The Art of Deception

by The Art of Deception (retail) (epub)

  ‘I’m Meira. Would you like some coffee?’ When Julian did not reply at once, she said, ‘Do you speak English? Gavaritie po Ruski?’

  ‘English,’ Julian found her voice. ‘I speak English.’

  ‘Good, then we can talk to one another. My Russian is pretty lousy and my Chechen is non-existent. What about the coffee?’

  ‘Would tea be possible?’ Julian felt that she might wither up if she drank any more of that desert drink, the driest liquid she had ever tasted.

  ‘You not only speak English, you are English. I can do tea, but it’ll be Russian tea, no milk, if you can take that.’

  When Julian told me this story, one word told me everything. Once it had been spoken I knew why they were there, what Anatoli and Igor must have been doing. But when Julian made this trip, early in 1994, Grozny was a town unknown in Europe and the Chechens an unheard of people.

  Meira returned after an absence of twenty minutes with two glass cups in metal holders, filled with golden brown tea in which floated sprigs of mint. She perched the brass tray on the kelim-covered trunk and seated herself on the cushions by the fire, spreading out her wide skirts over her crossed legs. It was not long before she was pouring out her history. She spoke like one who loved to talk and was starved of opportunity. Julian listened with a horrified fascination. There were many differences between them and one fundamental similarity which she recognised at once: a life lived entirely for a man.

  Meira’s story of easily diverted passions, abortions, disappointments and optimism was a tale from hell for Julian, who could not bring herself to contribute her own history and instead made herself into a good listener. She was born in Boston where she grew up, at some stage she had married and moved to New York. Chronology was not her strong point and events were coupled in her narrative by an internal logic unrelated to time. Her husband disappeared from the scene. With the fall of the Soviet Union she came to Europe to visit her family’s homeland in Georgia. Here, she had encountered Mansurkhan Ibrahimov, her current lover, and committed herself to his cause. He was a Chechen, one of a warlike people who had declared themselves independent of Russia in 1991, soon after the August coup.

  ‘Now it’s a question of arming ourselves,’ Meira said. ‘All Chechens have guns. It’s a kind of tribal society in which a man has to have a gun and a car to be validated as a man. But you need more than a rifle to take on Russian tanks and they’re the enemy.’

  ‘And that’s why we’re here?’

  ‘Yes, you guys can get us mortars and rockets which are the very least of what we need. We want jeeps, tanks, planes. It’s to protect ourselves you understand. If you’ve lived for centuries under the pressure of a ruthless great power on your northern border, you know that when you’ve grabbed your independence, you’re going to have to preserve it.’ She opened the French windows, letting in icy air. ‘Do you want something to eat? Shall we see what we can find?’

  The kitchen was as spartan as the rest of the house. A scarred white butler’s sink was piled with dirty dishes and below it a lidless dustbin was filled with leftovers. Under the table a large tabby cat sat, with one back leg raised in the air so it could comfortably clean its belly fur. Meira was turning the contents of some blackened saucepans.

  ‘What’ll you have?’ she asked. ‘It looks like rice. This is lamb. It’s very good, I can tell you. One of the bodyguards makes it.’

  Julian was drawn to the door into the dining room where the men were sitting amid the debris of a meal. Some plates were stacked at the end of the table, others had been pushed to one side by the diners, in favour of coffee cups, wine glasses or what looked, in Igor’s case, like vodka or plum brandy. The squalor struck Julian before she observed the people.

  Mansurkhan was obviously the leader. He was a big man in his fifties with dark hair and a grey beard, the two zones strikingly demarcated, with grey stripes running up his sideburns to his temples. The curling hair that escaped from the neck of his open shirt was grey too. He was leaning on his forearms, his black-nailed hands spread out in front of him. Igor was smoking, as usual, leaning back in his chair listening to Mansurkhan. The atmosphere was one of debate, but not of hostility. The only discordant note was struck by Anatoli, who was taking no part in the conversation. He had drawn his chair away from the table and was sitting sideways with his arm along the back.

  In the car returning to Istanbul she dozed uneasily between Anatoli and Igor, feeling the tension in their silence. When they reached their hotel, Anatoli said in Russian, ‘Igor, come to our suite, will you? I want to talk about this.’ Julian had by now woken up and when he continued, ‘Julian, do you want to go to bed?’ she looked at her watch, saw it was two thirty and said, ‘No, I don’t think so. I’ll have a nightcap with you two.’

  She had never wilfully misunderstood him before and he looked as if he might strike her. Julian turned her back on him and sat down.

  ‘Now,’ she said, as if oblivious of his unexpressed fury. ‘Let’s have something to eat. I hope you two are not going to be ill. I saw the kitchen and couldn’t eat a thing, so I’m starving.’

  She leaned over to take the phone and called room service for sandwiches and a bottle of wine. She then prowled round the room, nibbling dates from the dish of fruit on the table.

  Anatoli sat down heavily and said to Igor, ‘We’re not going on with this.’

  Igor was standing with his back to him, looking at the night view of the city. ‘We’re committed. You’ve just committed us.’

  ‘I’m going to uncommit us.’

  ‘You’re going back to tell Mansurkhan that you’re not going to deliver everything we’ve just promised?’

  ‘I’m not going to do it now. But it is going to become impossible for us to fulfil the order.’

  ‘You can’t do it. If we don’t deliver, all of us in Moscow will be in the shit. No question.’

  ‘We shouldn’t be doing it. We’re arming them to fight Russians.’

  ‘A bit late to worry about that sort of thing. I don’t remember any problems about dealing with our friend Iman, or the Latinos. If we don’t sell these guys the stuff, someone else will. Anyway, we can’t get out of it now.’

  The knock of room service silenced them both. The waiter fussed around with plates and napkins and wine glasses, while unresolved anger thickened the air. When he had gone, the silence continued, as if they knew that there was no reconciliation of their positions.

  ‘Who are the Chechens?’ Julian asked.

  ‘They’re the thieves and murderers of the empire,’ Anatoli said.

  ‘They’re an independent republic in the northern Caucasus which needs to protect itself. Quite reasonable.’ This was Igor. Then he added, ‘Anatoli’s right. They have a powerful underground network in Moscow and have had for years. They’re hitmen. So I can’t see that we’d survive long if we went back on our word.’ He had let out the information to frighten her. It worked.

  ‘Anatoli.’ He ignored her.

  ‘Dyadya has his own reasons for this. As far as I am concerned it’s good business. The Chechens want what we’ve got. They’ve money to pay. And even more important, they’ve got oil. It seems to be late in the day to say we shouldn’t arm them. He’ll do business with Colombia and Hong Kong and Iraq and now he makes a fuss about Mansurkhan and the Chechens. You can’t work by making promises and not keeping them. If we go back on it, we’ll find ourselves dead on the street.’

  Anatoli had been furiously eating sandwiches. ‘It’s no good. I’m not going to go ahead with this.’

  Igor shrugged. He had ignored the food and lit a cigarette. He turned his head to eject a stream of smoke with a force that belied the careless movement of his shoulders.

  ‘And,’ Anatoli went on, ‘I find this fear of the Chechens in Moscow ridiculous.’

  Julian watched the row develop, making no effort to intervene. She crouched in her chair, her terror growing. For once she thought Anatoli was wrong.

&nbs
p; The words they used had no meaning, because they simply reiterated their positions in different ways without changing the sense. Anatoli shouted. His face was suffused with rage, his fists clenched. Igor was pale. On the surface he appeared calmer, but she sensed that his anger was even more powerful than Anatoli’s. Even though Anatoli now dominated the room with his large figure and his noisy rage, the arithmetic was against him. If Igor and the Uzbek wanted something, they would get it and the fact that he had opposed it, fruitlessly, would count doubly against him. It was no good having a row with Igor. He had to be persuaded that the deal was impractical, or it was not worth it, or it was not in his interest. Somehow, too many other things had got mixed up in this very simple matter: Anatoli and Dyadya, Anatoli and Igor, Russian and Uzbek, nomenklatura and outsider.

  Russians never gave up. They could go on all night, making things worse every time they circled over the old ground. She stiffly released her knees, uncoiling her legs which she had drawn up to her chin, and rose from her chair. They took no notice of her. Anatoli was leaning forward, his chin jutting at Igor who was lounging back as if held in his place by the force of Anatoli’s fury.

  She put her hand on Anatoli’s shoulder. ‘Anatoli.’ He ignored her, continuing his flow of Russian rhetoric. ‘Anatoli, this is enough. We’ll get nowhere like this. Leave Igor alone. You’ll have to sort it out calmly in London or Moscow.’

  He stopped speaking abruptly. She was standing over the two of them, dominating them. The silence stretched between them, thinner and thinner. She was waiting for it to rip open and expose what had happened. This was when things went wrong. She had chosen Igor, to save Anatoli, and Anatoli would never forgive her for it.

  26

  Once the Chechen war broke out, Anatoli spent more time in the west, most of it in London, as if he found life in Moscow intolerable. His visits were longer, but did not have the predictability of the past, so Julian lived in a state of expectation, always hoping to find him at home when she returned, or a message on the answerphone to say when his plane was due in. The sight of his coat slung over a chair in the hall, the sound of his voice, ‘Julian, it’s Anatoli,’ never failed to produce a halt in her breathing, a falling sensation in the gut. The physical symptoms of obsession were always there.

  ‘I always knew it would end, that is, I always feared it was too good to last, which is why I worried so much, why I tried to learn from Igor where the danger was, to arm myself. I meant to prevent it, to outwit fate.’

  We were sitting in the dark; she held a brandy glass in her palm. She spoke to herself as much as to me. I thought how much of what she told me about her feelings for Anatoli applied to mine for her. I never drew the analogy to her attention.

  ‘When the end came I had been expecting it, fighting it for years. But I didn’t see it when it came. I imagined shootings in Moscow, arrests in the west. I had never dreamed of this.’

  ‘Weren’t you ever frightened for yourself?’ I asked. ‘Not for Anatoli.’

  ‘Not at first, but after Istanbul, yes, I understood how dangerous it was. I remember, just before Anatoli disappeared, we were in Paris. You know how I hate Paris. Bad things always happen to me there.’

  Both Anatoli and Igor were there for several days ‘on business’. Julian and Anatoli were staying at the Crillon and Igor in one of his little hotels on the other side of the river in the sixth. Julian had come to join them to see Anatoli and to finish furnishing an apartment for the Uzbek. He had bought a block of flats in the eighth arrondissement and had taken the two top floors for himself. Although he was still unable to leave Russia, he continued to invest in property in the west. Julian had on several occasions flown to Cyprus to make arrangements for the purchase of property there, to see lawyers and architects and builders, to carry out the designs she had made for the house by the sea. Anatoli did not like her being so actively involved with the Uzbek, but she reasoned that she was helping him in his difficult relations with his partner. She did not hide from him what she was doing; on the other hand, she never went into the details of her visits.

  She breakfasted with Anatoli on the day after his arrival. She knew from experience they would have little time together. He would disappear during the day and at night they would dine with Igor and other Russians. They arranged to snatch lunch together in the Place St Germain.

  It was unseasonably mild. The sun shone as she walked along the Rue Napoleon looking in the antique shops for furniture that would please the Uzbek. She had chosen several samples of fabrics for the curtains in the drawing room and almost decided on a set of heavy gilt Louis-Philippe chairs which were of a size and grandeur to suit him, if he were ever able to come to France again to sit in them.

  She arrived first at the brasserie and the waiter, an old friend, placed her at her favourite table in the warmth of the sunshine through the glass, to look out over the square to the church tower. After some time she saw Igor striding across the cobbles, his grey raincoat flapping around his long legs. He made straight for the entrance to the restaurant and came to join her at her table.

  ‘I don’t think Anatoli’s going to make it. Did he call you? No, you don’t have one of these things.’ He took a phone from his pocket with his cigarettes and said, ‘No alcohol for me in the middle of the day. I’ll just have a bottle of wine. Will you share it?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’m going to have a steak.’

  ‘Ah, you’re a carnivore, truly a Latin, not a central European. Latins need meat. Look at them.’ Around them Frenchmen sat eating steak frites or the plat du jour which was faisan pommes dauphinoises, according to the blackboard. ‘Northerners need sugar to keep them warm, to stop them getting depressed.’

  ‘And what are you going to have?’

  ‘Nothing. I don’t eat lunch. You know me. I keep going on nicotine.’

  His phone rang, calling disapproving glances from those around them engaged in the serious business of eating. He answered in Russian. His glance at one point darted at Julian and he seemed to hesitate. When he closed the phone, leaving it lying beside his plate, like an extra knife, he said, ‘One of Dyadya’s people is coming to speak to me. I’ve told him to join us here. You don’t mind.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  About twenty minutes later she saw, over Igor’s shoulder, a powerfully built man making his way towards them. He was middle-aged, his face etched with lines, his eyes narrow slits beneath jutting eyebrows. He bowed and smiled and sat down between them, speaking rapidly to Igor. Julian’s Russian had advanced since that first evening when she had been invited to Francesca’s, but she understood nothing of the patois in which the newcomer and Igor conversed. She ate her steak and tried to judge by their gestures what the relationship was between them. The older man was deferential to Igor, leaning forward in his chair, his hands between his thighs. Igor smoked and asked a few questions, interrupted once or twice. At one point the new arrival reached into the breast pocket of the jacket he wore under his grey and black anorak, and drew out a paper. He placed it in front of Igor, smoothing out the folds.

  As he did so, Julian saw that three fingers of his right hand had been severed at different points. The index finger was missing altogether, the middle finger had been cut off at the first joint from the knuckle, the ring finger lacked only the top section, so that it was the same length as the little finger, the only one, along with the thumb, that was whole.

  When their visitor had gone, Igor drained the last of the bottle of wine into his glass. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘I must go now. Where do we meet this evening?’

  “We’re going to some Russians who live on Avenue Foch. Are you coming?’

  ‘Yes, there’ll be caviar and they know how to count the vodka, Russian-fashion: a bottle a head.’

  ‘And will he be there, your fingerless friend?’

  ‘Him? No, not his scene, man. He’s an aide of Dyadya’s. You know how his hand got like that? The punishment of the court.’

&nbs
p; ‘Of the court? They don’t…’

  ‘Not the Soviet court, though their punishments could mean much the same thing in the end. No, this was the thieves’ court, with the thieves at law sitting in judgement. It’s not an anarchic world. It has its rules and its punishments.’

  ‘Was he in the same camp as you?’

  ‘He wasn’t in the camps. He came to Dyadya as an enforcer. He was a sportsman, a javelin thrower, I believe, but not absolutely the best. What becomes of those people when they get old, at twenty-five or thirty? They’ve been trained for one thing since they were ten years old, then they’re no use any more. They’re strong, fit and used to the best of everything. So they get recruited as bodyguards. He was picked up by Dyadya. But at the beginning – I didn’t know him then, this was years ago, when Dyadya was a boss in Tashkent – this guy was very arrogant and he made some mistakes. And that was his punishment.’

  He held up his own hand, palm inwards, the fingers clumsily folded down to mimic the javelin thrower’s injuries. ‘Pretty, isn’t it?’

  She did not permit herself to show any reaction, but she felt the sudden sickness of vertigo, when you look down and the earth far below spins in space, independent, unattached.

  ‘But what did he do, exactly? And why is he still working for Dyadya?’ She had concealed her emotion, but was betraying herself by asking too many questions.

  Igor became vague and dismissive. ‘Don’t ask me. He disobeyed the rules; that’s enough. And why does he still work for Dyadya? What else could he do? Who else will protect him? You can’t escape. And he’s a reformed character, one of Dyadya’s most trusted men. He has seen power and knows it works and he is a living witness and warning to everyone else. He holds up his hand and we’re all reminded.’ He rose. ‘See you tonight then.’ He bent towards her. ‘You look pale. I’ll call for another coffee.’