The train set off again. Komsomolskaya was the interchange. There’d be a mass exodus and a mass embarkation. I’d go the six stops to Park Kultury, where the second bomb had gone off, and then take the Central Line back to Lubyanka.
The motorbike helmet shuddered. The neck of the vodka bottle disappeared once more through the open visor, then went back down between its owner’s legs. This time it tipped over and made him look like he’d pissed himself.
I knelt down and righted the bottle. Nobody watched. If they had, it would have been obvious to them that any good comrade should take the trouble to ease this boy’s helmet off his head before he choked on his own vomit. Maybe I’d get a medal when Anna took me to the Victory Parade.
As the train slowed at Komsomolskaya I shrugged off my North Face and bundled it under my arm, then straightened up and joined the throng at the door. The lining of the helmet stank of stale sweat and beer and cigarettes. I hoped I didn’t have to keep it on much further than the end of the platform.
19
I dumped the helmet and heaved my parka back on as soon as I emerged once more into the wind and snow. It was already starting to get dark. Sunset was at six at this time of the year. The lights of GUM did their best to make up for it, glinting off the wet cobblestones of Red Square.
Before perestroika hit its stride, all cities in the USSR had a branch of the state-owned department store. It was the only place where diplomats could buy their Marmite and Blue Nun, and the privileged Soviet few could shop for their premium vodka while the rest of the country lined up for hours for a loaf of bread and a dodgy-looking onion.
The Moscow flagship looked like Harrods on steroids, and had a history to match. Stalin converted it into office space. Then, when his wife had had enough of him killing everybody and topped herself, he turned it into her mausoleum. In the early 1950s his successors reopened it as a store, most of which consisted of empty shelves. Now it was a shopping mall like anywhere else on the planet, except for the fantastic architecture and the eye-watering prices. The two hundred stores inside boasted all the Western luxury brands and labels. After ten years of record-breaking economic growth, high-end Muscovites had money to burn. The man in the street could only press his nose against the glass.
I headed towards the sports deck. They sold everything from trainers to canoes, but I wasn’t after a pair of Versace trainers or a twenty-thousand-dollar home multi-gym. I needed a telescopic fishing rod — the one you see in gadget mags that folds down into something that fits in the palm of your hand.
20
Had Mossad, the Israeli secret service, not assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, one of the co-founders of the military wing of Hamas, in his Dubai hotel room in January 2010, I might have been trying to make entry in a totally different way.
The electronic lock of Room 419 could be accessed and reprogrammed directly at the door, but getting hold of the right box of tricks would have taken a lot more time than I had to spare. But — thanks to my mate Julian’s involvement at MI5 in tracking down the source of the British passports Mossad’s hit squad had used as cover — I knew a shortcut.
Burglars use fishing rods all the time to lift the keys you leave on the hall table. They then make entry with the house keys, or stay outside and steal whichever vehicle blinks in response to the key fob. Mossad had had an even better idea.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was wanted for the kidnap and murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1989, and purchasing arms from Iran for use in Gaza. He wasn’t on Mossad’s happy holiday list. They followed him from Syria to the Al Bustan Rotunda hotel near Dubai airport.
Al-Mabhouh was no fool. He’d requested a room with no balcony and sealed windows, so the only way in was through the door. He showered and changed, put documents into the room safe, and left the hotel between four thirty and five p.m. When he got back to his room at eight twenty-four that night to relax in front of a couple of episodes of Mr Bean, Mossad were inside, waiting for him. Half an hour later, he failed to answer a call from his wife. His body was found by a cleaner the next morning. And all it would have taken to stop his assassins in their tracks was a bath towel.
A read-out indicated that an attempt was made to reprogramme al-Mabhouh’s electronic door lock, but that wasn’t how the boys from Tel Aviv had got in. They’d used a method Julian had demonstrated to me in my own living room. Fuck knows why he’d brought a telescopic fishing rod with him. Maybe he thought if he could show me what fun they were all having, I’d cross back over to the dark side.
21
I headed for the house phones in the lobby, keeping eyes on the entrance for Ant and Dec. I had lost them for sure, but once they’d lost me they’d have had to make a decision. Stake out the flat, if they knew it, or go back to my last known location. Or split up and check both. Fuck it, I just had to get on with what I was here for, and as quickly as I could before one of them turned up.
I got six rings from 419 before an automated voice said what I guessed must be the Russian for ‘Please leave a message’. I hung up.
I checked out the hotel restaurants, but it was far too early to sit and eat. I didn’t see any of the crew having a session in the gym or the pool. But a drink or two to celebrate the fact they were alive? That was a definite maybe.
They weren’t in the lobby bar. I took the lift to the roof. The view of the Kremlin was straight out of a winter-wonderland brochure.
I heard the crew before I saw them. They were well wrapped up under gas heaters, and by this stage their breath was probably 90 per cent proof. They were having a great time and I didn’t blame them.
I turned back into the lift. As it descended I started to assemble the Mossad magic wand. The fishing rod telescoped down to about seven inches, but extended to five feet when fully open. It was made of bendable alloy. I’d binned the reel that had come with it, and the low breaking-strength line. I needed to land a shark, not a kipper.
The eyelets the line fed through also folded down. I opened the one at the tip, tied the end of the shark line to it and kept the other eyes closed.
I got out of the lift and checked the corridor for movement and sound. I wasn’t going to wait around. Defeating the door would take about ten seconds. The more I hovered about, the longer I was exposed. There was nothing in front of me, nothing behind. The shark-line reel on my left index finger spun as I started to extend the rod. I only needed about three feet. I put it over my knee and bent it into the shape of a bow saw.
I knelt on the plush carpet outside 419 and eased the tip, with the shark line attached, through the gap under the door. Hotel fire regulations are more or less uniform internationally. There has to be enough space — a maximum of ten millimetres at the threshold — to allow the door to swing without it touching the carpet.
I squeezed the rod through, pushing down the carpet on both sides. Once it was about three feet in, I twisted the handle and worked it up against the bottom of the door. The rod would now be going up vertically the other side. I nudged it to the right, towards the handle. The alloy clunked as it made contact with the metal.
I took a second to visualize what was happening inside the room. The shark line would be hanging between the handle and the door. The rod itself would be on the far side of the handle. I pulled down gently and heard another clunk of rod against handle a few inches from my head. The handle was trapped between the apex of the rod and the line.