Eve sinks into the proffered chair, murmuring bewildered thanks.
‘Latte? Americano?’
‘Yes, whatever.’
He presses an intercom button on his telephone. ‘Masha, dva kofe s molokom . . . Do you like roses, Mrs Polastri?’ Rising, he crosses the room to a side table bearing a bowl of crimson roses, selects one, and hands it to her. ‘They’re called Ussurochka. They grow them in Vladivostok. Do you have cut flowers in your Goodge Street office?’
Eve inhales the rose’s rich, oily fragrance. ‘Perhaps we should. I’ll suggest it.’
‘You should insist on it. I’m sure Richard Edwards would approve the budget. But let me ask you: how did you find last night?’
‘How did I . . . find it?’
‘It’s an immersive on-site project I’m developing. The Lubyanka Experience. Spend a night as a condemned political prisoner during the Stalinist Purge.’ Noting her speechless gaze, he spreads his hands. ‘Perhaps someone should have explained the concept to you beforehand, but I saw it as an opportunity for some valuable feedback, so . . . what did you think?’
‘It was, quite simply, the most terrifying night of my life.’
‘You mean in a bad way?’
‘I mean in the way that I thought I was losing my mind. Or that I was about to be shot.’
‘Yes, you had the full NKVD Execution package. So you think it needs fine-tuning? Too spooky?’
‘Perhaps a little.’
He nods. ‘It’s tricky, because while this is very much a working secret police environment, we do also have these amazing historical assets. All those underground torture cells and execution chambers, we’d be crazy not to exploit them. And we’ve certainly got the actors. This organisation’s never been short of people who like dressing up in uniforms and scaring people.’
‘So I believe.’
‘At least you got to wake up in the morning.’ He chuckles. ‘In the old days your ashes would have been used as fertiliser.’
Eve twiddles the rose-stem. ‘Well, I was genuinely terrified, especially since someone actually did try to kill me yesterday, as I’m sure you’re aware.’
He nods. ‘I am aware of that, and I’m going to get to it in a minute. Tell me, how is Richard?’
‘He’s well. And he sends compliments.’
‘Excellent. I hope we’re keeping him busy at the Russia desk.’
‘Busy enough. Did he explain to you why I wanted to come here?’
‘He did. You want to ask me, among other questions, about Konstantin Orlov.’
‘Yes. Specifically his later career.’
‘Well, I’ll do my best.’ Tikhomirov rises, and walks to the window. He stands with his back to her, silhouetted against the pale, slanting light. There’s a knock at the door and a young man wearing combat trousers and a muscle T-shirt enters, carrying a tray, which he places on a side table.
‘Spasiba, Dima,’says Tikhomirov.
The coffee is ferociously strong, and as it races through Eve’s system, she feels a faint shiver of optimism. A lifting of the fog of helplessness and shame which, for the last twenty-four hours, has enveloped her.
‘Tell me,’ she says.
He nods, responsive to the shift in her mood. He’s back behind the desk now, his posture languid but his gaze attentive. ‘You’ve heard of Dvenadtsat. The Twelve.’
‘I’ve heard of them, yes. Not much more.’
‘We think that they started life as one of the secret societies that came into being under Leonid Brezhnev in the late Soviet era. A cabal of behind-the-scenes operators who foresaw the end of communism and wanted to build a new Russia, free of the old, corrupt ideologies. As they saw them.’
‘Sounds reasonable.’
Tikhomirov shrugs. ‘Perhaps. But history, as so often, has other ideas. Boris Yeltsin’s policies in the early 1990s enriched a handful of oligarchs, but diminished and impoverished the country. At which point, it seems, the Twelve went underground, and began to transform into a new kind of organisation altogether. One that made its own rules, dispensed its own justice, and pursued its own agenda.’
‘Which was?’
‘Do you know anything about organisation theory?’
Eve shakes her head.
‘There’s a school of thought that holds that sooner or later, whatever its founding ethos, the most pressing concern of any organisation is to ensure its own survival. To this end, it adopts an aggressive, expansionist posture which ultimately comes to define it.’
Eve smiles. ‘Like . . .’
‘Yes, if you will, like Russia itself. Like any corporation or nation state that perceives itself surrounded by enemies. And this was the point, I think, at which Konstantin Orlov was recruited by the Twelve. Which was entirely logical, because by then the Twelve had their own Directorate S, or its equivalent, and they needed a man with Orlov’s highly specialised skill-set to run it.’
‘So you’re saying that the Twelve is a kind of shadow Russian state?’
‘Not quite. I believe that it’s a new kind of borderless crypto-state, with its own economy, strategy and politique.’
‘And what’s its purpose?’
Tikhomirov shrugs. ‘To protect and advance its own interests.’
‘So how do you join? How do you become a part of it?’
‘You buy in, with whatever you’ve got to offer. Cash, influence, position . . .’
‘That’s such a weird idea.’
‘These are weird times, Mrs Polastri. As was confirmed to me when I saw Orlov earlier this year.’
‘You saw him? Where?’
‘In Fontanka, near Odessa. The SVR, our domestic intelligence agency, ran the operation against him which ended, regrettably, with his death.’
‘In the house of Rinat Yevtukh?’
‘Exactly so. The FSB contributed intelligence and man-power to that operation, and in return, I was invited to question Orlov. He told me nothing, of course, and I didn’t expect him to. He was old-school. He’d have died before betraying his employers, or the assassins he’d trained for them. The irony, of course, being that they killed him.’
‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Sure enough. The Twelve would have worked out pretty quickly that Orlov hadn’t been abducted just so that the local gangsters could collect a ransom payment. They’d have seen the fingerprints of the SVR all over the case. And they’d have liquidated Orlov in case he’d talked.’
‘So why might Yevtukh have been killed?’
‘If he was, it might have been because he collaborated, willingly or otherwise,
