The Art of Deception

by The Art of Deception (retail) (epub)

  I did not reply. She stood up and undressed, as if the matter were settled. I watched her hang up her coat, her jacket and trousers, strip off her underwear. She disappeared into the bathroom and the soft sound of running water filled the room.

  ‘It’s tomorrow evening about six.’ She had put her head round the door for a moment. Ten minutes later she was in bed. She put out the light and said, ‘It won’t even interrupt your conference.’

  Sleep came to her at once. I felt the involuntary jerk of her limbs as she fell into oblivion. I lay awake, reflecting on her need to warn Anatoli, to protect him, even when she said she had no hope of seeing him again. I could not match her selflessness. I would go on supporting Emily and the children, but that was easy for me. The money cost me nothing. I could not maintain the constant thought for Emily’s good as Julian did for Anatoli. I knew, too, that I could not carry out her instructions in the way that she wished. But I would do what I could and the chances were that the moment Anatoli met me and understood what my bizarre mission was, he would tell me to mind my own business and leave. Then I would have done all I could.

  My reason for agreeing to intervene lay with Julian. Anatoli must be the judge of his own risks. I wanted to say that he had a responsibility to see that Julian was no longer threatened. There were presumably ways he could tell his partner the Uzbek, or whoever was threatening him, that he could see Julian dead with equanimity and it was, therefore, a waste of effort to apply pressure on her.

  31

  The next day I was chairing one of the sessions of the conference, an office I had been asked to undertake because I was neither French nor American and so was expected to hold the chief debaters apart and probably to be torn to pieces in the process. This diplomatic or sporting task occupied me for the bulk of the afternoon. At the end of the day’s business I met Julian and we walked back to our hotel together on the rough, ice-covered pavements. The snow had stopped the night before and the temperature had fallen further. The air was clear and sharp and stung my nostrils and ears. She had acquired a fur hat to match her coat. It had a pointed leather crown with a broad circle of sable all around it, sitting on her eyebrows, so that she looked like a fierce Tartar horseman.

  She gave me my instructions and sent me off in a taxi. The place, when I was delivered there, appeared to be a restaurant not yet serving, though in the process of preparing for, the evening’s meal. The cloakroom had no attendant to take my coat and, after I had waited for a time for someone to come, I simply hung it over my arm. A bear-like figure, presumably a bouncer, watched me with the indifference normal in Moscow. I looked around the hall and could see a larger room beyond, in which several waiters were laying out cutlery with considerable clashing of knives. The bouncer, seeing my indecision, pointed to a stairway behind the cloakroom, which descended to a basement. Here, the room was furnished in a shabby dark red, filled with heavy armchairs and small tables. A bar in the far corner was lit; the rest was in shadow.

  At the foot of the stairs I allowed my eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. It had the appearance of a night-time place, used only by favoured regulars during the early evening. One group of them was seated at the far end by the bar, five or six bulky men in grey suits, leaning forward to talk to one another, paying no attention to anyone else. They were at ease, with no wariness about them.

  Then I recognised Anatoli, sitting by himself, his bodyguard some way away from him. He was equally secure, immersed in his work. His briefcase was open on the low table in front of him and papers were piled on his lap and on the floor. If he was waiting for someone, he was not expecting him soon. I wondered exactly what arrangement had been made to entice him here. Igor had set it up. A query formed in my mind about Igor, then I dismissed it; it was too late to question the circumstances now. When it became apparent to Anatoli that someone had betrayed where he was, for I could not have come here by chance, it would be Igor’s problem not mine. I very nearly turned and walked back up the staircase. I knew what I had to say; I had no idea how I was going to say it.

  My hesitation was ended by the thought that I could not go back to Julian and admit I had seen him and said nothing, and by the sound of people entering above. This minute, irrelevant factor was enough to swing the balance and propel me forward. I sat down in the chair opposite his. He looked up and I saw his expression change to surprise.

  ‘Mr Vozkresensky?’

  ‘Yes?’ He sounded puzzled, wary, but not afraid. He spoke with an American accent. The bodyguard got up and came round behind me.

  ‘My name is Nicholas Ochterlonie…’

  He was gathering his papers, stacking them efficiently and piling them into his briefcase. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve come to see you on behalf of Julian, Julian Bennet.’

  He closed the case, depressing the catches with powerful, blunt- ended thumbs. ‘Oh, yes? Why’s that? You’re a lawyer?’ He gestured to the guard to sit down again.

  ‘No, no, not at all.’

  ‘A pity. I’ve some business to do with her, for which she needs good legal advice. I suppose it’s about that money.’

  ‘Money? No. I know nothing about the financial arrangements between you.’

  He was settling back in his chair. ‘So what have you come about?’

  ‘You know she’s been trying to contact you…’

  ‘Has she? Is she in Moscow?’ He lied convincingly. I could have sworn that this was the first he knew of her presence in the city.

  The people I had heard entering a few minutes earlier were now coming down into the bar. There were four of them. Their heavy, rubber-soled boots came into view through the open treads and sides of the staircase. The cloakroom attendant was evidently still not there, for they had not taken off their outdoor clothes, not even their shapkas, the flapped Russian fur hat. Their only concession to the overheated interior was to have opened their coats. They clearly did not intend to stay long.

  ‘She is indeed. She’s very anxious to speak to you. It’s because she failed to reach you yesterday that I’m here now.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  The new arrivals were moving about in a lumbering way, two of them passing awkwardly behind Anatoli. They stopped on either side of him and one said, ‘Anatoli Feodorovich.’

  Anatoli turned from me, and it was in his reaction that I first saw danger. I made to rise and the newcomers clearly thought I was the guard. Immediately, my arms were taken from behind by one of the men, while another frisked me with the speed of long practice. The bodyguard reached inside his jacket. One of the men holding me saw the guard’s movement and, faster than he could act, shot him. The bullet entered his chest on the left side just below his shoulder. He crashed backwards to the floor, knocking aside the chair in which he had been sitting. Blood and flesh from the exit wound hit the wall behind him. Even while all this was going on, I remember thinking, AF – AФ. So it was Anatoli’s cuff link.

  The barman had disappeared. The conversation among the group at the far end of the room was frozen, like a Dutch genre scene. Our glances, fixed on the weapon, seemed to stretch over endless time and space. My eyes shifted uneasily back to the bodyguard, towards whom I had made an involuntary movement of aid. He was lying on his back, his mouth and eyes open. Blood was seeping out from under his body. I was tugged backwards. I did not resist, for there was nothing I could do. Blood would continue to drain out of the hole in his back; there would be a lot of it to clear up.

  Anatoli, too, was being held and searched. He was speaking angrily, but with control, not shouting. None of the men replied. The one who had spoken his name took his hand out of his pocket, moving his gloved thumb into his palm. Running smoothly from beneath his fingers, the silver triangle of a double-sided blade appeared. He turned his hand over and we all looked at the knife.

  Then, with co-ordinated speed, the four men seized us by the arms, gathering up Anatoli’s briefcase. Ahead of me, Anatoli was led up the stairs. It was a tight fit fo
r three large Russians in all their outdoor kit, but they mounted at speed. I was forced to follow. Hands behind me propelled me upwards. My feet moved; I was not being dragged, yet I went against my will. Force, moral and physical, projected us both out of the building into two cars. I saw Anatoli thrust into the first one just before I was pushed into the back of another with my two companions on either side of me. In the front seats were two more men. I was still clutching my overcoat, which I had had no opportunity to put on. Now as I was pushed into the car, my head was covered with a jacket, which was pulled under my chin and secured by twisting the sleeves together at the back of my neck. This cut me off from everything. I was filled with frustration and rage.

  I had not been in someone else’s physical power since I was a child. When I was about eight or nine my class at prep school had been ruled by a man on the brink of insanity, perhaps driven so by years of association with wild and unreasoning eight-year-olds. He enjoyed both physical and psychological cruelty and the most terrifying aspect of his personality was its unpredictability. Blows would erupt without warning and we lived in a state of terrified bewilderment. Later, I often wondered why we did not complain to our parents, or band together to rise up in revolt against his tyranny. I recalled that sense of powerlessness now that my resistance was enfeebled by my knowledge that my captors were numerous, ruthless and, furthermore, did not understand a word I said.

  I was held in position by the men on either side of me, my nostrils filled with the sweat and cigarette smoke that permeated the coat wrapping my head, trying to reason myself out of the impulse to unreasonable action. I did not speak Russian; I did not know where I was or where I was going; the climate was inhospitable and to escape into the night outside was to invite death by hypothermia. These were all reasons to submit to violence and to hope for the best: that they would realise their mistake in taking me and would let me go of their own accord. Futile resistance lacks dignity as well as purpose and invites pain. But I did not want to submit, to wait patiently until they came to their senses and let me go or decided to correct their error with a bullet. Better to make an attempt to escape, but best to do so with Anatoli, who would at least provide language and local knowledge, some understanding of what all this was about So I persuaded myself that I must bide my time in unheroic inaction, until a real opportunity presented itself.

  I remembered an incident from that period of bullying in my childhood, that I had suppressed so effectively it had never come to my mind before. I was alone and late, running guiltily up the stone steps of the cloakroom entrance, when the tyrant appeared in the doorway, shouted at me, lunging out with his arm to cuff my head as I passed him.

  A surge of hatred and a sudden irrational impulse to act roared up, pounding in my head, blocking caution. With the agility of a child whose spare time is spent in kicking a football around, I lashed out at his grey shins, catching him off balance, between one step and the next. He staggered backwards, crashed to the ground, his head striking the blue bricks of a downpipe drain. I knew I had killed him and ran on without verifying that terrible and wonderful certainty. Of course, I had done no such thing; I had only inflicted concussion and amnesia. My erasure of the memory must have been out of sympathetic fear that he would recall who had been responsible for his injuries. The memory of that irrational violence comforted me now.

  The drive seemed to last for hours. Eventually we came to a halt and doors opened, letting cold air into the tight fug of the interior. Russian voices shouted to one another. I was led with my hood still in place across the snow, up some steps into a wooden-floored house. Resentfully, blindly, I had to rely on my bear leaders to find my way. I was pushed roughly through a doorway, banging my shoulder on the jamb. I stood, waiting, wary. I heard the door close and the lock double turn.

  32

  In my muffled darkness, I waited for a voice, a blow. It took me several seconds to realise I was alone. I was not bound, so I pulled off my head covering, but it improved matters only marginally as the room was unlit I inched my way back towards the door, fumbling for a light switch. I could not find one; it was evidently placed outside. So I explored my prison by touch.

  The room was small, and its arrangement and furniture so odd it was hard to imagine what its purpose was, apart from housing unwilling guests. There was a second door opposite the one by which I had entered. Along the two other walls ran hard benches covered with leather. There were two easy chairs with cotton antimacassars and a table covered with a lace-edged cloth, on which was a bottle. I opened it and sniffed. It was water, an unlikely drink for Russia. Next to the entrance was an empty wardrobe, a few wire hangers clashing disconsolately as I opened the door. I made out all these petit-bourgeois details with my hands, but I could not put them together into any coherent whole. The oddest aspect was the lack of a window. It did not make sense to me.

  I smoothed my palms across the table’s surface and discovered a telephone, one of the old bakelite kind with a revolving dial on the front. I picked up the receiver and heard the dialling tone; I replaced it rapidly. I had not reached the stage of laughing aloud on my own, but I was near it. I had a phone in the darkness, but I could not speak. The only phone numbers I could remember were those of my mother’s flat and the house in Holland Park Could I phone Emily to tell her I was in Russia and had been kidnapped? What could she do about it? There was a violent carelessness about these criminals, who were protected by the helplessness of their victim. In the end I could think of no one apart from Emily that I could call. I had not memorised the number of the hotel, and had no other numbers on me. I picked up the receiver again, imagining the bizarreness of the conversation I was about to undertake. I was frustrated at once. I had dialled two zeros when a voice cut in. ‘Da? Da?’

  After rolling up my own coat with the jacket that had formed my blindfold and placing it beneath my head, I lay down on the bench and considered my future. Although it was clear I could do nothing, I could feel frustration building up, the desire to do something, even if it was only to shout at the darkness, to kick the unfeeling wooden panels of the door, to act against the arbitrariness of events.

  I lay and thought about what, who, had brought me here: Julian. Blind in the darkness, I pictured her, her striking physical presence and her equally determined personality, her extraordinary obsession with Anatoli whom she forgave everything. She had not recoiled from evidence of money-laundering, drugs-running, arms-dealing. Even after he had rejected her, she still wished only his good.

  Thoughts of Julian, although absorbing, could not provide me with any explanation of why I was here. The very brief glimpse that I had had of our captors, their heavy forms descending the stairs, the blackhead studded nose of the man who had frisked me, gave me very little to go on in guessing who they were or why they had attacked Anatoli. Julian’s assumption was always that the danger came from the Uzbek, but her tales of the Latinos, of the Chechens, of the Middle-Easterners who had frequented her flat suggested that there were many people who, if they fell out with him, might use violence against him. Or perhaps it was a random kidnapping, for ransom, one event among many in the general lawlessness of the place. I had no means of choosing between the various possibilities that came into my mind.

  I drifted from consideration of these alternatives into an uneasy doze in which state I must have passed some hours. I was brought back to consciousness by the sound of the door being unlocked. In the opening I saw a group of figures outlined in the lighted space, two men were propping up a third. They threw him into the room. The door closed and we were left again in darkness.

  He groaned, and I heard him turn his body as if to settle himself more comfortably. Then he just lay on the floor, unmoving. I could hear his breathing, stertorous, irregular. It was the respiration of a man in pain. I moved on my bench, sitting up, to let him know I was there.

  ‘Kto?’ The word was a groan, rather than speech.

  ‘It’s me.’ It was not much of an answe
r, but my language was sufficient explanation of who I was. ‘Are you all right?’

  He did not answer the question and I moved cautiously and crouched beside him on the floor. “There are benches,’ I said. ‘You’d be more comfortable lying on one of them.’ He still did not speak, but he co-operated when I put my arm under him and hauled him to where I had been lying.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Are you badly hurt?’

  Again he did not reply. He was moving himself into position on the bench. At last he said, ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve been asking myself that question since I arrived. I can only assume it was because I was with you at the time of your… arrest. Are you all right?’ I repeated.

  ‘They beat me about a bit, so I’m feeling pretty rough. But there’s nothing broken, unless its my nose.’ There was a silence. ‘Now, what did you come to see me about?’

  I sat down in one of the chairs. On the face of it, Anatoli and I were not the most suitable cell mates, yet I felt cheered to have a companion in captivity, even an injured one. Escape seemed more rather than less likely now.

  ‘It’s a long story, but I suppose we’ve got time for it. First, is there anything I can do for you?’

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s any water?’

  I found the bottle on the desk again by touch and poured some of it onto my handkerchief. He took it, pushing aside my hand in the dark. ‘No, no. I can do it myself.’ He spent some time cleaning himself up, concentrating on his face. Then he held the handkerchief to his cheek without moving.