Read Online The Troika Dolls by Miranda Darling - Free Book Online Page A

She apologised and explained that it was the first time she had been out since the abandonment. That’s what she called it, even though others might have used a different word.
    But Henning didn’t seem to mind and Stevie satisfied herself that Henning had no plans of seduction, at least not in the short term, and that he was probably a decent human being, one who travelled even more than she did and who made a habit of random acquaintances. Stevie was happy to be one of them for now.
    Still, flying to Moscow to see him on some secret mission was almost certainly unwise. If Charlie hadn’t unsettled her so with his talk of Joss proposing to Norah Wolfe, if she hadn’t seen his face on every bus stop posing next to the fashion star, she may not have gone at all.
    But she wasn’t ready to face the memories all over again—not yet. So, feeling like a coward for the second time that day, she had fled.
    A few days in Moscow would be enough for her to gather her courage and return to her responsibilities. She would do the assessment for Henning as a favour then she would go home to her flat in Zurich, surrounded by thick woods, where she could safely hide from the world until David Rice called her back to London.
    ______________
    Thank heavens Henning came to collect her himself from Sherme-tyevo. Moscow’s airport was a battleground, predictably grim at passport control, with interminable forms asking in-coming passengers to list any electronic goods, cash, recording devices and so on in their possession. An accumulation of previous visits had taught Stevie to just answer Nyet to everything. The forms were relics from the time of the Iron Curtain; no one at customs was interested anymore. Nor do they smile, ever.
    The arrivals hall was filled with jostling men in leather jackets, fur hats and cheap shoes—touts, thugs, taxi drivers, impossible to tell apart. Henning was waiting near the automatic doors, ready to seize her before anybody else could.
    ‘ Dobri vyecher , stranger.’
    ‘Henning!’ She kissed him hello on his freshly shaven cheeks. He swooped on her bag, put a protective arm around her shoulders—it might have gone around twice had she not been wearing her coat—and bustled her through the crowd of men.
    Sensibly he had chosen a dirty black Lada—a crappy Soviet-made car that was as indistinguishable as it was unreliable. No one would steal it, follow it, or even bother to notice it. When Stevie stepped out into the car park, the icy brown slush rose above her tiny booted ankle. The air had the faintly sour smell of Russia.
    ‘Welcome to Moscow.’
    ‘I didn’t think I would be back so soon.’
    The car windows were filthy from the dirty snow mist sprayed up by the traffic. Night had settled and a fog was creeping in. Only the tail-lights of the other cars, glowing red, and the fuzzy neon of the casino at Pushkinskaya were bright in the gloom.
    They crept down Tverskaya Yamskaya, one of the main boulevards of Moscow. Wide and straight, they seemed to go on forever.
    ‘I’ve booked you into the Metropole. It’s not far from the Kozkov’s flat—I’m staying with them.’
    ‘Oh. Thank you very much. That’s kind of you.’ Stevie was always formal when she was feeling shy. She noticed Henning hide a smile— something was amusing him.
    Stevie considered his profile. It was quite handsome, if you liked the tall and slightly scary type: strong nose—well, big actually, but it suited him—a square jaw, narrow eyes of a piercing glacier-ice blue. They made Stevie think of a chink of mountain sky. He should stop smirking at her, though.
    He was wearing his herringbone overcoat and a tomato-red scarf. ‘You look rather dashing in your Henningbone,’ she teased.
    ‘Just trying to keep up with you, Stevie, with all your fluff and pearls.’ He meant her coat and hat. Both were steel-grey astrakhan, her hat pillbox style, but generous enough to cover the tips of her ears; the coat was tulip-cut, with