The Samurai Inheritance

XXVI

‘I’m glad Comrade Berzarin’s English wasn’t entirely up to scratch,’ Jamie said as he and Magda shared a table at the internet cafe near the hotel. ‘Just for a moment I thought we were going to end up buried in a Siberian bog with a bullet for company.’

He accompanied the observation with a wry smile that wasn’t reciprocated. In fact, there was something quite intimidating about the way his companion was playing with her bread knife. Almost as intimidating as the scowl she’d worn for the past hour and the silence that had accompanied it.

He sighed. ‘You’re not still angry about the Sergei thing? I told you,’ he carried on with what he considered was impeccable logic, ‘it was nothing to do with the Bougainville head. An entirely separate issue. A loose end left over from a previous commission. In any case,’ he sought out her hand, but she whipped her fingers away, ‘there are some things it’s better not to know. I didn’t want you involved.’

‘I can look after myself, Jamie.’ The brown eyes skewered him. ‘But don’t you think I deserved to be kept informed after the visit from your Chinese acquaintances?’ She let her eyes drift across their fellow customers. ‘If I’d known someone like that was taking an interest it might have explained the familiar faces I keep seeing from the train.’

‘What familiar faces?’ He followed her gaze.

‘Not here.’ She shook her head. ‘On the streets. They’re mostly men, but at least one woman. I think one of them might have been the drunk who questioned me on the way from the bathroom on the train.’

‘Coincidence.’ He ignored her withering look. ‘Krasnoyarsk is one of the more scenic attractions on the Trans-Siberia route. You’d expect tourists to stop off here for a couple of days.’

‘These men aren’t tourists. I think they’re following us.’

‘It might have been helpful if you’d mentioned it before.’

‘I didn’t know then that a very intimidating person was in partnership with my travelling companion.’

‘Would it help if I apologized again?’

‘No.’

‘Not even if the good news is that I’ve booked us first-class tickets to Tokyo.’

Her eyes turned suspicious. ‘If that’s the good news, what’s the bad news?’

‘The flight’s at four tomorrow morning.’

‘I suppose that puts paid to my beauty sleep again.’ She sighed. ‘It’s a pity this was all such a waste of time.’

‘Not at all,’ Jamie said cheerfully. ‘It’s how the business works. Sometimes you end up chasing shadows, but you don’t know it’s a shadow until you’ve caught it. We might have walked into that room and found the Bougainville head on the mantelpiece between his Jackson Pollocks. “Take it away, Mr art dealer Saintclair, Berzarin is fed up with it and needs to make room for a Ming vase.” All right, it didn’t happen, but we’d never have known without being here.’

She smiled at his passable imitation of Berzarin’s voice. ‘So tomorrow night we’ll be in Tokyo and out of the clutches of Sergei’s annoying followers.’ The knowledge clearly invigorated her because her eyes glittered with excitement and Jamie reflected that she appeared to have as much invested in this quest as he did. The thought gave him another twinge of guilt.

‘Look, I really am sorry I didn’t tell you …’

‘You’re forgiven, but from now on we’re proper partners. No more secrets, right?’

‘No more secrets.’ He stood up and went to pay the bill, hoping she was right about the minders, but not entirely convinced. That wasn’t the way it usually worked out for Jamie Saintclair.

They walked back to the hotel along one of the city’s broad avenues and she linked her arm through his, suggesting he really was forgiven. Even through the padded jackets he could feel the curve of her breast against his bicep and he tried to think of Fiona back in Sydney or wherever she would be at this time, which reminded him he still needed to phone her. If it was 8 p.m. in Krasnoyarsk what time did that make it in Australia? He was still trying to work out the time difference when the drunk stumbled into him with a slurred ‘yob tvoyu mat’ and it wasn’t until the man was past that Jamie realized he’d felt a sharp sting in the hip at the exact moment of collision.

He stopped and looked back in confusion as the man disappeared into an alleyway.

‘Is something wrong, Jamie?’

‘I don’t know.’ He pulled up his jacket and shirt and in the light of a streetlamp tried to check the area of flesh where he’d felt the sting, but the angle and the bulk of the coat made it too awkward. ‘Can you see anything?’

Her face was already pale in the artificial light, but he could have sworn it went even whiter. The dark eyes filled with concern. ‘I think …’

‘What?’ he demanded.

‘It looks like a puncture mark.’

For a moment Jamie’s head spun and he felt like vomiting. Breath became hard to come by and Magda acted as a prop as she helped him to a nearby doorway. It was a combination of shock and fear — or was there something coursing through his system turning his blood to tar? Pull yourself together, idiot, it was just a drunk. But a drunk on the train had harassed Magda. Was it the same man? After what she’d said earlier surely she’d have recognized him? But this one had been wrapped up in a winter coat with a cap low over his face. Jamie had an image of a bald man lying back on a hospital bed, patches on his chest and tubes and electrical leads hanging from his emaciated body. What had his name been? Litvinenko, that was it. Alexander Litvinenko. A former FSB officer who’d fled to London seeking asylum, he’d accused his former masters of arranging the Moscow theatre siege that had left a hundred and thirty people dead, along with forty Chechen terrorists. He’d also accused high-ranking members of the government of complicity in the death of a prominent Moscow journalist. Someone had poisoned him with a radioactive isotope and it had taken him three painful weeks to die.

‘Can you walk?’

Christ, he’d forgotten where he was. ‘I think so.’ Magda took his arm and they stumbled in the direction of the hotel. What reason could anyone possibly have for …? He thought back to his conversation with Berzarin. If the FSB had somehow managed to get a bug into the aluminium mogul’s living room had he revealed too much to Sergei’s sworn enemy? No, it wasn’t possible. But what about their new friend Berzarin? For all his comradely bonhomie — Do you understand how difficult it is to be both honest and rich in today’s Russia? — he was a ruthless tycoon who’d built his fortune on the bodies of lesser men, some of them undoubtedly in the ranks of the Russian mafia. Maybe Berzarin had decided it would be more convenient to get rid of the nuisance away from his home?

Jamie’s head had cleared a little by the time they reached the hotel and he was able to walk up the steps unassisted. They took the lift up to the third floor and Magda opened the door to the twin room. When they were inside Jamie staggered to the toilet and was sick into the bowl.

‘I’ll get the front desk to call a doctor,’ Magda said as he emerged, wiping his mouth with a paper towel.

‘No. I don’t think so … If you do that I’ll end up in hospital where they’ll want to do tests and keep me under observation. I could be there for a week and I don’t fancy a week in a Russian hospital. I’m feeling much better now. We have to get out of here tonight.’ He saw her face harden and shook his head. ‘I think it’s only shock and over-reaction. Get them to book a taxi to the airport and set the alarm for one a.m.’ He stripped off his jacket and threw it over a chair, pulling the tail of his shirt and opening his jeans so he could study the mark she’d seen. There it was: a tiny dark spot surrounded by about an inch of reddened skin. A thin line of watery blood wept from the puncture. No dark lines reaching out from it, which had to be good news. He returned to the bathroom and washed the wound before applying copious amounts of antiseptic cream. His vaccinations were up to date, which should rule out hepatitis and tetanus. If the needle had been infected with HIV there wasn’t a lot he could do about it, and if someone had injected him with Polonium or whatever they’d used on Alexander Litvinenko, he was already dead, which was a cheerful thought. There was only one thing for it. He lay down on the left-hand bed and closed his eyes. ‘In the meantime, I’m going to try to get some sleep.’

Magda stood over him, waiting for his breathing to regulate. When she was certain he slept, she went to the door and silently opened it before slipping out into the corridor. She returned a few minutes later and contemplated the two beds for a moment before lying down fully clothed beside Jamie and pulling a coverlet across both their bodies.