From that moment, I didn’t let them out of my sight. I knew I would get into trouble. There were ten pairs of shoes I was meant to polish and a whole pile of crates to be broken up in the cellar. But there was no way I was going to disappear inside. Zelin was planning something. If Rykov wasn’t a helicopter mechanic, what was he? A thief? A spy? It didn’t matter. Zelin had brought him into the compound and had to be part of it. This was the opportunity I’d been waiting for. I could blackmail him. Suddenly I saw him with his hand on the cyclic. He could fly me out.
My biggest worry was that Ivan would return to the dacha. He’d gone into Moscow for the day, driving the new Mercedes sports car that his father had bought him for his birthday, but if he came back and saw me, the chances were that he would find some task for me to do. At five o’clock there was still no sign of him but Sharkovsky and his wife returned from a ride and I helped them down from the saddle and walked the horses back to the stable. All the gardeners had gone. There were just the usual guards, walking in pairs, unaware that anything unusual was going on.
As I got back to the house, I heard the helicopter start up, the whine of the engine rising as the rotors picked up speed. There was no sign of Rykov but the van with the MVZ logo was still parked close by so I knew he couldn’t have left. I pretended to walk into the house but at the last minute I hurried forward and ducked behind one of the cars. It was actually the Lexus that had first brought me here. If anyone found me there, I would pretend I was cleaning it.
I could see Arkady Zelin inside the cockpit, checking the controls, and suddenly the mechanic emerged from the other side of the helicopter and began to walk towards me, towards the house, carrying a sheaf of papers. If the guards had seen him, it would have looked completely natural. He had finished the job and he needed someone to sign the documentation. But he was being careful. He kept to the shadows. Nobody except me saw him go in through the side door.
I followed. I didn’t know what I was going to do because I still hadn’t worked out what was happening. All I knew was, it wasn’t what it seemed.
I crept down the corridor past the service rooms – the laundry and the boot room, where I had spent so many hundreds of hours, day and night, in mindless drudgery. There was nobody around and that was very unusual. The mechanic couldn’t have just walked into the house. One of the housekeepers would have challenged him and then made him wait while she went to fetch Josef or Karl. Rykov had only entered a few seconds ahead of me. He should have been here now. I felt the silence all around me. None of the lights were on. I glanced into the kitchen. There was a pot of soup or stew bubbling away on top of the stove but no sign of Pavel.
I was tempted to call out but something told me to stay quiet. I continued past the pantry. The door was ajar and that too was strange, as it was always kept locked in case the dog went in. I pushed it open and at that moment everything made sense. It should have been obvious from the start. How could I have been so slow not to see it?
The housekeeper was there, lying on the floor. I had lost count of the number of times that Nina had snapped at me, scolding me for being too slow or too clumsy, hitting me on the head whenever she got the chance. I could see the wooden spoon still tucked into her apron but she wasn’t going to be using it. She had been shot at close range, obviously with a silencer because I hadn’t heard the sound of the gun. She was on her back with her hands spread out, as if in surprise. There was a pool of blood around her shoulders.
Arkady Zelin had been bribed. There was no other explanation. He never had any money but suddenly he had an expensive new watch. Rykov was an assassin who had come here to kill Sharkovsky. The safest way to smuggle a gun into the compound – perhaps the only way to get past the metal detectors and X-ray machines – was to bring it in a truck packed with metal equipment. It would have been easy enough to dismantle it and scatter the separate parts among the other machinery. And the fastest way out after he had done his work was the helicopter, which was waiting even now, with the rotors at full velocity.
My mouth was dry. My every instinct was to turn and run. If Rykov saw me, he would kill me without even thinking about it, just as he had killed Nina. But I didn’t leave. I couldn’t. This was the only chance I would ever get and I had to take it. There was a small axe hanging in the pantry. I had used it until there were blisters all over my hands, chopping kindling for the fire in Sharkovsky’s study. Making as little noise as possible and doing my best not to look at the dead woman, I unhooked it. An axe would be little use against a gun, but even so, I felt safer having some sort of weapon. I continued to the door that led into the main hall. It was half open. Hardly daring to breathe, I looked through.
I had arrived just in time for the endgame.
The hall was in shadow. The sun was setting behind the house and its last rays were too low to reach the windows. The lights were out. I could hear the shrill whine of the helicopter outside in the distance but a curtain of silence seemed to have fallen on the house. Josef was lying on the stairs, where he had been gunned down. Rykov was standing in front of me, edging forward, an automatic pistol with a silencer in his hand.
He was making his way towards the study, his feet making no sound on the thick carpet. But even as I watched, the door of the study opened and Vladimir Sharkovsky came out, dressed in a suit and tie but with his jacket off. He must have heard the disturbance, the body tumbling down the stairs, and had come out to see what was happening.
“What…?” he began.
Rykov didn’t say anything. He stepped forward and shot my employer three times, the bullets thudding into his chest and stomach so quietly that I barely heard them. The effect was catastrophic. Sharkovsky was thrown backwards… off his feet. His head hit the carpet first. If the bullets hadn’t killed him, he would surely have broken his neck. His legs jerked then became still.
What did I feel at that moment? Nothing. Of course I wasn’t going to waste any tears on Sharkovsky. I was glad he was dead. But I couldn’t find it in myself to celebrate the death of another human being. I was frightened. I was still wondering how I could turn this to my advantage. Everything was happening so quickly that I didn’t have time to work out my emotions. I suppose I was in a state of shock.
And then a voice came floating out of the darkness.
“Don’t turn round. Put the gun down!”
Rykov twisted his head but saw nothing. I was hiding behind the door, out of sight. It was Karl. He had come up from the cellar. Maybe he had been looking for me, wondering why I hadn’t broken up those crates. He was behind Rykov and over to one side, edging into the hall with a gun clasped in both hands, holding it at the same level as his head.
Rykov froze. He was still holding the gun he had used to kill Sharkovsky and I wondered if he’d had time to reload. He had fired at least five bullets. Rykov couldn’t see where the order had come from but he remained completely calm. “I will pay you one hundred thousand rubles to let me leave here,” he said. He sounded very different from the mechanic I had spoken to. His voice was younger, more cultivated.
“Who sent you?”
“Scorpia.”
The word meant nothing to me. Nor did it seem to have any significance for Karl. “Lower your gun very slowly,” he said. “Put it on the carpet where I can see it… in front of you.”
There was nothing Rykov could do. If he couldn’t see the bodyguard, he couldn’t kill him. He lowered the gun to the floor.
“Kick it away.”
“If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else,” Rykov said. “Do yourself a favour. You’re out of a job. Take the money and go.”