‘Arse-crawling bastards,’ he said cheerfully. The two looked round, Anna young and fresh-faced and plump, Konstantin narrow and gloomy as an undertaker. They were known in the office as Laurel and Hardy. Both feigned indifference to his greeting, though Lenilko knew Anna was pleased.
The office was open plan in design, with eight workstations. Lenilko had his own personal office beyond a door at the far end, but he didn’t head for it. Instead, he strolled over to the pair and stood behind them, a hand on each of their shoulders.
‘Anything yet?’
He knew the answer. If there was any news, they’d have called him at home. Natalya would have rolled away in bed, groaning, and he’d have been awake and alert and rising, heading for the bathroom even as they spoke.
‘Negative,’ said Anna. ‘He hasn’t called in.’
Lenilko raised his head to peer at the row of clocks on the wall opposite. The one for Yakutsk showed one-ten pm.
‘He can’t have had the opportunity,’ said Lenilko. ‘Or, the journalist hasn’t arrived yet.’
‘He’s arrived,’ said Konstantin. He was in his early thirties, a decade older than Anna and the same span younger than Lenilko, but his melancholy demeanour and utter absence of humour made him seem far older. ‘Yakutsk confirms the pilot returned in the early hours of this morning. He delivered his passenger.’
‘Okay.’ Lenilko studied their computer monitors over their shoulders, caught Konstantin’s glance of irritation and backed off. He paced the carpet towards his office door and back again, breathing the familiar smell of his workplace, his eyrie, feeling the rush of purpose flood his veins.
A Reuters journalist, doing a piece on Yarkovsky Station. There was nothing overtly unusual about that. Except that the journalist, John Farmer, happened to turn up seven weeks after Feliks Nisselovich had disappeared from the facility.
Lenilko believed in coincidences. He’d studied statistics at university, and he knew the incidence of seemingly fantastical events occurring in quick succession was high, and related to nothing more than chance. But as an FSB officer, one of his tasks was to be suspicious of coincidences. To regard them as nonexistent until it could be proved otherwise.
He’d had Anna and Konstantin run John Farmer’s credentials through the wringer. They’d held up. The one photo Reuters had released of the man had been generic, slightly unfocused, and hadn’t matched anything on the Directorate’s database. Nor had the picture in Farmer’s passport. It meant nothing.
In his role as a senior officer in the Directorate of Special Activities, Lenilko was given a certain amount of freedom to conduct his own investigations, independent of the operational orders he and his colleagues received from on high. In less than an hour, the majority of the men and women under his command would arrive at the office, and the business of the day would begin. He’d receive updates on the various official operations the team was running: the infiltration of dissident groups in the Caucasus and Chechnya, the data collection from the surveillance apparatus planted in the embassies here in Moscow, the recruitment of potential assets within the foreign intelligence services known to be active across Russia.
But the Yarkovsky Station project was separate. It was his baby, and of his staff only Anna and Konstantin knew about it. The data he’d received so far from the station had trickled in, sometimes stopping for days, and there was nothing yet to get his teeth into. But something within Lenilko, deep in the marrow of his bones, told him that this case could make him, if handled skilfully.
And the arrival of the so-called journalist, Farmer, was a vindication of sorts. It suggested to Lenilko that he hadn’t been wrong. That his instinct that there was something of great significance going on in that bleak outpost in North-Eastern Siberia, had been correct.
He went into his office, set the coffee machine going, and resumed his attack on the never-dwindling stack of paperwork on his desk.
Five
Purkiss entered the living area to find four of them at the dining table, picking at the remains of breakfast: Efraim Avner, Keys, the British doctor, Ryan Montrose, and the woman he’d met in the corridor shortly after his arrival, Patricia Clement. Keys and Clement peered at Purkiss with interest. Montrose’s eyes darted at him and slipped away again. Only Avner greeted him, raising his mug with an exaggerated cheer.
‘Hey. It’s risen from the dead.’
Purkiss had woken half an hour earlier and had sat up, disorientated, the inside of his head like sludge. He’d gone across to the blackout blind and pulled it aside. The sky was grey and dull, the snow silent. He tried to remember when the sun was supposed to rise in this part of the world. Nine o’clock? Nine thirty? His watch told him it was twenty past ten. He’d slept for more than eleven hours.
He wandered the corridors, hearing the station thrumming and clanging distantly around him, and felt like an intruder in someone else’s home. After a couple of wrong turns he found the room from the night before, where he’d been introduced to the others.
Purkiss grinned ruefully. ‘Jetlag,’ he said. ‘But I’m fighting fit now.’
‘Grab a plate,’ muttered Keys. He looked even older than he had the night before, grey stubble rasping on his cheek as he rubbed it. Avner pushed bowls of scrambled eggs and bacon towards Purkiss.
Purkiss helped himself. ‘Who does the cooking here?’
‘We take turns,’ said Avner. ‘Well, some of us do. These three here, plus Budian. The rest of us are exempt, because our cooking’s so godawful we’d cause a dysentery outbreak within days.’ He plucked a gnarled rasher of bacon from the bowl. ‘How about you, John? Cordon bleu?’
‘Hardly,’ said Purkiss. ‘But I’d be happy to do my bit.’
Patricia Clement extended her hand across the table. ‘We weren’t properly introduced last night, Mr Farmer.’
Her eyes were so pale the irises were almost indistinguishable from the surrounding corneas, lending an unnerving quality to her gaze. Her skin was almost translucent. Purkiss wondered how long she’d been at the station, away from any prolonged sunlight.
Purkiss pretended to search his memory. ‘Dr Clement. The psychologist.’
‘Yes.’
‘Texas?’
Her smile was faint but genuine. ‘Alabama. Full marks for trying, though.’
It was an opening into a conversation that would eliminate the need for any awkward silences, and Purkiss took it. ‘What’s your accent, Efraim? You’re Russian, I think you said?’
‘Does it not show, tovarischch?’ Avner said, thickly and gutturally. He laughed. ‘Yeah, man. Born in Petersburg. But I came to America when I was ten, after the USSR went down the pan. Spent most of my life in Des Moines, Iowa. I still have Russki citizenship, though, and I did part of my postgrad work at Moscow University.’
Purkiss glanced at Montrose, who shrugged as if the unasked question bored him. ‘Portland, Oregon.’
Keys was eyeing Purkiss. ‘You got any medical conditions I should know about?’
‘No.’
The doctor put down his fork and wiped his mouth with his hand. ‘I only ask because I’ve been given no advance notification about your medical history. Which I should be, whenever a new person arrives here.’
‘Don’t worry, he’s a miserable bastard with everybody,’ said Avner. Keys ignored him and heaved to his feet, carried his plate over to the kitchenette.
‘Have you been given the grand tour?’ asked Clement.
‘Dr Medievsky showed me the basic layout of the building last night.’ The tour had taken close to an hour. Purkiss had listened carefully to Medievsky’s commentary as they explored the corridors. The station seemed smaller on the inside than it had from without, the ceilings low and claustrophobic and only intermittently illuminated by panel lights. The complex was, broadly, divided into two wings: the east, which contained living quarters and supply stores, and the west, comprising the laboratory and administrative facilities. Through windows on the west side, Purkiss glimpsed hulking outbuildings, blurred by the snowfalclass="underline" the vehicle hangar, and the shed containing the twin diesel generators that provided the station with its power.