The Troika Dolls

by Miranda Darling

  There were three hours to go until she had to be on the helicopter. Her little feet fretted in their ballet slippers. Her mind was made up, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t wild with nerves at defying David Rice. She needed to distract herself from visions of his Herculean wrath.

  Fate sent her a waiter.

  ‘Fräulein Duveen?’

  Stevie nodded.

  ‘There is a gentleman looking for you.’

  Her body betrayed nothing, but the adrenaline was back like a shot. ‘Who is he?’ She almost choked on the question.

  Track a bear to its lair.

  ‘A man of little importance,’ a voice said, from behind the waiter.

  ‘It’s you!’ Stevie leapt up in delight. There stood Henning, in all his tall, herringboned glory, smiling down at her. Her relief was immeasurable.

  He swept her into a marvellous bear hug, dangling her feet an inch off the ground, then kissed her on both cheeks and set her gently back down on the carpet.

  ‘Stevie.’

  ‘Sit for goodness sake,’ Stevie gestured to the other chair. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Henning sat and they ordered tea and a large slice of Engadiner Nusstorte each, the local nut cake, made with walnuts and toffee.

  ‘On second thoughts,’ Stevie called after the waiter, ‘I’d like a small pot of black coffee instead of the tea.’ She thought something a little stronger was required, given the shocks.

  ‘How is that poor head of yours?’ asked Stevie, suddenly remembering her behaviour in Moscow. She blushed a deep pomegranate.

  Henning watched her shrewdly, the corners of his mouth turning up in a small smile. ‘Are you feeling a little guilty for running, Miss Duveen?’

  Stevie nodded then shook her head quickly. ‘Kozkov fired me. I wasn’t running—I was no longer needed.’

  ‘I didn’t mean running from Kozkov, Stevie.’

  Stevie blushed an even deeper shade of red and reached for her cigarettes. She had known exactly what he meant. Henning knew full well she hadn’t wanted to face him. She had taken, oh yet again, the cowardly way out and Henning certainly must despise her for it.

  ‘The hamper was very thoughtful,’ Henning’s lips twitched again with suppressed mirth. ‘And the note, very concise: “Stevie”.’

  He reached forward with his lighter and lit her cigarette.

  Stevie sat up very straight. ‘I was going to send orchids but then I read that Marilyn Monroe chose white cymbidium orchids for her winter wedding to Joe DiMaggio. It might have sent the wrong signal.’

  ‘Might it have . . .’ Henning smiled wider and Stevie sat up straighter.

  ‘And for the record, Henning, I wasn’t running. I was simply in a hurry to get back. I feel bad I couldn’t stop in to see you but—’

  ‘But you couldn’t get away fast enough.’ Henning lit a cigarette of his own Turkish tobacco, inhaled and sat back in his armchair. The laughter left his eyes. ‘Poor Valery made a mistake when he decided he no longer needed you.’

  Stevie blew an agitated plume of smoke. ‘I got him killed.’

  ‘He got himself killed,’ Henning said quickly, tapping the end of his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. ‘You didn’t let him down—you didn’t let anyone down. I’m truly sorry, Stevie. I’ll never forgive myself for dragging you to Moscow.’

  Henning was staring through the huge windows and down the valley. The fog outside drifted about in rags, revealing then concealing the frozen lakes, the black and white forests.

  Stevie noticed the tightness around his eyes, the tiny lines of sorrow and fatigue. Her heart went out to him. He had lost his dear friend.

  ‘I should have stopped him, Henning. I failed to protect him.’

  ‘You had absolutely no right or power to, Stevie. It was Valery’s decision and his responsibility.’ Henning’s eyes were still on the frozen valley, his voice barely above a whisper now. ‘You are a remarkable woman, Stevie Duveen. I’m not sure I could tell you how much I admire you. More fool me.’

  He turned to her. ‘Death always seems to crystallise things, doesn’t it? What matters, what doesn’t, who you really love . . .’ His eyes found hers and held them.

  Stevie felt something flip inside her; she found she couldn’t breathe as well as she might have liked to. Possibly it was the altitude . . . She broke away from Henning’s stare, a hand on her pearls for protection.

  ‘How are Irina and Vadim?’

  Henning shook his head. ‘Not well. Irina is very thin, she won’t leave the house. Vadim has the rage growing in him. He is spending a lot of time with Masha, but he doesn’t have her clarity or wisdom yet. I worry he might do something drastic.’

  ‘These are some pretty drastic circumstances. You can’t really blame him. Are the authorities even looking for Anya?’

  Henning paused then shook his head.

  Stevie ran a despairing hand over her mouth. ‘Well, Kozkov’s killing made a splash—they have to do something about that. Have the police got any suspects or is it ridiculous of me even to ask?’

  Henning shrugged. ‘The authorities have pulled in some Chechens—naturally—who have apparently confessed to killing Kozkov.’

  ‘Probably plucked off the street at random and forced to sign a false statement,’ Stevie said. ‘It’s funny how the Chechens seem to specialise in killing journalists and reformers. Bizarre almost. You’d think a top general, or politician would be a more desirable mark.’

  ‘A farce.’ Henning’s cigarette had burned to ash and gone out. No one was laughing.

  The waiter arrived with tea and coffee in silver pots, and two pale pink plates with slices of Nusstorte. He laid the tea out carefully on the starched white tablecloth and left them without a word.

  ‘So,’ Stevie tried to dispel the gloom, ‘you haven’t told me what you’re doing here.’

  Henning gave Stevie an odd look. ‘Actually, Vadim and I rather thought you might be in some danger yourself.’

  ‘Really?’ Stevie poured a cup of coffee and left it sitting to cool a little. ‘Why?’

  ‘Someone went after Kozkov’s files, too, on the day that he was murdered. Turns out he had a hidden safe in his office.’

  ‘The list.’ Stevie’s eyes widened in dismay. ‘And now it’s gone. It’s very dangerous information in the wrong hands. But how did they break in? Surely strolling into the offices of the Central Bank in Moscow isn’t like sliding into the Ritz. Do you think there were people on the inside there, too?’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it was an inside job.’ Henning poured a cup of tea from the pot. ‘Someone fired an RPG from the next building straight into Kozkov’s office. Not very subtle, but very effective. Nothing left of the office, let alone any papers in the safe.’

  ‘Everything gone. The list would have been destroyed, too.’ Stevie paused to take a bite of cake. It was quite delicious, buttery and sweet and full of freshly roasted walnuts.

  ‘You know, Henning, they went after me, too—on the same day. I suppose it was meant to be a simultaneous attack.’ She raised a pointed eyebrow. ‘Very tidy.’

  Henning’s face grew still with concern. ‘What happened?’

  ‘They came for me at the polo. Oh, at first I thought they were after the Hammer-Belles . . .’ She took a small sip of her coffee then abruptly dropped the cup into its saucer.

  ‘Ech!’ Stevie screwed up her pale face.

  ‘Too bitter?’

  ‘No. They’ve put sugar in the coffee.’ She was indignant. ‘I can’t stand sugar in my coffee—what a silly mistake. And in Switzerland of all places.’ She stopped herself, realising she sounded a little hysterical.

  ‘Henning,’ she leaned in towards him and blinked in appeal, ‘may I have a cup of your tea instead?’

  Stevie flung the offending contents of her cup into the fire, rinsed it with Henning’s hot water and poured tea from his pot. She took a sip and rid her mouth of the sweet coffee taste.

  ‘That’s
better.’

  She sat back and stretched her toes towards the fire. ‘Yes,’ she repeated, ‘they came for me at the polo, a single—’

  Suddenly pain seared through her stomach followed by a wave of nausea. She tried to swallow but her throat refused, as if paralysed. Stevie’s head began to swim.

  ‘Hen—’ Her lips felt too numb to move properly. ‘I don’t—’

  She stood and steadied herself on the mantelpiece over the fire. She felt weak as a kitten, her legs shaking. Then her face began to tingle.

  ‘Oh—the tea!’

  With a slow grace—gold cigarette in one hand, tea cup in the other—she crashed to the floor. The cup shattered on the stone hearth and her head missed the iron fire poker by millimetres.

  Stevie lay face down, spread-eagled on the floor, her cigarette smouldering on the carpet. The toe of her ballet slipper touched the corner of a burning pine log and quietly caught fire.

  Her little body was convulsing now in sharp bursts, as if she were attached to invisible electric wires. The pain and anxiety Stevie had felt were gone, replaced by a complete lassitude. Nothing mattered now, not even that funny darkness that was creeping up all around her.

  Henning was kneeling beside her, tipping her head back, putting his mouth on hers.

  Stevie sat straight up like a shot.

  ‘I’m perfectly—’

  Then she let out a groan, her eyes rolled back into her head and she fell into a bottomless abyss.

  Consciousness crept into her mind like dawn through curtains. Stevie slowly became aware of her lips—parched and peeling and tight. Then of her big toe. It stung. She tried to open her eyelids but they were too heavy, sticky. She stopped trying to move and tried to think.

  This was no ordinary morning waking . . . all she could remember was sitting by the fire with Henning, then a rather blissful state of floating, from the light, into the darkness. There had been a vivid dream about hundreds of grey and black cats swarming though a roundabout, over and over again.

  ‘Stevie?’ Henning’s face appeared close to hers, feathered and fringed through Stevie’s eyelashes.

  Her eyes fluttered open. ‘I’ve been poisoned.’

  ‘Yes, yes, you have.’

  Suddenly she remembered. ‘The tea! Are you alright?’

  ‘It wasn’t the tea, Stevie. I’m fine. The poison was in the coffee. Thankfully you didn’t drink the whole damn pot. The sugar must have been put in to mask the taste.’

  A voice came from the end of the bed. ‘You would be dead if you had had more than a sip.’

  Henning took Stevie’s hand. ‘Doctor Meinetzhagen here has been treating you.’ That explained the heavy accent.

  ‘A very strange and rare case to see in the Engadine,’ continued the voice. ‘We don’t get many poisonings around here—especially not from the Oxyuranus scutellatus, or taipan. You were not bitten but rather ingested the poison, mixed into your coffee pot. I therefore have concluded that your unfortunate poisoning was the result of a deliberate act.’

  Stevie squinted her eyes and managed to focus her gaze. She saw a neatly clipped white beard, rimless glasses, a broad chest in a waistcoat. She let her eyes close for a moment’s rest. ‘Quite, Herr Doktor.’

  ‘We were unable to move you to the hospital,’ the doctor explained. ‘Had you been bitten by a real taipan, the situation would be worse: the taipan is extremely aggressive and attacks with no warning, biting numerous times with its unusually long fangs. The venom contains a clotting agent that can be fatal to humans in minutes.’

  He approached the bed with his stethoscope and listened to her breathing. Then his cold, papery hands took her pulse.

  ‘The key is immobility, heavy bandaging and an antidote administered as quickly as possible. For this, your hotel bed was quite suitable for treatment.’ He placed Stevie’s wrist carefully back on the bedcovers. ‘Any physical effort causes the heart to beat faster and pump poisoned blood from the site of the wound—in your case, the stomach—to the rest of the body at a faster rate.’ The doctor cleared his throat and tapped his pipe on the end of the bed. ‘This only speeds up its noxious effects.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about snake bites, Herr Doktor.’ Stevie’s voice was as weak as rain.

  ‘I spent many years in the Australian bush and made many expeditions along the North Eastern Cape. I came to know the serpent and his ways quite well.’

  He was now stuffing the pipe with tobacco. ‘I keep a modest collection— I call it my velenarium—of serpent venom from around the world, and many antiserums.’

  ‘Lucky for me.’

  ‘Indeed, yes.’ The doctor nodded neatly. ‘In your case, bandaging was not possible. Immobility was achieved by the fact that you lost consciousness and the resulting decline in heart rate that accompanies the poisoning worked much in your favour. I set up an intravenous fluid transfusion—’

  Stevie saw the giant cannula inserted into the vein in her hand for the first time.

  ‘—and gave you a shot of antiserum. Your lung function will have to be closely monitored as death in these cases is usually due to respiratory failure. I have administered some steroids to help the heart and lungs, and an anti-clotting agent. You will be as right as the rain, as they say, in ten days or so.’

  ‘Poor Stevie, the pin cushion.’ Henning was stroking her forehead lightly and Stevie felt she could almost go into some kind of delightful trance.

  Then her befuddled brain kicked in and she struggled to sit up. Henning slid her effortlessly into place, plumping two pillows to make her comfortable.

  ‘Ten days?’ she croaked.

  ‘At best,’ the doctor replied gravely.

  ‘I haven’t got ten days.’

  ‘You are fortunate you have a pulse, Fräulein Duveen. In a fortnight you should feel strong again, although there maybe some ongoing effects.’

  ‘Such as?’ Henning asked before Stevie could.

  ‘Well,’ the doctor gestured with his free hand, ‘drooping eyelids, for example. Or a slow swelling of the extremities, possibly extra sensitivity in the fingers. In one case I know of, the survivor developed night vision after being bitten. It varies from patient to patient.’

  ‘Wonderful—I’m turning into Spiderman.’

  The doctor looked at her sternly. ‘A snake, Fräuelein, is not a spider.’

  Sense of humour had never been the greatest attribute of the Swiss professional.

  ‘Quite,’ she agreed.

  ‘Bed rest for a week, stay warm and whatever you do, do not agitate the heart. Do. Not.’ Doctor Meinetzhagen actually waggled his index finger. ‘Perhaps you might have a small glass of schnapps this evening, to help stop any clotting. I will come back tomorrow and see you again.’

  He lifted his flat woollen cap. ‘The police, naturally, will have to be informed. I will see to it myself. Adieu, Fräulein Duveen.’ He nodded to Henning, ‘Mein Herr,’ and with that the doctor efficiently let himself out of the room.

  Stevie wiggled her feet under the blanket.

  ‘Ouch! My toe stings. Why on earth . . . ?’

  Henning said nothing. Stevie’s dignity didn’t need to suffer as well as her body. He could tell her about the flaming ballet slipper tomorrow.

  ‘It must be one of the exotic side effects . . .’ She furrowed her brow. ‘Obviously someone is still trying to kill me. It’s rather terrifying, only I think I’m too dazed to feel properly frightened.’

  ‘To be honest, Stevie, I wasn’t sure how you would take Kozkov’s killing. I thought, when you passed out—’

  ‘What?’ Stevie was suddenly angry. ‘That I’d lost my mind? And there you were, saying how much you admired me. Guess that’s not quite true, is it, Henning?’

  Stevie’s fear made her furious and Henning had no right to—well, anything, really!

  ‘No, Stevie. I thought you might have lost your nerve. It happens to the hardest men.’ He put a hand lightly on her arm. ‘And in any case, fo
r the record, I rate human qualities like compassion, empathy and bravery over the robotic ones of immutability. If I wanted the unshakable, I would go and talk to a concrete pylon.’

  Neither said anything for a long time but Stevie let Henning’s hand remain where it was.

  Outside, it was already dark. The lamps illuminated flurries of snowflakes that seemed to grow heavier by the minute. Soon they would be the size of postage stamps, thought Stevie.

  By now, she had missed the helicopter. David Rice would be properly livid, and trained assassins were trying to kill her.

  She turned to Henning. ‘I am frightened.’

  He took her small hand in his. ‘You have a good reason to be. I don’t think there is much doubt you are at the top of someone’s hit list but, now that we know “what” and “how”, the question left is “who”—’

  ‘I think I have some idea . . .’ Stevie squeezed Henning’s hand, grateful she was no longer alone.

  ‘Our Russian friends who went after Kozkov,’ he supplied.

  Stevie nodded grimly then said to her friend, ‘I think I’d rather like that schnapps.’

  Henning smiled. ‘Perhaps that could wait until later,’ he said, teasing. Then, all smiles vanished, he said, ‘Stevie, tell me what happened at the polo match.’ He sat gently at the edge of her bed.

  Stevie indicated she wanted to sit up, and Henning helped her, his hands so gentle. She took a deep breath and carefully pulled the strings of her mind back together and finished the story she had begun by the fire downstairs.

  ‘They were looking for me yesterday on the slopes,’ she confessed. ‘I’m sure I was followed.’ There was a Russian with a rifle—but the mist was so thick he missed me.’

  Henning stiffened in alarm and she squeezed his hand without thinking.

  ‘About the snake poison, Henning. When I was in Azerbaijan, I saw this beach covered in snakes. Hundreds of them. It was horrible. There was a decrepit concrete building nearby—it was built by the Soviets for biological weapons development. They used the facility to experiment with different deadly poisons and they had a collection of all the world’s most venomous snakes.’ Stevie stopped. ‘Could I at least have a glass of water?’ Henning got up without a word and poured her a glass. When he sat back down, his hand sought Stevie’s and held it tight as she continued. ‘When the Soviet Union fell apart, the scientists abandoned the facility. They didn’t know what to do with all the snakes so they just released them into the reeds behind the beach. There’s not even a sign to warn people.’