He took a couple of buses. Had a drink in a bar down by the harbour. Stood and watched one of the big supercats boom in from the Gulf, forty-five minutes from Helsinki to Tallinn and completely impervious to the weather. Nordic Jet Line boasted that their catamarans could sail through the eye of a hurricane, although that had not been required of them yet.
He took another couple of buses. He paused outside the Zoo, insanely large considering how relatively small the city was, but decided not to go in. He took another bus out to Kadriorg and spent an hour or so walking in the grounds of the Palace. He took some photographs. Then he took another bus back towards the centre of town.
In the Old Town, he wandered for a while, looking in shop windows. He bought himself a couple of sweaters and a tin of small cigars. Feeling peckish, he wandered from restaurant to restaurant, checking menus, before deciding to eat at Troika.
Troika hadn’t changed, either. From the vaulted cellar ceilings to the brightly-costumed staff to the menu, it was exactly the way it was the last time he’d been there, two days before he left Estonia for his long odyssey down the coast towards Restauracja Max.
He ordered pelmeni, and asked the girl who took his order who the chef was, these days, and when she told him he smiled and said, “And tell him I want proper pelmeni. Not the insipid crap he serves to the tourists.”
She looked at him and smiled uncertainly. “I’m sorry?”
“Let me write it down,” Rudi said, gently taking her order pad from her and scribbling a note. “And make sure he gets that. I’ll know if he doesn’t and I won’t give you a tip.”
She went away and Rudi poured himself a glass of water and lit a cigar and waited.
Five minutes later, a small, red-faced man in chef’s whites came storming through the restaurant, shouting at the top of his voice in Russian. The waiting staff fled as he approached Rudi’s table. Rudi stood up and the chef came right up to him and flung his arms around him.
“Sergei Fedorovich,” said Rudi, returning the hug.
Sergei let him go and took a step back to look at him. “You lost weight,” he said critically. “You don’t eat well, wherever you are.”
“I’m in Poland,” said Rudi.
“Pah. There you are, then.” Sergei snapped his fingers at one of the waitresses, who were just coming out of hiding. “You. Stolichnaya and two glasses.” He looked at Rudi again and shook his head. “You don’t eat well,” he said again.
They sat and Sergei raided Rudi’s cigars and lit one. “So,” he said. “You came back.”
“I’m on holiday,” said Rudi.
“You got your own restaurant yet?”
Rudi shook his head. “I’m working for someone. In Kraków. It’s a good place; you should come down sometime.”
Sergei sniffed. “To Poland? Those guys got long memories.”
“And we don’t?”
Sergei took a drag on his cigar and blew out a stream of smoke. He smoothed a hand over his thinning hair. “Things are not so bad here these days, you know?” Anti-Russian sentiment had run deep in the Estonian soul, even after the Soviets left. Estonia’s small but vocal ethnic Russian community had felt somewhat embattled ever since. “I’m not saying things are perfect now, but it’s better, you know?”
Rudi nodded and sat back in his chair. Troika had been the first professional kitchen he’d ever worked in, Sergei the first professional chef he’d ever worked under. He’d thought the little man was an unequal mixture of magician and ogre. Sergei had been the first chef ever to hit him. With a roasting pan.
“Now I’m going to make things awkward for you and ask why you didn’t stay in touch,” said the Russian.
Rudi didn’t feel at all awkward; he’d rehearsed this the night before. He shrugged. “I was travelling. I was working all hours God sent. By the time I had a chance to write…well, it would have been embarrassing.”
Sergei tipped his head to one side. “You’re different.”
Rudi laughed. “I’m a better chef now.”
“I should bloody well hope so, all this time gone by.” Sergei narrowed his eyes. “No, you’re different. Some bad stuff happen to you.”
“I’m a chef, Sergei Fedorovich. Bad stuff happens to me all the time.”
“That’ll be true,” Sergei admitted. The waitress returned with a frost-rimed bottle of vodka and two glasses and then departed again. Sergei poured them both a drink and then held up his glass. “Fuck your mother,” he said and knocked his drink back in one.
“Fuck your mother,” Rudi said, and knocked back his vodka.
“Okay.” Sergei refilled their glasses and then snapped his fingers at another waitress. “You. Black bread, butter, pickled cucumbers, some of that venison sausage.”
Rudi held up a hand to stop her. “I’m meeting someone, Sergei. But after they’re gone, I’ll have a proper drink with you. I didn’t want to sit here and be rude by not saying hello.”
“Sure. No problem.” Sergei stood and held up his glass. “Fuck your mother.”
“Fuck your mother,” said Rudi. They drank their drinks.
“Okay,” said Sergei. “I’ll go and make sure your pelmeni are the worst you ever tasted.”
“And I’ve eaten some pretty bad pelmeni,” Rudi said. “Many of them here.”
“Pah,” said Sergei. “I’ll see you later.”
A minute or so after Sergei had left, someone came over and sat in the vacated chair. “Well,” said Bradley in English, “that was touching.” He put his brandy glass down on the table and smiled at Rudi. “Enjoying our holiday?”
“Visiting old friends.”
“Can’t beat it,” said Bradley.
“I need some help,” said Rudi.
Bradley spread his hands. “I’m all ears, old son.”
Rudi had also rehearsed this conversation last night, but now he felt as though he hadn’t rehearsed quite enough. “My father’s a ranger at the national park up at Lahemaa,” he said.
Bradley nodded. “I know.”
Rudi looked at the Coureur. Of course he knew. “He wants to turn the park into a polity.”
“I know,” Bradley said again. When he saw the look on Rudi’s face, he said, “We haven’t been keeping tabs on your family, but when you had that spot of bother in Berlin we did some checks.” He held up a hand to stop Rudi’s protest. “We just wanted to know who you were, what your background was. That’s all.”
Rudi scowled at the Englishman. “Is there anything we can do to help?”
Bradley looked nonplussed. “‘We,’ old son?”
“Central. Is there anything Central can do to help?”
Bradley looked around the restaurant, just starting to fill up with the lunchtime crowd of tourists. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Advice?”
Bradley sighed and picked up his brandy snifter. He looked at it and put it down again. “Operational security forbids that I tell you where I was when we got your crash signal,” he said thoughtfully. “But it was quite a long way away, I’ve not had a very good journey, and I’ve spent all day following you around waiting for you to settle in order for us to have this meeting. So it would be nice if you could tell me I’m not here just because your dear papa has decided to set up his own country.”
Rudi sat and looked at him.
Bradley shook his head and picked up his glass again. This time he drained it. “You were given that number and that string in case of dire emergency,” he said, putting the glass down and twirling the stem back and forth. “Not to ask Central to help your father become a pocket Emperor.”