boot, shook Erroll’s hand and walked away. Erroll looked thoughtfully at his retreating back for a moment, then turned back towards the car. ‘Insurance investigator my arse,’ he muttered. ‘OK, George, let’s go.’
The black ZIL pulled up about fifty yards behind the Embassy Rover, and the three men inside watched intently as Richter approached the terminal building. As he passed through the doors, the man in the back seat opened the car door and stepped out. He pulled his overcoat tight around him, then walked across and followed Richter. He had barely entered the terminal before he heard the voice in his earpiece. He cocked his head as if to hear the words better, then smiled slightly and quickened his pace, following Richter deeper into the building.
The British Airways’ check-in desk was already open, so Richter produced his ticket and passport and handed over his small suitcase. A professional is always aware of what’s happening around him, and Richter was nothing if not professional. As he turned away from the counter, he casually scanned the crowd, looking for anything or anyone out of place, and one pair of hard grey eyes met and held his for just a moment longer than they should have.
Richter ignored the fleeting contact and walked away towards the cafeteria. Eight minutes later, sitting at a corner table and with a coffee and a paperback novel in front of him, he spotted the same man again, standing just beyond the cafeteria. Once can be happenstance and twice may be coincidence, but in Richter’s trade coincidences didn’t often happen. Usually it meant enemy action.
He finished his coffee, put the novel in his briefcase, stood up and walked into one of the shops. He wandered the aisles and selected a small bottle of the cheapest Scotch he could find. It wasn’t a brand he recognized but that didn’t matter because he had no intention of drinking it. He put the bottle in his briefcase then left the shop and crossed to the toilets. The rest-room was deserted, and Richter acted quickly. He ran to the stall furthest from the door and placed his briefcase on the seat, then closed all the stall doors. He entered the fourth stall, pushed the door closed behind him and climbed onto the seat. Then he waited.
Seconds later, he heard the noise of the restroom door opening, followed by heavy footsteps. The man stopped just inside the room and Richter knew he was looking at the closed stall doors, and was probably down on his knees peering underneath them. After that, the Russian had only one option, and five seconds later he took it.
Richter heard the crash as the first stall door smashed open, then the second and the third. Timing is everything. To kick down a door, the attacker must obviously be standing on only one leg, and a man on one leg is by any definition unbalanced. In the split second before the Russian’s right foot connected with the lavatory door, Richter stepped off the seat, pulled the door open and simultaneously launched himself forward, left arm reaching downwards.
The kick that hadn’t connected had spun the Russian round on his left leg. Richter’s hand hooked neatly under the Russian’s right calf and he pulled up and backwards, a basic Aikido move that used the opponent’s own momentum against him. The Russian lurched sideways, toppled against the side of the lavatory stall and then fell heavily, legs splayed wide apart. As the man hit the floor, Richter kicked sideways with his left foot, catching the Russian’s right arm at the wrist, sending the small black automatic pistol spinning under the wall of the adjacent stall. Then he smashed his fist, hard, into the left side of the Russian’s neck, and then it was all over.
Richter pulled the unconscious Russian out of the stall and propped his body against the restroom wall. He reached into the man’s inside jacket pocket and extracted a black leather wallet, which he opened. One of the items inside caused him to nod in satisfaction. He replaced the wallet, retrieved his briefcase and extracted the bottle of scotch. Richter cracked open the top, poured the liquor liberally over the front of the Russian’s jacket, then placed the bottle by the unconscious man’s right hand.
The pistol was a Russian 5.45mm PSM, light and easily concealed. Richter took a handkerchief out of his pocket, picked up the pistol and dropped it into the paper towel waste bin beside the row of sinks. He’d just picked up his briefcase when the restroom door opened and a man walked in. He looked at Richter, then at the figure slumped against the wall.
‘Another drunk,’ Richter said, in colloquial Russian, walking towards the door.
The man sniffed, then nodded. ‘Sometimes you can’t walk round Red Square without tripping over them,’ he replied.
Richter nodded agreement, opened the restroom door and headed for the departure gate.
Chapter Five
Friday
The telephone woke Richter at seven forty. ‘Yes?’ he muttered.
‘Go secure, please.’
‘Right,’ Richter said, reaching for the telephone base unit and pressing the button. To anyone listening in, it would sound as if both had disconnected.
‘Thomas, Duty Officer. How did it go?’
‘Fairly well,’ Richter said. ‘The First Secretary’s a bit of a prick, but the Fourth Under-Secretary, a chap named Erroll, is pretty switched on. The car was a mess, and so was the body. The head was crushed beyond recognition, and the hands and arms were badly burnt. The Embassy identified the body by documentation only.’ Richter paused and yawned. The voice in the earpiece squawked at him. ‘What?’
‘I said, was there was any doubt about the identity of the body?’
‘No, none at all.’
‘Poor old Newman. A pretty futile way to go. He was—’
‘Not really,’ Richter interrupted. ‘You misunderstood me. The identification was conclusive, but only because the body definitely wasn’t Newman.’
‘What?’ Thomas said. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I wouldn’t say it if I wasn’t certain.’
There was a short pause, the faint sound of background voices, and then the phone crackled again. ‘Simpson wants to see you – now. I’ll send a car.’
‘Give me an hour,’ Richter replied. ‘I’m still in bed.’
‘Best you get up quickly, then,’ Thomas said, his grin apparent even on the scrambled line, ‘because the car will be outside your building in about twenty minutes. Come straight up to the Director’s office when you get here.’
Richter unscrambled, listened for the dialling tone and replaced the receiver. He glanced at his watch – almost seven fifty – then looked round the bedroom. As usual, it looked as if a bomb had hit it, the bed having apparently been the focal point of the explosion. Richter dragged the sheets and blankets into some sort of order, made a mental note to buy a duvet, and soon, and headed for the bathroom.
The apartment at the western end of ulitsa Novyj Arbat was small by Western standards, with a floor area of barely one hundred square metres, but for Moscow it was considered vast, particularly for a single occupant. Most Muscovite families thought themselves lucky if they lived in three- or four-roomed flats half that size. Russians are used to cramped living conditions, parents and children routinely sharing bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens.
Like most of the other larger properties in this district of Moscow, the apartment was owned by the Russian government and had been allocated to the Ministry of Industrial Production. The Ministry, in turn, had allocated the apartment as the Moscow residence of the Minister himself. Dmitri Stepanovich Trushenko sat comfortably in a leather armchair, his long legs stretched out towards the fireplace, where coals and logs were already arranged. His manservant would light the fire early in the evening, before preparing and serving the Minister’s dinner. Trushenko was tall and slim, with fair skin and blond hair, and a friendly and somewhat vacant smile that concealed an excellent brain. He looked much younger than his fifty-six years, and his faintly academic air sometimes misled opponents into underestimating his cunning and his keen instinct for political and personal survival.
