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13

AN HOUR AND twenty-seven minutes later we turned off towards a village. I’d spent every second of that time trying not to get bounced around in the foot-well, so the small of my back was now as painful as my neck.

Genghis sparked up his cell again.

This wasn’t Navaho or Chelsea. The buildings were timber-framed and exuded an air of history. Enormous dachas, three storeys high with huge, overhanging roofs, stood behind big walls. These were the weekend retreats of wealthy Muscovites, built in the time of the Tsar. Tyre tracks led in and out of the driveways. There was no foot traffic at all. The rich didn’t need to walk and their snow was pure white.

We turned through a massive set of slowly opening wooden gates. I saw cedar tiles cladding a steeply pitched roof. Condensation billowed from modern heating ducts on the side of the old building. It looked like something out of a spy story. The whole village did.

The Range Rover crunched across the snow, flanking the dacha. Huge trees circled a snow-lined playground, gardens and a swimming-pool. I could just make out the little handles round the edge to help you out of the water. We swooped round to the back of the house and stopped behind another Range Rover with red plates. Genghis jumped out and produced an eight-inch blade from a sheath at his hip. My door opened. The blade flashed in the sunlight and the plasticuffs put up only token resistance. As I straightened, he pointed the tip of his knife towards the wooden veranda.

The cold slapped me in the face as I headed up the three steps. Crows squawked in a field the other side of the trees. I touched the swelling on the back of my head. The skin had broken, but the heat of the Range Rover had dried the wound.

Three doors led off the veranda: a bug screen for the summer, followed by a triple-glazed monster with an aluminium frame and finally the hand-carved wooden original.

I stepped into a big shiny modern kitchen, all white marble and stainless steel. It couldn’t have provided a more dramatic contrast to the exterior. I stood on a polished stone floor with the sweet smell of Russian cleaning fluids, that really intense mixture of rose perfume and bleach, assaulting my nostrils. And it was even hotter in there than it had been in the Range Rover.

A small man in his late forties sat facing me at a white marble table. His hair was brushed back. There was a hint of grey at the temples. He was immersed in a Russian broadsheet, the front page full of the Fukushima meltdown. ‘Coffee?’ Without looking up, he pointed to a cappuccino machine the size of a nuclear reactor. ‘Help yourself and sit down over here with me.’

He was wearing black suit trousers, shiny black leather shoes, a grey shirt and V-neck jumper. A white magnetic board hung on the wall behind him, covered with photos and all the normal family shit. A scaled-down red Ferrari with an electric engine was parked beneath it, next to a Tupperware crate containing every shape and size of game ball. The cappuccino machine stood beside a white marble sink large enough to dismember a body in.

‘Relax, Nick. No one else is going to interrupt us, and you’re in no danger. I just want to talk with you.’ His English was precise, but his accent was surprisingly guttural. He sounded like Hollywood’s idea of a Cold War Soviet agent.

‘Please.’ He nodded again towards the dozen or so matching blue mugs that were lined up on the spotless work surface. ‘Get yourself whatever you fancy. Then come and sit down.’

I wasn’t going to turn down a brew. It could be my last for a while. I piled in the sugar in case I needed an energy boost some time soon. I lifted the shiny glass jug from its hotplate and poured myself a generous shot of its contents.

‘Do you know where you are, Nick?’

I reached for the condensed milk. ‘Not a clue.’

‘Peredelkino. A very nice place, steeped in history. It’s known as the writers’ village. Many famous Russians have lived here, Russians who have changed the world