Arctic Sun by Jack Grimwood

Author:Jack Grimwood [Grimwood, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

54

Thursday 26th November – Moscow

The marble foyer of Moscow’s House of Lions near Patriarch Ponds was not somewhere Valentina Kosterova had expected to find herself when she was sent after a worried small boy in Kensington. But here she was, with instructions to hand deliver the boy’s letter. In an impossibly imposing retirement home built by Wehrmacht prisoners, on Stalin’s orders, for marshals of the Soviet Union.

Well, the ones he hadn’t killed.

Valentina glanced round. Suddenly worried that someone might have overheard her thoughts. Her only companion was a huge bust of Lenin on a green marble plinth, and he looked as if he agreed with her. Ahead was a row of lifts. Valentina had never been in a lift that had mahogany panelling, tiled floors, and an oil painting on its wall.

‘Miss Kosterova?’

Valentina stepped out to find herself facing a bird-like woman wearing a long black dress that looked far too well made to be Soviet. ‘Schiaparelli,’ the woman said, seeing her gaze.

She blushed.

‘I’d have been cross if you hadn’t noticed.’

Valentina hadn’t met a living legend before.

‘Don’t look so impressed,’ Maya Milova said. ‘It doesn’t suit you. Now, I believe you have a letter for me …?’

‘Wax Angel?’ Valentina asked apologetically.

Madame Milova smiled. ‘So it’s true then. You’ve met Charlie? He told you my nickname?’

Valentina nodded. Smiled in turn.

‘Good. You’ve read his letter?’

‘No, madame.’

‘But someone has or you wouldn’t be here.’ Taking the envelope, Maya Milova looked impressed. ‘Still sealed,’ she said. ‘No signs of having been opened. Very neatly done. Very neatly done indeed.’

Slitting it open, she read and reread its contents.

Valentina hadn’t been there when the letter was steamed open, and a decision taken at ambassadorial level that passing it on as swiftly as possible might be best for all concerned, so she had no idea what it said. It had, however, been serious enough for Ambassador Zamyatin to tell her to get the next flight to Moscow and hand deliver it. Next flight, not next Aeroflot flight. It was clearly important. Ambassador Zamyatin was not fond of spending hard currency if he didn’t have to.

A door twice as high and half as wide again as a normal door opened onto a decaying apartment full of oil paintings of battles, snow scenes and rolling plains. Every inch of the floor was covered with tatty rugs and heavy leather furniture that hadn’t been in fashion for decades. An old man with an embroidered skull-cap was scowling at a huge samovar.

‘It’s empty.’

‘Fill it then,’ Wax Angel told him.

Valentina hesitated in the doorway.

‘Come in then,’ Maya Milova said tartly. ‘He wants to meet you.’

‘Sveta or Dennisov?’ her husband asked, once the nervous girl was gone.

Wax Angel looked at him.

She adored the Commissar, which was how she still thought of him, even after all these years. Now he was cleanly dressed and his hair trimmed, he looked nothing like the lion-maned scarecrow he’d been back in the days when she was living on the street, and he’d only abandon his dacha to come into town grudgingly.

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