Londongrad

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Deborah Curtis, Grisha’s mother, was dead by the time I met Fiona Colquhoun the next morning at the Tate Gallery down near the river. It was early, mist hanging over the Thames, the lonely hoot coming from an invisible boat. When Colquhoun told me, at first I thought Mrs Curtis had somehow died from radiation poisoning in her house.

“No,” said Fiona. “No, Artie, and the radiation scare, this time anyway, was a false alarm,” she said, adding that Mrs Curtis had been found at her rich cousin’s house, sitting on the terrace, dead. The official line was she’d had a stroke, said Colquhoun.

“Did Grisha Curtis show up to see his mother? Did he kill her?”

“No”, said Fiona. “No evidence.”

I was sorry about Mrs Curtis. I wondered if my appearance at the Curtis house set off the events that had killed her. I had more questions for her, so I was sorry about that, too.

Fiona got it, didn’t think I was a bastard for saying it. She had been a real cop, even if now she was in some other game.

We walked along the river and she pointed out the spy palace across the river, an ugly modern building, letting me know she knew her way around, I thought. I had called her early that morning hoping I could play her, knowing there was plenty she hadn’t told me. But she was too sharp.

Drinking out of a coffee container, she told me she had run Grisha Curtis through her computers, and, unless he was using a different name, he was still in Britain. There was no record of him leaving the country.

“We matched fingerprints on the Bible you took from the Curtis house with some on Elena Gagarin’s handbag,” Fiona said. “They were a perfect match. The bank where he worked confirmed he was an employee and they had prints on him from a file. He taught school in Boston while he did his MBA, and the school system printed him,” she added. “He had a UK passport, and a Russian passport,” she said. “I had looked at Curtis before, but it was only when Valentina died, and when you came here, Artie, that I really focused on him. This Russian stuff really is like one of those mythical many-headed monsters, you look at something, it disappears, then shows up again. For a time, on the surface, he was pretty much what he claimed. I don’t know where the marriage license was filed, but I couldn’t find it. Perhaps someone made it disappear.”

“Yeah, what doesn’t show up is that he’s a murderous bastard. Thanks about the prints,” I added.

We sat on the steps of the museum. I knew Fiona was killing time while she thought about something.

“I met Grigory Curtis a second time, after I saw him at Larry Sverdloff’s, quite a bit later,” she said.

“Where?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Recently?”

“Quite.”

“You’re not comfortable with telling me?”

“I’m telling you what matters. I’m sorry it took this long. I’m telling you now, if you want the truth, because I think you can help me. Before I tell you, I’d like to know that you will share whatever you find with me, and that isn’t only about your friend’s daughter.”

“Go on.”

“Is that a yes?” The chilly formality, the way Fiona’s expression changed, the adjustment of her posture reminded me this was her real business with me.

“Sure.”

“I think Curtis did errands for the KGB,” said Fiona. “The FSB as it’s now called.”

“I know what the FSB is, for chrissake.”

“Curtis told me, and yes, quite recently, that he thought that it was not Putin’s people who killed Litvinenko, that it was the British, that we did it as a provocation, and that in any case Litvinenko was a traitor,” said Fiona, who went on to tell me that she understood from what he had said that Curtis worked for the Kremlin or the FSB-the same things, she said-and they had seen in him an opportunity. “A young man taken up with a zealous Russian patriotism, and who had two passports? Quite a coup, don’t you think?”

“And an American wife. You knew they were married?”

“Only when I met the mother yesterday,” said Fiona. “It’s when I realized I was right about him. It gave Curtis, and anyone he serviced, access to the US. I think that was the real ambition.”

“He used Val?”

“Hard to say. They were certainly in love when I saw them, I can’t know if he used her from the beginning or if he saw an opportunity he could retail, or if his masters exploited it. I haven’t got the whole answer.”

“And Val turned on him when she discovered what he was up to.”

“Or when she simply discovered he was a zealot who was in love with the whole ‘Russia first’, thing. Bloody fascists.”

“What about Larry Sverdloff?”

“I think he’s on our side. I think he understands all of it, and that we can trust him. Up to a point. He wants to change Russia, but he wants the money, like all of them. He’s scared. He should be scared. There have been plenty of death threats. I told him to leave England for a few days. I think you should go, too.”

“He went?”

“I don’t know.” Fiona got up. “It’s clear Curtis beat up Elena Gagarin. I can have him picked up if we can find him.”

What I didn’t say, though I was sure Fiona knew, was I wasn’t going anywhere until I had Curtis in my sights, until I had a way to get him for Valentina’s death.

“Your bosses want to know all about me?”

“They think you’re here working for Roy Pettus,” Fiona said.

“And you let them think it?”

“I told you, I like you. And I really want these people, I’ve worked nearly two years on this. I want them, I want to put a lid on Russian terrorism before it explodes here, and I think Curtis might lead me to them, because for now there’s just a wall of Russians in London, and nobody is quite what he seems, and it’s very hard to break through it. I want them, Artie, I want the people who bring their poison into my country. Or spread its myth and make people terrified, the fear of fear is something your country suffers from, and we’ve caught it. I want all this badly enough to accommodate anyone, including you. Please be careful. I’ll pick you up tonight, if you like, I’ll take you to meet someone who will help you. Say, it’s my boss. Just wait for me.”

“A real spy?”

She smiled. “Ah, but there are no real spies anymore,” she said. “Only people like me.”

“How come you’re doing all this?”

“I don’t know. Because it’s the right thing to do. And I like you,” she said and blushed. “I’ll find you later.”

“Where?”

“I’ll find you. Artie?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Sunday. I was wondering if you’d like to come round for lunch.”

“When it’s all over, I’d like that. Lunch. Even dinner.”

“Thanks.”

“Wait for me.”

“Of course,” I said. “Thank you.”

Fiona put out her hand and I shook it, and then she walked away, along the river, shrouded in the strange mist that had settled on everything.