People moaned at a bunch of teenagers with rucksacks. Women gripped their shopping bags firmly at their sides rather than risk having them trampled at their feet. Personal space was in very short supply.
The train set off again. Komsomolskaya was the interchange. There’d be a mass exodus and a mass embarkation. I’d go the six stops to Park Kultury, where the second bomb had gone off, and then take the Central Line back to Lubyanka.
The motorbike helmet shuddered. The neck of the vodka bottle disappeared once more through the open visor, then went back down between its owner’s legs. This time it tipped over and made him look like he’d pissed himself.
I knelt down and righted the bottle. Nobody watched. If they had, it would have been obvious to them that any good comrade should take the trouble to ease this boy’s helmet off his head before he choked on his own vomit. Maybe I’d get a medal when Anna took me to the Victory Parade.
As the train slowed at Komsomolskaya I shrugged off my North Face and bundled it under my arm, then straightened up and joined the throng at the door. The lining of the helmet stank of stale sweat and beer and cigarettes. I hoped I didn’t have to keep it on much further than the end of the platform.
19
15.00 hrs
I DUMPED THE helmet and heaved my parka back on as soon as I emerged once more into the wind and snow. It was already starting to get dark. Sunset was at six at this time of the year. The lights of GUM did their best to make up for it, glinting off the wet cobblestones of Red Square.
Before perestroika hit its stride, all cities in the USSR had a branch of the state-owned department store. It was the only place where diplomats could buy their Marmite and Blue Nun, and the privileged Soviet few could shop for their premium vodka while the rest of the country lined up for hours for a loaf of bread and a dodgy-looking onion.
The Moscow flagship looked like Harrods on steroids, and had a history to match. Stalin converted it into office space. Then, when his wife had had enough of him killing everybody and topped herself, he turned it into her mausoleum. In the early 1950s his successors reopened it as a store, most of which consisted of empty shelves. Now it was a shopping mall like anywhere else on the planet, except for the fantastic architecture and the eye-watering prices. The two hundred stores inside boasted all the Western luxury brands and labels. After ten years of record-breaking economic growth, high-end Muscovites had money to burn. The man in the street could only press his nose against the glass.
I headed towards the sports deck. They sold everything from trainers to canoes, but I wasn’t after a pair of Versace trainers or a twenty-thousand-dollar home multi-gym. I needed a telescopic fishing rod – the one you see in gadget mags that folds down into something that fits in the palm of your hand.
20
HAD MOSSAD, THE Israeli secret service, not assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, one of the co-founders of the military wing of Hamas, in his Dubai hotel room in January 2010, I might have been trying to make entry in a totally different way.
The electronic lock of Room 419 could be accessed and reprogrammed directly at the door, but getting hold of the right box of tricks would have taken a lot more time than I had to spare. But – thanks to my mate Julian’s involvement at MI5 in tracking down the source of the British passports Mossad’s hit squad had used as cover – I knew a shortcut.
Burglars use fishing rods all the time to lift the keys you leave on the hall table. They then make entry with the house keys, or stay outside and steal whichever vehicle blinks in response to the key fob. Mossad had had an even better idea.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was wanted for the kidnap and murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1989, and purchasing arms from Iran for use in Gaza. He wasn’t on Mossad’s happy holiday list. They followed him from Syria to the Al Bustan Rotunda
The train set off again. Komsomolskaya was the interchange. There’d be a mass exodus and a mass embarkation. I’d go the six stops to Park Kultury, where the second bomb had gone off, and then take the Central Line back to Lubyanka.
The motorbike helmet shuddered. The neck of the vodka bottle disappeared once more through the open visor, then went back down between its owner’s legs. This time it tipped over and made him look like he’d pissed himself.
I knelt down and righted the bottle. Nobody watched. If they had, it would have been obvious to them that any good comrade should take the trouble to ease this boy’s helmet off his head before he choked on his own vomit. Maybe I’d get a medal when Anna took me to the Victory Parade.
As the train slowed at Komsomolskaya I shrugged off my North Face and bundled it under my arm, then straightened up and joined the throng at the door. The lining of the helmet stank of stale sweat and beer and cigarettes. I hoped I didn’t have to keep it on much further than the end of the platform.
19
15.00 hrs
I DUMPED THE helmet and heaved my parka back on as soon as I emerged once more into the wind and snow. It was already starting to get dark. Sunset was at six at this time of the year. The lights of GUM did their best to make up for it, glinting off the wet cobblestones of Red Square.
Before perestroika hit its stride, all cities in the USSR had a branch of the state-owned department store. It was the only place where diplomats could buy their Marmite and Blue Nun, and the privileged Soviet few could shop for their premium vodka while the rest of the country lined up for hours for a loaf of bread and a dodgy-looking onion.
The Moscow flagship looked like Harrods on steroids, and had a history to match. Stalin converted it into office space. Then, when his wife had had enough of him killing everybody and topped herself, he turned it into her mausoleum. In the early 1950s his successors reopened it as a store, most of which consisted of empty shelves. Now it was a shopping mall like anywhere else on the planet, except for the fantastic architecture and the eye-watering prices. The two hundred stores inside boasted all the Western luxury brands and labels. After ten years of record-breaking economic growth, high-end Muscovites had money to burn. The man in the street could only press his nose against the glass.
I headed towards the sports deck. They sold everything from trainers to canoes, but I wasn’t after a pair of Versace trainers or a twenty-thousand-dollar home multi-gym. I needed a telescopic fishing rod – the one you see in gadget mags that folds down into something that fits in the palm of your hand.
20
HAD MOSSAD, THE Israeli secret service, not assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, one of the co-founders of the military wing of Hamas, in his Dubai hotel room in January 2010, I might have been trying to make entry in a totally different way.
The electronic lock of Room 419 could be accessed and reprogrammed directly at the door, but getting hold of the right box of tricks would have taken a lot more time than I had to spare. But – thanks to my mate Julian’s involvement at MI5 in tracking down the source of the British passports Mossad’s hit squad had used as cover – I knew a shortcut.
Burglars use fishing rods all the time to lift the keys you leave on the hall table. They then make entry with the house keys, or stay outside and steal whichever vehicle blinks in response to the key fob. Mossad had had an even better idea.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was wanted for the kidnap and murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1989, and purchasing arms from Iran for use in Gaza. He wasn’t on Mossad’s happy holiday list. They followed him from Syria to the Al Bustan Rotunda
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