The Troika Dolls

by Miranda Darling

  ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do to help,’ Stevie gave a little shrug, ‘tell me.’

  ‘Masha is writing an article. Apparently my father sent her some papers before he died—I don’t know what they were. Masha is very excited. She won’t say anything more—only that my father asked her to memorise the papers and destroy them if he was killed. Masha wants the article published all over the world. Then the red walls of the Kremlin will tremble like an earthquake, she says. Perhaps you can help us get the article published in England.’

  Stevie felt a wild surge of hope. Could the papers Masha was talking about be Kozkov’s list? She would say nothing about it. Masha was right. The less anyone knew, the better.

  ‘I think I can help with that,’ Stevie said slowly. She could call Rosie for starters, and David Rice knew everyone. He would help. In fact, she ought really to call him back.

  She stepped outside the café and dialled his number. Secretly she admitted to herself that she wanted his praise for getting Anya back.

  ‘Rice.’

  ‘It’s Stevie.’

  ‘How and where the hell are you?’

  ‘Zurich. Anya’s with us. She’s safe.’

  ‘I heard the good tidings. Thank God,’ he huffed out. There was a brief pause, then he said, ‘Stevie, have you seen the news broadcast this morning?’

  ‘It’s not on the news is it?’ Stevie was dismayed. ‘I haven’t told anyone—I thought it would be safer for all the Kozkovs if they were just quietly forgotten. I’ll murder whoever blew their cover!’

  There was another, longer pause. ‘No, you did a good job with that. I assumed as much. Discretion has always been your virtue in this job.’

  The announcement for platform five drowned out most of what came next. Stevie managed to catch—

  ‘—damn fine.’

  Did he mean her? She was too shy to ask him to repeat himself. Anyway, it was too late. Rice had rung off.

  Stevie wandered about the station aimlessly. She didn’t feel like going back into the bar. Hadn’t Rice mentioned the news?

  There was a screen above the escalators. The daily news was constantly on play, the ticker tape running a foot high beneath it. She stood and watched, all of a sudden feeling very tired.

  Just as she was about to turn back to join the others, a bulletin stopped her in her tracks. The television was showing a human shape on a snowy footpath. The snow all around had been stained red. Stevie’s eyes strained to read the words on the ticker tape.

  She couldn’t believe it. Not again.

  Masha Ivanovna Osipova had apparently jumped from her fifth-floor window, committed suicide.

  Stevie, her hand to her mouth, began to cry.

  The television showed a close-up, the body, the blood, a brown bag of groceries spilling open. Stevie knew at once Masha had not jumped. No one committed suicide with a full bag of shopping. There was to have been a vegetable soup, some smoked fish, black bread— perhaps an almond cake—in her future, to be shared most likely with her thirteen-year-old son. The groceries were an undeniable testament that Masha had intended to keep on living. Her assassination was a statement of utter indifference to her intentions, a blunt denial of her right to consider her life her own. She had been tossed out her own window like orange peel.

  Stevie imagined Masha’s flight through the morning air, the buckling of bones and the exploding of organs as her body hit, then the pooling blood on ice and the unravelling of carefully laid plans for the summer.

  Moscow and Masha’s world seemed a million miles away from Zurich, but it was only a plane ride. What could be thought of a place that tolerated the murder of journalists—of anyone inconvenient? The annoying, the unwelcome, were disposed of like old Friday girls. Whoever had killed Masha hadn’t even bothered to make it look like a proper suicide. Because they knew no one would want to find the truth. To the siloviki, and those who lived in the vile shadow of their protection, Masha was better off dead.

  Suddenly loss and death were all around her and it was too much. Stevie leaned against pillar and wept until she shook. Spent, her nose so blocked she had to breathe through her mouth, Stevie felt a small hand.

  Anya was behind her, holding out her gold chain and the evil eye that hung from it like a tear drop. Irina had kept it safe. Anya now wanted Stevie to have it.

  Stevie took it from her with a small smile but she still couldn’t speak. She held up her hand in a half-wave, half-salute and walked away, losing herself a little unsteadily in the crowds, hoping the passers-by would blame her swollen red nose on a nasty cold.

  She headed for the soothing shores of the lake. Horizons seemed to shrink troubles and she needed proper fresh air.

  Where the river Limmat flowed into the lake, by the Bellevueplatz bridge, the water was not frozen. Against the snow, and the ice further out, it looked black. The lake front along it was coated in ice, a phenomenon Stevie hadn’t seen for years.

  The wind, coming down from the Alps, skims the Zürichsee and sweeps droplets of water up onto the shore. They freeze where they land, swaddling steel railings, tree branches, lamp posts, even parked cars, in cocoons of white ice.

  It was impossible to walk by the shore. The pavement was frosted in ripples. The wind had shaped the ice with a genius sculptor’s hand into the wild shapes of Dali or God. Stevie stood on the bridge and looked out, a small figure in a dark coat, lost to the wind.

  The lake ferry was not running, but the ferry master, bristling in his heavy jacket, his seaman’s cap, was smoking a cigarette clamped in an ebony cigarette-holder. He was standing on the dock watching his ship.

  Stevie wandered over and asked if she could go aboard. If the ferry master thought the request odd, he didn’t show it. Perhaps he realised that Stevie’s red nose wasn’t a cold, that she needed to be on the water and alone.

  Like everything else, the deck was covered in ice; a pair of small brown ducks was sheltering in the lee. The boat moved gently on the patch of black water. Opposite, Stevie could see the wooden Schwimm–bad, in summer full of sunbathers and swimmers in coloured caps, but today grey and dusted with snow. The renovations were still unfinished and the place looked forlorn, the sky above it heavy with the unshed snow.

  Things had come to an end and Stevie felt lost. Irina, Anya and Vadim were moving to Zurich. She had insisted and they had been glad to comply. Moscow was no longer home—the bad memories overshadowed the good and, in any case, it was too dangerous for them now.

  Stevie hoped Vadim’s revenge fantasy had played itself out in that horrible scene he had witnessed. Revenge was not justice, but she found it hard to find fault with Vadim. When a society could no longer have faith in its government to uphold the laws and to redress their grievances, then people would begin to take matters into their own hands. They could see no other choice. Every man in power was, after all, just a man.

  Wasn’t that the universal hero’s story, the wresting back of control for the individual life from forces larger than yourself—monsters, earthquakes, madness, despotism—and the restoration of dignity? There was glory in that struggle, Stevie thought as she lit her last cigarette, and it was what Masha and Kozkov and so many others had died for. It was important to remember them.

  We were all capable of small heroics; we were all capable of being masters of our own destinies if we chose to be. It was time, Stevie decided, to think about the future.

  She would lend the Kozkovs her flat until they got settled. It would make a good excuse to get away. She would tell Rice she needed a break and disappear until the cold shadows had melted.

  Somewhere hot, she thought. Very hot.

  Along the bridge, walking against the wind, she saw a tall figure in a herringbone overcoat.

  Henning and Stevie stood on the frozen deck looking out at the ice and said nothing for a long time. The tips of Stevie’s eyelashes had frosted where they had been wet.

  ‘What are you going to do, Stevie? What if Dragoman co
mes after you . . . ?’ Henning looked at her.

  ‘He’s a businessman. I have to believe I’m not worth the expense or the effort. Out of sight, out of mind.’ Her eyes were on the tips of the Alps on the far side of the lake. ‘Anyway, I could use a long holiday.’

  Stevie hoped she sounded resolute and brave, because she didn’t feel it.

  The ferry master had climbed on board unnoticed. He switched on the ship’s PA system and a beautiful voice as lonely as a star drifted out and swirled around the boat. Stevie recognised it immediately—it was singing ‘Casta Diva’, an aria from Bellini’s opera, Norma.

  The dark voice sent shivers across Stevie’s shoulders. It could belong only to Maria Callas.

  She turned to Henning. ‘I think the captain thinks we’re lovers.’

  Henning looked down at Stevie, his blue eyes burning now. ‘Aren’t we?’

  Stevie waited, looking everywhere for her courage. Finally, shyly, she said, ‘Well, not yet.’

  Then Henning smiled like the sun. Stevie felt suddenly warm. She moved closer to him and, not quite tall enough to reach his shoulder, she leaned her head against his chest. Henning drew her in close and held her.

  On the far side of the lake, a ray of sunlight struggled through the clouds and hung like a gold rope against the dark sky.

  It had to be a sign, thought Stevie, something good.

  The ferry master appeared on deck and stood to one side, looking out.

  ‘Hear that?’ he grunted.

  There was a groaning, cracking sound. Stevie heard it again—and now the sound was all around them, like whales meeting and bridges falling, loud and eerie.

  ‘The ice is moving,’ said the ferry master, leaning on the rails.

  ‘Spring is coming.’

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful to Sophie Edelstein, Rosie Garthwaite, Catriona McFar-lane, Rowan Lawton, Lilia Osadchuk, Jason Darling, and Daniel Darling for generously sharing their expertise with me. Fran Moore at Curtis Brown deserves many thanks for her support of me, and of this book, as do Jane Palfreyman, Ann Lennox, Alex Nahlous and the rest of the team at Allen & Unwin. Thank you to my parents, Michael and Manuela, per tutto, and to the Wieland family for their frequent and generous hospitality. Finally, an enormous thank you to my husband Nick, whose support makes the impossible possible.

  Grazie a tutti.