was probably grounds-keeping equipment and not much else, but there was no need to confirm that either way. The door was set facing the lawn, out of sight of the dacha. He circled back east through the trees and around the lawn to where the guesthouse was located. It was a two-storey detached cottage, close to the swimming pool and big enough to comfortably house a family of three in a nice suburban neighbourhood. The rain started back up.
Victor approached the rear of the cottage, emerging from the cover of the woods at the point with the least amount of open ground. He hurried across the twenty-foot-wide corner of lawn and paused with his back to the exterior wall. Listened.
There may have been no cameras here, but the cottage had its own alarm system. He peered through a few windows. Nothing of note. He circled the dacha through the woods surrounding it. There was about thirty feet of open space from the edge of the woods to the wall occupied by flower gardens. It was the same on the opposite side. At the front of the house there was a big driveway and lawn and then more woods.
Victor found a small car, most likely the housekeeper’s, on the driveway. The front door of the dacha opened and the woman he’d seen pass the window appeared. She was young, not far over twenty, petite, wearing a big padded coat, her shoulders hunched up. The coat had no hood but she held a folded newspaper above her head as a shield against the rain. She rushed over to her car, leaving the mansion’s front door open behind her. Victor watched as she smoked a cigarette and drank what he guessed was coffee from a thermos.
She wasn’t facing the dacha and Victor knew he could easily sneak inside without her noticing, but not without taking off his muddy boots first, and there wasn’t time for that. There was little point in exploring the house as Victor had no intention of getting up close and personal for this one. He knew from Bucharest how alert Kasakov’s guards were.
The housekeeper smoked her cigarette right up to the filter and tipped the dregs of her coffee on to the drive, before hurrying back inside.
Victor stayed crouched for another hour until she finally left for the day. He watched her drive away, before making his way to the rear of the dacha.
Staying clear of the security cameras and their fields of view, Victor stepped out on to the lawn and got as close to the dacha as he dared. He turned and looked back towards the hill. The branches and leaves of the few trees on the lawn obscured his vision. He looked back to where the back door was located. Again, he looked at the hill, judging the angle.
The tree took seconds to climb after a short jump and pull up. Victor removed his knife from a pocket and opened it. He used the serrated part of the blade to saw through a thin branch. It fell to the lawn. He did the same with several others. Then again, up a second tree, then a third. When he was done, there were over a dozen thin branches scattered across the grass. Victor collected them up and dumped them individually throughout the woods. He returned to the first tree and climbed it. Squatting to achieve the right angle, he peered down to his left and saw the mansion’s back door. He then took out his binoculars and looked right and up, through the tunnels of gaps he’d created in the foliage of the trees until he located his metal water bottle sitting on the protruding highpoint halfway up the hill. He cleared a couple of thin branches to improve his field of view and descended the tree. From the ground, the trees looked no different from before he’d tampered with them.
With his preparations complete, Victor headed back into the woods at the rear of the grounds. He followed his original trail back towards the wall. The paths he had made through the undergrowth were obvious to him but would be invisible by the time Kasakov and his bodyguards arrived. Until then no one would be around to notice them.
Someone noticed.
CHAPTER 49
Izolda Kasakov awoke from a nightmare with her heart thumping and her throat dry. She reached across to the other side of the bed to touch her husband and feel the safety of his presence, but instead found only empty bedclothes. She switched on a lamp and squinted against the light. She put her wrist to her forehead. It was damp with sweat.
‘Vladimir?’
There was no response, no sound from the adjoining bathroom. She checked the time. They had gone to bed two hours before and she had been asleep soon after. The cool pillow next to hers told her Vladimir had been gone for a while. It wasn’t like her husband to have trouble sleeping. He was a big bear of a man who slept easily and noisily. For the first few years of their marriage Izolda had used earplugs to block out his snoring. Now, she was so used to the loud, rhythmic sound that she sometimes couldn’t sleep without him next to her.
Given his recent behaviour, Izolda wasn’t wholly surprised he was having trouble sleeping. Something was going on. Something he wasn’t telling her about. He had not been his usual jovial self for several weeks now, and seemed always moody, self-absorbed and quick to anger. She had asked what was wrong but he kept assuring her it was nothing. She guessed it was about work, but didn’t pry further, just as Vladimir kept his distance from Izolda’s private life. They both had dark secrets the other didn’t want to hear.
Her pulse finally slowed down to a normal beat. She couldn’t remember the nightmare, only the fear it had evoked. Maybe the stress between her and Vladimir was doing more damage than she thought. Or perhaps it was the new guilt she carried. Either way she was unlikely to get back to sleep just yet.
Izolda slipped on her dressing gown and ventured out on to the landing. She loved Sochi, which was fortunate as it was one of the few vacation destinations that Vladimir was able to travel to without risk. The mansion was a large, lavish building, but nothing compared to the home she shared with Vladimir outside of Moscow. That house was huge beyond need or luxury. They had an entire wing that housed the full-time maid, chef, butler, driver, groundskeeper and bodyguards. The rest of the Moscow dacha was shared by just herself and Vladimir. She didn’t know how many rooms there were and sometimes weeks could go by without her using some of them. Those bedrooms she and Vladimir had once designated as nurseries, she hadn’t ventured into for years.
Izolda switched on lights as she went. She may have been a grown woman but she was on edge from the nightmare and being in an isolated dacha didn’t help keep her imagination in check. Her slippers muffled her footsteps on the red oak flooring.
Faint light emanating from the study told her where she would find Vladimir. He looked up when she entered. He was sitting behind his desk, dressed in silk pyjamas, and facing the open door. Some men looked better as they aged; though Vladimir was perhaps not one of them, the grey in his hair did lend him a certain dignified presence, and the lines in his face added character to his somewhat blunt features. But he was still as strong and powerful as he had ever been.
It was the computer monitor that provided the light. Vladimir clicked the mouse and removed his earbuds.
‘Izzy,’ he said. ‘I thought you were fast asleep.’
She leaned against the doorframe. ‘I had a nightmare.’
‘My poor baby.’ He looked so concerned. ‘What was it about?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Isn’t that the best way?’
She shrugged. ‘What are you doing up at this time of night?’
An expression passed over Vladimir’s face that was both happy and sad at the same time. ‘Just work, my love. Just work.’
‘Can’t that wait until morning? We’re on vacation, aren’t we?’
‘It’s not urgent,’ he said. ‘But I couldn’t get to sleep and thought I might as well make use of my insomnia. I hope I didn’t wake you when I got out of bed.’
Izolda shook her head. ‘No, no. I didn’t realise you weren’t there until the nightmare woke me. How long have you been up?’
‘Not long.’
‘Oh, I thought-’
Vladimir smiled and said, ‘You looked so cute when I left. You were snoring.’
‘ I was not.’
