“Do you ever have time off?”
“One evening a week.”
“After the election, you must come and dine at one of our Young Combatants camps. They’re rough-hewn lads but good-hearted. And of course extremely fit. All fifteen to nineteen. The best of them we take into the Black Guards.”
“That would be very ... agreeable.”
“And of course after the election I shall suggest to President Komarov that the Guards and the Combatants will need an honorary chaplain. Certainly the rank of bishop will be necessary.”
“You’re very kind, Colonel.”
“You will find I can be, Father Maxim. Now back to the residence. Keep me informed. You had better take this. You will know what to do with it.”
When the informer had left, Colonel Grishin ordered his driver to take him to the National Hotel. It was time, he thought, that this interfering Westerner and his American troublemaker learned some of the facts of modern Moscow.
CHAPTER 17
COLONEL GRISHIN ORDERED HIS DRIVER TO PARK A hundred yards down Okhotny Ryad, Hunter’s Row, which makes up the northwestern side of Manege Square where the National is situated.
From inside his car he could see the two vehicles of his watcher team parked near the shopping mall facing the facade of the hotel.
“Wait here,” he told his driver, and got out. Even at seven in the evening it was almost twenty below zero. A few huddled figures shuffled past.
He crossed the street and tapped on the driver’s side window. It creaked in the cold as the electric motor brought it down.
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Where is he?”
“He must be inside, if he was in there before we arrived. No one has left that even looks like him.”
“Call Mr. Kuznetsov. Tell him I need him here.”
The propaganda chief arrived twenty minutes later.
“I need you to play your American tourist again,” said Grishin. He pulled a photograph from his pocket and showed it to Kuznetsov.
“That’s the man I’m looking for,” he said. “Try the names of Trubshaw or Irvine.”
Kuznetsov was back ten minutes later.
“He’s in there, under the name of Irvine. He’s in his room.”
“Number?”
“Two-five-two. Is that all?”
“That’s all I need.”
Grishin returned to his own car and used his mobile phone to call the professional thief he had stationed around the corner in the lobby of the Intourist.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Stay on listening watch. When I give the command, the room I want searched is two-five-two. I want nothing taken, everything searched. One of my own men is in the lobby. He will come with you.”
“Understood.”