ROAD TO MANDALAY

by Rolf Richardson

  Alexei’s apartment was on the top floor, with a balcony facing west, the river barely a hundred yards off to the left. There was an open plan lounge/kitchen and one bedroom, all done in light wood and plastic.

  On the walls were a series of framed A3-size photos. One was of a skier -Alexei? - a contra-jour shot in front of the ‘eye of the needle’, a Val Fornet landmark. The rest were of animals: black Labrador in mid-flight leaping into a river; cat looking sloppy; close-up of a horse showing its teeth, as if laughing. Family pets?

  She welcomed me with a kiss and salad lunch. This was my first view of ‘summer Alexei’, an even more beguiling picture than the winter version. Her cheeky little face had retained much of Val Fornet’s tan and a trim body was encased in a grey top and white trousers.

  “First we eat and talk,” she began, indicating the spread. “Then we walk and talk. Then we eat again and talk. After that...?” She grinned. “Okay?”

  I said this was acceptable. As we sat down, I asked, “So who was Nikolai Vishnevskaya?”

  “The Nikolai part was correct, but not Vishnevskaya. It was Kuznetsov. Like saying Nicholas Smith here, so must be hundreds of them in the phone book - except they don’t have phone books. This particular one was a dissident.”

  “An opponent of the regime?”

  She nodded. “Since Yeltsin sold the country’s family silver to his cronies, Moscow has been a dog-eat-dog sort of place. Billions at stake. And much falling out amongst thieves. If you upset the Capo dei Capi, alias Vladimir Putin, you’ll likely find yourself lying full of lead in red coloured snow. To avoid this fate, people on his hit list often head west, where they hope to be safe.”

  “A wish not always granted,” I said. “Alexander Litvinenko moved to London, where he drank some Polonium-laced tea and took three weeks to die.”

  “Then they swamped Salisbury with nerve toxin,” added Alexei.

  “That’s just two attacks we know about. Dubious Russian deaths are two-a-penny.”

  “Which is why I can’t understand it,” she said. “If Nikolai was against Putin, he must have been a good guy. So why push him down an icy slope?”

  “Obvious,” I replied. “If your theory is correct - and remember I’ve always been sceptical - then Gudrun must be on their side: KGB or whatever they call themselves these days. Do you really think she’s that sort?”

  “I don’t know...”

  “How did you discover Vishnevskaya was Kuznetsov?”

  “My photo. The one you improved. I sent it whirling round cyberspace and got half a dozen replies. One lady emailed me an ecstatic, ‘Where are you Nikolai? Please come back!’ I didn’t have the heart to tell her this was no longer possible.”

  “Just as well,” I said. “Keep schtum. If the Russian mafia are involved, we should leave well alone. Let someone else find out if they can. Did you discover anything else about him? Like what might have landed him in trouble?”

  “Probably an argument about loot - money. Or maybe foolishly bleating about democracy.”

  “Mention democracy in Russia and you end up in a Siberian salt mine,” I agreed. “Or lose your head. Always been so, probably always will be.”

  “I don’t think Kuznetsov was a big dissenter. The little I could discover about him was pretty low key.”

  “That’s as maybe,” I said. “But big or little, the notion that Gudrun may be working for the other side poses the question of how we reply to her invitation.”

  “We accept. Of course!”

  “You don’t mind cosying up to an ex-KGB?”

  “We don’t know that she is. Anyway, no one turns down an offer of a night at Cliveden.”

  “Ever stayed there?”

  “It’s above even my pay grade.”

  “Think we might ask for the Profumo and Christine Keeler suite?” I mused.

  The ‘Profumo affair’ had been the major political scandal of the fifties, a delicious mix of ministerial cover-ups, reds in beds and high class call girls. All taking place at Cliveden. Now a very up-market hotel.

  Alexei smiled. “We should try and avoid the front pages. But go we must. Gudrun intrigues me. In spite of my suspicions, I can’t imagine her working for the Russians. And her email said she has something to offer us. I’d like to hear what that is.”

  “When suits you best? Next Friday or the one after?”

  We settled on the following one and fired off an email accepting. Then it was time for walkies. The weather had turned from spring to summer, small cumulus drifting by, temperature nudging twenty. We took the pedestrian tunnel under the Thames to Greenwich, past Cutty Sark, up the hill to the old observatory. Below us the baroque lines of the Royal Naval College, in the distance the high rises of Canary Wharf. One of the classic London views. I got some juvenile kicks posing astride the Greenwich Meridian, one foot in the western hemisphere, the other in the eastern. Then it was back to her place for dinner cooked by madam, followed by some domestic bliss. I could get used to this.

  11

  As I was car-less, Alexei had agreed to pick me up en-route. Cliveden is not the place for those who have to rely on public transport. Arriving in anything less than a Roller or Lamborghini was probably looked down upon, but Alexei had a little red Porsche Boxster, which I suppose was acceptable.

  Turning past the ornate fountain that heralded the final straight to the house, I had a sudden qualm. What if this was some elaborate scam? A joke? Would reception look us up and down and say witheringly that we were not expected?

  In the event, reception could not have been more charming. “Ah yes, here we are: Miss Thomas and Mr Bowen. Guests of Mrs Larsen. She asks that you meet her in the bar any time after six-thirty...” He looked at his watch and smiled. “That’s any time now. But you might like to freshen up in your room first.”

  Indeed we would. Alexei had managed to get away from work early, but Docklands was on the wrong side of London and the whole city seemed bent on fleeing for the weekend. As always, Richmond was a traffic nightmare, part of Kew Bridge under repair and the overhead section of the M4 barely moving. It had been a tedious journey.

  Once in a fit state to socialise we went down to seek out our hostess. The bar décor was dark wood and heavy reds, long drapes partially obscuring the large windows; Toulouse-Lautrec late 1800s style.

  We spotted her easily enough, sitting by the window with a man of about her own age.

  They rose as we approached and Gudrun made the introductions. “Max, Alexei... I’d like you to meet Igor.”

  Igor... A glance from Alexei. Of course. Russian. Ex-KGB?

  If so, Igor must have been taught good manners at spy school, because he gave Alexei an old-fashioned bow and seemed about to kiss her hand before opting for a normal handshake. He was a large courtly looking man, dressed in a suit and dark tie, his most distinctive feature being a mass of silvery hair that was perhaps a mite too long - as if he fancied himself an operatic conductor, a musical maestro.

  Gudrun matched Igor in height and was also dressed for the occasion in a long dark skirt of expensive material and string of pearls around her neck. Although she was all woman from the neck down, that very short blonde hair again gave her a boyish appearance.

  When drinks had been ordered, Igor said, “We’re meeting here because I wanted to thank Gudrun for what she did for us in Val Fornet. When she mentioned she wanted to meet you two, I said let’s make it a foursome.” His English was fluent, but with a noticeable accent.

  Gudrun smiled. “Think yourselves lucky. I wouldn’t normally have chosen Cliveden. You have Igor to thank for that.”

  Alexei was looking pensive, no doubt, like me, trying to process all this information. London’s Russians were famous for their deep pockets, but what was his connection with Gudrun? And who was Gudrun? “Why did she want to meet us?”

  As if reading our thoughts, Gudrun began, “I expect you’re wondering why you’ve been invited?”

  We nodded. I couldn’t h
elp noticing that Alexei looked gorgeous, the shortest of us all in stature, but with her youth and dress sense the runaway all-round winner.

  “Let me answer your question by asking another one,” continued Gudrun. “What do you think happened at Val Fornet?”

  Alexei and I exchanged puzzled glances.

  Gudrun, “Have you discovered anything more since?”

  Alexei hesitated, then said, “Vishnevskaya’s real name was Kuznetsov.”

  “Excellent.” Igor gave Gudrun a smile. “You said these two were promising material.”

  Gudrun, “Anything else?”

  “Kuznetsov was an opponent of the Moscow regime; a dissident who’d fled to London.”

  “Very good.”

  Gudrun and Igor both looked delighted.

  “So what does that make us?” added Gudrun.

  Alexei, who’d been in the firing line for these questions, looked uncomfortable. Said nothing. Like a coward, I also remained silent.

  “Let me answer that for you,” continued Gudrun, clearly enjoying this verbal jousting. “You are understandably suspicious. You see someone tumbling down an icy slope. How could this happen? Then I appear, apparently unruffled. I realise now that some tears would have been a good idea. So you investigate further. Discover the dead man was not whom he was supposed to be. That his skis seemed to have been tampered with...”

  “You know that as well...?” I was astonished.

  Gudrun smiled. “We’re very thorough; phoned round the rental companies and heard you were not happy with what you found. When you then discovered Kuznetsov was a Russian dissident in exile, a species with a famously poor shelf life, you drew the obvious conclusion...”

  Silence.

  With us saying nothing, Gudrun continued. “You assumed that I had...” she hunted for the right word, “...facilitated his fall. Am I correct?”

  Further silence.

  So she pressed on. “Which led to one more inescapable conclusion: Igor and I must be agents of the Russian regime.”

  Neither of us responded. Drinks had arrived, so we filled the hiatus with alcohol.

  Gudrun broke the silence. “Immaculate reasoning. Only one thing wrong. Kuznetsov was not a dissident.”

  Alexei and I together, “What?”

  Igor took over: “Kuznetsov said he had left Moscow because he feared for his life. At first we believed him. But Russian politics is a tangled web and one day we heard a whisper, that Kuznetsov was in fact... I believe you call it a stool pigeon, a plant. Such men are dangerous.”

  Gudrun added, “Especially for people like Igor, who really are enemies of the regime.”

  Igor nodded. “Moscow is waging an undeclared war on all who dare speak out against the regime. Remember Litvinenko? And the Skripals? All attacked on foreign soil. So even here in London I must be very careful. Russia is not like other countries. We’ve never known true democracy. Always been ruled by tyrants. Even our good tyrants have been brutal. Peter the Great killed his own son and Catherine the Great was involved in murdering her husband. That was two of our best rulers. You can imagine what the bad ones have been like.”

  “Kuznetsov was not only dangerous to people like Igor, there was another factor,” said Gudrun. “Russians only respect one thing, strength. Which is why Peter the Great’s son, when accused of treason, had to be executed. And why mass murderer Stalin still has his admirers. So Kuznetsov’s death sends a clear message back to Moscow: you can’t have it all your own way.”

  “What happened in Val Fornet was not an accident, then,” said Alexei.

  “Of course it was an accident,” said Gudrun.

  “A very fortunate accident,” Igor added.

  We let more alcohol digest these official statements.

  Then Alexei asked, “What has this got to do with us? Why the invitation?”

  “That will take more explaining,” replied Gudrun. “Let’s do it over dinner.”

  12

  Large windows ensured that the dining room was pleasantly bright; it may have been late evening, but the summer solstice was barely a month away. We were shown to a table for four in a corner, no doubt chosen for privacy. While studying the menu and selecting wine we kept to very British topics like the weather and state of the popular soaps. Only when the waiters had departed and the wine poured did Gudrun get down to business.

  “I think it’s best to start with how I got started,” she began. “Does the name Anders Behring Breivik ring any bells?”

  “Wasn’t that the chap who ran amok?” I replied. “Shot a lot of kids at a summer camp? In Sweden? Norway?”

  Gudrun nodded. “It was Norway. America is obsessed with Nine/Eleven and the Twin Towers, but we remember the twenty-second of July. The day everything changed for us. First shock was hearing that a bomb had gone off in the government quarter of town. Only a few people were around, but the blast was so powerful that one victim was shredded and could only be identified by a dismembered finger with a wedding ring.”

  “Such things simply didn’t happen in Norway,” she continued. “And while we were trying to come to terms with the fact that the impossible was happening, it became much worse. News started filtering through of a massacre of young Labour Party activists. Clearly we were being attacked by Islamic terrorists.”

  “Clearly not,” said Alexei.

  Gudrun nodded. “On top of the impossible we now had the unbelievable: that the culprits were not Islamic crazies, but one of our own, a single demented man. If his target had been a politician, for example the prime minister, we might have understood. Some years ago the Swedish prime minister was assassinated. These things happen. But to shoot a group of innocent teenagers in cold blood was... well, beyond belief.”

  Gudrun had not shed a tear when Kuznetsov had fallen to his death, but her hankie was out now.

  “Violence is now unregulated and unpredictable,” explained Igor. “In the bad old days we generally knew our enemies. Planes were painted with black crosses, or red stars, or rising suns to show which side they were on. Now the enemy may be that nice looking young man sitting beside you in a bus.”

  “How do we fight these phantom enemies?” asked Gudrun, recovering her poise.

  “Tip them over a steep and icy slope,” I suggested. And immediately regretted it. After all, I was enjoying a weekend at their expense in one of the most expensive hotels in the country.

  Fortunately Igor smiled. “That’s the sort of solution we’re being forced into. Laws increasingly favour the criminals, or at least prevent us bringing them to justice. So governments are turning to ‘black’ operations which are deniable even when successful. Many things now happen that never happen.”

  Gudrun added, “Litvinenko was liquidated by Moscow, even though they swore it was nothing to do with them. We know who his killers are, but can’t prove it. We’re helpless. But we can try and stop such things happening again.”

  “By taking out people who might want to kill Igor?” asked Alexei.

  Gudrun nodded. “It’s not something we’re proud of. But it’s becoming necessary. And of course we also deny everything. We now live in a world of lies.”

  “Bad guy Kuznetsov is eliminated by pushing him down a mountainside. Of course nothing to do with you.” Alexei was not impressed. “But where do Max and I come in? You’ve not invited us here for an expensive weekend just to thank us.”

  Gudrun and Igor looked at each another, as if uncertain who should do the explaining. The decision fell to Gudrun.

  “Modern warfare is different to anything we’ve been used to. Old guidelines have gone. We’re floundering. For example, how do we silence hate preachers when everyone should have the right to free speech?”

  “And who would join a Western army these days?” added Igor. “A soldier’s job is to kill the country’s enemies, but make a slight mistake in the heat of battle, when it’s your life or his, and that soldier may find himself up on a murder charge. We’re not advocating Na
zi-style executions, but rules of engagement have now swung too far in favour of the enemy.”

  “To try and cope with this brave new world certain... let’s call them ‘interested parties’ have set up an organisation called the Stockmann Institute,” said Gudrun.

  Alexei, “Like the Scandinavian retail group?”

  Gudrun shook her head. “No connection. We’re more of a think-tank. A pressure group. We monitor some of the bandwagons that get going. Try to put a brake on those that stray too far into the rough - to use a golfing metaphor.”

  “By nudging them down an icy slope - to use a skiing metaphor?” said Alexei.

  “Sometimes drastic steps are necessary in order to survive. Like the state of Israel, we may have to do the unpopular. Even the unlawful.”

  “You can’t compare Britain with new nation Israel.”

  “Why not? Whatever your age, if survival is at stake, special measures may be needed.”

  “You sound like one of those sandwich board men,” I said. “Repent! The end of the world is nigh!”

  “Don’t mock,” said Igor. “In Tsarist times Russians were saying ‘A crisis? Nonsense. Nothing to worry about.’ Next thing they knew the Bolsheviks were in town and any opponents were either in exile or facing a firing squad.”

  “Complacency,” said Gudrun. “It’s in those last few seconds before catastrophe that people never had it so good.”

  As if on cue to defuse a tense discussion, waiters then arrived with our starters. Alexei and I had chosen the fresh asparagus spears with the chef’s secret sauce - delicious. The others had gone for French Onion Soup.

  After we had enjoyed our first taste, Alexei said, “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to be rude. Should have been more tactful.”