Read Online The Kremlin Device by Chris Ryan - Free Book Online Page A

that all our rooms were the same: small, hot and stuffy, without air-conditioning, and with only the small upper section of the windows openable. In the tiny bathrooms the tiles were cracked and yellowing, the grout between them black with grime. As Sasha had warned us, there were no plugs in the baths or basins . . . and suddenly – fuck it – I realised I’d left mine behind. I took a quick look round the bedroom for signs of hidden microphones, and although I couldn’t see anything I felt sure they were there. We’d already agreed that there’d be no shop talk in the hotel.
    â€˜Grotsville,’ exclaimed Rick as he emerged into the passage.
    â€˜You said it. Have you got your money on you? Don’t leave it in there, whatever you do.’
    â€˜Got it.’ He slapped his bum-bag which he had pulled round to the front, over his stomach.
    â€˜You look like that fat git we came up with.’
    â€˜ Spasibo , mate.’
    â€˜Let’s stretch our legs,’ Whinger suggested. ‘Eyeball the Kremlin.’
    That seemed like a good plan. It was already 9.45 local time, but only 6.45 by our biological clocks, and since we’d eaten on the plane we didn’t feel any need for food. Besides, I knew that the British Embassy was somewhere close by, just across the Moscow River from the Kremlin, and I reckoned we might as well suss it out, as I was going to have to report there regularly during our operation.
    On our way down in the lift Rick suddenly started shitting himself with laughter.
    â€˜What’s so bloody amusing?’ Whinger said irritably.
    â€˜Some cunt left a menu from one of the restaurants in my room. The stuff on offer is incredible.’
    â€˜Like what?’
    â€˜â€œNeedles in meat sauce”, for one. Then there was “frog’s paws in paste”.’
    â€˜That’s frog’s legs in batter,’ Whinger told him.
    â€˜I know – but think of it . . .’
    It was a fine evening for a stroll: the sky was clear and the air cool. Out on the pavement, we elbowed through the scrum of taxi drivers and walked down the slope towards Red Square. The street was so wide and the traffic was moving so fast that the subway seemed the best way to cross. We went down some steps into a concrete tunnel, past young people busking and old women begging, and up the other side. A minute later we were walking uphill on another short, broad thoroughfare and emerging on to the huge open expanse of Red Square.
    â€˜Never realised it was cobbled,’ said Whinger.
    â€˜Nor that it was so big.’
    It gave me a strange feeling to be looking at buildings I’d seen a thousand times in pictures. As a young soldier, during my early years in the army, I’d spent hours in classrooms doing recognition training, staring at black-and-white slides of Soviet tanks and missiles until we could pick out T54s, T64s and T72s in our sleep and name all the main types of ICBM. The place all these weapons were photographed most often was Red Square, during big parades on the anniversary of the 1917 revolution and suchlike – so now the buildings in the background were like echoes from the past.
    Rick’s mind was moving on the same lines. ‘Think of all the military hardware that’s rolled along here,’ he said.
    On our right the low, squat hulk of Lenin’s mausoleum sat hunched against the wall of the Kremlin. Wherever a light was shining on the wall, we could see it was made of dark red brick.
    â€˜Funny there aren’t any guards on the mausoleum,’ said Whinger. ‘You’d expect there to be some official presence. Isn’t it a national shrine?’
    â€˜Not any more,’ Rick told him. ‘I read on the Internet that they’re arguing about what to do with the old bugger. The die-hards are all for keeping him, but a lot of people want him out.’
    â€˜Burning’d be too good