The Moscow Sleepers

8

Liz was hanging up her wet raincoat on the back of her office door when her young colleague from the mail room walked in.

‘Lovely day again,’ he remarked. ‘There’s two for you.’ He dropped two brown envelopes on to her desk.

‘Thanks, and it isn’t,’ she replied. She knew what would be in the envelopes. Ever since her visit to Tallinn to meet Mischa the year before, she had been receiving fliers from the hotel she had stayed at, advertising unmissable weekend breaks at knockdown prices. She had used a cover address to go with her cover identity – she had been Liz Ryder, a former schoolteacher whose mother had recently died after a long illness. She had not given the hotel an email address so they were sending all their publicity by mail to the address she had used, where it was forwarded to her at Thames House.

She opened the first envelope; sure enough it was an advertisement for a Christmas break – full Christmas dinner with party hats and crackers, champagne and wine with dinner included. A tour of Tallinn to see the illuminations, plus carol service by candlelight in one of Tallinn’s famous churches. Liz shuddered at the idea and chucked the whole lot in the waste basket.

She slit open the next envelope expecting more of the same but this envelope felt different. Inside it was a picture postcard. The picture on the front of the card wasn’t of Tallinn. It was of a building she had never seen; it looked like an enormous glasshouse – examining it closely she saw it was an enormous glasshouse. When she turned the card over and read the caption, it turned out to be the main tropical greenhouse of the Botanical Gardens of Berlin – or strictly speaking, the Botanischer Garten.

Intrigued, she read the message written on the card in dark ink with slashing strokes:

I thought this looked a bit like St Olaf’s. M

St Olaf’s had been the church in Tallinn where she had met Mischa. But why was he sending her this picture? It didn’t look at all like St Olaf’s church. What was he trying to tell her? Was he in Berlin? That’s where it appeared to have been posted. And how had he got this address?

The last question was the easiest to answer – he could have quite easily found which tour group she was in, found which hotel they were staying in, and it wouldn’t have been too difficult to blag some unsuspecting receptionist to give out the name and address.

But what did this message mean?

The only thing written on the card, other than her name and address, were some numbers at the top, which she had at first taken to be the date the card was written. She looked at them more closely and suddenly understood that they were indeed a date and a time. Four days from now – that was the date. And 09:45 was the time. He was asking for a meeting, and it must be in this building – the greenhouse. Still staring at the card, she noticed that a small squiggle underneath the M, which she had taken to be part of the signature, was in fact a tiny drawing of a cup and saucer. So the meeting must be in the café.

Liz sat up in her chair, her mind racing. Four days – that was enough time; Berlin was a two-hour flight away. But she would have to get her ducks in a row first. There was Geoffrey Fane to get round, and just as urgently, the Americans. According to Fane they would put the kibosh on any attempts to contact Mischa. But it was Mischa who was trying to contact her. Would that make them change their minds? She hoped so.

She picked up her phone and punched in a number. The phone at the other end was picked up immediately. ‘Hello, Miles,’ she said, trying not to sound too excited.