Villains in the Night

Hello there!

Welcome to the first three chapters of “Villains in the Night” - a novel for the Instagram era, coming 28 November 2021! Read on to see if you like it!…

Part 1: Florentina.

Chapter 1. 

London, September 5

Of course, everyone knew that the difficult part would be finding enough time to open the safe. It was at least - in the best tradition of luxury accommodation - tucked discreetly away in the other room. The ambiance of a deluxe suite shouldn't be spoiled by anything as crassly practical as a safe. Better for all concerned, both management and thief would have agreed, to place it in a cupboard in the alcove of the lounge room, where one could work on the dial without interruption, and where the suite's occupants wouldn't have to look at it. 

Vladimir reset the dial, sat back down on the foot of the bed, lit his cigarette and exhaled slowly. Time would be of the essence, no room for mistakes, he’d lectured, to nobody in particular.

Taisia was perched on the edge of the double bed, one leg tucked behind her, the other dangling above the carpet. She looked at him expectantly, her blue eyes shining through the mist of his cigarette smoke. 

Both women watched Vladimir inhaled and exhaled once, twice, and then set to work. He began to twist the dial slowly to the right and then to the left. In the concentrated silence the three of them gradually became aware of the ambient hum of the fridge coming from the kitchen and the slow drip of the tap in the cramped bathroom. 

“Seventeen.”

Taisia looked bored as she typed in the number to her phone. 

“Eleven.”

Taisia held the phone out in front of her and turned around and crossed her eyes and poked her tongue out to the side. A giggle escaped from Florentina and then she clamped her mouth shut. 

Vladimir glanced up briefly, glared at her, then returned to the dial. 

“Twenty-three.”

Vladimir pulled the door. A beat, and then: “FUCK!” Vladimir slapped the safe and the clang of the metal rang out and drowned out the fridge and the tap.

Florentina flinched, but Taisia smiled and lay back down sleekly on the bed. 

“The numbers must be wrong, let me see those damn graphs again.” 

“Vladimir, darling the numbers aren’t wrong. Look at the graphs again.” She held up her phone in Vladimir’s direction, the red and blue lines intersecting at the three points. Florentina could see this, but Vladimir almost certainly couldn’t. “We have the drill here. Its lying on the carpet. Just say the word, I can pass it over to you. But you can only make the decision once.”

“I DON’T need the fucking drill.” It was hard not to laugh at this tantrum. 

Vladimir kept telling them how he approved of this work. An old-fashioned safe with a dial restores an element of challenge and problem solving to an enterprise that still struggles to command respect in the eyes of much of the public. 

Vladimir reset the dial.

“Seventeen.”

If they were stealing from another guest, the whole procedure would have been much more straightforward. Most of the safes throughout the hotel, as Vladimir could have informed you, featured a digital interface and keypad and required a five-digit code.

“Twenty-three.”

If pressed, hotel management would have admitted that there had been some rare incidents. Almost nothing that wasn’t covered by insurance. Some staff had to be let go. Investigations had pointed the blame at the hotel room iPads (also usually taken) provided to guests during their stay for providing a source of fingerprints. Once these were obtained, most of the hard work of guessing the keypad combination had been done. Unfortunate, admittedly. But again – senior staff at the Mayflower would have insisted – the problem had been identified and a blueprint for upgraded security was being finalised for approval.

It was not yet clear who had told the Prince about the burglaries. It had been, without a doubt, one of the darkest days in the history of the Mayflower Hotel. Its most lucrative regular visitor had exploded into the lobby, flanked by two of his bodyguards, red faced, yelling invective in English at the reception staff and punctuating these tirades with tortured soliloquies in Arabic to nobody in particular.

The carefully nurtured reputation of the Mayflower Hotel - luxurious, elegant, and above all discreet – hung by a thread. A platoon of managers and parent company executives were pressed into service. Rates were discounted. Concessions were made. And in the more expensive rooms, frequented by the most loyal and discerning guests, the safes had been replaced. 

The new safes, produced by a company called aperture, were stylish and elegant, "untouched by time, their dials will turn with the same effortless fluidity in a hundred years' time as they do today" (from the aperture website). Their style and elegance were accentuated by their accessibility. This was deliberate. Notwithstanding the previous problems with the keypads, it wouldn't do to maintain impregnable safes when so many hotel guests kept forgetting their combinations.  A good hotel manager knows when security must yield to hospitality. 

“Eleven.”

Vladimir turned the dial back slowly to the left. Untouched by time, the dial moved with the same effortless fluidity with which it would turn in a hundred years' time. There was a moment of silence where Taisia sat up on the bed, and looked at Vladimir intently. As Florentina stared at her shifting her gaze between the safe and the phone, each second took longer to crawl by than the last. Florentina could tell she was concentrating hard, and couldn't help but smile. The tip of Taisia's tongue had started to poke out the side of her mouth.

And then finally, finally, there was a click, and the door of the safe swung slowly open. Florentina checked the stopwatch on her phone. Fifty-eight minutes, thirty-three seconds. She had asked Taisia before why they didn’t just bring a locksmith or engineer and get him to open the safe instead. “They were going to!”, Taisia exclaimed, “…they auditioned three professional locksmiths previously. Elvira introduced me and Vladimir to them. but this Prince has bouncers, bodyguards, other goombahs surrounding him. You know, protecting all the Arabs and their party people. Vladimir told me seeing the Prince can be like getting into a nightclub.” 

This had been a few days earlier, before they had left Moscow. It was a Friday evening, and they were having a drink together near the university. “… and you should have seen some of these guys… dumb as rocks when they weren’t twiddling a dial, and not a single one – I’m serious – not one – was even average attractive. There was no way we could have got them into the hotel unnoticed. And after a while Vladimir was like ‘Stop this crap – I’m going to be at the hotel, I can look inside the safe.”

That evening with Taisia had convinced her that the trip would be ok. Taisia was so funny, and so easy to talk to; Florentina kept smiling for the whole next day at some of the things she had said (“I’m not making this up – I’m not – I had to explain to a 23 year old, a grown man, what a period was!”). Up until then she had been debating whether to return the advance and pull out of the whole thing.

“Tell me the truth - were you a figure skater in a previous life?”

Vladimir was trying to flirt with Taisia again. Taisia was looking at her phone whilst he talked and didn’t respond as she swiped through photos of Lada. Florentina went back to her drawing. She had carefully traced over the ballerina’s dress and was finishing drawing her hair. She stopped shading so she could sharpen the pencil again, making sure that its grey tip was honed to a fine point. She decided that the ballerina should have a bow in her hair, and looked up for a moment as she thought about what type of bow should be.

Vladimir turned back to muttering about the safe dial, but it was clear he had exhausted Taisia’s interest. 

Blue was Lada’s favourite colour. She took up the blue pencil, noticeably shorter than the others, and began to sketch the outline of a bow in the ballerina’s hair. Over by the bed, Vladimir was still babbling on about contact points or something. She hoped Taisia could understand all this, because she couldn’t. She was an artist, not an engineer, or whatever you needed to be to learn about opening safes. Florentina re-traced the outline of the bow with the sharpened lead pencil. 

Over the other side of the room, Vladimir’s babbling had drawn to a close. Taisia escaped the conversation and retreated back to Florentina’s desk. Vladimir was putting on his jacket and a scarf. Taisia took up a chair and prepared to help on Lada’s picture. Glanced up with pleasure that they would soon be left alone.

“I have to go and meet Alexander. We’ll be back in an hour or two, and he’ll want to brief both of you when we get back. You two behave yourselves.”

Both women muttered a distracted “bye”, but did not look up from the ballerina. Out of the corner of her eye, Florentina saw Vladimir momentarily frozen on the spot, waiting for a better end to the conversation, and fixed her gaze on the ballerina’s hair. Taisia was busy shading in the ballet shoes. Vladimir fixed his scarf and both girls could hear his awkward, uncertain steps and then the open and close of the hotel room door.

When the door had closed, Taisa looked up, crossed her eyes and made a talking mouth with her hand. Florentina couldn’t help but laugh, even though she knew Vladimir was probably still just outside the door. 

“He’s off to his important meeting, he has to brief Alexander and its too important for us to come along”. 

Florentina was still laughing. She glanced at Taisia as she concentrated on colouring in the ballerina’s tutu. She still felt a touch of jealousy when she looked at Taisia’s beautiful blonde hair, large blue eyes and long eyelashes. She was a few years older than Florentina. Every time Taisia smiled at her, or joked with her, or made one of her goofy faces, Florentina grew in confidence. 

In the last few days Florentina had been daydreaming about her life when this job was done. The daydream was embarrassingly detailed: Florentina and Taisia lived in adjoining houses in a duplex. Each house a small garden where they were growing flowers and vegetables, and Taisia was sitting on her front steps watching Florentina help Lada water some roses. 

These thoughts would often make Florentine smile and glaze over. But they always evaporated when one of the men interacted with her. She had often noticed Vladimir and Alexander looking at her strangely during these episodes. Flashback to one of Mama’s many warnings about daydreaming. She thought about mama as she was watching Taisia colour in Lada’s picture, and she felt a lump in her throat.

Taisia had put the finishing touches on the ballerina and was taking a photo of it with her phone to send to Lada. Florentina must have been bored because she decided to open the folder Alexander had told her to read. Taisia had been right: there wasn’t much of value in it. The brief, if that was not too strong a word for it, was built around a handful of articles from websites and magazines. Three of these were in English, and she had to get Taisia to help her read them. One of these was an article from Wikipedia.  

Taisia had seized the brief from Alexander when he tried to pass it to Florentina, leafed through it theatrically, before tossing the folder to the side. “She doesn’t need to read any of this, who put this together? This is useless, I can tell her what she needs to know!”, Taisia declared. Florentina had to wait until Taisia had left to go down the hall before she felt that she could look for herself. Later on she had to go to Taisia and get her to help translate some of the more difficult English words. 

She picked up the wikipedia article and skimmed through it again: 

“...Prince Farouk Aziz bin Fahd (born 1974) is the second eldest son and protege of      the assistant minister for intelligence and armaments of Prince Salman bin Fahd.

A reportedly divisive figure amongst both the members of the Royal Family and the wider public, his aptitude for business and politics has been counterbalanced by a reputation for extravagance”.

Along with his maternal uncle Majid bin Sayef al Ibrahim he is a major shareholder          in the Qurayn Media Corporation, one of the largest private free-to-air satellite              broadcasters in the Middle East and North Africa region.

The Prince owns a Boeing 777, a Boeing 737 Business Jet and a Canadair                       Challenger which he uses frequently for pleasure travel.

Florentina scanned some of the magazine pictures of the second eldest son of the assistant minister for intelligence and armaments. He was a slightly chubby baby-faced fellow, with straight black hair and a strangely unfinished looking goatee. The facial hair (she imagined) was to offset the likeness to a schoolboy after too many visits to the tuckshop. 

Wikipedia continued its biography (it should be noted that the online version of this article has been flagged as controversial and its content may be in dispute):

‘In 2017 Prince Fahd stepped down from his position as deputy minister for                       Agricultureafter multiple reports emerged alleging that he crashed his car whilst            intoxicated in the Diplomatic Quarter of Vienna in the early hours of April 17.    Two young female passengers suffered minor injuries, and Prince Fahd himself was apparently treated for concussion'.

'Palace insiders have reported that the fallout from this incident and subsequent               professional disgrace led to a period of professional and personal exile. Prince               Fahd’s professional diligence in several minor government posts led to his                         appointment in March 2019 as principal secretary to Prince Mohammed bin                      Almasi.

On November 24 2019 it was erroneously reported by several news outlets that the         Prince had been killed in an exchange of gunfire at a dockyard in the French port city of Marseille.

There was a second piece of information, a newspaper article, also included in the dossier. This dealt with another prince or Emirati or whatever (how many were there?), who seemed to also have something to with the oil business. Stuck to the article was a note saying ‘Prince Fahd’s boss, may also be there’.

Florentina waded through the article: “Prince Mohammed bin Almasi, 39, has risen surprisingly quickly through the ranks of the Emirate’s power structure, and has used his growing power and influence to help shape its newly assertive stance in the region. … Prince Mohammed has recently been put in charge of the state oil monopoly, and the Ministry of Defence’. 

The article had a photo of the other Prince. He was thinner and more attractive than Prince Fahd. But there was a hard, unsmiling look on his face, which Florentina found a little frightening. The rest of the article gave a detailed account of the new portfolio responsibilities of various ministers and members of the Royal family. She struggled to the end, and her head began to spin a little. 

Taisia was taking a break from colouring in and was browsing Facebook on her phone. 

Being shut away in a hotel room like this waiting for more instructions was wearing very thin. It was such a waste of time and place being cooped up in here like pets, when they weren’t even achieving anything. Florentina was smart enough to keep the Prince busy for at least fifty (OK, perhaps fifty-five) minutes. Enough time for the safe business to be finished surely? He’d probably just fall asleep after a massage. 

Almost an hour later she had almost succeeded in boxing up these fears when the door opened and some of the men entered the room. 

Chapter 2.                              

It was Alexander who came in first. It was difficult for your eyes not to be drawn to his sharp-jawed angular clean-shaven face, accentuated by his thick, wavy hair. He looked like he should be advertising a Hugo Boss aftershave. He glided into the room and smiled at Florentina and Taisia. Florentina couldn’t help but meet his eyes and smile back. Taisia couldn’t be won over so easily and pouted, and asked how much more of their time would be wasted stuck in a room. Alexander moved slowly towards her as he replied. 

“Is there a reason you’ve shut us up in this room like luggage, Alexander?”

‘Patience in all things, Taisia. All the details have almost been worked out. By this time tomorrow all of London will be yours to do with as you please. But right now, right now we work.’

Florentina breathed a sigh of relief, and felt her initial excitement at coming to London returning. Vladimir entered carrying a suitcase, and an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. 

He saw Florentina and smiled his version of Alexander’s warm, easy smile. She returned it with an icy, contemptuous look, which amused Alexander. Vladimir held her gaze while he lit his cigarette, and after a second Florentina looked past him to examine the other two newcomers. 

Another man: bad haircut - cut in a circular wave so that his hair looked like a helmet. His teeth were yellowed from too many cigarettes and he threw his shoulder bag onto the ground near the bed. He was followed by a clean cut man who came in at a march, and whose posture was better than the previous man. 

Alexander called the first man Yuri and they shook hands firmly. The second man took a phone call and went back out. Yuri looked over at Florentina, and smiled, and held her gaze until she looked down. It was creepy.

"And who’s this?" 

Florentina shifted closer to Taisia, who seemed uninterested in either of the two newcomers.

Alexander was texting and didn’t look up. 

“Yuri I would introduce you but you know as well as I do that a gentleman should never introduce a lady to somebody that may turn out to be disreputable”.

Yuri smiled at Alexander's joke, but he didn't take his eyes off either of the two women. 

"In that case, I'll introduce myself. I'm Yuri, and I'm delighted to make your acquaintance". 

Taisia and Florentina gave their names in the most perfunctory way possible. Alexander displayed a flash of private amusement when Yuri’s delight at meeting his new acquaintances was not reciprocated. Yuri himself also seemed untroubled, and with a final grin at Florentina turned and accepted Alexander's offer of a drink. Alexander shot Florentina a smooth, easy smile and she felt relief rush over her and her confidence return. 

During the exchange with Yuri another man had entered the room. Older, grey-black hair, dressed in a button-up shirt and a sports jacket. He looked straight at Florentina and she felt a shudder of terror race through her. The upper right side of the man’s face was a lifeless melted candle. Whereas his left eye flickered in its socket during the second that Florentina held its gaze, the right eye was bloodshot and its wilted iris stared lifelessly ahead.

Taisia looked surprised when she saw him. She inhaled deeply as the new man looked at her, and then turned ostentatiously back to the drawing.

The left eye looked past Taisia and Alexander and fixed itself upon Florentina. She immediately cast her eyes downward and began looking at her phone. As she blankly pressed the buttons, ashamed at having been caught staring at him, Florentina was sure that she could feel the left eye scanning her whole body. After a moment, she heard Alexander and the new man come into the room and finish their conversation.

Alexander introduced him: ‘Yuri this is Mikhail, I don’t think you’ve met before. He’s here to handle some of the logistics of this operation’. Mikhail stood silently and appeared to survey the hotel room.

Yuri: “Does he speak, or should we change his batteries?”

‘I’m Mikhail. I have experience handling logistics for various operations’, came the flat and affectless reply. ‘Now run me through the plan for this evening’. Florentina glanced up again and immediately found herself staring into the eye once again, which was relaxing in its socket waiting for her to stop pretending to ignore it. 

At Alexander’s prompting, Vladimir started to recite the planned itinerary: the planned meeting with the Prince and his entourage for his farewell to London at the club (organised by Vladimir and by Sergei, who had been mentioned before), the updated reports that the Prince was planning to return back to his suite at the Mayflower where he had been living for the past three months, Vladimir’s reports of the Prince obsessively shovelling money, diamonds, USB sticks in and out of the safe. 

“… Yuri is here to handle the communications and tap into the Prince’s phone if and when we obtain it. And I’ve been practicing on the same type of safe for several weeks now.” 

Mikhail considered this. ‘Its a wasted skill if you never get into the target’s hotel room’. 

Obviously there’s alarms and video cameras providing security for the rooms, so we’ll just have to ensure that Prince Fahd invites our guests up with the rest of his friends. He does it all the time, the whole bunch of Arab cocksuckers and their hangers-on. Sergei is confident he can steer the ship safely into shore.’

Mikhail’s functioning eye swivelled slowly in its socket and looked at Alexander, who raised his eyebrows. The eye rotated back to Yuri, and then to the two women. Yuri squared his body, ready for the argument, but Alexander laid a hand on his arm. Florentina could see Mikhail and Taisia looking at each other, and an unspoken accord seemed to pass between them before Taisia looked away.

‘Bring those two over here, I want to talk to them.’ 

A chill pulsed down Florentina’s spine and she reached out and grabbed Taisia’s hand. Taisia squeezed it and then let go as Mikhail approached. He navigated his way around Florentina’s suitcase and stopped at the end of the bed where they were sitting. He motioned to the armchair.

‘Mind if I sit down?’. Florentina nodded meekly, and Taisia answered back that he could sit down if he wanted. ‘Thank you’. He sat down slowly on the armchair and looked at them both. His eye stopped at Florentina. 

‘So you’re Florentina?’. She swallowed and nodded, as he turned to Taisia. “… and you have been confirmed in your role in tonight’s … tonight’s proceedings?”. Taisia nodded. Mikhail paused and seemed thoughtful. 

‘Did Alexander tell you what needs to be retrieved from the room?’

‘I know what I’m doing.’

“And Vladimir - does he know what he’s doing?”

“He needs time… But I’ve seen him do it.”

“How much time?”

Taisia looked anxious and didn’t reply.

The emotionless voice repeated itself like a machine: “How much time?”

A long pause. “Maybe an hour…”

No reply. A shadow had fallen on the unharmed side of Mikhail’s face as he sat in thought.  Taisia looked like she was fighting the urge to say something further. 

He ignored her for a while, before turning back to her. For a moment, he seemed on the verge of saying something. He glanced back at Alexander, who had glided over while he and Taisia were talking. Alexander returned his look, and nodded slightly. Alexander looked over to Florentina and winked. The pulse running up and down Florentina’s spine came to a halt. 

‘Ok, that’s good.’ It was difficult to tell whether he really thought it was good. ‘Now let’s hope they haven’t changed out the safes’. Taisia looked worried but Alexander shook his head. 

Taisia looked thoughtful. ‘Maybe  … we could just ask him to open the safe for us.’ Alexander smiled but Mikhail looked solemn. Well, even more solemn. 

‘Why would he open the safe for someone?’ 

‘... Well if, if we can get him drinking.... Well it might just be easier to … ‘. Taisia trailed off. Florentina froze again as she peeked over at Mikhail’s face staring expectantly at Taisia. Again Mikhail seemed to be in deep thought. 'Don't try to get him to open the safe for you' he said at last. Even Florentina, whose experience with industrial deception was relatively limited, was instinctively relieved at seeing Taisia’s idea overruled. 

Mikhail turned his head to look at Florentina. A strange instinct took hold of her and she lifted her head to try and stare back at him. After half a second the side of Mikhail’s mouth flickered amusedly. Florentina swallowed and tried to keep looking into his strange and terrible face, but after another second, she averted her eyes and looked over toward the bathroom. 

‘Its easier to hold someone’s gaze if you only have to do it with one eye.’, Mikhail observed. Florentina looked over at Taisia, who nodded reassuringly. 

Mikhail reprised his line of questioning. 

‘Can you keep the Arab busy for sixty minutes after Taisia leaves to the other room?’ 

Florentina nodded. 

‘How are you going to keep the Arab busy for twenty-five minutes after Taisia leaves?’ 

Florentina felt like she was in maths class at school. She swallowed and frowned. Mikhail had resumed his stare down.  

‘Well, um, after we ...’. The men were starting to laugh, but Mikhail continued staring at her. ‘Well, with Taisia in the other room, I will give him a massage… and then see if he wants to take a shower. Then… well’. She felt herself turning red.  

Florentina shuddered and wondered if she’d said enough, but she really couldn’t think of anything else to add. She was becoming furious at being talked to like this, but she was too scared to push back. She squeezed Taisia’s hand again. Mikhail looked and her and smiled slightly. ‘Good. Good, you’ll be fine’.

‘What do you do in your free time you?’, Mikhail asked. There were many possible things he could have said at this juncture, but this was unexpected. ‘Um well...’ - for some reason she was tongue tied. ‘Florentina is an artist - a drawer’, Taisia helpfully added. ‘I’d like to be a cartoonist maybe … or maybe draw posters for fashion shows’. Florentina heard herself blurting this out, and Taisia started laughing. Mikhail’s blank expression didn’t change.

‘That’s good’, he said flatly. At the back of the room, Alexander received a telephone call, and spoke quickly and efficiently. ‘Yes, they’ll ready’ he said. ‘They’ll be there shortly after 10pm’. He hung up, and glided back over to the three team members occupying the beds. He spoke to Vladimir.

Florentina felt her heart sink again. She had an enduring fear being trapped having to make small talk with a stranger for an open-ended period of time. Taisia returned Alexander’s smile, and stood up. She turned to Florentina, winked, and squeezed her hand. Alexander bent down and whispered something to Mikhail, who frowned and shook his head slowly.  Alexander turned to Florentina. ‘Be well, my beauty’, he said, and touched her cheek. Then Alexander took Taisia’s hand and led her out of the room. The door closed behind the two of them. Florentina was alone with Mikhail.    

Chapter 3.

There was a small fridge in the corner of the room with a kettle and coffee bags perched on top of it. Florentina watched as Mikhail went over and began to make himself a cup of coffee. Several moments went by, as he turned the kettle on and retrieved the milk from the fridge. Suddenly his blunt, toneless voice cannonballed through the air. 

‘If you want me to make you a drink, all you have to do is ask’. He didn’t look up from what he was doing. Florentina was suddenly conscious of herself staring at him, gripping her pencil with her frozen left hand in mid-air, like a child holding a crayon. 

‘Um, I’m fine, thank you’, she stammered, and she snapped her head back down to her drawing. 

‘You should have a drink, it will relax you’. Mikhail still hadn’t looked up from what he was doing. ‘I’ll make you one, and put it on the table. You can drink it, or not drink it. Its up to you.’ He finished make two cups of white coffee and brought them over to the motel room’s tiny table. He set them down and then went to his briefcase, and retrieved a wooden chess set. 

Florentina looked at the steam curling up from the two cups of coffee resting on the table. Mikhail was starting to arrange his chess pieces. ‘Do you have one of those makeup mirrors, that women use to put lipstick on when they’re out and about?’. Nothing in Mikhail’s tone or body language changed when he asked this question. Florentina’s moment of relaxation at the inviting sight of the coffee mugs began to melt away. ‘Um, yes, here...’, she reached into her purse and got out the makeup mirror. 

Mikhail had retreated back to the fridge to dispose of the coffee bags. ‘Then next time you want to stare at someone, that is what you use’. Florentina was blushing again. ‘Use it, and tell me how many fingers I’m holding up’. She picked up the mirror and angled it away slightly, and the Mikhail appeared in the lens holding up four fingers. 

‘You’re holding up four fingers’. Mikhail nodded. ‘Good. Now try it again, but do it while applying your lipstick. That might make it look less like you’re trying to spy on someone. Keep your head straight, only move your eyes’. Florentina retrieved her lipstick from her purse and applied it using the makeup mirror. Out of the corner of her eye she observed Mikhail holding up three fingers. She concentrated on keeping her head straight.  ‘Three fingers … now four’. Mikhail seemed relatively pleased and grunted to himself. ‘Better. Your first proper introduction to spycraft’. 

He had finished setting up his chess pieces. Out of the corner of her eye, in the reflection of the makeup mirror, she could see him take a sip of his coffee. ‘How well do you play chess?’ he said. ‘I don’t play chess’. Mikhail paused. ‘You should play chess. Its your national game’. ‘Well, I don’t know how to play.’ ‘Well come and sit at the table and I’ll show you. You can be black, I’ll be the white pieces. You should hurry, because your coffee is getting cold.’  

Florentina didn’t particularly feel like drinking coffee, but her fear of Mikhail, which had subsided to a persistent but low reverb in her stomach, had begun climb its way back up her spine toward her heart. She didn’t have any choice but to comply, and scurried over to the table. She sat down and stared at her pieces. Florentina again felt Mikhail’s eye scanning over her slowly. 

‘OK. So I’m going to assume you don’t know anything about the game, so we’ll start with the basics’. He picked up a piece from his front row. ‘These are the pawns. You can move them forward one space at a time, except on the first move, where they can move forward two’. 

It was unsatisfactory that the very first rule of the game was immediately followed by an exception. She must have been frowning, because Mikhail asked her if something was the matter. She shook her head. ‘Don’t worry it about it too much, just know that they can move two at the start, then one. Now...’ he put two pawns, one from each side, in the centre of the board. ‘... when you want to take a piece from the other side with a pawn, you can’t take it front on like this, you have to take it diagonally, like this’.

Florentina tried making a joke. “What about Angry Birds?”. Mikhail shot her a look of complete incomprehension. ‘What?’. ‘Angry Birds. It’s a game you play on your phone.’ Mikhail raised his eyebrows. ‘Yes I know, what about it?’. Florentina realised that she’d used her brief shot of confidence to derail the entire conversation. ‘Well everyone I know is playing that. Maybe that’s our national game now’. There was a brief silence, during which the incessant buzzing of the refrigerator was amplified.

After a long moment, Mikhail clarified the facts. “Angry Birds isn’t Russia’s national game. Chess is Russia’s national game.” ‘Ok’, Florentina replied. Mikhail was conscious that they were yet to move beyond the movement of the pawns, and continued. “These are the castles. They move in straight lines horizontally or vertically. These are the bishops - they move diagonally. Do you understand?’. She nodded. Mikhail held up a tall chess piece. “This is the Queen, and she’s the best piece you have. She can move like this or like this”. “Its good that they made the Queen the best piece. I like that.” He nodded, and she sighed inwardly as he kept droning on about the other pieces on the board.

“Where did you grow up?” he said suddenly. “In Moscow”, she replied, using her standard art-school cool girl cover story. He fixed his gaze on her until she looked away again and swallowed. “Where did you grow up?”. “In Nizhny Tagil, in the Ural Mountains. Its near Perm”. Mikhail nodded. "I know where it is. When did you decide to come to Moscow?” “About a year ago when I was accepted into the art school… I worked as a model for a little while to pay for class…” 

Almost true. She thought back to the last casting call when she was number 77 (of like a billion) and her anger at those losers making her humiliate herself and that piece of shit lighting guy and … she realised that he was staring at her and that she had began to feel that anger rise in her again. She didn’t even know why she would tell him something like that. She apologised. “Sorry… I don’t know why I told you that.” Or why he would even care. Or why she was still sitting here playing this game for children with some old man. 

Mikhail was holding up the tiny wooden horse. “Now pay close attention. This is the knight. These are important. They move either two, and then one, or one and then two. And they can jump over other pieces. Got it?” She nodded. “Now we’re ready to play.” The lesson over, he triumphantly moved a pawn two spaces. Florentina was trapped in a board game. She moved a knight. “Mmm. Good first move”.  She suddenly felt good, although she still didn’t really know what she was doing.  

“So how long did you work as a model?”

After a short pause, Florentina replied: “About a year”. She noticed herself swallowing and felt herself blush. Mikhail moved another pawn two spaces and informed her it was her move. She picked up the knight again and moved it to the corner of the board. 

“I don’t think you worked as a model for a year. I think you’re still lying to me.” The casting call anger returned. She wanted to tip the whole board over and slap him. She settled for saying: “So you’re surprised that people lie to you when you demand answers to idiot questions about … nothing that matters.” The last part felt like it was wrenched out of her. He was looking at her but he gave no sign of a reaction. Her blush deepened, and her spine shivered. “You have two choices: stop lying, or lie convincingly”. 

There was a pause in which Mikhail moved another pawn. “Your move”, he said, “Don’t move the knight again. You shouldn’t move the same piece twice in the opening. You have to concentrate on controlling the centre of the board. See you have to focus on what square each piece can attack, not just where it is on the board. Understand?” She didn’t really, but she decided to copy Mikhail and move a pawn.  

‘So are you ready to start lying properly to me?’. She was already halfway through a chess game, so she thought she may as well learn something useful from him. ‘Yes’. Mikhail moved his bishop into the centre of the board. ‘Then start by getting your hand away from your mouth when you lie. Get your arms away from your throat and chest.’ Florentina started to feel annoyed at Mikhail’s commands. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat before moving another pawn. 

She felt Mikhail staring through her again. ‘You’re losing our chess game. You don’t have any pieces that control the centre of the board.’ Anger was fighting with fear inside her. She swallowed and looked him directly in the eye. ‘Why do you think I even care about playing this fucking game?’

Mikhail’s mouth curved upwards in what might have been a smile. ‘So you’re annoyed that I’m making you play chess?’. Florentina didn’t reply. ‘And its your move. I recommend that you move the knight toward the centre of the board.’ She moved the knight to the centre of the board. Mikhail was staring at her again. ‘You can’t deceive people if you let yourself be annoyed you so easily. When you meet these Arabs tonight you’ll see. After five minutes you’ll want to drink cyanide milkshake. So I’m preparing you, exercising your patience. Now smile like there’s nowhere else you’d rather be. That’s more of a grimace than a smile.’ 

Florentina allowed herself a mutinous glare, but Mikhail didn’t react. He took a sip of his coffee and looked thoughtful. ‘OK let’s take a break from chess for a few minutes’. He gestured to the bed. ‘Sit down on the bed there’ he ordered. ‘Now you’re going to relax. That’s the most important part of this job, everything else flows from it. You’ll never make a good liar if you can’t relax’. 

Florentina slumped down on the bed at Mikhail’s command. She didn’t feel annoyed anymore, just homesick, mixed with residual gloom at being tormented by chess games. Mikhail finished his coffee and resumed the training regimen. 

‘Now, as I said, I need you relaxed. Properly relaxed that is. Now make a ball with both your fists and squeeze as tight as you can.’ Florentina realised she would probably have to re-do her nails after this. She balled up her hands and started to squeeze. ‘Squeeze harder’, Mikhail ordered. She kept squeezing harder until she started to feel a little faint. She was embarrassed to realise that she has closed her eyes tight and opened them suddenly, blinking stupidly in front of Mikhail. He was right though, she did feel more relaxed. 

‘Now breath in to the count of ten’. She lowered her eyes and breathed deeply. ‘Good, good’. She looked back up at him and he nodded very faintly at her. ‘You have to remember that. Its easy to do it now, but you have to remember to do it when it counts.’ She nodded. He paused for a second. ‘Now, where did you grow up?’. She looked him in the eye: ‘In Moscow. My family lived in a townhouse in Frunzenskaya, not far from Gorky Park’. There was a pause, and Mikhail nodded his approval. 

This set the pattern for the next hour and a half. Again and again Mikhail forced her to breath in and out slowly, before elaborating on an increasingly complex web of lies and misinformation. He fired question after question at her, often returning to the same questions over and over again.

"What did your father do for a living?", he would ask intermittently. She had never known her father- her real father- but repetition started to strangely make her believe that he really had been a doctor who used to walk her to school each day. She did find that it was easier to be natural when you believe your own lies. 

It was exhausting, and she was grateful when Mikhail declared that they should take a break. She had a drink of her coffee, and a moment later Mikhail stood up and put on his jacket. ‘Come on. Let’s get some dinner’. He started to go toward the door. Florentina took out her phone and took a photo of the chessboard. 'What are you doing?.', Mikhail asked. "I'm taking a photo of the chess game to put on Instagram'. Mikhail sighed and ushered her out the door.