‘Handler?’
‘If you’re an agent, your handler is your boss, the one who gives you your assignments, your point of contact. Have you never seen Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?’
She shook her head, remembering Nick buying the DVD and ending up watching it alone while she had a bath.
‘Bearing in mind that Dominic would have been in his eighties now, it’s no surprise that any handler of that generation of spies is no longer with us. But we have a meeting tomorrow with Alexei Gorshkov, the former KGB colonel, who I think is going to confirm Dominic’s activities.’
Abby laughed nervously.
‘I’m just an archivist from Wimbledon. This morning I was supposed to meet my friend for brunch, and tomorrow we’re off to meet the KGB.’
‘You’re not just an archivist, Abby. You’re a journalist for the Chronicle,’ Elliot said in a way that made Abby feel a little bit bigger and bolder.
She couldn’t stop a yawn escaping from her mouth.
‘Tired?’
She nodded, and their eyes met for a brief, electric moment.
She looked away, part of her willing him to leave the room, part of her hoping he would stay.
He stood up and walked towards her. Abby’s heart started beating fiercely. He touched her shoulder with his fingertips as she held her breath, wondering what would happen next.
‘You’d better get some sleep. You’ve been travelling all day and we’ve got a big meeting tomorrow.’
He left the room without even a kiss on the cheek good night, and Abby couldn’t help but feel disappointed.
Chapter Eighteen
Abby was just about to reluctantly swing her legs off the bed and slip her feet into white fluffy slippers, helpfully put there by the housekeeping fairy at some point she hadn’t even noticed, when the bedroom phone rang.
‘Are you up?’ asked Elliot.
‘Just about,’ groaned Abby. ‘Although I could have stayed in that bed for ever.’
‘Gorshkov has put back our meeting until five p.m. That gives us a chance to get out and see the city.’
‘Well it’s an awfully long way to come just to stay in a hotel room, however much I could happily sit out on the balcony all day nibbling blinis.’
Abby didn’t know whether Elliot had inside knowledge of the city or whether the concierge had guessed her taste correctly, but their day had been planned to perfection.
They had breakfast in a nearby café, another grand space, with the feel of a Vienna tea room, where they ate butterbrots and tvorog.
Many of the great sights of the city were within walking distance of their hotel: the Mariinsky Theatre, St Isaac’s Cathedral and the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood with its gold and turquoise onion-shaped domes that soared into the crisp blue sky. Just a glimpse of each one of them made Abby feel like a Romanov princess, although the many designer boutiques, expensive restaurants and chic fashionistas on the street made her realise that this was very much the twenty-first century.
They spent the afternoon in the Hermitage Museum, set in the spectacular Winter Palace, an enormous mint green, white and gold villa that had once been the royal residence of the tsars and was quite possibly Abby’s favourite building in the whole city of architectural treasures. Inside was just as incredible. They saw golden thrones and dozens of objets d’art: clocks, crockery, caskets that had once belonged to Catherine the Great. As an art history graduate, Abby almost wept with joy at the museum’s collection. Room upon room was stuffed with works from the great masters: da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Titian. Elliot couldn’t have been a better companion, surprising her with his knowledge of Italian Renaissance art but not taking it all so seriously that they didn’t have fun.
‘Come on,’ he said, glancing at his watch as time slipped away from them. ‘We’d better get a move on. I can’t imagine the KGB are too tolerant of poor timekeeping.’
‘Ex-KGB,’ said Abby hopefully.
The Mianovitch Building stood in the middle of a park, surrounded on all sides by hedges and fountains, as if it had been dropped into the middle of the city from the air. Such old-world elegance was an incongruous sight out in the suburbs, half an hour’s drive from the city, where rows and rows of grey tower blocks – ‘the people’s housing’ – pressed in on all sides. Abby peered out of the window of the taxi – an Eastern European town car with leather seats and rusting chrome bumpers – as it slid past a row of shops, some of them boarded up, a queue of sullen people outside one. What were they queuing for? she wondered. She leant forward to the driver.
‘That shop?’ she said, pointing. ‘Is it a bakery?’
The driver, a thickset man in a lime-green Adidas top, shrugged and pulled a face to indicate he didn’t understand.
‘Bread?’ said Abby, miming eating.