a choice of nineteen empty plush leather passenger armchairs, all with marble-topped tables and a thousand gadgets to play with. Waiting for him on one of the seats was a designer travel bag containing his visa documentation and half a million rubles in large denominations, which equated to about six thousand euros for walking-around money. Kaprisky had thought of everything. Ben transferred the cash into his old green haversack and settled in a window seat.
Soon the jet was in the air. A ridiculously pretty Korean flight attendant with a smart uniform and glossy black hair appeared from the galley, sauntered brightly down the aisle towards her sole passenger and asked him in a California accent if he wanted dinner. ‘We have a full à la carte menu. The butter poached lobster, caught fresh this morning, is one of Mr Kaprisky’s favourites.’
‘You can prepare me anything I want?’ Ben said.
She beamed at him. ‘Absolutely whatever you desire. Your wish is my command.’
‘Great. I’ll have a ham sandwich. Thin bread, white or brown, I don’t care, light on the butter, just a smear of mustard. That’s it.’
Her smile wavered. ‘Can I offer you a glass of champagne with that? The Krug Private Cuvée is the finest in the world.’
‘No, but you can bring me a triple measure of single malt scotch, no ice, no water. And an ashtray, please.’
Now she was looking at him as if he’d just run over her cat. ‘I’m sorry, smoking is strictly disallowed on board.’
‘Whatever I desire, eh?’ Ben muttered to himself when she’d stalked off to convey his order to the chef. The whisky and the sandwich duly arrived. The chef hadn’t been able to resist putting on a fancy herb garnish, as though it were beneath him to serve up anything so plain and unadorned. Ben ate quickly, savoured the drink slowly, then set his Omega diver’s watch for the hour’s time difference between France and Russia, closed his eyes and let the plane carry him through the night.
Two hours later, Ben opened his eyes and saw the huge sprawling lit-up expanse of Moscow far below as the Gulfstream overflew the city on its approach to Vnukovo International Airport. Ben gazed down at the glittering lights and wondered where among all that he was going to find little Valentina Petrova and her father.
Kaprisky’s ETA proved startlingly accurate. The jet hit the runway at Vnukovo precisely three hours and eleven minutes after takeoff. Five minutes after that, they’d taxied to the business aviation terminal and the Korean stewardess returned, all smiles again, to say Ben was clear to disembark.
Moments later he was stepping down the gangway into the balmy summer night to set foot, for the first time in his life, on Russian soil. If Ben had stuck coloured pushpins in a world map showing all the places he’d travelled in his time, some countries would have been bristling with them and only a very few untouched. Should this prove to be his one and only visit to the Russian Federation, he could only pray that he would return home successful, and not empty-handed.
Ben walked from the plane with that dark thought in mind and his bag over his shoulder. Kaprisky had said his new assistant would be there to meet him – but nobody seemed to be around. Bright floodlamps lit up the tarmac and probed into the deep shadows between the private aircraft hangars. The screech of a jumbo jet coming in to land pierced his ears; then as the noise died away he heard the rev of an approaching car and turned. Strong headlights dazzled him momentarily, making him narrow his eyes and put up a hand to block out the glare.
The oncoming car veered in front of him and stopped directly in his path with a soft hiss of tyres. It was another black Mercedes S-Class identical to the one that had transported him to Le Mans-Arnage earlier that day. The windows were tinted, so he couldn’t see anyone inside. The rear passenger door swung open and a black high-heeled shoe stepped out, followed by a long, slim but well-muscled leg and then the rest of a woman in a charcoal business suit. Ben didn’t know her, but she seemed to know him.
‘Major Hope?’ Her English was marked with the unmistakable intonations of the Russian accent.
‘I’m Ben Hope,’ he said. The woman stepped towards him from the Mercedes. In her heels she was as tall as he was, an inch under six feet. She had the build of a model, but wide shoulders like a competitive swimmer. The eyes fixed on Ben could have been airbrushed aquamarine blue. Her blond hair was cut very short, which accentuated the angular contours of a face that would have been pleasantly attractive, except for the severe expression of hard purposefulness as she approached and stuck out a hand as rigid as a blade.
‘I am Tatyana Nikolaeva,’ the woman said. ‘I am employed to assist you in whatever way may be required during your visit to Russia.’
Ben took her hand. Her grip was as strong as it looked. ‘So I’ve been informed,’ he replied. ‘But I prefer to work alone whenever possible. If you’d like to show me to my accommodation and pass on any particulars I might need, after that you can feel free to stand down and let me take it from there, okay? I’ll square things up with Mr Kaprisky, so there’s no misunderstanding.’
‘Regrettably, that is outside of my remit to decide,’ she answered with a frosty smile. ‘My orders are clear. I take my obligations very seriously.’
Ben returned the smile. ‘Well, then, it appears neither of us has much of a choice, do we?’
The driver’s door opened and the chauffeur unfolded himself from the car. The Mercedes wasn’t a small vehicle, but at very little under seven feet in height, the guy would have been cramped in anything less than a Humvee. If Kaprisky’s driver back in France had been a racing driver in a past life, this guy had been an ultra-heavyweight boxer. The broken nose, shaven head and cauliflower ear, he had it all. The hulk exchanged some quick-fire words of Russian with Tatyana that made Ben wonder whether having an interpreter might not be such a bad thing, after all, then stepped around the car and held out a girder-like arm to take Ben’s bag and load it into the boot.
‘You have no other baggage?’ Tatyana asked, eyeing the tatty old haversack with an air of obvious distaste. ‘You are a man who likes to travel light, I see.’
‘Thought I’d leave the golf clubs at home this time,’ he replied.
Tatyana Nikolaeva frowned. ‘I do not think there would be time to play. There is work to do.’
Some people were too armoured for humour, obviously. Ben decided that would be his last attempt to break the ice with his new assistant.
She motioned towards the open rear door of the Mercedes. ‘Please.’ Ben got in. Tatyana climbed into the front passenger side. The chauffeur hefted his monstrous bulk back behind the wheel without another word, and they sped off.
Twenty-eight kilometres later, Ben was getting his first taste of Moscow. For the moment he had no idea what awaited him there.
Deep into the night, the heart of the city was alive and in full swing. The driver carved fast and efficiently through the busy traffic while Tatyana gazed absently out of her window and ignored Ben’s presence behind her. Now and then the two of them spoke in Russian and Ben listened, trying to pick out some of the words from the limited vocabulary he’d sifted from his memory of the language. Twenty minutes after entering the city, Tatyana said, ‘We are here,’ and the Mercedes pulled up outside their hotel.
Ben
