Page 144 (1/2)

“Would you like to see the first-class menu, sir?”

“Only if I can write on the back of it”

“A cocktail perhaps?”

“No, I’ll stick with the coffee, thank you And can I say so to sound incredibly rude, but I assure you it’s not meant to be”

“Of course, sir”

“Could you not speak to ain until we land in Stockholm?”

“As you wish, sir”

“Other than to tell er in Russian air space” The senior steward nodded “Thank you,” said Harry, then picked up a pen and began writing

I first es Institute in 1941 I was on a conveyor belt of graduates being awarded their degrees, and if you had toldfor a monster who made Hitler look like a pacifist, I would not have believed it possible But I have only myself to blame, because I would never have been offered a job in the Kremlin if I hadn’t come top of my class, and been awarded the Lenin Medal If I’d colish in a state school, and not been even a footnote in history

Harry paused as he tried to recall a paragraph that began, For the first six months …

For the first six months, I worked in a ss within the red wall that encircled the 69 acres of the Kremlin My job was to translate the leader’s speeches frolish, without any idea if anyone ever read them But then one day two members of the Secret Police (NKVD) appeared by my desk and ordered , across a courtyard, and into the Senate, a building I’d never entered before I must have been searched a dozen tie office where I found myself in the presence of Comrade Stalin, the General Secretary of the Party I towered above hih I am only five foot nine, but what I re intoI learned years later that he beca when they first appeared before him Why did he want to see me? Clement Attlee had just been elected as the British prime minister, and Stalin wanted to kno it could be possible for such an insignificant little man (Attlee was an inch taller than Stalin) to replace Winston Churchill, whoaries of the British electoral system to him, all he said was, “That’s the ultimate proof that democracy doesn’t work”

A stea hot coffee, Harry’s second, and more sheets of paper of different sizes and shapes were supplied by the silent chief steward

Sebastian took a cab to the High Court shortly after eleven Just as he had been about to leave his office, Rachel had dropped thepost and three more thick files on his desk He tried to tell his would return to nor Ross Buchanan that he intended to go to A Saree to see him Ross h

ad e, and later described her as the best asset he’d ever let go

“I didn’t let her go,” Seb had tried to explain, “and if I could get her back, I would Whatever the cost”