millions of the poor, the old, the dying and the drugged. These people were all fucked big-time. I passed a collection of Soviet concrete blocks where they scraped a living.
Portable paraffin heaters provided their only warmth, but gave off so much moisture that their windows were still frozen solid on the inside — unless the residents had sold the glass and shoved up plywood in its place. In Putin’s Russia, everyone was an entrepreneur.
8
One of the promises I’d made myself during my dying days was to take the time to ‘stand and stare’, as Anna called it — to look at trees and plants, walk through gardens, shit like that. So every time I came out of Gunslingers, I turned left through Victory Park, along ‘Years of War’, its central avenue. Then I got the trolleybus home.
Victory Park was a new creation. It was only finished after years of fuck-ups in the mid-1990s. Poklonnaya Gora, the hill it sat on, was where Napoleon had waited to be given the keys to the city when his troops surrounded it in 1812. He’d waited in vain.
The park was finished just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of what we called the Second World War and the Russians called the Great Patriotic War. They had little interest in what had happened elsewhere. Fair one — more Russians were killed between ’41 and ’45 than all the other Allies put together. And eight out of ten Germans killed were dropped by the Soviets. In Western history books, those little details always seem to get lost in the footnotes.
The ‘Years of War’ had five terraces, one for each year of the conflict, and 1,418 fountains, one for every day. They weren’t working at the moment because everything was frozen. But there were chapels, mosques, statues, rockets, all sorts of shit — and then, right at the centre, one big fuck-off statue of Nike, the goddess of victory. I kept meaning to ask Anna the Russian for ‘Just do it’.
She was going to take me there on Victory Day, 9 May. Veterans, survivors, kids, everybody turned out. I was looking forward to seeing the old and bold. They’d be wearing more medals than Gaddafi. And it wouldn’t be raining.
I was nearly at the main gate, head down, nose running, hands in pockets, making sure I didn’t slip on the ice, when the front panel and an alloy wheel with the Range Rover logo appeared in what little peripheral vision my hood allowed.
‘Hey, fella, want a lift?’ It was the gunslinger without the side parting.
My head turned but my hood stayed where it was. I pulled the fur aside. Webb was at the driver’s window of a white wagon stained grey by today’s slush.
‘Where are you going? We’ll take you. It’s fucking freezing out there.’
‘Nah, it’s all right — I need the exercise.’
I turned through a set of fancy iron gates. The Range Rover’s engine revved behind me, but instead of driving away it turned into the park. The wagon swept past and pulled up about three metres ahead of me. Even the number plate spelt drama. The back door swung open. Mitchell, in a big black Puffa, beckoned me inside. But he wasn’t smiling. ‘Come on, my friend. It’s a lot warmer in here.’
The driver’s window was still powered down, and I could see that Webb wasn’t smiling either.
I was about to turn back towards the main when Mitchell stepped out, weapon up. He’d obviously decided not to follow my advice. ‘In — the — fucking — vehicle — now.’
9
I swung back towards him, hands now out of my pockets and up by my chest. Head down, I focused on the weapon. I could smell the exhaust fumes billowing from the cold engine. I got to within a couple of paces of the open door. I could smell the rich leather interior as I leant closer, and feel the warmth of the heater.
I punched out with my left hand and grabbed the top of Mitchell’s Glock. I pushed down, gripping it so I was outside his arc of fire, and jabbed at his face with my right. Short, sharp jabs, three or four in quick succession. Not caring where they hit, just that they did.
As his head jerked back, I took my chance. I found the trigger of the weapon and pushed down and round until the barrel pointed towards him.
The Glock jumped in my hand as a shot kicked out and the guy went down. I let go, turned and legged it as fast as I could, back through the gates. I screamed across the road, slipping on ice the other side and going down hard. I got up, legs flailing, and turned immediately right, out of their line of sight and fire. I kept running, not looking back — not that I could have with my hood up — and took another right.
I found myself in a service road. Steam spewed from heating vents set into the back wall of an industrial unit and engulfed a line of huge industrial wheelie-bins. I dodged between two of them, three-quarters of the way down, and fought to recover my breath.
Webb would have had to wait until Mitchell was back in the wagon before coming after me. Even if he didn’t give a shit about him, he couldn’t just leave the boy bleeding into the Victory Avenue snow. The police would soon be asking why.
I leant against the wall, heart pounding. Now that I was still, the cold began to eat its way into my feet. But at least they were dry; that was all that mattered right now.
I kept looking left and right to cover both exits of the service road. It wasn’t long before Webb drove past the end I’d come in from. There wasn’t much exhaust vapour now his engine had warmed up.
I had to assume they knew where I lived. And that meant the only thing I could do was face them up. I had to find out who the fuck they were and why they wanted me.
It looked as if Dostoevsky would have to wait. There was no way I could risk heading back to the flat or the range — or to any other known location — until I’d sorted this shit out.
And if the Range Rover’s number plate was anything to go by, there was plenty of shit to sort.
10
In Moscow, real people’s cars have white plates with black letters. The Range Rover had red ones with white numbers. Diplomatic plates. That could have meant jack-shit. You could buy them on the black market: they let you travel in the government-designated fast lanes and beat the Moscow jams.
Lads with red plates were never stopped. About a month ago, the police had a clamp-down on their illegal use. They pulled over a genuine red-plated wagon: the diplomat’s BGs jumped out and overpowered them, spread the officers on the ground, weapons confiscated. How were they to know the police were genuine?
But even if they were black-market gear, I still had to worry. These things cost at least twenty-five thousand dollars — more if you threw in the blue flashing lights. Which meant that whoever was after me had money as well as Glocks — and that wasn’t good news.
Fuck it. Running away would only make me die short of breath. And then I’d never know what this was all about.
I started to retrace my steps. They’d be back along that street sooner or later. They’d hit all known locations: Gunslingers, maybe the flat. Then they’d cruise around for a while longer. But not indefinitely. Mitchell was going to need medical attention, unless Webb was going to let him bleed to death. So I needed them to find me before they made that drop.
I got back on the main, hood still up, but enough of my face sticking out to be able to spot the nearest mini-mart. These places were even more prolific than Starbucks. They sold everything the man who had nothing could possibly want: cigarettes, alcohol, sulphuric acid to keep your crumbling piping clear, paraffin to keep you
