The hidden man

49

The Russian is sitting alone on the back seat of a brand-new Audi A4. Smooth, cushioned upholstery, a smell of leather and artificial pine. It is dusk in the suburbs of Moscow, banks of low white clouds bringing late spring snow to the capital. Through the back window of the vehicle, nineteen storeys up, he can make out the balcony of the flat where he has lived for the past eleven days, his latest refuge in a long line of hotel rooms and apartments. The flat, belonging to an associate of Viktor Kukushkin, has a single window looking out on to five grey, deserted breeze-block towers, each of them defaced with structure cracks and graffiti. Kostov is not going to miss that view. He is looking forward to the house in the country.

Three hundred metres from the car, across a flat expanse of buckled concrete randomly interrupted by weeds, two young boys are playing football against a white brick hut. It is below freezing and the light is failing all the time, but their eyes must have adjusted to the pre-dark gloom because the yellow ball cracks regularly against the wall. If he strains for it, Kostov can hear the rubber contact of their shoes against the asphalt, voices echoing amongst the buildings, the sudden gasps and shouts.

He adjusts his position in the back seat and leans on a large canvas bag containing most of his clothes and possessions. A man of sixty-three with his whole life in the back seat of a car. Kostov grimaces at the thought. There are aches in every part of his body — in the back of his head, along the sciatic nerves of his thigh, behind his knees — and the temperature inside the vehicle only makes this worse. This is not the cold of London or New England; it is the bone chill of Russia under snow. He raps on the window and urges the driver inside.

Leaning on the roof, Juris Duchev finishes his telephone call and steps into the car, bringing with him an odour of sweat and impatience. Like Kostov, he is also wearing a black winter coat and thick gloves, one of which he removes in order to light a cigarette.

‘You want one, Dimitri?’ he asks in Russian, turning to the back seat.

‘Not for me,’ Kostov replies. ‘Not for me. Just turn on the fucking engine. Get me some heat in here.’

The smoke now deep in his lungs, Duchev turns the key in the ignition and the engine hums into life. Fans pump blasts of cold air into the car through vents in the dashboard and floor.

‘It’s fucking freezing,’ Kostov complains.

‘Just give it time,’ he is quietly told.

Do they know? Have they found out about Keen and Bone? Kostov lives with this persistent doubt, the paranoia of imminent discovery. He watches the eyes of Kukushkin’s people all the time for the tell of sudden betrayal. For days he has suspected SIS of following him around town, two skinny foreigners with the look of British diplomats. Somebody, someday, will put two and two together. Somebody, someday will find the link between Kostov and Christopher Keen.

‘I thought you lived in London nowadays?’ he asks. ‘How come you’re back in Moscow?’

‘I just came home,’ Duchev replies. ‘Just came home for new business.’

Duchev loathes Kostov, despises him. A so-called friend of Viktor whose vengeance has ruined London. He takes his old friend for apartments and money and gives him only trouble in return. Reversing the Audi in the narrow road, he heads for the airport motorway and actually looks forward to the night ahead. The phone call merely confirmed that all the arrangements are in place, the plan to foil the British and to end Dimitri’s lies. Kostov is not being handed over to SIS. Kostov is being taken out to the woods.

‘Where are we going?’ he asks, lolling tiredly on the back seat like a fat, unexercised dog. ‘Viktor told me I was going to his house in the country.’

‘I have a job beyond Sheremetjevo,’ Duchev explains, ‘a package needs collecting. Then we’ll go to the village, Dimitri. Then you can see your new home.’

Driving at fifty miles an hour through blinding April snow, Duchev can track the SIS tail in the Audi’s rear-view mirror. AVolkswagen with St Petersburg plates that has been following Kostov for days. This is his only problem. This is what he has to lose. But right on time, just as the phone call had promised, the strobe of a police vehicle punches through the night, sixty metres behind the Volkswagen and closing all the time. Good, Duchev thinks, Pasha doing what he has been paid to do. Above the roar of the road he can hear the siren and he watches with pleasure as the Volkswagen is pulled to the edge of the motorway. Imagine the swearing in that car right now. Imagine the fat load of trouble those British spies are going to get into just as soon as they get back to the embassy.

And from now on it is easy: Kostov even falls asleep in the back. For an hour Duchev drives in silence, deep into the black night south of Moscow, and at eight o’clock spots the turn-off into the woods. There are no other vehicles behind or in front of him and he turns the Audi without indicating on to a single-track road running east into the forest.

‘Where are we going?’ Kostov asks, muttering from the depths of his sleep.

‘Package,’ Duchev intones, ‘package,’ and reaches for the handle of the gun.

He parks and switches off the engine in a clearing half a mile along the road, surrounded on all sides by high, broad pines. Nobody in sight. Nothing but snow. Then, blinding in the darkness, the sudden momentary flash of Tamarov’s headlights, a signal hidden discreetly ahead amongst a thick clump of trees.

Kostov, dreaming of Mischa, is never conscious of the shot. A single bullet to the head, and then perpetual sleep. He is stripped of himself, of his teeth and fingers, while Tamarov soaks the vehicle in petrol. Within five minutes the brand-new Audi and Kostov and his canvas bag are ablaze in a brilliant column of fire that flares and heats the trees. The Russians are already on their way home. Now they can go back to business.