The Samurai Inheritance

XIV

A serious, bespectacled young Englishman from the Devlin Foundation introduced himself as Daniel and eased their way through customs at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. Once they’d collected their baggage and been shown to the customary black limousine he handed Jamie a slim file.

‘It’s not much, I’m afraid,’ he apologized, poking his head through the gap in the front seats from his place beside the driver, a fit-looking older man with a tan that suggested he spent as much time under a sun lamp as he did behind the wheel. ‘We weren’t given a great deal of warning and, truth be told, our Russian friends are still a bit coy about their relationship with the Nazis before the Second World War. At the same time they were flexing their muscles against each other in Spain, Stalin and Hitler conducted what was more or less a mutual admiration society, which doesn’t sit very well with the mythology of the Great Patriotic War. They’d prefer not to talk about the Molotov — Ribbentrop Pact or the deal to partition Poland.’

He paused in his briefing and Jamie skimmed through the contents of the file while Magda fidgeted impatiently beside him. When he had all the details fixed in his mind, Jamie nodded for Daniel to continue.

‘You also have to understand that this was at a time of enormous suspicion and fear. Even though Stalin’s Great Purge had just got started and would only have been the subject of whispers, the men selected for what on the surface was a hugely important mission would have been well aware of the danger. The slightest hint of mistrust and it would be the gulags at best or more likely a bullet in the back of the neck in the basement of the Lubyanka. Any official reports would have been very guarded,’ he ended apologetically.

‘The mission consisted of two diplomats and a couple of low-ranking clerks who are likely to have been NKVD minders,’ Jamie read aloud for Magda’s benefit. ‘They flew from Moscow to Berlin by way of Konigsberg in December nineteen thirty-six after a personal briefing from Stalin, and held talks over a two-week period.’ He grunted in surprise. ‘It says here they met Hitler and von Ribbentrop in the Reich Chancellery. No official record of that meeting survives.’

‘That’s correct,’ Daniel confirmed. ‘The Moscow versions were probably destroyed around the time of Stalin’s death in nineteen fifty-three, possibly the Berlin ones, too, if they didn’t burn in ’forty-five.’

‘But who were these men?’ Magda demanded impatiently. ‘And what happened to them when they came back. Surely they must be long dead now?’ She saw the look that passed between Jamie and Daniel and her dark eyes widened a little. ‘Surely?’

‘Gennady Berzarin,’ Jamie continued, ‘first secretary in the Department of Foreign Affairs under Maxim Litvinov, headed the mission, accompanied by his second secretary, twenty-five-year-old Dimitri Kaganovich. Berzarin survived the war, but died in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, in nineteen eighty. Kaganovich,’ he tried and failed to suppress a grin, ‘according to this, is still alive.’

The hotel, as with all things associated with Keith Devlin, was impressive — a broad, glass-fronted palace in the shape of the bridge of an ocean liner — and Magda was duly impressed. As she studied the sumptuous lobby, Daniel whispered to Jamie. ‘This is probably the best hotel in Moscow, the one Mr Devlin usually stays in. We’ve booked you into his suite. It should be very convenient for you.’ Jamie studied the owlish face for any hint of innuendo, but found no trace. Evidently, the young executive didn’t think much of his chances with Magda Ross. On a certain level, Jamie found that downright insulting.

A concierge took their luggage and Daniel escorted them to the check-in desk. When they’d completed the formalities, Magda thanked the young man with a smile. ‘I hadn’t expected this kind of luxury. When I’m on a research trip the choice is usually between a cockroach-infested hostel and a damp tent. The tent is normally much more comfortable, and decidedly cleaner.’

Daniel watched them as far as the lifts before he headed back to the car. ‘Was that okay, Mr Stewart?’ he asked tentatively as he took his seat beside the driver.

‘You did great, son,’ Doug Stewart assured him. ‘From now on we’ll leave it to our usual people. Make sure they report direct to me,’ he yawned, ‘but not for a couple of hours. I’m getting on a bit for this globetrotting lark. I’m off for a quick bit of shut-eye.’

The presidential suite at the Lotte Hotel seemed to stretch for miles in every direction and made Jamie’s rooms in Berlin look like a mountain shack. The concierge ushered them into the palatial living room with a view across the western Moscow skyline. He offered to have their cases unpacked and their clothes stored away, but they declined.

‘I’m not sure I would like them comparing my poor rags with those of the kind of royalty who normally use this place.’ Magda smiled after the Russian had given them the obligatory tour, including the suite’s private bar and kitchen, marble bathroom fit for the Queen of Sheba, and explained the intricacies of the digital control panel: ‘with one switch you can work the lights, air conditioning, heating, curtains, TV and audio. It will give you today’s weather forecast and whatever tourist information you need, oh,’ he said almost as an afterthought as he reached the door, ‘and you can use it to set the alarm clock.’

Jamie returned Magda’s smile. ‘I suspect, like hotel staff the world over, they’ve seen just about everything there is to see, unless you have something very exotic in there?’

Magda’s ‘room’ turned out to be a self-contained suite of its own, but she vowed to use the facilities in the palatial main suite instead of, as she put it, ‘slumming’.

‘I’ll make a coffee,’ Jamie offered, and set off for the kitchen.

‘Don’t we have someone to do that for us?’ she demanded, and they both burst out laughing.

When he returned, Magda walked to the window with her coffee and stared out. Jamie saw a troubled look cross her face.

‘Is something wrong?’

Her lips formed a sad half smile. ‘My dad spent years living in big houses and mixing with rich people, but he was always a socialist at heart. I thought I took after him, but there’s something seductive about sitting here in all this luxury, set apart from the ordinary people down there living their ordinary lives. Of course, it is only an illusion, a dream, like Cinderella in the story. When the clock strikes midnight I’ll be sitting on a pumpkin, the concierge will turn into an old farm horse and I won’t even have a glass slipper to show for it.’ She slipped away from the window and sat beside him, so close her eyes seemed to swallow him up. ‘But what about you, Jamie?’

The question and her proximity unsettled him. His first instinct was to hide behind a flippant, throwaway reply, but he decided she deserved better.

‘When this is all over I’ll go back to my partner and her daughter and we’ll spend an idyllic couple of weeks on my client’s private island. Then I’ll give up being a knight in shining armour for good and turn into a boring art dealer again.’

He thought he saw a shadow cross the dark eyes, but it was gone before he could decide what it was. ‘Your client must be someone very special?’

Again, there was more to the question than the words implied, and Jamie gave it some thought before he replied. Till now, as far as Magda Ross had been concerned, the client was just ‘the client’, but it had always seemed a rather pointless subterfuge. Anyone who really wanted to know who Jamie was working for only had to get a look at the flight and hotel bills. That trail would presumably take them directly to Devlin Metal Resources, the Devlin Foundation, or one or other of their many spin-offs. Magda was on the team, she deserved to know who was paying her wages.

‘He’s probably someone you’ve never heard of,’ he said eventually. ‘An Australian mine owner by the name of Keith Devlin?’ She shook her head. ‘He has interests all over the world, including the Solomons, but his negotiations have run into trouble because of some stolen documents and the intransigence of the local chief. The Bougainville head is the price of the chief’s cooperation. I suspect it’s worth a very substantial amount to Mr Devlin, given the money he’s paid out so far to fund the search for it.’

‘First Class all the way and no expense spared for the intrepid Jamie Saintclair, and his ever-so-fortunate assistant?’

‘That’s the way it looks.’

‘So what happens tomorrow?’

He’d been thinking it over, but had avoided bringing up the subject because he suspected his decision would sound patronizing. He had a feeling Magda Ross was a woman you patronized at your peril.

‘According to Daniel, Dimitri Kaganovich lives in an old people’s home in one of the workers’ housing projects just inside the outer ring road. He must be close to a hundred years old now. I think, in the first instance, I should visit him alone … sound him out. Apparently, he suffered a great deal under the old Communist regime. It’s likely to be quite a long, possibly a difficult conversation, entirely in Russian, so you’d probably be bored and—’

‘Jamie,’ Magda laughed, ‘all you had to say is it would be more sensible for me not to come along. I’m not going to be much use to you if I don’t speak the language. Besides, I have better things to do.’

‘You do?’

‘Of course.’ She grinned. ‘I’m in one of the world’s great cities. I’ll go shopping. I packed for Japan, remember, and it’s a lot colder in Moscow. If we’re here for a few days I’ll buy something a little warmer. If you let me know your size, maybe I could get you a jacket?’

‘That would be great.’ Jamie cursed himself for sounding like a gushing schoolboy. ‘Naturally, Mr Devlin will be paying, so don’t hold back.’

‘Naturally.’ Her lips twitched. ‘And I wasn’t going to. Now,’ she got to her feet, and he rose with her, ‘I have to go to bed.’ She kissed him on the cheek and though it was only the faintest touch of her lips he felt as if he’d been branded. He watched the door close behind her, sighed and picked up his mobile phone. If it was bedtime in Moscow what time did that make it in Australia?

It took less than an hour by taxi to get from the Lotte Hotel to Kapotnya, but by the time the driver turned off the MKAD, Moscow’s outer ring road, Jamie was convinced he’d been transported to another planet — one made entirely of concrete and steel. For the last third of the journey the highway was sandwiched between huge factory complexes, steel foundries, cement works and petrochemical plants. Daniel had described Kapotnya as a workers’ housing project from the Fifties. What he hadn’t mentioned was the air of defeat and destitution, or the sprawling oil refinery — all belching chimneys, giant tanks and gas flares — that squeezed the enclave against the bank of the Moskva as if it were a medieval army bent on pushing the squat, rust-stained housing blocks into the river. Low, leaden clouds leaking a thin, sulphurous drizzle helped turn the scene into the backdrop of some gloomy post-apocalyptic disaster movie; a Philip K. Dick adaption, only without the belly laughs. Jamie began to understand the look the taxi driver had given him when he’d mentioned the address: a cross between disbelief and pity. Another turn took them into a tree-lined avenue flanked by two of the giant apartment blocks, a concrete chasm with a tarmac floor. Normally, Jamie associated trees with freedom, the open countryside, or even little London parks that gave you the illusion of being out in the fresh air when your lungs were being clogged with petrol fumes. These trees felt like prisoners, just like the dusky-skinned teenagers who sheltered from the rain beneath them. The separate groups had been eyeing each other dangerously until the white Mercedes caught everyone’s attention. He heard the driver curse beneath his breath and he had the feeling the man was a second away from refusing to go any further, but a quick check of the satnav showed the destination to be so close as not to make any difference. Another turn and another concrete canyon. Halfway along, a path led to the entrance of the block on the right and the car slowed to a halt.

‘This is it.’ The driver sniffed. Jamie studied the doorway. There was a sign beside it, but it didn’t look like any old people’s home he’d ever seen.

‘You’re sure?’

The man shrugged, what difference did it make to him?

‘You’ll wait for me?’ Jamie asked, more in hope than expectation. A half grunt, half laugh that meant ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ confirmed his theory and he counted the agreed fare into the outstretched hand. The car was in gear almost before he managed to close the door.

Conscious of the predatory eyes of the teenagers sheltering under the trees, and a group of older men he hadn’t noticed earlier who sat smoking and playing cards, Jamie hurried up the path and through the doorway. The block caretaker’s office had been converted into a reception area. It was empty and after a brief hesitation he walked past it and through a double door that led to a long corridor. The stench of excrement, stale urine, unwashed body and the bitter tang of fresh vomit hit him like a slap in the face. On either side of the passage the original ground-floor apartments had been converted into wards. Their doors lay open, revealing dank, gloomy rooms illuminated only by the light filtering through ragged curtains and what seeped in from the dimly lit corridor. In the first room, each of the six beds was occupied by a grey-faced male in pyjamas or a dressing gown. The men lay on filthy blankets stained with weeks or months of anonymous bodily fluids, their heads back and mouths open, breath wheezing in their chests or rattling in their throats. Eyes flickered and bony hands twitched as if they were in the grip of some terrible living nightmare. A sound alerted him and a thin stream of urine dripped from the bottom of one of the beds. He watched it form a small pool before trickling towards the doorway and he stepped back in disgust.

‘Napoi-it,’ a voice as brittle as sea ice whispered. ‘Water.’ A feeble, blue-veined hand waved from the bed at the back of the room.

Jamie hurried out into the corridor and called for a nurse, but no one answered.

‘Water.’

He returned to the room and searched in vain for a tap. A door on the far side opened on to what had once been once a tiny kitchen, with a bed containing another semi-comatose figure taking up most of the space. The only utility remaining of the room’s former use was a rust-stained sink filled with unwashed cups. He gingerly picked one up and turned the tap to rinse it, but the only result was a dribble of brown liquid.

‘You have to let it run for a while,’ a voice from behind advised.

He turned to find one of the men from the card game leaning against the doorway.

‘One of your patients wanted a drink — I take it you are a nurse?’

‘Sure.’ The man grinned. ‘That will be old Nikolai. He’s due his fix. Are you visiting? Only you don’t sound as if you’re from round here and we don’t get many. Visiting time is …’

The water finally ran clear and Jamie swirled it round the cup. ‘Here,’ he said, handing over the cup and displaying a handful of hundred-ruble notes. ‘I’m looking for a resident here. A man called Dimitri Kaganovich.’

‘Resident?’ The man’s grin grew broader. ‘Sure, Dimitri’s still a resident. There’s a special place in Hell waiting for Dimitri, but the tough old bastard’s determined to keep the Devil waiting. He’s like that, Dimitri, never happier than when he’s pissing somebody off. I think the Devil may not be in charge for long when Dimitri eventually gets down there, know what I mean?’

‘Just tell me where he is.’ Jamie tucked the notes into the nurse’s top pocket.

‘Third door on the right. He’ll be the one who’s awake, unless he’s died. Never takes his meds that one.’

Jamie walked to the door then turned, as if he wanted to imprint the scene on his mind; the concrete floor, with its recent history mapped out in stains of brown and yellow; the filthy, rusting ex hospital beds carrying their cargoes of chemically comatose living dead to a destination most of them probably longed for. ‘Maybe Dimitri has decided he’s already in Hell. Don’t you ever clean this place?’

‘Why?’ The nurse seemed genuinely surprised. ‘They just dirty it again. What’s your worry? Nobody cares about these people. Only Mikhail.’

As he walked out and along the corridor Jamie heard a soft scuffle. ‘Come on, Nikolai, time for your pill.’

‘No, please …’