‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Find out!’ yelled the colonel.
‘Yes sir,’ answered the major who dashed out of the room.
A high-pitched whine could be heard, which seemed to be getting louder.
Pudovkin strode across the sitting room to one of the tall windows. A light breeze billowed the white net curtains to either side. Pudovkin swept them apart and stepped out onto the balcony. Below him, the wilderness garden fell away across a hundred yards of lawn, leading down to a lake edged by the pine forest beyond.
Pudovkin, though, found himself looking up.
Fifty feet off the ground, a wasp-like sound continued to whine. Pudovkin squinted against the brightness of the sky to make out what it was.
An eight-prop drone was hovering overhead, flying level with the roof of the house. It then moved in towards him.
‘What the fuck?’ he shouted. Hastily, he worked to unfasten the strap over his pistol. The drone gained height rapidly, maintaining its attitude – still pointing at the balcony.
Explosive noises suddenly rang out. Pudovkin fred his Makarov semi-automatic repeatedly at the drone, its reports reverberating off the mature pine trees all around.
Inside the sitting room, Mrs Baryshnikov flinched at the commotion. Walking to another of the large windows, she tentatively pulled back one of its net curtains and peered out. She heard a further volley of shots, this time from somewhere below in the grounds. She managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of the strange object as it flew along in front of the house – to the right as she watched – before it disappeared over the tops of the trees.
Pudovkin came back inside. ‘Stay here,’ he barked over his shoulder.
He stormed out and down the stairs.
Major Ustinov was just re-entering the hall.
‘Did you hit it?’
‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ came the reply. ‘It looked like a camera was underslung beneath it; whatever they were filming would surely have been uploaded. Do you think that was from a news channel, sir?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘All you and I can hope for, major, is that it was.’
Half an hour later, while Pudovkin was still at the mansion checking through all the security arrangements, his phone rang. It was Pudovkin's other unit commander, Police Major Kuprin.
‘Colonel, I thought you should know. We’ve had a development.’
‘What?’
‘It's Colonel Straker, sir – him and that female lawyer.’
‘Yes, yes. What?’
‘Neither of them had been out of the office all day, which I thought was strange.’
‘So?’
‘I got one of my guys to walk past the Brandeis building.’
‘And?’
Pudovkin sensed there was something going on.
‘In the basement garage of the Imperatorskaya Tower, my guy happened to spot Straker and McMahon climbing into the back of one of the delivery vans. They left the Brandeis building ten minutes ago. We’re now in pursuit.’
‘Shit, how often have they been doing that? Where are they heading?’
‘Going north.’
‘And?’
‘They’ve just pulled in through a set of gates off Tverskaya Ulitsa.’
‘Which number?’
‘The only one that would prompt this call, sir.’
‘Christ,’ said Pudovkin, ‘what the hell's Straker up to now?’
SIXTY
Two minutes later, Police Colonel Pudovkin was back in his car and heading for the centre of Moscow. All the car's sirens and blue lights were on.
By the time they had travelled a few hundred yards along the lane through the trees, Pudovkin's car was already doing over a hundred miles an hour.
Grabbing his phone, the police officer rang a number. The call was answered: ‘The prosecutor general's office.’
‘I need to speak to Prosecutor General Gazdanov, urgently. Colonel Pudovkin here.’
