"Where did he pick us up?" I asked.
"Was he outside the hotel?"
Rick shook his head.
"I don't think so. He must have been hanging around on Red Square."
Away to our right, across the river, the floodlit Kremlin was a magnificent sight, but we were feeling too unsettled by the incident to appreciate it fully.
"I can see three possible explanations," I said.
"One, he was after our money. Two, Sasha detailed him to check where we went. Three, he was a Mafia dicker. I don't like any of them. If he was just a mugger, it goes to show how dodgy this place is. If Sasha sent him, it means we're not trusted. If he's Mafia, it means we may have been rumbled already."
I was getting jumpy. I remembered how the Colombians had had dickers posted at all the airports, photographing people as they arrived off the planes. Someone had told me that the secret police got hold of the flight manifests, and that by using computers they were able to match up passengers with pictures, so they could keep tabs on every single visitor to the country.
We walked on, until we became aware of a handsome, old style building set back from the road behind a courtyard on our left, and flanked by two matching outliers, evidently part of the complex. Beside the gate, in a grey pillbox, were two Russian guards in uniform, chatting, smoking, looking bored and not paying attention. Behind them, further in, was a stone gatehouse containing a guy in a red jumper who sat at a desk behind a glass screen.
"Bet that's a Brit," I said.
"He's a bit more alert. He'll be controlling the electronic gates and the phones."
"Look on the roof," said Rick, 'left-hand corner. There's an infra-red light. They must have good security systems."
We crossed the street towards the gates, where a brass plaque announced that the building was the British Embassy. The discovery made me feel a little better: at least we'd carried out one small but useful research task.
We recrossed the river by the next bridge, watching our rear all the way, and returned to base along the north side of the Kremlin, past the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where a perpetual gas flame burned out of a horizontal slab, and a cloak made of bronze lay folded over a plinth. We paid our respects and walked on.
Then, only a minute or two away from the hotel, we were nearly caught up in a violent incident. Fifty yards ahead, facing us, a single car was parked against the kerb. Suddenly a grey van hurtled past us from behind. Tyres screeched as it scorched to a halt inches in front of the car, blocking any take-off From the van burst four figures in uniform militiamen, by the look of them. They ran at the car, ripped the doors open and dragged out the driver and passengers.
In seconds the three guys from the car were spreadeagled over their own vehicle, taking heavy punishment from batons. Then one of the uniformed men stood back in the road and fired a couple of short bursts from his sub-machine gun, aiming into the air over the river. His purpose seemed to be to scare the shit out of the targets and I wondered where the bullets were landing in this huge city. As if to emphasise what he thought of his victims, another militiaman ran in and swung his boot, delivering a fierce kick to one of the huddled bodies, catching the man in the small of the back, whereupon he sank to the ground with a groan.
My instinct was to back off as fast as possible. Whinger evidently felt the same, and hissed in my ear, "Keep walking!"
This was nothing to do with us, and we definitely didn't want to get involved. So we crossed to the far pavement and kept going.
The last we saw, one of the three had been dragged into the van and driven off, leaving the others slumped in the gutter by their vehicle.
"What the fuck was that all about?" Whinger muttered.
"Were they the cops, or hooligans pretending to be cops?"
"I bet those were some of the guys we're going to have to train," said Rick cheerfully.
The brawl had made me yet more edgy, and for the last few hundred yards to the hotel, we speeded up. The approach was thronged by hangers-around, but as far as we could see the crowd didn't include our friend who'd lost his knife. Still, I was relieved when we'd pushed through and were back inside.
By now it was nearly 11:00 p.m." and Whinger spoke for all of us when he said, "Let's get a pint, for Christ's sake."
We'd already spotted a bar on the third floor, so we took the lift up. Whinger stepped out first on to the landing, and he was hardly through the door before I heard him go, "Phworrhh!
Firekin ell!"
"What is it?" I rushed out and instantly saw: leaning against the wall was the most blatant hooker I'd ever set eyes on — fishnet stockings, black leather skirt nine inches long, white blouse open to the navel, blazing scarlet lipstick, hair a dark, coppery colour she was never born with. As we passed within a couple of feet of her she let out a long jet of cigarette smoke through pursed lips and gave us a cool, arrogant stare of appraisal.
"Jesus!" Whinger muttered as we turned along a corridor.
"How was that for an old slag? She could be quite a looker if she wasn't so plastered in make-up."
"Rather you than me, mate," I said.
"Wait a minute, though.
You're not exactly strapped for choice."
The entrance to the bar was ahead of us, at the end of the landing; in front of the doorway lurked three more women, all peroxide blondes, all smoking. We pushed past them into a dark cavern thudding with a disco beat and headed for the bar on our right.
"Pivo, pozhaluista," I said, trying out two of my best words.
"Tn."
"Three beers?" said the barman in good-sounding English.
I nodded, and he pulled three tall glasses of Heineken, the only brand on offer. The beer was OK, but it cost the equivalent of k3 apiece.
As our eyes became accustomed to the dim light, we realised that the whole room was heaving with hookers, all dressed in minimalist kit. Two were dancing with each other under strobe lights on a small circular floor in the centre; the rest were sitting at tables or standing against the walls, gyrating in time with the beat. A quick head-count put the total at sixteen. The three other men present were paying them no attention whatsoever.
Soon it was clear that Rick had spotted someone he fancied. I saw him getting eye contact, and his gaze kept wandering off across the room.
"Bloody hell!" he muttered.
"There's going to be some crack when the rest of the lads get here." Then he said, "Look at that, too."
Above my head and behind me, on a high shelf in the corner, sat a television set. I turned to look at it, and saw a guy, with his bare arse to the camera, humping a woman, going at her hammer and tongs.
When I turned back, the two girls had left the dance floor and their place had been taken by a single, pasty-faced man. The guy, who looked to be in his twenties, was pissed out of his mind. He could still just about stand upright, but he staggered whenever he tried to walk. Lurching, faltering, tripping over his own feet, he seemed oblivious to his surroundings, but at the same time hell-bent on staging a grotesque solo dance.
Only when he started a strip-tease did he become too much for the management. Two security heavies hustled in and took him away.
We had another round of beers, watched the hookers vainly circulating, and then decided to get our heads down. At least, Whinger and I did. Rick said he was staying on for one more round.
"Watch yourself," Whinger told him.
"This place is hopping with Aids."
"How d'you know?"
"I can smell it."
Out in the corridor we were accosted by yet another pair of tarts, one dark, one fair. The blonde came straight for me, stopped a foot away and said, "We go to the bedroom."
It was a statement, not a question. I twisted a smile into position and said, "No thanks. I'm happy."