Suite 365 was two floors above Ilyas’s room, twice as big, and felt less like a retreat and more like a temporary command centre upholstered in silk.
From the windows, one could see the arena, the black water and the bands of light from the harbour. On a shelf stood a silver tray, four untouched absinthe glasses, an open bottle of the green drink and a tray with exactly nine figs that no one had touched yet.
Anya opened the door for him.
Ilya stepped inside and took off his jacket. He seemed composed enough to pass for calm, yet tense enough that this was precisely not the case.
Anya walked to the window, her back half-turned towards him, the dark green of her dress gleaming almost silkily in the room’s light. The dress was already open at the back. She did not turn round.
“You’re late!”
Ilya replied, “This suite looks as though you’re expecting a state guest.” He tossed his jacket as casually as possible over the arm of the chair and smiled. Then he nonchalantly unbuttoned his shirt and flung it onto the floor beside the chair. In the reflection, however, Anya saw that his hands were trembling.
Anya said, “You’re not one.”
A fleeting moment arose from the recognition between two people who had long since read each other as both useful and dangerous.
Ilya undid the button on his trousers. “I don’t have much time.”
Anya grinned: “Do you need minutes in Copenhagen?”
Ilya snorted softly.
She was still standing by the window. Outside, the harbour glistened. Inside, the heating was turned up higher than necessary.
“They wanted something from me, I’m delivering.”
He tossed his trousers onto the pile of other clothes. It was a well-rehearsed move, but here it was neither genuine nor as convincing as he’d hoped.
Anya asked: “Fancy a drink?” She poured a glass of absinthe and dripped exactly one drop of water into it, so she could admire the streaks as they mingled.
“Later.”
She stepped away from the window and stopped close enough to him that the room seemed to rearrange itself. She looked at his body. Ilya resisted the instinct to hide behind an armchair like a bashful child. He began to take off his underpants as well.
Anya asked, “Do you have it?”
Ilya didn’t answer straight away. That was answer enough.
Anya saw it. “Then you were only partially successful with Mr Hollander.”
That hit the nail on the head. No moral judgement, just a statement of fact. She picked up Ilya’s shirt and sniffed it.
He was confused. Ilya briefly averted his gaze from her to the table, as if he didn’t want to give the sentence his eyes as well.
“Shane doesn’t have the puck anymore.”
Ilya took off his underpants and tossed them nonchalantly towards his trousers. He missed; they slipped down and fell to the floor. Anya didn’t move. Only her focus sharpened.
She speculated: “Is it one of those ‘athletes measuring themselves against each other’ things? But then why doesn’t your shirt just smell of your deodorant? That’s interesting. Even more interesting, however, is the question: since when?”
Ilya looked at her in confusion. Now he felt weak in his vulnerability. “Since when what?”
Anya shook her head in exasperation. “Since when has Hollander no longer had the puck. And who did he give it to?”
Ilya replied, genuinely taken aback: “Since before our… conversation. Probably since the post-match shower.”
“Probably?” asked Anya.
Ilya explained: “Shane saw the woman from Hesse with the shoulder pads coming out of the ladies’ toilets near the team showers, far away from the visitors’ area. That was the only thing that stood out. A garish eighties outfit.”
Anya’s expression barely changed. But inside her, something clicked into exactly the right place.
“Dr Tiedemann,” she said.
Ilya nodded. “She was already in the ballroom, watching the monitors. But I don’t know who she is.”
Anya explained: “That’s Dr Claudia Tiedemann, a nuclear physicist from Hesse. She’s here to buy cheap Danish nuclear waste and bury it in her decrepit power station in Winden or burn it for heat. Stromberg pays surprisingly well if the waste isn’t dumped into the sea. And Denmark is surprisingly thrifty when it comes to the waste from its nuclear power stations.”
Now Anya turned away from the conversation and began to ponder with that abrupt inner acceleration which, in very clever people, makes the whole body more sober. She slipped off her dress and stood before Ilya in nothing but elegant lingerie; he could not help but react to the sight. She noticed. Then she took the glass of absinthe from the table and placed it before him.
From the wardrobe she took a black woollen jumper and a pair of smart black trousers. She tucked the emerald jewellery under the turtleneck, removed the earrings and rings, and placed everything on the bedside table. She went to the desk in the next room, opened the drawer and pulled out a hotel brochure. A map.
 
“Not in the arena itself,” she said. “There are too many people there today, too many sandwiches and, above all, too many cameras that are officially supposed to be filming something else.”
She pointed to the hotel’s main hall.
“Not up in the suites, because that would be too conspicuous and too close to the guests.”
A finger traced the entire length of the hotel wing.
Ilya leaned against the edge of the table and asked, “So?”
Anya looked at the diagram as if it were inadequate but serviceable.
“In the basement,” she said. “Beneath the hotel and the arena. Deep enough for shielding, close enough for control, and below the waterline should anything need to be cooled quickly.”
She put the brochure away. The decision had been made even before it was fully spoken.
“The Hessian will already be on her way,” she said.
Ilya took a step closer and asked, “Are we going to sleep together now?”
Anya looked at him pityingly. “No,” she said. “I’d admire it if you’d done it for Hollander. I would have enjoyed it if you’d done it for the Soviet Union, but I don’t have time right now. I have to work.
Ilya said, “You wanted material, I’ll give you material.”
Anya replied, “Stay in my suite, but don’t touch anything. And no phone calls.” Her gesture indicated his mobile phone.
As she pulled on her trousers, she pointed to Ilya’s trousers, which were lying on the floor. He bent down, took the phone out of the pocket and handed it to her reluctantly.
She looked him up and down sternly. Not with desire, but rather with scrutiny. Then she pinned her hair up and put a black woollen cap over it. She was no longer to be mistaken for the elegant woman in the evening gown: she was now all business.
Anya asked: “What else did Hollander say? Word for word.”
Ilya thought for a moment. “Shane said he’d bumped into the woman from Hesse in the showers, and he wasn’t wearing his trousers at the time. Shane also said that the woman in green — that is, you — knew about the puck. And that Ilya searched him first and then …”
He left the sentence hanging.
Anya didn’t rescue him. She merely asked, “And then?”
Ilya said he’d put the sequence in the wrong order. There was a hint of dryness in it. More self-contempt than humour. Anya took it in without judgement.
She asked, “And what now?”
Ilya replied hesitantly, “Shane now thinks I’m sleeping with them to protect him.”
“Does he trust you?”
Ilya looked her straight in the eye.
“No,” he said.
It was the first sentence in that room that sounded entirely devoid of strategy. Anya took him seriously.
Ilya looked away because he understood that this was not an invitation, but a transformation. A few minutes ago, the act would have been erotic. Now it was preparation.
Anya told him to stay here. He should have a drink, savour today’s victory and watch television. But he shouldn’t leave before she was back.
Ilya laughed briefly. “You sound like my father.”
“But I’m not your mother. If Tiedemann starts something downstairs, I don’t need a second variable who thinks they have to save a Brit.”
Ilya fell silent. Too silent, which is why Anya realised she’d hit a nerve.
“Maybe the Brit needs saving?” Ilya hesitated.
Anya explained: “Right now, the best way you can help Shane is for both of you to stay out of it. I’ll be back, and then we’ll sort this out between us Russians. If what Lind handed out was a key, then it leads to something very useful, judging by the efficiency of this hall and the tidal power station.”
“Should I get dressed?” For the first time, he looked genuinely unsettled.
“Do whatever you like while I’m downstairs. And hope that the Brit in your suite doesn’t do anything rash either.”
“Anya!”
She paused.
“If you harm Shane in any way…”
Anya turned slowly. “If I have to do something to him, there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Ilya was left alone in Suite 365, between absinthe, figs, harbour lights and the realisation that Anya was right — and that he would, of course, disobey her as soon as enough time had passed to make disobedience seem reasonable.
He looked at the closed door. Then over at the arena. He gathered his things and dressed hurriedly. Quietly, almost to himself, he said, “Don’t wait for me.”