The Russian Doll (Ben Sign Book 3)

by Matthew Dunn

  Archer looked at Sign. “I can see why you chose him to be your business partner.”

  Sign smiled. “Mr. Knutsen is a man of many hidden depths. And I never underestimate him.” With sincerity he added, “He is also a gentleman who wishes to be respected. Go into the kitchen, talk to him, help him with the meal. You don’t need to apologise – he’d feel awkward. Just ask him about his life.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Two days later Sign got a call from Archer. She said, “The passport’s ready for collection. Get Tom to meet me on Vauxhall Bridge at eleven o’clock this morning. I’ve seen Natalia and given her cash. She flies tomorrow on an 0845hrs British Airways flight. That means you’re on. Book your flight now. Tomorrow it’s time to visit Russia. Natalia’s going to meet you at sixty thirty this evening in The Coal Hole pub on the Strand. You can discuss in-country logistics with her then. Do you need anything else from me?”

  “No. I’ll take over from here.” When the call ended Sign stood in the centre of the lounge, deep in thought.

  Knutsen was in the kitchen, brewing coffee. “All okay?”

  “Yes. We fly tomorrow.” He gave him details of what Archer had said.

  Knutsen handed him a mug of steaming black coffee. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be. Natalia is our only hope of discovering what happened to Natalia. And in doing so, we’re putting Natalia back in the saddle.”

  “Killing two birds with one stone.”

  “Something like that.”

  Knutsen was earnest as he said, “When I asked if you were sure about this I wasn’t talking about Natalia and Susan.”

  “I know, dear chap. You were talking about me. Don’t worry. I’ve been tortured and threatened with death in other countries as well. That doesn’t stop me going back to the places. We put one foot in front of the other.”

  Knutsen sighed. “Come on Ben. It’s never as simple as that. When we go to Moscow you might get flashbacks or trauma or both.”

  Sign blew on his coffee. He was quiet for a moment before saying, “I do not for one moment underestimate the devastating consequences of trauma. I’ve seen men, stronger than me, who’ve achieved so much in their lives and have finally cracked. When it happens, it’s often a fairly minor thing that breaks them down. A trigger, as I call them. There was one chap who’d served with me in Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, China, and Colombia. We’d witnessed a lot of appalling behaviour – beheadings, massacres, the results of artillery strikes, mutilations of children, rape, hangings, and so on. We also dealt out our punishments – assassinations, drone strikes, tricks that persuaded war lords to get in a vulnerable position so we could put bullets into their head. It would take me a long time to tell you even ten percent of what went on. But, the chap I served with lost his mind when he saw a car accident in Swindon. He was just standing on the side of the road. The car hit a boy on a bike and smashed him. That was the trigger. A random event that dug up the worst recesses of my colleague’s memories. But, despite everything I’ve gone through, not least in Russia, I don’t have those trigger points. I know why. There is nothing that could be done to me, or I could see or do, that in any way comes close to the grief I have for my murdered wife. I carry the relentless burden of grief. Others carry the horror of trauma.”

  Knutsen nodded. “Grief makes you bullet proof.”

  “I would gladly relinquish that armour in a nanosecond if it would give me my wife back.”

  “I bet you would, mate.” Knutsen didn’t want to press Sign any further. His colleague had a thousand yard stare. His thoughts were not in the room. They were elsewhere. Knutsen said, “I’ve got to do the Cold War shit and meet Her Nibs on a bridge, we’ve got to book a flight, need to pack, and you’ve got to brief a girl who’s lost her nerve. We’ve got our work cut out today.”

  Sign looked at him. “We have indeed, sir.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll make the flight bookings. From memory there’s a 1040hrs Aeroflot flight out of Heathrow. Aside from the carrier Natalia’s travelling on, there’s another early morning British Airways flight, but we must avoid BA. I will also source accommodation close to Moscow.”

  “A hotel or B&B?”

  “No. The place I have in mind will be free of charge.”

  “Do you have access to weapons in Russia?”

  Sign nodded. “Yes. But bear this in mind – if you have to use a gun it will be because Natalia’s in danger from her own people. Any assault on FSB or SVR personnel in close proximity to Natalia would mean that Natalia is fully compromised. We would have to grab her and use a covert exfiltration route out of Russia. As a backup, I will arrange for that exfiltration out of St. Petersburg. But the use of guns and my covert get-out-of-Dodge-card must be a last resort. We want Natalia to remain in the SVR and safely fly out of Russia without raising any suspicion from the authorities there.” He gulped his coffee. “I don’t want to offend your knowledge, but do I need to brief you on how to pack.”

  Knutsen wasn’t offended. “Before I used to go on an undercover job, I’d strip naked, place my bag on my bed, alongside clothes, ID, and cash. I’d check my bag and wallet to make sure there was zero documentation – shopping receipts and stuff – that could be traced to Tom Knutsen. And I’d check every single pocket in my clothes. Only after that was done would I pack.”

  “Excellent. I do the same. Do you have any tattoos?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever been arrested?

  “Loads of times, but only as a result of undercover work and always in a different name.”

  “Good. Our cover for flying to Moscow will be simple. We are high school teachers at the Cotswold School. You teach history; I teach languages. We are in Russia because we are, as per UK educational law, required to do a risk assessment analysis prior to a planned school trip to Moscow. We intend to take twenty students to the capital in January next year. But, we can’t do so until we’ve checked the hotel they will be staying in, and looked at all the usual potential risks – fire hazards, transportation, crime, et cetera. We have a Skype call at four PM this afternoon with the head teacher of the Cotswold School. He and I went to university together. I’ve used him in the past. He will brief us and ensure that we’re temporarily on the school list of staff, should anyone in Russia call the school to verify our credentials. Are you happy with that?”

  “Makes sense. History was always my strong point. But we’re going to have to dot the Is and cross the Ts. Which hotel are the students staying in? Are we staying in the same hotel on tomorrow’s trip? What activities are we planning for the kids? And what’s currently on the history and languages curriculum?”

  “The head teacher will brief us on our role at his school. Regarding the hotel, I have that in hand. We won’t step foot in the place. But, I know the concierge. He’s Muslim. I saved his daughter after she stupidly went to Syria to join ISIS. As a result, he is utterly loyal to me. He will confirm to anyone who calls the hotel that we are booked in there, are staying there, and have been talking to him about hotel fire evacuation procedures and other mundane emergency protocols. He’ll cover for us in every respect.”

  Knutsen smiled. “Sounds like you’ve got all angles squared away.”

  “Let’s hope so. But always remember, things rarely go to plan. Now, you need to get ready and go and see Jayne. Please don’t tell her that Sunday evening’s Chinese meal was only edible because you stepped in to rescue the dish. Oh, and say please and thank you. In other words, don’t be yourself.”

  Knutsen laughed. “I’ll try my best.” He went to his room to change.

  Sign opened his laptop and placed three mobile phones on his desk. He needed to make calls to three people in Russia.

  Ninety minutes’ later, Knutsen was back in the flat, clutching his passport in the name of Thomas Peterson. Sign was still sitting at his desk. Knutsen asked, “How’s it gone?”

  Sign closed his laptop. “I’ve booked our flights, have arran
ged our accommodation, secured a trawler out of St. Petersburg should the need arise, and have spoken to a criminal who can get you a Makarov pistol and three spare magazines.”

  “Blimey! You’ve been a busy bee.”

  Sign stood and arched his back. “If you have to use the gun, get cornered, and have no way out, kill me and turn the gun on yourself.”

  Knutsen was stock still. After ten seconds he said in a quiet voice, “I’m sure it won’t come to that, Ben.”

  “One must prepare for every possibility.” Sign smiled. “Don’t worry, old fella. I’ll make sure that we minimize risk to Natalia and ourselves. Okay, you and I need to pack. Make sure you shut your bedroom door. Life is traumatic enough without me seeing you in your birthday suit.”

  At four PM they had the Skype call with the Cotswold School head teacher. He told them that they were now officially members of his staff, that his reception desk was instructed to forward any enquiries about them to his PA or to him in person, that Sign was teaching Year 11s Russian language and culture, and that Knutsen was teaching Year 10s the history of Russian Tsars. He gave them the names of other key members of staff, thumbnail sketches on their backgrounds and personalities, and details of the school’s location in Bourton On The Water and its local amenities and foibles – including pubs, what beers were on draft, what the council was doing to deal with a petition to oust a high street fish and chip shop that had a particularly noisy extractor fan, flooding issues with the River Windrush that ran through the centre of the village, and the fact that the last remaining cash machine in the village had been excavated by criminals who’d nicked a digger lorry from the nearby industrial estate, had dug out the ATM, and driven off with it into the night. He also said that he’d issued a newsletter to parents, advising them that Simon Priest and Thomas Peterson, the false names being used for the Russia trip, were now formally on the staff-roll of the school and had previously worked in remote charity schools in respectively Africa and Nepal.

  After the call, Knutsen said to Sign, “He’s pulled out the stops for you.”

  Sign replied, “I have lots of people who pull out the stops for me, primarily because I’ve pulled out the stops for them. In the case of the head teacher, I saved him from a fall from grace when we were at university. He’d been accepted for teacher training, with the proviso that he had to undergo security vetting to assess his background and suitability to teach minors. The problem was that he was one of the biggest dealers of cannabis to university students. He had a barn in a nearby Oxfordshire village. It was on a farm, owned by his father. But father had dementia and hadn’t a clue what his son was up to on his property. In the barn were a third of an acre of lamps and cannabis plants. It was an extremely lucrative cottage industry. I knew about this because the teacher-to-be was my friend. I didn’t condone his extra curricula activity, but nor did I do anything about it. I’ve never taken drugs. People who had a few puffs of his weed seemed very harmless when intoxicated. And they were functioning – attending lectures, getting essays done, zero violence towards others. They weren’t like the strung out heroin or meth addicts I’d read about. And my friend was a good chap. Most of the profits he made from dealing were put into his father’s health care and upkeep of the farm. His mother didn’t feature. Years before she’d run off with an Australian exporter of snakes and other deadly creatures. One day I got summoned to the dean’s office. He grilled me on whether I had any evidence about my friend’s illegal affairs. He said matters were getting serious, beyond my friend being potentially expelled from our college. Of course, the dean was tipping me off. I went straight to my friend and said that he was going to be busted by the cops. He panicked. I told him I’d help. We went to his farm, removed the lamps which I sold to a very friendly local gypsy called Frank, and we took all of the cannabis pot plants outside of the barn. My friend suggested we burn them. I told him not to be ridiculous – the smell would carry for at least a mile. I had a better plan. At 0500hrs the police drug squad hit our campus. They found nothing. They searched my friend’s farm. Again, nothing. No doubt they were extremely frustrated. And I wonder how long it took them to realise that every member of the Thames Valley Police drug squad had one cannabis pot plant in their homes’ gardens.”

  Knutsen was incredulous. “You planted one pot in every drug cop’s house?! How the fuck did you do that? How did you even know who the cops were?”

  Sign smiled. “There is a reason why I was later recruited into MI6. Anyway, my friend completed his degree, like me got a double first, and he successfully entered the teaching profession. And now he’s helping us with our cover story to enter Russia.”

  “Jesus! You’ve led an odd life.”

  “I prefer the word unusual. A rich tapestry of life is never cluttered with swathes of dullness. You know me well enough to understand that I do not tolerate chapters of mundanity.” Sign grabbed his wallet and keys. “So, now I’m off to see a Russian spy. Do me a favour while I’m out. I’ve ordered a hare from my butcher in east London. Would you mind collecting it, bringing it home, and skinning the hare?”

  “Er, no problems. The only thing is I’ve never skinned an animal before.”

  “Use one of my sharp, thin blade, knives to make an incision in the fur from throat to anus. Then simply peel the skin off the flesh. It’s easy. Oh, and you’d be a champion if you could get dinner on the go while I’m seeing Natalia. Chop the hare’s head off, gut the animal, pan fry the head, liver and kidneys in butter, add white wine, mustard and mixed herbs, gently simmer the sauce, remove and discard the meat after about an hour, take the sauce off the heat, braise the whole hare on a high heat with equal measures of rapeseed oil and butter, in a separate pan gently sweat chopped shallots and garlic, place sauce, hare and onions into a casserole dish, add one tin of tomatoes, and place the casserole into the oven on seventy degrees heat. Do you think you could do that?”

  Knutsen rubbed his face and said with resignation, “I thought I was your business partner, not your sous chef.”

  “We must all aspire to have more strings to our bow. By the way, when you walk to the butcher’s shop, stop off at the independent record stall I mentioned, outside The Royal Festival Hall. I’ve pre-ordered a vinyl album for you and it’s ready for collection. The stall doesn’t close until five thirty. It’s a very limited edition of early Jane’s Addiction. I’ve paid for the record. Just give the proprietor my name. He’s expecting you.”

  Knutsen screwed his eyes shut and shook his head. “How… how the hell do you know about Jane’s Addiction? And, Jesus, the record must have cost you a packet.”

  Sign stood by the door. “The stall owner is a very knowledgeable chap. He was once a roadie for Nirvana, whoever they are. He’s educating me. I like turning my tastes on their head. He also let slip to me that he spent five years in Wandsworth Prison for smashing an electric guitar over a rather rude audience member at a Faithless gig. He’s quite a character. Alas, the audience member is now a quadriplegic as a result of his head trauma.”