The Sandman

129

It’s ten to seven in the evening, and Joona Linna is sitting on the last flight to Moscow. By the time the plane lands in Russia it’s gone midnight. The country is in the grip of a crisp chill, and the low temperature makes the snow quite dry.

Joona is being driven through the vast, monotonous suburbs in a taxi. It feels as though he’s caught in a loop of sprawling municipal housing estates when the city finally changes. He manages to catch a glimpse of one of Stalin’s seven sisters – the beautiful skyscrapers – before the taxi turns into a back street and stops outside the hotel.

His room is very basic and dimly lit. The ceiling is high, and the walls are yellow with cigarette smoke. On the desk is an electric brown plastic samovar. The fire-escape notice on the back of the door has a circular scorch-mark over the emergency exit.

As Joona stands at the only window looking down at the alley, he can feel the winter chill through the glass. He lies back on the rough brown bedspread, gazes up at the ceiling and can hear muffled voices laughing and talking in the next room. He thinks it’s too late to call Disa and say goodnight.

Thoughts are swirling through his mind, and their images carry him into sleep. A girl waiting for her mother to plait her hair, Saga Bauer looking at him with her head covered in cuts, and Disa lying in his bath humming with her eyes half-closed.

At half past five in the morning Joona’s mobile starts to vibrate on the bedside table. He slept in his clothes, with all the blankets and covers on top of him. The tip of his nose is frozen and he has to blow on his fingers before he can switch the alarm off.

Through the window the sky is still dark.

Joona goes down to the foyer and asks the young woman in reception to hire a car for him. He sits at one of the ornately laid tables, drinks tea and eats warm bread with melted butter and thick slices of cheese.

An hour later he is driving a brand-new BMW X3 on the M2 motorway out of Moscow. Shiny black tarmac rushes under the car. There’s heavy traffic through Vidnoye and it’s already eight o’clock when he leaves the motorway and turns off onto winding, white roads.

The trunks of the birch trees look like skinny young angels in the snow-covered landscape. Russia is so beautiful, it’s almost frightening.

It’s cold and clear, and Ljubimovka is bathed in wintery sunshine when Joona turns off and pulls up in a cleared yard in front of the house. He was once told the place used to be Russian theatre legend Stanislavsky’s summer residence.

Nikita Karpin comes out onto the veranda.

‘You remembered my grubby old dog,’ he smiles, shaking hands with Joona.

Nikita Karpin is a short, stout man with an attractively aged face, a steely gaze and a military haircut. When he was an agent, he was a frightening man.

Nikita Karpin is no longer formally a member of the security services, but he’s still employed by the Ministry of Justice. Joona knows that if anyone can find out whether Jurek Walter has any connection to Russia, it’s Karpin.

‘We share an interest in serial killers,’ Nikita says, showing Joona in. ‘For my part, they can be seen as empty wells that can filled with unsolved crimes... which of course is very practical. But on the other hand we have to arrest them so as not to appear incompetent, which makes the whole business much more complicated...’

Joona follows Karpin into a large, beautiful room whose interior seems to have remained untouched since the turn of the last century.

The old medallion wallpaper shimmers like thick cream. A framed portrait of Stanislavsky hangs above a black grand piano.

The agent pours a drink from a misty glass jug. On the table is a grey cardboard box.

‘Elderflower cordial,’ he says, patting his liver.

As Joona takes the glass and they sit down facing each other, Nikita’s face changes. His friendly smile vanishes as though it had never existed.

‘The last time we met... most things were still secret, but in those days I was in charge of a specially trained group that went by the name of the Little Stick, in direct translation,’ Nikita says in a low voice. ‘We were fairly heavy-handed... both my men and I...’

He leans back in his chair, making it creak.

‘Maybe I’ll burn in hell for that?’ he says seriously. ‘Unless there’s an angel who protects people who defend the motherland.’

Nikita’s veined hands are lying on the table between the grey box and the jug of cordial.

‘I wanted to come down harder on the Chechen terrorists,’ he goes on gravely. ‘I’m proud of our actions in Beslan, and in my opinion Anna Politkovskaya was a traitor.’

He puts his glass down and takes a deep breath.

‘I’ve looked at the material that your Security Police sent to the FSB... you haven’t managed to find out very much, Joona Linna.’

‘No,’ Joona says patiently.

‘We used to call the young engineers and workmen who were sent to the cosmodrome in Leninsk rocket fuel.’

‘Rocket fuel?’

‘Everything surrounding the space programme had to be kept secret. All reports were carefully encrypted. The intention was that engineers would never come back from there. They were the best educated scientists of their day, but they were treated like cattle.’

The KGB agent falls silent. Joona raises his glass and drinks.

‘My grandmother taught me how to make elderflower cordial.’

‘It’s very good.’

‘You did the right thing, coming to me, of course, Joona Linna,’ Nikita Karpin says, wiping his mouth. ‘I’ve borrowed a file from the Little Stick’s own archives.’