Moscow Honey: A dark suspenseful spy thriller (Clarke and Fairchild Book 2)

  Moscow Honey

  By T.M. Parris

  A Clarke and Fairchild Thriller

  © 2020 T.M. Parris. All rights reserved.

  Moscow Honey is written in British English

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  The Clarke and Fairchild Readers’ Club

  Author note

  Trade Winds

  Crusaders

  About the author

  Russia

  1

  Three thousand miles east, the air was different here. God is in heaven and Moscow is far away. Roman’s father used to say that to him. But not so far these days. Moscow was getting bigger, reaching further, burying deeper, creeping closer, never stopping until everyone marched to the beat of its drum.

  Roman got out of the car and walked to the riverbank. The cold reached out and grabbed him by the face. It sent itchy tendrils up his nose, pressed on his forehead, plunged down the back of his neck, seeped in through the seams of his jacket. So thick you could touch it. This was Siberia cold: stronger, cleaner, drier. It reminded him again how good it felt to be back.

  Vadim joined him from the car and stared at the lights on the far bank. He looked like a priest with his long pale face and his mournful eyes. They’d watched each other grow old here. Roman know Irkutsk, every grey street, every scrubby back yard playground, every snow-laden wooden hut. Every spacious boulevard, pavements piled with chipped ice in the winter, shaded from the heat by trees in the summer. Like Paris, so they said. He knew this town and this town knew him. It wasn’t personal pride; the fight was necessary, though you paid a price. It didn’t happen by itself that the kiosk owner, the night club manager, the traffic officer, the prosecutor, all knew that the Bear was a man of his word, a man to be taken seriously.

  He looked down at the black river, flowing here but where it met Lake Baikal it would stop. Baikal was frozen solid for another three months. This yard was unused until the spring.

  He looked at Vadim. “Is it true?”

  Vadim shrugged, shook his head. He didn’t know. It was just a rumour.

  “Piotr is there, is he not? Who used to collect from the south? He’s in Moscow, now?”

  Vadim gazed at him, got his meaning. “Yes,” he said simply.

  Headlights flashed; the car was here. The engine died. Andrei got out, son of Roman’s old friend the locksmith, but all grown up now. He opened the passenger door, reached a burly fist inside and pulled a man out by his shirt. The man shrieked as he landed on the icy ground. Andrei slammed the door and dragged him forward into the beam of the car’s headlights. He backed off to take his station, arms folded. The man on the ground scrambled to his feet.

  “What are you doing? You just grabbed us off the street!”

  He stopped. Roman and Vadim stepped into the beam, onto the stage. The man’s eyes widened. He was starting to realise. He glanced back to the car, but his friend on the back seat would be no help.

  “You know who I am?” Roman spoke pleasantly. The guy just stared. He started to shiver, from the cold maybe. He was too tall, skinny and folded up, not much more than a boy. A boy with a big mouth. “I heard that you are a man of opinions. Did I hear right?”

  He shook his head. “No, not at all.”

  “Really?” Roman moved in. The man took a step back and looked round to see Andrei hovering just outside the beam of the headlights. The four of them stood spaced in formation, Vadim next to Roman. “Because I heard from my friend, the barman at the Green Palace, that you were there last night. For a long time. Good party, he said. You had a lot to talk about. A lot to say. About my son. About me.”

  “No, no.” Even in this cold, the boy’s top lip glowed with sweat. He put his palms up, as if he could calm the Bear down. The Bear was already calm.

  “The barman is a good friend of mine,” he said. “You’re not calling him a liar, are you?”

  The boy’s breaths were shallow, each producing a puff of mist.

  “I was drunk! I was talking nonsense! I don’t even remember what!”

  “Well, let me remind you.” While Roman talked, he took off his jacket and handed it to Vadim. “You said, I’m told, that my son Alexei was in Moscow, pissing away the Morozov obschak on champagne and cars instead of running the business. That I was a fool for putting him in control.”

  “Oh, no, I didn’t say that!” His voice wavered.

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, not that.”

  “Those were not your exact words?” Roman started to roll up his sleeves. The hairs on his arms prickled with cold.

  “It doesn’t matter. I just—”

  “It doesn’t matter?”

  He fumbled about. “I just meaned that I didn’t mean it.”

  “Well, it matters to me. Alexei is my family, you see. Family is important. You honour your family, you value your family. That’s how my father raised me. Do you have family? People who are important to you?”

  He was gasping like a fish out of water. “Please don’t— please don’t—”

  “And what else did you say? Something about a woman?” The boy looked around wildly, like a trapped animal. “A particular kind of woman?”

  “It was just a joke. I didn’t mean it.”

  “A joke? You think it’s funny? What’s funny? Me? Or my son?”

  “Not a joke, A rumour.”

  “A rumour? That’s interesting. Please, tell me this rumour. I’d like to hear it.”

  “That he married a whore!” He blurted it out and the words hung in his breath, almost visible.

  “A whore?”

  His eyes turned skywards as though he were praying. “Yes! A Chechen whore!”

  The word sucked the air from Roman’s lungs. He sensed Vadim looking across at him.

  “Chechen?”

  The boy looked straight at him for the first time, curious. “You didn’t know?”

  Roman punched him hard in the face. He fell onto his back and didn’t move. His jaw was a mess, blood and teeth. Roman punched him three more times, fast. The boy’s head rolled back. The Bear stood and flexed his hands. It was over already but he kicked him anyway, for the stage sh
ow: stomach, ribs, gut. The boy rolled over on his side.

  Roman turned away. Vadim handed him his jacket. He put it on and approached the car. Andrei opened the door and he peered in, at the pair of eyes inside.

  “You a friend of his?” Another skinny boy. The car smelled of his after-shave and sweat. “Well, I give you some advice. My name is Roman Morozov. People call me the Bear.” The eyes didn’t blink. “My people are everywhere in this town. You get on a train and go somewhere, I’ll know. You get in a car, a truck, a plane, I’ll know. You talk to the police, I’ll know. So you don’t disappear and you don’t squeal. You tell people what happened here. That’s your job. That’s why you’re in this car and not out on the concrete like your friend. Tell everyone you know. Tell them about the Bear. Tell them I’m a serious man. Understand.”

  It wasn’t a question and the boy on the back seat didn’t try to answer. Roman nodded to Andrei, who got in the car and they drove off.

  Vadim was watching with his priest’s eyes. Behind Vadim, the body was slumped in the dark.

  Okay, he didn’t intend to kill the boy. He didn’t kill for enjoyment. Destruction for its own sake? Not if he could see an easier way. But the words repeated, whispered in his ear, shouted in his face: a Chechen whore.

  He rubbed the blood on his knuckles dry. These days it wasn’t respectable to get wet. These days they should be men of authority, in suits behind desks, looking down on this street life, ashamed of it. Well, the Bear was not ashamed. It was never enough just to talk about strength; without blood on the ground there would be no Morozov, no Bear.

  “Let’s go,” he said. Vadim glanced round at the body. Yes, they could haul him over the wall into the freezing river. They’d done it often enough in the past. But this wasn’t something to hide. The police would do nothing except talk. Then everyone would talk and those who needed to would learn. So reputation is earned. And reputation was what Roman needed, now more than ever.

  They drove off and left the body lying there.

  2

  Rose climbed the staircase with the confidence of a chick on its first outing out of the nest. Her heels sank into the thick carpet and pushed her weight forward. Her dress rode up, only the thinnest of tights shielding her bare legs from the elements. Her piled-up hair left the back of her neck exposed, and painted nail extensions made everything awkward to handle. Her tiny gold clutch bag was only just big enough for make-up and cash. It was telling, that formal dress rendered a woman next to useless.

  This wasn’t just any staircase; it was the famous Jordan staircase, leading up into one of the many lavish Winter Palace galleries overlooking the river. She had checked it out on her tourist visit here the previous day. Everything in St Petersburg was a celebration of the era of the Romanovs, the days of the Tsars. Funny how people here preferred to surround themselves with the glories of the past. Moscow seemed much more a city of the present. Most attendees tonight would be Muscovites; this annual VIP event attracted diplomats, business people, journalists, politicians, the great influencers in Russian society.

  Inside, tables offered beautifully presented crudités, variations on a theme of caviar. And champagne, of course: real champagne, not the poorly-regarded Soviet variety although plenty of it still remained, apparently, even now. A tuxedoed Peter Craven had located himself strategically next to the rows of glasses constantly being replenished. As Deputy Head of the UK’s Mission to Russia, he was officially the second most important Briton in the country, but the most important as far as Rose was concerned, being MI6 Head of Moscow Station and, therefore, her boss. She tottered over to him.

  “You look very at home at a shindig like this.”

  “Well, I’ve been to a few.” Peter’s stretch in the country was long enough for him to have experienced its Soviet predecessor. Round-faced and universally liked, Peter was a stalwart Service good old boy, perpetually on the brink of retirement. “And you’ve scrubbed up pretty well yourself, if I’m allowed to say that kind of thing these days.”

  “Yes, well, it doesn’t come naturally. They certainly like to do these things in style.”

  “They do. You’ll have to get used to that, I’m afraid.”

  “Odd this place is called the Hermitage. It seems the least appropriate name there is.”

  Rose had left the tour the previous day with a head full of huge volumes of gold and marble, vast canvasses of oil in ornate frames, enormous vases, immaculately polished expanses of patterned wood flooring. Ostentatiously layered wealth, the setting for artwork presenting a view of humanity over the past thousand or more years – birth, love, glory, sickness, terror, death, room upon room, on all sides. The Rembrandt room, dramatic events frozen in time; the father alight with joy, recognising his prodigal son; Jacob with the knife poised over his son’s exposed neck, just at the moment the angel arrives to interrupt with God’s mercy.

  “So, the guests we were expecting have arrived?” While it was part of Rose’s official diplomatic role to network at events like this, the clandestine element of her job gave her a more specific reason to be here.

  “Yes indeed.” Peter had a champagne glass in each hand. “Give me ten minutes then come over. Oh, here’s someone you can catch up with in the meantime. I believe you know each other?”

  He nudged someone’s arm with his elbow. Its owner turned, grey eyes widening with recognition. John Fairchild. The last time Rose saw Fairchild, he was washed out and dejected on a riverbank in Kathmandu. She’d been in a similar state. That was some months ago and things seemed to have improved for him, as they had for her. His face was clean-shaven and slightly tanned, his hair a generous length and tastefully coiffured. Someone else who looked at home in a tux.

  He and Craven greeted each other like old buddies. Interesting. Responses to Fairchild within the Service seemed to fall into two camps. A few months ago it was being whispered that Fairchild was selling MI6 secrets to the highest bidder, but to date no one appeared to have acted on those suspicions, and not everyone believed them. Craven clearly belonged in the more favourable camp. As he pulled away with the drinks, Fairchild’s handshake with her was less spontaneous. He gave her the briefest sweep of his eyes before fixing on her face with a detached expression.

  “Well,” said Rose, “I’d be lying to say I’m surprised to see you here. I was wondering when you’d show up in these parts, to be honest.”

  “I had a few matters to sort out. You know how it is.” This was definitely the breezy, suave version of John Fairchild, not the broken, haunted man who awkwardly confided in her on that damp riverside.

  “And have you made any progress yet with your mission? Last time we spoke you were looking for a certain Russian monk. One with two missing fingers, if I remember right.”

  “That’s taken a little longer than I thought.”

  “I see. And I trust you’ve been occupying your time constructively?” It was always interesting to learn what Fairchild was doing, not that he was naturally prone to sharing. His combination of an impressive global network of contacts, a variety of skills including his famous aptitude for languages, and an ability to know what no one else did, rendered his services in high demand from a colourful range of clients. Most data brokers in the industry were former officers, but Fairchild had acquired his skills in less formal ways.

  “I have a number of business interests in Russia, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Of course.” On paper, Fairchild was a businessman with an extensive range of concerns worldwide. She’d asked around at the Embassy as soon as she’d got here and discovered that Fairchild had, amongst other things, a controlling interest in a luxury limousine service operating in several Russian cities. Given the number of luxury limousines she’d seen prowling the streets of Moscow, it looked to be a good line of work. She suggested that might be the case. He responded nonchalantly and changed the subject.

  “You’ve returned to the fold, I see. I hope your role is enabling you to promote Bri
tish interests abroad. And that you are exporting British values as per your mission statement, even in this inhospitable environment.”

  Delivered with a knowing smile, it was a reminder that Fairchild was well aware that the description “Trade Delegation” on her name badge didn’t quite cover the entirety of her role. Rose was an agent runner. She recruited and managed people who were prepared to pass to the British government the deepest secrets of the Russian state. Fairchild might not know the detail of what she did, but he was familiar enough with the world of secret intelligence to have a pretty good idea.

  “Well, the climate does take a lot of getting used to. Frozen solid, moving to icy slush every now and then.”

  She wasn’t talking about the weather. Craven’s long-term perspective gave some credence to his view that current “soft war” UK-Russia relations were as close to an all-out war footing as they had been since the days of the actual Cold War, with Russia’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimea only the most recent sensitivity. “Still, we try. Always good to have values, mind, even if they’re not taken up universally.”

  “Ah! Of course.” Fairchild took this dig at his stateless allegiance-free lifestyle in good humour. “Well, if you’ll excuse me. I have some amoral business to attend to.” He slid away leaving Rose unsettled, irritated, and none the wiser.

  Fairchild’s presence in Russia at some point was inevitable. It was Fairchild himself who told her that he’d discovered the identity of a Russian monk with information about the disappearance of Fairchild’s parents decades ago. But Rose hadn’t been looking forward to seeing him here. It was largely down to Fairchild that she got her job at the Service back at all, and she didn’t particularly want him reminding her of that when he needed something. Which tended to be the way Fairchild operated.

  The incident in Croatia which led to her dismissal was not her fault. It was just very unfortunate timing, with one of her agents compromised on the eve of a fatal attack on UK soil claimed by the group she should have had eyes on. They needed a scapegoat; she was standing the closest. She’d always felt that way, though it would have been futile to say so at the time. When the mysterious and unspecifically senior Walter Tomlinson arrived shortly afterwards with an offer of an off-the-books job in exchange for re-admission, no way was she going to pass. Fairchild was an unwilling target but in the end she succeeded. As a result, she insisted that her Service record be fully restored. It was – she received the closest MI6 ever gave to an apology – and was promptly posted to one of the most challenging locations in the world. Not a bad outcome, and her fluency in Russian didn’t do any harm, although she felt sure it had something to do with Walter’s obsession with Fairchild and wanting to keep eyes on him. Until now, though, she’d seen or heard nothing of either Fairchild or Walter, and Craven had never mentioned either. Her work so far seemed unrelated. She’d kind of been hoping it would stay that way. She couldn’t afford to have anything, or anyone, mess up the second chance she’d been given.