark wood door stands ajar. Inside, the office is all shadows. Nondescript curtains frame tall windows. Behind a mahogany desk a broad-shouldered, silver-haired figure is hunched over a laptop computer.
‘Can you believe Kim Kardashian?’ he says, waving a hand to dismiss the pig-men. ‘Surely no one’s really that shape?’
Eve peers at him. He’s probably in his mid-fifties, with buzz-cut hair and a wry, urbane smile. His suit looks handmade.
He snaps the laptop shut. ‘Take a seat, Mrs Polastri. I’m Vadim Tikhomirov. Let me order you some coffee.’
Eve sinks into the proffered chair, murmuring bewildered thanks.
‘Latte? Americano?’
‘Yes, whatever.’
He presses an intercom button on his telephone. ‘Masha, dva kofe s molokom . . . Do you like roses, Mrs Polastri?’ Rising, he crosses the room to a side table bearing a bowl of crimson roses, selects one, and hands it to her. ‘They’re called Ussurochka. They grow them in Vladivostok. Do you have cut flowers in your Goodge Street office?’
Eve inhales the rose’s rich, oily fragrance. ‘Perhaps we should. I’ll suggest it.’
‘You should insist on it. I’m sure Richard Edwards would approve the budget. But let me ask you: how did you find last night?’
‘How did I . . . find it?’
‘It’s an immersive on-site project I’m developing. The Lubyanka Experience. Spend a night as a condemned political prisoner during the Stalinist Purge.’ Noting her speechless gaze, he spreads his hands. ‘Perhaps someone should have explained the concept to you beforehand, but I saw it as an opportunity for some valuable feedback, so . . . what did you think?’
‘It was, quite simply, the most terrifying night of my life.’
‘You mean in a bad way?’
‘I mean in the way that I thought I was losing my mind. Or that I was about to be shot.’
‘Yes, you had the full NKVD Execution package. So you think it needs fine-tuning? Too spooky?’
‘Perhaps a little.’
He nods. ‘It’s tricky, because while this is very much a working secret police environment, we do also have these amazing historical assets. All those underground torture cells and execution chambers, we’d be crazy not to exploit them. And we’ve certainly got the actors. This organisation’s never been short of people who like dressing up in uniforms and scaring people.’
‘So I believe.’
‘At least you got to wake up in the morning.’ He chuckles. ‘In the old days your ashes would have been used as fertiliser.’
Eve twiddles the rose-stem. ‘Well, I was genuinely terrified, especially since someone actually did try to kill me yesterday, as I’m sure you’re aware.’
He nods. ‘I am aware of that, and I’m going to get to it in a minute. Tell me, how is Richard?’
‘He’s well. And he sends compliments.’
‘Excellent. I hope we’re keeping him busy at the Russia desk.’
‘Busy enough. Did he explain to you why I wanted to come here?’
‘He did. You want to ask me, among other questions, about Konstantin Orlov.’
‘Yes. Specifically his later career.’
‘Well, I’ll do my best.’ Tikhomirov rises, and walks to the window. He stands with his back to her, silhouetted against the pale, slanting light. There’s a knock at the door and a young man wearing combat trousers and a muscle T-shirt enters, carrying a tray, which he places on a side table.
‘Spasiba, Dima,’ says Tikhomirov.
The coffee is ferociously strong, and as it races through Eve’s system, she feels a faint shiver of optimism. A lifting of the fog of helplessness and shame which, for the last twenty-four hours, has enveloped her.
‘Tell me,’ she says.
He nods, responsive to the shift in her mood. He’s back behind the desk now, his posture languid but his gaze attentive. ‘You’ve heard of Dvenadtsat. The Twelve.’
‘I’ve heard of them, yes. Not much more.’
‘We think that they started life as one of the secret societies that came into being under Leonid Brezhnev in the late Soviet era. A cabal of behind-the-scenes operators who foresaw the end of communism and wanted to build a new Russia, free of the old, corrupt ideologies. As they saw them.’
‘Sounds reasonable.’
Tikhomirov shrugs. ‘Perhaps. But history, as so often, has other ideas. Boris Yeltsin’s policies in the early 1990s enriched a handful of oligarchs, but diminished and impoverished the country. At which point, it seems, the Twelve went underground, and began to transform into a new kind of organisation altogether. One that made its own rules, dispensed its own justice, and pursued its own agenda.’
‘Which was?’
‘Do you know anything about organisation theory?’
Eve shakes her head.
‘There’s a school of thought that holds that sooner or later, whatever its founding ethos, the most pressing concern of any organisation is to ensure its own survival. To this end, it adopts an aggressive, expansionist posture which ultimately comes to define it.’
Eve smiles. ‘Like . . .’
‘Yes, if you will, like Russia itself. Like any corporation or nation state that perceives itself surrounded by enemies. And this was the point, I think, at which Konstantin Orlov was recruited by the Twelve. Which was entirely logical, because by then the Twelve had their own Directorate S, or its equivalent, and they needed a man with Orlov’s highly specialised skill-set to run it.’
‘So you’re saying that the Twelve is a kind of shadow Russian state?’
‘Not quite. I believe that it’s a new kind of borderless crypto-state, with its own economy, strategy and politique.’
‘And what’s its purpose?’
Tikhomirov shrugs. ‘To protect and advance its own interests.’
‘So how do you join? How do you become a part of it?’
‘You buy in, with whatever you’ve got to offer. Cash, influence, position . . .’
‘That’s such a weird idea.’
‘These are weird times, Mrs Polastri. As was confirmed to me when I saw Orlov earlier this year.’
‘You saw him? Where?’
‘In Fontanka, near Odessa. The SVR, our domestic intelligence agency, ran the operation against him which ended, regrettably, with his death.’
‘In the house of Rinat Yevtukh?’
‘Exactly so. The FSB contributed intelligence and man-power to that operation, and in return, I was invited to question Orlov. He told me nothing, of course, and I didn’t expect him to. He was old-school. He’d have died before betraying his employers, or the assassins he’d trained for them. Th
e irony, of course, being that they killed him.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Sure enough. The Twelve would have worked out pretty quickly that Orlov hadn’t been abducted just so that the local gangsters could collect a ransom payment. They’d have seen the fingerprints of the SVR all over the case. And they’d have liquidated Orlov in case he’d talked.’
‘So why might Yevtukh have been killed?’
‘If he was, it might have been because he collaborated, willingly or otherwise, with the SVR.’
‘So do you have an interest in the Yevtukh case? In knowing exactly who murdered him?’
‘We’re following developments, certainly.’
‘Did Richard mention to you that we have an idea who was responsible?’
‘No, he didn’t tell me that.’ He looks thoughtful. ‘Let me ask you something, Mrs Polastri. Are you familiar with the expression “a canary in a coal mine”?’
‘Vaguely.’
‘In the old days, here in Russia, coal miners used to take a canary in a cage with them when they went down to dig a new seam. Canaries are highly sensitive to methane gas and carbon monoxide, so the miners knew that as long as they could hear the canary singing, they were safe. But if the canary fell silent, they knew they had to evacuate the mine.’
‘That’s fascinating, Mr Tikhomirov, but why exactly are you telling me this?’
‘Have you ever asked yourself, Mrs Polastri, why you were appointed by MI6 to investigate a major international conspiracy? You’ll forgive me, but you are hardly experienced in this area.’
‘I was asked to investigate a particular assassin. A woman. And I have a number of lines of enquiry that could lead to her identification. I’ve got closer to her than anyone else has.’
‘Hence the attempt on your life yesterday.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘There’s no “perhaps” about it, Mrs Polastri. Fortunately, we had people watching you.’
‘Yes, I saw them.’
‘You saw the ones we intended you to see. But there were others, and they intercepted and arrested the woman who attempted to kill you.’
‘You’re telling me you’ve caught her?’
‘Yes, we have her in custody.’
‘Here? In the Lubyanka?’
‘No, in Butyrka, a couple of miles away.’
‘My God. Can I see her? Can I question her?’
‘I’m afraid that’s impossible. I doubt she’s even been processed.’ He lifts a silver paper-knife in the shape of a dagger, and turns it in his fingers. ‘Also, the fact that she’s been arrested doesn’t mean you’re out of danger. Which is why I made sure you were brought here, yesterday, to spend the night as our guest.’
‘Do you have a name for this woman?’
He opens a folder on the desk in front of him. ‘Her name is Larissa Farmanyants. She’s what we call a torpedo, a professional shooter. New photographs will have been taken during her induction at Butyrka, but they haven’t sent them over yet, so I’ve printed out an old press shot for you.’
Three young women standing on a ceremonial dais, in an outdoor sports stadium. They’re wearing tracksuits zipped up to their chins, they’re holding posies of flowers, and they have medals and ribbons around their necks. The Tass news agency caption identifies them as medallists in the pistol-shooting event at the University Games, six years earlier. Larissa Farmanyants, representing Kazan Military Academy, has won bronze. Blonde-haired, with broad, high-cheekboned features, she stares blankly into the middle distance.
Eve stares back at her, dazed. This person, a young woman she has never met, tried to kill her. To put a bullet through the back of her skull.
‘Why?’ she murmurs. ‘Why here? Why now? Why me?’
Tikhomirov looks at her, his gaze level. ‘You’ve crossed the line. You’ve done what nobody thought you could, or would. You’ve got too close to the Twelve.’
Eve picks up the Tass printout. ‘This Lara woman could be one of the pair who killed Yevtukh in Venice. There’s a CCTV clip.’
In response Tikhomirov takes a second sheet of paper from the folder, and hands it to her. It’s an identical screen-grab to the one that Billy printed out at Goodge Street. ‘We’ve seen that footage,’ he says. ‘And we agree.’
‘And the other woman?’
‘We don’t know, although we’d very much like to.’
‘I wish I could help you.’
‘Mrs Polastri, you’ve helped us far more than you know. And we’re grateful.’
‘So what happens now?’
‘In the first instance, we will put you on a flight home, under another name, as we did your colleague, yesterday.’ He hands her the folder. ‘This is for you. Read it on the flight. Give it to the steward before you leave the aircraft.’
She picks up the Tass agency printout and is about to slide it into the folder when something stays her hand. For almost a quarter of a minute she stares disbelievingly at the image of the medal-winners.
‘The one who won gold,’ she says, glancing at the caption. ‘The Perm University student, Oxana Vorontsova. What do you know about her?’
Tikhomirov frowns, and flips open his laptop. His fingers stab the keyboard. ‘She’s dead,’ he says.
‘Are you sure about that?’ Eve asks, suddenly short of breath. ‘Are you absolutely one hundred per cent certain?’
Tikhomirov is as good as his word. He gives Eve lunch in the Lubyanka canteen, and then shows her into a Mercedes with darkened windows which is waiting at the entrance to the FSB complex on Furkasovsky Lane. On the rear seat is her suitcase, which has been collected from the hotel. Within the hour she is at Ostafyevo airport, being fast-tracked through the customs and security procedures by the car’s driver, a young man in a business suit to whom the airport staff are immediately deferential. He ushers Eve to a first-class waiting room, and sits with her, unobtrusive but vigilant, until her flight is called. As she leaves, with a dozen-strong group of Gazprom executives, he hands her an envelope. ‘From Mr Tikhomirov,’ he says.
The interior of the Dassault Falcon jet is shockingly luxurious, and Eve sinks pleasurably into her seat. Take-off is delayed, and dusk has fallen by the time the aircraft finally lifts off, banks to port over the glittering sprawl of Moscow, and sets its course for London. Exhausted, Eve sleeps for an hour before waking with a start to find a steward at her side, tendering frosted shot-glasses of Black Sable vodka.
She takes a long swallow, feels the spirit’s icy progress through her veins, and inclines her head towards the window, and the darkness beyond. Just forty-eight hours ago, she reflects, I was flying the other way. I was a different person then. Someone who hadn’t heard the passing whisper of a silenced bullet. Someone who hadn’t seen a man’s face infold.
I can’t do this any more. I need my life back. I need my husband back. I need a routine, familiar things and places, a hand to hold on icy pavements, a warm body next to mine at night. I’ll make it up to you, Niko. I promise. All those evenings I spent whispering into my phone and staring at my laptop screen. All the secrets I kept, all the lies I told, all the love I withheld.
Reaching into her bag she searches for her phone, determined to draft a text to Niko, but her fingers find the envelope from Vadim Tikhomirov, which she has forgotten to open. Inside is a single sheet of paper. No message, just a black and white line illustration of a canary in a cage.
What does Tikhomirov mean? What is he not telling her, and why? Who, or what, is the canary?
And that woman in the photograph. Not Larissa Farmanyants, but Oxana Vorontsova, the Perm University gold medallist. Now dead, according to FSB records, but the doppelgänger of the woman she saw in Shanghai on the night Simon Mortimer was killed. Or is she imagining that, and making connections that simply aren’t there? She only saw the woman momentarily, after all. Eve winces with frustration. None of it quite fits together. From having too little information to work with, she’s now got too much.
Just as well then, that it no longer matters. Just as well that on Monday morning she is going to schedule a meeting with Richard Edwards, at which she is going to admit to him what she has finally admitted to herself, that she is out of her depth. That she’s decided to walk away from Goodge Street, MI6, and this whole toxic, terrifying mess, and reclaim her life.
At London City airport, she sends Richard an encrypted text to say that she’s back, and takes the tube home. Her phone battery’s dying, she’s starving and she desperately needs Niko to be at home, preferably cooking and with a bottle of wine open. At Finchley Road station she drags her case up the steps to the exit. Outside, the pavements are shining with rain, and she puts her head down and half walks, half runs through the illuminated darkness. Turning into her street, the wheels of her suitcase whirring and skidding behind her, she sees the unmarked van parked a few cars down from her building, and, for the first time, feels truly grateful for the watchers’ presence. Then, seeing that the lights in the flat are unlit, her step slows.
Inside, the air is still and cold, as if long undisturbed. On the kitchen table there’s a note, secured in place by a vase of dying white roses whose fallen petals obscure the words.
Hope your trip went well, though don’t expect to hear the details. Have taken car and goats, and gone to stay with Zbig and Leila. Not sure how long I’ll be gone. Hopefully long enough for you to decide whether you want us to go on being married.
Eve, I can’t continue like this. We both know the issues. Either you choose to live in my world, where people do normal jobs, and married couples sleep together and eat together and see their friends together and yes, perhaps it is a bit boring at times, but at least no one’s getting their throat cut. Or you choose to continue as you are, telling me nothing and working day and night in the pursuit of whatever and whoever, in which case sorry, but I’m out. I’m afraid it’s that simple. Your call. N.
No Tomorrow: The basis for Killing Eve, now a major BBC TV series (Killing Eve series Book 2) Page 18