Ghosts - 05 by Mark Dawson

Mr. Milton.”
    “In this snow?”
    “It should take us eight hours.”

Chapter Sixteen
    MILTON SWAPPED his bath for a shower, dressed warmly, and met Anna in the lobby. There was a car waiting outside for them. It was a top-of-the-line Range Rover Sport, a big and powerful four wheel drive with snow chains fastened around all four tyres. It was black and the windows were tinted. Anna led the way to it and opened the rear door.
    Milton got inside and saw that they had been provided with a driver, too. The man was dressed in an anonymous suit and his blond hair had been shaved to a short, prickly fuzz. He was an intelligence operative, he guessed, one seconded from the Spetsnaz if his guess was right. He was big, several inches taller than Milton and fifty pounds heavier. He would be armed, and tough, and a passable match for him if things took a turn for the worse. Milton looked into his face in the rearview mirror as he slid into the seat, the man’s eyes cold and impassive as he glared back at him.
    “Who’s the gorilla?” he asked Anna, his eyes still fixed on the man’s.
    “His name is Vladimir,” she said as she slid alongside. “He’ll be driving us.”
    “Just driving?”
    “Don’t worry, Mr. Milton. You’re under the protection of the Russian government now.”
    “That fills me with confidence.”
    “Please, relax. We have a long drive.”
    “So you said. Are you going to tell me where?”
    “There is a place called Pylos. North east from here. The colonel is staying at his dacha. We will visit him there.”
    “Why all the way there? You don’t have a safe house in Moscow?”
    “Of course we do,” she said irritably. “But, no matter how careful we are, there will always be prying eyes in the city. The colonel is a private man. Pylos is remote. A place where Muscovites go for their summer holidays. It will be deserted in this weather. There is one way in and one way out and we will be watching both. Easier for us to ensure that your meeting is not noted. That is in both our best interests, is it not?”
    Milton said nothing.
    The driver put the Range Rover into gear and slid into the traffic. They headed to the north.
    There were new high-rise apartment buildings on the edge of Moscow, coloured beige and cream and not as ugly as the old Soviet ones, with patches of snow-covered lawn between them. They drove on, passing out of the suburbs and into the countryside beyond, the road occasionally taking them through cute Russian idylls of sloping wooden houses and little orchards alongside and behind them. The houses all had ornamental window frames, rickety fences and rusty roofs, and sometimes the snow receded just a little to reveal a hint of the landscape that hibernated beneath it: a grove of silver birch trees, stretches of water choked by mirror smooth ice, tethered goats, wild deer and elk foraging for greenery amid the freezing grip of winter. The towns and villages were beautiful and ugly in equal measure, with fly-tipped trash left to rot on the outskirts: bits of old machinery covered over by the snow, discarded white goods, empty vodka bottles scattered across deep drifts. Milton remembered Russia well enough, and knew that the snow was covering a multitude of sins. It masked all the scars and blemishes and lies that collected beneath. It was an apt metaphor for a great country that had fallen into disrepute.
    They followed the E115 north, passing through Khotovo, Pereslavl-Zalessky and Rostov. Milton watched the scenery passing by the window and thought about Pope and what the Russians wanted from him. Whoever he was, Shcherbatov was obviously a man not to be taken lightly. Mamotchka was a tough old coot; she had seen plenty of the KGB’s hardcases and blowhards, watched them rail against the unstoppable tide of capitalism, and she had outlasted them all. Her years had given her a breezy confidence and yet Milton had not missed the frown she wore throughout their discussion last