“I’ll look forward to it. Listen, I’m running late, but we have a deal? You keep me out of this?”

“Yes, of course,” Korolev said, shaking the American’s, hand. He watched Schwartz enter the hotel and shook his head in astonishment. What had he been thinking of? Asking a foreigner to a football game? He wouldn’t have believed five minutes before that he could come up with a way to make things even worse than they were, but the answer was yes, he could. He’d better ask the general what he thought. And make sure Gregorin had no objections. Damn.

Still, Schwartz wasn’t a bad fellow. Optimistic, self-confident, friendly, he seemed fresh and clean against the gray Moscow autumn. He wondered if New York was the same: shiny, a little brash. Perhaps things weren’t quite as bad there as they made out. Things weren’t that good in Russia: they couldn’t keep the famines in the countryside secret, no matter how hard they tried. Hell, there were people starving in Moscow itself. The uniforms picked up bodies from the streets every day.

He looked at his watch. It was ten past five, and a ten-minute walk to the office. If he was lucky, he might catch Semionov. He started toward Petrovka and, as he turned, caught a glimpse of a face he recognized from the lobby of the Metropol: a young fellow, square of body and face, with short brown hair, sallow skin and a scrubby mustache. He appeared to be very interested in a passing group of Pioneers, their red neck-scarves poking from their winter coats. Korolev let his glance slide across the man-if it was a tail he didn’t want him to know he’d spotted him. He wouldn’t be surprised if they had been followed. Someone would be keeping an eye on Schwartz, given what he was in Moscow for, and they’d be interested in anyone who spoke to him. He had a nonchalant look round the square but couldn’t see any others. Then again, if it was the NKVD, there’d be at least three or four and they’d be good at it too. He took a deep breath-they were either tailing him or they weren’t. There wasn’t much point in worrying about it, either way.

But when he caught a young woman observing him in the reflection from a Torgsin window five minutes later he cursed the day Popov had lined him up for this damned case. The investigation was beginning to take on a life of its own and he wasn’t sure he was going to like what it might have in store for him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Semionov rose to his feet with an excited grin when Korolev entered Room 2F. It almost made Korolev feel cheerful for a moment. He put his hat on the desk and sat down.

“Well?”

“Well,” Semionov began, and then paused as though to calm himself. “Well, I may not have the car itself, Alexei Dmitriyevich, but I think I can tell you the make.”

“Go on,” Korolev said, shrugging his coat off onto the back of his chair.

“I’ve a hunch anyway. I went back out to the stadium. Every car has a different turning circle, you see, and I thought-well, why not measure it and see what it tells us? You see the new ZIS 101 has a turning radius of 7.7 meters, for example, whereas the Emka’s is only 6.35 meters. The Model T we drove has a smaller one still. Anyway, I measured the tire marks and, presuming they turned as tightly as they could-and I think they did because the tire marks, if you remember, were within half a meter of the stadium wall-then I think the turning radius of the car they were driving was approximately 6.45 meters.”

“A bit bigger than an Emka’s then?”

Semionov smiled and held his finger and thumb apart. “Ten centimeters. Not much, really. But it rules out the ZIS 101. Anyway, listen to this. The nightwatchman was there when I went back and he told me he saw a new black car with a shiny metal radiator drive past his hut just after midnight. Coming from behind the stadium. The Emka has a chrome radiator facing, and we don’t import many new cars these days.”

“I don’t suppose he went out and had a closer look, did he, this nightwatchman?”

Semionov shook his head. “He saw two men in a Black Crow, so he decided it was State Security business and none of his affair. He’s about a hundred and five.”

“Did he come up with anything else?”

“He wanted me to investigate his next-door neighbor for currency speculation.” Semionov shrugged-everyone wanted to inform on everyone else these days. It seemed there was no class solidarity now that everyone was the same class.

“An Emka,” Korolev said to himself and wondered how many there were in Moscow. There was a knock on the door behind him and then the sound of it opening. He looked round to see the typist from the night before enter with a pile of papers. She looked at Semionov uncertainly, but then recognized Korolev as he turned.

“Comrade Korolev? Anna Solayevna-I have some interview notes for you from Captain Brusilov over at Razin Street. One of his men dropped them off. I thought they might be urgent, so I brought them up myself. Here they are.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s a pleasure, Comrade. Particularly if it helps you catch that poor girl’s killer.” She paused and gave a nervous smile. “I’m sorry, Comrade, you said that the report was not suitable for the younger girls so I typed it myself. The poor child-what he did to her.”

She was about five years younger than him, light brown hair, a round face, brown eyes, a little careworn perhaps but still a good-looking woman.

“We’re doing our best to track him down, believe me. We’ll have a look through these; there may well be something useful. Thank you for bringing them up.”

She nodded and backed out the door.

“Hmm, individual service. A little against the collective mentality, some people might say.”

Korolev turned toward Semionov and frowned. “Well, is that all you have for me? Some wheel measurements and a drunken nightwatchman’s hung-over recollection?”

Semionov’s smile broadened.

“There’s something else. The cigarette packet. No fingerprints, I’m afraid, but I know the outlets.” Semionov pointed at the piece of paper in front of him and Korolev held out his hand.

“You’re a real shock worker today, I see,” Korolev said. Apart from the Metropol and the other central hotels, every other outlet was a closed shop, open only to senior Party members or privileged specialists attached to a particular workplace or organ of government. The NKVD stores were on the list, as were those of the Moscow Party’s Central Office. “Your friend must be very well connected or very well off to smoke such a brand.”

Semionov shrugged his shoulders. “There are other outlets, of course, and they have a certain prestige, this brand. But the other outlets wouldn’t be exactly ‘approved.’ ”

“You did well,” Korolev said, relenting. He flicked through the list once again. “It’s good detective work, this. I’m not sure I much like the direction it’s pointing us in, but it doesn’t exactly come as a surprise.”

“It doesn’t change anything, does it? If there’s a bad apple in the Party then they need to be dealt with.”

“Of course, of course. It’s just we’ll have to proceed carefully: things are not always straightforward. I found out some things today as well, things that you need to be aware of.” And Korolev began to tell him about Mary Smithson, Nancy Dolan and the mysterious icon.

“The only problem is I’m not sure where we go from here,” he said when he’d finished. “I know this is going to be a dangerous case to investigate. It may mean stepping on some people’s toes, political toes. Whoever is behind this is probably a traitor of the worst possible kind. I’ve considered it carefully, Comrade, and I’d like you to consider stepping aside from the investigation. You’re too young, Vanya. I won’t take the risk.”