Kholodov's Last Mistress

She’d been standing staring at St Basil’s with a map dangling forgotten from her hand. She’d had plenty of time. But why should he care? Sergei asked himself. Why should he bother even having this conversation? She was just another American tourist. He’d seen plenty of those over the years, from the first ones who goggled at the pathetic obscurity of an actual Russian orphan to the ones who judged with an assessing eye and brought in an army of therapists and psychologists to make sure no child was too damaged. As if they had any idea. And then of course tourists like this woman, who swarmed Red Square and gazed at the Kremlin and the GUM department store and all the rest as if everything were no more than a bizarre and rather quaint antiquity, rather than a lasting witness to his country’s heart-wrenching history. He had no time for any of them, and certainly not for her. He’d already half turned away when he heard her soft little exhalation of dismay, no more than a breath, as if she wouldn’t allow herself any more.

Sergei turned back. ‘What?’

‘My passport …’

‘You kept your passport in your coat pocket?’

‘I told you, I’d just been to the bank …’

‘Your passport,’ Sergei repeated, because he honestly couldn’t believe someone would actually keep their cash and passport in an unzipped coat pocket while they walked across Red Square.

She smiled ruefully now, acknowledging his incredulity, accepting it even. ‘I know, I know. But I was cashing my traveller’s cheques and they needed ID—’

‘Traveller’s cheques,’ Sergei repeated. This got better and better. Or worse and worse, depending how you looked at it. He’d thought with the advent of computer banking those cheques had become obsolete. ‘Why on earth were you using traveller’s cheques? Why not an ATM card?’ Much simpler. Less chance of being stolen. Unless, of course, you kept the card in your coat pocket, with the pin number kindly attached with Sellotape to the back, as this woman probably would. Just to help a thief out.

She lifted her chin, and he saw that flare of indigo again. ‘I prefer traveller’s cheques.’

Now he was the one to shrug. ‘Fine.’ And he would have turned away, he would have turned away so quickly and easily, if not for the way her smile faltered, her lips trembling, and he saw desolation cloud her eyes to a grey-violet, the long lashes sweeping downwards to hide the sorrow he’d already seen there. He felt a painful twist in the region of his heart, a kind of raw emotion he didn’t like feeling, hadn’t let himself feel in years. Yet somehow with one sorrowful look she hadn’t even wanted him to see, he felt it. And it made him furious.

Hannah knew it had been rather foolish of her to carry her cash and passport in the front pocket of her coat; she got that. She would have put it away in her zipped purse except she’d become distracted by the beauty of St Basil’s, its colourful domes piercing the hard blue of the sky. And, she acknowledged, she’d been thinking about how today was her last day of travel, how tomorrow she’d be back in upstate New York, opening the shop, taking inventory, trying to make things work. And while she’d known it shouldn’t have, the thought gave her a little pang of—sorrow? Regret? Something like that. Something she pushed away, didn’t want to feel.

And now this Russian … assassin was looking at her with daggers in his ice-blue eyes. Hannah didn’t know what he did for a living, but the man was seriously intimidating. He wore a black leather coat over black jeans, not exactly the friendliest of outfits. His hair was a relatively ordinary brown but it was cut very short and framed a face so coldly arresting that Hannah’s heart had near stopped in her chest when he’d approached her.

And now this … the last of her money gone. Her passport gone. And her flight back to New York left in five hours.

‘What?’ the man asked brusquely. He’d turned back to her, impatience and irritation evident in every taut line of his well-muscled body. The man radiated lethal, barely leashed power. Yet still he’d turned back, even it seemed as if he’d done so against his will, or at least his better judgment. ‘You know you’ll need to go to your embassy, don’t you?’

‘Yes …’

‘They’ll help you,’ he explained to her, slowly, as if she had trouble understanding her own language. ‘They can issue you a new passport.’

‘Right.’ She swallowed. ‘How long does that usually take, do you know?’

‘A few hours to fill out the paperwork, I should think.’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘Does that inconvenience you?’

‘It does, actually,’ she informed him, managing a wry smile despite the panic plunging icily in her stomach. She was starting to realise how awful this really was. No passport. No money. Missing her flight. In Moscow.

All bad.

‘Perhaps you should have thought of that when you wandered around Red Square,’ the man returned. ‘You might as well have hung a placard around your neck declaring you were a tourist, ripe for the taking.’

‘I am a tourist,’ Hannah pointed out in what she thought was quite a reasonable tone. ‘And I don’t know why it’s got you so worked up. It’s not your money, or your passport.’

The man stared at her, his expression turning from fierce to something close to bewildered. ‘You’re right,’ he said after a moment. ‘There’s no reason for me to be worked up at all.’ Yet he didn’t turn away as she’d half expected him to, just kept staring at her as if she were a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve.

‘In any case,’ Hannah said, ‘I don’t mind that they took my money.’ Well, she wouldn’t have minded, except that it was the only money she’d had left. And as for the passport …

She lifted her chin, staring the man down. Sort of. ‘They need it more than I do, and at least now they can buy food—’

‘You think they’re going to buy food?’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t tell me they must be buying drugs or something awful like that. Even children who live on the street need to eat, and they couldn’t have been more than twelve—’

‘Twelve is plenty old on the street,’ the man informed her. ‘And food is easy enough to score, just steal from a fruit and vegetable stall or wait out in the back of a restaurant. You don’t use money to buy food. Not unless you have to.’

Hannah stared at him, surprised by his knowing tone, discomfited by the fierce light in those ice-blue eyes. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘And thanks for helping me out. If you hadn’t come along—well, if I hadn’t interfered, maybe I’d still have my money.’ And her passport.

The man jerked his head in a semblance of a nod. ‘You’ll go to your embassy?’ he asked, sounding almost as if the words—the concern—were forced from him. ‘You know where it is?’

‘Yes.’ She didn’t, but she wasn’t going to give this man any more reasons to think her an idiot. ‘Thank you for helping me out.’

‘Good luck,’ he said after a moment, and, nodding her own farewell, Hannah turned and started walking across Red Square.

Now that she was no longer dealing with that man and his forceful presence, the panic lodged icily in the pit of her stomach was becoming heavier. Icier. She swallowed, squared her shoulders—just in case he was watching—and strode towards the other side of the square. She’d look at her map then, and figure out where the American Embassy was.

Two hours later she’d finally reached the window in the consular department of the American Embassy, only to be rather flatly told that she had to report the theft to the Moscow Police Department, fill out a form, and bring it back to the embassy before she reapplied for a passport.

‘Reapply,’ Hannah repeated, not liking the word. She’d been hoping—praying—that they could just give her some sort of stamped form, like a get-out-of-jail-free card that would let her on the aeroplane. Get her home.

The woman behind the window looked at her without a flicker of sympathy or interest. To be fair, Hannah told herself, she probably heard this kind of sob story all the time. And it wasn’t her job to help Hannah, just give the information. Still, Hannah had to swallow past the lump in her throat as she explained, ‘But my flight leaves tonight.’

‘Reschedule,’ the woman said. ‘It will take days to get a passport, and after that you have to reapply for your entry visa.’

An entry visa? ‘But I’m leaving.’

She shrugged. ‘Your Russian contact will have to vouch for you.’ She passed a paper under the window and Hannah stared at it, saw the hundred-dollar fee for a passport application.

‘My contact is just a hotel,’ Hannah said, desperation now edging her voice. ‘I don’t think—’

‘Talk to the police,’ the woman advised. ‘You must do that first.’ Already she was looking over Hannah’s shoulder, indicating that the next person should come forward.

‘But—’ Hannah leaned forward, flushing as she spoke in a whisper ‘—I don’t have any money.’

Still no sympathy. ‘Use the ATM. Or a credit card.’

Of course. That was the normal, expected thing to do. Except she didn’t have that much money in the bank to withdraw, and she’d cut up her credit cards after seeing the bills her parents had racked up before their deaths. Maybe not the wisest decision, but now that she’d finally paid the bills off she’d been determined never to be in debt again. The woman must have seen something of this in her face for she said, a touch impatiently, ‘Call someone, then. In America. They can wire you money.’

‘Right.’ It was finally sinking in just what kind of trouble she was in. ‘Thank you for your time,’ she said, and fortunately her voice didn’t wobble.

‘Any time,’ the woman said in a bored voice, and the next person started forward.

Hannah walked slowly outside; there was a chill to the spring air now, and the sky had darkened to a steely grey.

She was really trying hard not to panic. She normally wasn’t a panicker, tried to see the best in everything and everyone.

Only now it was getting dark and she had no money, no passport, no options. She could call a friend, as the woman had advised, but Hannah resisted that option. She’d have to reverse the charges of the telephone call, and then explain her awful predicament, and then whomever she called—and no names sprang readily to mind—would have to drive fifty miles to Albany to wire the money, and that money would have to be hundreds of dollars at the very least. Passport fees, hotel stays, food, perhaps even another plane ticket. It could be thousands of dollars.

She didn’t have friends with that kind of money, and she didn’t have that kind of money either. She’d used the last of her own savings to fund this trip, knowing it was foolish, impulsive, everything she never was. Except maybe she was foolish, and stupid even, as that man in Red Square had so obviously thought, because if she had any sense at all she wouldn’t be standing on the steps of the American Embassy, people and traffic streaming indifferently, impatiently all around her, with no place to go, no idea what she could do. Nothing.