On his bed was a plastic bag containing four large pots of caviar that he had, as usual, smuggled through the Russian customs. He delighted in his skill in doing this, exasperating Julian.
‘Why don’t you just pay?’ she would say. ‘It’s not even your money you’re saving. Anatoli would pay.’
‘It’s the risk, you must understand that. It’s the principle of cheating. I have to do it. Anyway, what’s his is mine; we’re partners. So I’m saving my money.’
‘What if you were caught?’ She understood very well what made him do it, but she was too intelligent to take small risks.
‘If they found them, I would pay up; a bribe not a fine. But I’m too clever for them.’
This time, she saw, he had been taking big risks, too. Lying beside the casually presented parcel was a moulded briefcase, cheap, nondescript, in keeping with Igor’s own style. Turning from opening the door of his room to her, Igor saw that its lid was raised. He flipped it down with the palm of his hand as he reached over it for her present, but not quickly enough to deny Julian a view of what it contained. Her two bricks of dollars, still stacked in her drawer at home, gave her a standard by which to assess the value of its contents. She could not believe what she had seen.
Igor put the plastic bag into her hands. ‘Sorry it’s not well wrapped,’ he said. ‘Anatoli always tells me to buy some boxes and ribbon to make a nice presentation to you and I always tell him I did it. So I hope you won’t betray me.’
She dropped the caviar on the bed and slowly lifted the Ed of the briefcase. ‘Igor, what is this? You’re meant to be a computer man and a banker. What are you doing with a briefcase full of cash?’
He pretended to look shamefaced. ‘A bit primitive, I agree. I’m not usually involved in this side of things, but we had some courier problems and Anatoli didn’t feel there was anyone else. He couldn’t come himself, because you know how things are between him and Dyadya just now. So I took over. I thought I’d like to see you. We can go out for a meal, or I know, even better, let’s get drunk.’
At the time, she thought he was evading her. Afterwards she became convinced that he had stage-managed everything.
‘Never mind that. What sort of banker flies from one country to another with suitcases full of cash? What are you doing?’
He firmly removed her hand, closed the briefcase lid and spun the lock. ‘All right. I’ll put it in the night safe at the bank. Then we’ll eat.’
‘You’re mad. We’ll be mugged.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll hand over your jewellery like a lamb. They might be willing to take you, too. I’m safe.’
They flagged down a taxi on the Bayswater Road and took it to the City. When they drew up at a heavy, old-fashioned wooden door in a narrow side street, Igor got out and rang the bell. He spoke into the intercom and was let in by a security guard. Julian leaned over to identify where she was. Banque de was all she could read, inscribed on the frosted glass windows above the marble dado. When Igor returned he was in high spirits.
‘Liberation,’ he said. ‘Let’s find something to eat. We’ll go to the Chinese tonight.’ He gave directions to the taxi driver and leaned back, humming under his breath.
‘Now I’ll explain it to you,’ he said, when he had let her pay for the taxi. ‘It’s all legit. I have all the papers I need to show what this money is. We’re a bank, so we change money. Russia is a cash economy, so everything is done in cash. But eventually with a moneychanging business you need to turn the cash into paper. And that’s what I’m doing.’
She saw that he was teasing her, showing her something to rouse her suspicions and then explaining away her questions. It was as if he wanted her to know, was inviting her, tempting her to knowledge and then denying that he had meant what he had said. The sight of stacks of cash inside the briefcase had looked, quite simply, criminal. No one needed to carry cash around in quantities like that. Then he immediately denied the suspicions he had aroused; like a conjurer making bank notes disappear from within his folded fingers.
‘It’s not the kind of thing that the Big Five banks involve themselves in, it’s true. But in London you can always find someone to do business with you. We found an idle private bank, delighted to handle our cash and take our commission. And all legal, too. Our courier was stopped at Heathrow last month with over a million dollars in cash, but he had all the papers necessary to prove he was legal and he went on his way like a good citizen.’
They had arrived in front of the restaurant and hesitated outside.
‘You don’t want to eat, do you?’ Igor said. ‘Food’s shit, eating’s for kids. Let’s buy some vodka and take it back to your place.’
This was Julian’s first experience of a Russian drinking session, which begins with the desire to be drunk. She herself had only occasionally had too much to drink, for her love of control revolted against the abandonment that went with it. She had never before seen someone soberly set out to be drunk, tackling it like work.
Afterwards, it was never clear to her – nothing was clear about the rest of that night – whether she could only remember gobbets of Igor’s conversation because of his drunkenness or hers. She had only had one glass and had been immediately in the region of raised consciousness which precedes a blackout. Igor had drunk steadily, smoked continuously, talked.
He had talked about his childhood in Siberia, about the autumn when the forests of larch turned gold around Lake Baikal, about the late spring when the snow had barely disappeared and the wild flowers sprang up overnight.
She was lying full length on a sofa in the drawing room. The fire was lit, otherwise the room was in shadow.
‘What about your parents, your brothers and sisters? What did you do as a child?’
‘I didn’t have brothers and sisters. I didn’t have parents.’
He lurched to his feet, stumbling against the coffee table, disappearing in the direction of the bathroom. She watched the shadows on the ceiling, realising she was drunk because of the terrifying feeling of freedom and omnipotence. The reckoning would come later, as it did for any kind of abandonment, whether emotional or financial. This knowledge came from deep down, embedded in the foundations of her personality, in her bigoted petit bourgeois home in Nottingham, whose much-prized ugliness had aroused her hatred as early as she could remember.
She had long ago rejected her parents, but their sense of the structure of life, of how things had to be, sometimes reasserted itself. The wicked flourished like the green bay tree, of that they had had no doubt, and it was proof of their righteousness that they had seen worldly success pass them by. Their only child had reversed the premiss: in order to flourish, you had to be wicked. They had expected their ultimate triumph in the next world, when all those of whom they disapproved (blacks, Labour politicians, foreigners, snobs, in fact, anyone who didn’t know their place) would be proved wrong and punished for their errors. Her father had been a policeman, who had believed in discipline for his daughter and for everybody else. Longer prison sentences and the death penalty would sort out most of the problems of society. He had died when she was still at university and had not seen her wilful flourishing. She had deliberately wiped him and her childhood out of her mind. She was a changeling, misdirected to a wrong destiny at birth, which she was altering by her own will. Yet her father’s blows in swift and violent punishment, echoing in her head, had marked her expectations. The balance was being drawn up and retribution always came. An eye for an eye was the final account.
When Igor came back she said argumentatively, ‘You must have had parents. Everyone has parents. You didn’t spring fully formed from someone’s head. Even in a camp you must have had parents.’
Igor lay down on the floor with his head propped against the sofa. ‘What the hell do you know about the camps?’
‘You told me once you were a camp child.’ He did not reply. He seemed to have fallen asleep. She could see his eyes were closed. ‘You were drunk,’ she offered in
explanation.
‘I must have been. I don’t talk about the camps usually.’
‘You’re drunk now.’
‘My mother was a political, that’s the lowest of the low. My father? Who knows? If she’d had any sense she’d have got off with the most violent murderer in the camp, who would have protected her, given her some bread. She died when I was about five, I suppose. I don’t remember her. After that I was a camp child, like a camp cat, fed by everyone, kicked by everyone. That’s how I know Dyadya.’
‘He was in the same camp as you?’
‘He was the ruler of the camp. You despise Dyadya because he’s an old man with gold teeth who doesn’t speak good English, or good Russian for that matter. He’s not your idea of a powerful man. That’s Anatoli, who’s got all the elements that you respect. But you’re wrong. Dyadya’s been a great man all his life. He’s led men and imposed his will in circumstances you can’t imagine. I’ve seen it. That’s why I know Anatoli must be careful.’
She struggled up to open one of the French windows onto the balcony to let in the night cold. Anatoli’s name was throbbing in her head. He hated cigarette smoke in the apartment. His nostrils would tremble like an animal’s, tasting the air when he entered. He liked the scent of lilies, her perfume, leather. Cigars he smoked in the open air, standing on the balcony, contemplating London. He would smell Igor’s smoke when he returned; it would never be erased. She leaned out, gulping the fresh air, clutching the iron rim of the balcony. Igor was standing behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders, holding on gently, as though she were a piece of furniture helping him to remain upright.
His voice was abstracted, whispering directly into her ear. ‘Dyadya was a knife man. A knife stolen from the camp kitchen, sharpened on a stone, a blade like a razor, a point like a needle.’ One hand dropped to her waist. “You aim here. A quick blow and out. The victim doesn’t know it’s happened, no blood, externally; nothing to show. The spleen is pierced, the body cavity fills up with blood. Quick, clean, invisible.’
She leaned further forward, looking directly down now, four storeys. Fifty feet below she could make out the foreshortened spikes of the railings, the squared stones of the pavement.
‘It’s the Judas jab. I’ve seen Dyadya embrace a man and leave. Ten minutes later he fell down and was dead within half an hour. The wound was in his side, just there, like a mouth, little red lips, that’s all.’
She had always suffered from vertigo and rarely opened the windows or stood on the balcony. The drop was too great and too attractive. She could feel the desire for the ground in her feet, the almost irresistible sensation of gravity calling her downward.
‘Or you can throw it; straight between the shoulder blades of a woman trying to escape.’ His arm came around her neck, jerking her painfully backwards.
“You’re drunk,’ he said. ‘Come away from there.’ He forced her to step back, the crook of his elbow pressing on her trachea. She took his hand and slowly removed it from her neck, still standing with her back to him, her other hand caressing her throat.
‘Is Dyadya dangerous?’
Igor had poured himself another drink. ‘We need herring,’ he said. ‘Caviar, smoked fish.’ He strode off through the hall, towards the kitchen. When she reached him, she found the fridge door was open and by its icy light he was prising up the lid of one of the pots of caviar that Anatoli had sent. He tipped its contents onto a plate, scooping out the last reluctant, slippery grains with his finger tip.
‘Black bread? You have black bread?’
She opened a cupboard. Her kitchen contained certain basics for Anatoli’s unexpected arrival and black bread was one of them, but Igor would not wait. He had already taken a teaspoon to the caviar.
‘In the good old days of Stalin and Brezhnev little Russian children of the nomenklatura had a spoonful of caviar everyday to help them grow healthy. And look how big and strong they grew. Look at Anatoli.’ He took another spoonful. ‘And then look at me. You can see the difference. He has a body women like. I’m a piece of string.’
She took no notice of his self-pity. ‘Igor, stop. Leave some for me. Eat it properly.’
He opened the freezer and took out another bottle of vodka.
‘Is Dyadya dangerous?’
She was lying down again when she heard Igor repeat her question. Was it on her bed that time? Now she was horizontal the world no longer swung with the rolling motion of a great ship in a storm. Instead, the words themselves seemed embodied and to fly like birds through the darkened air above her eyelids.
‘No, not yet. They haven’t reached that point yet. But he could be. And when it happens, we’ll have to decide which way to jump, you and I.’
He stopped talking. His head was on her thighs and she could tell he had fallen asleep, the vodka felling him from loquaciousness to silence with a blow as violent as one from the Uzbek’s hitmen.
She woke feverishly thirsty, alone. Igor had gone, leaving empty vodka bottles in the drawing room, a greasy jar of caviar in the kitchen and the odour of his cigarettes everywhere. She cleaned her teeth and got back into bed and slept for another ten hours. When she woke again the amnesia of alcohol failed her. She remembered every word he had said. It had to be replaced with determination to forget everything she had learned. Igor was not to be trusted. She did not have to believe him.
22
After that drunken night information jumped at her from every side, forcing itself upon her.
She had gone to collect Anatoli’s shoes which were being resoled at a little repair shop nearby. There was a queue, but she could not avoid waiting, because he was due back that night and might want them the next day. The radio chattered in the background and the blur of senseless conversation sharpened into meaning.
‘… and what exactly does money laundering consist of?’
‘Well, as you can imagine, it’s a system of taking black money, that is money that has been made illegally in any way, but usually if we are talking about big money laundering operations, it’s drugs money, and turning it into white, legal money that can be moved around the world’s financial markets and invested legally in property or stocks and shares or anything you like…’
The man at the head of the queue was complaining about the unsatisfactory job that had been done on the seam of his brogue. The girl was arguing that the problem was that his foot was too big.
‘… it’s not literally put through the wash, ha, ha. The legitimate financial world is an immensely complex place and growing ever more so and the criminals’ activities simply mirror what is going on above board. You can set up a series of shell companies, for example, which do nothing, have virtually no life, so that the movements of money between them have nothing to do with business or profit that has been generated. They are simply ways of getting illegal money into the banking system.’
Julian shifted from foot to foot, wanting to escape, held in her place… ‘The sensitive point is where black money is transferred from cash to paper. Paper is traceable in a way that cash is not, so the method the law enforcers are using to attack money laundering is to watch deposits. Where do they come from and why are they in cash? You’ve got to have a very good story to explain why…’
At last she was at the head of the line and impatiently put down her ticket. The girl consulted the number and began to examine every one of the fifty or so brown paper packets stacked on the shelves behind her.
‘… this is where the best hope lies of tracing all those narco-dollars, the profits of the cartels…’
She laid a ten-pound note on the counter, swept up her change. A month ago she would not have heard, however long she had had to stand there. Now it was as if she had developed an acute sensitivity, like an allergic reaction, to any mention of Russia and Russian crime and could detect any reference to it in her environment. She rationalised her fears with a lack of rigour that even she recognised. Igor had been teasing her. He liked to terrify her. He had explai
ned the suitcases of cash: they were money-changers.
* * *
She sat opposite Barnaby at one of Francesca’s dinners.
‘We were in St Petersburg again last weekend,’ he shouted at her. ‘Have you been there yet?’
She shook her head. She would never go to Russia.
‘You should. So beautiful, but in a terrible state. We went to a gala dinner at the Winter Palace to raise money to preserve the city. Everyone was there, Romanovs, the lot. You should have seen the diamonds, just like the old days, before the Revolution.’
She watched him steadily, all attention.
‘It’s all so changed. We were among the first in there after the coup in ’91 and it was quite different then.’ She remembered his excited comments on the wild west and early capitalism.
‘It’s all rather out of control now. Crime has taken over and the levels of extortion are terrible.’
‘Extortion? Taxes?’
‘No, no, at least that’s legal extortion. No, protection rackets, and I don’t mean petty, street-level stuff. All the big companies have to pay up. If they don’t… A German firm refused, and they were fire-bombed. Three dead. Only Russians, but still. What does Anatoli say about it all? Pretty sickened, I imagine.’
* * *
She could never seek reassurance from Anatoli or ask him to contradict the fears planted in her mind by Igor. The unspoken rules by which they lived demanded that she knew nothing, had no worries. Her role was to smile and make him smile.
They came in late from a dinner at the Dorchester where they had been entertaining some business associates from Indonesia (there seemed to be no country in the world with which he did not do business). He turned on the television and stood in front of it, slowly pulling off his tie and rolling it around his hand, as he waited for the news headlines. She had thrown herself down on the sofa, closing her eyes. When she reopened them it was to see a shot which might have come from old footage of the last war, except that it was in colour.
The Art of Deception Page 16
