‘I thought you lived in London nowadays?’ he asks. ‘How come you’re back in Moscow?’
‘I just came home,’ Duchev replies. ‘Just came home for new business.’
Duchev loathes Kostov, despises him. A so-called friend of Viktor whose vengeance has ruined London. He takes his old friend for apartments and money and gives him only trouble in return. Reversing the Audi in the narrow road, he heads for the airport motorway and actually looks forward to the night ahead. The phone call merely confirmed that all the arrangements are in place, the plan to foil the British and to end Dimitri’s lies. Kostov is not being handed over to SIS. Kostov is being taken out to the woods.
‘Where are we going?’ he asks, lolling tiredly on the back seat like a fat, unexercised dog. ‘Viktor told me I was going to his house in the country.’
‘I have a job beyond Sheremetjevo,’ Duchev explains, ‘a package needs collecting. Then we’ll go to the village, Dimitri. Then you can see your new home.’
Driving at fifty miles an hour through blinding April snow, Duchev can track the SIS tail in the Audi’s rear-view mirror. AVolkswagen with St Petersburg plates that has been following Kostov for days. This is his only problem. This is what he has to lose. But right on time, just as the phone call had promised, the strobe of a police vehicle punches through the night, sixty metres behind the Volkswagen and closing all the time. Good, Duchev thinks, Pasha doing what he has been paid to do. Above the roar of the road he can hear the siren and he watches with pleasure as the Volkswagen is pulled to the edge of the motorway. Imagine the swearing in that car right now. Imagine the fat load of trouble those British spies are going to get into just as soon as they get back to the embassy.
And from now on it is easy: Kostov even falls asleep in the back. For an hour Duchev drives in silence, deep into the black night south of Moscow, and at eight o’clock spots the turn-off into the woods. There are no other vehicles behind or in front of him and he turns the Audi without indicating on to a single-track road running east into the forest.
‘Where are we going?’ Kostov asks, muttering from the depths of his sleep.
‘Package,’ Duchev intones, ‘package,’ and reaches for the handle of the gun.
He parks and switches off the engine in a clearing half a mile along the road, surrounded on all sides by high, broad pines. Nobody in sight. Nothing but snow. Then, blinding in the darkness, the sudden momentary flash of Tamarov’s headlights, a signal hidden discreetly ahead amongst a thick clump of trees.
Kostov, dreaming of Mischa, is never conscious of the shot. A single bullet to the head, and then perpetual sleep. He is stripped of himself, of his teeth and fingers, while Tamarov soaks the vehicle in petrol. Within five minutes the brand-new Audi and Kostov and his canvas bag are ablaze in a brilliant column of fire that flares and heats the trees. The Russians are already on their way home. Now they can go back to business.