Lermov said, "Explain."
"Remember the Garden of Eden sailed downriver on Monday afternoon? Well, this Ali Selim was fished out of the river at Wapping two days later."
"Drowned, of course."
"No, his throat was cut."
"I see. What is the source of this information?"
"Grafton Street Morgue in Wapping, where the body was delivered by the paramedics who recovered it. It's all there in the morgue records. A brief report of the recovery of the body, identity and address in a wallet found on the body. He lived at a place called India Wharf on the Thames. The autopsy report indicated that due to possible contamination of the body, cremation was urgent, and this took place at the morgue facility the same day."
"I must say, Ferguson is definitely turning out to be the ruthless bastard of legend. Is that everything?"
"Major Chelek has gone down himself to this India Wharf where Selim lived to see what he can find out. He'll be in touch as soon as possible."
"Then let's have something to eat until he does."
An hour in the canteen, a heavy vegetable broth that was a meal in itself with black bread, and, once again, a glass of the rough red wine.
"Peasant food," Lermov said. "In spite of the delights of the modern world, we still love the kind of food our grandparents enjoyed."
They went back to the office, and, ten minutes later, Ivanov's secure mobile sounded. "Put it on speaker," Lermov ordered.
Ivan Chelek's voice was clear and firm. "Well, here I am on India Wharf, looking out over the Thames, Ivanov. It's raining."
"I'm here also," Lermov told him. "We'll make this a conference call. So where are we at?"
"It seems to be an anchorage surrounded by old Victorian warehouses, most of them boarded up just waiting for a developer to knock them all down. Four motorboats tied up for the winter with canvas covers. No sign of any kind of habitation."
"So Ali Selim didn't live there."
"Oh yes he did. There's a lane at the top with a few old terrace houses and a corner shop. I walked up, tried the shop, and struck gold."
"Go on," Lermov told him.
"The people living in the houses are all Islamics of one kind or another, and the shop was their general store, run by an aging Arab named Hussein. We had the place to ourselves. I'm an old Iraq hand, as no one knows better than you, so I went and locked the front door, took a pistol from my pocket and five hundred pounds in fifties, and put them on the counter. I told him in Arabic that he had a clear choice. He could answer my questions or I would blow his brains out."
"And?" Lermov said.
"Proved a mine of information. Ali Selim was born in London. His father was a seaman off a freighter, in the old days when the Pool of London was thriving. He met and married a cockney white woman. It seems Ali was a very frightening and violent man from his youth. He went to prison on many occasions for robbery, assault, that kind of thing."
"And yet there is no police record on him at Scotland Yard," Ivanov observed.
"Obviously, his record had been wiped clean," Lermov said. "As if he never existed."
"He existed all right," Chelek said. "Apparently, he had relatives in Afghanistan who helped with the poppy trade, and he was into the drug business and made big money."
"Was he interested in the Islamic movement?"
"Not at all. He drank very heavily and made strange remarks when he was drunk, deriding Islam, and mocking such things as the bombing attacks in London by British-born Muslims, saying that he'd done far more that they ever could imagine. He once said to Hussein that they should have come to Belfast with him in the old days and seen some real action."
"Did he indeed?" Lermov said. "So we've established that he was a thoroughly frightening individual who would appear to have some sort of terrorist links in his past, and that's if he is to be believed. Is that it, then?"
"Not quite. Ali Selim lived in a barge anchored in the basin here. He also had an orange motorboat with a huge outboard motor. It was called Running Dog, and he boasted it could do forty knots. Both vessels have disappeared."
"Has Hussein got any explanations for that?" Lermov asked.
"Yes, he sometimes looks after an old greyhound for his son. On the Monday that the meeting was taking place on the Garden of Eden, he locked up his shop at one o'clock and walked the dog down the street, leading to the wharf. As he got to the end of the wharf, he drew back because he saw two men in fluorescent-yellow-and-black jackets being urged off the barge by Ali and pushed towards the Running Dog. The thing is, their hands were tied. Ali was wearing a similar jacket and carrying a large canvas bag."
"Were they talking?"
"It looked like it, but Hussein couldn't hear a thing. He said the weather was terrible, pouring rain, and mist so thick that the Running Dog disappeared as it roared away."
Ivanov said, "And Hussein turned right round and went straight back to the shop and minded his own business."
"I'd say a sensible thing to do, considering his experience of the kind of man Ali Selim was," Lermov told him.
"So what does all this say to us?" Chelek asked.
Lermov said to Ivanov, "I recall you telling me about a small riverboat exploding, an overheated gas tank or something."
Chelek said, "You think that was the Running Dog?"
"I've never been so certain of anything in my life," Lermov said. "This is how I write the story. Ali Selim sets out in the Running Dog to attack the Garden of Eden, probably with a bomb of some kind. I feel that his two prisoners were Kurbsky and Bounine."
"But what happened to Luzhkov?" Ivanov demanded.
"I cannot answer that."
"But what do you feel most probable?"
"Ali Selim is the person most likely to have had the answer. His barge has obviously been spirited away by Charles Ferguson, who has also had his criminal file at Scotland Yard wiped clean. It's as if he never existed. The crematorium at Grafton Street Morgue has taken care of that, reducing him to six pounds of gray ash. It was possibly an oversight on Ferguson's part not to have the morgue records wiped out, too."
"So it's all over?" Chelek said.
"Not at all," Lermov replied. "I must make my report to the Prime Minister, but what do I tell him? That Alexander Kurbsky is alive and well and safe in the hands of a most bitter enemy of Russia, and that Charles Ferguson has won again?"
"When can I expect to see you in London?" Chelek asked.
"I'll only know that when I've seen him and he confirms my task. Then I'll need time to work out a plan of action. In the meantime, you must continue to run things over there, Ivan. How did you end things with Hussein?"
"I told him that I had it on good authority that Ali Selim was dead."
"And what did he say to that?"
"He shrugged, and said in Arabic it was his time."
"I suppose it was. Take care, old friend."
Ivanov switched off his mobile. "So what now, the Prime Minister?"
"No avoiding it." Lermov patted him on the shoulder. "You've done well, and I definitely intend to take you with me to London when I go, but there's still work to be done here, so let's get started. I'll summarize what's happened, and you can take it down on your laptop."
"Then what?"
"Forward it to the Prime Minister's Office and request an i nterview."
It was lightly snowing on the way to the Kremlin but pleasantly warm in what had once been Volkov's office. They'd presented themselves in good time for the interview, but were still waiting an hour after the designated time.
"Do you think he's making us wait deliberately?"
"We're not important enough, Peter."
"Well, I believe that we are still one of the greatest nations on earth," Ivanov said. "And considering the state of the world today, that he has time for us at all surprises me."