Eve pulls on her coat, and Niko sets the state-of-the-art alarm that Thames House has thoughtfully provided. The front door closes, and hand in hand, their breath vaporous, they make their way through the half-light of morning towards Finchley Road tube station.
In the P3 office at Thames House, Simon Mortimer looks inscrutable as he puts down the receiver. “Unless you can come up with a specific reason for changing your mind on Kedrin, it’s no go,” he tells Eve. “Too short notice.”
Eve shakes her head. “That’s ridiculous. SO1 could easily have a team in place at half a day’s notice. Is the foot-dragging coming from our end, or theirs?”
“Ours, as far as I can tell. There’s hesitation to deploy SO1 on the basis of, um…”
“Of what?”
“The phrase used was ‘female intuition.’”
She stares at him. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
She closes her eyes.
“On the positive side, you have made your concern known. Your ass, if I may refer to it as such, is covered.”
“I suppose you’re right. But really, ‘female intuition’? What I said in my memo was that I was concerned that I’d underestimated the potential threat to Kedrin.”
“What exactly made you change your mind?”
On her screen, Eve calls up an article from Izvestiya. “OK, this is from a speech he gave last month in Ekaterinburg. I’m translating. ‘Our sworn enemy, which we will fight to the death, and to which we will never surrender, is American hegemony in all its forms. Atlanticism, liberalism, the deceitful’—he actually says snake-like—‘ideology of human rights, and the dictatorship of the financial elite.’”
“Pretty standard stuff, surely?”
“Agreed. But there’s a huge tranche of the Russian and former Sov-bloc population who see him as a kind of messiah. And messiahs don’t have a long shelf life. They’re too dangerous.”
“Well, let’s hope he says his piece at the Conway Hall and pushes off fast.”
“Let’s hope.” She rubs her eyes. “I suppose I ought to go. Don’t much feel like it, but…” She exits the Izvestiya page. “Simon, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Do you think I should do something about, you know, the way I dress? That female intuition comment makes me worried I’m sending the wrong message?”
He frowns. “Well, I know you’re not even slightly like that. And as we’re so often reminded, discretion is the keynote of the Thames House style. But I don’t think there’d be any harm in your, perhaps, venturing a teensy bit further afield than the Marks and Spencer’s Classic and Indigo ranges.” He looks at her a little nervously. “What does your husband think?”
“Oh, Niko lives in a fashion universe all of his own. He teaches maths.”
“Ah.”
“I just don’t want to see this department’s authority undermined, Simon. We make serious decisions, and we need to be taken seriously.”
He nods. “Are you busy tomorrow afternoon?”
“Not specially. Why?”
“Well, I don’t want to perpetuate any stereotypes here, but perhaps you and I could go shopping?”
The Vernon Hotel is a six-storey edifice faced with grey stone on the north side of High Holborn. Its clientele is, for the most part, as anonymous as its frontage, so reception manager Gerald Watts is happy to give his attention to the strikingly attractive young woman standing before him. She’s wearing a fur-trimmed parka, and the eyes that meet his from behind the grey-tinted glasses are bright and direct. Her accent, with its hint of France and suggestion of Eastern Europe (after five years at the Vernon’s front desk Gerald considers himself something of an expert in these matters), is charmingly fractured.
Her name, he discovers when he takes her credit card details, is Julia Fanin. She’s not wearing a wedding ring; absurdly, this pleases him. Proffering her key-card to Room 416 he allows their fingers to touch. Is it his imagination, or does he detect a flicker of complicity? Indicating with a raised hand that one of his assistants take her valise and show her to her room, he watches the easy sway of her hips as she walks towards the elevator.
By the time that Eve arrives at Red Lion Square, it’s 7.45. Inside the Conway Hall the crowd is about two hundred strong. The majority of those who have come to hear Viktor Kedrin speak are already seated in the Main Hall; a few stand chatting against the wood-panelled walls, while others have found their way up to the gallery. Most are men, but there are a few couples here and there, and several younger women in T-shirts printed with Kedrin’s portrait. And there are other more enigmatic figures, male and female, whose predominantly black clothing is imprinted with slogans which might be musical, mystical, political or all three.
Looking around her, Eve feels a little out of place, but not threatened. The hall is filling fast, and the various tribes seem content to coexist. If the individuals present have anything in common, it is perhaps that they are outsiders. Kedrin’s audience is a coalition of the disenfranchised. Climbing the stairs to the gallery, she finds a seat at the front on the right-hand side, overlooking the stage and the lectern, and with a rush of guilt, realises that she hasn’t called Niko to tell him that she can’t make it to the bridge tournament. She searches her bag for her phone.
She doesn’t tell him where she is, just that she can’t come, and as always he’s understanding. He never questions her about her work, her absences or her late nights. But she can tell that he’s disappointed; it’s not the first time he’s had to apologise for her at the club. I must make it up to him, she tells herself. His patience isn’t infinite, nor should it have to be. Perhaps we could go to Paris for a weekend. Take the Eurostar, stay in a little hotel somewhere and walk around the city hand in hand. It must be so romantic in the snow.
In the hall, the lights flicker
