"One helluva monument, that place. Sure is. How long are you guys here for?"
"Couple of days."
A quick inspection revealed that all our rooms were the same: small, hot and stuffy, without air-conditioning, and with only the small upper section of the windows op enable In the tiny bathrooms the tiles were cracked and yellowing, the grout between them black with grime. As Sasha had warned us, there were no plugs in the baths or basins... and suddenly fuck it - I realised I'd left mine behind. I took a quick look round the bedroom for signs of hidden microphones, and although I couldn't see anything I felt sure they were there. We'd already agreed that there'd be no shop talk in the hotel.
"Grotsville," exclaimed Rick as he emerged into the passage.
"You said it. Have you got your money on you? Don't leave it in there, whatever you do."
"Got it." He slapped his bum-bag which he had pulled round to the front, over his stomach.
"You look like that fat git we came up with."
"Spasibo, mate."
"Let's stretch our legs," Whinger suggested.
"Eyeball the Kremlin."
That seemed like a good plan. It was already 9:45 local time, but only 6:45 by our biological clocks, and since we'd eaten on the plane we didn't feel any need for food. Besides, I knew that the British Embassy was somewhere close by, just across the Moscow River from the Kremlin, and I reckoned we might as well suss it out, as I was going to have to report there regularly during our operation.
On our way down in the lift Rick suddenly started shitting himself with laughter.
"What's so bloody amusing?" Whinger said irritably.
"Some cunt left a menu from one of the restaurants in my room. The stuff on offer is incredible."
"Like what?"
'"Needles in meat sauce", for one. Then there was "frog's paws in paste"."
"That's frog's legs in batter," Whinger told him.
"I know but think of it..."
It was a fine evening for a stroll: the sky was clear and the air cool. Out on the pavement, we elbowed through the sc rum of taxi drivers and walked down the slope towards Red Square. The street was so wide and the traffic was moving so fast that the subway seemed the best way to cross. We went down some steps into a concrete tunnel, past young people bus king and old women begging, and up the other side. A minute later we were walking uphill on another short, broad thoroughfare and emerging on to the huge open expanse of Red Square.
"Never realised it was cobbled," said Whinger.
"Nor that it was so big."
It gave me a strange feeling to be looking at buildings I'd seen a thousand times in pictures. As a young soldier, during my early years in the army, I'd spent hours in classrooms doing recognition training, staring at black-and-white slides of Soviet tanks and missiles until we could pick out T54s, T64s and T72s in our sleep and name all the main types of ICBM. The place all these weapons were photographed most often was Red Square, during big parades on the anniversary of the 1917 revolution and suchlike so now the buildings in the background were like echoes from the past.
Rick's mind was moving on the same lines.
"Think of all the military hardware that's rolled along here," he said.
On our right the low, squat hulk of Lenin's mausoleum sat hunched against the wall of the Kremlin. Wherever a light was shining on the wall, we could see it was made of dark red brick.
"Funny there aren't any guards on the mausoleum," said Whinger.
"You'd expect there to be some official presence. Isn't it a national shrine?"
"Not any more," Rick told him.
"I read on the Internet that they're arguing about what to do with the old bugger. The diehards are all for keeping him, but a lot of people want him out."
"Burning'd be too good for that bastard," said Whinger bitterly, surprising me with the anger in his voice.
"If anyone sent the Russian government a bill demanding compensation for all the misery he and his bloody ideas have caused, this country'd be bankrupt for the next thousand years.
"That's why they're not paying the Regiment anything for our job here," I said.
"All the funds are coming from the States or the UK.".
Ahead of us in the distance rose the multi-coloured onion domes of St. Basil's Cathedral, some striped horizontally, some vertically, some segmented like the skins of pineapples. Even I, ignorant as I am about church architecture, sensed that there was something wild and barbaric in those amazing shapes and colours.
"What about that German kid who landed a light plane here?"
said Whinger.
"Some feat, that. I bet it made them cut about a bit. The Russkies must have been fairly shitting themselves when they found out how easily he'd got through their de fences without the aircraft even being called."
"Rust, his name was," I said.
"Mathias Rust. He landed up the slope." I pointed ahead.
"That means he must have come in from that direction, towards us. Didn't the cheeky bugger get a job at some travel agency in Moscow, once he'd come out of gaol? I think so. It just shows how times change."
Soon we were walking down the gentle hill past St. Basil's. At the bottom we found a bridge over the river, and decided to cross to the other side, so we'd be able to look back across the water and get a view of the Kremlin. We cleared the steps on the far bank, and had just started walking, the river on our right, when Rick said quietly, "We've got a tail."
"Sure?" I asked.
"Pretty much. He's been with us at least since the bottom of the square."
"Keep walking, then. When we get to that bench, we'll sit down and see what he does."
On the embankment a hundred yards in front, a metal bench faced out over the water. When we reached it, I sat on one end, took off a shoe and proceeded to shake out imaginary bits of grit.
Up on Red Square there had been plenty of people wandering about. Down here by the river the wide road was deserted, and our follower stood out like a spare prick.
"He's stopped," Rick announced.
"He's leaning over the wall."
"Let's tip the bastard in," said Whinger.
"It could be someone Sasha's laid on to keep an eye on us, Rick suggested.
"Hardly," I said.
"I don't think he'd do that. More likely a common-or-garden mugger. He could have mates waiting up ahead, though. He may be trying to push us towards them. We'd better sort him."
Whinger agreed so we strolled forward, slower than before, then suddenly turned and began walking fast towards our pursuer. He'd started after us again, and it seemed to take him a moment to realise what was happening. Then he also turned round and began to scuttle off By now we were running, and we were on to him in a flash.
Whinger and I each went for an arm and grabbed him, bringing him to a rapid halt. We couldn't see him too clearly in the lamplight, but he looked a swarthy lad of twenty-odd, with a bit of a ragged beard, wearing a check shirt and a thin jacket of some dark material. He was angry, but also scared.
"What the hell d'you think you're doing?" I snapped.
He let fly a stream of Russian, of which I understood not a word. Rick said something in Russian, and he spat out an answer. Then he started to struggle, and for a moment I was afraid he was going to scream to attract attention. I got my handkerchief rumpled in a ball, to stuff in his mouth if he opened it any wider, but already Rick was frisking him, and in seconds came up with a nasty, slim-bladed knife which he held in front of the guy's face.
That made his eyeballs rotate and quietened him nicely.
"Into the river," I said, and Rick flipped the weapon over the wall. We heard the splash as it hit the water.
"No mobile phone or radio?"
Rick shook his head.
"No wallet or money either."
"In that case he's probably after ours."
Suddenly I remembered one of the unofficial phrases Valentina had taught us. Valite otsyuda!" told him, and indicated the direction he could go back the way we'd come.
He got the message, no problem. As we released him, he shook himself like a dog and set off without a word. I saw that he had a bit of a limp, dipping slightly on his right leg. We watched until he had disappeared up the steps by the bridge, then we carried on along the river.
"What did he say, Rick?"
"Just that he was out for a walk."
"Like hell he was.
Rick was the most observant member of our party. He had a terrific knack of noticing any small object or incident that was out of line, and his memory for faces was phenomenal: even a year or more after an event he'd remember a person's appearance. Sometimes it took him a minute or two to place them, but then the setting and date would come back. I'm sure his skill derived partly from all the surveillance work he'd done in Northern Ireland, and often it stood us in good stead.
"Where did he pick us up?" I asked.
"Was he outside the hotel?"
Rick shook his head.
"I don't think so. He must have been hanging around on Red Square."
Away to our right, across the river, the floodlit Kremlin was a magnificent sight, but we were feeling too unsettled by the incident to appreciate it fully.
"I can see three possible explanations," I said.
"One, he was after our money. Two, Sasha detailed him to check where we went. Three, he was a Mafia dicker. I don't like any of them. If he was just a mugger, it goes to show how dodgy this place is. If Sasha sent him, it means we're not trusted. If he's Mafia, it means we may have been rumbled already."
I was getting jumpy. I remembered how the Colombians had had dickers posted at all the airports, photographing people as they arrived off the planes. Someone had told me that the secret police got hold of the flight manifests, and that by using computers they were able to match up passengers with pictures, so they could keep tabs on every single visitor to the country.
We walked on, until we became aware of a handsome, old style building set back from the road behind a courtyard on our left, and flanked by two matching outliers, evidently part of the complex. Beside the gate, in a grey pillbox, were two Russian guards in uniform, chatting, smoking, looking bored and not paying attention. Behind them, further in, was a stone gatehouse containing a guy in a red jumper who sat at a desk behind a glass screen.
"Bet that's a Brit," I said.
"He's a bit more alert. He'll be controlling the electronic gates and the phones."
"Look on the roof," said Rick, 'left-hand corner. There's an infra-red light. They must have good security systems."
We crossed the street towards the gates, where a brass plaque announced that the building was the British Embassy. The discovery made me feel a little better: at least we'd carried out one small but useful research task.
We recrossed the river by the next bridge, watching our rear all the way, and returned to base along the north side of the Kremlin, past the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where a perpetual gas flame burned out of a horizontal slab, and a cloak made of bronze lay folded over a plinth. We paid our respects and walked on.
Then, only a minute or two away from the hotel, we were nearly caught up in a violent incident. Fifty yards ahead, facing us, a single car was parked against the kerb. Suddenly a grey van hurtled past us from behind. Tyres screeched as it scorched to a halt inches in front of the car, blocking any take-off From the van burst four figures in uniform militiamen, by the look of them. They ran at the car, ripped the doors open and dragged out the driver and passengers.
In seconds the three guys from the car were spreadeagled over their own vehicle, taking heavy punishment from batons. Then one of the uniformed men stood back in the road and fired a couple of short bursts from his sub-machine gun, aiming into the air over the river. His purpose seemed to be to scare the shit out of the targets and I wondered where the bullets were landing in this huge city. As if to emphasise what he thought of his victims, another militiaman ran in and swung his boot, delivering a fierce kick to one of the huddled bodies, catching the man in the small of the back, whereupon he sank to the ground with a groan.
My instinct was to back off as fast as possible. Whinger evidently felt the same, and hissed in my ear, "Keep walking!"
This was nothing to do with us, and we definitely didn't want to get involved. So we crossed to the far pavement and kept going.
The last we saw, one of the three had been dragged into the van and driven off, leaving the others slumped in the gutter by their vehicle.
"What the fuck was that all about?" Whinger muttered.
"Were they the cops, or hooligans pretending to be cops?"
"I bet those were some of the guys we're going to have to train," said Rick cheerfully.
The brawl had made me yet more edgy, and for the last few hundred yards to the hotel, we speeded up. The approach was thronged by hangers-around, but as far as we could see the crowd didn't include our friend who'd lost his knife. Still, I was relieved when we'd pushed through and were back inside.
By now it was nearly 11:00 p.m." and Whinger spoke for all of us when he said, "Let's get a pint, for Christ's sake."
We'd already spotted a bar on the third floor, so we took the lift up. Whinger stepped out first on to the landing, and he was hardly through the door before I heard him go, "Phworrhh!
Firekin ell!"
"What is it?" I rushed out and instantly saw: leaning against the wall was the most blatant hooker I'd ever set eyes on -fishnet stockings, black leather skirt nine inches long, white blouse open to the navel, blazing scarlet lipstick, hair a dark, coppery colour she was never born with. As we passed within a couple of feet of her she let out a long jet of cigarette smoke through pursed lips and gave us a cool, arrogant stare of appraisal.
"Jesus!" Whinger muttered as we turned along a corridor.
"How was that for an old slag? She could be quite a looker if she wasn't so plastered in make-up."
"Rather you than me, mate," I said.
"Wait a minute, though.
You're not exactly strapped for choice."