for building throughout its former empire were at the other end of the housing estate and practically out of sight from this street. The winter snows did much to hide the ugliness but the sun was now shining brightly through a patchy sky to shrink back the heavy downfall that had fallen a week before.
The car pulled up alongside the kerb, stopped and the engine was switched off. It was a quiet neighbourhood, the houses comfortably spaced with street-parking guaranteed.
Mikhail Zhilev climbed out of the vehicle and registered pain on his granite, Slav face, which was covered in a two-week-old beard, as he stretched his six-foot-three, fifty-year-old body until his spine cracked. He had been determined to finish the last eight-hour leg of his two-day drive without a stop but his stubbornness had not come without a price. The old twinge in his neck which had plagued him for the past twelve years had throbbed continuously since leaving the mountain road and in the last hour or so had become almost unbearable. When anyone ever asked him about his discomfort he always explained it away as the result of thirty-five years of Sambo wrestling, a Russian self-defence discipline, in particular the last few weeks of those years when he pushed himself hard in the hope of finally winning the heavyweight division of the Russian Army Championship, a hope dashed in the semi-finals when a bad fall almost left him with a broken neck. But the few people who truly knew him, all old comrades in arms except for his brother, knew the real culprits were the Russian scientists and their damned experiments, and also the OMRP (Detachment of Marine Reconnaissance Point - Naval Intelligence) and their bosses in the GRU (General Intelligence Department) who allowed the ridiculous practice of using the military’s finest as medical guinea pigs.
Zhilev let his head fall gradually forward and then, with a grimace, forced his chin the last few inches on to his chest until the vertebrae in his neck also cracked. It gave him a little relief although he knew from experience it would not last long. He thought of the bottle of Temgesic tablets he always kept in his pocket, heavy-duty painkillers, but only for a second before dismissing the notion. He carried them for much the same reason some former smokers keep a packet of cigarettes, as a constant test of resolve and willpower. Soon he would be sitting back in his armchair, his feet up, a towel rolled behind his neck, relaxing and taking the weight off his shoulders, the only sure way to relieve the pain. In his philosophy, painkillers were for the weak, and no one who knew him had ever described him as being weak. One glance at his tall, slightly stooped demeanour, his rock of a head and determined eyes, his powerful shoulders, long arms, gnarled fingers and oaken bones bound in old iron muscles and there was no doubt that this man had spent his entire life in physical hardship. His career may have prematurely aged him but only a blind fool could fail to sense he still had a great capacity for physical destruction.
Besides, there was a much deeper truth behind his disdain for pills. Zhilev had a psychosomatic aversion to any form of drug, and for understandable reasons.
Zhilev opened the back of the car and pulled out an old canvas A-frame rucksack which had a military-style web-belt, pouches and a knife secured to the top. He pulled it heavily on to one shoulder, ignored the pain as he straightened up, steam shooting from his mouth and nostrils as he exhaled the frosty air, shut the boot and trudged up his garden path. He stepped on to his porch where snow remained against the house, sheltered from the direct sunlight, and pulled a bunch of keys out of his coat pocket. He unlocked the front door and stamped his boots on the wooden decking before stepping over the small drift that had moulded solid against the door and entered the house. A pile of mail littered the entrance and he crouched to pick it up before closing the door and walking down the sparse, creaking hallway and into the kitchen.
The house was clean, tidy and organised, the furnishings basic and austere, and noticeably void of a feminine touch.
He placed the letters on the wooden kitchen table, bare except for a half-burned candle in a saucer, dropped the rucksack on the clay-tiled floor, hung his coat