The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [79]
There was also a typed note inside. It ordered the family to their dacha—their summer house—and to wait for the satellite phone to ring.
Constantine Dinov had arrived at their Moscow home ten minutes after Stevie’s call. The Kozkovs were driving through the outskirts of Moscow now. Constellations of massive tower blocks loomed on either side of the road, overlooking a frozen river.
Valery sat in the front passenger seat; Constantine drove, wearing a chauffeur’s hat to avoid suspicion. Stevie had filled Constantine in on as much as there had been time for. Irina and Vadim sat in the back with her, Saskia the Borshoi at their feet, but they were silent. She was grateful for the chance to sit still and think. The action would come later.
Once out of Moscow, they sped through a white landscape, mostly flat, interfered with here and there by a dilapidated fence, a concrete farmhouse, a smoking factory, a black copse of pines.
They drove for hours until they were in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing but shades of white and grey taking on different shapes outside the tinted windows. Once they came across a huge red tractor trundling on the road, its vivid colour almost obscene in the absence of all others. It could have been the end of the world.
Their destination looked like a large snowdrift surrounded by the silvery stalks of Russian birches, tall and naked and as fine as legs. Stevie shivered at the thought of having to get out of the car, into—was Koz-kov sure there was a dacha under there? But there was indeed a wooden house, a cupola on the roof, buried under all that white.
Stevie stepped out into the pale blue light of the early afternoon. The scent of birch and brittle ice was crisp and unfamiliar, not the pine-scented air she knew from the alps. It was more than silent. It was stillness distilled: the heavy snow, the viscous rays of dying daylight, no birds or bells or distant engines.
Then Saskia bounded out of the back seat, warm and full of life, brushing past Stevie, out to sniff the snow. She ran about, her long fur standing and thickening in the cold. This winter world was the one she had been created for and she was a happy dog.
Along the front of the dacha ran a wooden verandah overhung with snow; three steps up, there was a heavy door. The generator was out of oil and Vadim was sent to investigate; there were only candles but many of them, on every sill and table and even the floor. Irina floated around the house in the semi-darkness lighting them. The place smelt of pale wood and tea leaves.
Stevie was shown to a small room—the smaller rooms, Irina explained, would be warmer—with wooden floors, walls and ceiling; a wrought-iron bed in one corner, a chest of drawers against the far wall. It was a room that had been furnished for the summer months.
Stevie threw down her crocodile bag and peered out from the small window. It was black outside; darkness had fallen quickly. Checking her phone, she saw there was no reception. The house had no landline.
She went in search of Constantine. The Greek was in his room, staring out at the white fields. He was a lean man with longish curling hair and a sharp nose. He came from a family of traders in the Balkans and spoke just about every language under the sun. Stevie had often wanted to ask how he had come into this line of work, but Constantine was not a man of superfluous words, if he spoke at all. The words he did use, he made count. He was, like David Rice, a man you wanted on your side in battle.
‘Does your mobile have reception, Constantine?’
He shook his head.
‘Hence the satellite phone . . .’ Stevie added.
Constantine nodded. ‘They have isolated us very nicely. Anyone coming or going will be easily noticed by surveillance. There is no way to communicate with the outside world. The satellite phone has no doubt been programmed to receive calls only.’
Stevie took one of Constantine