Dead Centre Read online

  Mr Lover Man closed down his mobile. Was he staying or going?

  The vibe I was picking up from the crew was that it would be better if he left. You could have cut the tension between them with a knife. The atmosphere couldn’t have been more at odds with the comfortable world of suede-upholstered headboards and Egyptian cotton sheets.

  Mr Lover Man wasn’t moving one inch.

  ‘Does anybody else speak English?’

  ‘I do.’

  I turned back into the room.

  16

  HE WAS JUST a kid, really, low twenties at the most. His nose was already peeling. He looked even more nervous than Rudy, maybe because he was right at the bottom of the food chain and the only other crew member I’d be able to talk to. There was definitely something wrong with this lot.

  He added, ‘A little.’ He had the kind of American accent that foreigners pick up from Friends.

  ‘You know I’m here to help, don’t you? I’m trying to get the three of them back, nothing more.’

  I got a sort of nod from the boy. He sat back on the bed, but he was about as relaxed as a high-tensile wire.

  Rudy looked as though he’d be a serious candidate for the job of Cap’n Birdseye in a few years’ time. Right now, though, the smile beneath his closely cropped beard was so rigid I thought his face might crack.

  ‘So what happened, Rudy?’

  ‘We were attacked by Somalis. It was so far from the African coast, I never thought—’ He was still on his feet. His eyes darted involuntarily in the direction of Mr Lover Man.

  ‘It’s OK, mate, you don’t have to stand for me. Go on.’

  He sat down on the bed.

  ‘The Maria Feodorovna—’

  ‘The yacht?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What sort is it? A motor yacht? Sailing?’

  ‘Motor yacht. Forty metres. We were cruising, and then from nowhere two skiffs were coming towards us from the port side.’

  The rest of the crew sucked at their cigarettes and kept their eyes down. Either the carpet was really interesting or they didn’t want me to read their expressions.

  ‘They were travelling very fast – twin seventy-fives on the back. I knew they were pirates even before they attacked. Skiffs so far from the coast. They had to be.

  ‘We started to make speed and tried to change direction, make it harder for them to board. I shouted for Jez and—’

  ‘The bodyguard?’

  Rudy’s eyes shot across to Mr Lover Man once more. No one else moved, but I knew they were even more uncomfortable at the mention of the BG’s name.

  ‘Yes, yes. He came up on deck, and he looked, but then he went down below with Stefan and Madame.’

  ‘Where did he take them? Was there some kind of panic room? Was he armed – did the yacht have any weapons?’

  He shook his head. ‘They went into the main cabin. He told me to make more speed. I was trying, but we could not outrun them. They fired a rocket across our bows. Then they aimed the rocket launcher straight at the bridge. I had no choice. I had to come off the power. The other skiff was closing behind. They had grappling hooks.’

  I raised a hand. ‘But did you have weapons? Did the BG take them on?’

  The boy jumped in: ‘If we had, I would have killed them all.’

  Rudy glared at him to stand down. ‘They climbed on the back, maybe five, six, I don’t really know. All with rifles and big knives. I tried to make a mayday call but they must have jammed the radio.’

  He sounded close to tears. ‘They got everyone on the bridge. We were on our knees. There was a lot of shouting. They were kicking us, pointing their rifles into the back of our heads. They were high, chewing that drug they like. I could hear Stefan crying behind me. Madame trying so hard to comfort him.’

  The crew nodded when they heard the boy’s name. Their expressions seemed to soften.

  ‘He was scared … so scared.’

  A lad with thick dark-brown hair mumbled to the skipper and pointed at me, cigarette in hand.

  ‘He wants to know that you will get Stefan back home safe.’

  ‘I’m going to try. But you need to tell me everything you know. Everything.’ I nodded at the questioner. ‘Tell him, of course. I’ll get all three of them back.’

  Rudy translated. I caught ‘Stefan’ a couple of times.

  I shifted position so I could keep Mr Lover Man in sight. He hadn’t spoken a word of English so far, but he clearly understood every word.

  ‘You all have watches. Are they new? Didn’t they take money, valuables?’

  The boy answered: ‘No, they didn’t let us take anything with us, but also didn’t take anything from us. They didn’t care about us. It was Madame and Stefan they wanted.’

  He was quivering with anxiety. He reached suddenly into a red nylon holdall, then had second thoughts and pushed it further under the bed with his heel.

  Mr Lover Man said something in Russian. He wanted to know what the fuck was going on. Rudy seemed to be begging him to keep things nice and calm. He turned to me, hands clasped together like he was about to pray. ‘I’m sorry. He has had a terrible time …’

  ‘What happened next, Rudy?’

  He took a deep breath as the boy sat back down. ‘We were all on the bridge, on the floor. They stood over us, shouting and chewing. And then they made me steer a new course west.

  ‘Maybe half an hour later, we saw their mother-ship, an old fishing trawler with another two skiffs tied up alongside it. They were hundreds of kilometres from home.’ There was a note of profound sadness in his voice. ‘They took us off the Maria Feodorovna. They placed us in the tender and just left us. They took my ship.’ He finally broke down. ‘They took Stefan and his mother …’

  The young one sparked up. ‘And Jez …’

  The captain shot the boy a warning glance.

  ‘But, Papa …’

  I looked at him. ‘What about the bodyguard? Did he do something? Did he say something?’

  His father answered for him: ‘He stayed with Stefan and Madame. Trying to protect them. Please. I’ve spoken to my crew. They know nothing more than I have told you. I wish we knew more, but it was so quick. They came, they took. And then they left us. We never saw the three of them again. I do not even know if they had a plan.’

  Of course they had a plan. This was business. There were even established pay differentials for the pirate crew members. The first guy to board a ship got paid more than anyone else. He usually picked up a couple of thousand dollars extra once the ransom money came in. Relative risk and reward, just like any other line of work.

  ‘I need to know anything at all that anyone can remember, no matter how insignificant. It may help me find them.’ I fixed on the captain. ‘Can you tell them that?’

  Mr Lover Man had had enough. He packed away his mobile and got out of his seat. ‘We are done here.’

  His English was just as it should have been. Deep and growly.

  ‘That is all they know. That is all you need to know to make a plan and rescue them. Come.’

  As he headed out of the room, the crew looked up at me with a mixture of embarrassment, fear and relief.

  I glanced at the door handle and the electronic lock. It looked like the Russian equivalent of a VingCard Classic, the magnetic card reader used in most European and American hotels. If so, the locksets would be high security, with a full one-inch steel deadbolt and three-quarter-inch anti-pick latch for added strength. The electronics worked off standard AA batteries. Their flash memory allowed the lock to be accessed and reprogrammed directly at the hotel-room door.

  I followed my escort to the lift. ‘Are you giving me a ride back to my flat? The Metro’s a fucking nightmare around here.’

  Mr Lover Man had been with Mr T too long. He didn’t give it a nanosecond’s thought. ‘No.’

  We headed down. At the main door, I zipped my parka up to my chin and adjusted the hood to hide my face from the cold. Then Mr Lover
Man and I stepped outside. He took a pace or two towards the Range Rover, then spun on his heel.

  ‘Go now and bring back Stefan.’

  The Audi was still two-up. The engine stopped as soon as I turned towards the Metro. A guy in a dark overcoat and beanie stepped out of the car and his mate, in sheepskin, followed suit. Mr T had obviously tuned into Comedy Central. These boys were the spitting image of Ant and Dec. Dec hit the key fob to lock up.

  I crossed the road, heading the couple of hundred metres towards the sign with the large red M. I didn’t bother to check if Frank’s new celebrity couple were still with me. I took it as given. He clearly liked to keep a tight rein on all his people.

  17

  LUBYANKA WAS ONE of the first stations to be built in Moscow’s underground system in the mid-1930s. Because of the city’s unstable subsoil, it also turned out to be one of the world’s deepest. It took passengers more than five minutes to get from the concourse to the platforms. That was just what I wanted today. I wanted to lose my new best mates, but I didn’t want them to know I’d done it on purpose.

  I reached the bottom of the stairs. This subway wouldn’t have got Crazy Dave’s seal of approval. There were no lifts anywhere. Most stations didn’t even have ramps. So even if he got down here, there’d be no guarantee Crazy Dave would ever resurface.

  Another thing that was going to work in my favour was the fact that you could stay down here all day. You could interchange at will, and I might have to.

  Ant and Dec wouldn’t find that strange. Visitors to Moscow who don’t speak or read Russian can find the Metro very intimidating. It’s a hub-and-spoke system, with the majority of lines running from downtown Moscow to the peripheral districts.

  The Koltsevaya Line (No. 5) forms a twenty-kilometre ring that connects the spokes. There are twelve lines, each identified by a number, a name and a colour, and 182 stations. The locals often identified the lines just by colour, except for the very similar shades of green assigned to 2, 10, 11, and L1 – and at Kievskaya, where the light blue and dark blue lines converged and were almost impossible to tell apart.

  It got worse. The colours on the platform signs weren’t always the same as the colours on the maps, and one station could be called two or three different names depending on the line on which one was travelling.

  Out-of-towners and foreigners like me had to change platforms and retrace their steps every ten minutes. I quite liked fucking about down here for a couple of hours when I’d had enough of Dostoevsky and Gunslingers. It was a great place to see the wildlife. It also reminded me of the few fun times I used to have as a kid, bunking on the Underground all day, not having a clue where me and my mates would surface. Anywhere north of the river was the Outback, as far as we were concerned.

  The entry gates looked like a series of turnstiles, but without the turnstiles. They were a row of card readers, with little gates between them. Some stations had futuristic glass panels that swung open once your card had been given the green light. Most, however, had nothing – until you tried to step through without scanning your card. At that point the mechanical gates would slam shut and do their best to crush you.

  I brushed my card across the sensor and went through without losing any limbs.

  The Moscow Metro was designed to double up as an underground shelter in case of attack. The masses might have to spend long spells down there, but were sure not to miss out on the joys of the Communist system. There were sculptures, reliefs and mosaics aplenty to glorify the achievements of the squaddie and the tractor-driver.

  Above all, it looked good, it worked, and it was cheap. A single trip – which translated as ‘race’ – cost 60p. My sixty-race card made it even cheaper.

  All the tourist guides recommended at least one trip. But not many sightseers took in Lubyanka this year, even though it was on the doorstep of Red Square and the Kremlin. All the murals and engravings had gone from the ceilings and walls, leaving shiny cream tiles. It had been targeted by a Chechen suicide bomber a year ago. Forty people were killed.

  Less than an hour later, another device had gone off at Park Kultury, also on the red line, raising the death toll by a further fourteen. A couple of hundred were injured.

  Both stations were quickly back in business. Muscovites still had to get to work, and above ground the city was gridlocked between eight and eleven in the morning and five and eight in the evening, and no picnic the rest of the time. Down here, you never had to wait more than about a minute for a train – even if, at peak hours, it was like being caught in a stampede.

  The escalator finally unloaded me onto the platform. Two dogs stretched out alongside a couple of young guys gripping beer bottles like they were gold bars. Passengers just stepped over them and went on their way. They also swept past a policeman curled up in the corner. He wasn’t drunk. He was covered in dirt, leather jacket shredded, his face bloodied and beaten. This lad had been kicked to shit, but nobody batted an eyelid.

  I plotted a route through the rat’s nest that would eventually take me back up to Lubyanka. I wanted a better look in Room 419, without Mr Lover Man hovering over me. I’d start with what was under that bed. Another little chat with Rudy and his boy, if that was possible, would be a bonus.

  This was the second busiest underground system on the planet after Tokyo’s. Eight million people used it every day, and they always seemed to be sharing my carriage. There’d be no hopping on and off just before the doors closed to avoid being followed, like you see in the movies. It would be more like wading through treacle.

  Losing Ant and Dec wasn’t going to be easy.

  18

  THE CROWD SWAYED uncomfortably close to the edge of the platform as we waited for the north-west train. People shouted. Drunks sang. Dogs barked. Nobody cared. At least it was warm down there.

  I didn’t scan the place for Ant and Dec. I didn’t want them to know I was aware. And all that mattered was that they weren’t still behind me when I exited. If they were, I’d dis appear back into the rat’s nest. At the worst stations it was easier to take the first available exit than fight your way through the maze to get a couple of blocks closer to your destination. If the worst came to the worst I’d just make a run for it.

  Our train arrived. The crowd surged. I didn’t wait for anyone to get off. The doors on the Moscow Metro didn’t take prisoners. They were like guillotines. If you were caught when they snapped shut, your next stop was A&E.

  I shuffled and pushed my way aboard, and grabbed a handrail. The doors slammed shut, imprisoning me in a world of tobacco and beer fumes. The woman to my left was overloaded with market-stall perfume. At least it took the edge off the stench of vomit from the two drunks who’d annexed the three or four seats alongside me. Another sat by their feet, trying to navigate the neck of a vodka bottle through his full-face motorbike helmet. Nobody paid them the slightest attention. It was the Metro Derby. For 60p a race, who cared?

  Head lolling with the rhythm of the carriage, I let my gaze wander casually along it at about shoulder level, trying to catch Ant and Dec’s coats, not their eyes. They were probably doing exactly the same, unless I’d already given them the slip.

  The train lurched. A female voice announced the next station. I was going in the right direction. It was a male voice when you were going towards the centre, a female when heading away from it.

  Three stops took me to the intersection with Moscow’s answer to the Circle Line. The masses fought their way on and off at the first, Chistye Prudy, giving me the chance to see a bit more of the carriage.

  Nothing.

  I finally spotted Ant trying hard to look as though he hadn’t spotted me as we pulled into Krasnye Vorota. The train jolted, there was a surge of bodies, and I lost him again. People moaned at a bunch of teenagers with rucksacks. Women gripped their shopping bags firmly at their sides rather than risk having them trampled at their feet. Personal space was in very short supply.

  The train set off again. Komsomols
kaya was the interchange. There’d be a mass exodus and a mass embarkation. I’d go the six stops to Park Kultury, where the second bomb had gone off, and then take the Central Line back to Lubyanka.

  The motorbike helmet shuddered. The neck of the vodka bottle disappeared once more through the open visor, then went back down between its owner’s legs. This time it tipped over and made him look like he’d pissed himself.

  I knelt down and righted the bottle. Nobody watched. If they had, it would have been obvious to them that any good comrade should take the trouble to ease this boy’s helmet off his head before he choked on his own vomit. Maybe I’d get a medal when Anna took me to the Victory Parade.

  As the train slowed at Komsomolskaya I shrugged off my North Face and bundled it under my arm, then straightened up and joined the throng at the door. The lining of the helmet stank of stale sweat and beer and cigarettes. I hoped I didn’t have to keep it on much further than the end of the platform.

  19

  15.00 hrs

  I DUMPED THE helmet and heaved my parka back on as soon as I emerged once more into the wind and snow. It was already starting to get dark. Sunset was at six at this time of the year. The lights of GUM did their best to make up for it, glinting off the wet cobblestones of Red Square.

  Before perestroika hit its stride, all cities in the USSR had a branch of the state-owned department store. It was the only place where diplomats could buy their Marmite and Blue Nun, and the privileged Soviet few could shop for their premium vodka while the rest of the country lined up for hours for a loaf of bread and a dodgy-looking onion.

  The Moscow flagship looked like Harrods on steroids, and had a history to match. Stalin converted it into office space. Then, when his wife had had enough of him killing everybody and topped herself, he turned it into her mausoleum. In the early 1950s his successors reopened it as a store, most of which consisted of empty shelves. Now it was a shopping mall like anywhere else on the planet, except for the fantastic architecture and the eye-watering prices. The two hundred stores inside boasted all the Western luxury brands and labels. After ten years of record-breaking economic growth, high-end Muscovites had money to burn. The man in the street could only press his nose against the glass.