East of the Sun Read Online Free Page A

face lift from the pillows. Apologetically she started backing out of the room, but Amelia jumped up and gestured for her to come back inside. Quickly the woman disappeared into the bathroom with a stack of fresh towels and just as quickly she was gone again with a brief nod. Fully awake now, Amelia stood purposelessly in the room for a minute and then remembered that she still had to call Mara, the one person she could trust with the truth about her return to Moscow.
    As she lifted the receiver, there was another knock on the door. The maid must have forgotten something, she thought, but when nobody entered, Amelia put the phone down again and went to open the door. The passage was empty, and an envelope lay at her feet.
    Puzzled, she bent to pick it up, wondering why the delivery person hadn’t waited. She returned to the desk and with the telephone wedged between her shoulder and ear, she opened the thin, cream-coloured envelope.
    Inside was a piece of paper, a bright yellow square folded over into a triangle and then into another. There was no doubt about the tone of the message:
    It is too late. Go home.

3
    T he time difference between London and Moscow was insignificant – a mere three hours – and there was no real reason for Amelia to wake up, but it came as no surprise when she did. Only recently had she started experiencing the bliss of sleeping through the night again, but it had been a fragile new milestone she had known not to trust. And now there was something else that added to her restlessness. A message that couldn’t have been any clearer: It is too late. Go home.
    She was unnerved by it, yes, but in a way it also confirmed that her gut feeling to return was the right one. Someone had a reason for not wanting her here. That much was obvious. Was it because they, whoever they were, wanted to keep something hidden?
    As she lay in the dark, the uncomfortable pounding in her chest told her it was useless to try and let herself drift back to sleep. She reached for her mobile phone: the glowing screen showed it was only a few minutes before four. She held her breath and listened. The hotel was quiet, so quiet that she didn’t want to disturb the silence with the noise of the television, but without the aid of a distraction there was no chance she would be able to sleep again. Being back in Moscow had stirred up too many memories of the person she had once been and a life that no longer belonged to her.
    The reading light cast a soft yellow light on the folder she’d left untouched next to the bed a few hours earlier. Out of it she pulled a wad of newspaper clippings and print-outs. By now the first article was so familiar she could quote from it, so she picked up the next one and scanned through the information:
    . . . three years ago Sibraz, a Russian mining company with extensive operations in Siberia, identified what it believed to be a prospective diamond deposit, but the company was unable to explore the deposit on their own and had to look for a partner to share the exploration costs. There were more than enough interested parties, but, according to industry sources, the list dwindled as it became clear just how protective Russians are of their exploration licences. It was rumoured that their conditions were extreme and that they were unwilling to share much control with any future partner. The winner, or rather, survivor, was Prism, a medium-sized Canadian mining exploration company with a reputation for taking big risks and more often than not earning big returns from those risks.
    A joint venture was formed between Prism and Sibraz and exploration on the Kola Peninsula was supposed to commence six months later. However, things were slow to start and countless rumours surfaced about the fragility of this particular JV. There were even hints of the deal falling through last summer, but the stories disappeared until a week ago when Prism unexpectedly announced that it had sold its stake in the joint