She breakfasted in the hotel’s small dining room, busy even at this early hour with couples and small family groups loudly chatting in various languages and planning their day. Liz had already worked out her route to the gardens, and since Peggy had researched the tram times and the location of taxi ranks, Liz knew exactly how long it would take her, so she took out her guidebook and studied it like the well-organised tourist Liz Ryder would be. After breakfast she paid her bill and left her bag to be collected later. If any of Sally’s worst fears happened and she couldn’t get back to the hotel, there was nothing in the small suitcase that Liz Ryder would not have owned.
At nine o’clock she left the hotel and walked to the Anhalter Bahnhof, where she caught a tram that took her halfway towards her destination. Getting off at the northern edges of the Friedenau district, she waited at a tram stop in a small queue of smartly dressed young people who looked as if they were going to work, though it seemed quite late for that. She abruptly pulled out her mobile phone, looked at the screen and, as though she had received a message, crossed the street to a taxi rank opposite the tram stop and climbed into the first cab in the line. As it pulled away, she glanced back and was glad to see the next taxi still parked and waiting.
It was a considerable drive to the south-west fringes of the city and though she tried to follow the route on the map on her phone she found it impossible to keep up with all the twists and turns. Once she spotted a stretch of the wall that had divided the city between the two opposing ideologies of the Cold War, though now it looked more like the graffiti-adorned walls the Eurostar passed outside Brussels than the frightening barrier it had once been. Although there was no wall nowadays, if Sally was right, East and West were still using Berlin as a jousting ground.
As directed by Peggy, she had asked the driver for an address several streets north of the Botanic Gardens. She got out and made a play of dropping her handbag and picking it up slowly while the driver drove off; then she walked through quiet suburban streets, passed by just a few cars and pedestrians. She was relieved to see no sign of Sally or her colleagues or indeed of anyone at all taking any interest in her. She walked on, circumventing the grounds, until she came to the southern entrance on Unter den Eichen. The gates were just opening to the public, and she joined a small group – a few middle-aged people, what seemed to be a class of young children with a couple of teachers, and a handful of older students with notebooks who got out of a small bus, talking earnestly. Liz wondered about them, but then it was her turn at the cash desk, so she paid her six euros for a day ticket and went in.
She meandered along a path through the arboretum, past what seemed acres of roses growing underneath tall trees. From time to time she examined the pamphlet about the gardens she’d been given along with her ticket, trying to look like her mother, who ran a nursery garden in Wiltshire and knew all about plants, and not like Liz Carlyle, whose interest in them was non-existent.
When she reached the glasshouses at the east end of the gardens she headed for the largest, the Grand Pavilion. It was an immense Art Nouveau-style building, an intricate cobweb of thin steel and glass panes. As she went in she was struck by a wall of heat and humidity that had her perspiring in seconds. A man in a green uniform was spraying the plants with a fine mist of water but otherwise there appeared to be no one around.
She sat down on a wrought-iron bench under an overhanging palm tree at the end of a row of tropical plants. Someone had left on the seat a copy of the same leaflet she had been given at the gate. As she sat down she casually swapped it for her own. She examined the new brochure and saw a circle drawn around the little picture of the café. This was the ‘All clear’ signal from Sally – the only actual intervention she had agreed.
Five minutes later, Liz was inside the café, sipping a large black coffee at a table just by the door. Several tables were occupied. An elderly couple was chatting to the waitress, whom they clearly knew well. Liz put them down as regular customers and no threat to her or Mischa. She wasn’t quite so sure about the four young people on the other side of the room. They were talking animatedly in German about some papers they had spread out on the table. She thought they all looked remarkably fit for students and hoped that if they were not what they seemed to be, then they were Sally’s colleagues.
As she was speculating about a couple of young American women at another table, the door opened and Mischa walked in. He went straight across to the counter and gave his order to the waitress. Liz watched how his eyes took in the room as he saw her and came and sat down at her table.
‘All clear?’ he asked tersely. With his cord trousers and blue wool jersey, shirt collar visible at the neck below a two-day stubble, Mischa could have passed for a university lecturer. Though there was nothing reflective or thoughtful in his dark, restless eyes.
‘Seems to be,’ Liz replied, keeping her voice down.
‘There was a car by the entrance when I came in – with a woman, a blonde, and a man. They were kissing, which seemed remarkable so early in the day.’ He shrugged. ‘But who knows? And they didn’t follow me into the gardens; I made sure of that.’
That better not be Sally, thought Liz. ‘So how are you?’ she asked quickly, steering him away from the idea of surveillance.
‘I am glad you could make it here. I leave in another couple of days. I needed to see you again.’ Liz nodded and waited for him to go on. ‘I am going back to Moscow. Meeting there would be very difficult.’
Yes, thought Liz. I certainly wouldn’t want to be doing this in Moscow.
The café was filling up now, with elderly couples, young women with pushchairs and babies in prams. ‘OK,’ she said slowly, ‘here I am. So, why did you want to see me – how I can help?’
‘First of all, you should know the consequences of what happened in Britain.’
‘You mean the Russian Illegals we exposed there?’
Mischa nodded. ‘Yes. You sent them back to Russia, which was a big mistake.’
Liz happened to share his view, but she was certainly not going to criticise her own government to this Russian. The Foreign Office had been immovable in their opposition to putting the two Russians on trial, fearful of the damage to relations with Russia and the possibility that two British citizens would be put on trial in Moscow as a tit for tat. ‘There were reasons for that,’ she said.
Mischa shook his head in disgust. ‘Not good ones.’ He brought out a cigarette lighter from a pocket in his trousers and fingered it absentmindedly. ‘You see, the couple you sent back were questioned thoroughly by their superiors in the FSB. What is that phrase – no stone was left untouched?’
‘Something like that,’ said Liz equably, not wanting to provoke him. He sounded on edge, and she remembered him from their previous meeting as nervy and irascible. As she was waiting for him to go on, the door of the café opened with unusual force and two uniformed police officers marched in.
Liz felt an icy wave wash up from her stomach to her head. She stiffened, clutching her bag. Thoughts flashed through her head: was this the disruption Sally had talked about? No one had bleeped her phone to warn her. Should she get out fast and leave the country?
The policemen had walked up to the counter, spoken a few words to the waitress and now turned to face the room. She looked at Mischa. He was rigid; sitting very straight in his chair, motionless, the fingers clutching his lighter white and bloodless.