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The Kamenny Most, or Stone Bridge, is the oldest permanent bridge across the river. In olden days pontoon bridges were used, erected in spring and dismantled in winter when the ice became hard enough to ride over.

Because of its bulk, it not only spans the river but jumps over Sofia Quay as well. To gain access from the quay by road, a driver has to turn left again for a hundred yards until the bridge returns to ground level, then hang a U-turn and drive up the slope of the bridge. But a walker can run up the steps direct from the quay below to the bridge above. That is what the Rabbit did.

He was on the pavement of the Stone Bridge when the red Rover came by. He waved his arms. The woman inside gave a startled look and drove on. Zaitsev set off in hopeless pursuit. But he had noted the Russian number plate, and saw that on the northern side of the bridge the Rover pulled half left into the traffic maelstrom of Borovitskaya Square.

Celia Stone’s destination was Rosy O’Grady’s Pub on Znamenka Street. This unlikely Muscovite tavern is actually Irish, and the watering hole where the Irish ambassador is likely to be found on New Year’s Eve if he can get away from the stuffier parties of the diplomatic circuit. It also serves lunch. Celia Stone had chosen to meet her Russian reporter there.

She found a parking space without difficulty just round the corner, for fewer and fewer Russians could afford cars or the petrol to run them, and began to walk back. As always when an obvious foreigner approached a restaurant the derelicts and beggars hauled themselves out of their doorways and off the pavement to intercept and ask for food.

As a young diplomat, she had been briefed at the Foreign Office in London before her posting, but the reality always shocked her. She had seen beggars in the Underground of London and in the alleys of New York, the bag people who had somehow slid down the ladder of society to take up residence on its bottom rung. But in Moscow, the capital of a country experiencing the onset of real famine, the wretches with their hands out for money or food had once, and not long ago, been farmers, soldiers, clerks, and shopkeepers. She was reminded of TV documentaries of the Third World.

Vadim, the giant doorman of the Rosy O’Grady, saw her several yards away and ran forward, clouting several begging fellow Russians out of the way in order to secure safe passage for a vital hard-currency patron of his employers’ restaurant.

Offended by the spectacle of the supplicants’ humiliation at the hands of another Russian, Celia protested feebly, but Vadim swept a long, muscular arm between her and the row of extended hands, swept open the restaurant door, and ushered her inside.

The contrast was immediate, from the dusty street and the hungry beggars to the convivial chatter of fifty people who could afford meat and fish for lunch. Being a good-hearted young woman, she always had trouble when lunching or dining out, trying to reconcile the food on her own plate with the hunger outside. The genial Russian reporter who waved to her from a corner table had no such problem. He was studying the list of
zakuski
starters and settled for Archangel prawns.

Zaitsev the Rabbit, still plodding on his quest, scoured Borovitskaya Square for the red Rover, but it had gone. He checked all the streets leading off to the left and right for a flash of red paintwork, but there was none. Finally he chose the main boulevard on the far side of the square. To his amazement and joy he saw it two hundred yards further on, just round a corner from the pub.

Indistinguishable from the others waiting with the patience of the utterly cowed, Zaitsev took up position near the Rover and started to wait again.

Nairobi, 1983

IT had been ten years since Jason Monk had been a sophomore at the University of Virginia and he had lost touch with many of the students he had known. But he still recalled Norman Stein. Theirs had been an odd friendship, the medium-height but hard-muscled football player from the farm country and the unathletic son of a Jewish doctor from Fredericksburg. It was a shared and mocking sense of humor that had made them friends. If Monk had had the talent for languages, Stein was the near genius in the Biology Department.

He had graduated summa cum laude one year before Monk and gone straight to medical school. They had kept in touch the usual way, by Christmas cards. Crossing a restaurant lobby in Washington two years earlier, just before his Kenyan posting came through Monk had seen his friend lunching alone. They had had half an hour together before Stein’s lunch partner had showed. That had enabled them to catch up on each other’s news, though Monk had had to lie and say he worked for the State Department.

Stein had become a doctor then taken a Ph D in tropical medicine and was even then rejoicing in his new appointment to the research facility at Walter Reed Army Hospital. From his apartment in Nairobi, Jason Monk checked his address book and made a call. A blurred voice answered at the tenth ring.

“Yeah.”

“Hi, Norm. It’s Jason Monk.” Pause.

“Great. Where are you?”

“In Nairobi.”

“Great. Nairobi. Of course. And what time is it there?”

Monk told him. Midday.

“Well it’s five in the fucking morning here and my alarm is set for seven. I was up half the night with the baby. It’s teething, for God’s sake. Thanks a lot, pal.”

“Calm down, Norm. Tell me something. You ever heard of something called melioidosis?”

There was a pause. The voice that came back had lost all trace of sleep.

“Why do you ask?”

Monk spun him a story. Not about a Russian diplomat. He said there was a kid of five, son of a guy he knew. Seemed the boy was likely to die. He had heard vaguely that Uncle Sam had had some experience with that particular illness.

“Give me your number,” said Stein. “I have to make some calls. I’ll get back to you.”

It was five in the afternoon when Monk’s phone rang.

“There is—may be—something,” said the physician. “Now listen, it’s completely revolutionary, prototype stage. We’ve done some tests, they seem good. So far. But it hasn’t even been submitted to the FDA yet. Let alone cleared. We’re not through testing yet.”

What Stein was describing was a very early cephalosporin antibiotic with no name in 1983. It would later be marketed in the late eighties as ceftazidime. Then it was just called CZ-1. Today it is the standard treatment for melioidosis.

“It may have side effects,” said Stein. “We don’t know.”

“How long to develop these side effects?” asked Monk.

“No idea.”

“Well, if the kid’s going to be dead in three weeks, what’s to lose?”

Stein sighed heavily.

“I don’t know. It’s against all the regulations.”

“I swear, no one will ever know. C’mon, Norm, for all those chicks I used to pull for you.”

He heard the roar of laughter coming all the way from Chevy Chase, Maryland.

“You ever tell Becky and I’ll kill you,” said Stein, and the line went dead.

Forty-eight hours later a package arrived for Monk at the embassy. It came via an international freight express company. It contained a vacuum flask with dry ice. A short, unsigned note said the ice contained two vials. Monk made a call to the Soviet embassy and left a message with the Trade Section for Second Secretary Turkin. Don’t forget our beer at six tonight, he said. The message was reported to Colonel Kuliev.

“Who is this Monk?” he asked Turkin.

“He’s an American diplomat. He seems disillusioned with U.S. foreign policy in Africa. I am trying to develop him as a source.”

Kuliev nodded heavily. That was good work, the sort of thing that went well on the report to Yazenevo.

At the Thorn Tree Café Monk handed over his package. Turkin looked apprehensive in case anyone from his own side had seen them. The package could contain money.

“What is it?” he asked.

Monk told him.

“It might not work, but it can do no harm. It’s all we have.”

The Russian went stiff, his eyes cold.

“And what do you want for this … gift?” It was obvious there would be a payback.

“You were on the level about your kid? Or just acting?”

“No acting. Not this time. Always we act, people like you and me. But not this time.”

In fact Monk had already checked with the Nairobi General Hospital. Dr. Winston Moi had confirmed the basic facts. Tough, but this is a tough world, he thought. He rose from the table. According to the rules he should twist this man into passing something over, something secret. But he knew the story of the small son was not a con, not this time. If he had to behave that way he might as well be a street sweeper in the Bronx.

“Take it, pal. Hope it works. No charge.”

He walked away. Halfway to the door a voice called him.

“Mr. Monk, you understand Russian?”

Monk nodded. “A bit.”

“I thought you would. Then you will understand the word
spassibo
.”

¯

SHE came out of Rosy O’Grady’s just after two and approached the driver’s side of her car. The Rover has central locking. As she unlocked the driver’s door, the passenger door also unlocked. She was in her seat belt, engine started and ready to go, when the passenger door opened. She looked up, startled. He was standing there, stooping to the open door. Threadbare old army coat, four soiled medals clinging to the lapel, stubbled chin. When he opened his mouth three steel teeth glinted at the front. He tossed a file into her lap. She easily understood enough Russian to repeat later what he said.

“Please, give to Mister Ambassador. For the beer.”

The sight of him frightened her. He was clearly mad, perhaps schizophrenic. People like that can be dangerous. White-faced, Celia Stone pulled out into the street, the open door flailing until it was closed by the car’s momentum. She tossed the ridiculous petition, or whatever it was, onto the floor of the front passenger area and drove back to the embassy.

CHAPTER 3

IT WAS JUST BEFORE NOON ON THE SAME DAY, JULY
16, that Igor Komarov, sitting in his office on the first floor of the dacha off Kiselny Boulevard, contacted his chief personal assistant by intercom.

“The document I lent you yesterday, you have had a chance to read it?” he asked.

“I have indeed, Mr. President. Quite brilliant, if I may say so,” Akopov replied. All of Komarov’s staff referred to him as Mr. President, meaning president of the executive committee of the Union of Patriotic Forces. They were in any case convinced that within twelve months he would still be Mr. President but for a different reason.

“Thank you,” said Komarov. “Then please return it to me.”

The intercom went dead. Akopov rose and went to his wall safe. He knew the combination by heart and spun the central dial the required six times. When the door swung open he looked inside for the black-bound file. It was not there.

Puzzled, he emptied the safe, paper by paper and file by file. A cold fear, part panic and part disbelief, gripped him. Taking a hold on himself, he began again. The files on the carpet around his knees were sorted out and examined, sheet by sheet and one by one. No black file. A light sweat beaded his forehead. He had worked contentedly in the office all morning, convinced that before leaving the previous evening he had put every confidential document safely away. He always did; he was a creature of habit.

After the safe, he began on the drawers of his desk. Nothing. He searched the floor under the desk, then every cupboard and closet. Just before one he knocked on Igor Komarov’s door, was admitted, and confessed he could not find it.

The man who most of the world presumed would be the next president of Russia was a highly complex personality who, behind his public persona, preferred to keep much of himself intensely private. He could not have been a greater contrast to his predecessor, the ousted Zhirinovsky, whom he now openly referred to as a buffoon.

Komarov was of medium height and build, clean-shaven, with neatly trimmed iron-gray hair. Among his two most evident fetishes were an absorption with personal cleanliness and a deep dislike of physical contact. Unlike most Russian politicians, with their back-slapping, vodka-toasting, arms-around-the-shoulders bonhomie, Komarov insisted on formal dress and manner of speech in his personal entourage. He rarely if ever donned the uniform of the Black Guard and was usually to be found in a double-breasted gray suit with collar and tie.

After years in politics none but a very few could claim to be on close personal terms with him, and no one dared pretend to be an intimate. Nikita Ivanovich Akopov had been his confidential private secretary for a decade but the relationship was still one of master and slavishly devoted servant.

Unlike Yeltsin, who had raised staff members to the rank of drinking and tennis-playing buddies, Komarov would, so far as was known, only permit one man to refer to him by first name and patronymic. That was his Head of Security, Colonel. Anatoli Grishin.

But like all successful politicians, Komarov could play the chameleon when he had to. To the media, on the rare occasions when he deigned to meet them personally, he could become the grave statesman. Before his own rallies, he became transformed in a manner that never ceased to evoke Akopov’s utter admiration. On the podium the precise former engineer vanished as if he had never been. In his place appeared the orator, a pillar of passion, a sorcerer of words, a man of all the people enunciating their hopes, fears, and desires, their rage and their bigotry, with unerring accuracy. To them and only them would he play the figure of geniality with the common touch.

Beneath both personae there was a third, the one that frightened Akopov. Even the rumor of the existence of the third man beneath the veneer was enough to keep those around him—staff, colleagues, and guards—in a permanent state of the deference he demanded.

Only twice in ten years had Nikita Akopov seen the demonic rage inside the man well up and spew out of control. On another dozen occasions he had seen the struggle to control that rage and witnessed the effort succeed. On the two occasions when the control had failed, Akopov had seen the man who dominated fascinated and controlled him the man he followed and worshipped turn into a screaming raging demon.