Exit wound

Now it was my turn for the smile. ‘When he sees what you did to my neck, Semyon will probably want to kill you.’

The old boy spoke again and her brow creased. The waffle bounced back and forth a couple of times.

She turned back to me. ‘It’s not good, I’m afraid. The Falcon came back here, to Moscow.’

‘No – that’s good. Tell him that’s good.’

Anna didn’t bother. ‘He says it’s due to go to the proving ground tomorrow. Assuming everyone is still together, that can mean only one thing. They will test fire. There were rumours that it was faulty, but-’

Semyon gobbed off some more.

‘You know about dark flares? You know the importance of them? You know that the SA-16 can defeat-’

I dredged a name out of my briefing notes. ‘Vologda?’

She nodded. ‘It’s in the middle of a military training area.’

‘I know.’ I undid my day-sack and took out the Nikon. ‘How long will it take to get there?’

‘Maybe six hours by road.’

‘There’s no train?’

‘The line goes from St Petersburg only, and the area is north of the city. No internal flights either.’

Semyon said something else.

‘The weather forecast is cloudy until the afternoon. They will want a clear sky.’

With the camera powered up, I opened the side to replace the memory card. There was something I wanted to show Semyon. ‘Does he know where the people in the Falcon are now? They in Moscow?’

They waffled away, but it wasn’t sounding hopeful.

‘Can he try and find out where they are? It’s really important.’ I didn’t give a shit what Anna had in mind for them after she had her photos. ‘Where is the Falcon?’ If I could get to it before they took off tomorrow, maybe I’d be able to get the job done without leaving the city.

She didn’t have to ask Semyon. ‘No good. M3C have their own hangar in a military air base on the other side of the city.’

I passed him the Nikon. ‘Ask if he knows him.’

Semyon pulled a pair of cheap reading glasses from an alloy tube and focused on the back screen.

‘The little fat one, tell him.’

He zoomed in until Spag’s face filled the screen.

The accompanying shrug and shake of his head said it all. As he handed the Nikon back his eyes fixed on mine. He seemed to be apologizing.

‘If he doesn’t know where they are, I need to get into the proving ground. Can he help?’

His eyes bounced between the two of us and he gobbed off some more.

‘OK. We will go to his apartment later tonight and he may have more information.’

I realized I had their relationship all wrong. It wasn’t their apartment. But they’d said a lot more to each other than she was translating. ‘I don’t want to go to his place. I want to meet outside.’

‘No.’ Anna protected him. ‘He may be able to get maps, papers, find out where everyone is in the city. If he is stopped in possession…’ She searched my face. ‘No matter where they are, you will take me.’

Semyon asked something.

Anna turned to me. ‘We do not know your name.’

‘Manley. James Manley.’ I’d always wanted to say that. ‘But you can call me Jim.’

‘Jim, we need to help each other. We get what we want, the pictures that prove the story, then you can do whatever you have been sent to do.’

Semyon stepped forward, his hand extended, but his eyes burnt into mine. There were several messages there, none of them good.

96

Izmailovsky Park, Moscow

1930 hrs

We followed the crowd out of the ornate, almost Victorian-looking metro station. The thirty-minute non-stop express ride from Sheremetyevo had given me time to check out the others in the carriage.

Once up at street level, Anna fumbled about in her day-sack for a pack of cigarettes. It gave me time to study the twenty or so who’d come up with us.

We headed down a tree-lined avenue littered with empty bottles and rusty cans. Anna’s wheelie-case squeaked over the paving-stones. At the end, set in a large park of patchy grass, was a mock-Russian fortress with bell towers and onion domes. We could have been in Disneyland, if it hadn’t been for the slogans and graffiti daubed on the walls and the methers sparked out beneath them.

We manoeuvred round a group that had gathered to watch and applaud a fire-breather and passed through a pillared gateway topped off with balloons. The Izmailovsky flea-market was huge. You could lose yourself in it – and anyone you needed to.

Anna had chosen well. I wanted somewhere we could disappear for a few hours, that had constant movement and faces that changed quickly. She knew the score. She’d been doing it herself for years. Campaigning journalists weren’t exactly in the Good Lads Club in this country.