The Lure by Bill Napier Page A

the only way to ensure that her car would start in the minus thirty degrees of a Moscow winter. But the night air from this Moscow winter was drifting in through the gap and she gasped as she opened the living-room door and hurried towards the telephone. The sound of traffic, still rumbling at this hour, came up from the street below.
    Still ringing.
    Don’t stop!
    She banged a shin painfully on the edge of a low table. Keep ringing. I’m almost there!
    She found it, dropped the receiver, picked it up, trembling.
    Professional voice, deep male: ‘Tatyana Maranovich?’ A doctor or a surgeon. Dasha was in some hospital bed. No. This was a policeman. Her daughter was lying on a mortuary slab somewhere.
    Tanya’s voice and hands shook uncontrollably. ‘Yes?’
    ‘My name is Vashislav Shtyrkov. I want to speak to Professor Velikhov. The duty clerk at the Academy referred me to you. May I have his home phone number?’
    Relief and anger struggled in her head, and relief won: Dasha was all right, probably tucked up with Alexei somewhere. Suddenly the bitter cold, which she had ignored, became an issue. ‘Vashislav Shtyrkov, it’s two o’clock in the morning.’
    ‘I know.’
    ‘I can’t give the Professor’s name out to a stranger. I could lose my job.’
    ‘Let me give you an assurance on that: you will lose it if you don’t.’
    ‘Can you tell me what this is about?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘At least tell me who you are.’
    ‘A colleague, from the old days.’
    Something stirred in Tanya’s mind. ‘Are you the one who called the Professor about that castle in Slovakia?’
    ‘I am the one. Now will you give me his number?’
    ‘No, I’m not allowed to do that. But if you give me yours I’ll relay it to him.’
    ‘That will suffice. But you must give it to him now.’
    ‘At this hour? The Professor will not thank me for that.’ She was now shivering inside her thick flannel nightgown.
    ‘On the contrary, Tanya Maranovich, if you call him now he will bring you lilies from the Nile and sunshine from Mexico.’
    *   *   *
    Georgi Velikhov, as befitted the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, had a villa in the Gorki-9 district of Moscow. The villa came with a maid and a cook, six bedrooms and government-issue furniture. His neighbours were diplomats, high government officials and, not two kilometres away, was the fazenda of Mikhail Isayevich Ogorodnikov, President of Russia.
    And the central heating stayed on all night. Apart from anything else, the house was full of children: over the New Year, Velikhov was playing Father Frost to his wife Masha, his three daughters and their husbands, and nine grandchildren.
    So it was that, although it was three in the morning and the air outside was colder than a domestic freezer, the patriarch was warm and comfortable in a studded green leather chair in his study. A stove, which he had banked up with wood for an overnight slow burn, was burning brightly, and a green shaded lamp suspended from the ceiling was throwing a harsh light over a large leather-topped desk.
    He was on the telephone for over an hour. Most of the time he listened, but now and then he would fire off a question in a staccato tone.
    He didn’t hear Masha come into the study, didn’t notice his four-year-old granddaughter standing at the open door in a pink nightdress, finger in mouth and hand on the top of her head until Grandmother Masha picked her up and carried her back to bed.
    At the end of the call he noticed the hot chocolate in front of him with surprise. It had gone cold but his mouth was dry with talking and excitement and he gulped it down.
    Velikhov stood up, stretched briefly, and then paced up and down for some minutes. The Kremlin, of course, would have a duty officer.
    Good morning, I want to speak to the President on an urgent matter.
    Certainly. I’ll rouse the President’s Chief of Staff now.
    Alexy? I believe we’ve been contacted by an alien intelligence.
    Thank you,