No Kiss For The Devil

37

Riley’s mobile was buzzing. She rolled over, kicking aside the bedclothes, disoriented by finding herself in a strange single bed. After hearing of the murder of Goricz’s family, they had decamped the previous night, encouraging Mr Grobowski to do the same. It would only be for a day or two. He had gone to friends, while they were in a small hotel north of the Edgware Road. Palmer was in a room just along the corridor.

Riley had been reluctant to let anyone drive her from her home, but commonsense had prevailed, reinforced by the shock of the murders and Palmer’s suggestion that the gunman who’d shot Lipinski — maybe one and the same man — might come back for another try.

She fumbled for the phone, expecting it to be the vet. To her surprise, it was Natalya Fisher, her voice unusually sombre.

‘You were asking about a man named Richard Varley,’ the former KGB member said without preamble. In the background, a door slammed, a bell jangled and laughter echoed in a hollow corridor. School noises. God, she’d slept later than she’d thought. Her watch told her it was nine-thirty.

‘That’s right.’

‘I happened to mention him to friends of mine.’

‘People you used to work with?’

‘Just friends. They know of him. They say Varley is nothing. A foot-soldier… a doer of deeds, not a decision maker.’ She coughed, the sound moving abruptly away from the phone. ‘Sorry — too many cigarettes.’

‘How would your friends know of him? He’s American.’ Just for a second, Riley held on to the vague thought that Richard was nothing to do with the man who had threatened her. She was soon disappointed.

‘No.’

‘But he told me he was an army brat.’

‘An army brat, yes, Miss Gavin. But not American army.’ She paused. ‘Russian.’

A ticking on the line was the only sound for a long time.

‘What?’ Riley finally managed to drag out a response. She felt something drain out of her.

‘His real name,’ continued Natalya softly, ‘is Vasiliyev. He comes from Petrograd.’

‘No.’

‘Yes. He was a good student and worked very hard; he scored top grades in his class. When they discovered he had a facility for languages, he was recruited into the army where they placed him in a political section and polished off his rough edges, preparing for operations against the Americans.’

‘Spying?’

‘Not directly. At the time, they had plans to use American-sounding officers to become friendly with their American counterparts. It was all part of a grand plan — a soft infiltration. Then everything changed and they had no use for men like him. No money, either. He left the army and went into private work.’

‘What sort of private work?’

‘Mostly criminal. He uses other names from time to time. Men in his line of work often do.’

Riley slumped against the headboard, waiting for more. She wondered if Natalya’s friends had got the name wrong. Or maybe there was more than one Varley in publishing. Richard had seemed so smooth, so in charge, she had a hard time imagining him as anyone’s gofer, still less someone named Vasiliyev. Then she recalled his manner when he had come to her flat. For a man normally so in control, he hadn’t been exactly calm. She’d attributed that to the pressure he was under from the shareholders of Ercovoy Publishing. Now she knew better. She felt a stab of something akin to shame at how naive she must have seemed.

‘You say he works for someone?’

‘Yes. I am told a man named Fedorov.’

That name again — the one Koenig had mentioned. ‘Who is he?’

‘A man you do not wish to meet,’ Natalya replied bluntly. ‘He is well known in the country I come from. Fedorov has many friends and contacts across Eastern Europe. He is not a man to cross.’

‘He’s one of these oligarchs?’

‘An oligarch? I don’t know for sure. Rich, certainly. Very rich. For that reason, maybe he pretends to be something he is not. But he is different. We have our career criminals, too, you know. They love money, like all crooks.’

‘Is he Russian mafia?’

‘Perhaps. Probably. Nobody knows. They are not always easy to identify, these people. They belong to impenetrable factions, hiding behind various identities, their loyalties changing all the time. Mafiya is an easy title to put on men like him, but not always accurate.’

‘What’s his full name?’ Her instinct for detail asserted itself, dulling the disappointment of discovering that Richard Varley was not what he seemed.

‘Ah, that I do know. He is called Pavel Ivanovich Fedorov. But he is not called Pavel by those who know him well. He uses the name Grigori. He does not care for Pavel, because it is from Latin, and means small.’

‘Great. A rich man with an ego problem.’

Natalya gave a bark of laughter. ‘Tell me any man who has not. He was brought up by an uncle who was not successful with women due to his small stature. Because of this, he took out his frustrations on the boy.’

‘What happened?’

‘One day the uncle disappeared. Fedorov was sixteen. He reported to the police that his uncle had gone looking for work.’

‘Oh.’

‘Later, Fedorov disappeared, too. When he returned, some years later, he was a different man. He was making money — doing what, nobody knows. But we can guess. He had moved up in the world and continued to do so. Now he has friends and wants more. It is said he is under investigation by the Interior Ministry in Moscow for illegal business practices and state fraud. This is very serious, but there are ways around it. He is looking for ways to make those investigations go away.’

Riley remembered the analogy Natalya had used before, about exiled Russians. The boy going back home with the school prize. ‘Would that be enough, though?’ she asked. ‘Ruining Al-Bashir’s chances in the telecoms market?’

‘It would,’ the professor confirmed, ‘if it meant control would stay in the hands of local organisations. Better that than going to a westerner.’ She sighed as if recognising that some things could never change. ‘As I explained to you before, there are some sins that can always be forgiven if the price is right.’

‘What does this Fedorov look like? In case I should bump into him.’

‘I hope you do not, Miss Gavin, for your sake. But I think you will know him as soon as you do.’

‘How?’ Riley felt a thud in her chest. Even as Natalya said it, an image, unbidden, had begun to swim up from deep in her consciousness. Suddenly, she knew without a shadow of a doubt: she had met Fedorov — and the next words confirmed it.

‘Fedorov is short and becoming bald. He looks and dresses like an accountant, and always stays in the background, where nobody sees him. My friends say he is a man to miss in a crowd. But most of all, a man to avoid.’

Riley switched off her phone. Her mouth was dry and she felt her heart pounding at the realisation that she had made a serious mistake. The colourless ‘associate’ was actually the boss. Which made Richard…what, exactly? According to Natalya, he was a soldier…a doer of deeds.

But did it also make him a killer?