“He will be terribly disappointed,” she said.
“So let him. I just lent him some money. He’s going on like I donated a kidney.”
“He loves you like a brother,” she admonished – and Quayle smiled briefly, turning up the lamp wick. They were sitting on the veranda and, down below, the coloured strings of lights along the waterfront twinkled in the warm breeze.
“How long will you stay here?” she asked. “I mean, it’s wonderful and peaceful and warm, but…”
“... but not enough going on for a person like me?” he finished ruefully.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. I like it still. I own this place, so if I go I will always come back sometime. Nico would keep an eye on it. I know a man in Italy. His name is Marc. He deals in paintings. He wants me to go into business with him. I find them and he sells ‘em. The trouble is the very good ones are in Russia, and the Russians take a dim view of their national treasures being hawked on the open market. That means being a bit clever about it, and Marc isn’t the clever type.” He smiled again in the soft light. “He’s the type who gets caught. Just like Nico.”
“Then you best ignore it?”
“No,” he said softly. “Can’t do that.”
“Why not, Ti? I’m sure the Russian police would advise it.”
“Because he would get caught and I wouldn’t and because he is my friend.”
There seemed to be no arguing with that so she went inside, took a another bottle of wine from the fridge, and came back carrying it and the kitten together.
“When?” she asked, too casually, screwing the corkscrew down.
“Maybe next year. Just one trip would be best. In through Kiev and make the buys. Set up a conduit to get the pieces out. Shouldn’t be a problem...”
And then the sweat broke out on his forehead. Someone had said that about the Libya job. Just pop in and pick up the plans for the chemical factory. Easy as falling off a log. But they were there at the buy, black uniformed police everywhere. They had known he was coming.
There was no trial, no phone call, no contact. Just the blindfolded bone-jarring ride in the back of the truck and the boot in his back and the dirt and blood in his mouth and Jebel Muhkta Prison.
Holly saw the look in his eyes and moved quickly to break the spell.
“Here,” she said placing the little black street fighter on his lap, “I will pour the wine,” and she watched with satisfaction as his big scarred hand moved gently over the cat’s back.
That night they made love for the first time, Holly lying beneath his bulk, feeling his strength, loving him back fiercely as the warm wind blew through the window. Afterwards she lay in the crook of his arm, her head on his chest, and listened to him breathe, frightened of losing him because she loved him.
*
KGB General Nikolai Borshin climbed from the car and told his driver to wait. Holding his pass up to the guards with his good left hand, he walked through the massive wooden gates with a mixture of trepidation and delight. He wasn’t sure what he expected of the grounds, but it wasn’t only the huge firs and old pines that rutted the path. He took a deep breath and inhaled the scent of summer trees, the rich sap and pine needles taking him back to memories of his boyhood. He had always liked things in their natural state. The basic wholesome things.
As he stepped over a fallen branch, he saw the house through the trees. It was a traditional Russian building, low-eaved and with split log walls, the chinks long ago filled with the moss that grew across the timbers like a green velvet mantle. Bright blooms sprang from painted wooden tubs in the warm summer sunlight and only the small forest of communications aerials in the background gave any hint that this was the twentieth century.
As he walked, he straightened his blouse and squared away his cap. Head of the Fourth Directorate KGB he may be, but this was the dacha of the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet himself.
Soon he was ushered into the cool entrance hall by a woman servant, a withered old woman who, the stories said, had been found standing on a rubble strewn roadside on a bitterly cold Leningrad morning, the Nazis only six miles away, trying to sell a pair of shoes to buy potatoes for the children at the orphanage. But no-one wanted shoes and there were no potatoes anyway – and people thought she was crazy because she saw things in the future and avoided her. Things were looking bad until a tank came along. Up in its turret was a young man, a boy almost, who saw something in her eyes, something different, something he recognised. He called to the driver to stop and jumped down, behind him the huge metal monster’s engines still rumbling. Moments later, he called up and told them to throw food down, holding out a burlap bag of bread and beets and a dead chicken for the woman to take.
“Take it and feed your little ones,” he had said.
“Thank you, oh thank you!” the woman said. “How did you know?”
“I remember you” he laughed. “I was there for a while.”
He had an aura even
