The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [45]
Petra raised her eyes to Vadim’s, but they were like chips of ice.
Petra quailed. ‘He promised to make me famous! Really famous!’
‘You didn’t think about what might happen to Anya?’ Vadim’s voice was hoarse with anger.
‘I didn’t care! Anya thought she was so beautiful. This guy said I would be on billboards in Times Square!’ Petra was not finding the understanding she craved from the two people in the room.
Stevie pulled the interrogation back on track. ‘Were these men Russian?’
Petra nodded. ‘One was quite short, dark hair, kind of a lumpy face. I think he said his name was Sascha. The other guy was tall. He never told us his name.’
‘You sold Anya because you wanted to be a supermodel,’ Vadim was trembling. Stevie watched closely in case he made a sudden lunge at the girl in the bed.
‘I didn’t know they were bad guys!’
Vadim just stared at her, struck dumb by Petra’s stupidity. Petra turned to Stevie, angry at her now, angry that Stevie had made Vadim hate her so.
‘We all want to get out! We have to do what we can to survive. You wouldn’t understand!’
‘Petra, you bought your dog diamonds.’ Vadim’s words were soft with hate. ‘How can you justify it that way? You cashed in my sister’s life to buy the one thing you couldn’t charge to your black Amex: fame!’
Minutes later Stevie and Vadim were hurrying back across Red Square, the extreme cold making it difficult to breathe and walk and talk at the same time.
‘This place,’ Vadim spat, gesturing at the Kremlin walls, ‘it deforms people’s souls.’
It didn’t take a Moscow upbringing for that. Unfortunately, Stevie had met people all over the world who might have made the same trade as Petra.
‘So how do we find this Sascha, Stevie? What do we do now? I could kill that girl.’
‘Vadim, save your energy for your sister—’
Puff.
‘—you will need it when the kidnappers call. I’m afraid hunting for a “Sascha”—a nickname and probably not even real—and whose physical description matches almost every man in Zima—’
Huff.
‘—is not going to be a good use of our time. But—’ Puff puff.
‘—we do know this—’
Huff huff puff.
‘—do you think we could talk somewhere inside, Vadim?’
The snow had begun to fall heavily and it was difficult not to inhale the huge flakes with every breath.
They went through the revolving glass doors and into the blessed warmth of GUM. The place was gigantic, galleries filled with shoppers running under a vast glass dome. It was the sort of place where no one would be able to remember a face.
Stevie paused. She had the distinct feeling that they were being watched. She couldn’t spot a tail, but that didn’t mean anything. Good surveillance was very difficult to detect. A shiver crawled across her scalp and she hurried to catch up to Vadim.
The café was on the ground floor. Vadim said he had been there every day since Anya’s disappearance, asking the staff if they remembered her. It seemed no one did.
‘Either no one remembers her, or this Sascha paid them to forget.’
He suddenly sounded very tired. ‘We won’t get anywhere with our questions here.’
Stevie put her hand on the young man’s arm. ‘Well, it was the smart thing to do, Vadim. Sascha was probably trusted muscle hired to do the actual kidnapping. I doubt a key person would have risked being seen here. Shall we sit down?’
Stevie took the menu, her eyes hovering between coffee, and the strawberry tsarina, a drink made of strawberry ice-cream and champagne.
When the tsarina arrived, pale pink in a long flute, Stevie was glad she hadn’t chosen coffee. It was not necessary to be sensible in Moscow. She took a cautious sip.
‘I think the people who took Anya are professionals,’ she told Vadim. ‘They didn’t just want some girl, they wanted her specifically. They did extensive target surveillance from the sound of it, and certainly had been watching Anya for a while before Petra was approached. This is