Private Moscow (Private 15)

“Why?” he asked.

“I want to search the car for bugs. It’s unlikely given how desperate they were to keep up, but it pays to be cautious,” Dinara said.

If the men following them had managed to plant a bug on Leonid’s car, they wouldn’t have needed to break cover, which suggested the surveillance was a new and recent thing, probably last minute and possibly connected to their meeting with Maxim Yenen.

CHAPTER 15

DINARA AND LEONID pulled off the main road near the Zhivopisniy Bridge onto a dirt track that took them into a deserted forest. The Lada left a solitary trail in the virgin snow, and when they were confident they couldn’t be seen from the road, Leonid pulled over and used the EMF detection kit he kept in the boot to sweep the car for bugs. He found nothing, and Dinara’s physical search didn’t reveal anything either. Satisfied they weren’t being monitored, they left the silent forest, returned to the Marshala Zhukova highway and headed east.

When they reached Luzhniki, they parked the Lada and took the Metro to Dubrovka. From there they took a taxi to Kolomenskoye Park, arriving fifteen minutes ahead of their scheduled 10:30 a.m. meeting with Yenen. The cab driver clearly thought they were crazy when they asked him to drop them off in the empty parking lot. The brutal cold and thick snow had turned Kolomenskoye into a hostile frozen wasteland, and there was no one else around. When the cab had headed back to the city, Leonid and Dinara found indentations in the snow that marked the edges of the curving path that led to the Church of Our Lady of Kazan. The grand white building with its blue-domed towers was one of the few imperial churches to have survived the revolution unscathed. It had become a draw for tourists and Muscovites, and Dinara recalled spending a day here with Nofel Popov, a man she’d dated six years ago. As she and Leonid traveled the same path she’d walked with her former sweetheart, Dinara wondered what Nofel might be doing now. Had he found the love and stability he’d so desperately been seeking? He’d demanded far more from Dinara

than an ambitious young FSB agent could possibly have given him. She smiled at the thought of him doing pull-ups on the branch of a tree in an attempt to impress her. She searched for the spot where he’d tried to win her over with feats of strength, but the landscape had been remodeled by snow and looked very different from her summer visit all those years ago.

“Something wrong?” Leonid asked.

“Just remembering my last time here,” Dinara replied.

“Stay in the moment, please,” Leonid upbraided her.

Dinara frowned at him, and the two of them walked on through the snow. The path had been cleared at some point, but fresh powder had covered it, concealing any evidence that humans had ever been here. There were a few animal tracks in the deep snow either side of the path. The tracks vanished into woodland that covered much of the former imperial estate.

The courtyard that lay in front of the church had been cleared to reveal the gray stone slabs. The flowerbeds were lost to deep powder and the gray portico roof and blue domes were capped with thick crusted ice that shone in the sunlight. The sounds of Dinara and Leonid trying to stay warm, shifting from side to side, patting themselves, were deadened by the surrounding snow.

Twenty minutes later, Dinara saw flashes of black through the trees and a convoy pulled into the parking lot. A Bentley SUV positioned itself between two Range Rovers and the occupants got out. A man in a padded silver jacket was surrounded by six men in long woolen trench coats. There was no mistaking who the bodyguards’ principal was. The guards’ heads turned in every direction, sweeping for threats as they followed Dinara and Leonid’s footsteps into the park. As they drew nearer, Dinara recognized Maxim Yenen from his newspaper photos. The deep snow made it hard to gauge his height, but Dinara guessed he was approximately 180 centimeters. He was slightly overweight, had black hair that poked from beneath a woolen hat, and watched the world with narrow, greedy eyes. He had always struck Dinara as a calculating man for whom all the riches of Russia wouldn’t be enough.

Puffing clouds of steam as he walked the woodland path to the church, Yenen soon reached Leonid and Dinara.

“Mr. Yenen,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m Dinara Orlova.”

Yenen refused the greeting with a dismissive wave. “We live in dangerous times, Miss Orlova. Even the touch of a hand can be deadly.”

Dinara recognized the paranoid glint in the man’s eye. She’d seen it in her reflection when she used to work undercover. There was no such thing as too careful, she’d always told herself, and here was a man who lived by that mantra.

“How can we help you?” Dinara asked, lowering her hand.

Yenen looked at his bodyguards, but it was Leonid who picked up on his pointed expression first.

“Hey,” Leonid said to one of the men, a huge bull-necked figure whose coat struggled to contain his massive frame. “You’re Tisha Bobrik, aren’t you?”

The man looked at Leonid in puzzlement.

“Leonid Boykov. We were on the Olympic team together in 2004.” He mimed lifting weights. “You got bronze in the super heavyweight. I got silver for rapid pistol.”

“I remember you,” Tisha said. “You were at the team party on the last night.”

Leonid nodded. “We might even have shared a toast or two.” He smiled. “Listen, why don’t we bore these other fellows with tales of past glory and leave these two to talk.”

Tisha looked at Yenen, who nodded.

“OK,” Tisha said, and he and the other guards followed Leonid to the portico a short distance away.

His work as a cop meant there were few places in Moscow where Leonid didn’t know someone, and his Olympic success with a pistol had made him a minor celebrity, so he could usually find a connection. The deft way he read people and won them over was something Dinara aspired to.

“What can Private Moscow do for you, Mr. Yenen?” Dinara asked, once the others were out of earshot.

“You are to investigate the murder of a woman called Yana Petrova. She was killed in an explosion last night.”

CHAPTER 16