Читать книгу Moscow Blue - Philip Kurland - Страница 6

With his bag hanging from his shoulder, Crocker forced a farewell smile as he slid sideways through the doorway into the noisy confusion outside. Feelings of relief and irritation flooded through him in equal measure. Knowing the murdered Kolyunov probably knew him, or of him, made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. But he liked an alternative even less: he could have been set up as the fall guy in some nefarious plot. He had no doubt such things did happen in Russia, but then decided there was probably a simpler explanation.

He craved fresh air and couldn’t wait to get out of a place starting to feel like a sauna in a Turkish bath.

‘Taxi? Taxi?’ insisted a swarthy man leaning over the living swarm milling around the doorway leading from the Customs Hall. Crocker gave him a quick glance and ignored him.

‘Taxi? Taxi?’ called another.

And another.

Crocker shook his head slowly, not wanting to dislodge his schapka while at the same time willing these uninvited pests to disappear. His eyes searched for Oleg Ilyich Nikiforov, the company driver employed to ferry him around when he was in Moscow. After a long flight, the last thing Crocker felt like doing was bargaining with one of the many evil-looking villains who, calling themselves taxi drivers converged like vultures around the terminal’s main exit.

It was difficult to see through the stale, copper-tinted haze in the poorly lit hall, and he was about to become even more downcast when a quiet voice greeted him from behind.

‘Ullo, Mr Lee.’ The familiar greeting was all he craved at that moment. The tension growing within him disappeared instantly.

Oleg was a singularly unattractive, spindly man in his late forties wearing a knitted orange ski-hat topped with a floppy orange pom-pom. With widely spaced bulbous eyes, fixed grin and poor complexion, the driver resembled an overgrown, badly painted, bandy-legged garden gnome. But now those eyes were crinkled in a friendly welcome. He was clearly pleased to see the American, almost as pleased as Crocker was to see him. They shook hands warmly.

‘It’s good to see you, Oleg. Are you well?’

Oleg cleared his airway with a thick smoker’s cough.

‘As usual, Mr Lee.’

Good old reliable Oleg.

Crocker followed the driver out towards his car, at peace with the world again, at least for the moment.

The sky outside was pitch-black, and the change from the kerosene-saturated warmth of the terminal building to the bitter winter air outside seized Crocker by the throat. Of all the cities he visited in his work, Moscow could feel colder in January than anywhere else. It was not for the first time he was grateful for his thermal underwear. He prayed the drive into the city would be the final hurdle without any more surprises before he could settle down to some edible food, and then a good sleep.

Sinking into the rear seat of Oleg’s orange Lada, Crocker was aware that nothing in the car had changed since his last trip. The atmosphere of cheap perfumed disinfectant blended with stale Russian cigarette smoke, filled his lungs. The lucky-charm temptress still swung from the rear view mirror, her exotic Spanish-style paintwork still chipped on her nose, breasts and buttocks. The four windows were permanently shut, the interior handles having been stolen some months earlier to feed a growing market for Lada spares.

‘Keeps the warm in,’ Oleg had proclaimed when first asked about the closed windows. Crocker had decided there was no point in trying to argue with such practical Russian logic.

‘We were all so sorry to hear about your brother, Mr Lee,’ said Oleg, his face turned up to the roof of the car.

All the mystery and sadness surrounding his brother’s death, flooded back into Crocker’s consciousness from wherever it had been consigned by the unexpected police interrogation.

‘Thanks, Oleg. The shock still hasn’t worn off.

‘You were good friends?’

‘If you mean close, no. Not really.’

‘Yes, close.’

’I’m going to miss him, although we saw each other mainly through business. We didn’t socialize a great deal.’

‘I understand.’

‘He was some years older. A little wild when we were kids. Probably thought I was dull. But, hey; that’s enough about Paul. How’s your wife and boy?’

‘They are very happy, Mr Lee. Yes, very happy, thank you.’

The American stretched his six-feet-two-inch frame as far as the rear of the Lada would allow, and he pondered on his unexpected encounter at the airport; the round face, the dead eyes and the prominent ears coming back to him. Kolyunov? Kolyunov? He searched his memory once again for some forgotten connection no matter how tenuous, but still the name meant nothing to him. He wrote it down on the back of his air ticket, promising himself to check it out the next day at the office.

With his mind overloading with many varied topics, from conversations with his erstwhile live-in partner, Angie Powers, to recent events in Moscow, he decided coming here was fast becoming anathema to him.

What the hell do I want this for? I don’t need it.

He tried telling himself he was being irrational, probably because the incident with the police had rattled his nerves, and he was hungry and tired. But deep down, he didn’t believe it. Knowing himself as he did, he anticipated this police matter would prey on his mind until he had all the answers. He hated loose ends.

While the Lada continued along the bumpy, poorly lit roads of Moscow’s suburbia, in the darkness of the car, Crocker rummaged through his shoulder bag among the presents bought at the Duty Free. He dug out one of the large packs of Marlboros and dropped it onto the empty front seat.

‘Thank you, Mr Lee,’ acknowledged Oleg over his shoulder, his wide grin held for several seconds. Being embarrassed for distributing largess was a thing of the past for Crocker. It was on his first visit that he understood recipients were not interested in his personal or emotional upheaval when they were beneficiaries of unattainable presents from the West.

Driving in complete silence, neither Oleg nor Crocker noticed the dipped lights of the large saloon car maintaining a constant distance behind.