But when the pecking order of her preference from among the three of them had been silently and subtly established, the other two left and the lucky winner, unable to believe his good fortune, suggested they dine alone. After a lengthy preamble, he finally suggested his room, a dinner for two, another bottle of whatever she wanted. Russian men would have taken half the time to get there, she thought.
“Are you married?” she said, having already seen the ring.
“Does it matter?” the man said.
“I don’t want this unless you’re attached,” she said. “I’m not the committed type.”
Ten minutes later she was in his room, with his key, while he picked up another from the concierge.
Ten minutes after that, he was lying on the floor, bound and gagged with the cord that tied back the drapes. She just had time to drag him into the bathroom and switch on the shower when the dinner he’d ordered downstairs arrived.
She ate from both plates, drank a bottle of water, and had the trays removed before dragging him back into the room. She checked his breathing, put a pillow under his head, and told him that if he moved from the floor in the night she’d kill him.
Then she slept for nine hours.
Chapter 30
THE SUN CAUGHT THE half-sunken pier on Seventieth Street, and the flat dawn light whited out the glass of the high-rises across the Hudson River.
Water dripped with a steady, pulsating monotony from the concrete pillars that supported the highway above her, and she jogged slowly in the damp, pillared arcade, observing with a steady eye the other, infrequent figures along the path: a couple of vagrants, another jogger, a man taking pictures in the dawn light who at first alerted her suspicions but was clearly on some project that didn’t include her. She knew she was alone, as much as it was possible to know.
The river walk to her right was punctuated with steel benches, four seats to a bench, and a few ferries and harbour vessels plied the river beyond.
She wore jogging pants and shoes and a hat and earmuffs she’d bought the day before with Vladimir’s money—less than a hundred dollars from a closeout sale on the Bowery for the whole ensemble—and, having jogged for a mile now, she was warm enough in the frozen morning that was breaking over New York City.
She was where she needed to be—and where no one else but Mikhail would find her. But she would jog for another half mile and then return to the fourth bench beyond the pier, which she’d passed a few minutes earlier. That way she could see the signs of anything untoward.
On the way back, vigilant to both changes and similarities in the faces and behaviour of the few people she observed, she was satisfied that she could make her approach. The fourth bench was just visible about a hundred yards away. She could see nobody anywhere near it. She checked her watch. It was time.
She jogged up to the bench and continued to jog on the spot, as she took a water bottle from her belt and drank. She then sat on the second seat from the left for a minute or so. The metal seat was icy through her jogging pants. After a few minutes had passed, she got up and moved to the seat on the far right. That was the signal.
She began to wait, looking out across the river, her back to the highway and the arcade beneath it. The steam of her breath puffed in clouds around her in the still-freezing air. Before her body temperature dropped, she took a fleece jacket that had hung around her waist and put it on.
After just over four and a half minutes, a man sat down on the seat at the far end. She saw him only in her peripheral vision, caught sight of a man’s coat, a man’s hands emerging from the pockets and being placed on his knees.
“It’s not a morning for sitting still,” he said. She recognised the voice.
“I have to keep walking,” she replied.
The exchange was as arranged. She immediately got up from the seat and half walked, half jogged away from the view of the river and back into the concrete pillared arcade. Once there, she turned left and walked at a steady pace.
There was the small workman’s hut Mikhail had told her about in his message. It was built of composite wood and ply, and the padlock on the door dangled open. He must have already been there before he sat down on the bench. He’d said the hut was unused at present, but if not, there was another fallback position farther along the river walk.
She slipped the padlock out of the catch and went inside. It was hardly less cold inside the hut, but she knew he was right. Nobody would stand around chatting outside at dawn on a January morning at the Seventieth Street pier, not without attracting attention.
She sat on an upturned bucket and looked at the tools that hung on the walls, a jacket with fluorescent yellow shoulders, and a couple of orange plastic helmets. He joined her a moment later.
He wasted no time. “What is it you want, Anna?”
It was two years since they’d met, for the only time, and then they’d been delivering Finn’s corpse to the British embassy.
“The Americans want to know about Icarus,” she said. “A British source in Russia has given them information that there’s an agent code-named Icarus in a leading U.S. defence establishment and passing secrets to Russia. They don’t know if Icarus is an individual, or if it’s a collective code name for more than one individual. They’re giving it the highest priority. That’s all I know.”
He didn’t reply at once.
She looked at him. Now he’d removed his hat, she saw that he had aged since the only other time they’d met. She remembered the thick black hair, and saw now that it was greying and thinned.
“That’s it?” he said.
“They want you reactivated, as they call it.”
He grunted. “You and me? Like with Finn? Is that what they think?”
“I know that’s the most you’d consider,” she answered him. “I told them that.”
“You’re right. But do you really think they’d trust you to be the sole intermediary? The Americans are great meddlers.”
“Mikhail, I don’t know.” She looked at him directly. “The only promise I made either to them or myself was to ask you.”
“My position is precarious. Even more precarious than it was when Finn and I worked together. I may be close to Putin, but these days such familiarity is a cause more for suspicion than for innocence. Putin is become like all dictators or men of power. Those closest to him are the most watched, the most fragile. The certain is what’s most uncertain, the close most distant, the friend the most likely enemy. They will not rest until they find Mikhail.”
“What shall I tell them?”
He didn’t answer her directly, but put his hand on hers.
“You too are on moving ground. I see it behind your face, Anna. What is your fragility?”
“They have my son. Finn’s son.”
“A hostage?”
“No. Not explicitly. But perhaps I can buy his freedom at least.”
“I see.”
They sat in silence. Then he broke the silence.
“What is he like?” Mikhail said.
“I think you would see Finn in him.”
“Ah, Finn. He was a beautiful man.”
“Yes,” she said. “He was.”
He looked at her, but didn’t touch her this time.
“As you know, Anna, you are the only person in the world who knows my identity.”
She nearly choked as she spoke. “There’s another now. An American. Burt Miller.”
He looked at her sharply, but she saw no hostility or even alarm in his eyes.