The eyes that glanced up from beneath slightly shaggy, dark sand-coloured eyebrows were mid-blue and twinkling with unexpected good humour. The full, rather sensual lips quivered towards a smile as Ivan saw Felix and the surprisingly fine nostrils flared. ‘Sorry to do this to you, Felix,’ said an unexpectedly light baritone voice with a clear Muscovite accent that did not strain Richard’s basic Russian vocabulary too much. ‘It’s the price of following orders, I’m afraid.’
‘Whose orders?’ demanded Felix as he and Richard hurried across the room.
‘The federal prosecutor’s,’ answered Ivan easily.
Not my father’s, thought Richard. The federal prosecutor’s. Interesting.
‘Lavrenty Mikhailovich probably doesn’t realize his word isn’t law down here. Yet,’ Felix answered easily.
‘Oh, but it is,’ interposed Richard, hoping his Russian accent was as polished as everyone else’s. ‘Show them the letter, Felix.’
The sandy eyebrows rose. The delicate mouth widened into a ready grin as Felix, who appeared to have forgotten the minister’s letter, went to show it to the officers.
‘Captain Mariner, I presume?’ said Ivan in impeccable English stepping forward, as light on his massive feet as a professional boxer, seeming to lead with his large shoulders.
Richard extended his hand. ‘Your English is perfect,’ he said. ‘Oxford?’
‘Sandhurst.’ The handshake was short, carefully gentle but full of latent power. Their eyes were almost on a level, Richard for once in his life looking slightly upwards. ‘A brief secondment many years ago.’
‘Of course. I should have guessed.’ Richard stepped back a little, still holding eye contact. ‘How is your father?’
‘The federal prosecutor?’ Ivan shrugged. ‘Much as usual. Prosecuting.’
‘We have to wait,’ said Felix unhappily. ‘They’re expecting someone else with Ivan’s luggage.’
‘Of course,’ soothed Richard, turning away from Ivan just enough to meet Felix’s frustrated gaze. ‘Colonel Kebila is on his way, no doubt.’
‘A full colonel?’ said Ivan, reclaiming Richard’s full attention. ‘Either I’ve gone up in the world or they really do have Mickey Mouse armies down here.’
‘You’ve gone up in the world, believe me,’ Richard informed him shortly. ‘Mickey Mouse is the last thing these people are.’
Colonel Kebila arrived a minute later, followed by two porters trundling a sizeable luggage trolley loaded with massive suitcases. Clearly no twenty-kilo limit for young Ivan, thought Richard ironically. Two hundred kilos looked nearer the mark.
Everyone in the room straightened respectfully as the dapper soldier entered, even Felix and Richard. Ivan came very close to full attention; A fact which Kebila noted, along with everything else. ‘Senior Lieutenant Yagula,’ he began, also in clipped Sandhurst English. ‘I have inspected the contents of your luggage. And find that I am informed by at least one government minister and indeed the president himself, that they contain nothing that presents any risk to my country. Or that contravenes any of our stringent import laws.’
‘That is very understanding of all concerned, sir. Please forward my thanks and best wishes as you feel appropriate,’ replied Ivan in the equally clipped tones of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, Camberley, England.
Ye Gods, thought Richard. They’ll be exchanging visiting cards next. Inviting each other round for tea and cucumber sandwiches. Or calling for seconds and duelling sabres …
‘However,’ continued Kebila smoothly with the curtest of nods at the pleasantry, ‘you should be aware, Stárshiy Leytenánt, that it is my job to guard the people who have just given me my orders, whether I agree with them or not. And if I find I’m having to guard them against you or any of the weaponry I have recorded as being in these suitcases, you can rest assured I will come looking for you. Personally.’
Ivan’s smile broadened microscopically, just enough to reveal a flash of pearl-white teeth. ‘And I am sure you will know where to find me, Colonel. That, I am certain, would be true even were we not, as I understand it, ordered to undertake the same mission, side by side. But it is, in fact, my very real hope that the equipment I have imported — and which you have so carefully catalogued — will help protect you and your men, when the going gets tough. Somewhere upriver. Sometime soon.’
No doubt there was further family news to swap and more social catching-up to do, but Richard reckoned that if whatever was in Ivan’s luggage had upset Kebila so much, it would probably give the manager of the Granville Lodge Hotel a heart attack. ‘What did you bring in those cases?’ he asked as the limo fought its way through the eternal rush hour south of Granville Harbour International twenty minutes later.
Ivan reached into the inside pocket of his beautifully cut jacket and passed over a carefully folded piece of paper.
‘No wonder Kebila’s jealous,’ said Richard as he finished scanning it. ‘He’s just upgraded his men to Ruger MP nines. As I expect you noticed.’
‘It was the first thing that struck me,’ admitted Ivan. ‘But that’s a fine semi-automatic. We’ve kept with HK MP fives, though, as you’ll see from the list.’ Ivan leaned over to slide a perfectly manicured finger down the column of writing. ‘I like Graches, though, I must admit. I carry the four-four-six Viking myself nowadays when I’m at work, but it doesn’t take the hot rounds. It’s civilian spec, of course. I like the fact there’s only seventeen parts. And that the hot nine mil loads will go through body armour like butter. Is body armour a problem? I thought it might be, though I’ve only had real experience in Chechnya. I’ve been in Africa, but only in a support role. No combat. But I reckoned better safe than sorry, you know?’
‘Body armour has been a problem in some areas,’ said Richard carefully. ‘Certainly the leadership of the hostiles we’re likely to face tend to wear it. The foot soldiers, though, are either hopped up on coke or brainwashed into believing Poro magic. Or both.’
‘I guessed as much,’ said Ivan. ‘If a guy’s coming at you wearing a wedding dress and a fright wig, you don’t need armour piercing, right?’
‘That’s about the size of it.’ Richard nodded, speaking feelingly from personal experience. ‘But both cocaine and magic can make them hard as hell to stop, hot rounds or not.’
‘Talking of hot rounds,’ interrupted Felix, ‘you haven’t brought ammunition for all these weapons as well, have you?’
‘Only the special stuff,’ answered Ivan. ‘I’m relying on the fact that everything I’ve brought will take standard military loads. If you guys haven’t got enough then we’ll have to take it from the hostiles. They’ll have plenty if the intelligence is accurate. That’s the head shed to you, Captain Mariner, I believe. As we seem to be using special ops jargon.’
Richard laughed. But as he did so, he thought back to other conversations he had had like this. And remembered who he had shared them with: Max’s daughter Anastasia, in fact. ‘You take all this kit upriver with you,’ he said easily, ‘and you’ll certainly have a lot to talk to Anastasia about.’