“You smoke?” she said as they walked across the forecourt together to the car.

“Now and again,” he said.

“Here.” She tossed him a packet of Winstons.

“Haven’t seen these for a while,” he admitted as he tore the wrapper from the pack.

“Taste like shit and they still sell more here than anything else.”

Milton put one of the cigarettes to his lips and lit it. The tobacco was harsh and bitter and strong and he had to stifle the urge to cough.

“See what I mean?” she said, a half-smile brightening her face.

“It’s a challenging taste,” he said, briefly raising an eyebrow. He mastered it and filled his lungs.

“We’re halfway there,” she said.

“What time will we get in?”

“Provided it doesn’t snow, around ten.”

“And if it snows?”

“Then we’ll sleep in the car.”

Chapter Seventeen

Pylos was an enchantingly pretty place. There were onion domed churches and brightly painted wooden houses with ornate carved window frames and zinc and tin roofs, spilling down a hillside to a waterfront of fine former merchants houses and colourful houseboats. The main street was tiny and entirely free of designer shops and even the advertising for Western brands, ubiquitous in every other town through which they had passed. Milton had visited upstate New York on several occasions and the town reminded him of Bridgehampton: deliberately folksy, carefully low-key, yet the signs that it was saturated with money were obvious if you knew where to look.

The dacha was on the other side of the town, just outside the boundary. Large residences started to appear, walled and gated, all with plenty of land and access to the Volga. Milton stared through the window across the vast expanse of water. It was five hundred metres wide and seventy-five metres deep, the moon throwing a rippling stripe of light across the blue-black water. Milton saw the two police speedboats bobbing at anchor and, as he looked further towards the other bank, he saw the discreet signs of military activity. He knew there was no point in asking, but it was easy to guess what that meant: a place like this, with all these big summer retreats, there had to be a good chance that members of the political elite could be found here. Oligarchs, crime lords, high-ranking military officials, all of them swimming in the money that the new Russia showered on the chosen few.

Vladimir slowed and turned off the road, proceeding along a short drive to a pair of gates. There were two armed guards just inside and Milton noticed the CCTV cameras that were trained down on them; after a moment, the gates parted and they continued onwards. Milton concentrated on taking in everything he could. The dacha was large, much bigger than the cabin that he had naïvely expected. They approached it along a short drive that passed through a festive Russian landscape, stands of silver birches alternating with thrusting fir and redolent pines, the greensward between them obliterated by the deep falls of snow. There was an area for parking cars and the driver reversed next to another big executive Range Rover and an army jeep. The snow had been shovelled to the edge of the parking area, revealing the frozen gravel beneath, and as Milton stepped down from the car he stood on a twig and snapped it, the sound ringing back through the darkness like the report from a rifle. That, and the crunch of their boots on the gravel, were the only sounds; everything else was muffled, as quiet as the grave. Milton scoped out his surroundings as he allowed himself to be led to the entrance. To the south was a frozen stream, crossed, if necessary, by two planks which met at a man-made island in the middle. On the other side of the stream, and similarly set out along the banks of the Volga, were other dachas, each of them seemingly larger than the last. Milton saw smoke emerging from the chimney of the nearest one but the rest seemed deserted. The illuminated green roof and golden cupolas of a Church poked through a stand of fir. Icicles hung from the eaves of roofs, icy daggers that shimmied and glimmered. The road that they had entered on was quiet. There were no other people abroad. Anna had been right: this was perfect isolation. It was the ideal place to hold a meeting that no-one else could know about.

Vladimir led the way to the front door. It opened on his approach and he conferred in Russian with the guard who stood behind it. The man was armed: Milton recognised his holstered weapon as an MP-443 Grach, the double-action, short-recoil 9mm that was standard issue Russian service pistol. The conversation was brief, and evidently satisfied, the guard nodded and stepped aside. Vladimir waited at the door; Milton followed Anna past them both and inside.

He took it all in, unconsciously performing a tactical assessment. There was a large hallway, with doors opening out into the rest of the dacha in all three internal walls. A flight of stairs led up to a first floor and, he guessed, to a second and third above that.

Anna noticed him paying attention; she smiled and nodded at him. “It is quite something, yes?”

She thought that he was impressed. Fair enough; he would rather she thought that than the truth, which was that he was working out the best way to breach the thick oak door. “Who owns it?” he asked.

“The federal intelligence service.”

“I saw a lot of big places as we came in.”

“Plyos is special, Mr. Milton. Very exclusive.”

“And why’s that?”

“Have you heard of Isaac Levitan?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

She pointed to the wide canvas that was hung above the fireplace in the sitting room. It was a beautiful landscape, the distinctive bulbs of a Russian church reflecting against the water of a wide river. “He was the most famous Russian landscape painter of the nineteenth century. He worked here. He painted it many times. That is one of his works.”

“I’m not great with art.”

She ignored that. “Repin, Savrasov and Makovsky, too. All of them worked here. It is very beautiful in the daylight.”

“Shame we’re not here to visit, then.”

“Yes. There will be no time for sightseeing, not like in Moscow.”

He ignored the jibe and allowed her to lead the way upstairs. They reached a landing with several doors leading from it; again, he committed the layout to memory. She took him halfway down and pushed one of the doors ajar.

“This is your room,” she said.

Milton opened the door fully and looked inside. It was a large room, dominated by a four poster bed. It was simply but evocatively furnished, with heavy Volga linens and had a brick stove beneath a marble fireplace. A fire had been made, and, as the flames curled around the logs that had been stacked there, they cast their orange and yellow light into the dark corners. It was warm and friendly.

“Please, stay here tonight. There’s nothing to see in the village after dark and there are armed guards posted outside. They have been told to prevent you from leaving. I’m sure you could avoid them but it wouldn’t do you any favours. The temperature up here is colder than in Moscow. If you don’t have the right clothes, and you don’t, you wouldn’t last twenty minutes. Much better to stay here, where it’s warm. Okay?”

“Don’t worry,” Milton said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She nodded her approval. “The cook will prepare anything you like for your dinner. It will be brought to your room.” She indicated the telephone next to the bed with a nod of her head. “You just need to dial 1 to speak to the kitchen.”

He stepped further into the room, sat on the edge of the bed and started to work his boots off.

Anna stayed at the door. “The colonel is arriving tomorrow morning. He wants to see you immediately. We will have breakfast together and then I will introduce you.”