genuinely troubled by her loss. ‘She was trying to find out the answer to that question when she died.’
‘And did she?’
‘She was your friend, Sam. You tell me.’
There was a long silence. Gaddis felt that Neame was still holding something back.
‘Tom?’
‘Yes?’
‘You look like you want to tell me something. Is it about Charlotte?’
Neame looked up at the bar then down to his shaking, mottled hands. The whites of his eyes were glassy, free-floating, as if he was struggling to focus. ‘There is a woman in Moscow by the name of Ludmilla Tretiak. She is the widow of ATTILA’S third and final KGB handler, Fyodor Tretiak. I had suggested to Charlotte that she try to find her.’
‘And did she?’
Neame looked back at the bar. ‘I have no idea. Ludmilla was a lead that Eddie had wanted to follow before he was forced underground. All I did was to warn Charlotte about her.’
‘Why?’
‘Tretiak was murdered in St Petersburg in 1992.’
‘The same year that Eddie met his maker at St Mary’s.’
‘Precisely. That always struck me as too much of a coincidence. If Ludmilla suspects that her husband was killed by the KGB, she might want to talk to somebody about it. Which means that there are bound to be people watching her. Even now.’ Neame cautioned Gaddis with a resigned smile. ‘If you seek out her out, Sam, take the appropriate precautions. That’s all I’m saying. Make sure she isn’t observed talking to any nosey historians.’
Chapter 20
Gaddis was certain that he had seen Ludmilla Tretiak’s name in Charlotte’s files. Back in London, he called Paul, went round to the house in Hampstead and rummaged through her office. Sure enough, after searching for less than fifteen minutes, he found a listing for Tretiak under ‘T’ in one of her Moleskine notebooks, complete with an address and telephone number in Moscow. Later that evening, Paul remembered that Charlotte had been booked on a flight to Russia six days after her heart attack and called Gaddis to tell him. In her diary for that date, she had written the initials FT/LT and SU581, which turned out to be an Aeroflot flight number. Gaddis was convinced that the two women had arranged to meet, although there was no trace of an email correspondence between them on any of Charlotte’s accounts.
It took him forty-eight hours to arrange a flight and emergency visa to Moscow via his usual travel agents in Pembridge Square; the publication of Tsars had clearly made no impact on Gaddis’s status at the Russian Embassy. He arrived at Sheremetyevo late on a Monday evening, endured the traditional chaos at passport control and found his suitcase in a corner of the baggage area fifty metres from Aeroflot’s advertised carousel. Gaddis had arranged for Victor, the driver that he always used in Moscow, to pick him up outside the airport and they shunted along a five-lane highway in permanent gridlock towards the Sovietsky Hotel, assaulted by smells of cigarettes and diesel.
The following morning, after breakfasting on an omelette and two cups of metallic black coffee, he took the Metro three stops from Dynamo to Voykovskaya, emerging two blocks from Ludmilla Tretiak’s apartment. Whenever he was in the centre of Moscow, Gaddis felt that he had a memory for almost every building and street that he passed. But Voikovskaya was beyond the Garden Ring, a grey and sunless neighbourhood that he knew only by name. Tretiak’s apartment turned out to be on the ninth floor of a typical panel-built, twenty-storey, post-Soviet tower finished in three shades of beige. It was on a busy street characterized by erratically parked cars and kiosks selling pirated DVDs and cheap make-up. To ensure that Tretiak was in the city, Gaddis had called her number from a phone box in Shepherd’s Bush, pretending to be a telesales assistant offering cheap rates on wireless broadband. She had politely informed him that she did not use a computer and wished him a good day.
Residents were coming in and out of the building all the time and Gaddis was able to enter without pressing the buzzer. He had decided to make his approach at lunchtime, when Tretiak was most likely to be at home, and had written a short note in Russian which he now passed under her door in a sealed envelope. Esteemed Ludmilla Tretiak Please excuse this method of contacting you. I am an historian from University College in London. I was also a friend of Charlotte Berg. I am aware of what happened to your husband in St Petersburg in 1992. For reasons that I am sure you will appreciate, I do not wish to put your safety at risk by telephoning you or even by introducing myself to you in person at your home. I have information about the events leading to your husband’s death. If you would like to discuss this matter further, I will be sitting in the branch of Coffee House opposite this building for the rest of the day. I am wearing a blue shirt and will have a copy of The Moscow Times on the table in front of me. Alternatively, if you would prefer to contact me by email, I have left an address at the bottom of this page. With my respect Dr Samuel Gaddis
When he had pushed the envelope inside the apartment, Gaddis rang the bell twice, in quick succession, then took the lift back down to the ground floor. He wondered if he had sounded the right tone in the letter. Tretiak had been courteous and polite over the phone, but he could not be sure of her age and had perhaps pitched the letter too formally. Would she be prepared to risk a meeting with a man she neither knew nor could possibly trust? She might pass the letter directly into the hands of the FSB, with potentially disastrous consequences. But it was a risk that he had to take.
As it transpired, he had no need to be concerned. Twenty minutes after sitting down towards the back of the Coffee House, Ludmilla Tretiak walked in, appeared to recognize Gaddis immediately and came towards his table. She was younger than he had imagined, perhaps no more than forty, and looked almost amused as she shook his outstretched hand and removed a bottle-green overcoat secured around her waist by a narrow leather belt.
‘I wish you good health,’ he said in Russian. ‘You are kind to come.’
‘How could I not? I was intrigued by your letter, Dr Gaddis.’
She was dressed in designer jeans and a dark red blouse which fitted her pale, slender frame so precisely it might almost have been tailored. Gaddis was reminded of a certain type of married woman in the wealthier avenues of Kensington and Notting Hill, preserved in the dignity of early middle age, manicured and undernourished. He wondered if Ludmilla had remarried and searched her hands for a ring which wasn’t there. Had she had children with Tretiak? They would be teenagers by now, schooled in Moscow.
‘I apologize for all the subterfuge,’ he said. He used the word ‘ uhlovka ’ for ‘subterfuge’ and Tretiak’s calm eyes flared for a split second as she acknowledged his proficiency in Russian.
‘You must have been warned about me,’ she replied.
Was this the same woman that he had spoken to from the phone box in London? Her voice was very faint, but oddly playful. He tried to recall her end of the conversation, how she had pitched it, but his memory failed him.
‘I think you were supposed to meet Charlotte in Moscow last month,’ he said.
‘That is correct. I never heard from her again.’ Ludmilla took off a pair of leather gloves and set them on the table. Her fingers were witch-thin and bitten. ‘You said in your letter that you were a friend of hers. I hope that she is all right.’
‘I’m afraid I have to tell you that Charlotte died suddenly.’
Ludmilla reacted in a way that reminded Gaddis of Holly’s indifference towards her late mother’s death. ‘I am sorry for your loss,’ she replied, without inflection.
He craved a cigarette, but had made yet another private pact to quit. The Aeroflot flight had started it: smoking was banned on board, of course, but the upholstery of his seat had been so marinated in nicotine that he had considered lighting up in the toilet at 35,000 feet.
‘Did Charlotte mention why she wanted to talk to you?’
‘Of course.’ A waitress wearing a beige shirt and a long brown skirt approached them. Tretiak ordered a cup of tea with lemon. Gaddis was increasingly unnerved by her almost glacial sense of calm. ‘She told me that she was a reporter who knew about the circumstances leading to my husband’s death. In fact, she adopted almost exactly the same phrase that you used in your letter. “I know what happened to your husband in 1992.” Nothing more, nothing less. Only this.’
