by T. M. Parris
“Oh, poor thing!” Olga took the bowl, guided his head to the pillow. “You must rest. You must rest. Moscow can wait, heh? Moscow can wait.”
Fairchild breathed slowly and closed his eyes, pushing that memory away.
Yes, Moscow could wait.
17
Rose’s feet pounded the road. She sped up, filling her lungs with freezing air. Her chest ached. Checking behind her, she veered into a side street down to the river.
She was running every evening now. It got her out of the flat, away from the invisible watchers, the silent listeners. Her runs were getting longer and longer. The pavements were rough and icy so she found routes quiet enough to run in the road, or where the paths were wider and well gritted. She already knew the streets in her own neighbourhood – standard training – but her knowledge was broadening to other areas as she covered greater and greater distances. Back streets and parks didn’t bother her; she wasn’t afraid of muggers. What was she afraid of? That was a question she didn’t want to answer.
She crossed a bridge by some enormous new cathedral. Here was a former chocolate factory, now regenerated in parts, trendy restaurants concealed within a red brick maze. She powered around the outside keeping to the river. At this time of night it was deserted. She tried to empty her head, focus on her breathing, her pace, maximising the stretch of her legs. The bridges went by as she ran on and on, set in a rhythm, managing, finally, to feel truly alone. She turned back homewards, every sense on overdrive as she neared the flat, every shape, every shadow, every sound registering. But it was only when she entered her apartment building that something jarred.
The light was different. Rose knew it as soon as she pushed open the door. The stairs rose in front of her; to their left the stairwell lurked in shadow. The door closed and a choreography formed in her head. Two steps towards the main staircase, a spin, kicks and jabs into the darkness, leading with hard edges of feet and hands. She met resistance, substantial flesh but unprepared. A male voice groaned as a figure slumped. She took a step back. The body down in front of her was swearing softly – in English. She reached for the light switch.
The man was well-built with slicked back dark hair. He lay crouched, two large hands clutching his groin. The swearing had an American accent.
“Christ’s sake! You don’t take prisoners, do you?” She struggled to place the voice. The sleek head eventually lifted to reveal accusing brown eyes, melodramatically reproaching. Eyes that Rose recognised.
“Zack!” She crouched down to speak quietly. “I didn’t know you were in Moscow.”
“Yeah, well, surprise!”
“What are you doing, coming here? This place is being watched.”
“Not at the moment it isn’t.”
Rose glanced at the door. “They’ve been here. They’ve been in my flat. You know what that means.”
“And that’s why I’m waiting for you down here. I know what I’m doing, I’m telling you. I checked the place. There’s no one outside. Not tonight. I promise you.” Rose stood, not sure whether to believe him. “They can’t watch everyone all the time, you know. Not even the FSB.”
Maybe she was getting too twitchy. “Well, we can’t talk upstairs.”
“I know, I know. There’s a bar two blocks down on the other side. Irish theme pub. You know it?”
“Sure.”
“See you in there in half an hour?”
“What’s this about?”
“Come and find out.”
The pub was like all other Irish pubs across the world, in that its Irishness had certain limits. It didn’t extend to the food menu, for example, and the draught Guinness wasn’t the best Rose had tasted. But there were shamrocks and black-and-white photos of Dublin and a bashed up old piano, and a decent number of customers creating a useful hum of conversation.
If Zack had something to say, it was worth finding out what it was. He and Rose hadn’t parted on the best of terms last time they met, but he was a man with access to resources and the authority to use them. Last time, on her suggestion, he applied them on a mission to spring Fairchild from a Chinese prison. It had been in both their interests. So she was curious. On the way to the pub she’d given herself a pep talk. No more FSB jitters. She needed to be in control.
He was already in a corner behind a bottle of Russian beer. Rose sat opposite.
“How’s the injury?”
“I’ll live. Still got the capacity to reproduce. Thanks for that.”
“Next time, don’t lurk in dark corners near a woman’s flat. Can you see anything at all with those things on?”
Zack was now wearing his trademark mirrored shades, making it impossible to read his face. “I can see fine. You want to punch me in the eye as well?”
“Take it as payback for when we last met. Thanks, by the way. For chucking me out of a helicopter in the middle of the jungle. In the middle of the night.”
“That was a precaution. As I explained at the time.”
“It wasn’t a hundred miles to Chengdu, by the way. Only about twenty. And there was a road. But then you knew all of that, didn’t you? Do you play games with everyone, or am I special?”
“I didn’t like you and I didn’t trust you.” He necked his beer.
“You don’t say. So what’s changed?”
“I heard you got your job back. You’re back in the fold. That changes things. This isn’t a social visit, see? This is work. Sounds like your people and my people are interested in the same target.”
“That target being?”
“The charming Alexei Morozov. His dubious business interests. His even more dubious government contacts. I heard you and your pals were actively involved in getting to know the guy.”
“And where did you hear that?”
“A mutual friend.”
They only had one mutual friend. “I see. I saw him recently, at a reception in St Petersburg. He was working for you? He did disappear quite suddenly during the evening.”
“Yeah, well, he does that.” She heard irritation in his voice.
“So, has the all-talented Mr Fairchild got inside the Morozov syndicate? He has something of a track record doing business with gangsters, hasn’t he? That’s what he was doing when he and I first met. He was working for you then, as well.”
“That’s what he was trying to do. Failing, though, on account of your interference.”
“Sorry about that. You both seem to have got over the experience, though. So does he have something?”
“Do you?” Zack’s expression was impossible to read.
“Maybe.” Rose had no intention of telling him anything of substance. This was interesting news, though, and gave some weight to her theory about Kamila’s lover. Would Fairchild sleep with a woman to get information he could sell? She could believe it of him.
“Well, you wanna share? We’re supposed to be on the same side, aren’t we? Us NATO allies, reluctant to see Russia expanding its influence? Not to mention its borders.”
“So you think Morozov is taking on a political role?”
“Don’t you? That’s what the Kremlin does now. They want all kinds of organisations working to their political agenda, including the less legitimate ones. We should pool our resources on this.”
She sipped on her mediocre Guinness. “What you’re proposing would involve Fairchild as well, I suppose?”
“That a problem? Can you stand to have him on board? I mean, I know you guys aren’t keen on him. Being as he’s British, and all.”
“Well, you have got to admit, Zack, it’s difficult to be sure where his loyalties lie.”
Zack shrugged. “I pay him, he does a job.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. And you’re right, he’s not flavour of the month with the Service. Particularly our new chief.”
“Marcus Salisbury? That’s a surprise. Oh, I’m sorry. Sir Marcus Salisbury.”
“Whatever. Look, I’ll run all this past my people. Give
me a way to get in touch with you. If I get the green light we can all get together and compare notes.”
Zack handed her a business card featuring generic corporate details including a phone number. “One possible hold-up,” he said. “You know I said Fairchild had a habit of disappearing?”
“Fairchild’s gone off the job?”
“The way he sees it, something more important came up, so he decided to take a few days out. But that was more than a few days ago. More like a week and a half.”
“Something more important? Oh, I see.” The Russian with the missing fingers, no doubt. Even with his shades, she could tell Zack was observing her.
“So he confides in you now?” he said. “That’s cosy.”
“He confides in you, doesn’t he?”
“We go back years. He knows he can trust me. He knows I’m loyal.”
This again. Zack had the idea that Rose wasn’t on Fairchild’s side. Hence the helicopter incident. And, fair enough, her mission at that time was to deliver Fairchild to MI6 and thereby get her job back.
She leaned forward. “Are you more loyal to him than to your country, Zack?” He didn’t answer. “I’ve nothing against Fairchild. But the job will always come first. He knows that. And I didn’t ask him to share. I was pretty surprised, to be honest. You want to be his best buddy, that’s fine by me.”
She’d only managed half the Guinness, but their business seemed to be concluded. She got up. “See you around, Zack. Don’t come to the flat again.”
He gave a mini-salute and, as far as she could tell, watched her as she left.
18
Olga Grigorievna was right about her borscht. That and her winter potatoes and her sweet red kompot juice and her stewed apple in jars, made from all the apples she could reach while they were fresh on the trees – fewer every year! Fairchild lay and listened and she apologised for talking – rattling away, Olga Petrovna would say, but she was such a sourface – as she shuffled round the room, her discourse leaping the decades from one family tragedy to another. In his company she spent more time with these memories than she had for years, recalling them more closely, more warmly. A remembered habit or turn of phrase brought a smile and moisture to her cheeks.
When he could walk, he would help her feed the animals then wander around slowly, gathering a few pieces of firewood before returning to rest. But he was getting stronger. The other women of the village stared at him with his oddly-fitting clothes and his fine fingers that showed he didn’t belong in the country. Eventually they overcame their shyness and called him over, and if he was gone a long time, Olga would venture out and find him bent over a cold frame or carrying crates of cabbages. Olga Petrovna even got him fixing a wardrobe in the bedroom. The cheek of it! she complained as she shooed him back to sit by the stove. It was she, Olga Grigorievna, that found him. She was his Olga, not that interfering old shrew.
Sleeping wasn’t easy, still. When he woke he’d jump into consciousness, mouth dry, neck strained, sucking air through his teeth, that hideous sight in the chapel coming back over and over again. Olga would tut, and bring more borscht.
He would lie awake and think about those men on the train. Did they think he was dead? He would have been, if a curious old woman hadn’t found him by chance half buried in snow. Was anyone looking for him? This was a vast area, mile upon mile of empty frozen land. The whole time he’d been in this village, no one had arrived or left. It felt insulated from the rest of the country, a tiny world in itself where everyone shared the same aim: survive the vicious winter as comfortably as you can.
Time passed differently in the village, too. How long had he been here? One week, two? Perhaps he could stay. He could do some good. He could fix Olga’s roof. A small contribution maybe, but not for the woman who’d saved his life in return for nothing. Could it make up for what had happened out there? Out there, where a man died, horribly, because of him. Where people hauled him off while he slept on a train, where someone he’d never met seemed to want him dead. If he stayed here, presumed dead, he could make lives better without making anything worse. He was sick of the life he’d led. He’d been ruthless, cruel, utterly focused. Now he had the answer he’d always craved, it seemed meaningless. He didn’t have to be about that any more. He could be someone else, perhaps.
Dimitri’s voice came into his mind: find somewhere far away to live. Treat this chance you have as a gift. Everyone in the village had seen horrors, but long ago. Life here was about keeping the foxes away from the hens, and finding new places where the mushrooms grow, and keeping warm through the winter, even though firewood melted away in the stove and was so heavy to carry. That could be enough, couldn’t it?
But he knew it wasn’t. His dreams weren’t just memories; they had a present, a future. He thought he was merely digging into the past, unearthing old secrets, but Dimitri’s secret triggered something that brought men in the middle of the night. They could come here, with their sullen faces and their guns, and pull him from his wooden cot. Olga and the women here had seen plenty of that in their lives. They’d suffered enough.
One day he went to Olga Petrovna’s house to borrow her ladder. When his Olga came back from the animals, she found him on top of her house making repairs. Olga had accepted the slow deterioration of her troublesome roof as inevitably as her own decline, and was only hoping that she would reach her end before the roof did. But now it had a new lease of life, and the buckets and bowls so carefully placed everywhere could be tidied away. When it was time to go, his Olga’s was not the only house with a well-stocked woodstore or better fitting windows or buckets of onions and cabbages and gherkins peeled and ready for pickling.
The ladies of the village tramped through the forest as far as the railway line, the nearest station stop six miles further on. It seemed that everyone had a box of men’s clothing stored away somewhere, and Estonian Ivan had a wide choice of trousers and shirts and sweaters and jackets and woollen hats. Laden down with blinis wrapped in napkins and salted meat and fried potato cakes and apples, he felt a sudden great sadness.
You could stay, Olga said. She’d learned how to read his face. It’s not so bad here. You can make yourself useful. The food is good, no? And spring is coming. But he knew he had to go. Moscow beckoned, though with a fist, not a wave.
His posse looking on mournfully, he turned westwards, walking in the middle of the tracks to avoid the snowdrifts. After a while he looked back. The women had gone, back to their snug cottages and their roaring stoves and their bulging winter stores. It wasn’t long before all of that would seem like another dream.
19
“Interesting,” was what Peter said, when Rose told him of Zack’s offer. They were back in the secret room again. “I can’t think of any reason why we wouldn’t work together, can you?”
“Well, only one,” said Rose. “John Fairchild. He’s working with Zack on this. That’s why he was at the reception. He’d be part of the package if we went with Zack. And he’s not flavour of the month with all of our colleagues, is he?”
“He’s an interesting character.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“You’re not keen?” Peter sat back and looked at her.
“He’s cynical. He hates MI6. He thinks they covered up the circumstances of his parents’ disappearance. You know about that?”
Peter shrugged. “Only the stories. Before my time.”
“Well, he’s adamant, and determined to find out exactly what happened. In fact, that’s where he’s gone now. Zack said he’d disappeared. He’s gone to track down some Russian who was supposedly there the night it happened. And he hasn’t come back. This isn’t something you know anything about?”
Peter looked surprised. “Me? Why would I know about that?”
“Well, you and Fairchild seemed pally at the St Petersburg do.”
“He’s a contact. We’ve met, occasionally. He can be useful. He’s not on my Christmas card list.” He pause
d. Rose could see he knew there was more.
“That job I was doing for Walter Tomlinson, before I came here. You know about that?”
“I knew you were working for Walter, but nothing beyond that.”
“Walter sent me after Fairchild, to get a meeting with him. Which I got. After that, Walter asked me to find out where Fairchild was going next. Which I did. Then guess what? I end up being posted to the exact same country.”
“Well, it could be that Walter is playing some intricate and long-term strategic game,” said Peter. “Or, it could be that we were looking for people with your experience, and you had an excellent Service record as well as already speaking Russian. I don’t have any secret motives, Rose, if that’s what you mean. You came highly recommended, that’s all I know. The reception was the first I’ve seen or even heard mention of John Fairchild in years.”
Peter sounded credible. But he was a spy, and had been for decades. Credible meant nothing. “Well, I guess if there is a Fairchild-related purpose to my being here, someone will tell me at some point. As far as Morozov is concerned, Fairchild may be useful if we think we can trust him. Or indeed, are allowed to trust him. Even if you’re happy, I’m not sure what they’d think back home.”
“London’s a long way away. As long as we keep things discreet there’s no need for anyone to know. This guy Zack will be carrying the can anyway. It’s the Americans who’ve contracted with him, not us. Anything goes tits up Fairchild-wise, it’ll be Zack’s fault. Of course, it would be much better if it didn’t go tits-up in the first place.”
Rose felt the need to raise the other matter that she’d spent longer thinking about than she wanted to admit. “We need to consider the possibility that we might already be treading on each other’s toes. On the night of the reception, did you see Fairchild leave?”
“No. I thought he was still there when I went.”
“No one seemed to see him go. But I’m sure he’d gone by the time I left. He just vanished. After spending quite a long time in close conversation with our Kamila Morozova.”