“They said so, but like Maxim Antonovich says, anyone can say anything. He thinks it’s possible some rival gangster could be using Repin’s name in vain, maybe even from the Moscow mafia. He has a reliable contact in the Petersburg force with a good network of informers, and we may get something from him tomorrow. We’re going to have to stay at least another couple of days, if not more.”
Helen listened tensely as Alexey asked, “What about Lebedev? Did you track him down?”
“Zaitsev, Maxim’s contact in the Petersburg police, found us his address. According to his neighbors he hasn’t returned yet from his trip. Zaitsev’s put a watch on the place so as soon as he turns up, he’ll let us know.”
“Good. Kolya – how is everyone in the office?”
“A little shaken, but coping well. Feodor got a little roughed up when he tried to stop the intruders from smashing one of the computers. He’s got cuts and bruises, but nothing major, the hospital’s checked him over, no broken bones or anything like that. The other staff were unhurt. And the office – well, it’s a mess, but that can easily be cleaned up. Even the computer – it was just a spare one, and all the files it contained were duplicated elsewhere. As to the documents in the filing cabinets, they too are duplicated, so no real harm done there.”
Helen mouthed, “Ask him if it seemed if they were looking for anything in particular.”
“Good thinking,” Alexey said, and asked. Volkovsky answered, “You mean, for Koldun? Maxim doesn’t think so. And certainly they took nothing away.”
“So that must mean Repin – or whoever it is – has no idea it exists.”
“Possibly. We think it most likely that this incident was meant as some kind of warning. We’re going to have to do something about improving security, at the very least. Maxim thinks it’s not up to scratch.”
“Of course. Do whatever you must.”
“Now, Lyosha, another thing. Feodor wanted to know about what they should do about those remaining contracts you were doubtful about.”
“Tell them we’ll look at each one on its merits,” said Alexey, with a glance at Helen. “If they are the right sort of jobs for the right sort of clients, then there will be no problem. If not – then we will cancel them.”
“But, Lyosha, it might not be so easy as all that. And if we acquire a reputation for unreliability …”
Helen saw Alexey’s expression harden as he said, “If we acquire a reputation for unreliability by refusing the money of bad men, then we should be proud of that.”
Volkovsky sighed. “Very well. If you say so. But then you must resign yourself to a good deal more trouble.”
“Then I do.”
“It’s not just you, Lyosha. It’s our people, too.”
Alexey snapped, “Like you said, we will improve security. And you will also issue a statement making it clear I am solely responsible for the change in Trinity’s direction, so that any quarrel anyone has with that will be only with me.”
Helen cried out, “Alexey, no! You can’t do that!”
Volkovsky said, “She’s absolutely right, Lyosha. You can’t. Firstly, because it is not true. We are all in this together. And secondly, because to do such a thing – it would be extremely dangerous. For all of us.”
There was a silence. Then Alexey said, quietly, “What do you propose, then?”
“Let me and Maxim Antonovich think it over. Between us we will come up with a plan.”
“You are getting on well with him, then?”
“He is a good man to have on our side,” said Volkovsky. “Now, Alexey, the memory card. It must be found. That is what you could do. You and Helen could look for it in the house.”
“I don’t think it’s here, Kolya.”
“You can’t be sure. And I know it’s not as exciting as dashing off on a white horse brandishing your fiery sword,” said Volkovsky, drily, “but it’s important. Maxim Antonovich thinks the card is the key to understanding what happened at Trinity.”
“And you, Kolya? What do you think?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps.”
“Always the cautious one, eh?”
“Someone’s got to be cautious,” said Volkovsky, and you could hear the smile in his voice even over the phone, “because it sure as hell isn’t going to be you, Lyosha!”
*
They looked for a couple of hours. They flipped through books in case the card had been placed there. Pulled out drawers to see if it might have been taped to their underside. Felt in the family photo album in case it might have been hidden behind a photo, or even taped to the inside of the binding. Looked through bags of flour and rice, in bottles and boxes and all sorts of things. While they were doing that, Slava popped his head around the kitchen door to ask if it was okay if he and the other staff walked into town for a drink at the local bar. He looked a little surprised to see them rummaging around on their hands and knees but made no comment, even after Alexey told him brusquely that of course it was okay, and they didn’t have to ask permission. After he’d gone, Helen said, “Your godfather probably told him he had to ask us.”
“I know,” said Alexey, and he sounded annoyed. “Honestly, Kolya can be so old-school sometimes, it drives me mad!”
“He just wants the best for you …”
“Knowing that doesn’t make it easier to cope with.” He gave her a mischievous glance. “But listen, my dear Mademoiselle Clement, I do believe the card is nowhere here. I also believe that for the next couple of hours or so we are all alone in the house, and what do you think we should do about that?”
It didn’t take much figuring out.
*
Later, Alexey said, dreamily, “I’ve had an idea. How about we go to Moscow tomorrow?”
She twisted round to look up at him. “What for?”
“The card’s not here. It’s not in Petersburg. So I reckon it’s in Moscow. At the office. Or the apartment. We can make a day of it. We can look for the card – and I can show you Trinity head office and introduce you to our people.”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh, Alexey, I’d love that!” A pause. “Only, Nikolai said …”
He broke in. “He only banned me from Petersburg.”
“Slava and Oleg will have to come along and …”
“To hell with that. We won’t tell them we’re going. You don’t really want those two eavesdropping on us, do you?”
Helen looked at him. “No, but …”
He took her hand, and kissed it, softly. “Do you really think I’d ask you to come, milaya maya, if I thought it was unsafe?”
“No,” she said, “I know you wouldn’t. But you can’t be sure – and besides, how can we possibly drive to Moscow and back without anyone knowing? It’s hours away.”
“Who said anything about driving? We’ll fly. There and back within a day. Direct from here.”
Helen stared at him. “There’s no airport in this town. You have to go to Yaroslavl for that.”
He smiled. “True. But there’s a helipad here.”
She squeaked, “You’re not saying we go by helicopter?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“No – don’t tell me – you’re a helicopter pilot in your spare time, along with everything else!”
He burst out laughing. “Sorry to disappoint, my love, but no. The only aircraft I’ve ever flown is an ultralight. I’ll hire a local pilot. No worries at all. So – are you on, or not? I’ll go and organize it now, if so.” He gave her a teasing glance. “But if you don’t like helicopters or you don’t like flying, that’s okay, I’ll go by myself and …”
Helen’s eyes flashed. “Don’t you dare! I’m coming with you, whatever.”
He smiled. “You’re trembling. Scared, maya sladkaya?”
“No, no, no. Not at all. Just so happy. And excited. What did you just call me, by the way?”
“Sladkaya—” he said, nuzzling at her neck. “Means sweet one.”
“You’re going
to have to teach me all those words to say to you too,” she said, kissing him, “and the right way to say them and everything.”
“Only if you’ll teach them to me in French,” he said. “Deal?”
“Deal,” she said, happily, “mon amour, mon chéri … je t’aime,” and she moved slowly down his body, touching him with hands, with lips ...
“Wait a moment.” He laughed, “How do you think I can concentrate on learning a foreign language when you’re ... oh God, Helen ... Helen, Helen ... what are you doing to me?”
Chapter 16
That night, back in her own bed at Irina’s, Helen lay awake for a while, thinking about all that had happened. Thoughts of the future had not troubled her when she was lying in his arms, but they troubled her now. In a month she’d have to leave, when her visa ran out. What would happen then? This was not some fling, not the rebound remedy her friends had urged on her. This was the real thing and the thought that she and Alexey might be separated made her stomach clench, as she remembered what he’d said to Maxim, when the policeman asked him why he hadn’t moved the business to Australia. His life was here. He’d chosen Russia. And it had chosen him. But not me, Helen thought. I’m a foreigner. I find it fascinating here, I even like it, but I’d never belong. And I’m not sure I even want to. I’m not Alexey, or even Irina. I don’t have that beat of blood in my veins, that instinctive understanding, that links a person to a country. I can never be Russian. So how can my life be here? But how can it be anywhere, if it isn’t with Alexey?
Then worries about the future evaporated as she recalled his touch on her skin, the expression in his eyes, the smell of him, the beauty of him. Don’t be afraid, she told herself, he’s not afraid and neither should you be. It will work out, somehow, because it must. Because we will it. She fell asleep on that thought, and slept soundly, dreamlessly for the rest of the night. Waking refreshed and eager to start the day, she showered, dressed and went downstairs to find her mother at work on her laptop on the kitchen table.
“Already hard at it, Mam?”
“Sad, I know. But I woke rather too early. Couldn’t get back to sleep.” She glanced at her daughter’s bronze silk shirt, black linen flares, cropped jacket and high-heeled boots. “You look stunning. What’s the big occasion?”
“Well, we thought we might have a day out in Yaroslavl. See the sights. Eat in a flash restaurant. And like you told me the other day, best to dress up for that.”
She felt a bit guilty about lying to her mother, but it was easier than telling her they were going in a helicopter to Moscow. There’d be questions. Fussing. Anxious requests for a phone call when they arrived. She wanted to be free.
Therese smiled. “Sounds perfect. Have fun.”
“Thanks, Mam. We will. You have a good day too. Productive.”
“Thanks, chérie. And remember, we’ve been invited to Galina’s place tonight.”
“Who?”
Her mother looked sharply at her. “Sergey’s sister. I told you.”
Now Helen dimly remembered her mother mentioning it last night. “Would they mind terribly if maybe I didn’t ...”
“Helen! I told them you were coming. And you said last night that was okay. Please be back by seven-thirty.”
“Okay,” said Helen, vaguely. She’d heard the motorbike engine. “He’s here, Mam. I’ve got to go.”
“What’s the big hurry? You haven’t even had your breakfast, tell him to come in for a minute,” protested Therese.
“It’s okay, Mam, I can have it at Alexey’s. And you don’t want to sit around chatting, I know. You need to get on with your work.” She kissed the top of her mother’s head. “Have a good day. See you tonight.”
A day out on the motorbike was what everyone had been told, including Slava and Oleg. “Told them the phone would be out of range too,” Alexey said, as she got on the motorbike. “So we’re all set.” His delighted grin gave Helen a sudden, touching glimpse of the impish little boy he must once have been.
They raced through the town, heading a kilometer or two north to the helipad. There were two or three choppers parked there, and the pilot was waiting for them in a building nearby. A thick-set middle-aged man with a rather military air, he introduced himself laconically as Konstantin and did not seem in the least surprised that two young people should be his passengers, or that one of them didn’t speak Russian. Yes, he agreed in answer to Alexey’s question, they’d be in Moscow in about an hour and a bit. No, he didn’t expect any delays. Weather conditions were fine, and everything had been cleared.
Though Helen had often flown, it had only ever been in planes, and big ones at that. She’d never even sat in a helicopter before, and she couldn’t help feeling a little spurt of anxiety in with the excitement as she climbed into the big white machine.
Alexey grasped her hand as they buckled themselves in and put on their headphones. “Don’t worry. It’s great. You’ll see. I’ve been up in them in Australia a couple of times and I really enjoyed it.”
Helen nodded, dumbly, staring out through the windscreen as Konstantin started the engines and the rotors started turning. She couldn’t help a small gasp as the helicopter slowly rose vertically in the air for several meters, and then seemed to lean slightly forwards and began to accelerate. Her stomach lurched. She felt as though she were on a Ferris wheel, or a roller-coaster. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation – she quite liked Ferris wheels and roller-coasters – but it was unexpected. Not like a plane at all. Alexey lifted up her headphone flap and whispered, “I’d love to fly one of these things one day.”
“It looks … complicated.”
“Yes, much more than a plane. Anyone who’s driven a car can learn to drive a plane, though there’s more to it of course. But a helicopter’s different. You have to use both hands and both feet to drive it. See that control there in his hand? That’s the cyclic, which controls whether the chopper’s going to go forwards or backwards, left or right. The one in his other hand – that’s the collective, which controls the up and down motion of the helicopter, and also the engine speed. And those pedals under his feet – they control the tail rotor.”
“You know a lot about it,” said Helen, smiling at the enthusiasm in his voice.
“Mishka used to have a picture book about planes and helicopters when he was a kid. Wanted to be a pilot before he decided boats were more his thing. It had all these cut-away pictures and things. I used to look at it sometimes.” His tone changed. “Hey, look down there, Helen! Can you see it? That’s the place where we were yesterday.”
She could see a little patch of green in the dark trees below. Her heart beat fast as images from the day before flooded into her mind. But she said, pertly, “It could be anywhere.”
“No, it couldn’t.” He grinned. “You women – you have no sense of direction!”
“And you men are such boasters!” she retorted, cheerfully.
They fell silent, looking out of the window at the unfolding landscape below. Once you got used to the motion of the helicopter, thought Helen, it was really quite exciting to look down from that height, onto the forests and rivers and cities that spread underneath you like a living tapestry. Because they were flying lower and slower than a plane would, you could see so much more too, and more clearly. Time seemed to go so quickly that Helen was surprised when the taciturn Konstantin pointed out the sprawl of Moscow below.
“We’re landing at a small airport called Bykovo,” said Alexey, pulling off his headphones, “helicopters and private jets go there. It’s a little way from the city, but I’ve organized for a car to pick us up and take us back there this evening, okay?”
“You’re the boss,” said Helen, teasingly, and then gave a startled, “Ooh!” when her stomach dropped as if she were in an elevator, as Konstantin began to make his descent.
Chapter 17
The Trinity head office was situated in a side street off Okhotny Ryad, the big wide boulevard that runs past the Duma, the
Russian parliament building, in central Moscow. Everything about it was unexpected to Helen: the nondescript building in which the office was housed on the first floor; the modest entrance, with a simple wooden door with a discreet plaque on it announcing “Trinity Consultancy”, in Russian and English; and the lack of obvious security guards.
In the reception area, furnished with a couple of shabby leather armchairs for visitors and a low table on which reposed several magazines, a big-haired young woman of about Helen’s age sat on a swivel chair at a plain desk. Behind her was a wall untidily crowded with framed certificates and testimonials, and a cheap reproduction of the Trinity icon. With its rabbit-warren confusion of cramped little offices and dull furnishings, the whole place might look at first sight like some shabby ’60s government department, one of the more boring ones, say administration. But the computers on the desks were brand-new, the telephone system state of the art, there were security cameras discreetly positioned, and the young man in the casual jacket who greeted Alexey at the entrance had a way of carrying himself that hinted he was more than a mere doorman. It seemed the low-key, flying-under-the-radar approach was deliberate, part of the company’s mystique, which had enabled it to survive the political and social turmoil of the last twenty years when others had long since fallen by the wayside.
On the way from the airport, Alexey had called the office and asked that everyone gather in the meeting room. And he’d told them Helen was coming along to observe, that she was a business student in London, and wanted to see how it was done. The cover story had been Helen’s idea; she’d have felt weird coming in just as his curious new girlfriend.
As they approached the meeting room, followed by Alla the receptionist and Grigori the security man, Helen could hear a buzz of conversation coming from behind the door. All talk ceased when they entered, as the dozen or so people seated around the table in the center of the room turned their eyes toward them.
For the first time, she felt nervous. But it all went fine. Alexey greeted them all in his usual warm, easy manner, briefly introduced Helen, and then sat down. Helen sat next to him, and took rapid stock of the people around her.
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