The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [165]
Stevie opened the kitchen window and put a handful of toast crumbs on the window sill. It was still freezing outside and she noticed icicles hanging from the eaves of her building.
The image of the man in the snow, neck snapped like a sapling, ambushed her and Stevie suddenly felt a little sick.
‘The man that was killed in the snow was from GROM, too,’ she added, closing the window. ‘The insignia on the knife was a bat on a blue globe. At the time I couldn’t remember which special forces group use the bat as their emblem. Dragoman recognised it straight away.’
‘He must have radioed Moscow before he was killed.’ Henning was watching her closely, concern in his still-bloodshot eyes. ‘Orlikov would have leapt to the conclusion that little mysterious Stevie Duveen had already killed two of his men.’
Stevie smiled at him, happy that Henning was with them—with her—in the little kitchen.
‘It must have made them wonder who on earth I was really working for . . .’ Stevie turned her empty cup in circles. ‘Until they saw Dragoman appear. That would have been quite a surprise.’
Anya was buttering her third piece of toast, the colour returning to her cheeks. ‘That man told me no one was coming to rescue me, that he had power over the Kremlin. I don’t know why he said these things to me. I guess he thought I was going to disappear forever.’ Anya smiled happily.
Stevie shuddered at the thought of how close she had come to doing just that.
Henning refilled Stevie’s coffee cup, a hand lightly on her shoulder. ‘Dragoman would have been convinced his friends in the Kremlin had turned on him when Orlikov jumped out. We know he recognised his face because he pointed him out on the television. Stevie saw him through the window.’
Anya’s eyes opened wide and stared at Stevie in wonder. ‘It was you on the roof? Dragoman went so crazy after that.’
Henning grinned. ‘I bet he did—it was quite a show.’ He squeezed her shoulder and Stevie felt herself blushing, but she left his hand there, enjoying the warmth of his touch.
‘So,’ Henning asked, ‘will Dragoman pursue his vendetta against the siloviki?’
Stevie nodded. ‘I’m guessing he will—he survived, didn’t he? And he’s not a man who forgets. I think we’re going to start seeing a series of accidents and mysterious deaths, possibly a small epidemic of suicides . . .’
‘How grim.’
‘Maybe, but without the list, Dragoman’s probably the only one outside the circle who knows who the bad guys are.’ Stevie put her cup down and looked at Henning, her clear green eyes steady.
‘It’s as close to justice for Anya and for Valery Kozkov as we’re going to get.’
They both glanced at Anya but she seemed not to be listening, her attention caught by two sparrows flitting on the window sill, pecking happily at the toast crumbs Stevie had put there for them.
Good, thought Stevie. The sooner Anya put all this behind her, the better. A quest for a justice that would as likely never come, given the current administration’s track record, would only poison what was left of her childhood.
Stevie didn’t think this made her a cynic. She was far from being that. She believed strongly in the power of good to triumph, and in the responsibility of the individual to do what good they could. But she was no fantasist. Ideals were important, but they meant nothing if they didn’t have a human face; and sometimes the person was more important than the concept.
Stevie also suspected Vadim might feel differently. She hoped he wouldn’t do anything silly.
EPILOGUE
Their heads appeared amongst the crowd at the Bahnhof and Anya ran to meet them. Irina’s face was awash with tears as she held her daughter close, the pause button in her life now released. Vadim held Anya’s hand tight, wouldn’t let it go, not even when they ordered five celebratory glasses of champagne and drank them standing, as was fitting, in the bustling anonymity of the railway bar. They would be safer in a crowd.
For a few minutes amongst the little group, there was only pure and unmitigated