Dead Centre (11 page)

Both stations were quickly back in business. Muscovites still had to get to work, and above ground the city was gridlocked between eight and eleven in the morning and five and eight in the evening, and no picnic the rest of the time. Down here, you never had to wait more than about a minute for a train – even if, at peak hours, it was like being caught in a stampede.

The escalator finally unloaded me onto the platform. Two dogs stretched out alongside a couple of young guys gripping beer bottles like they were gold bars. Passengers just stepped over them and went on their way. They also swept past a policeman curled up in the corner. He wasn’t drunk. He was covered in dirt, leather jacket shredded, his face bloodied and beaten. This lad had been kicked to shit, but nobody batted an eyelid.

I plotted a route through the rat’s nest that would eventually take me back up to Lubyanka. I wanted a better look in Room 419, without Mr Lover Man hovering over me. I’d start with what was under that bed. Another little chat with Rudy and his boy, if that was possible, would be a bonus.

This was the second busiest underground system on the planet after Tokyo’s. Eight million people used it every day, and they always seemed to be sharing my carriage. There’d be no hopping on and off just before the doors closed to avoid being followed, like you see in the movies. It would be more like wading through treacle.

Losing Ant and Dec wasn’t going to be easy.

18

THE CROWD SWAYED uncomfortably close to the edge of the platform as we waited for the north-west train. People shouted. Drunks sang. Dogs barked. Nobody cared. At least it was warm down there.

I didn’t scan the place for Ant and Dec. I didn’t want them to know I was aware. And all that mattered was that they weren’t still behind me when I exited. If they were, I’d dis appear back into the rat’s nest. At the worst stations it was easier to take the first available exit than fight your way through the maze to get a couple of blocks closer to your destination. If the worst came to the worst I’d just make a run for it.

Our train arrived. The crowd surged. I didn’t wait for anyone to get off. The doors on the Moscow Metro didn’t take prisoners. They were like guillotines. If you were caught when they snapped shut, your next stop was A&E.

I shuffled and pushed my way aboard, and grabbed a handrail. The doors slammed shut, imprisoning me in a world of tobacco and beer fumes. The woman to my left was overloaded with market-stall perfume. At least it took the edge off the stench of vomit from the two drunks who’d annexed the three or four seats alongside me. Another sat by their feet, trying to navigate the neck of a vodka bottle through his full-face motorbike helmet. Nobody paid them the slightest attention. It was the Metro Derby. For 60p a race, who cared?

Head lolling with the rhythm of the carriage, I let my gaze wander casually along it at about shoulder level, trying to catch Ant and Dec’s coats, not their eyes. They were probably doing exactly the same, unless I’d already given them the slip.

The train lurched. A female voice announced the next station. I was going in the right direction. It was a male voice when you were going towards the centre, a female when heading away from it.

Three stops took me to the intersection with Moscow’s answer to the Circle Line. The masses fought their way on and off at the first, Chistye Prudy, giving me the chance to see a bit more of the carriage.

Nothing.

I finally spotted Ant trying hard to look as though he hadn’t spotted me as we pulled into Krasnye Vorota. The train jolted, there was a surge of bodies, and I lost him again. People moaned at a bunch of teenagers with rucksacks. Women gripped their shopping bags firmly at their sides rather than risk having them trampled at their feet. Personal space was in very short supply.

The train set off again. Komsomolskaya was the interchange. There’d be a mass exodus and a mass embarkation. I’d go the six stops to Park Kultury, where the second bomb had gone off, and then take the Central Line back to Lubyanka.

The motorbike helmet shuddered. The neck of the vodka bottle disappeared once more through the open visor, then went back down between its owner’s legs. This time it tipped over and made him look like he’d pissed himself.

I knelt down and righted the bottle. Nobody watched. If they had, it would have been obvious to them that any good comrade should take the trouble to ease this boy’s helmet off his head before he choked on his own vomit. Maybe I’d get a medal when Anna took me to the Victory Parade.

As the train slowed at Komsomolskaya I shrugged off my North Face and bundled it under my arm, then straightened up and joined the throng at the door. The lining of the helmet stank of stale sweat and beer and cigarettes. I hoped I didn’t have to keep it on much further than the end of the platform.

19

15.00 hrs

I DUMPED THE helmet and heaved my parka back on as soon as I emerged once more into the wind and snow. It was already starting to get dark. Sunset was at six at this time of the year. The lights of GUM did their best to make up for it, glinting off the wet cobblestones of Red Square.

Before
perestroika
hit its stride, all cities in the USSR had a branch of the state-owned department store. It was the only place where diplomats could buy their Marmite and Blue Nun, and the privileged Soviet few could shop for their premium vodka while the rest of the country lined up for hours for a loaf of bread and a dodgy-looking onion.

The Moscow flagship looked like Harrods on steroids, and had a history to match. Stalin converted it into office space. Then, when his wife had had enough of him killing everybody and topped herself, he turned it into her mausoleum. In the early 1950s his successors reopened it as a store, most of which consisted of empty shelves. Now it was a shopping mall like anywhere else on the planet, except for the fantastic architecture and the eye-watering prices. The two hundred stores inside boasted all the Western luxury brands and labels. After ten years of record-breaking economic growth, high-end Muscovites had money to burn. The man in the street could only press his nose against the glass.

I headed towards the sports deck. They sold everything from trainers to canoes, but I wasn’t after a pair of Versace trainers or a twenty-thousand-dollar home multi-gym. I needed a telescopic fishing rod – the one you see in gadget mags that folds down into something that fits in the palm of your hand.

20

HAD MOSSAD, THE Israeli secret service, not assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, one of the co-founders of the military wing of Hamas, in his Dubai hotel room in January 2010, I might have been trying to make entry in a totally different way.

The electronic lock of Room 419 could be accessed and reprogrammed directly at the door, but getting hold of the right box of tricks would have taken a lot more time than I had to spare. But – thanks to my mate Julian’s involvement at MI5 in tracking down the source of the British passports Mossad’s hit squad had used as cover – I knew a shortcut.

Burglars use fishing rods all the time to lift the keys you leave on the hall table. They then make entry with the house keys, or stay outside and steal whichever vehicle blinks in response to the key fob. Mossad had had an even better idea.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was wanted for the kidnap and murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1989, and purchasing arms from Iran for use in Gaza. He wasn’t on Mossad’s happy holiday list. They followed him from Syria to the Al Bustan Rotunda hotel near Dubai airport.

Al-Mabhouh was no fool. He’d requested a room with no balcony and sealed windows, so the only way in was through the door. He showered and changed, put documents into the room safe, and left the hotel between four thirty and five p.m. When he got back to his room at eight twenty-four that night to relax in front of a couple of episodes of
Mr Bean
, Mossad were inside, waiting for him. Half an hour later, he failed to answer a call from his wife. His body was found by a cleaner the next morning. And all it would have taken to stop his assassins in their tracks was a bath towel.

A read-out indicated that an attempt was made to reprogramme al-Mabhouh’s electronic door lock, but that wasn’t how the boys from Tel Aviv had got in. They’d used a method Julian had demonstrated to me in my own living room. Fuck knows why he’d brought a telescopic fishing rod with him. Maybe he thought if he could show me what fun they were all having, I’d cross back over to the dark side.

21

I HEADED FOR the house phones in the lobby, keeping eyes on the entrance for Ant and Dec. I had lost them for sure, but once they’d lost me they’d have had to make a decision. Stake out the flat, if they knew it, or go back to my last known location. Or split up and check both. Fuck it, I just had to get on with what I was here for, and as quickly as I could before one of them turned up.

I got six rings from 419 before an automated voice said what I guessed must be the Russian for ‘Please leave a message’. I hung up.

I checked out the hotel restaurants, but it was far too early to sit and eat. I didn’t see any of the crew having a session in the gym or the pool. But a drink or two to celebrate the fact they were alive? That was a definite maybe.

They weren’t in the lobby bar. I took the lift to the roof. The view of the Kremlin was straight out of a winter-wonderland brochure.

I heard the crew before I saw them. They were well wrapped up under gas heaters, and by this stage their breath was probably 90 per cent proof. They were having a great time and I didn’t blame them.

I turned back into the lift. As it descended I started to assemble the Mossad magic wand. The fishing rod telescoped down to about seven inches, but extended to five feet when fully open. It was made of bendable alloy. I’d binned the reel that had come with it, and the low breaking-strength line. I needed to land a shark, not a kipper.

The eyelets the line fed through also folded down. I opened the one at the tip, tied the end of the shark line to it and kept the other eyes closed.

I got out of the lift and checked the corridor for movement and sound. I wasn’t going to wait around. Defeating the door would take about ten seconds. The more I hovered about, the longer I was exposed. There was nothing in front of me, nothing behind. The shark-line reel on my left index finger spun as I started to extend the rod. I only needed about three feet. I put it over my knee and bent it into the shape of a bow saw.

I knelt on the plush carpet outside 419 and eased the tip, with the shark line attached, through the gap under the door. Hotel fire regulations are more or less uniform internationally. There has to be enough space – a maximum of ten millimetres at the threshold – to allow the door to swing without it touching the carpet.

I squeezed the rod through, pushing down the carpet on both sides. Once it was about three feet in, I twisted the handle and worked it up against the bottom of the door. The rod would now be going up vertically the other side. I nudged it to the right, towards the handle. The alloy clunked as it made contact with the metal.

I took a second to visualize what was happening inside the room. The shark line would be hanging between the handle and the door. The rod itself would be on the far side of the handle. I pulled down gently and heard another clunk of rod against handle a few inches from my head. The handle was trapped between the apex of the rod and the line.

I held the rod handle firmly in my left hand, rested my head against the door and pulled hard on the line. It pushed down on the handle and the door sprang open.

I slipped quickly inside, closed the door and activated the deadlock. I collapsed the deformed rod as best I could and shoved it inside my jeans.

All the Hamas lad had needed to do before he went out was roll up a towel and place it between the handle and the door. Mossad would have been fucked. Rudy and his boys also had a lot to learn.

The room still stank of cigarette smoke, and the mini-bar had been raided. Empty miniatures and beer bottles and chocolate wrappers were scattered on the table by the window. At least the bed had been made. Beyond it, the Kremlin
son et lumière
was in full swing.

I lifted out the holdall and unzipped it to discover not very much at all. There was a passport for the boy; a new one, of course. A carton of 200 Camel. Some socks, still in their cardboard packaging, and a few pairs of Speedo-type briefs. And a memory stick.

I headed for the B&O and hit the space-age remote. It took me a minute to work out how to persuade it to do what I wanted. I finally inserted the USB end plug into a port in the side of the TV. There was only one icon on the stick. I clicked on it and got a picture but no sound.

I was glad there wasn’t.

Tracy’s face filled the TV screen.

Her skin was red and flushed; her face screwed up.

A pair of male hands came into shot from behind her and around her naked shoulders, pulling her away from the lens. I was dreading what I was about to see.

As the hands turned her and pushed her towards the bed, I could see that BB was still inside her from behind.

I watched for about five minutes, then sat there in shock. I thought about the pain in Tracy’s eyes. I thought about BB being an arsehole. And I thought about my promise to Mong.

I threw the stick back into the bag, zipped it up and replaced it under the bed. I wasn’t about to take it with me. Frank was obviously a generous employer, but I already knew you didn’t want to fuck him over.

I closed the door carefully behind me and headed for the lift.

22

BACK AT THE apartment, I had a shower and changed. I stank like I used to when I had to hang around pubs as a kid, waiting for my mum and stepdad to stop drinking and take me home. The smoke from Player’s No. 6 or whatever knocked-off cigarettes they’d bought from the market that week used to soak into my clothes, hair and skin even when I sat under the table. In the morning, the stench made me feel like throwing up.