Dead Centre

1

The extractor fan was working overtime in the low-level, low-lit twenty-five-metre range. There were six hi-tech firing cubicles, each with electric wires that spun out the target between five and twenty-five metres. The fans were there to extract the lead dust that spat from the muzzles as the rounds left the weapons. Over a period of time, that stuff can line your lungs. The fans extracted the smoke and smell of cordite and cigarettes as well. People smoked everywhere in Moscow. I didn’t know if there was a public policy against it, but even if there was, who was going to take the risk of telling you not to?

I pulled my Glock from its padded nylon zip-up. I hadn’t been a fan of these weapons when they first came out. For a start, they incorporated three different safety systems, not one of which I could feel and work with my thumb. But now, like two-thirds of USA law enforcement and many other police and military agencies around the planet, I put my hands up. I’d got it wrong. It was an excellent weapon.

I’d misjudged Moscow, too. It had taken me a while to realize it was just an extreme version of New York. You knew where you stood with the Muscovites. People didn’t open doors for each other. When you wanted something you said, ‘Give me.’ And as long as you had the roubles, you got. It was very clear-cut.

Muscovites had a live-for-today attitude that was infectious. Nothing you did in Moscow had consequences. It was a bit like the Wild West. The government was a dictatorship. The police were mostly corrupt. The crime rate was one of the highest on the planet. Most Russians were either unfriendly or downright hostile, especially if they were manning the doors of nightclubs. Moscow bouncers administered Face Control (Feis Kontrol). It didn’t matter if you were male or female, if you were a minger they wouldn’t admit you — unless you were rich. I’d even seen them split couples or groups. They were OK with my ugly face at Gunslingers, but only because I paid my membership on time.

The main reason I liked Moscow was that Anna lived there. It was nine months now since I’d taken the lease on the penthouse overlooking the Moskva River. To the right was the Borodinsky Bridge. Behind that, the Russian Federation’s government buildings. It was a great place just to sit and gaze out at the city, especially at night, when the streets were full of pissed-off mingers who’d been face controlled chuntering to themselves on the way home.

Anna had been right. Moscow looked great in summer. I must have walked in every one of the city’s ninety-six parks. Gorky Park had been the first. It was the only one I’d heard of. Then I discovered there was more green stuff here than in New York, and New York had more of it than London. It almost made me glad I’d left.

As the days got longer and warmer, Anna and I had headed for Serebryany Bor, an island just a trolleybus ride away. It could be walked at any time of day, but it was especially great in the evening when the late-setting sun bathed the dachas, the woods and the river.

I checked out the spring buds and flowers, kids on bikes with stabilizers, all the normal shit that now made sense to me. These were people who were getting on with their lives. I was getting on with mine too. It was all right. It wasn’t as if I jumped up every morning and ran outside to kiss the flowers and hug the trees, but I’d been taking the time to stand and stare. For a while, anyway. Then I’d started to get itchy feet.

The more I got to know Anna, the more I realized how alike we were. We gave each other loads of space and got on with our own lives, knowing that made us both happy.

She was certainly giving me enough space at the moment. She’d just arrived in Libya, after a four-week stint covering the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt for RT news. Since January, the only time I’d seen her was on the screen.

2

According to her reports, beamed out every day on Russia Today, Gaddafi wasn’t giving up without a fight. He had just begun bombing rebel-held Benghazi. And, of course, the Brits were still having the piss taken out of them by the Russian and the German media for the fucked-up evacuation of British nationals. The Russians — and everyone else for that matter — had sent in their ships and planes and got their people out, well before the British FCO had decided to have a think about it over a nice cup of tea one morning.

I liked it when she went away. Reporting, for her, was a matter of doing the right thing. I knew it made her happy. Maybe it was the only way that a relationship would work for me, by having gaps and then coming back together. We’d probably get on each other’s tits if we lived a conventional lifestyle.

I was looking forward to her coming home. Not only because I’d get to see her, but also because it’d mean she was out of harm’s way. Far too many reporters were getting dropped. Russia, together with many other countries, showed the horror of war much more than we tended to in the UK and US.

Instead of a doll being placed on the rubble of a bombed-out building and some bland report voiced over, Russians got to see the mangled body of the child.

Al-Jazeera and RT reporters stood in the line of fire rather than watching from the rooftop of a distant hotel. Russians got to see dogs eating the dead. They got to see it as it was. Which was why Anna and her team were in more danger.

I didn’t mind being on my own. I felt comfortable with my own company, just as Anna did. I’d been alone most of my life. I’d had lots of mates and always been around people, but I’d felt like an outsider. That was OK: I knew that was the way it was for me. I just got on with what I was doing.

I spent a lot of time in the basement gym of our condominium. For me, the gym had always been famine or feast. I did nothing for months on end because I was busy, working or injured, but when I had the time, I was in there every day.

My brain was getting a bit of a workout, too. I was reading the books I’d promised myself I was going to get through last year when I’d thought I was dying from a falsely diagnosed tumour. I did Tolstoy’s War and Peace first, seeing as I was in Russia and Anna had suggested I started on the local lads’ classics. She tested me on them, just to make sure I had done exactly what I’d promised myself. She didn’t warn me the first fucking thing was over twelve hundred pages long. It had taken me longer to read than it took Napoleon to reach Moscow.

I’d just finished Fadeyev’s The Young Guard, about the Russians’ fight against the Nazis in the Second World War. Stalin had loved that guy. Now I was into Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. A poverty-stricken young man, who views himself as intellectually superior, comes up with the idea of murdering a rich money-lender he hates. I’d read as far as the crime, so I supposed the punishment bit was coming up. I couldn’t wait to bore Anna to death about it when she got back.

I’d given the art galleries a pounding as well, and she’d taken me to Swan Lake at the Bolshoi ballet, and Così Fan Tutte at the opera house. I’d always thought it was a kind of ice cream.

I didn’t feel I’d entered a world that I’d been missing. When I’d thought I was dying, I’d felt like I had some kind of hole that needed filling. Now it was just great to know something new. But it wasn’t going to take over my life. That was why I still needed to keep my eye in on the range.

3

It’s easy to shoot well, in theory. If the weapon is correctly aimed, the trigger is squeezed and the shot released without moving it, then the round will hit the target. However, the perfect or ‘lucky’ shot that is going to save your life is the result of years of practice. It’s like building muscle at the gym: use it or lose it.

I started loading the seventeen-round magazine. A couple of punters to my left pressed their return buttons and man-shaped targets of Russian hoods with knives slid towards them. Lots of Russian piss-taking came from their cubicles as they checked each other’s hits.

Gaston Glock was a genius. He’d had no experience with firearms when he entered a design competition for a new pistol for the Austrian Army in the 1980s, but he’d come up with the idea and built a prototype within a couple of months. He might have known jack about weapons, but he knew a lot about synthetic polymers, and that was one of the things that made this gun so different. The Glock’s plastic frame made it much lighter and easier to handle, but it was also what made it so hard for people — myself included — to accept initially. But in the last thirty years it had proved reliable and durable, and old Gaston had done all right for himself.

I liked it here at Gunslingers. There was always a great mixture of police and Mafia, as well as gun nuts and European tourists doing the ‘Russian military experience’. They paid the equivalent of five euros a round to fire weapons, and up to 16,000 to fly in a MiG 23. Some of these guys, mostly the Germans, blew off about thirty grand in euros over a long weekend.

It wasn’t as if I talked to any of them or had mates there. Apart from anything else, I’d only learnt a phrase or two of Russian in the time I’d been in the country. There wasn’t much point. Moscow was one of the big tourist destinations these days and most people knew enough English for me not to have to learn Russian. If they didn’t understand me I’d do the British thing of pointing and shouting. It seemed to do the trick. I’d nod at the regulars, but only if they nodded at me first. Police and Mafia tend not to be the most sociable of people, and that was the way I liked it. I also liked coming in early, before the first tourists Rambo’d in and the place got packed.

Standing in my cubicle, I put the target out at about ten metres. I loaded a mag, pulled back on the top slide, and let go so it rammed a 9mm round into the chamber.

In the movies, when actors load semi- or automatic weapons they always pull back the top slide and keep hold of it as it goes forward. It looks good, but it’s bollocks. You’ve got to let the top slide go. The spring then forces the next round out of the magazine and into the chamber. Hamper this action and you’re going to have stoppages. Law-enforcement agencies all over the world have trouble training recruits because of how they’ve seen the likes of Russell Crowe fuck it up on screen. When a Hollywood hard guy takes cover against a wall, the camera shows him with his weapon up, barrel near his face and pointing at the sky. It’s yet more bollocks. The weapon’s got to be pointing out towards the threat. The reason directors show it the way they do is so you can see the sexy weapon very close up, so it’s next to the actor’s head and you can register his emotion before they cut to the next scene.

I still used the Weaver stance when I shot. Your body became a firing platform by adopting the stance of a fighter. My legs were shoulder-width apart, left leg forward so my body turned forty-five degrees to the target. Now I was balanced forward and back, left and right.

The eyes are the aiming mechanism and the brain is the decision maker of when to fire, but everything else is used to create stability for the weapon. The web of my right hand was pushed hard and high into the grip. The higher the grip, the better the bore axis, the better the control of the weapon as the muzzle jumped when I fired. That was important. If I had to draw down outside this club it wouldn’t be just one round at a time and at a paper target. Semi-automatic pistols are designed for a high grip. When the top slide comes back to reload after a round is fired, it needs to move against the abutment of a firmly held weapon frame. If not, the top slide may not go all the way back and may not be able to reload. Then I’d be fucked.

My bottom three fingers were like a vice. My thumb was wrapped round the other side of the pistol grip. Only my trigger finger was free. It was the only thing that was allowed to move. Fuck the gentle tremor that I knew would be there as I aimed. This was a lump of metal that had to be controlled if it was to do its job. If I gripped the weapon and aimed correctly, the tremor would be where I wanted to hit.

I brought the weapon up towards the target, my support hand wrapped around the dominant hand. My shoulder was forward so my nose was closer to the target than my toes. My right arm pushed the weapon towards the target as my left exerted rearward pressure so the platform was rigid.

I lifted the weapon to the centre mass of the raging Russian. Both eyes fixed on the target; dead centre of mass. The weapon’s metal foresight came into my vision and became my primary focus. The target and the rear sight were now just blurs. I made sure the split at the back of the rear sight was level with the foresight. Then everything blurred as I focused on the foresight with both eyes.

As I squeezed, I felt the trigger safety with the first crease in my finger, the small lever that released the trigger action.

The foresight rested on the centre of mass and I finished my squeeze. The trigger went back. The round kicked off.

I didn’t check to see where my round had hit. I’d find out soon enough when I retrieved the target. I just carried on firing, bringing the weapon down, then slowly up again into the same point of aim.

The only negative about coming down to Gunslingers was that it gave me itchy feet. Not to get out of Moscow, or away from Anna — far from it. But there was only so much reading, art and opera you could take in one burst. If I wanted to get out there again, it wasn’t because I needed the money. There was still plenty of that left. If Anna had taught me one thing, it was that money isn’t everything. It certainly wasn’t her motivation. It was easy for me to say that money wasn’t mine now that I had plenty of it, but I was starting to understand why Anna did what she did. Besides, going away for a bit of work the next time Anna was on a trip would make me want to come back to her and Moscow even more.

I squeezed off round after round, no double taps, just slow-time singles, making sure my skills and my eye were still in. I was in no rush. I’d bang out a couple of mags, clean my weapon, and take a walk home to get stuck into a bit of Punishment.

4

The coffee shop was further down the corridor, in an area that looked as if it had once been a Cold War nuclear bunker. The new owners had given it a complete makeover. It was warm and welcoming, and did a good trade in coffee and a roaring one in vodka and Baltika beer. Nobody saw a problem with customers having a few looseners before they picked up a weapon.

There wasn’t one Moscow bar or coffee shop that was what it seemed. Once you were in, they didn’t want you to leave. Almost every bar doubled as a restaurant, a bowling alley, snooker hall, casino, bookshop or, in this case, a gun club. Moscow is so huge and cabs are so expensive that bar owners want their customers to have everything they could possibly want from dawn till dusk — and on from dusk till dawn.

I’d only been to Gunslingers a couple of times in the evening, and only because Anna said I should see Moscow when the cash was really being flashed. All of a sudden there were dancing girls, acrobats and laser light shows. Buying a table, which I didn’t, but which gave you guaranteed entrance, a place to sit and a bar-tab, cost five thousand dollars. That was cheap; in some places it could be more than twenty thousand.

There were about five others in the bar that morning. Leather jackets weren’t back in vogue as it wasn’t yet spring. For now it was anything that was thick and padded.

At night, it was wall-to-wall Prada. The clubbers I’d seen were a mix of the beautiful, the rich, the well-connected, and those who wanted to be — mostly models, hookers, and girls with cocaine sparkling in their eyes as they scoped the room for ‘sponsors’. And there were always plenty of wealthy men offering.

I was watching one of the six huge plasma screens hung around the walls. Two of them were linked to the ranges, so you could watch people trying to shoot under the influence. The first two tourists to come into view were German, judging by the flags sewn onto their parkas. They had that comfortable look about them, with premature beer bellies and thick moustaches.

The screen I was watching was linked to the English news channel on Russia Today. The girls always made sure it was on for me at ten a.m. so I could watch Anna’s first report of the day. I never had a clue what she said because the sound was kept down, but that didn’t matter. I could see that she was alive, and that she didn’t have loads of holes in her. You could tell that she loved what she was doing, even in the middle of a war zone.

I was a bit early today. The screen was filled with images of Japanese military helicopters dropping water on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant as they tried to avert a full meltdown. The number of confirmed dead and missing after the tsunami now stood at nearly thirteen thousand. Some 450,000 people had been staying in temporary shelters amid sub-zero night-time temperatures.

The German comedy show next door was much better viewing. The two lads were about to enjoy some AK action down one of the longer ranges. It wasn’t heated, and their breath condensed around them in clouds. So did the cordite fumes kicking from their muzzles.

The AKs jerked into their shoulders and pushed them backwards. Mong was behind one of them as he fired, pushing the guy forward to try and keep the barrel pointing down the range. Rounds cracked and ricocheted off the concrete. These lads were giving it twenty-round bursts, when they’d have been told to limit them to five. At five euros a round, I doubted Mong cared that much.

He wasn’t really Mong, of course. He just looked like him. Or maybe he didn’t, and it was the endless news footage that made me think back to our time in Aceh. Whatever it was, every time I saw him, I wondered if he had tattoos on his arse.

5

Mong was getting a bit more pissed off. These two were tearing the arse out of it. They started to Rambo it up, firing from the hip, which made the AKs swing to the right with each burst. It was a total gang-fuck. The real Mong would have banged their heads together.

It always made me sad to think of him. Or maybe I just felt guilty. I’d kept my word after the job. I’d looked after Tracy. Jan had sucked cash out of her like a vacuum cleaner, and Tracy had paid for her mother to have private medical treatment for her cancer and home care afterwards, so I gave her money when I could.

If I was in Hereford I always went to check that things were all right. They weren’t, of course. She was devastated: she’d gone into a deep depression and it was taking her a long time to climb out. The cash I gave helped her pay the bills, but it wasn’t really what she needed. I never stopped telling her to get out of Hereford, to make a new start, but she didn’t want to leave her mum and Jan to fend for themselves.

I got the Glock out and started cleaning the barrel with a small brush. I smiled as I thought about all the times I used to take the piss out of Mong for being soft in the head and sending money to his supermarket woman.

When I’d got out of Russia with a few million dollars of a corrupt company’s money in 2009 and bought the London flat, Tracy was the first person I wrote to. I told her I’d settle the mortgage so at least she had security. If she wanted to sell the house, she could do what the fuck she wanted with the proceeds.

She wrote back. She was really happy to have an address for me at last, and told me thanks, but no thanks. Her mum had died six months earlier and she’d finally taken my advice and got a job as a nanny in the South of France. She’d met a man. A Ukrainian guy called Frank. It didn’t strike me as the commonest name for a Ukrainian, but that was beside the point. Tracy was in love. She’d sold the house and moved to be with him.

There was no return address, just thanks for all I had done. She told me life was wonderful, and how much she wished she’d taken my advice earlier.

I felt happy for her, but the last paragraph choked me up. She thanked me for all I’d done for Mong. I’d been a true friend to him, she said. I’d always watched his back. And she would always be my friend, too. Mong would have wanted it that way.

I was cleaning the barrel a bit too vigorously. I felt the same way I had the first time I’d read the letter. That she wouldn’t have had to go through all this shit if Mong was still alive. And he would have been, if I’d stood firm about him not going to help BB.

6

Two brits I’d seen there a couple of times before came into the coffee shop and ordered espressos. They reminded me of the comedians Mitchell and Webb. Their accents were almost posh, the sort estate agents might develop after a few years’ running around in designer Minis selling overpriced properties to Sloanes or the Notting Hill mob.

Their hair was well cut but over-gelled, and they were cleanshaven. They wore Armani jeans and shirts, with rugby-ball cufflinks. You saw a lot of guys like them around town, with money to burn and plenty of drop-dead beautiful Svetlanas and Nadias happy to help them — for a suitable fee. These were sex-pats. They’d be down here later tonight, no doubt, watching the women who danced in cages, and buying shots from the ones wearing bikinis and vodka bottles slung in hip-holsters.

The ex-pat women didn’t get left out. There were plenty of Russian men looking to provide the same service. This was an equal-opportunities town.

Companies that sent staff to dangerous places showered them with incentives. Forget bankers’ bonuses. On top of their monster salaries, these guys got free rent, foreign service premiums, and cost-of-living allowances. No wonder money lost its meaning for them. After a thousand-dollar dinner at the Café Pushkin, they went to clubs like Gunslingers and ordered vodka tonics at thirty dollars a time. Then they’d select their sofas and wait for the girls to come say hi. Behind each was a private room. The menu on the table — in Russian, Japanese and English — helped you budget for what happened in there: Intercourse 30 minutes: $500.

Then they all turned up at their banks and law firms the next morning after about half an hour’s sleep. By lunchtime they’d be having the first one of the day in the company bar or snorting a line of coke on their desk to steady their nerves.

Anna had a word for their disease: anomie. ‘It means a breakdown of social norms or values, Nicholas. Distance from home puts personal values out of mind.’

It was just the kind of thing her favourite Russian authors banged on about. My new best mate Fyodor Dostoevsky certainly went for it in Crime and Punishment. The main character was trying to justify murder by saying it was not people he was killing but a principle.

Good luck to them. Why not? It didn’t bother me. I just got on with my own life and let those jokers get on with theirs.

Mitchell, the well-fed one with the side parting, turned to me. ‘You’re a Brit, aren’t you?’

I looked up from reassembling the weapon. ‘Yep.’

‘We are too.’

He pointed at the Glock. ‘We like them. That your own?’

I nodded.

‘I’ve seen you shoot a couple of times. We’re thinking of joining, buying some Glocks, having some fun.’

Webb, taller, with dirty-blond hair, was concentrating on the TV. RT ran the intro to the ten o’clock news.

‘Yeah, that’d be good.’

‘What do you do with the gun? Do you have it locked up at home, or is it better to leave them here? Is it a drama carrying a pistol across town?’

The RT announcer was a very bland-looking guy with thinning hair and rimless glasses. The headlines kicked off with Libya. Anna would be on soon. Gaddafi had launched his first bombing raids on Benghazi. The West had called for a no-fly zone and Russia was sitting back and laughing at it all.

‘I just leave mine here, mate. I don’t need it at home. And I don’t want it burning a hole in my pocket.’

I glanced at the screen above his head. Anna was gobbing off into her mike, with crowds of chanting Libyans around her.

Mitchell got the hint and went back to his showbiz partner, who was now watching Mong get even more pissed off with the Germans. They were larging it in front of an increasingly long queue of tourists waiting their turn.

7

Anna looked as good as ever. The water in Benghazi must have been back on. The last email I’d got from her, the day before yesterday, told me the water had been cut off and she hadn’t washed her hair for a week. Her two-minute piece was done. I’d watch the full-length version when it came on later. The three o’clock news was more in-depth.

I zipped my Glock back into its case and handed it in to the armoury. I didn’t bother saying goodbye to my new showbiz mates. I got my coat and headed outside into –8 °C.

The Russian media took the piss out of the UK continuously for grinding to a halt at the first hint of a snowflake. Moscow hadn’t seen a winter like this one for well over forty years, but it was still functioning. The mayor had gripped the situation. He’d raised an army of six thousand street cleaners.

The city was covered with gloomy grey and black slush but nowhere was impassable. Ladas and Mercedes spun a bit and people slid, but it was business as normal. There was very little grumbling about it. Some people just forgot about their cars until spring. They took the Metro, the same as I did.

The only problem was ice falling from rooftops. Two kids had been seriously injured yesterday. In St Petersburg, the roofs of a hospital and a hypermarket had collapsed under the weight of snow. They’d probably been built in the 1980s when Putin was mayor and subbing jobs out to the Mafia.

Unless there was an icicle with my name on it, I was weatherproof. I wore a North Face parka with a huge hood well and truly done up. I looked out at the world through a little circle of fur a few inches in front of my face. The hood was so big it didn’t move when I turned my head. I looked like Kenny out of South Park. On my feet I had a pair of Dubarrys, the Gore-Tex and leather boots that were all the rage in this city. They looked like posh wellies. Anna had bought me a pair as a present for my first winter here.

According to the mayor, this was going to be the last time the city ever suffered from snow. The grey stuff reflected badly on its image, and he was going to do something about it. This boy had more money at his disposal than many a nation’s GDP. He probably spent more in a day than Boris did in a year.

He’d decided to ban snow from the city. He was going to invest in the same cloud-sealing programme the city rolled out on all the major holidays to ensure the citizens of Moscow didn’t get rained on. When had it ever rained on a May Day parade? Never. The city paid for jets to get up there and spray silver iodine into any clouds heading Moscow’s way so they’d dump their rain upwind well before it could spoil things in Red Square. I wouldn’t be needing the Dubarrys next May Day.

Alongside the biggest collection of billionaires on earth there was a massive migrant population, as well as millions of the poor, the old, the dying and the drugged. These people were all fucked big-time. I passed a collection of Soviet concrete blocks where they scraped a living.

Portable paraffin heaters provided their only warmth, but gave off so much moisture that their windows were still frozen solid on the inside — unless the residents had sold the glass and shoved up plywood in its place. In Putin’s Russia, everyone was an entrepreneur.

8

One of the promises I’d made myself during my dying days was to take the time to ‘stand and stare’, as Anna called it — to look at trees and plants, walk through gardens, shit like that. So every time I came out of Gunslingers, I turned left through Victory Park, along ‘Years of War’, its central avenue. Then I got the trolleybus home.

Victory Park was a new creation. It was only finished after years of fuck-ups in the mid-1990s. Poklonnaya Gora, the hill it sat on, was where Napoleon had waited to be given the keys to the city when his troops surrounded it in 1812. He’d waited in vain.

The park was finished just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of what we called the Second World War and the Russians called the Great Patriotic War. They had little interest in what had happened elsewhere. Fair one — more Russians were killed between ’41 and ’45 than all the other Allies put together. And eight out of ten Germans killed were dropped by the Soviets. In Western history books, those little details always seem to get lost in the footnotes.

The ‘Years of War’ had five terraces, one for each year of the conflict, and 1,418 fountains, one for every day. They weren’t working at the moment because everything was frozen. But there were chapels, mosques, statues, rockets, all sorts of shit — and then, right at the centre, one big fuck-off statue of Nike, the goddess of victory. I kept meaning to ask Anna the Russian for ‘Just do it’.

She was going to take me there on Victory Day, 9 May. Veterans, survivors, kids, everybody turned out. I was looking forward to seeing the old and bold. They’d be wearing more medals than Gaddafi. And it wouldn’t be raining.

I was nearly at the main gate, head down, nose running, hands in pockets, making sure I didn’t slip on the ice, when the front panel and an alloy wheel with the Range Rover logo appeared in what little peripheral vision my hood allowed.

‘Hey, fella, want a lift?’ It was the gunslinger without the side parting.

My head turned but my hood stayed where it was. I pulled the fur aside. Webb was at the driver’s window of a white wagon stained grey by today’s slush.

‘Where are you going? We’ll take you. It’s fucking freezing out there.’

‘Nah, it’s all right — I need the exercise.’

I turned through a set of fancy iron gates. The Range Rover’s engine revved behind me, but instead of driving away it turned into the park. The wagon swept past and pulled up about three metres ahead of me. Even the number plate spelt drama. The back door swung open. Mitchell, in a big black Puffa, beckoned me inside. But he wasn’t smiling. ‘Come on, my friend. It’s a lot warmer in here.’

The driver’s window was still powered down, and I could see that Webb wasn’t smiling either.

I was about to turn back towards the main when Mitchell stepped out, weapon up. He’d obviously decided not to follow my advice. ‘In — the — fucking — vehicle — now.’

9

I swung back towards him, hands now out of my pockets and up by my chest. Head down, I focused on the weapon. I could smell the exhaust fumes billowing from the cold engine. I got to within a couple of paces of the open door. I could smell the rich leather interior as I leant closer, and feel the warmth of the heater.

I punched out with my left hand and grabbed the top of Mitchell’s Glock. I pushed down, gripping it so I was outside his arc of fire, and jabbed at his face with my right. Short, sharp jabs, three or four in quick succession. Not caring where they hit, just that they did.

As his head jerked back, I took my chance. I found the trigger of the weapon and pushed down and round until the barrel pointed towards him.

The Glock jumped in my hand as a shot kicked out and the guy went down. I let go, turned and legged it as fast as I could, back through the gates. I screamed across the road, slipping on ice the other side and going down hard. I got up, legs flailing, and turned immediately right, out of their line of sight and fire. I kept running, not looking back — not that I could have with my hood up — and took another right.

I found myself in a service road. Steam spewed from heating vents set into the back wall of an industrial unit and engulfed a line of huge industrial wheelie-bins. I dodged between two of them, three-quarters of the way down, and fought to recover my breath.

Webb would have had to wait until Mitchell was back in the wagon before coming after me. Even if he didn’t give a shit about him, he couldn’t just leave the boy bleeding into the Victory Avenue snow. The police would soon be asking why.

I leant against the wall, heart pounding. Now that I was still, the cold began to eat its way into my feet. But at least they were dry; that was all that mattered right now.

I kept looking left and right to cover both exits of the service road. It wasn’t long before Webb drove past the end I’d come in from. There wasn’t much exhaust vapour now his engine had warmed up.

I had to assume they knew where I lived. And that meant the only thing I could do was face them up. I had to find out who the fuck they were and why they wanted me.

It looked as if Dostoevsky would have to wait. There was no way I could risk heading back to the flat or the range — or to any other known location — until I’d sorted this shit out.

And if the Range Rover’s number plate was anything to go by, there was plenty of shit to sort.

10

In Moscow, real people’s cars have white plates with black letters. The Range Rover had red ones with white numbers. Diplomatic plates. That could have meant jack-shit. You could buy them on the black market: they let you travel in the government-designated fast lanes and beat the Moscow jams.

Lads with red plates were never stopped. About a month ago, the police had a clamp-down on their illegal use. They pulled over a genuine red-plated wagon: the diplomat’s BGs jumped out and overpowered them, spread the officers on the ground, weapons confiscated. How were they to know the police were genuine?

But even if they were black-market gear, I still had to worry. These things cost at least twenty-five thousand dollars — more if you threw in the blue flashing lights. Which meant that whoever was after me had money as well as Glocks — and that wasn’t good news.

Fuck it. Running away would only make me die short of breath. And then I’d never know what this was all about.

I started to retrace my steps. They’d be back along that street sooner or later. They’d hit all known locations: Gunslingers, maybe the flat. Then they’d cruise around for a while longer. But not indefinitely. Mitchell was going to need medical attention, unless Webb was going to let him bleed to death. So I needed them to find me before they made that drop.

I got back on the main, hood still up, but enough of my face sticking out to be able to spot the nearest mini-mart. These places were even more prolific than Starbucks. They sold everything the man who had nothing could possibly want: cigarettes, alcohol, sulphuric acid to keep your crumbling piping clear, paraffin to keep you warm and your windows frozen.

I dodged and wove my way through the traffic and went into Apricot Garden. There wasn’t a piece of fruit in sight; they all had names like that. Milky Way, Cowboy’s Stable, you name it.

The Russian version of X Factor blared from a TV mounted above the counter. An old woman who looked as though she’d been sitting by the checkout since before the Cold War puffed a cigarette and watched Simon Cowellski put the local hopefuls through their paces.

I scanned the aisles, then grabbed a hammer and some overpriced paraffin in the kind of plastic five-litre container we’d use for ready-mixed screen-wash.

I arrived at the counter as Simon gave his verdict and the singer burst into tears. A dozen or so brands of cigarette were on display, from Lucky Strike and Marlboro to Leningrad and CCCP in bold, no-nonsense Soviet-style packaging for those who still missed the old ways. I was interested in the lighters alongside them.

I grunted and pointed. She hoovered up my roubles without taking her eyes off the screen.

I headed back to the bins, put down my newly purchased gear and unclipped the wheel retainers on the last one in the line. I unscrewed the top of the paraffin container and pressed my thumb into the seal until it broke, then left it on the ground.

I retraced my steps to the corner and looked around uncertainly, as if I was waiting for a pickup. I checked once more behind me. They’d be able to get their wagon down the service road, no problem.

11

I didn’t have long to wait. The Range Rover was moving a lot faster now. Webb was still at the wheel. He spotted me and his mouth moved in double-time behind the windscreen.

He hit the brakes just past the service road and the wheels spun in the slush. Mitchell was forced up and forward from where he was lying in the back seat and I saw him give a silent scream of pain as I turned and legged it down the service road, giving my best impression of a headless chicken. I shoved the lighter between my teeth.

The Range Rover reversed at speed. I heard the engine roar as it powered into the narrow space. I reached the wheelie-bins, slid behind the last one, back against the wall, and shoved against it with both arms and then my right foot. The bin toppled into the path of the oncoming wagon.

There was a flash of grime-covered white as Webb stood on the brakes, but he was too late. Metal screeched on metal and the bin clattered off down the road.

The air-bags kicked off in the Range Rover’s cabin.

I grabbed the hammer in my right hand and the paraffin container in my left.

Webb tried to exit but his door smashed against the wall. There wasn’t room for him to get out. I swung the hammer at the bottom left-hand corner of the rear passenger window before they had time to draw down. The safety glass starred, then shattered.

Shouts of anger and pain came from inside. I shoved the paraffin container against the frame and pushed down on it with my right forearm. There was a fine spray for a couple of seconds, then the rest of the seal gave way and fluid gushed into the interior. The fumes burnt my nostrils and can’t have been much fun for theirs.

I dropped the container and shoved my left fist through the hole, lighter at the ready, thumb on the roller.

‘Show me your hands!’

They got the message loud and clear. Webb put his straight on the steering wheel. He wasn’t pleased. ‘You’ve fucked up, Stone. Just stand down.’

‘Who the fuck are you? What do you want with me?’

I didn’t get an answer. Maybe I wasn’t sounding crazy enough.

I cranked it up. ‘What the fuck do you want? Tell me or I’ll fucking torch this. Tell me — tell me now!’

I glanced down. The paraffin had mixed nicely with Mitchell’s blood on the tan leather. His leg was a mess.

I heard a squeal of brakes and the scream of an engine coming towards us from the other end of the service road. Another Range Rover, two up. Black with a blue flashing light on the driver’s side of the roof. That was all I had time to register before I turned and started running in the opposite direction.

I heard no shouts, no commands to stop, no gunfire. I kept on running.

Then my head exploded. I went down like liquid. My legs moved like I was still running, but I knew I was going nowhere. Hands grabbed me and dragged my face across the hammer that had dropped me.

12

It wasn’t long before I was in the back of the undamaged Range Rover, hands secured to my ankles with plasticuffs. I rested my forehead on the leather upholstery of the seat in front of me to try to release the pressure on my wrists.

My skull had recovered from the initial pain where the hammer had connected, but I knew I was going to have a big fuck-off headache for the rest of the day. I just hoped it wasn’t a fracture and I’d get the chance to sort out the cut. I couldn’t feel any wetness, but I knew there had to be one. Maybe my parka had soaked up the blood before it reached my neck.

Both wagons backed out of the service road. The driver of mine was a big old Nigerian lad in a blue Puffa. Blue and red beads tied off each braid of his cornrows and he had a shaving rash under his chin. The guy beside him looked like Genghis Khan. He must have come straight from the steppes. He kept turning in his seat to make sure his passenger wasn’t trying to escape — as if I was going to get far even if I did.

The blue light started to flash. I could see it bouncing off shop windows as we drove down the main. We were heading out of the city.

I was flapping. None of these guys cared about what I saw or heard, and that wasn’t a good thing. It could mean they knew I was never going to get the chance to tell anybody.

I checked the dash clock: 11:17. I tried to get a view of the speedo but it was blocked by the driver’s Puffa. The sat-nav was glowing, but it was all in Russian. All I got from it was our direction of travel.

Genghis had his phone out. He grunted acknowledgements to whoever was on the other end and closed it down. These vehicles were brand new. The white one must have lost its sumptuous showroom smell, but the warmth and luxury of this one almost lulled me into feeling safe.

I gave everybody time to settle down before I tried to get some sort of relationship going. I didn’t even know if these lads spoke English.

‘The small guy — he OK? No hard feelings, eh? I—’

With a rustle of nylon jacket, Genghis turned and put his forefinger to his lips. He shushed me like a child. I nodded, returned my forehead to the seatback and began a close examination of the carpet.

There wasn’t any point in trying to talk with these guys. They were only the monkeys. And if the organ-grinder wanted me dead, I would have been dead by now. They’d have done it in the alleyway while I was half concussed. But why had they let me see their faces? And why weren’t they pissed off that I’d shot their mate?

I raised my head and caught another glimpse of the sat-nav. We were still heading west, but keeping off the M1, the main motorway. Suburbia was just beginning to take shape on the Moscow margins. The media were full of it — all the usual moaning about forests having huge holes ripped out of them to make way for gated communities with names like Navaho and Chelsea.

The road was now lined with trees and the potholes were getting more treacherous.

13

An hour and twenty-seven minutes later we turned off towards a village. I’d spent every second of that time trying not to get bounced around in the foot-well, so the small of my back was now as painful as my neck.

Genghis sparked up his cell again.

This wasn’t Navaho or Chelsea. The buildings were timber-framed and exuded an air of history. Enormous dachas, three storeys high with huge, overhanging roofs, stood behind big walls. These were the weekend retreats of wealthy Muscovites, built in the time of the Tsar. Tyre tracks led in and out of the driveways. There was no foot traffic at all. The rich didn’t need to walk and their snow was pure white.

We turned through a massive set of slowly opening wooden gates. I saw cedar tiles cladding a steeply pitched roof. Condensation billowed from modern heating ducts on the side of the old building. It looked like something out of a spy story. The whole village did.

The Range Rover crunched across the snow, flanking the dacha. Huge trees circled a snow-lined playground, gardens and a swimming-pool. I could just make out the little handles round the edge to help you out of the water. We swooped round to the back of the house and stopped behind another Range Rover with red plates. Genghis jumped out and produced an eight-inch blade from a sheath at his hip. My door opened. The blade flashed in the sunlight and the plasticuffs put up only token resistance. As I straightened, he pointed the tip of his knife towards the wooden veranda.

The cold slapped me in the face as I headed up the three steps. Crows squawked in a field the other side of the trees. I touched the swelling on the back of my head. The skin had broken, but the heat of the Range Rover had dried the wound.

Three doors led off the veranda: a bug screen for the summer, followed by a triple-glazed monster with an aluminium frame and finally the hand-carved wooden original.

I stepped into a big shiny modern kitchen, all white marble and stainless steel. It couldn’t have provided a more dramatic contrast to the exterior. I stood on a polished stone floor with the sweet smell of Russian cleaning fluids, that really intense mixture of rose perfume and bleach, assaulting my nostrils. And it was even hotter in there than it had been in the Range Rover.

A small man in his late forties sat facing me at a white marble table. His hair was brushed back. There was a hint of grey at the temples. He was immersed in a Russian broadsheet, the front page full of the Fukushima meltdown. ‘Coffee?’ Without looking up, he pointed to a cappuccino machine the size of a nuclear reactor. ‘Help yourself and sit down over here with me.’

He was wearing black suit trousers, shiny black leather shoes, a grey shirt and V-neck jumper. A white magnetic board hung on the wall behind him, covered with photos and all the normal family shit. A scaled-down red Ferrari with an electric engine was parked beneath it, next to a Tupperware crate containing every shape and size of game ball. The cappuccino machine stood beside a white marble sink large enough to dismember a body in.

‘Relax, Nick. No one else is going to interrupt us, and you’re in no danger. I just want to talk with you.’ His English was precise, but his accent was surprisingly guttural. He sounded like Hollywood’s idea of a Cold War Soviet agent.

‘Please.’ He nodded again towards the dozen or so matching blue mugs that were lined up on the spotless work surface. ‘Get yourself whatever you fancy. Then come and sit down.’

I wasn’t going to turn down a brew. It could be my last for a while. I piled in the sugar in case I needed an energy boost some time soon. I lifted the shiny glass jug from its hotplate and poured myself a generous shot of its contents.

‘Do you know where you are, Nick?’

I reached for the condensed milk. ‘Not a clue.’

‘Peredelkino. A very nice place, steeped in history. It’s known as the writers’ village. Many famous Russians have lived here, Russians who have changed the world with their words and their wisdom. Do you admire our great Russian writers, Nick?’

I stirred the milk into my coffee. It was so thick with sugar I could stand the spoon up in it. ‘I read when I can.’

‘Tarkovsky? Pasternak? Fadeyev?’

I raised an eyebrow. I knew he was taking the piss. ‘The guy who said Stalin was the greatest humanitarian the world has ever known? Good writer, but I wouldn’t trust his character references, would you?’

I didn’t give a fuck what he thought, but I was quite pleased that he was suddenly sitting up and paying attention.

‘We all need friends in high places, Nick.’ He waved his hand at a huge picture window. ‘Every one of these great writers had a dacha here, you know. They’re buried here too. Peredelkino is featured in a le Carré novel — The Russia House.’

I finished stirring. ‘Is that so?’

‘There’s a lot of history in these dachas. If only they had ears.’ A thought struck him. ‘Well, maybe some of them did have ears during the Soviet era, yes?’

The triple-glazed windows slightly warped the view, but I knew that if I had to leg it, I’d head for the door I’d come through and straight towards the swings and the slide. Then into the tree line, even though I didn’t know what was on the other side of it. I’d go and see what the crows were up to.

The small man flicked through the pages of his newspaper with one hand, as he motioned with the other for me to sit opposite him.

‘What are you reading now, Nick?’

‘Dostoevsky.’ I gave him my best poker face. ‘Crime and Punishment. But I’ve got a feeling I won’t be finishing it any time soon.’

‘When you do, you will find knowledge and enlightenment. I came to books late, but …’ He closed the paper and raised his hands. ‘… as we all know, Nick, knowledge — of whatever kind — is power.’

I sat there with the brew. He was playing with me, enjoying the moment, even though he wasn’t showing it. Not a hint of a smile crossed his face. He was like Arnie in Terminator mode.

‘Thanks for the tip. But isn’t it time you introduced yourself? And told me what you want?’

He waved my questions away. ‘How’s Anna? Is she enjoying North Africa? I watch her every day. It’s a little warmer there, I suspect.’

If he was trying to impress me, he’d succeeded.

I put my mug down on the white marble. ‘She in trouble?’ I kept my voice even. It was pointless getting sparked up. I’d know the answer soon enough.

‘This is not about Anna, Nick. No, this is about another of your women.’

My head pounded. I was starting to get pissed off. If he was going to hurt me or offer me something — I didn’t really care which — I just wanted him to get on with it.

He dragged his seat backwards, turned and pulled one of the photos from the steel board. A well-manicured hand spun it towards me. Then he settled back, putting a bit of distance between himself and the table.

A woman and a young boy cuddled one another on the garden swings.

She’d changed the colour of her hair; it had blonde highlights now, and was a lot longer, well past her shoulders.

‘She’s still beautiful.’

He nodded. ‘Of course. And you knew her husband. Knew him well. What was his name?’

‘Montgomery. We called him Mong.’

He nodded, satisfied.

‘So you’re Frank.’

‘Francis. But until we get to know each other better, you may call me Mr Timis.’

‘Not very Ukrainian.’

‘It puts you Westerners at ease.’

‘What’s happened to Tracy? Is she OK? Or is it the boy?’

‘Stefan.’

‘Your son?’

‘Yes, he’s my son. Look closer — you will see.’

I did. The boy’s eyes were fixed on the camera as if he was interrogating it. The only difference between father and son was the grin on the boy’s face. Frank probably hoped that in a few years’ time the whole smiling thing would just run its course, and Stefan would turn into his father’s son.

His eyes suddenly burnt, and I knew playtime was over. ‘I have a problem. I need your help. Someone has stolen them from me. And I want you to get them back.’

14

‘Have you heard from them? Has anyone contacted you?’

He leant forward, keeping my gaze. He was still remarkably cool, even for a machine. Which was probably why he managed to be whatever he was. ‘No. If they had, I wouldn’t need you.’

I gestured at the wound on the back of my head. ‘Is this what passes for a golden handshake round here? I could have been killed. And so could that lad who bled all over your car seat.’

Frank’s face was stone. ‘I had to know if you are … capable. I only know what you used to do, not if you can still do it. What is it you Brits say — to see if you can still cut some mustard?’

He said it without a trace of a smile. The emotion gene had bypassed Mr T.

‘What about the lad I shot? Are his mustard-cutting days over?’

‘He’ll have a fine life. He’ll get drunk and tell stories of how he fought off five assassins. With the money I’m going to pay him, the women will hang on every word. You’ve done him a very big favour.’ He waved his hand dismissively. ‘Don’t worry about him. Worry instead about my son and his mother. You have certain responsibilities towards her. Or did she lie to me? This is not just personal for me, Nick — it is for you, too, would you not say?’

I took a swig of the brew and gave him a nod. ‘What do you know?’

‘Only that they were taken four days ago, along with their bodyguard. The pirates seized the yacht about a hundred kilometres west of the Seychelles. I’ll pay them whatever they want, Nick. Just find them, and broker the deal.’

It was only a couple of days since four Americans had been killed on their yacht during a bungled rescue operation, after being hijacked off the Horn of Africa. In South East Asia this would have been pretty routine. Crew and passengers were killed and thrown overboard; the ships and their contents were seized. But this was a bit of a turn-up for the Somalis. As far as they were concerned, the people were the prize.

I didn’t know if Frank knew about the US deaths, but either way I’d have to start to manage his expectations. Right now they seemed pretty high, considering he knew fuck-all about what had happened.

‘You sure nobody’s contacted you, even indirectly?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Then how do you know the yacht’s been taken?’

‘The crew was dumped. The yacht was taken with the three of them still aboard. The crew arrived back in Moscow this morning. You will go and see them when we’ve finished here.’

‘The BG, the bodyguard — is he good?’

‘He’s British, like you. He will be doing what he can. I know it. But I will have no further need of him once all this is over. Stefan and his mother — I want them back. I don’t care what it costs.’

I looked at the picture again. ‘This isn’t as clear-cut as you might think. If you pay what the pirates ask, you may put them in more danger. If you don’t bargain, they’ll think you’re loaded. They’ll take your money and then they’ll sell them on to another clan and the whole process will start all over again. Or rival clans could go to war over them. Either way, you’ll never get them back.’

‘Money talks, Nick. If—’

‘There is a protocol. As long as you stick to it, there’s a chance of getting them back. You understand that?’

‘Of course. That is why you are here.’

‘You’ve got to start thinking of them as dead. Plan their funerals in your head. Anything else is a bonus. Do you understand that too?’

He nodded.

‘All right. To confirm, no one has contacted you? No one has been given a message to pass on? No contact number was left with the crew?’

He shook his head.

Maybe Frank hadn’t heard anything yet because they were dead. Or maybe the BG was switched on enough not to give him as the point of contact.

‘So why me? Why aren’t you doing this through your insurance company? They have people who do this sort of thing twenty-four/seven. Or why not get the word out some other way? Knowledge, as you say, is power. And the red plates out there tell me you’ve got both. Why have you come to me?’

He shrugged. ‘I have my reasons. I will pay you extremely well. But we can talk about all that later. Tracy respects you, Nick. I think perhaps she loves you. You have been a good friend to her, not just to her husband. You will not let her down now, will you?’

Eyes riveted to mine, he pointed his finger. ‘You will be doing what you do best. And doing it for somebody you care about. What could be better for a man’s soul? Read some of the books that have been written in this village, Nick. Then you will understand what I am talking about.’

I took another mouthful of my brew. The coffee wasn’t hot any longer, but it still tasted good. ‘I’ll have to try and find a contact. Once I’ve done that, I’ll get back to you. It’s pointless talking about anything else until we know they’re alive.’

He nodded again, slowly.

‘Don’t raise your hopes.’

He pulled a business card from his shirt pocket. The only thing on it was a mobile number. ‘Call me whenever you want. Do not give this out to anyone else. Please remember the number and then destroy the card.’ His eyes burnt again. ‘I’m a very private man.’

The card went into the pocket of my jeans.

‘I need you to buy me a flat, somewhere on the outskirts of London. No more than a hundred and fifty K. In my full name. You know that, of course.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Why?’

I was sure money wasn’t the reason he wanted to know. ‘You’ll find out why if they are still alive. But the only way to get them out safely will be to do exactly what I say.’

An engine rumbled alongside the dacha. The smashed-up Range Rover came into view and Webb climbed out.

Frank leant over the table, eyes boring into me. ‘I want my son and his mother back here. Whatever it costs.’

I took a last mouthful of the brew and swallowed. Finally, I nodded.

If he was pleased at my decision he didn’t show it. He sat back. ‘The crew is waiting for you.’

I gestured towards the sink. ‘Just give me a couple of minutes to clean my head.’

15

I kept my hood up as we stepped into the luxurious lobby of the Ararat Park Hyatt. This was an extraordinarily lavish hotel. The management would have surveillance measures to match.

I didn’t look around much as we headed for the elevators. But the little I saw of the polished steel and marble atrium told me that Frank Timis looked after his people. The cheapest room would be about six hundred dollars a night, and not just because of the architecture. Neglinnaya Street was in the heart of the city, within spitting distance of Red Square, the Kremlin, St Basil’s Cathedral and the Bolshoi Theatre. Property here would cost millions of roubles a square metre. We were on oligarch turf.

The one thing my hood didn’t shield me from was the smell. It was roses and bleach again. Either that scent really was everywhere or it was buried inside my head.

The drive back to the city had been as talkative as the one in. We took the same route. Genghis drove this time. The Nigerian rode shotgun. He was constantly on the phone. He talked in Russian.

This suited me. I hadn’t come to any decision on Frank yet. I didn’t know enough about him to make a judgement, and I didn’t know enough about the situation. All I knew was that it involved Tracy, so here I was.

In the exposed, space-age lift, the Nigerian pressed the button for the fourth floor. We raced upwards while the world below chatted over coffee in plush sofas. The mobile never left his ear. It had to be a woman he was talking to. His tone was far too smooth for it to be anybody else.

He didn’t bother knocking when we got to Room 419. The door was ajar. He signed off his lady friend with a silver-tongued comment or two and walked straight in. More five-star-plus luxury. The walls were cream. The thick-pile carpet was the colour of bleached sand. The furniture was solid walnut. Electric curtains. A wider than widescreen Bang & Olufsen TV. A mini-bar that was even bigger than Mr T’s cappuccino machine.

There were two sofas. Two men sat on each. A fifth, the youngest, was on the unmade king-sized bed. They all wore brand new shell-suits. Their faces were red and blotchy from exposure to the sun. And they all had cigarettes on the go. There was so much smoke you couldn’t even see the No Smoking signs.

They eyed me apprehensively, like I was a cop who suspected them all of murder and the grilling was about to begin. Maybe it was the environment. Not many crew normally got to stay in a twelve-hundred-dollar suite in the Ararat Park Hyatt.

The Nigerian didn’t even bother to greet them. He just redialled and helped himself to one of the armchairs that sat each side of a small coffee-table next to the triple-glazed window.

The oldest of the crew got to his feet. ‘I am Rudy.’ He stretched out his hand. He was in his early fifties, with tight grey hair and a beard. ‘I am the captain.’

He was about to start a round of introductions.

‘No time for that, mate. Let’s crack on.’

I threw my parka onto the armchair opposite Mr Lover Man, then drew back the curtain. I was looking out of the front of the hotel. The rooftops of Moscow were covered with snow. It was like a still from Doctor Zhivago. The onion-shaped domes of the Kremlin were so close we could have watched Putin pumping iron.

Mr Lover Man wasn’t impressed. He was too busy looking inwards, locking eyes with the crew. He might have been whispering sweet nothings into his phone, but he wanted them to know he’d be hanging on their every word.

Below me, the Range Rover was parked at the front of a line of half a dozen vehicles immediately outside the hotel entrance. Genghis did his bit for the Moscow smog by keeping the engine running. An Audi estate about four wagons down was doing the same. A couple of half-moons had been carved out of the dirt on the windscreen. It was two up. I admired the view for longer than I needed to.

Mr Lover Man closed down his mobile. Was he staying or going?

The vibe I was picking up from the crew was that it would be better if he left. You could have cut the tension between them with a knife. The atmosphere couldn’t have been more at odds with the comfortable world of suede-upholstered headboards and Egyptian cotton sheets.

Mr Lover Man wasn’t moving one inch.

‘Does anybody else speak English?’

‘I do.’

I turned back into the room.

16

He was just a kid, really, low twenties at the most. His nose was already peeling. He looked even more nervous than Rudy, maybe because he was right at the bottom of the food chain and the only other crew member I’d be able to talk to. There was definitely something wrong with this lot.

He added, ‘A little.’ He had the kind of American accent that foreigners pick up from Friends.

‘You know I’m here to help, don’t you? I’m trying to get the three of them back, nothing more.’

I got a sort of nod from the boy. He sat back on the bed, but he was about as relaxed as a high-tensile wire.

Rudy looked as though he’d be a serious candidate for the job of Cap’n Birdseye in a few years’ time. Right now, though, the smile beneath his closely cropped beard was so rigid I thought his face might crack.

‘So what happened, Rudy?’

‘We were attacked by Somalis. It was so far from the African coast, I never thought—’ He was still on his feet. His eyes darted involuntarily in the direction of Mr Lover Man.

‘It’s OK, mate, you don’t have to stand for me. Go on.’

He sat down on the bed.

‘The Maria Feodorovna—’

‘The yacht?’

‘Yes.’

‘What sort is it? A motor yacht? Sailing?’

‘Motor yacht. Forty metres. We were cruising, and then from nowhere two skiffs were coming towards us from the port side.’

The rest of the crew sucked at their cigarettes and kept their eyes down. Either the carpet was really interesting or they didn’t want me to read their expressions.

‘They were travelling very fast — twin seventy-fives on the back. I knew they were pirates even before they attacked. Skiffs so far from the coast. They had to be.

‘We started to make speed and tried to change direction, make it harder for them to board. I shouted for Jez and—’

‘The bodyguard?’

Rudy’s eyes shot across to Mr Lover Man once more. No one else moved, but I knew they were even more uncomfortable at the mention of the BG’s name.

‘Yes, yes. He came up on deck, and he looked, but then he went down below with Stefan and Madame.’

‘Where did he take them? Was there some kind of panic room? Was he armed — did the yacht have any weapons?’

He shook his head. ‘They went into the main cabin. He told me to make more speed. I was trying, but we could not outrun them. They fired a rocket across our bows. Then they aimed the rocket launcher straight at the bridge. I had no choice. I had to come off the power. The other skiff was closing behind. They had grappling hooks.’

I raised a hand. ‘But did you have weapons? Did the BG take them on?’

The boy jumped in: ‘If we had, I would have killed them all.’

Rudy glared at him to stand down. ‘They climbed on the back, maybe five, six, I don’t really know. All with rifles and big knives. I tried to make a mayday call but they must have jammed the radio.’

He sounded close to tears. ‘They got everyone on the bridge. We were on our knees. There was a lot of shouting. They were kicking us, pointing their rifles into the back of our heads. They were high, chewing that drug they like. I could hear Stefan crying behind me. Madame trying so hard to comfort him.’

The crew nodded when they heard the boy’s name. Their expressions seemed to soften.

‘He was scared … so scared.’

A lad with thick dark-brown hair mumbled to the skipper and pointed at me, cigarette in hand.

‘He wants to know that you will get Stefan back home safe.’

‘I’m going to try. But you need to tell me everything you know. Everything.’ I nodded at the questioner. ‘Tell him, of course. I’ll get all three of them back.’

Rudy translated. I caught ‘Stefan’ a couple of times.

I shifted position so I could keep Mr Lover Man in sight. He hadn’t spoken a word of English so far, but he clearly understood every word.

‘You all have watches. Are they new? Didn’t they take money, valuables?’

The boy answered: ‘No, they didn’t let us take anything with us, but also didn’t take anything from us. They didn’t care about us. It was Madame and Stefan they wanted.’

He was quivering with anxiety. He reached suddenly into a red nylon holdall, then had second thoughts and pushed it further under the bed with his heel.

Mr Lover Man said something in Russian. He wanted to know what the fuck was going on. Rudy seemed to be begging him to keep things nice and calm. He turned to me, hands clasped together like he was about to pray. ‘I’m sorry. He has had a terrible time …’

‘What happened next, Rudy?’

He took a deep breath as the boy sat back down. ‘We were all on the bridge, on the floor. They stood over us, shouting and chewing. And then they made me steer a new course west.

‘Maybe half an hour later, we saw their mother-ship, an old fishing trawler with another two skiffs tied up alongside it. They were hundreds of kilometres from home.’ There was a note of profound sadness in his voice. ‘They took us off the Maria Feodorovna. They placed us in the tender and just left us. They took my ship.’ He finally broke down. ‘They took Stefan and his mother …’

The young one sparked up. ‘And Jez …’

The captain shot the boy a warning glance.

‘But, Papa …’

I looked at him. ‘What about the bodyguard? Did he do something? Did he say something?’

His father answered for him: ‘He stayed with Stefan and Madame. Trying to protect them. Please. I’ve spoken to my crew. They know nothing more than I have told you. I wish we knew more, but it was so quick. They came, they took. And then they left us. We never saw the three of them again. I do not even know if they had a plan.’

Of course they had a plan. This was business. There were even established pay differentials for the pirate crew members. The first guy to board a ship got paid more than anyone else. He usually picked up a couple of thousand dollars extra once the ransom money came in. Relative risk and reward, just like any other line of work.

‘I need to know anything at all that anyone can remember, no matter how insignificant. It may help me find them.’ I fixed on the captain. ‘Can you tell them that?’

Mr Lover Man had had enough. He packed away his mobile and got out of his seat. ‘We are done here.’

His English was just as it should have been. Deep and growly.

‘That is all they know. That is all you need to know to make a plan and rescue them. Come.’

As he headed out of the room, the crew looked up at me with a mixture of embarrassment, fear and relief.

I glanced at the door handle and the electronic lock. It looked like the Russian equivalent of a VingCard Classic, the magnetic card reader used in most European and American hotels. If so, the locksets would be high security, with a full one-inch steel deadbolt and three-quarter-inch anti-pick latch for added strength. The electronics worked off standard AA batteries. Their flash memory allowed the lock to be accessed and reprogrammed directly at the hotel-room door.

I followed my escort to the lift. ‘Are you giving me a ride back to my flat? The Metro’s a fucking nightmare around here.’

Mr Lover Man had been with Mr T too long. He didn’t give it a nanosecond’s thought. ‘No.’

We headed down. At the main door, I zipped my parka up to my chin and adjusted the hood to hide my face from the cold. Then Mr Lover Man and I stepped outside. He took a pace or two towards the Range Rover, then spun on his heel.

‘Go now and bring back Stefan.’

The Audi was still two-up. The engine stopped as soon as I turned towards the Metro. A guy in a dark overcoat and beanie stepped out of the car and his mate, in sheepskin, followed suit. Mr T had obviously tuned into Comedy Central. These boys were the spitting image of Ant and Dec. Dec hit the key fob to lock up.

I crossed the road, heading the couple of hundred metres towards the sign with the large red M. I didn’t bother to check if Frank’s new celebrity couple were still with me. I took it as given. He clearly liked to keep a tight rein on all his people.

17

Lubyanka was one of the first stations to be built in Moscow’s underground system in the mid-1930s. Because of the city’s unstable subsoil, it also turned out to be one of the world’s deepest. It took passengers more than five minutes to get from the concourse to the platforms. That was just what I wanted today. I wanted to lose my new best mates, but I didn’t want them to know I’d done it on purpose.

I reached the bottom of the stairs. This subway wouldn’t have got Crazy Dave’s seal of approval. There were no lifts anywhere. Most stations didn’t even have ramps. So even if he got down here, there’d be no guarantee Crazy Dave would ever resurface.

Another thing that was going to work in my favour was the fact that you could stay down here all day. You could interchange at will, and I might have to.

Ant and Dec wouldn’t find that strange. Visitors to Moscow who don’t speak or read Russian can find the Metro very intimidating. It’s a hub-and-spoke system, with the majority of lines running from downtown Moscow to the peripheral districts.

The Koltsevaya Line (No. 5) forms a twenty-kilometre ring that connects the spokes. There are twelve lines, each identified by a number, a name and a colour, and 182 stations. The locals often identified the lines just by colour, except for the very similar shades of green assigned to 2, 10, 11, and L1 — and at Kievskaya, where the light blue and dark blue lines converged and were almost impossible to tell apart.

It got worse. The colours on the platform signs weren’t always the same as the colours on the maps, and one station could be called two or three different names depending on the line on which one was travelling.

Out-of-towners and foreigners like me had to change platforms and retrace their steps every ten minutes. I quite liked fucking about down here for a couple of hours when I’d had enough of Dostoevsky and Gunslingers. It was a great place to see the wildlife. It also reminded me of the few fun times I used to have as a kid, bunking on the Underground all day, not having a clue where me and my mates would surface. Anywhere north of the river was the Outback, as far as we were concerned.

The entry gates looked like a series of turnstiles, but without the turnstiles. They were a row of card readers, with little gates between them. Some stations had futuristic glass panels that swung open once your card had been given the green light. Most, however, had nothing — until you tried to step through without scanning your card. At that point the mechanical gates would slam shut and do their best to crush you.

I brushed my card across the sensor and went through without losing any limbs.

The Moscow Metro was designed to double up as an underground shelter in case of attack. The masses might have to spend long spells down there, but were sure not to miss out on the joys of the Communist system. There were sculptures, reliefs and mosaics aplenty to glorify the achievements of the squaddie and the tractor-driver.

Above all, it looked good, it worked, and it was cheap. A single trip — which translated as ‘race’ — cost 60p. My sixty-race card made it even cheaper.

All the tourist guides recommended at least one trip. But not many sightseers took in Lubyanka this year, even though it was on the doorstep of Red Square and the Kremlin. All the murals and engravings had gone from the ceilings and walls, leaving shiny cream tiles. It had been targeted by a Chechen suicide bomber a year ago. Forty people were killed.

Less than an hour later, another device had gone off at Park Kultury, also on the red line, raising the death toll by a further fourteen. A couple of hundred were injured.

Both stations were quickly back in business. Muscovites still had to get to work, and above ground the city was gridlocked between eight and eleven in the morning and five and eight in the evening, and no picnic the rest of the time. Down here, you never had to wait more than about a minute for a train — even if, at peak hours, it was like being caught in a stampede.

The escalator finally unloaded me onto the platform. Two dogs stretched out alongside a couple of young guys gripping beer bottles like they were gold bars. Passengers just stepped over them and went on their way. They also swept past a policeman curled up in the corner. He wasn’t drunk. He was covered in dirt, leather jacket shredded, his face bloodied and beaten. This lad had been kicked to shit, but nobody batted an eyelid.

I plotted a route through the rat’s nest that would eventually take me back up to Lubyanka. I wanted a better look in Room 419, without Mr Lover Man hovering over me. I’d start with what was under that bed. Another little chat with Rudy and his boy, if that was possible, would be a bonus.

This was the second busiest underground system on the planet after Tokyo’s. Eight million people used it every day, and they always seemed to be sharing my carriage. There’d be no hopping on and off just before the doors closed to avoid being followed, like you see in the movies. It would be more like wading through treacle.

Losing Ant and Dec wasn’t going to be easy.

18

The crowd swayed uncomfortably close to the edge of the platform as we waited for the north-west train. People shouted. Drunks sang. Dogs barked. Nobody cared. At least it was warm down there.

I didn’t scan the place for Ant and Dec. I didn’t want them to know I was aware. And all that mattered was that they weren’t still behind me when I exited. If they were, I’d dis appear back into the rat’s nest. At the worst stations it was easier to take the first available exit than fight your way through the maze to get a couple of blocks closer to your destination. If the worst came to the worst I’d just make a run for it.

Our train arrived. The crowd surged. I didn’t wait for anyone to get off. The doors on the Moscow Metro didn’t take prisoners. They were like guillotines. If you were caught when they snapped shut, your next stop was A&E.

I shuffled and pushed my way aboard, and grabbed a handrail. The doors slammed shut, imprisoning me in a world of tobacco and beer fumes. The woman to my left was overloaded with market-stall perfume. At least it took the edge off the stench of vomit from the two drunks who’d annexed the three or four seats alongside me. Another sat by their feet, trying to navigate the neck of a vodka bottle through his full-face motorbike helmet. Nobody paid them the slightest attention. It was the Metro Derby. For 60p a race, who cared?

Head lolling with the rhythm of the carriage, I let my gaze wander casually along it at about shoulder level, trying to catch Ant and Dec’s coats, not their eyes. They were probably doing exactly the same, unless I’d already given them the slip.

The train lurched. A female voice announced the next station. I was going in the right direction. It was a male voice when you were going towards the centre, a female when heading away from it.

Three stops took me to the intersection with Moscow’s answer to the Circle Line. The masses fought their way on and off at the first, Chistye Prudy, giving me the chance to see a bit more of the carriage.

Nothing.

I finally spotted Ant trying hard to look as though he hadn’t spotted me as we pulled into Krasnye Vorota. The train jolted, there was a surge of bodies, and I lost him again. People moaned at a bunch of teenagers with rucksacks. Women gripped their shopping bags firmly at their sides rather than risk having them trampled at their feet. Personal space was in very short supply.

The train set off again. Komsomolskaya was the interchange. There’d be a mass exodus and a mass embarkation. I’d go the six stops to Park Kultury, where the second bomb had gone off, and then take the Central Line back to Lubyanka.

The motorbike helmet shuddered. The neck of the vodka bottle disappeared once more through the open visor, then went back down between its owner’s legs. This time it tipped over and made him look like he’d pissed himself.

I knelt down and righted the bottle. Nobody watched. If they had, it would have been obvious to them that any good comrade should take the trouble to ease this boy’s helmet off his head before he choked on his own vomit. Maybe I’d get a medal when Anna took me to the Victory Parade.

As the train slowed at Komsomolskaya I shrugged off my North Face and bundled it under my arm, then straightened up and joined the throng at the door. The lining of the helmet stank of stale sweat and beer and cigarettes. I hoped I didn’t have to keep it on much further than the end of the platform.

19

I dumped the helmet and heaved my parka back on as soon as I emerged once more into the wind and snow. It was already starting to get dark. Sunset was at six at this time of the year. The lights of GUM did their best to make up for it, glinting off the wet cobblestones of Red Square.

Before perestroika hit its stride, all cities in the USSR had a branch of the state-owned department store. It was the only place where diplomats could buy their Marmite and Blue Nun, and the privileged Soviet few could shop for their premium vodka while the rest of the country lined up for hours for a loaf of bread and a dodgy-looking onion.

The Moscow flagship looked like Harrods on steroids, and had a history to match. Stalin converted it into office space. Then, when his wife had had enough of him killing everybody and topped herself, he turned it into her mausoleum. In the early 1950s his successors reopened it as a store, most of which consisted of empty shelves. Now it was a shopping mall like anywhere else on the planet, except for the fantastic architecture and the eye-watering prices. The two hundred stores inside boasted all the Western luxury brands and labels. After ten years of record-breaking economic growth, high-end Muscovites had money to burn. The man in the street could only press his nose against the glass.

I headed towards the sports deck. They sold everything from trainers to canoes, but I wasn’t after a pair of Versace trainers or a twenty-thousand-dollar home multi-gym. I needed a telescopic fishing rod — the one you see in gadget mags that folds down into something that fits in the palm of your hand.

20

Had Mossad, the Israeli secret service, not assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, one of the co-founders of the military wing of Hamas, in his Dubai hotel room in January 2010, I might have been trying to make entry in a totally different way.

The electronic lock of Room 419 could be accessed and reprogrammed directly at the door, but getting hold of the right box of tricks would have taken a lot more time than I had to spare. But — thanks to my mate Julian’s involvement at MI5 in tracking down the source of the British passports Mossad’s hit squad had used as cover — I knew a shortcut.

Burglars use fishing rods all the time to lift the keys you leave on the hall table. They then make entry with the house keys, or stay outside and steal whichever vehicle blinks in response to the key fob. Mossad had had an even better idea.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was wanted for the kidnap and murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1989, and purchasing arms from Iran for use in Gaza. He wasn’t on Mossad’s happy holiday list. They followed him from Syria to the Al Bustan Rotunda hotel near Dubai airport.

Al-Mabhouh was no fool. He’d requested a room with no balcony and sealed windows, so the only way in was through the door. He showered and changed, put documents into the room safe, and left the hotel between four thirty and five p.m. When he got back to his room at eight twenty-four that night to relax in front of a couple of episodes of Mr Bean, Mossad were inside, waiting for him. Half an hour later, he failed to answer a call from his wife. His body was found by a cleaner the next morning. And all it would have taken to stop his assassins in their tracks was a bath towel.

A read-out indicated that an attempt was made to reprogramme al-Mabhouh’s electronic door lock, but that wasn’t how the boys from Tel Aviv had got in. They’d used a method Julian had demonstrated to me in my own living room. Fuck knows why he’d brought a telescopic fishing rod with him. Maybe he thought if he could show me what fun they were all having, I’d cross back over to the dark side.

21

I headed for the house phones in the lobby, keeping eyes on the entrance for Ant and Dec. I had lost them for sure, but once they’d lost me they’d have had to make a decision. Stake out the flat, if they knew it, or go back to my last known location. Or split up and check both. Fuck it, I just had to get on with what I was here for, and as quickly as I could before one of them turned up.

I got six rings from 419 before an automated voice said what I guessed must be the Russian for ‘Please leave a message’. I hung up.

I checked out the hotel restaurants, but it was far too early to sit and eat. I didn’t see any of the crew having a session in the gym or the pool. But a drink or two to celebrate the fact they were alive? That was a definite maybe.

They weren’t in the lobby bar. I took the lift to the roof. The view of the Kremlin was straight out of a winter-wonderland brochure.

I heard the crew before I saw them. They were well wrapped up under gas heaters, and by this stage their breath was probably 90 per cent proof. They were having a great time and I didn’t blame them.

I turned back into the lift. As it descended I started to assemble the Mossad magic wand. The fishing rod telescoped down to about seven inches, but extended to five feet when fully open. It was made of bendable alloy. I’d binned the reel that had come with it, and the low breaking-strength line. I needed to land a shark, not a kipper.

The eyelets the line fed through also folded down. I opened the one at the tip, tied the end of the shark line to it and kept the other eyes closed.

I got out of the lift and checked the corridor for movement and sound. I wasn’t going to wait around. Defeating the door would take about ten seconds. The more I hovered about, the longer I was exposed. There was nothing in front of me, nothing behind. The shark-line reel on my left index finger spun as I started to extend the rod. I only needed about three feet. I put it over my knee and bent it into the shape of a bow saw.

I knelt on the plush carpet outside 419 and eased the tip, with the shark line attached, through the gap under the door. Hotel fire regulations are more or less uniform internationally. There has to be enough space — a maximum of ten millimetres at the threshold — to allow the door to swing without it touching the carpet.

I squeezed the rod through, pushing down the carpet on both sides. Once it was about three feet in, I twisted the handle and worked it up against the bottom of the door. The rod would now be going up vertically the other side. I nudged it to the right, towards the handle. The alloy clunked as it made contact with the metal.

I took a second to visualize what was happening inside the room. The shark line would be hanging between the handle and the door. The rod itself would be on the far side of the handle. I pulled down gently and heard another clunk of rod against handle a few inches from my head. The handle was trapped between the apex of the rod and the line.

I held the rod handle firmly in my left hand, rested my head against the door and pulled hard on the line. It pushed down on the handle and the door sprang open.

I slipped quickly inside, closed the door and activated the deadlock. I collapsed the deformed rod as best I could and shoved it inside my jeans.

All the Hamas lad had needed to do before he went out was roll up a towel and place it between the handle and the door. Mossad would have been fucked. Rudy and his boys also had a lot to learn.

The room still stank of cigarette smoke, and the mini-bar had been raided. Empty miniatures and beer bottles and chocolate wrappers were scattered on the table by the window. At least the bed had been made. Beyond it, the Kremlin son et lumière was in full swing.

I lifted out the holdall and unzipped it to discover not very much at all. There was a passport for the boy; a new one, of course. A carton of 20 °Camel. Some socks, still in their cardboard packaging, and a few pairs of Speedo-type briefs. And a memory stick.

I headed for the B&O and hit the space-age remote. It took me a minute to work out how to persuade it to do what I wanted. I finally inserted the USB end plug into a port in the side of the TV. There was only one icon on the stick. I clicked on it and got a picture but no sound.

I was glad there wasn’t.

Tracy’s face filled the TV screen.

Her skin was red and flushed; her face screwed up.

A pair of male hands came into shot from behind her and around her naked shoulders, pulling her away from the lens. I was dreading what I was about to see.

As the hands turned her and pushed her towards the bed, I could see that BB was still inside her from behind.

I watched for about five minutes, then sat there in shock. I thought about the pain in Tracy’s eyes. I thought about BB being an arsehole. And I thought about my promise to Mong.

I threw the stick back into the bag, zipped it up and replaced it under the bed. I wasn’t about to take it with me. Frank was obviously a generous employer, but I already knew you didn’t want to fuck him over.

I closed the door carefully behind me and headed for the lift.

22

Back at the apartment, I had a shower and changed. I stank like I used to when I had to hang around pubs as a kid, waiting for my mum and stepdad to stop drinking and take me home. The smoke from Player’s No. 6 or whatever knocked-off cigarettes they’d bought from the market that week used to soak into my clothes, hair and skin even when I sat under the table. In the morning, the stench made me feel like throwing up.

I felt like throwing up now.

I grabbed my passport and threw a few things into a day sack. It felt good to be back in that routine, getting on with a job — even though it wasn’t a job until I knew they were alive.

I looked up Frank Timis online. Nothing. I even tried Wikipedia and Wikileaks. I couldn’t find a thing.

I sat on the sofa and looked out over the river and the downtown lights. Steam billowed out of every building. I speed-dialled Anna. I usually called her every other day after the three p.m. broadcast. She always wanted to know what footage they’d used, and if there was anything she’d done wrong.

There seldom was. She was an old hand at reporting foreign conflicts. A lot of journos turned up in war zones without a clue. A picture of one unwittingly wearing Gaddafi green, for instance, could be valuable propaganda. It could also get you killed.

The only thing I’d commented on so far this trip was the state of her hair. Apart from that, she looked perfect. I couldn’t wait to see her again. It was turning ugly out there. She’d been in Tunisia and Egypt earlier in the year, then moved to Libya. With the whole Middle East jumping up and down, she’d probably want to cover the fuck-up that was unfolding in Bahrain. Protesters had been shot and Saudi troops had moved into the country to back the government. Big drama ahead for all. Especially me, as she’d want to be in the thick of it.

The phone buzzed and crackled in my ear as it tried to get cell contact. Eventually it opened up. She sounded concerned. ‘Nicholas — is everything all right?’

There were screams and chants in the background as the rebels gave Gaddafi’s name a hard time.

‘Shouldn’t I be asking you that?’

She laughed. ‘I got held up, that’s all.’

She must have found a quieter spot because the noise went down a couple of decibels.

‘Anna, I need a favour. Can you find out about a guy called Francis Timis? I think he’s Ukrainian. He says he changed his name to Francis so it sounds more Western. He’s loaded, but I can’t find anything about him on the Net. There’s a Romanian mining guy, but that’s definitely not him.’

‘Maybe he’s rich enough to buy anonymity. Spell it for me?’

I heard gunfire and some scuffling as she took cover.

‘How old is he?’

‘Mid-forties, maybe. No older than fifty. Anything you can get.’

There was more rustling. She had to shout to make herself heard. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘I’ll tell you another time. You sound a bit busy. Have you got your date yet?’

She was due to be replaced by a colleague. At first she’d been looking forward to some leave. But this past week she’d started to sound less keen. It didn’t make me worried, exactly, but I was concerned.

‘I’m going to have to go.’

‘I’ll call you tomorrow, usual time.’

‘Nicholas?’

‘Anna?’

‘Look after yourself.’

I started to laugh as the phone went dead.

My next call was to a London number. This time the line was a lot clearer.

23

I left the flat and crossed the street to the Metro. One change would get me to Paveletskaya, and from there the Aeroexpress to Domodedovo took just under an hour. That was the quick bit. Security at the airport had been a nightmare since the suicide bombing in January. The queues could snake around for miles inside the building. Passengers were missing their flights. It was going to mean I couldn’t just try and grab a seat on the next Heathrow plane. I’d have to factor in at least a couple of hours of downtime before I could get airside.

As I neared the entrance, something registered in my peripheral vision. I didn’t turn my head. I carried on until I was nearly inside, then stopped, checked my watch and looked around like I was weighing up my options.

About fifty metres down the road was a vehicle. I couldn’t see the driver, but it was either Ant and Dec’s Audi from outside the hotel or one that looked exactly like it, right down to the half-moons carved out of the grime on the windscreen and the two shapes filling the front seats inside.