Then, out of the darkness where the tongue of shadowy jungle licked up against the eastern end of the compound, Ivan and his men came in at a steady trot, pulling off their goggles as they came into the light. They were carrying four makeshift stretchers, on which lay the corpses of the little patrol Mako had left looking for the route Ngoboi had taken to and from his boat. The dead men had been laid out reverently enough, but none of them had been covered. Eight dead eyes stared up at the starry sky, the foreheads above them skinned from eyebrow to hairline. Eight hands lay on still stomachs, all their fingers gone. Four mouths gaped silently, their teeth red and their tongues torn out. Each of the four corpses had a hole in his chest, apparently reaching from front to back, where his heart had seemingly been simply ripped out of his body. And each of them had a broad-bladed spear thrust up under his chin to come out a foot or so above the crown of his head.
As chance would have it, Ivan and the corpse bearers came face-to-face with Anastasia first, and the huge Russian stopped, shocked at having confronted his childhood friend with so much bloody brutality. Ignorant, as yet, of how much horror she had already had to face this evening. But then he stepped back, his open gaze clouding with confusion, at the simple rage in her expression. At the tenseness of the finger curled around the trigger of the assault rife that pointed at him with the same steely directness as her usually soft brown eyes.
‘You!’ she spat. ‘You and I have something to discuss, Ivan Yagula!’
‘What …’ he said, simply nonplussed.
Richard closed his eyes wearily as it all fell into place, remembering the unruffled bed and untouched bottle of vodka he had seen as he ran past Anastasia’s door, pulling his shirt on amid the screaming and the gunfire. She hadn’t been anywhere near her bed or her booze. She had been listening at the paper-thin wall separating her room from theirs while he told Robin what he had found out about the end of Simian Artillery.
‘About how Boris Chirkoff really died,’ Anastasia snarled now, stepping forward as Ivan stepped guiltily back. ‘About who paid for him to be murdered. And who actually killed him. And who let me live in hell for ten years and more believing he had shot himself and it was all my fault, you bastard …’
Confrontations
‘Who cares what Anastasia knows or thinks she knows,’ snarled Max. ‘The stupid little shluha vokzal’naja isn’t going to tell anyone who matters. Not in this godforsaken hole anyway. And even if she gets back to Moscow and starts making trouble, who’s going to take her word over that of her father, her godfather and the federal prosecutor? And remember, your father isn’t just the federal prosecutor for the Moscow office any longer. He’s just about the most senior law officer in the country! She opens her mouth anywhere north of Armenia and she’ll rot in Butyrka prison waiting for a trial that’ll never come!’ He grabbed the bottle of Stoli Elit and gulped down a mouthful without bothering with a glass, then slammed it down on his bedside table with enough force to make the black pearls he kept in a bowl there dance and rattle.
Ivan looked at him, leaning his full weight against the closed cabin door — only too well aware that much of this trouble had arisen from conversations half overheard by people who were never meant to share the secrets.
‘In any case, if what you tell me is true,’ continued Max brutally, ‘this Ngoboi will take care of her long before I have to ask any favours from your father or the prison governor.’ He reached for the vodka again.
‘That’s why I’ve moved her aboard,’ said Ivan quietly. ‘To protect her. That’s why I’ve agreed to talk to her.’ He took a step towards Max’s bunk, stopping just before he could tower over his adopted father. He had come here to reason, not intimidate. And, besides, Uncle Max was drunker than he had ever seen him before. Perhaps there was some feeling for his wayward daughter behind all the vodka-fuelled bluster. ‘But I still think we ought to put all this bullshit aside, Uncle Max, and agree how much of the truth I’m going to tell her when we finally go têtê à têtê — or head to head as she’d rather have it.’
‘Tell her what you like, boy. Têtê à têtê, face-to-face, head to head or mano a mano. We’re off upriver in the morning. The little sooka’s staying here. And with any luck Ngoboi will have sorted everything out for us before we even get these huesos home.’ He used the bottle to gesture towards the pile of pearls overflowing from the big glass bowl. Then he swung savagely back towards Ivan. ‘Though he’ll be lucky to find enough of a heart to eat!’
‘Why do you hate her?’ asked Ivan. ‘She’s your daughter, after all.’
‘Don’t you understand anything?’ snarled Max, drunk enough to open up. A living example of the old Latin saying. In vodka veritas. ‘She has cost me everything! All my hopes and dreams. Every plan I made, every idea I had about my Ivan’s future, about how my tall, strong son would take over Bashnev/Sevmash and rule it alongside you, with Anastasia at your side cementing our families, passing the inheritance down, father to son in the old way. Lavrenty Mikhailovich, Felix Makarov and I had it all planned. You were even to be married in Saint Basil’s! Either there or the Church of the Spilled Blood in Saint Petersburg! Then honeymoon aboard my yacht. Nearly a billion dollars’ worth! In those days she was called the Anastasia. In those days! And that’s all gone! Why? Because she killed my Ivan. Then she destroyed herself. That destroyed her mother, God rest her. Then she destroyed my plans. Then she destroyed me! Me! Who was going to build a business dynasty to rival Abramovich, Lisin, Ivan Grozny, Peter the Great! I can never forgive the damage she’s done to me. If there was anyone left alive I thought the little sooka loved, I’d destroy them too, just to see her suffer!’
‘She heard?’ snarled Robin. ‘She heard it all?’
‘She must have,’ said Richard. ‘I didn’t realize the walls were that thin!’
‘And she had no idea?’ grated Robin.
‘Apparently not!’ he snapped, his countenance darkening again. ‘As you heard her say, she thought it was suicide — and she’s been blaming herself for the whole mess ever since. Until this evening.’
‘But the shock of it, Richard! The shock! I must go to her!’ Robin surged up off the bed in their cramped new quarters aboard Volgograd, as though she would go to the girl at once wearing only her nightgown.
‘You can’t!’ Richard raised his hands to restrain her. ‘She’s been moved on to Stalingrad for safety. In the same way we’ve been put here aboard Volgograd. And the sentries are so jumpy after what happened to that patrol, you’d get shot for sure if you even thought of crossing from one to the other. If you went like that they’d probably think you were a ghost in any case!’
‘Aboard Stalingrad with those … men!’ Robin sat, quivering with outrage.
‘She wants to be there, Robin.’ Richard secured his pyjama cord, reached for his top — and thought better of it. Even though Volgograd was air-conditioned, the cabin was still hot. ‘That’s where Ivan is. She wants to have a heart-to heart with Ivan.’