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“Medium height, spare, silver hair, early to mid-seventies.’’
“No idea where he came from?”
“Ah, he was different from the young American. He came by car and it waited for him. I showed them out. The car was still there. Not a taxi, but a limousine. I took its number as it drove away.”
He passed a slip of paper to the colonel.
“You have done well, Father Maxim. This will not be forgotten.”
Anatoli Grishin’s detectives did not take long. A call to the Bureau of Automobiles had the number within an hour—the limousine belonged to the National Hotel.
Kuznetsov the propaganda chief was the errand boy. His near-perfect American English could persuade any Russian clerk that he was indeed American. He turned up at the National just after lunch and approached the concierge.
“Hi, sorry to ask, but do you speak English?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Great. Look, I was dining in a restaurant not far from here last night and there was this English gentleman at the next table. We got talking. When he left, he forgot this on the table.”
He held up a lighter. It was gold and expensive, a Cartier. The concierge was puzzled.
“Yes, sir?”
“Anyway, I ran after him, but I was too late. He was driving away ... in a long black Mercedes. But the commissionaire thought it might be one of yours. I managed to grab the number.”
He passed over a slip of paper.
“Ah, yes, sir. One of ours. Excuse me.”
The concierge checked his log for the previous evening.
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“That must have been Mr. Trubshaw. Shall I take the lighter?”
“No problem. I’ll just hand it in to reception and they can put it in his cubbyhole.”
With a cheery wave, Kuznetsov strolled over to the reception desk. He pocketed the lighter.
“Hi there. Could you give me Mr. Trubshaw’s room number?”
The Russian girl was dark and pretty and occasionally moonlighted with Americans. She flashed a smile.
“One moment, sir.”
She punched the name into her desktop computer and shook her head.
“I’m sorry. Mr. Trubshaw and his companion left this morning.”
“Oh, damn. I hoped to catch him. Do you know if he has left Moscow?”
She punched in more figures.
“Yes, sir, we confirmed his flight this morning. He returned to London on the midday plane.”
Kuznetsov was not really aware of the reason why Colonel Grishin wanted to trace the mysterious Mr. Trubshaw but he reported what he had found. When he had gone, Grishin used his contact in the visa applications section of the Immigration division of the Interior Ministry. The details were faxed to him, and the photo that had accompanied the application through the Russian Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens, London, came by messenger.
“Blow that photo up to a eight-by-ten,” he told his staff. The face of the elderly Englishman meant nothing to him, but he thought he might know a man to whom it would.