“Ryan, are you ready?” said Anya, emerging from the kitchen. A few cracks of static jumped into the air as she ran a brush through her hair a few times. She dipped her little finger into a pot of lip gloss and ran it across her lower lip as she turned to face him.
“Do I look okay?”
“Yeah, you look great… fine.”
“Thanks.”
“Do I look okay?” said Harper, smirking.
Anya looked him over. “Yes. Okay.”
“Just okay?”
She blushed. “You look like a man. A man can look how he wants and it’s always okay. As long as he is clean.”
“I’ll remember that.” They made their way down onto the street and Anya stuck her hand out to hail a gypsy cab.
“So Johnny two names is going to meet us at the party?” said Harper.
“Who is this Johnny two names?”
“Paul-Pavel.”
Anya laughed. “You shouldn’t make fun of him.”
“Some people need to be made fun of sometimes. It’s good for them.”
A battered Lada pulled up in front of them and Anya bent down to the window. The destination caused the driver to hesitate a little, but he was persuaded by a slightly higher price. They both got in the back seat and the car juddered off up the road.
“I don’t think he has ever been to Rublyovka,” said Anya.
“We’re going to Rublyovka?”
“It’s where the Katusevs live when they are in Moscow. I would imagine they have property in quite a few places though.”
Harper had heard of Rublyovka. The fabled suburb for Moscow’s most exclusive residents was out to the west of the city. It wasn’t somewhere you went without an invite and he planned to make the most of his. His mind skipped back to his second call from Morton. They were doing all they could from London, but they needed him to find anything he could on the missing genius, Vitsin.
“Do you want some of this?” said Harper, offering Anya a black hipflask he had in his jacket pocket.
“Oh, no thanks.”
“You don’t drink?”
“I’ll have some wine when we get there.”
“Me too.”
“You drink wine with Cognac?” said Anya, looking slightly surprised.
“I’m English. We drink anything with anything.”
“You mean like a Russian homeless person?”
“Yeah, I suppose you could compare English drinking habits to those of a Russian tramp.”
The traffic was light and they swept along the Moscow highways out into the countryside. The taxi driver looked a little twitchy as they pulled up to the large security gate at the entrance to the complex. Two armed guards strolled over, looking disdainfully at the rusting vehicle. One of them shot some questions at the driver and he swiftly pointed in Anya’s direction, who thrust two elaborate party invites into his hand. The guard must have seen the same invite multiple times that evening, but he shone his torch on them all the same and examined them thoroughly.
“Don’t take this piece of shit anywhere near the house,” he said to the driver in Russian as he handed the invites back to Anya. “Drop them at the gates.”
The driver nodded and pulled forwards. They all marveled at the waves of opulence that flashed past the car. Mansions in a myriad of styles sat among the trees. The Moscow grime had disappeared and been replaced with a moneyed sheen. The driver’s face looked less impressed and more irritated the further they got into the estate. He put his foot down so they arrived quickly at their destination.
“Can you take us up to the house?” said Anya as he pulled over next to the gates of the Katusev property.
“You heard what the guard said,” shouted the driver. “He doesn’t want my shit car up at that place. It’s not for people like me.” They paid him and he soon disappeared back off into the forest.
“What’s his problem?” said Harper.
“Some Russians don’t like to see this type of place. It can make them a little envious.”
Harper took another swig from his flask. “It’s not just Russians that it makes envious. I’m feeling pretty envious myself at the moment.”
“Well,” she said, linking her arm into his. “Why don’t we pretend we are arriving home to our own house. That way, for a few minutes, you don’t have to be envious.”
“Ha, why not.” Harper put his hands in his pockets, squeezing her arm onto the side of his body. They walked slowly up to the floodlit house. It was built in a classic Russian style and painted in a yellow pastel colour. A fountain on the vast front lawn spouted a spherical stream of water into the air. Anya handed the invites to one of the bouncers on the door and they were directed towards a hall straight ahead of them. Harper noted there were more bouncers blocking entrance into other parts of the house. They wandered down a small corridor and onto the top of a staircase leading down into a large ballroom. A sea of people thronged the room and a small army of waiters moved deftly among them distributing canapés and drinks to the guests.
“Oh, I can see some of the other teachers,” said Anya, grabbing Harper’s arm and pulling him down the stairs. They pushed their way past a few people to the back of the room. Harper recognised some of the faces from the minibus. He smiled at the two girls that had been dropped at the grotty flat.
“Hey there, how are you? He said. “Did you manage to get another place or did you have to stay there?”
“It was a lot nicer inside,” said the girl that had burst into tears on the pavement. “But the corridors just smell horrible.”
“The school don’t seem very concerned,” said the other girl. “They said they would let us know if anything else comes up, but it doesn’t sound too promising. How is your place?”
“Oh it’s okay,” said Harper, not wanting to sound too smug. “They’re all pretty much the same. The resident dog doesn’t seem to like me very much.”
“Well, we should all go out for drinks one day,” said the first girl. “We can meet at the school or something. You live with that nice girl Anya, don’t you?”
“Yeah, it’s us and another guy. She was just….” He looked around and spotted her a few yards away talking to Pavel and some students from the school.
“Excuse me,” said Harper as he turned and walked over towards the group. As he joined the circle, he noticed that Pavel had dropped his rule of never speaking English in Russia. He gifted Harper a cursory glance and continued talking.
“…I just found the pace of Crime and Punishment so leisurely. Dostoevsky seems to delight in dwelling on irrelevant emotions. Bulgakov seems to understand pace more and the importance of the external in literature. I just found Myshkin to be very difficult character to spend time with…”
“Raskolnikov,” said Harper.
Pavel flashed an irritated look in Harper’s direction. “What was that?”
“I think you meant Raskolnikov. Myshkin is from the Idiot.”
“Err, well…no…I said Raskolnikov.”
“If you say so,” said Harper.
“No, I think you said Myshkin,” said one of the students. “Pavel, I think you maybe need to be more diligent with your reading of Russian literature.”
Pavel scowled in Harper’s direction. “Well maybe Evans would like to regale us all with his opinions on Crime and Punishment since he is suddenly such an expert. I mean, I’m sure with your excellent Russian you’ve read all the classics in their native form.”
“I’m not sure people really…”
“No, I insist,” said Pavel. “We are on the edge of our seats.”
Harper thought of his grandmother’s library. The rows of Gogol, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Turgenev, Bakunin. He could picture it intimately in his mind. No television and an abundance of time. “It just seems to me Crime and Punishment shouldn’t be easy to read.”