Private Moscow (Private 15)

“People lie, and the best fakes always seem real,” Justine observed. “But I’ll ask Mo to look into it. Sci is in Washington checking the evidence from the Robert Carlyle crash.”

“Thanks,” I said. “One last thing. I just tried to call Victoria Parker, but there was no answer. Can you ask her to phone me as soon as possible?”

“Sure,” Justine replied. “What time is it there?”

“Ten,” I replied. “We’re heading out of the city to check out the place the photo was taken.”

“Be careful,” Justine cautioned, before hanging up.

“She doesn’t think the picture is genuine?” Dinara asked.

“She’s right,” I conceded. “It could be a fake.”

I took the photograph from my coat pocket. I’d put it inside a cellophane evidence bag to protect it. Everything about the old Polaroid seemed authentic, but Justine was right, it was not beyond the capabilities of a good forger.

“Of course, if it is real …” Dinara trailed off, but she didn’t need to finish her sentence.

I knew exactly what she was implying. If the photograph was genuine, there was a distinct possibility Karl Parker was a Russian agent. Was that what he’d wanted to talk to me about on the day he died? And if so, why now? I couldn’t believe my old friend, a man who’d served our country with distinction, could ever betray it. There could be a more innocent explanation, but I was struggling to come up with what that might be.

The possibility continued to trouble me as Leonid drove north out of the city into the frozen wilderness beyond.

CHAPTER 70

WHAT SHOULD HAVE been a five-hour drive became ten. The bad weather turned a 250-mile straight line into a crooked route of road closures and diversions. We shared the driving, and I took the dawn shift after a few hours’ bad sleep on the back seat. We’d passed Rybinsk and were traveling through the ancient pine forests of Yaroslavl, along a deserted single-lane road. Dinara was asleep on the back seat, and Leonid was dozing next to me. The truck’s heater filled the cabin with warm air, but just looking at the huge icy drifts that had been carved by snow plows was enough to make me shiver. They were so cold, their edges were tinged a toothpaste blue and the air seemed to shimmer around them.

Halfway between Rybinsk and Volkovo, we passed the wreckage of an accident. Two overturned, burned-out cars lay at the edge of the vast pine forest, their scorched rusting shells half covered in snow, suggesting the accident had happened months ago. I wondered whether anyone had survived. Even if they’d lived through the crash, what chance did they have in such hostile conditions, so far from help?

The sun had risen by the time I drove into Volkovo, and the town was just starting to wake up. Less than a mile in diameter, Volkovo straddled an inlet that branched off the enormous Rybinsk Reservoir, which lay to our west, concealed by thick forest. The town was made up of a couple of hundred homes and a handful of businesses. Most of the wooden houses had been constructed on spacious lots and many of them were in a state of disrepair. Volkovo reminded me of an Alpine village without the money.

Every building was capped with a thick layer of snow, which had turned to ice in the freezing temperatures. The tracks and driveways that lay off the main road were lost beneath deep drifts, and the parking bays that lined the street were populated by hillocks of snow, each of which marked a buried car.

Agafiya had told us the bar had been on route P104, the main drag that ran through the heart of town, and I followed the directions given by my phone’s GPS to the location. I slowed and turned right into a yard in front of a square white single-story building. Leonid and Dinara stirred when I brought the car to a halt near the bright green front door.

Leonid yawned and stretched, and as I looked past him, I saw the bar was gone. Judging by the contents of the misty windows that flanked the entrance, the place was now a bakery.

“This is it,” I told the others.

“Wait here,” Leonid said, before getting out.

The blast of cold air countered the soporific effects of the heater and revived me after the long drive. I looked around the deserted town and tried to picture Karl Parker here. He simply didn’t fit, and the more I thought about it, the more I found myself drawn to Justine’s suggestion that the photograph might be fake.

“What would an American be doing out here?” Dinara asked. “Even Russians don’t come here. At least not willingly.”

“It must be nice in summer,” I observed, and she replied with a snort of derision.

Leonid emerged from the bakery with a fully laden plastic bag.

“Breakfast,” he said, signaling the bounty of bread and pastries as he jumped in the car.

“I’m not hungry,” I responded.

“Any kalach?” Dinara asked.

Leonid nodded and ferreted in the bag for a hooped bun, which he handed her.

“Head up the street and make the next left toward the water-front,” he said, before taking a bite from a glazed pastry. “The bar closed ten years ago, but the owner still lives in town.”

Ten minutes later, we were in the living room of a small wooden house that overlooked the frozen inlet. Nikita Garin, the bemused former owner of the Novoko Bar, was in the kitchen and Dinara, Leonid and I sat on frayed green corduroy couches and exchanged furtive glances. They’d fast-talked our way into the house, but the gray-haired, puffy-faced ex-barkeep hadn’t needed too much convincing. I counted six cats, a para-keet and three dogs, and got the sense this was a man in desperate need of company.