The Moscow Cipher. Scott Mariani
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address.’ She scrutinised his face for a moment, then added, ‘You are much too young to be retired.’
‘I didn’t say I stopped working.’
‘Looking for missing people, is that the work you do now?’
‘I’ve done a lot of K and R missions over the years. That’s short for kidnap and ransom. But I’m sure you could deduce that, detective.’
She smiled. ‘It seems an unusual career change for a retired soldier to become a person finder.’
‘There are a lot of people in the world who go missing because someone stole them, usually for money, sometimes for other reasons. I wanted to do something about that, because I know how much pain and suffering it causes to the victims and their families.’
She watched him for a moment, looking deep into his eyes as if she could see unspoken secrets there. ‘You have suffered from it too.’
‘When I was in my teens, my younger sister was kidnapped by human traffickers in Morocco. The police never found her.’
‘You never saw her again?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘But it explains why you do this,’ Tatyana said. She paused, sipping delicately from her drink without taking those vivid eyes off him. ‘Is there a Mrs Hope?’ she asked, switching tracks.
The question brought more memories to Ben’s mind. There had been a Mrs Hope, once upon a time, all too briefly. The vision of Leigh’s face flashed through his thoughts for a moment. And Roberta’s, and Brooke’s, accompanied by the same mixture of emotions those reminiscences always rekindled. The best times, the worst times. He didn’t share his deeper feelings, as a rule, and he wasn’t particularly inclined to discuss the current state of his personal life.
‘Is there a Mr Nikolaev?’ he countered.
‘I asked you first.’
‘Not currently.’
‘What about a girlfriend?’ she asked him, leaning forward to plant both elbows on the table and curling one side of her lips in a teasing smile. ‘Come now, I am sure you have many of those.’
Ben wasn’t going to be drawn into mentioning Sandrine Lacombe. Not that she could have been considered a girlfriend, exactly. They’d met by chance a few months ago, back home in France. A few dates since then, hints of mutual attraction, no commitments made, nothing serious. He had the impression she’d been hurt before, as he had. It might grow into something; it might not. Either way it was no business of Tatyana Nikolaeva’s, and he made no reply.
She frowned as a thought struck her. ‘You are not goluboi – what is the English expression – a sodomite?’
‘We in the West tend to use slightly more progressive terms nowadays.’
‘But you are not one of them?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m not one of them.’
She took a sip of her drink and looked relieved.
‘Shall we get down to business?’ he said.
‘Of course.’
‘Tell me what we know about Yuri Petrov.’
Tatyana replied that, in fact, they knew remarkably little. He didn’t appear on the voter register and finding an address for him had been quite a challenge for her investigation firm. The easy part had been checking for a criminal record, which had come up blank – he had never been charged with anything in Russia, at any rate.
‘Employment?’
She shook her head. ‘Whatever he does for a living, he is getting paid only in cash. His bank account is almost empty and shows no activity within the last twelve months.’
Which, as far as it went, seemed to fit with Kaprisky’s portrait of the man as a low-life ne’er-do-well, possibly involved in all sorts of petty criminal dealings for which he hadn’t yet been caught. Ben couldn’t be sure until he knew more. ‘First thing I need to do is check out his apartment.’
‘He is not there,’ Tatyana said. ‘I assumed you had been informed of this.’
‘Tell me what you found.’
Tatyana seemed mildly irritated by having to repeat the same information she’d already told Kaprisky. ‘It is all in my report. I accompanied the team to the address, where we found the door locked and the apartment empty.’
‘Did you look inside?’
‘Breaking and entering was not our purpose.’
‘If it’s an apartment block, there must be a caretaker or a concierge. You could have got the key from them.’
‘Only the police have authority to demand access to a private property.’
‘Okay,’ Ben said. ‘So if you didn’t get to look inside, how could you be so sure the apartment was empty?’
‘Petrov had been seen leaving, and not returned. I spoke to neighbours, who reported having not seen him for several days.’
‘All the same,’ Ben said, ‘I’d like to see the place for myself, first thing in the morning. I’ll need you to meet me here at eight o’clock on the dot.’
Tatyana seemed not to object. ‘Any other instructions for me?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘None, other than try to keep up. I’m using to working alone, which means I go at my own pace and push hard. I don’t believe this man intends to harm the little girl, but I don’t intend to let him hold her hostage any longer than absolutely necessary. Fall behind, I won’t wait for you, okay?’
‘I am a professional,’ Tatyana replied coolly. ‘You do not have to worry about me.’
‘Glad to hear it. The last thing to discuss is transport. Do you have a car, or are we using Kaprisky’s? Because if so, I’d like to ditch that big lunk of a driver.’
‘Car is a terrible way to travel in this city,’ Tatyana said breezily. ‘From early in the morning until late in the afternoon, Moscow is solid with traffic. It is worse than Los Angeles. But the public transport system is best in the world. That is what we will use instead.’
Ben wasn’t sure about that idea. For the first time since he’d met her, Tatyana Nikolaeva smiled with enough warmth to melt away the icy severity of her face.
‘I am a MOCКBИЧКА. A Muscovite. Trust me, Major Hope.’
Ben rose early, out of old habit. As sunrise broke over Red Square and bathed his balcony in a flood of golds and magentas, he ticked off a hundred press-ups in sets of twenty-five, followed by the same routine for sit-ups. It wasn’t much of a morning’s exercise session for him; maybe he could go for a ten-mile run later, or abseil up and down the towers of the Kremlin just for the hell of it. He brewed up a pot of espresso on his coffee machine, the one luxury of his suite that meant anything to him, then walked through onto the balcony to consume it, along with the first Gauloise of the day, and watch the city rumble into life below.
After a pummelling in the cavernous marble shower room, he was back downstairs at three minutes to eight to meet Tatyana. She was three inches shorter in the flat shoes she was wearing in anticipation of walking about the city, and had exchanged yesterday’s charcoal business suit for a double-breasted navy affair with heavy epaulettes a little reminiscent of Russian military dress uniform.
‘Good morning, Comrade Major Hope,’ she said briskly.
‘And a very good morning to you, Miss Nikolaeva.’