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I’d come to like this city in my year here. You knew where you stood with Muscovites. They didn’t open doors for each other. When you wanted something, you said, ‘Give me.’ And as long as you had the roubles, you got.

The main reason I liked it, of course, was that Anna was here. In between living with me, investigative reporting for
Russia Today
and flying around saving the world, this amazing woman had opened doors for me. She’d introduced me to ballet and art, music without bass guitars and synthesizers, and books without pictures.

Thanks to her, my brain had been getting a serious workout. She’d introduced me to Tolstoy’s
War and Peace
, and two years on I was still at it. The fucking thing had over twelve hundred pages. It had taken me longer to get a third of the way through than it took Napoleon to reach Moscow, be defeated and sent into exile. Twice.

I read in English. I’d only gathered a phrase or two of Russian in the time I’d been there. Moscow was a big tourist destination, these days, and most people knew enough English for me to get away with that. If they didn’t understand me I’d do the British thing of pointing and shouting. It seemed to do the trick.

As the days got longer and warmer, Anna and I headed for Serebryany Bor. The island was a trolleybus ride away. It could be walked at any time of day, but it was especially great in the evening when the late-setting sun bathed the
dacha
s, the woods and the river. She pointed out the spring buds and flowers, the families with babies in buggies and kids on bikes with stabilizers.

The more I’d got to know her, the more I realized how alike we were. We gave each other loads of space and got on with our own lives. I knew that her job was about doing the right thing, and that it made her happy. And I knew we’d probably get on each other’s tits if we lived a more conventional lifestyle. Maybe having gaps, then coming back together was the only way that a relationship would work for me.

Just when I thought we’d got the balance right, we discovered she was three months pregnant. Our lives changed almost overnight; it was like a switch had been thrown inside her.

‘You ready, Nicholas?’

Anna’s reflection was slumped in the leather sofa. Dressed in one of her smart pregnancy outfits, she was working her way through a plate of cupcakes, her latest craving.

I turned. ‘Ready if you are.’

Hmm, was I? I was far from ready to leave what we had there – the apartment, the view and, most importantly, our old life.

I loved everything about the penthouse. I loved the basement gym. For me, the gym had always been famine or feast. When I
was working or injured I did nothing for months on end, but when I had the time, I was in there every day.

I loved the dual-aspect reception room, which opened onto the roof terrace and gave me a near 360-degree view of the high ground. I loved the secure underground parking space; the private balcony, overlooked by no one; the walk-in wardrobe that hadn’t yet been filled on my side with more than a couple of pairs of jeans and some shirts.

The only thing we lacked was a decent-sized second bedroom. But even if it had had one, an apartment wasn’t the right place to bring up a child. Anna was right about that, as she was about most things. We had to do what city-based parents did all over the planet – move out to the suburbs.

I helped her to her feet. Strange to think it was only two years since I’d first gripped her hand. Even then – standing among the wreckage of an aircraft full of dead men and drug dollars I’d shot down – I’d felt I’d known her all my life.

I’d been working undercover for the Firm; she’d been investigating a corrupt Russian industrialist’s links with the Iranian ayatollahs. She said she wouldn’t have touched me with a ten-foot pole if she could have sorted it on her own. Then she gave me the kind of smile that makes your knees go funny.

She was a dead ringer for the girl from Abba with blonde hair and high cheekbones. I fancied her big-time. As a sixteen-year-old boy soldier I’d sat in the NAAFI with my pint of Vimto and steak-and-kidney pie, waiting for
Top of the Pops
. ‘Dancing Queen’ had already been number one for about five years, and I took my seat in front of the TV every week hoping her reign would be extended.

I smiled as I draped her black raincoat around her shoulders. ‘OK, let’s get this little soldier on the road.’

She didn’t smile back.

We drove out towards the ring road to the east of the city, scanning the various neighbourhoods that had spawned since the collapse of Communism.

Suburbia was beginning to take shape on the Moscow margins. The media were full of it – all the usual moaning about forests having huge holes ripped out of them to make way for gated communities with names like ‘Navaho’ and ‘Chelsea’.

At first glance, the area she wanted us to concentrate on – wide boulevards, criss-crossed with electricity and phone cables and jammed with four-wheel-drives and people-carriers – reminded me of an American Midwestern sprawl. But the planning department must have been sick the day they’d dreamed this place up, or at a resort on the Black Sea spending the contents of the brown envelopes the developers had slipped them. Huge apartment blocks reared haphazardly between small houses with a bit of yard and big ones with gardens.

Alongside the biggest collection of billionaires on earth, the massive migrant population, as well as the poor, old, dying, drunk and drugged, scraped a living in these old Soviet concrete blocks. They were all fucked big-time. In winter, portable paraffin heaters provided their only warmth, but gave off so much moisture that their windows still froze solid on the inside – unless they’d already sold the glass and shoved up plywood in its place. In Putin’s Russia, everyone was an entrepreneur.

Anna was determined to find somewhere our baby could grow up safe from predators – somewhere with gates; big ones. Gates to her were things that kept people out. She was right, of course, but to me they had always been things that locked people in.

We had no idea of the kid’s sex – Anna didn’t want to know, and I wasn’t bothered as long as all its arms and legs were in the right places. We hadn’t even talked about names. But she wasn’t the only one whose switch had been thrown. I felt stuff the moment I saw the first scan, even though it looked like nothing more than a grey peanut, and those feelings got a whole lot stronger when I felt the first kick.

I hadn’t expected ever to have kids of my own; I could only just look after myself. And I certainly hadn’t expected to feel this way if I did. I already knew I’d go to the ends of the earth to protect it.

The rest of the package I still wasn’t sure about: the nuclear family. I’d seen it, at least from a distance, but never
needed
it. I’d been a best man once; that was as close as I ever wanted to get to a wedding.

‘Nicholas?’

‘Hey, I’ve been thinking, maybe we could keep two places. Live in the apartment and have a
dacha
for weekends?’

It wasn’t like we were short of money. If Anna had taught me one thing, it was that money isn’t everything. But I’d scooped enough drug dollars from the industrialist’s aircraft to last us a while, and it was a fuck of a lot better than having to nick your own trainers.

‘Nicholas – look.’

I glanced towards her. ‘Seen a place?’

‘No.’ She pointed at her lap. ‘I’m bleeding.’

I brought the Touran to a screeching halt in what turned out to be a McDonald’s car park.

‘You want the clinic?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ll go inside and check. You phone Katya.’

Anna didn’t go anywhere without her ‘hospital bag’, these days. In the Regiment we used to keep a grab bag close by: a Bergen with all the ‘one hour’s notice’ gear – from trauma care to demolitions kit – that we might need on a call-out. Anna’s contained knickers and slippers, a change of clothes, the baby’s first outfit, nappies and hundreds of muslin squares – I still hadn’t worked out what they were for. In my little compartment there was a change of clothes, a camera, a tube of Pringles and some bags of Haribo. I fished out a pair of her trousers with a big, elasticated waist, some knickers and packs of wet wipes just in case.

She set off for the toilet and I pulled out my phone. I wasn’t unduly worried. Anna was thirty-six weeks into her pregnancy with no complications. Katya had taken care of her throughout and assured us the baby was in launch mode, upside down and ready to get tabbing.

We hadn’t even bothered signing the birthing contract; they’re a Russian thing – you pay about a month before the due date, according to the level of care you think you’ll need.
We were going to do so at Katya’s clinic the week after next.

I punched the speed-dial key for her mobile and got voicemail. Not a complete surprise: she hardly ever picked up even when she wasn’t working, and today was a Friday – she’d be busy. I’d have to wait for Anna to come back with the clinic number, unless Googleski found it for me first.

I was glad the waiting was nearly over. Anna had become increasingly impatient with me, the more uncomfortable she got. The epic heat of the Moscow summer and a fair amount of pelvic pain had made the last few weeks a real struggle – and I was increasingly on the receiving end. I wasn’t cut out for family life, she reckoned. I told her that, whatever family life was, I was up for it. That went down like a wagon load of shit. She said she wasn’t sure if she still wanted me in this new life, or just her and the baby.

‘Things are changing in me – and not just down here, Nicholas.’ She’d pointed at her bump. ‘In here as well.’ Then she’d tapped the side of her head. ‘We don’t only have to change our lifestyle, we have to change our way of thinking. I’m not sure you can.’

I’d waved my arms at the mountains of baby kit around us. ‘I’m already in baby mode. I’m prepared for whatever that means in the future.’

I wasn’t convincing her. She was obsessed. I wasn’t ready to change; I wasn’t ready to settle and to do the right thing for our child. She needed someone who was going to be there not because they had to but because they wanted to. And this ‘wanting to’ feeling – well, she wasn’t getting it from me.

One day she was worried about my lack of excitement, the next my lack of commitment. I couldn’t keep track of what she wanted from me. I wasn’t going to win
Mr & Mrs
anytime soon, but I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t gamble, didn’t do drugs, didn’t spend nights out with the lads. I told her I’d get plenty excited and committed once the baby was there. Then I really fucked up. I wondered aloud if the problem had more to do with her hormones than me not being connected to the idea of fatherhood.

It took a couple of days for the volcano to stop erupting and a
whole lot more for the ash cloud to settle. Hormones or not, she worried that our child wasn’t going to have a proper relationship with me because of what I was, and what that brought into our new family. ‘I don’t want our baby to become like us, Nicholas. That’s why I’m changing. This child is the only thing I’m concerned about. I have to be. I’ve got to make sure it grows up in the best environment possible. Surely we both owe it that.’

I tried to understand. I’d have hated lugging round the equivalent of a Bergen strapped to my stomach 24/7. For the last couple of weeks she’d looked more and more like the big purple Pilates ball she was always sitting on, and when the baby moved it was no longer the vague flurry or two of the second trimester, it was the Klitschko brothers having a full-on spar.

I checked my mobile. Googleski wasn’t co-operating. I kept getting pages in Cyrillic.

If she didn’t come back in a minute I’d go and find her. What did the blood mean? I’d learned enough obstetrics as a patrol medic to win the soft-power war with indigenous populations, but not much more. I could handle an uncomplicated delivery, but for anything else she was going to need expert help.

Anna came out of McDonald’s clutching one of their brown-paper carrier bags, and I was sure it didn’t contain a couple of Happy Meals.

It seemed to take her for ever to cover the few metres to the wagon but I knew that if I got out and offered to help she’d go ballistic again. She finally made it and climbed back in.

‘I think it’s stopped. Let’s carry on a bit and see what happens.’

I touched her shoulder. ‘OK, but give me a bit of warning – the clinic’s an hour away …’

We hadn’t got further than the end of the road when I saw Anna’s hand dip down to her lap. When she brought it back up her fingers were red.

‘No messing. We’re going right now.’ I handed her my mobile. ‘Tell them we’re coming.’

She fumbled with the buttons and slumped in her seat. ‘I don’t feel too good, Nicholas. I feel … dizzy … This baby is beating me up from the inside …’

I grabbed the phone back and pulled over to the kerb. My call was answered after three rings. It was the twenty-something from Ukraine I’d met when I’d gone in to sort out the first round of paperwork. ‘Sasha, it’s Nick Stone. Is Dr Fuentes there?’

When it came to phone etiquette, she’d been really well trained in the art of pissing everyone off. ‘Hello, Mr Stone. How are you today?’

‘Sasha, stop. There’s no time. Is she there?’

‘Dr Fuentes has gone for the day. Can I take a—’

I cut in again, told her what had happened.

‘She is losing bloods?’

‘Yes.’

‘One moment.’

A few seconds later a new voice. Sasha must have transferred me to a doctor. She kicked off in Russian, caught herself, and switched to garbled English, but I got the gist. ‘You must to go to the nearest public hospital, Mr Stone. Where is your position?’

I gave her the main and a cross street. I heard a rapid exchange in Russian, a short pause and the clatter of a keyboard.

‘OK … You will be needing City Hospital Number Seventy, on Federated Avenue.’

‘Anna doesn’t want a public hospital. We—’

‘Mr Stone, are you wanting two dead people?’

She had a point. Anna’s head had lolled forward and I couldn’t even tell if she was conscious. I pressed the red button, sparked up the Maps app and scrabbled to input Federated Avenue. By the time I got moving again I had half of Moscow’s drivers flipping me the finger. The other half soon joined in as the Touran fish-tailed into the stream of traffic and my foot hit the floor.