Читать книгу The Man Between: The gripping new spy thriller you need to read in 2018 - Charles Cumming - Страница 10

The apartment was on a quiet street in the Tverskoy district of Moscow, about two kilometres from the Kremlin, a five-minute walk from Lubyanka Square. From the third floor, Curtis could hear the ripple of snow tyres on the wet winter streets. He told Simakov that for the first few days in the city he had thought that all the cars had punctures.

‘Sounds like they’re driving on bubble wrap,’ he said. ‘I keep wanting to tell them to put air in their tyres.’

‘But you don’t speak Russian,’ Simakov replied.

‘No,’ said Curtis. ‘I guess I don’t.’

He was twenty-nine years old, born and raised in San Diego, the only son of a software salesman who had died when Curtis was fourteen. His mother had been working as a nurse at Scripps Mercy for the past fifteen years. He had graduated from Cal Tech, taken a job at Google, quit at twenty-seven with more than four hundred thousand dollars in the bank thanks to a smart investment in a start-up. Simakov had used Curtis in the Euclidis kidnapping. Moscow was to be his second job.

If he was honest, the plan sounded vague. With Euclidis, every detail had been worked out in advance. Where the target was staying, what time his cab was booked to take him over to Berkeley, how to shut off the CCTV outside the hotel, where to switch the cars. The Moscow job was different. Maybe it was because Curtis didn’t know the city; maybe it was because he didn’t speak Russian. He felt out of the loop. Ivan was always leaving the apartment and going off to meet people; he said there were other Resurrection activists taking care of the details. All Curtis had been told was that Ambassador Jeffers always sat in the same spot at Café Pushkin, at the same time, on the same night of the week. Curtis was to position himself a few tables away, with the woman from St Petersburg role-playing his girlfriend, keep an eye on Jeffers and make an assessment of the security around him. Simakov would be in the van outside, watching the phones, waiting for Curtis to give the signal that Jeffers was leaving. Two other Resurrection volunteers would be working the sidewalk in the event that anybody tried to step in and help. One of them would have the Glock, the other a Ruger.

‘What if there’s more security than we’re expecting?’ he asked. ‘What if they have plain clothes in the restaurant I don’t know about?’

Curtis did not want to seem distrustful or unsure, but he knew Ivan well enough to speak up when he had doubts.

‘What are you so worried about?’ Simakov replied. He was slim and athletic with shoulder-length black hair tied back in a ponytail. ‘Things go wrong, you walk away. All you have to do is eat your borscht, talk to the girl, let me know what time Ambassador Fuck pays his cheque.’

‘I know. I just don’t like all the uncertainty.’

‘What uncertainty?’ Simakov took one of the Rugers off the table and packed it into the bag. Curtis couldn’t tell if he was angry or just trying to concentrate on the thousand plans and ideas running through his mind. It was always hard to judge Simakov’s mood. He was so controlled, so sharp, lacking in any kind of hesitation or self-doubt. ‘I told you, Zack. This is my city. These are my people. Besides, it’s my ass on the line if things go wrong. Whatever happens, you two lovebirds can stay inside, drink some vodka, try the stroganoff. The Pushkin is famous for it.’

Curtis knew that there was nothing more to be said about Jeffers. He tried to change the subject by talking about the weather in Moscow, how as a Californian he couldn’t get used to going from hot to cold to hot all the time when he was out in the city. He didn’t want Ivan thinking he didn’t have the stomach for the fight.

‘What’s that?’

‘I said it’s weird the way a lot of the old buildings have three sets of doors.’ Curtis kept talking as he followed Simakov into the kitchen. ‘What’s that about? To keep out the cold?’

‘Trap the heat,’ Simakov replied. He was carrying the Glock.

Curtis couldn’t think of anything else to say. He was in awe of Simakov. He didn’t know how to challenge him or to tell him how proud he was to be serving alongside him in the front ranks of Resurrection. Ivan gave off an aura of otherworldly calm and expertise which was almost impossible to penetrate. Curtis knew that he had styled himself as a mere foot soldier, one of tens of thousands of people around the world with the desire to confront bigotry and injustice. But to Curtis, Simakov was the Leader. There was nothing conventional or routine about him. He was extraordinary.

‘I just want to say that I’m glad you got me out here,’ he said.

‘That’s OK, Zack. You were the right man for the job.’

Simakov opened one of the cupboards in the kitchen. He was looking for something.

‘I need some oil, clean this thing,’ he said, indicating the gun.

‘I could go out and get you some,’ Curtis suggested.

‘Don’t you worry about it.’ He slapped him on the back, tugging him forwards, like a bear hug from a big brother. ‘Anyway, haven’t you forgotten? You don’t speak Russian.’

The bomb detonated six minutes later, at twenty-three minutes past four in the afternoon. The explosion, which also took the life of a young mother and her baby daughter in a corner apartment on the fourth floor of the building, was initially believed to have been caused by a faulty gas cylinder. When it was discovered that Zack Curtis and Ivan Simakov had been killed in the incident, a division of Alpha Group, Russia’s counter-terrorism task force, was dispatched to the scene. Russian television reported that Simakov had been killed by an improvised explosive device which detonated accidentally only hours before a planned Resurrection strike against the American ambassador to the Russian Federation, Walter P. Jeffers, former chairman of the Jeffers Company and a prominent donor to the Republican party.

News of Simakov’s death spread quickly. Some believed that the founder of Resurrection had died while in the process of building a home-made bomb; others were convinced that Russian intelligence had been watching Simakov and that he had been assassinated on the orders of the Kremlin. To deter Resurrection opponents and sympathisers alike, Simakov’s remains were interred in an unmarked grave in Kuntsevo Cemetery on the outskirts of Moscow. Curtis was buried two weeks later in San Diego. More than three thousand Resurrection supporters lined the route taken by the funeral cortège.