The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [146]
Looking up, she saw the crenellations of the four towers against the night sky, opaque with cloud. She needed a photo of Dragoman to go with Rosie’s story and for that, she had to get closer to his windows.
It wouldn’t be much of a photo but she needed it quickly, and she knew from her time spent amongst paparazzi fodder just how much could be done with computers to even the poorest picture.
It seemed there was only one way to approach: over the skylight.
Stevie slipped off her shoes. Nothing would be quieter or safer than bare feet. She opened the narrow window on her side. Three times she tried to fit through that tiny gap, then on the fourth she finally managed to wriggle out, head first. She stretched her hands out. It was freezing in the open air.
The lights from the hall below had obliterated the glass panels in the dark. It took all of Stevie’s faith to trust they were still there.
Slowly and silently she put one foot, then two, on the first glass panel, testing it would hold her weight. Then she stepped to the next. Panel to panel she crept along the freezing glass roof, one tender foot at a time, unable to stop herself looking down onto the small waiter leaning at the tiny bar below, the three Lebanese ladies drinking cocktails.
The skywalk seemed to take forever, but finally Dragoman’s windows drew close. She peered in.
The back of Dragoman’s small head protruded—just—over the back of a velvet armchair. He was watching television, his feet in velvet sandals, crossed delicately at the ankles. His shadow stood to the right of the chair, at least two other men—Stevie noted the neat suits—were in the room, also watching the screen.
It was enormous and Stevie could see it very clearly. It was a news channel televising Kozkov’s funeral in Moscow. It was being held in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, on the banks of the Moskva river, just west of the Kremlin. Gold domes capped the white turrets, almost invisible in the snow.
Stevie started as the faces of Irina and Vadim suddenly appeared, almost life-size on the screen. They looked so ghostly and alone, and Stevie’s heart went out to them. Masha Osipova stood by Irina, an arm around the widow, her eyes red from crying.
The ticker tape at the bottom of the screen gave the bulletin as the camera swung slowly and showed the room. Irina and Vadim were walking with other mourners in a procession, down the marble aisle, towards the coffin. Pale faces like almonds in a sea of black dotted the cathedral. Stevie couldn’t hear the music through the window but the silent spectacle was moving enough.
Generals in their full medallion stood, breasts out like tanks, along the aisle. Even the president was there, his fish-lids unblinking, perpetually outlined in red. Everyone looked very sorry, very sombre, very fitting. They would all be expressing their condolences to the widow and her son, saying the right things, and none of it would change a thing.
Stevie thought of something Vadim had told her after Kozkov had left the dacha.
‘He has no real friends,’ he’d said. ‘People feel it’s too dangerous for them to be close to my father.’
Stevie, out on the roof, wondered which of the faces wore only the mask of grief and regret . . . perhaps Kozkov’s enemies were amongst the mourners. In fact, it was more than likely.
As one of the generals stood at the microphone, speaking gravely to the mourners, Stevie thought of Juvenal: Who guards the guards?
The camera panned the retinue around the president, moving from face to face. The figures painted on the gilded walls seemed to also be watching the spectacle. Suddenly Dragoman pointed to someone on the screen, saying something to the men in the room.
Stevie looked at the face that had excited him. She did not recognise it. Indeed, it was a most unremarkable face, one that would slide through your