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Sechin—”
    “Siloviki?” Lewis the private secretary interrupted.
    “Men of power,” Adrian said. “In Russian,” he added caustically.
    “So . . . but a call from President Medvedev would rather highlight that, wouldn’t it?” Lewis leaped into the gap he’d been waiting nearly an hour to fill. “It would draw attention to the Kremlin’s unhealthy—covert interest, you called it—in Semyonovich. Surely they wouldn’t want to do that.”
    “The Kremlin,” Adrian said carefully, though without disguising his distaste at being even on the same planet as Lewis, “. . . the Kremlin doesn’t care what the world thinks. In fact, it has taken a delight in recent years in demonstrating openly that it couldn’t give a shit. You may have noticed that it invaded Georgia last month. And since then it’s not taken a blind bit of notice what the rest of the world says or thinks.”
    “Diplomatic channels are working with the Russians on that,” Lewis said confidently. “The EU—”
    “But they haven’t got anywhere, have they?” Adrian interrupted with icy patience. “That’s the point.”
    “This is another matter,” Teddy broke in smoothly. He knew from old that Adrian was spoiling for a fight. “Who would want Semyonovich dead?” he asked baldly.
    “There’s a long list.” Adrian shrugged. “Some individual, or clan, from the Kremlin itself, perhaps. The internecine power struggles in the Kremlin don’t exactly represent one voice. Then there’s a string of businessmen whose toes and other vital extremities Semyonovich has crushed over the years; there are Chechen bandits and other ne’er-do-wells with a grudge. Not to mention the owner of Manchester United,” he added facetiously.
    “Why the Kremlin? Why would they murder one of their own? If he looked after their cash?” Lewis demanded.
    “As I tried to explain, the Kremlin isn’t one entity, one single interest. It’s a snake’s nest of competing interests, with Putin prefering to keep it that way. Divide and rule, it’s called. That’s why Medvedev, the nominal president, is just a Putin clone, running the place on behalf of Putin’s clan, which happens, at this moment, to be in the ascendant. We don’t know why anyone in the Kremlin might want Semyonovich dead, but certain interests there, which want to damage Putin’s clan, might well use the murder of Semyonovich as a lever to exert their power.”
    Adrian relaxed into his exposition.
    “Alternatively, maybe Semyonovich had outlived his usefulness with his actual supporters there, Putin included. Maybe he’d got too big for his boots. Maybe he was bucking orders from Moscow. Maybe it’s pour encourager les autres . There’s a lot of possibilities. We don’t know. And that’s just the possible Kremlin involvement. There’s a bloody long list of people with motive outside the Kremlin, that’s what we do know.”
    “Here in Britain?” Lewis demanded.
    “Everywhere,” Adrian said.
    “And the repercussions,” Teddy said, “from Moscow—assuming he was still on the inside over there?”
    “They’ll be very angry indeed,” Adrian acknowledged. “They’ll look for someone to blame. They’ll reel off a whole lot of guff about ‘lawless Britain.’ The usual hypocritical crap. Who knows, they might even try to blame us.”
    “Us?” Lewis repeated.
    “The Kremlin will see what damage it can cause, and then try to cause it,” Adrian replied.
    “If we assume for a second that it’s not a Kremlin hit, what’s their reaction?” Parkinson said.
    “If it’s not a Kremlin hit, I should think it will worry them a great deal,” Adrian said, suddenly thinking about this aspect for the first time. Yes, it was, in its way, a momentous murder. It could have very far-reaching implications. “Anatoly Semyonovich had an extremely complex business empire,” he continued. “It has a real reach. It’s very important to the Kremlin’s foreign economic policy.