Ghosts

Milton turned from the window and sat on the edge of the bed. He thought of A

He dressed in the warm clothes that she had provided, pulled on the Timberland boots and put on his thick overcoat, quietly shut his door and padded softly to the elevator. He took it down to the ground floor and, without pausing, strode across the lobby, down the small flight of stairs, through the revolving door and into the street outside. He had noticed the man sitting in an armchair next to an open fire, a copy of the Herald-Tribune spread out in front of him. He had chosen a spot where he could observe the door and the lobby and Milton pegged him as an agent from the internal security directorate immediately. He didn’t rush through the lobby — he didn’t want them to think he was trying to flee, a reason to call for backup — but neither did he dawdle. As he emerged onto the street outside he made a show of arranging his overcoat, fastening the buttons all the way to the top, and, as he looped his scarf around his neck and tucked it into the front of the coat, he allowed himself a quarter turn back to the interior and saw the man, without his newspaper, coming down the steps.

The snow was falling thick and heavy, fat flakes that settled on everything, softening edges, turning the parked cars into sculptures with gracefully curved lines. The snow was deep; a trough had been shovelled down the centre of the sidewalks that was wide enough for two people to pass, the walls of snow and ice on either side reaching up to Milton’s knees. He walked at a decent pace, following streets that he remembered from the last time he had been here.

He stopped at a currency exchange and swapped two of the hundred dollar bills in his pocket for roubles. He turned to the street as the cashier counted out his money and saw the man from the hotel a hundred feet behind him, talking into the open window of a Mercedes SUV that was parked against the bank of snow on the road side edge of the sidewalk. Reinforcements, Milton thought. Fair enough. It didn’t concern him. He took the notes from the cashier, put them into his pocket and set off again for the station at Ploshchad Revolyutsii. He stepped into the relative warmth inside the heavy glass doors and bought a fur trimmed ushanka from the stall-holder who was doing a brisk trade flogging hats, scarves and gloves to credulous tourists. He put the hat in his pocket, bought a day ticket for the trains and made his way to the platform.

A second tail got ahead of him, probably alerted by a call from the third agent, the one in the car. He was waiting on the platform. Milton recognised him as an intelligence man without very much difficulty. He was standing alone at the end of the platform where the civilian statues were; the athletes, the engineers, the proud revolutionaries with their puffed out chests and bulging biceps. It was the obvious spot for him to wait; he would have a good view of new arrivals. He was glancing at a newspaper that he obviously wasn’t reading, speaking the odd word from the side of his mouth into a throat mic hidden beneath the scarf around his neck. The Russians used to have plenty of good men. Times had changed; now that the prestige and influence of the security service had been affected by the fall of the Wall, they had plenty of bad ones too, and more of the latter than the former. They were bad ones tonight. Milton thought, a little ruefully, it might have been nice to have been assigned some professionals to keep an eye on him. More of a challenge to lose them and, he admitted to himself, he'd been out of the game for a year. It would have been good for his ego to know that he still demanded their full attention.

Never mind.

Milton walked towards the man and looked into his eyes for a moment before he clocked him and turned away. Milton wasn’t concerned that the man knew that his cover had been blown. He wanted him to know. His ego again.

Milton looked across the tracks to the other platform and waited until the display board advertised a wait of a minute for the eastbound train. He remembered the station well from the times he had been active in Moscow and its geography came back to him without difficulty. He turned on his heel and walked quickly to the stairs that you took to transfer to the green line. He took the steps two at a time, quite sure that he would have sent the man on the platform into a spin and enjoying that knowledge. He turned his head as he reached the middle of the bridge that crossed the tracks: on his left he could see the collection of disc-shaped chandeliers, ru

He boarded the westbound train.

He took the ushanka and pulled it onto his head, untying the ear flaps from the crown and straightening them all the way out, enough to obscure his face. He looked down at his feet, yet glanced at the platform through the corner of his eye as the train jerked and bumped into motion. He saw the agent, confused and lost, caught between the eastbound and westbound trains, unsure which one he needed to be on. Had he changed trains or had he stayed where he was? The train slid away, Milton looking down again to hide his face as the agent passed before his window, and then they were back into the tu

Milton sat in the seat, ru