He was aware of being tracked by two Slavic-looking bruisers, who were keeping pace with him and Plunkett as they moved farther into the venue. The goons were not shy about muscling their way through the crowd. You could track their progress by the drinks they spilled, the elbows they jostled, and by one old dame they nearly knocked to the ground. Under different circumstances, Harry might have hurried over to help her up, and popped the Bolshevik enforcer a good one on the nose for his bad manners. Instead he hurried along just behind the SIS agent. The Russians were sending a nasty vibe throughout the gathering. Harry was alive to it, and increasingly so were the guests.
“Hard to say what they might do if and when things kick off,” Plunkett conceded of the five Soviet diplomats. “We have pretty thorough coverage on all of them. As best we can tell, there are no real players there. A couple with military experience, because-well, who doesn’t nowadays? But nothing of note. And we have each of them marked, anyway. It’s Beria’s people who are making a bloody nuisance of themselves.”
By now Harry could see for himself what Plunkett meant. He recognized the British ambassador-backed into a corner, engaged in an animated discussion with a short, bald character, who seemed to be leaking sweat from every pore in his body. The man’s cheap, ill-fitting suit shone where the light caught it, and his frightened eyes darted back and forth between another pair of slab-shouldered Soviet brutes, who were doing their best to slowly, surreptitiously, force their way through a cordon of Plunkett’s people. Undoubtedly, the human bag of sweat and nerves was none other than Valentin Sobeskaia.
From this distance, the contest between the Russians and the embassy’s security people was fascinating to behold. It had not come to open blows yet, but Beria’s men were not far off. The larger of the two was toe to toe with an enormous black man, whose dinner jacket probably cost more than the Russian earned in a year.
Harry smiled at the sight of his former regimental sergeant major. He almost laughed. In fact, he felt his spirits lifting for the first time since he had seen Julia, so many hours before.
“Viv,” he said. “Everything is going to be fine. Or not. But better than I’d thought, anyway.”
“Indeed. Sorry, I suppose I should’ve mentioned it. Mr. St. Clair is here in a private capacity, as a businessman, of course …”
Harry waved off Plunkett’s explanation. “Oh, I’m not at all surprised that old Viv would be mixed up in all this, Agent.”
“I’ll gather more troops if you think you’re good for this, sir?” said the SIS man.
“Good to go,” Harry replied as he watched the big West Indian shift his center of gravity slightly while holding on to the wrist of the NKVD thug attempting to get past him. The former SAS noncom drew the other man’s hand across his body and inflated his chest with a deep breath. The move was quick and almost impossible to see, if you didn’t know what to look for. But Harry could hear the crack as St. Clair broke the man’s elbow. The Russian’s face turned yellow, then white. Sweat beaded his high forehead and the muscles in his jaw line knotted as he ground his teeth together.
But he did not retreat. Instead, he used his close proximity to St. Clair to attempt a killing blow. Harry saw the flash of a blade appear in his good hand just in time. It looked like an oyster knife, stolen from the buffet.
“Viv, old man! On your left,” he called out, distracting both Russians but not St. Clair. It was not his first bar fight. St. Clair ratcheted up the torque on the armlock as Harry lunged forward and grabbed the attacker’s knife hand, crushing it back into the joint and twisting viciously, breaking that limb too. The NKVD hard man groaned and staggered away from the confrontation. He looked as if he was about to vomit.
“Bloody Russians,” said Harry. “Never could handle their drink.”
“Nice to see you, guv,” beamed his old sergeant. “Heads up …”
The West Indian interposed himself between Harry and the second attacker, who had moved up quietly on his blind side. St. Clair’s hand shot out and back-fisted the man in the testicles. Harry flinched when he heard the crack. Plunkett took the victim by the arm, not gently, and propelled him away from the ambassador and Comrade Sobeskaia.
“Nasty,” Harry muttered with a heartfelt grimace. “I think I heard one of his goolies pop.”
“That’s disappointing, guv,” said St. Clair. “I was aiming for both.”
Harry looked down as he felt a hand gripping his biceps. It was Sobeskaia, who had detached himself from the ambassador.
“Your Highness, you must get me out of here. You must get me away. They mean to kill me. I know what they are capable of.” The man was dangerously close to babbling.
“Oh, I think we all know what they’re capable of. Get a grip, man-but not on me.” Harry prised the Russian businessman’s fingers from his upper arm. Sobeskaia’s hands were cold and clammy. Panic sweat.
“Don’t mind him, guv,” said St. Clair. “I’ve got him sorted.”
The ambassador, an ex-Royal Navy man, Harry recalled, did his best to calm their would-be defector and draw him away from Harry and Viv, who had now been targeted by three more NKVD goons.
Harry took up station next to the forbidding presence of Vivian Richards St. Clair-six feet four inches of hard-packed West Indian carnivore. The reception roared on around them, largely oblivious to the quietly violent struggle playing out near the sausage rolls and party pies. Harry understood now why Carstairs and Walker had not let him bring a weapon other than the pig sticker strapped inside his forearm. It would be too tempting to open up on the Smedlovs, and God knows how many bystanders would’ve been cut down in the cross fire. He supposed the only reason the Sovs hadn’t opened up on Sobeskaia was thanks to the metal detector out in the foyer. They hadn’t been able to get any artillery inside, contemporary ceramics and plastic munitions being what they were. Which is to say, complete arse.
They must have wanted this character back quite badly, though. Because while everybody was keeping things relatively nice on the surface, beneath that it was obvious they intended to either escort Sobeskaia out of the joint or leave his corpse behind.
“What are you even doing here, Viv?” Harry asked, as they watched the approach of the three Soviet strongmen.
“Just trying to turn a quid, governor,” said his onetime NCO. “I’ve got a lot of old boys from the barracks on my books now, you know. Turned over a mill in profit last year for the first time-after tax, of course. Not easy to do with Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue having its paws so deep in my funds. Oh, no offense, guv.”
“None taken, Sergeant Major. Wakey wakey, here comes trouble …”
The NKVD emerged from the jostle of the crowd in a two-up, one-back formation, hoping to engage Harry and St. Clair into defending themselves and Sobeskaia from the first attackers, while the third slipped in with a blade or perhaps a poison point, whatever they intended to use on him. Harry caught himself nervously running his thumb over his fingertips, anticipating the confrontation before it arrived. He breathed in and out and tried to empty his mind. To play the ball on its own merits, as he had said to Plunkett. He waited, knees slightly bent, his weight focused forward on the balls of his feet, eyes settled on the center mass of the man who seemed to be coming directly at him.
Before the Russian could reach him, Harry stepped out and closed the distance between them, shifting off-line just before their bodies met, fending away the slashing blade that tried to open him up. He turned outside the short arc described by the knife, stamping down on the Russian’s instep with the heel of his expensive Italian loafers. Bones cracked, and the man grunted, but not without trying to drive an elbow into Harry’s solar plexus. He foiled that with a high-low block that appeared to most onlookers as though he was patting a friend on the shoulder, and perhaps directing him toward the food table with a gentle push on the elbow. In fact, he had unsheathed his own blade and buried it deep into the triceps of the other man, who lost control of his weapon hand and dropped his own blade to the floor.