Exit wound

Her flat was routinely watched. A hotel was out of the question – they’d want to see our passports. So, it was hang-about time until we went to Semyon’s. After that, the plan was for her to go and collect her car. If Semyon didn’t know where the targets were in Moscow, or if he discovered that they’d already left the city, we’d need to get to the proving ground as fast as we could. The area was the size of Wales, the brochure had said. Finding it was one thing; finding out where exactly the test firing was going to happen was quite another.

Straight ahead there was a long run of stalls. The flea-market was a tourist attraction and kept long hours. A group of Japanese camcorded each other buying tat. Cold War chess sets, brass busts of Lenin, and Russian dolls with Putin and Obama painted on them were flying off the stall. So was the cheap padded coat I asked her to buy me, the sort any respectable granddad would wear. Del was very happy with the US dollars she handed him.

I steered her down an alley that opened up on our right. As we moved behind a rail of hanging T-shirts, I turned and had a quick browse. Nobody was following or taking the slightest interest. I decided I didn’t want a Putin T-shirt after all and we moved on. If someone’s behind you innocently, they might follow you the first time you take a turn. At a push, they might take the second. But nobody follows you round the third side of a square without a fucking good reason.

Anna caught on fast and didn’t need to ask. She pointed to things, smiled and laughed. Sometimes she took my arm. Worst case, I was a foreigner with a girl I had out on appro from the Russian-brides catalogue.

The third right had brought us into the flea-market’s very own B amp;Q district: rows of stalls covered with all your needs if you were building a house or knocking one down, from second-hand screwdriver sets to petrol-powered Kango hammers. I looked at my watch. It was nearly eight and coming to last light. The first stars were out. The temperature had dipped. We still had three or four hours to kill.

We crossed into a place filled with counterfeit DVDs and CDs and Russian rock memorabilia. Techno thumped from a speaker. A guy with a head-load of stubble-length bleached hair tried to get Anna to buy a Prodigy mug. Instead he got back the short, sharp Stalin daughter’s stare and bollocking. We moved on a bit, but not far. The deafening music was good – it made it impossible for anyone to hear our conversation.

She drew my head down and moved her mouth against my ear. ‘Would you like a drink?’ I could feel her breath. I wasn’t going to complain about that.

I pointed to a cafe at the end of the alleyway instead. Embers glowed in an open fire. A guy was cutting neat slices off something roasting over it. I started to head towards it.

‘No, not there.’ She pulled me in the opposite direction.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Somewhere else. Anywhere but there.’

97

We sat in a bar filled with people, smoke and music. It doubled as a kebab shop, and that was what she bought me to eat. I filled my face and lifted the Pepsi Max can to my mouth. She gunned down Baltika beer from the bottle. I was sure I’d never seen Agnetha do that.

‘Remember, we got a busy time ahead.’

She put down the bottle and picked up her cigarette. She blew the smoke towards the ceiling, as if that was going to stop the nicotine getting anywhere near me. ‘Do not patronize me. If I want a drink I’ll have one. You are not my father.’

‘Is Semyon?’

The cigarette went down and the beer came up. ‘No, he is not. But he is special – perhaps more so, even, than my own father.’

I looked at the ring on her right hand. ‘What about your husband?’

The beer bottle smacked down on the tabletop. ‘Do I ask anything from you? I don’t even know if James Manley is your real name. IranEx is full of people with unreal names. Are you a spy, Jim? I imagine you are.’

I couldn’t help laughing. She didn’t know how much I wished I was. I’d been brought up on old Bond films. ‘No.’

‘I don’t believe you. But that’s OK.’ She nodded at the two remaining kebabs. ‘They will get cold.’

As I kept eating she drank and smoked, deep in her own world. She ordered more drinks and tapped another stick from the pack.

‘What about you? Are you a spy?’ I wiped grease from my mouth. ‘Your Arabic’s good. And your English is better than mine.’

‘I am what I say I am. I like languages, that’s all. Besides, Arabic pretty much came with the territory.’

‘Chechnya?’

‘Yes, and Bosnia, and Afghanistan…’

‘I thought your thing was anti-corruption.’

‘It is. Where do you think M3C sells its weaponry?’

‘Does your source work for them?’

‘Semyon… Semyon is a very trusted friend.’ She spoke the words slowly to emphasize just how much she meant them.

I picked up a piece of pitta bread and got stuck into the last kebab. ‘How do you know him? I mean, M3C are the enemy, aren’t they?’