justify political ends. Ben had seen enough of covert dirty dealings to know such tactics were a reality, and not just here in Russia. The official versions of tragic events were often far from the truth, a truth known only to a tiny few.
They passed under the arches of the station’s entrance and were quickly swallowed up in the throng of fast-moving commuters. Tatyana had a pair of prepaid contactless Troika cards that were the fastest way to negotiate the metro, and gave one to Ben. On their way down to the trains, without warning he paused to crouch down in the middle of the tunnel and retie his left bootlace. The river of foot traffic parted around him, jostling by with more than a few looks as Tatyana waited impatiently for him to finish. ‘So you see, it is not me who slows us down,’ she said acidly.
The slight delay caused them to miss the train, which departed as they were stepping out onto the platform. The short wait gave Ben time to decide that the station’s Soviet-era architecture looked pretty much as plain and severe as he’d have imagined. ‘Doesn’t look any great shakes to me so far,’ he observed.
‘Just wait,’ she said, smirking at the sceptical look on his face.
True to her promise, the next train came whooshing into the station within less than a minute. Crowds bundled out; more crowds piled on board. Ben and Tatyana’s carriage was crowded, with standing room only. As they began to snake their way beneath the city, Ben was in for a revelation. Station after station offered a staggering display of vaulted ceilings and grand chandeliers, amazing murals and friezes, stained glass and gilt, marble arches and columns and great bronze statues of Socialist icons, each one designed around its own individual architectural theme and every inch as pristine and magnificent as London’s underground was dingy and depressing.
‘Stalin intended the metro to be a triumph of Communist ideology,’ Tatyana said, keeping her voice low enough that only Ben could hear over the clatter and rumble of the moving train. Ben supposed that maybe mentioning Stalin’s name too loudly in liberal Moscow was akin to referring to the unmentionable Adolf Hitler in public anywhere in modern-day Germany, a serious social misstep. Though he’d read that many Russians were still misty-eyed about their ruthless mass-murdering former dictator, which worried a few folks. ‘While Khrushchev and later leaders condemned the luxuries of the old era,’ Tatyana continued, ‘resulting in many of the stations of the 1960s and 1970s being much plainer in style.’
‘I see. Interesting.’ Ben nodded and listened as she prattled on, while glancing around him at the sights. The truth, which he was keeping to himself for the moment, was that he was observing more than just the breathtaking architecture.
Almost from the moment they’d left the hotel, he’d become aware they were being followed. Ben had enough years in the field under his belt to have developed an extremely acute spider sense, which was the name soldiers gave to that feeling of being watched. Sure enough, he and Tatyana hadn’t walked a hundred steps from the doorway of the Ararat Park Hyatt before he’d used the reflection in a shop window to spot the two goons shadowing them.
The pair were dressed casually, not tall, not short, well blended into the crowds and as instantly forgettable as all good shadows should be. They were doing a creditable job of hanging back and looking unsuspicious, and would have been perfectly invisible to most ordinary Joes; not, however, to a former SAS man trained in the delicate art of counter-surveillance.
Without having to turn around, Ben had been able to keep the two in almost constant view. When the goons had followed them into Lubyanka metro station, Ben knew exactly where they were. When he had deliberately paused to fiddle with his bootlace as a way of testing their response, they’d stopped moving and huddled to one side of the tunnel, pretending to be gawking at something terribly fascinating on a mobile phone. And when Ben and his companion had got on the subway train, the pair had slipped surreptitiously on board after them. Now they were loitering at the opposite end of the carriage, innocently chatting to one another and throwing the occasional discreet glance at their targets, obviously unaware that they, the watchers, had themselves been spotted.
Tatyana looked surprised as Ben bent close to her ear, interrupting her history lecture. Her cropped blond hair smelled of fresh apples. In a whisper just loud enough to be heard he said, ‘Tell me, what’s Russian for “Don’t look now, but someone’s following us”?’
She didn’t look, but two small vertical lines appeared above her nose and her blue eyes narrowed. ‘Who are they?’ she whispered back. ‘Why would this be happening?’
‘Perhaps I should go and ask them,’ Ben said. ‘What do you think?’
‘I am sure you are just imagining it,’ Tatyana said. ‘You are … what is the word?’
‘Paranoid,’ he said. ‘Maybe. All the same, don’t turn around and look for them. They don’t know I’m onto them, not yet.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Make a phone call, for starters.’
‘And then?’
‘Maybe we ought to confront them, shoot them, dump their bodies on the track and then make a run for it before the cops arrive,’ he said. ‘Have you got a gun on you?’
Tatyana frowned. ‘You are not serious.’
Ben had Auguste Kaprisky on his list of speed-dial contacts. Two taps, a couple of bleeps and a few moments’ wait, and the old man’s crackly voice came on the line. Hurtling through a tunnel deep beneath Moscow, and the signal from 1500 miles away was crystal clear. The benefits of superior Russian technology.
Ben spoke softly, in French. ‘Auguste, I thought you said your guys were off the job.’
‘They are,’ Kaprisky replied, sounding taken aback.
‘Positive about that? I seem to have picked up some company here.’
‘I can assure you, it has nothing to do with me. Are you quite certain you are not—?’
‘Imagining things? Thanks, Auguste. Talk later.’ Ben ended the call. It was hard to know whether to believe Kaprisky. The wily old fox could be hedging his bets by keeping an eye on him. Maybe you didn’t get to become a billionaire by being too trusting.
Tatyana was looking at him, an eyebrow raised. ‘Well?’
Ben thought about all the places in a subway system he could lure the two goons. Men’s toilets were always a good place for an impromptu roughing-up and forced interrogation of the ‘Who are you working for?’ variety. If indeed Kaprisky had sent them, the old man might not be happy to have Ben knock his hirelings around. If however they were someone else’s guys, the use of forceful tactics could be stirring up a hornet’s nest that Ben preferred to leave alone, for now. He decided he could worry later about who they were. For the moment, his priority was to give them the slip so he could get on with the job he’d come here to do.
‘Next stop is ours,’ he said to Tatyana.
‘But we are not halfway there yet.’
‘I fancy a little fresh air, don’t you?’
The next station they arrived at was even more ridiculously opulent than the last. As Ben stepped off the train, followed by a confused Tatyana, he saw the two goons filter among the throng of disembarking passengers and drift along in their wake. Ben moved faster, forcing Tatyana to trot to keep up. The goons kept following, keeping their distance like before but moving with
