I looked away from the windows across there. 'If anything goes wrong it won't be your fault. You've warned me. Now tell me about that building.'
Legge didn't look at the windows, looked down, fitting the guns back into their baize-lined case. 'It's an RAOC headquarters.' Regional Administration – Croder had spelled it out for me in the church – for fighting Organized Crime. 'I wouldn't,' Legge said over his shoulder, 'have picked a room for you overlooking a building where anyone could put you in the cross-hairs, bullet-proof glass or no.'
Got his back up, the executive in from London turning down his toys, the Heckler and Koch and the SIG and the Smith and Wesson, but I always have trouble going through Clearance when I refuse to draw weapons. What people don't realize is that your hands are always available – you don't have to reach for them in a hurry and they don't jam.
'You've seen a lot of service,' I told Legge. 'You're a survivor, like me.'
'Sure. That's because my own preference is the Austrian Glock 19, fires fifteen rounds, and since I arrived in this town I've put six notches on it.' He snapped the locks of the attache case and swung it off the bed and put it carefully by the door, coming back and pulling a coloured brochure out of the other case and handing it to me, no eye contact. 'For transport I've picked you a Mercedes S420, the flagship of the line, luxury sedan V-8, 275 horse-power, a bit on the heavy side so it takes eight seconds to hit sixty from a standing start, but there are things you'll need here in winter time – you can adjust the traction-control system to give you some wheelspin so the chains can bite through the snow, for one thing. The headlights have got their own heated washer jets and wipers, which'll give you good visibility even in a blizzard, and the outside rearview mirrors fold back at the touch of a button so they won't snap off if you run things close. The headrests also drop on demand to give you a clear view behind. I tried out six cars and this one came up the best: it's got a hundred-thousand-dollar black market price on it, which in terms of your mafiyosa image is the least a successful capo would want to pay, plus it's got storm windows and all the other stuff.' With a shrug: 'You want something different, there's more brochures here, but in the meantime this one's in the hotel garage under support surveillance with the engine kept warm every hour on the hour, and it's got chains on. And by the way – you won't like this – I put an AK-47 assault rifle in the trunk with two boxes of ammunition.' He got out a small black velvet bag with a drawstring and handed it to me. 'These are direct from Antwerp.'
Three diamonds the size of grapes, all faceted, dazzling under the lamp on the bureau where I took them to have a better look.
'Worth?'
'For all three the current dealer price is half a million pounds sterling – they're 24-carat. London would like them back if you don't use them to trade anything.'
Such as my life. 'Your idea?'
'Mr Croder's.'
I put the diamonds back into the velvet bag, the bag into my pocket.
'Micro recorder,' Legge said, and put a matt-black Sanyo compact on the bed, 'if you need one. Set of tapes.' He shut the case and snapped the locks shut. 'The cleaning staff will come only when you request it by calling Housekeeping. I would advise being here all the time they are, even though they've been carefully screened by the hotel security. People can make mistakes. Don't tip them. Have you got any questions?'
'Safe house?'
'We've got three lined up for you to look at. Addresses and keys are with the Sakkas dossier and the other stuff on the bed. As soon as you've chosen the one you want, let me know. Our contact numbers are there too and I'll be at the base most of the time and you can get me on the beeper if I'm away. My second in command is Zykov, Russian-born, naturalized Englishman, thrown out of the SAS because he wouldn't always obey orders, but I like his creative approach.' He looked at me steadily now and the resentment over the weapons thing had at last gone from his eyes. It had taken its time, and I noted that: the chief of any support group in the field is strictly subordinate to the executive at all times, not as a matter of military-style protocol but as a matter of life and death.
He was waiting for more questions but for the moment I kept them to myself; I was only a few hours in the field and I hadn't yet been briefed by my DIF and I needed time to orientate, mentally and physically.
'I think that's it,' I said.
'Okay.' Legge swung away with that trapped energy of his and turned at the door. 'I've got fourteen men, active. Four of them are going to cover the passage outside in two shifts, four more will be on surveillance in the street. That leaves you with only six bodyguards, and if you need more than that I can call some sleepers in from -'
'No bodyguards.'
His head jerked up an inch and he hesitated, working out how he was going to put what he had on his mind: this was my impression. 'All the mafiya chiefs have bodyguards,' he said carefully, 'some of them twenty or thirty. It's as much for show as anything else, prove how big they are, you know? But they also live a lot longer like that. Six isn't too many, and I'd like to bring in -'
'I'll let you know,' I said, 'if I need bodyguards. Until I do, keep them well clear. Those are my express instructions.' I was getting fed up, that was all, with having to repeat myself so often. Legge stood there for another five seconds, six, then swung to the door. Over his shoulder: 'Infiltrating the Moscow mafiya with no weapons and no bodyguards, I give you three days.'
'That's not a bad start.'
When Legge had gone I used the phone and called the chief of hotel security to come and see me and gave him a hundred-dollar note and told him he'd get one every week if he looked after me, and if he didn't look after me he'd be found shot dead in the Katerinberg Forest, and by his reaction it seemed like language he understood.
3: SCORPION
I didn't want to work too close to the Hotel Moskva International so I walked across the street and went into the RAOC building and told the desk clerk that Inspector Loshak wanted to see me and they said there wasn't any Inspector Loshak there, maybe I was mistaking this branch for the one down on Suharevskij Prospekt. I said they could be right – how would I get there?
Then I got the Mercedes S420 from the garage and drove sixteen blocks and found the other place and left the car halfway on the pavement – A car like that, Legge's briefing noted in the Field Information file, can be left almost anywhere you can find a space. The police won't touch it: the image is distinctly mafiya.
The snow had stopped in the early hours of this morning; I'd slept for a time and then got up and gone through the whole of the briefing again, committing the essentials to memory and testing them, looking down from one of the windows at intervals to check on the movements of the two surveillance people, bundled in their black leather coats to look like plain clothes policemen, hands pushed into their pockets and snow on their fur hats and their breath clouding as they shifted their feet, giving an oblique glance upward at my windows every time they reached the end of their beat and turned, could have been looking at the sky, wondering when it would clear.