The Moscow Cipher

The bottle was empty by the time Jeff reappeared soon afterwards. Ben knew from his footsteps in the flagstone-floored passage and the telltale banging open of the kitchen door that his old friend and business partner wasn’t in the best of moods either. Jeff stalked into the room, saw Ben sitting there, stood with his arms folded and gave him one of his patented hard glares.

‘Something on your mind, Jeff?’

Jeff glared a little longer, then said, ‘Out of your league?’

Ben stiffened. Knowing a fight was coming. Jeff wasn’t a man to hold back with his opinions, nor to back down in an argument.

‘That’s right,’ Ben said. ‘I’ve already explained why.’

If Ben had declared he was becoming transgender and henceforth wished to be known as Lolita, Jeff wouldn’t have been looking at him with any more incredulity. ‘Bullshit. What’s the real reason? You getting old? Tired out? Not up to it any more?’

‘I belong here now,’ Ben said. ‘You and I have a business to run, remember? We’ve got bookings coming in every day, more classes than we can handle and a waiting list as long as your arm, we’re expanding all the time, mortgaged up to our eyeballs; and in case you’ve forgotten, we’re in the middle of looking for a second location to grow the business even more.’

That idea had been on the cards for a few months. They’d looked at a couple of rural properties in the south of France, though no commitments had so far been made.

‘To hell with the business,’ Jeff spat.

‘Oh, to hell with the business?’

‘You heard the old man. You saw the look on that woman’s face. They need help, and fast.’

‘He’s not going to hurt her.’

‘He’s not going to give her back, either,’ Jeff said.

‘Kaprisky can easily find someone else to do the job.’

Jeff shook his head. ‘Kaprisky’s going to hit the panic button, is what Kaprisky’s going to do. He’s liable to either bring in the bloody A Team, a bunch of trigger-happy numbskulls who think they’re Dolph Lundgren. Or even worse, he’ll take your advice and call the authorities. Either way he’s going to drive Petrov even deeper underground, or something bad will happen.’

‘That’s the risk,’ Ben agreed. ‘But even if I still worked in K&R, which I don’t, I can’t be in two places at once. If I said yes to Kaprisky, there’s no telling how long I could be away hunting for this guy.’

‘I can draft in a couple of temporary replacements to cover for you. I could call Boonzie. He knows a million guys out there who’d come in at short notice.’

‘I didn’t realise I was so replaceable.’

‘We’ll muddle through somehow.’ Jeff unfolded his arms, reached out and spun a chair out from the table and sat down, leaning towards Ben on his elbows and giving him an earnest, penetrating stare. ‘Seriously. This is what you do, mate.’

‘Did. We’ve moved on, Jeff. I’ve moved on. I’m retired from all that.’

‘Start talking like that, pretty soon you’ll be gathering moss in front of the fire with your fucking carpet slippers on, and a briar pipe in your gob, listening to Bing Crosby albums.’

‘That’ll be the day,’ Ben said.

‘Want my opinion?’

‘Do I have any choice?’

‘Nope. My opinion is that if you don’t find this Petrov guy and bring that girl home, you’ll never forgive yourself. I’ve never known you to turn down a chance to help someone who needed it, and I’m buggered if I’m going to stand by and watch you do it now. If you’re afraid of failing, you just need to look in the mirror, ’cause the guy looking back at you doesn’t do failure. And don’t you dare try to put this on me by talking about the sodding business.’

‘I have responsibilities,’ Ben said.

‘Too right, you do.’

‘I’ve already spent far too long away from home, running around the world doing too much crazy stuff.’

Jeff shrugged. ‘You know what they say. When the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ Jeff always had an appropriately hackneyed saying to hand.

‘Maybe they do. But I wouldn’t want you thinking I was the kind of bloke who’d just up and run off towards trouble at the first beat of the drum.’

Jeff craned his neck closer over the table, and his eyes bulged. ‘Mate, I already know that’s exactly who you are. So get the bloody hell out there and find that little girl and bring her home to her mother. Because you know you want to.’

And so it came to pass that, two hours later, Ben Hope was sitting behind the wheel of his silver twin-turbo Alpina B7 with his old green army haversack on the passenger seat next to him, Miles’ Bitches Brew blasting on his speakers and a 180-kilometre-an-hour wind streaming in the windows as he tore southwards on the motorway towards Le Mans.

Persuasive, that Jeff Dekker. And incredibly perceptive, for all his rough edges. He could read Ben’s mind as if his skull were made of glass. As usual, he was dead right. Because despite all his protests and refusals, Ben had known all along he wanted to do this. He was back in the saddle. Back doing what he did best. And the thought of a missing child was the only thing that could take the smile off his face.

Chapter 8

The home and reclusive sanctuary of Auguste Kaprisky was a seventeenth-century castle that had formerly belonged to the Rothschild dynasty. The security cordon its current owner had built around himself made entry into his private world something like accessing the Pentagon. If Ben hadn’t called from the road and left a message with Kaprisky’s PA to say he was coming, the armed guards on the gate probably wouldn’t have let him in at all.

Once inside the perimeter, Ben drove for almost twenty minutes through the vastness of the chateau’s landscaped grounds, past rolling green paddocks where magnificent Arab horses grazed and cantered; past hectares of carefully tended orchards and vines, and along the shores of a perfectly blue glass-smooth lake with boathouses and a jetty where a moored sail cruiser rocked gently in the late afternoon breeze.

Just as it seemed the grounds might go on forever, the fantastical chateau with its baroque architecture and columns and turrets rose up in front of him like a mirage. A classical fountain with a bronze statue of the goddess Diana the huntress dominated the circular courtyard, spouting jets of water that made rainbows in the air. Ben drove around it and crunched to a halt on the gravel, next to a row of cars. Most men of Kaprisky’s wealth would own a collection of the world’s most expensive supercars, but Ben happened to know that his personal vehicle was the battered, ancient Renault 4 parked nearest the house. He was a strange fish, that Auguste Kaprisky, with his own peculiar sense of priorities. It was rumoured that he put artificial flowers on his wife’s grave, so that he wouldn’t have to replace them too frequently.

As Ben climbed out of the Alpina a pair of plain-clothes security guys appeared from nowhere and zeroed in on him. Neither was concerned about trying to hide the weapon strapped under his jacket, which their body language made clear they were ready to pull out at the first sign of trouble. They both had the fast eye and alert manner of ex-military men whose skillset had been bumped up to the next level. Ben knew how well trained they were, because he’d been the one who trained them: hence the failure of the attempt on their boss’s life; hence Kaprisky’s eternal debt of gratitude to all at Le Val, and to Ben in particular.

‘Easy, boys,’ Ben said to the pair. ‘I’m expected.’

Recognising him, the guards smiled, nodded and backed down. One of them spoke into a radio. Seconds later the grand entrance of the chateau opened, and a butler in a black waistcoat and white gloves appeared in the doorway to welcome Ben as he climbed the balustraded stone steps. The butler was a small, gaunt man with oiled-back hair, who looked like Peter Cushing. He led Ben through a vast marble hallway that made their footsteps echo all the way to the frescoed dome of the ceiling. The Greek statues lining the walls were probably not plaster copies, Ben thought. The butler stopped at a door that King Kong could have walked through without ducking his head, knocked twice and then ushered Ben inside without a word.

Kaprisky was pacing by one of the tall windows at the far end of the magnificent salon, overlooking an endless sweep of formal gardens. The billionaire looked twenty years older than he had a few hours ago. Even from a distance the stress of the situation was visibly etched all over his face in deep worry lines. When he saw Ben he came rushing to welcome him with a pumping handshake and tears of gratitude.

‘I was unsure what to make of your phone message. Dare I presume that you have changed your mind?’

‘It was wrong of me to disappoint you, Auguste,’ Ben said. ‘I’m here now. Let’s get your little girl back.’

‘I’m so thankful. I have no words.’

‘Any developments since we talked?’

Kaprisky shook his head gravely. ‘We have heard nothing. The situation is unchanged, except that with every passing moment that brute could be getting further away with Valentina.’

The salon door burst open. Eloise. She was wearing a different dress from earlier, and had a matching handbag the size of a postage stamp hanging from one shoulder. Her face was mottled from crying, but lit up with sudden joy at the sight of Ben standing there with her uncle. She rushed into the room and hugged Ben so violently that she almost head-butted him in the face and he felt her ribs flexing against his chest. ‘Dupont told me we had a visitor. I didn’t want to believe it was really you. Thank you. Thank you.’

Ben said she was welcome and managed to detach himself from her death-grip without breaking any of her fingers.

‘Now, let us make the arrangements,’ Kaprisky said. ‘Before we begin, we must talk about money.’

‘You can keep your money, Auguste. That’s not the reason I changed my mind.’

‘Nonetheless, money is the oil that will make the machine run smoothly and enable a happy outcome to this dreadful crisis. You will have every possible resource at your disposal. Anything whatsoever you may require, you only have to ask.’ Kaprisky darted a hand inside his jacket, came out with a tatty old wallet and produced from it a shiny new credit card with the Kaprisky Corp logo emblazoned on its front.

‘This is your expense account. It will work in any country or currency in the world. The limit is set at five million euros per week, but that can be extended with one phone call. Please make free use of it. You will of course be provided with an additional sum of cash in Russian rubles, for your convenience.’

Ben took the card. Five million a week. Unbelievable.

‘One more matter. You indicated that your lack of familiarity with the Russian language was a concern; that will no longer be an issue. I am arranging for an assistant to accompany you at all times, to act as guide, interpreter, whatever you require. They will be entirely at your service.’

Ben wished now that he hadn’t made a big deal of it. The last thing he really needed was a tag-along slowing him down. ‘Who’s that, your man Andriy Vasilchuk?’

Kaprisky shook his head. ‘His skill is security, not detection. In any case my men will be standing down from the moment you depart for Moscow. Your guide will be the same local private investigator who assisted us previously, a partner in Moscow’s most highly reputed detective agency. As you know, I must always have the best.’

Kaprisky allowed himself an uncharacteristic dry smile that showed his grey teeth, then glanced down at his watch. He seemed to delight in wearing the cheapest plastic Casio digital going. ‘For the sake of expediency, we should delay as little as possible. When can you leave?’

‘Are we forgetting the small matter of a travel visa?’ Ben said. ‘As far as I’m aware, EU citizens still can’t go just waltzing in and out of Russia without the right papers.’

Kaprisky gave a dismissive little wave of his hand, like brushing off a mosquito. ‘Forget such piffling technicalities. It is already, as you British would say, sorted.’

‘In that case,’ Ben said, ‘I’m ready to leave right this minute. I’m assuming the jet’s standing by to take off at a moment’s notice.’ Kaprisky kept the aircraft at Le Mans-Arnage airport, just a few minutes’ drive from the estate.

‘Naturally. You will be familiar with your flight crew, I think, from your journey to Africa.’

There weren’t many things Ben wanted to remember from that particular escapade, but he’d never forgotten the stalwart service of Kaprisky’s chief pilot Adrien Leroy and his Number Two, Noël Marchand.

‘Flight time to Moscow will be three hours and eleven minutes,’ Kaprisky said. ‘It will be evening by the time you arrive, and so my chef will be at your disposal to provide whatever you wish to eat. You will land at Vnukovo International Airport, twenty-eight kilometres southwest of the city. Your assistant will be there to meet you on landing, with a car to take you to your hotel. I hope you will be satisfied with the accommodation.’

‘Just the basics, Auguste,’ Ben said.

‘Oh, it is nothing remotely fancy, I assure you. But then, a man of your experience is used to the rougher side of life.’

‘Just a couple of things before I go,’ Ben said. ‘First, I’d like a photo of Valentina.’

Eloise unsnapped the tiny handbag, dug inside and pulled out a glossy print. ‘This one is very recent.’ It showed a pretty dark-haired child with lots of light and joy in her sparkling hazel eyes, pictured by the lake. Eloise said, ‘There are more pictures in her room. Would you like to see it?’

Ben said yes, anything was useful. With her uncle in tow, Eloise led Ben quickly from the salon, through the gleaming labyrinth of marble and priceless rugs and furniture, and up a grand staircase to a bedroom on the first floor. Valentina’s room was the size of a luxury penthouse apartment, with its own bathroom and dressing room and a walk-in wardrobe fit for Marie Antoinette. Everything was pink, from the silk on the walls to the canopy of the Cadillac-sized four-poster bed to the teddy bears clustered on the pillows, and the pillows themselves. There were books everywhere, a precarious stack of them piled on a pink bedside cabinet: Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov, a collection of short stories by the same author, Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin and a volume of poetry by Mikhail Lermontov. Ben wondered how many twelve-year-old girls were so heavily into Russian literary classics.

Eloise saw him looking at the books and explained, ‘She adores reading. And her goal is to become completely fluent in Russian before her father’s fortieth birthday next April, so she can surprise him.’ Eloise let out a deep, shuddering sigh and screwed her eyes shut, shaking her head in anguish. ‘What has he done? What has he done?’

‘She’s a clever kid,’ Ben said, to keep it light.

‘A little genius,’ Kaprisky weighed in, voice heavy with emotion. ‘She already speaks Dutch, German and English and has come on greatly with her French since moving here. Naturally, she is also proficient in mathematics, and developing a strong interest in science. She could be anything she wanted. She is such a talented actress, too. She does the most incredible impressions of people.’

‘But most of all she loves animals,’ Eloise said. ‘She wants to be a vet when she grows up.’

Which made sense, judging by the pictures on the walls. Every inch of available space was crammed with framed photographs of a variety of dogs and cats and horses. Kaprisky held back tears as he told Ben what a keen little photographer his grandniece was, among her many talents, constantly snapping shots of animals everywhere she went. Other framed pictures that hadn’t been taken by Valentina featured her hugging various puppies, kittens and ponies, each time with the same dazzling smile on her face.

Eloise couldn’t look at the pictures of her daughter without bursting into tears once again. Wiping her eyes she went to a little pink chair and picked up a little pink gilet jacket that was neatly hung over its back. She caressed the material with a sob. ‘She has another one exactly the same as this, which she was wearing when she left. Tailor-made especially for her. Pink is her favourite colour, as you might have noticed.’

‘That’s all good to know,’ Ben said. ‘What about her father?’

Eloise looked confused. ‘No, he hates pink.’

Kaprisky’s mouth gave a twitch. ‘Please forgive my niece,’ he said in French so that Eloise wouldn’t understand. ‘With such parents I can’t begin to imagine where her daughter gets her intelligence from.’

Ben smiled patiently and said to Eloise, ‘I mean do you have a photo of him?’

Eloise went from confused to blank, then her cheeks flushed. ‘No, but I think Valentina keeps one in her bedside drawer.’

She hurried over to look. While she was rooting through all the usual paraphernalia that twelve-year-old girls keep in their bedside drawers, even academically brilliant multilingual genius ones, Ben added, ‘It’d also be useful to know all you can tell me about your ex-husband.’

Eloise looked up with a frown. ‘Like what?’

‘Like who his friends are, where he hangs out, habits, hobbies and interests. I realise details of current girlfriends might be difficult, but the more information I have, the more it could help provide a clue to his present whereabouts.’

She chewed her lower lip and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you. Even before Yuri moved back to Russia, I couldn’t have given you the name of a single friend, or anyone he kept company with. He has no interests, no hobbies I know of, no activities outside of his work. Only his religion. He’s Catholic, and attends church quite often.’

‘That’s handy information,’ Ben said. As long as he could stake out every Catholic church in Russia on the off-chance of Yuri wandering inside to worship. There couldn’t be more than a few thousand of them. He asked her, ‘Would you happen to have his mobile number? That could be useful to me, as well.’

‘I haven’t spoken to Yuri by phone in a long time,’ Eloise said, still rooting around in the bedside drawers. ‘Not that I would want to, because it would only end in arguments. All I have is an email address. From what Valentina says, he’s changed phones a dozen times since I last had a number for him. Ah, here it is.’ She pulled out the photo she’d been looking for. It was obvious she didn’t want to look at it, and quickly passed it to Ben with barely a glance.

The picture was an old family snap of when Eloise and Yuri were still together. Valentina was much younger and smaller, with gaps where her baby teeth had fallen out. Eloise had a different hairstyle, and looked rosy and happy. Yuri Petrov stood with his arm around his wife’s shoulders, smiling broadly. He had lots of shaggy jet black hair, a broad, craggy but not ugly face, a solid jaw and pronounced cheekbones. His eyes were dark and not as stupid-looking as Ben might have expected, given Kaprisky’s account of him.

‘He has a bit more weight around the middle now,’ Eloise said. ‘And Valentina says his hair is longer, and he grew a beard.’

‘What a deadbeat,’ Kaprisky muttered in the background.

‘Can I keep this?’ Ben asked.

She shuddered. ‘Please, take it out of my sight. I don’t want to see his face ever again.’

Chapter 9

The Kaprisky staffer who drove Ben to the Aéroport Le Mans-Arnage appeared to be an ex-racing driver of some kind, with special dispensation from the French police to deliver his passenger to their destination as fast as possible, irrespective of public safety. By the time the black Mercedes S-Class had screeched to a halt at the private terminal, the Gulfstream G650 had already taxied out of the huge Kaprisky Corp hangar and was on the runway approach, fuelled and prepped for takeoff, its lights twinkling in the falling dusk.

Ben was greeted on the tarmac by a sombre Adrien Leroy and Noël Marchand. ‘Every time we meet,’ Leroy said as he shook Ben’s hand, ‘it’s in unfortunate circumstances. I can’t believe this is happening. Poor kid. Everyone adores her.’

‘How well do you know Petrov?’ Ben asked. With so few clues to go on, he needed to fish for all the scraps he could get.

Leroy shook his head, barely able to contain his anger. ‘I’ve seldom even laid eyes on the bastard. He’s never there to collect her. But I’ll tell you, if I do ever see him again I’ll smash his teeth down his throat.’

So much for fishing. Leroy went off to attend to his pilot duties as Ben boarded the jet.

The plane’s luxurious interior offered a choice of nineteen empty plush leather passenger armchairs, all with marble-topped tables and a thousand gadgets to play with. Waiting for him on one of the seats was a designer travel bag containing his visa documentation and half a million rubles in large denominations, which equated to about six thousand euros for walking-around money. Kaprisky had thought of everything. Ben transferred the cash into his old green haversack and settled in a window seat.

Soon the jet was in the air. A ridiculously pretty Korean flight attendant with a smart uniform and glossy black hair appeared from the galley, sauntered brightly down the aisle towards her sole passenger and asked him in a California accent if he wanted dinner. ‘We have a full à la carte menu. The butter poached lobster, caught fresh this morning, is one of Mr Kaprisky’s favourites.’

‘You can prepare me anything I want?’ Ben said.

She beamed at him. ‘Absolutely whatever you desire. Your wish is my command.’

‘Great. I’ll have a ham sandwich. Thin bread, white or brown, I don’t care, light on the butter, just a smear of mustard. That’s it.’

Her smile wavered. ‘Can I offer you a glass of champagne with that? The Krug Private Cuvée is the finest in the world.’

‘No, but you can bring me a triple measure of single malt scotch, no ice, no water. And an ashtray, please.’

Now she was looking at him as if he’d just run over her cat. ‘I’m sorry, smoking is strictly disallowed on board.’

‘Whatever I desire, eh?’ Ben muttered to himself when she’d stalked off to convey his order to the chef. The whisky and the sandwich duly arrived. The chef hadn’t been able to resist putting on a fancy herb garnish, as though it were beneath him to serve up anything so plain and unadorned. Ben ate quickly, savoured the drink slowly, then set his Omega diver’s watch for the hour’s time difference between France and Russia, closed his eyes and let the plane carry him through the night.

Two hours later, Ben opened his eyes and saw the huge sprawling lit-up expanse of Moscow far below as the Gulfstream overflew the city on its approach to Vnukovo International Airport. Ben gazed down at the glittering lights and wondered where among all that he was going to find little Valentina Petrova and her father.

Kaprisky’s ETA proved startlingly accurate. The jet hit the runway at Vnukovo precisely three hours and eleven minutes after takeoff. Five minutes after that, they’d taxied to the business aviation terminal and the Korean stewardess returned, all smiles again, to say Ben was clear to disembark.

Moments later he was stepping down the gangway into the balmy summer night to set foot, for the first time in his life, on Russian soil. If Ben had stuck coloured pushpins in a world map showing all the places he’d travelled in his time, some countries would have been bristling with them and only a very few untouched. Should this prove to be his one and only visit to the Russian Federation, he could only pray that he would return home successful, and not empty-handed.

Ben walked from the plane with that dark thought in mind and his bag over his shoulder. Kaprisky had said his new assistant would be there to meet him – but nobody seemed to be around. Bright floodlamps lit up the tarmac and probed into the deep shadows between the private aircraft hangars. The screech of a jumbo jet coming in to land pierced his ears; then as the noise died away he heard the rev of an approaching car and turned. Strong headlights dazzled him momentarily, making him narrow his eyes and put up a hand to block out the glare.