This is London. The worst thing that can happen to you is usually a mugging at knifepoint, and I do my best not to look like a promising victim, which is why it takes me a couple of minutes to realize that I’m being tailed. In fact, it takes until the three of them move to box me in: at that point, disbelief is futile. I’ve done the mandatory Escape and Evasion training, not to mention Streetwise 101; I just wasn’t expecting to need it here.
Two of them are strong, silent types in black leather biker jackets worn over white tees and jeans. They’ve got short stubbly blond hair and the sort of muscles you get when you go through a Spetsnaz training course-not bodybuilders: more like triathletes. They come up behind me and march along either side, too damn close. The third of them, who I guess is their boss, is a middle-aged man in a baggy Italian suit, his open shirt collar stating that he’s off the office clock and on his own time. He slides in just ahead and to the left of Thug #1 as I glance sideways. He winks at me. “Please to follow this way,” he says.
I glance to my right. Thug #2 matches my stride, step for step. He stares at me like a police dog that’s had its vocal cords severed. I glimpse his eyes and look away hastily. Shit.
“Who are you?” I ask, my tongue dry and stumbling, as Mr. Baggy Suit pauses in the doorway of the Frog and Tourettes.
“You may wish to call me Panin.” He smiles faintly. “Nikolai Panin. It’s not my real name, but it will serve.” He gestures at the door. “Please allow me to buy you a drink. I assure you, my intentions are honorable.”
My ward is itching; nevertheless I am disinclined to bet my life on it. Panin, whoever he is, is a player: his definition of “honorable” might not encompass allowing me to escape with my life, but he’s unlikely to start something in the middle of a pub with an after-work crowd. “Would you mind leaving the muscle outside?” I ask. “I assume they’re not drinking.”
“Nyet.” He snaps his fingers and says something to the two revenants. They split, taking up positions to either side of the street front of the pub. “After you,” he says, waving me into the entrance.
If I was James Bond, this is the point at which I would draw my concealed pistol, plug both heavies between the eyes, get Panin in an armlock, and pistol-whip some answers out of him. But I am not James Bond, and I don’t want to precipitate a diplomatic incident by assaulting the Second Naval Attaché and a couple of embassy guards or footballers or whatever (not to mention sparking a murder investigation which would result in the Plumbers having to conduct a gigantic and expensive cover-up operation, all of which would come out of my departmental operating budget and drive Iris to distraction). And anyway, everyone knows that you don’t get useful answers by torturing people, you get useful answers by making them trust you.
(Why don’t you talk to them? I’d asked the committee.
(Because we might unintentionally tell them something they don’t already know, said Choudhury, after staring at me for a minute as if I’d grown a second head.
(Fuck that shit, like I said.)
So I let Panin buy me a pint. “By the way, do you mind if I text my wife to tell her I’m going to be late?” I ask.
“If you think it necessary, but I promise I will keep you only half an hour.”
“Thanks.” I smile gratefully and whip out the NecronomiPod and tap out a text: HAVING A BEER WITH UNCLE FESTER’S BOSS, HOME LATE. Panin holds up a purple drinking voucher and it has the desired effect: money and a pair of pint glasses change hands. He carries them over to a small table in the back of the pub and I follow him. Panin’s assistants gave me a nasty turn, but it seems this is to be a friendly chat, albeit for extremely unusual values of friendly. I keep both my hands on the table. Wouldn’t do to give the Spetsnaz goons the wrong idea-I have a feeling it would take more than Harry’s AA-12 shotgun to stop them in their tracks.
“To health, home, and happiness,” he proposes, raising his glass.
“I’ll drink to that.” My ward doesn’t nudge me as I bring the drink to my lips. “So. I guess you wanted to talk?”
“Mm, yes.” Panin, having taken a mouthful, puts his glass down. “Do you have any clues to its whereabouts?”
“Have what?” I ask cautiously.
“The teapot.”
“Tea-” I take another mouthful of ESB. “Pot?” There was something about a teapot in those letters, wasn’t there? Something Choudhury said in the meeting, maybe?
“It’s missing.” Panin sounds impatient. “Your people have lost it, yes?”
I decide to play dumb. “If any teapots have gone missing, I suppose Facilities would be the people who’d deal with that… Why do you ask?”
“You English!” For a moment, Panin looks exasperated, then he quickly pulls a lid over it. “The teapot is missing,” he repeats, as if to a very slow pupil. “It has been missing since last week. Everyone is looking for it, us, you, the opposition…! You were its last keepers. Please, I implore you, find it? For all our sakes, find it before the wrong people get their hands on it and make tea.”
Committed to paper, this dialogue might sound comicaclass="underline" but coming from Panin’s mouth, in his soft, clipped diction, it is anything but.
I shiver. “Ungern Sternberg’s teapot didn’t get misplaced by accident,” I hazard.
Panin’s response takes me by surprise: “Idiot!” He leans back in disgust, raises his glass, and takes a deep and disrespectful swig. “You are fishing, now.”
Bother, I’ve been rumbled. “’Fraid so. Let me level with you? I know it’s missing, but that’s all I know. But I’ll tell you what, if you can tell me what happened in Amsterdam last Wednesday and why it followed my wife home on Thursday I would be very grateful.”
“Amster-” Panin shuts his mouth with a click. “Your wife is unhurt, I hope?” he asks, all nervous solicitude.
“Shaken.” But not stirred. “The-intruder-was attributed to your people, did you know that?”
“Not unexpected.” Panin makes a gesture of dismissal with one hand. “They do that, you know. To muddy the waters.”
“Who? The opposition?”
Panin gives me that look again, the look you might give to the friendly but stupid puppy that’s just widdled on the carpet for the third time that day. “Tell me, Mr. Howard, what do you know?”
I sigh. “Not much, it seems. I have been seconded to a committee that’s trying to work out why you folks are currently running up an eBay reputation score like there’s no tomorrow. I am trying to deal with an unpleasant domestic situation, namely work following my wife home. My boss is out of the office, and I’m trying to pick up the pieces. If you thought you could shake me down for useful information, I’m afraid you picked the wrong spy. I could tell you more than you could possibly want to know about the structured cabling requirements for our new headquarter building’s fourth subbasement, but when it comes to missing teapots, nobody put me on the flash priority classified briefing list.”
“I see.” Panin looks gloomy. “Well, Mr. Howard, many would not believe you-but I do. So, here is my card.” He passes me a plain white business card-unprinted on either side, but pressed from a very high grade of linen weave. It makes my fingertips tingle. “Should you have anything to discuss, call me.”
I slide it into my breast pocket. “Thanks.”
“As for the teapot, it was never the same after Ungern Sternberg retrieved it from the Bogd Khan’s altar.”
He’s studying my face. I do my best not to twitch. I’ve heard those names before. “I’ll keep my eyes open for it,” I reassure him.
“I’m sure you will,” he says gravely. “After all, it would be in everyone’s best interests for the teapot to return to its rightful office.” He drains his beer glass. “I will see you around, I am sure,” he says, rising.