Free Dead Centre by Andy McNab Page A

blocked by the driver’s Puffa. The sat-nav was glowing, but it was all in Russian. All I got from it was our direction of travel.
    Genghis had his phone out. He grunted acknowledgements to whoever was on the other end and closed it down. These vehicles were brand new. The white one must have lost its sumptuous showroom smell, but the warmth and luxury of this one almost lulled me into feeling safe.
    I gave everybody time to settle down before I tried to get some sort of relationship going. I didn’t even know if these lads spoke English.
    ‘The small guy – he OK? No hard feelings, eh? I—’
    With a rustle of nylon jacket, Genghis turned and put his forefinger to his lips. He shushed me like a child. I nodded, returned my forehead to the seatback and began a close examination of the carpet.
    There wasn’t any point in trying to talk with these guys. They were only the monkeys. And if the organ-grinder wanted me dead, I would have been dead by now. They’d have done it in the alleyway while I was half concussed. But why had they let me see their faces? And why weren’t they pissed off that I’d shot their mate?
    I raised my head and caught another glimpse of the sat-nav. We were still heading west, but keeping off the M1, the main motorway. Suburbia was just beginning to take shape on the Moscow margins. The media were full of it – all the usual moaning about forests having huge holes ripped out of them to make way for gated communities with names like Navaho and Chelsea.
    The road was now lined with trees and the potholes were getting more treacherous.

13
    AN HOUR AND twenty-seven minutes later we turned off towards a village. I’d spent every second of that time trying not to get bounced around in the foot-well, so the small of my back was now as painful as my neck.
    Genghis sparked up his cell again.
    This wasn’t Navaho or Chelsea. The buildings were timber-framed and exuded an air of history. Enormous dacha s, three storeys high with huge, overhanging roofs, stood behind big walls. These were the weekend retreats of wealthy Muscovites, built in the time of the Tsar. Tyre tracks led in and out of the driveways. There was no foot traffic at all. The rich didn’t need to walk and their snow was pure white.
    We turned through a massive set of slowly opening wooden gates. I saw cedar tiles cladding a steeply pitched roof. Condensation billowed from modern heating ducts on the side of the old building. It looked like something out of a spy story. The whole village did.
    The Range Rover crunched across the snow, flanking the dacha . Huge trees circled a snow-lined playground, gardens and a swimming-pool. I could just make out the little handles round the edge to help you out of the water. We swooped round to the back of the house and stopped behind another Range Rover with red plates. Genghis jumped out and produced an eight-inch blade from a sheath at his hip. My door opened. The blade flashed in the sunlight and the plasticuffs put up only token resistance. As I straightened, he pointed the tip of his knife towards the wooden veranda.
    The cold slapped me in the face as I headed up the three steps. Crows squawked in a field the other side of the trees. I touched the swelling on the back of my head. The skin had broken, but the heat of the Range Rover had dried the wound.
    Three doors led off the veranda: a bug screen for the summer, followed by a triple-glazed monster with an aluminium frame and finally the hand-carved wooden original.
    I stepped into a big shiny modern kitchen, all white marble and stainless steel. It couldn’t have provided a more dramatic contrast to the exterior. I stood on a polished stone floor with the sweet smell of Russian cleaning fluids, that really intense mixture of rose perfume and bleach, assaulting my nostrils. And it was even hotter in there than it had been in the Range Rover.
    A small man in his late forties sat facing me at a white marble table. His hair was brushed back.