by G. D. Abson
‘Zena’s in a mortuary,’ she said gently. ‘Thorsten, there’s no shame in what happened. These criminals are clever and ruthless. They spend all day thinking up nasty con tricks. Now will you promise to trust me?’
He stared at her. ‘Yes, I think I can do that.’
‘Good,’ her voice was brisk. ‘I need you to return to St. Petersburg. Take the land border through Finland and use the smallest crossing you can find. Don’t use your credit cards and leave your mobile phone behind. I’ll give you an address. Whatever you do, keep away from the FSB – they handle immigration so be careful.’
‘You too, Captain,’ he said, with a melancholic smile.
Chapter 30
At Arlanda, Natalya caught an AirBaltic flight. With the stopover at Riga it was well after twelve when she queued outside the row of sentry boxes that marked passport control at Pulkovo airport. Despite the half-empty plane, nearly an hour passed before she found herself facing a woman wearing a gunmetal grey uniform and possessing a pair of eyebrows that had been plucked clean then pencilled in a high arch; combined with the sour mouth it made her look permanently sarcastic.
‘Documents.’
Natalya handed over her passport then waited. The woman studiously avoided her gaze and tapped numbers into a computer keyboard one finger at a time. There was a clock on the wall and her mind habitually ran to the bridge timetables. Around this time, six days ago, Zena Dahl had walked out of the Cheka bar and her troubles began.
‘Will this help?’ Natalya took out her police ID card.
The official glanced at it. ‘No…Captain.’
Now she was the last passenger from the small propeller plane and still the woman tapped on the keyboard.
Another uniformed official entered the booth, this time a man with a red band on his peaked cap. She glanced at the two adjacent stars on his epaulettes to check his rank: a lieutenant; then she glanced at the open pores on his veined nose: a drinker.
The woman’s eyebrows were raised even higher on her forehead as she handed Natalya’s passport to the officer. He examined it then tucked it in his breast pocket. ‘Any baggage in the hold?’ he asked.
‘No.’ Natalya twisted one shoulder to show a small rucksack.
He left the booth to face her. ‘Then come with me.’
‘I’m a captain in the Criminal Investigations Directorate, what’s the delay?’
‘No delay.’ He opened his mouth and sprayed breath freshener onto a yellowing tongue.
She followed him to a white-walled room with no windows. There was a desk and two chairs. Next to a fluorescent strip light she noticed a black plastic sphere masking a security camera.
‘Someone will be with you soon,’ he said, then left, closing the door. She heard a lock click into place.
She didn’t believe him, having tried the same trick often enough to unnerve a suspect. Well, it wouldn’t work on her. She was too tired to be stressed let alone wonder why she was being detained. Slumping in one of the chairs, she dropped her head on her forearms and instantly fell asleep.
A spasm in her neck woke her. She checked her phone: it was approaching three in the morning. Her body was craving nutrition and more sleep; her mobile battery was almost flat.
She flicked through her contacts wondering who would take a call at this time: Mikhail? She selected his number and listened to his voice as it diverted straight to the answerphone. Who next? Rogov? Too unreliable. Claudia? Certainly, but Germany may as well be on another planet. Anton? Well, it was safer for him if she didn’t call. She tapped a number and saw beads of sweat caught on muscled, golden legs. Despite the oppressive room, she chuckled to herself; only Primakov could run a half-marathon and look as if he was modelling sportswear.
She tapped her phone again and heard his ring tone. She pressed an index finger and thumb to the corners of her eyes to help her focus, then wedged the mobile to her ear with her left hand. At this time of the morning she had expected him to take longer to answer but he picked it up almost immediately.
‘Leo? I’m stuck in an interrogation room in Pulkovo—’
‘Forgot to put it on silent,’ Primakov was saying, not to her though. Instead of hanging up, he left the line open.
Knowing Leo’s fastidious nature he wouldn’t be careless enough to keep the line connected accidentally – he was telling her something.
She shut her eyes and shrank the world to the voices in her ear. There was a murmur of conversation then, ‘Major, how long are we going to be here?’ The voice might have belonged to Rogov but it was hard to tell because something was rubbing against the microphone. It sounded like a zipper being pulled up and down. Was that Leo’s nylon oversuit?
‘Don’t forget you’re a fucking Sergeant.’ That was Dostoynov, she was sure of it; so Dostoynov and Rogov.
There was fumbling and before the line went dead, Primakov’s voice came through at so low a whisper it was barely audible: ‘Federova’s apartment.’
She switched off her phone to save the battery then closed her eyes. A vacuum cleaner started outside her door. It wasn’t moving and she wondered if it was an attempt to unsettle her, along with the too-bright fluorescent light. Well, they could try, but they would have to pull out her fingernails just to keep her awake. Two freckles on her right forearm; fine, translucent hairs. She focussed on them, feeling sleep draw her away. Her skinny arm became a pillow; the red of the fluorescent light through her eyelids became a desert tent at sunset; the motor of the vacuum cleaner turned to white noise; white noise was the best noise of all.
A hand smacked on the table, hard. ‘Wake up!’
‘Go away.’
Silence, then her shoulders were gripped from behind. She was shaken violently, the back of her skull connected with her spine. Her head ached and the nerves in her neck screamed. She twisted her shoulders to see a man the size of a weightlifter. He was wearing a shoulder harness with a black Grach pistol tucked in it. That was as good as an identification card. The police had been waiting for years to get their aging Makarovs updated to Grachs – the excuse they had been given was there were too many guns already in circulation. It wasn’t a problem for the FSB though; they already had them. He pushed her shoulders against the desk then did it again.
She tried to turn and punch him but his thick hands held her rigidly.
‘I swear I’ll shoot you if you do that again,’ she said.
Fingers as hard as wooden stakes pressed under her collar bone making her eyes tear up. She sucked up the pain, refusing to give him the satisfaction of knowing it was working. Her attention fixed on the black globe on the ceiling, appealing to the person watching the thinly disguised camera to intervene.
She twisted a shoulder free from his grip; he replaced the hand and shook her again. The room was spinning; she could hardly breathe. She locked the muscles in her neck, lifted her head, and twisted to spew the meagre contents of her stomach over his trousers.
‘You—’
He stopped whatever insult was coming. The weight released from her shoulders and she turned to see black hair, thick, tanned skin and an impassive face.
‘What the hell are you doing? I’m a—’
‘Nosey bitch. What were you doing in Sweden?’
He had intelligent eyes, she could see that, even if he an objectionable personality.
The hands gripped her shoulders again and he shook her body sideways. The bones in her neck cracked. ‘This gives you brain damage. Do you want to be a vegetable? What were you doing?’
‘Stop and I’ll tell you.’
He withdrew his hands and she rubbed her neck. ‘A woman I know, Renata Shchyotkina. Her boyfriend is a bastard like you; I went to have a word with him unofficially.’
‘A Sven?’
‘Yeah, except they actually have laws against beating women over there.’
‘That bitch, was her boyfriend called Thorsten Dahl?’
He wrapped her shirt into his fist and dragged her to
standing. ‘I have a story for you, it’s called “you ignored the fucking warning”. If you didn’t have a uniform you would be dead already.’ He uncurled his fist and she tensed her body to prepare for another assault. It never came; he walked out of the room without looking back.
Over the Tannoy she heard an announcement for a late Aeroflot arrival from Moscow and checked the door. The handle twisted – he’d left it unlocked. Next to a silent vacuum cleaner she saw a plastic chair with a rucksack and her belongings spilling out of it. On top was her passport, splayed open to show her photograph. She pushed everything back into the bag and slung it over her shoulder then followed the line of closed sentry boxes marking passport control. A hubbub of passengers grew louder, then they came into view. There were no immigration officials for the domestic flight and Natalya attached herself to a middle-aged woman pulling a small silver case and wearing too many clothes for the mild morning, presumably to avoid paying for an additional bag. At the exit doors of Terminal 1, she left the woman at the taxi rank and went to the car park for her Volvo.
On the way home, she thought about a lot of things. In another life, Primakov’s message might have passed for intriguing, now it was damned sinister. What the hell was he doing in Yulia Federova’s apartment in the middle of the night with Dostoynov and Rogov? At least he had warned her, so there was still someone she could trust. She rubbed the aching muscles on her neck and tried to think clearly, but she was exhausted and whoever that bastard was, he’d left her with a katyusha firing inside her skull.
She drove back to Tsentralny District and parked on the road outside her apartment. A BMW X5 pulled up behind her. The driver remained at the wheel while his passenger got out and casually sat on the bonnet to smoke a cigarette. It was the weightlifter from the airport. He waved at her gaily like an old friend. Knowing they were FSB, it was safe to assume they were using her phone to track her movements and maybe listening to her calls too. “You ignored the fucking warning” she thought. Well, she couldn’t fault him there.
On the floor above hers, she saw a light and heard “Everything’s going to be alright” sung at a quarter speed. She could see Sergei, the old violin teacher, as he meandered from room to room, his head bobbing in and out of view.
The men in the X5 had a clear view of the block door but she had no alternative. She started walking towards it, her rucksack draped over her shoulder. She bent to tie her shoelace and saw the driver had his face tilted in her direction and a mobile phone pressed to his ear. She picked up pace but they didn’t follow. That was good – they didn’t have orders to take her in; at least not yet. At the metal door she pulled out her keys from her rucksack and pressed a magnetic disk against the lock. There was a soft click and she was in.
Until now she had never used the lift in the apartment block but she was too weary for the stairs. It took her to the fourth floor and she tugged on a tarnished brass bell. In the confines of the corridor, the noise rang out like an old fashioned fire alarm. She could feel herself being observed through the peephole and wondered when the two men in the street would receive new orders.
‘Goooooiingng to beeeee allllll-riiiigggghhht!’
Sergei, her old neighbour, yanked the door open on the final word. Beneath the violin teacher’s neat brown goatee he was topless, wearing only a pair of blue jeans on which he was hastily fastening the fly buttons.
‘What’s up, darling?’
‘I’m in serious trouble, Sergei,’ she said, letting herself in. ‘I need your help.’
Chapter 31
The sun was already up but the city was still asleep. From the shadows of his bedroom, she watched Sergei cross the street below. She’d told him to behave naturally but he was an ex-violin teacher not an expert in counter surveillance and she saw him turn his face away from the X5 as if the building’s wall held some fascination for him. With good reason, the men in the car would be intrigued by his self-conscious behaviour, wondering if they should question him, particularly now her phone had stopped transmitting its position.
‘Everything’s going to be alright,’ she sang to herself.
Sergei kept walking until he disappeared from view. Ten minutes later, the X5 suddenly came to life. Its headlights flashed on, and it performed a sharp U-turn in the street and accelerated away. She dashed out of Sergei’s apartment and took the stairs.
On the third floor she opened the door with a key, smelling cigarette smoke and fried food. The comforting wood-saw of Mikhail’s snores cut through the silence. She stepped over a bag of empty Ochakovo bottles to reach the bathroom and had a quick shower. As she reached for a towel the door burst open sending the flimsy lock flying to the far wall.
The steam iron was in Mikhail’s fist; his aggression offset by the pair of fake tiger-skin underpants she had bought for his fortieth birthday.
‘It’s OK, it’s just me.’ She finished tucking the towel over her breasts then found a wide-toothed comb and pulled it through her hair.
‘Tasha?’ He rubbed his face. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Can you put the iron down? Actually I’m surprised you knew where to find it.’
‘Funny.’ He rubbed his hand against his cheek making a rasping noise against the stubble. ‘Anyway, you left it out.’
‘Still, what are you doing here, Misha?’
‘I’d come to warn you again, but you weren’t in so I decided to wait. It appears Dostoynov is acting for his old friends… Stepan told me.’ He scrutinised her. ‘Jesus, you look terrible.’
‘I was interrogated by the FSB. They followed me here.’
He ran the fingers of his free hand through his hair, ‘Tasha, I told you to leave it alone, now you’ve brought them to our home.’
‘They aren’t there now.’
‘What do you mean?’
She pointed a finger skywards. ‘Sergei got rid of them.’
‘What were you thinking? He’ll be killed.’
‘Misha, I was desperate. I told him the risks and he agreed to help. I took the SIM and battery out of my phone and asked Sergei to reassemble it at Finlyandsky station. He’s going to hide it on the first elektrichka he finds. It was the only way I could get rid of them.’
Apart from the risk Sergei was taking, it made her feel sick thinking of the FSB getting hold of her phone with its calls to Dahl as well as the recording she had taken from Lagunov’s office. She may as well write them a note telling them everything she knew. Almost as bad, without her mobile she had few means of contacting anyone.
Mikhail looked deadly serious. ‘The FSB are paranoid fucks but they are not morons. When they know you’ve been playing with them they’ll designate you an enemy agent. I told you to stay away.’ Saliva flecked his chin. ‘I fucking told you, Natalya.’
The thought of being hunted down by the FSB made her spine freeze. The successor organisation to the KGB was barely twenty years old but they were already up to their elbows in blood and had displayed little concern about killing far more important people than her. ‘Where’s Anton?’ she asked, her voice rising in panic.
‘So now you think of him. I told him to stay at Dinara’s until you stop using State Security to commit suicide.’ He looked at her sternly. ‘I love you, Natalya, but I don’t want Anton dragged into this. Those pricks will ruin his life just to ruin yours. Now tell me where have you been?’
‘It was my day off, why should you care?’
‘I do care. Answer the question.’
‘Alright, I went to Stockholm to see Dahl, then I spent the night stuck at Pulkovo being entertained by an FSB gorilla.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Dahl? He told me he’d sent Axelsson to a ransom exchange at the boatyard.’
‘For what?’
‘Zena.’
Mikhail rubbed the stubble on his chin. ‘Did he forget his daughter was dead? I suppose it’s easily done.’
‘He’s not stupid but some conman pretended to be a kidnapper
and answered a proof of life question. He thought it was worth taking a chance—’
‘Sure, with someone else’s life. How did they know the answer?’
‘I’m guessing they eavesdropped on him while he discussed what question to ask.’
‘What were they after?’
‘The deeds to Dahl’s Russian companies.’
Mikhail let out a low whistle. ‘Christ. They got them, I suppose.’
‘Yes.’
‘How much are they worth?’
She shrugged, ‘Maybe half a billion dollars.’
Mikhail’s mouth slid open. ‘That’s a good con trick.’
‘At least it explains the FSB interest. They don’t get out of bed for a few million.’
He frowned briefly. ‘So what did the gorilla in the airport want?’
‘To scare me off.’
‘Then be scared. Get away while you can. Go see Claudia and come back when they have what they want.’
‘Misha, what’s going on? I called Primakov a few hours ago; he was in Yulia Federova’s apartment.’
‘Dostoynov heard the girl is missing and he’s scrabbling around to connect you to it. You forget our new major is ex-FSB, and any fool knows there’s no such thing as ex-FSB. I’m guessing someone whispered in his ear that you need to be put away.’
She put the comb down and stared at him. ‘Rogov was the only one who knew Yulia had gone away.’
He put the iron down in the sink. ‘Angel, Dostoynov threatened to fire Stepan this afternoon for insubordination. Don’t be too hard on him, his balls are in a vice.’
She shook her head, incredulous that Mikhail was defending Rogov.
‘And there’s a witness. Federova’s neighbour has gone on record claiming he heard you threatening the girl.’
‘Is this the guy in the apartment opposite hers – the one with poor personal hygiene?’
‘I think so.’
‘Misha, this is ridiculous.’ She felt the urge to scream. ‘Isn’t Vasiliev doing anything?’