“And who are you really?”
“We’re travellers.”
“What, like gypsies?” I said, with a fake smile.
“I don’t think so. Well, maybe a little.”
“Russian?”
“No.”
“No?”
“Definitely. No.”
“CIA?”
“No.”
“Some other American… organisation?”
“No.”
I took a breath. This time she jumped in on me before I could speak. “Don’t bother, Adrian. You’ll never guess.”
“You reckon?”
“Oh, I’m pretty certain.” She flashed the veiled smile again. “We should celebrate,” she said, “that you’re thinking of joining with us. Would you like that? Where shall we go?”
“I can’t imagine there’s much happening in this Pripyat place.”
“It is a little quiet,” she agreed. “Shall we go to Moscow? The plane will have been refuelled by now. Yes? I want to show you something.”
Seemingly my watch had to go forward yet another hour, though I still left the Rolex alone.
“ Adrian,” Mrs M said as we settled into the jet’s plush seats, “Connie and I have much to talk about. Can you amuse yourself?”
“Certainly. No, wait a minute.”
“What?” Connie asked.
“What if you keep me up past my bedtime?” I smiled.
Connie looked at me. “I understand there are hotels in Moscow.”
“What a relief,” I said.
They started talking some language I couldn’t even begin to unscramble. I left them to it and watched the ground slide by beneath. I’d hoped to see Chernobyl itself – from a safe height, obviously – but didn’t. It was only another hour’s flight but by the time we arrived in Moscow it was almost dark. Outside, on the tarmac of the airport, the wind felt cold enough for snow and smelled of jet fuel. A big black Merc was waiting. This time the driver had a cap and tie and everything. We went straight to a tall wire gate with a small guardhouse. A uniformed Customs/Immigration guy took the briefest look at our passports, exchanged a few words with Connie S. and waved us through to join chaotic traffic on a packed four-lane road.
My moby was happy again, reconnected to civilisation. I texted a couple of pals back in the big smoke to say where I was, and felt happier too.
The Novy Pravda was a club housed in a new-build block within sight of what I guessed was the Red River or whatever big river it is that runs through Moscow. Frankly I had no idea where we were. In something called the Central Administrative Okrug, which was not a vast amount of help. If we hadn’t driven through what was obviously Red Square with the big Disney church and stuff I’d only have had Mrs M’s word for it that we were even in Moscow.
The club was in a big black cube of a building. Lots of UV and dark purple lights on the outside, outlining it. The air shook with muffled music. Valet parking. Front of the line, two big bouncers with armpit bulges. Straight in, greeted by some guy in a very flash suit who took Mrs M’s long fur coat, fake-kissed Connie on both sides and gave me a small bow. I was in what I’d been wearing since I’d got up: black Converse, black 509s, a purple Prada shirt and a peach-soft thin black leather jacket. I felt underdressed for the first time that day.
“Kliment, how are you?” Connie said as the guy kept pace with us down a broad corridor lined with mirrors and what looked like blobs of mercury running down bronze mazes behind plates of glass.
“I am well, madam,” Kliment said, sounding very Russian. “You are well too, I hope.”
“Very. This is Mrs Mulverhill, my employer,” she told him.
“An honour, madam.”
“And this is Adrian. He’s from London.”
“ Adrian. Welcome. I love London,” he said.
“Smashing,” I said.
“This is Kliment’s club,” Connie told me.
I looked round. The sounds were getting loud and the light level dropping as we entered a big space with slowly flashing lights on the ceiling. A flunky came up, bowed to Kliment and took Mrs M’s coat and Connie’s jacket as well as my own to a coat-check counter staffed by two astoundingly beautiful girls, all high cheekbones, long black hair and sultry, unimpressed looks. The thudding music and faster flashing lights were coming from a big fluted archway ahead. “Tasty,” I said, smiling at Kliment. He nodded appreciatively, I think.
“Please,” he said. “We have your table.”
Vodka and champagne, caviar and blinis. We proceeded to get very drunk in our semicircular table facing a giant multi-level dance floor. I danced with Connie, then with Mrs M, who had a weird all-over-the-place way of dancing. In her black-bandages outfit and veil – yep, still with the veil – she got a lot of looks. Appreciative ones, too, and I could see why. She danced like she could move bits that other women didn’t even have. Connie was a lively bopper too. The two of them kept turning away bottles of bubbly from distant tables.
Connie leant over as they were opening our third bottle of Salon. “Come to the toilets. We’ll do some coke, yeah?”
By this time I’d drunk enough for this to seem like a good idea, and for the prospect of some white stuff to have taken on a sort of sensible, even medicinal quality, i.e. if I took some it’d sober me up a bit. Not to mention the fact that both Connie and Mrs M had only got even better-looking and more devastatingly attractive as the evening had gone on, and here was one of them inviting me to the loos. Well, why not? I looked from the gorgeous, blondely shining Connie to the shadowy Mrs M. Connie grinned and shook her head.
Mrs Mulverhill must have overheard, or guessed. She waved one hand. “Enjoy,” she said, watching the mass of people pulse and surge around the dance floor.
No eyelids were batted when we entered an extremely posh Ladies and commandeered a cubicle. We took turns snorting from a handily placed glass ledge. Good gear, almost uncut.
We stood up, grinning from ear to ear at each other. “Another dance?” Connie suggested.
I leant back against the wall, gave her a long look up and down. “We in a hurry?”
She laughed, shook her head. “Too sordid. Let’s away.”
I thought she might have meant Let’s away to somewhere quieter, but she just meant back to the dance floor and then the booth and the table where Mrs M was knocking back another deep-chilled vodka and looking as sober as when we’d walked in. She nodded at me. “We dance now,” she told me, rising.
“Can I catch my breath?” I asked.
She shook her head and took my hand.
It was quite a sexy dance. There were slow bits in the tune and she moved round me, curling and uncurling and rising and falling, circling about me like she was caressing my personal space. I’m not a bad dancer – many compliments received, know what I mean? But Mrs M was something else. Maybe it was the booze and toot, but I seriously felt I was in the presence of bopping royalty.
She sidled up, pressing herself against me. I felt the heat of her body through her black-bandage outfit and my own clothes. She was half a head shorter than me. She put her veiled lips close to my ear as I leant down to her. “ Adrian,” she said loudly, just audible over the music, “I want to take you somewhere. Will you come with me?”
I pulled back, showed some amused, pleased surprise and then bent to her ear. “Really?”
“Really,” she said. Then added, “Yes, that’s a way of putting it.” Which seemed unnecessary. “Follow me.”
“To the ends of the Earth, Mrs M,” I said as she took me by the hand. She laughed. Strange noise, almost like a bark. Her hand was very warm but perfectly dry. We slunk through the press of dancing people. She let go of my hand once we were clear of the dance floor and were heading for some cordoned-off steps. Not the loos again, then. Another pair of bouncers, nodded to. Down some wide, spiralling steps.
“This is called the Black Room, apparently,” she said as a large door was opened for us by another wide-shouldered gent, this one in dark glasses. Fair enough, it was nearly black inside. From what I saw as we walked through it was a fuck club. Lot of humping and humping-watching going on in/around/on/over tables and big comfy seats. Warm, it was.