Londongrad

by Reggie Nadelson

  “So it’s okay? You’re happy about it?”

  “Of course we’re happy,” she said. “The Russians come and they are wonderful tippers. As long as it lasts,” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “One of these days the whole thing will come crashing down.” She shifted her glance from me to the wall and back, and I realized she was not just uneasy, but on edge and maybe a little bit nuts.

  Was she afraid of her world crashing? Of the Russians fleeing? Of the wave of money receding and leaving her stranded on some imaginary beach?

  “How do you know?”

  She looked up at the ceiling.

  “I hear things,” she said, and I didn’t know if the woman meant God talked to her or she got messages through the fillings in her teeth or she eavesdropped on the Russians in the hotel.

  “Can I trouble you for a light?” said the man in jeans when I got back to the terrace.

  “Sure.” I handed him the gold lighter I had borrowed from Tolya. He shook a cigarette out of a pack and lit up, then handed the lighter back.

  “Nice,” he said. “I noticed it earlier.”

  “Right.”

  “I was just wondering where you got it.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve only seen one other lighter just like it. It belongs to Tolya Sverdloff.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “I’m Laurence Sverdloff,” he said, “Tolya’s cousin. It’s his lighter, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, and told him my name.

  “You have another name, Mr Cohen?”

  “Artie,” I said.

  “In Russian you are Artemy Maximovich?”

  “I’m not Russian,” I said. “But, yeah, once it was my name.”

  “Good, yes, like Tolya told me,” he said. “Then it really is you. I’m sorry to make a fuss, but this horrible thing with Valentina. It makes you look in the rear-view mirror twice, you know?” His accent was neutral, stranded somewhere between America and England.

  He was in his mid-forties, tall, wiry, and comfortable in his jeans and t-shirt, though I was guessing he was the kind of business guy who went everywhere first class as if he owned it. When he smiled, I saw the resemblance with Tolya.

  “My real name is Laurence Sverdloff Antonovich” he said. “In America, they called me Larry,” he said. “Somebody picked this ridiculous name when I went to grad school at Stanford. God, I loved California. Name stuck. Whatever, but then Artie’s not much better,” he said, smiling, making his charm work hard for him. “Have you heard from my cousin?”

  I didn’t answer. I wanted this Larry to fill the silence, tell me something.

  “I bloody worry about what he’ll do to find out who killed Valentina. Nothing matters to him anymore except that. I wish you were with him.”

  “He wanted me here.”

  “He thinks it’s all about London,” said Larry.

  “Is it? You could go to New York,” I said.

  “It would make things worse. People watch where I go.”

  “What people?”

  He didn’t answer the question, just said, “Tolya and me, we grew up together, his father and mine were brothers. Both dead now,” said Larry, picking up his own lighter from the table as he reached for a cigarette. I’m afraid I only use my old Zippo.” He lit up. “I’m scared for him, when we were kids all I wanted was to be like him, my cousin Tolya, my idol, this daring guy. He had every illicit book under his bed, he was very rock and roll and for real. I wanted to call myself Ringo, but my father threatened to send me to the military academy, he said, we named you for the great British actor, and you want to call yourself for a what? A Beatle? So I gave in. I didn’t have Tolya’s balls.”

  “I asked who’s watching you.”

  “People who I offend,” he said, and went on to recount how his father had been a director, like Tolya’s.

  “How’d you make the money?”

  “You assume I have money?”

  “Come on.”

  “I went to Stanford, my English was already pretty good, made some money in Silicon Valley,” he said. “I played the game in Moscow. Made more. Back to California. So I go all the way to America, which I love, to marry an English girl who’s a doctor and wants to come home to work in the National Health Service here.”

  I tapped my fingers. I wanted the meat and this guy was giving me the empty bun.

  “I married a socialist.” He laughed. “What comes around, eh? You know my grandfather went to high school with Trotsky,” he added. “Seems like they were always fighting because grandpa’s pop was in the fur biz. Sable.”

  “You’re not here by accident, are you?” I said to Larry.

  “No,” he said. “I knew you were coming to London, Tolya told me, and before he left, he called and said I should keep an eye on you. I’m sorry for all the cloak and dagger stuff, but my driver saw you leave Tolya’s and head this way and he called me. Apologies, Artie.”

  “How come you’re telling me all this?”

  “So you’ll trust me,” he said. “What are you looking at?”

  Just behind Larry, a guy with the square jaw and sloping shoulders of a piece of Russian muscle was hovering. Wanting to get into Larry’s eye line, to signal him, tell him it was time to get out of here, I figured. I mentioned it. Larry turned around, then got up from his chair and put some money on the table.

  He held up the newspaper. “You saw the story?” He gestured to a piece on Litvinenko. “The Brits are saying what everybody already knows, that this was an act of state terrorism. Now it’s official. I should go. Why don’t you ride with me, come have some lunch, if you want, or else my guy will take you back to London. His name is Pavel. He’s a good man, by the way.”

  Half an hour later, we arrived at Larry Sverdloff’s house. There was a high black wrought-iron gate which opened as if somebody had been watching for us. Larry’s driver, Pavel, went through it, up a circular drive and parked in front of a long low-slung stone mansion. The sun had come out and it gave the stones a golden color.

  We had come in the Merc-the Brits loved their cars, and gave them nicknames-with a Range Rover behind and in front. Through the narrow country lanes we had come like a military convoy. These Russians, Tolya, his cousin, others, used their drivers, their guys, like little armies. They used them as advance parties to protect them, spies to watch out for them, servants to do their bidding. Other things, too. Under his jacket, Pavel carried a gun.

  I had a vision of them constantly in motion, driving around the countryside, through the London streets, the drivers reporting back to headquarters. England was a crowded little country, too many cars, too many drivers, too many cameras hanging from buildings and trees, like strange fruit.

  From the front door of the house, a woman appeared. Larry greeted her in Russian, introduced me, we shook hands. Basha was her name, she said, and smiled. I saw in the way Larry Sverdloff talked to her, the way she used his first name, he played at being a benign laid-back guy. He was still in charge. The people who worked for him were modern-day serfs. Most were Russian. I was betting plenty of them were illegal. If they left him, where would they go?

  Around the huge house were gardens planted thick with flowers, neon blue hydrangeas, purple iris, creamy roses. Ancient trees spread green shade over lawns. Beyond them I could see huge vistas of green, more trees, a lake glittering in the distance. I could see how jealous Tolya would have been. His cousin was a player with a castle and the courtiers to go with it.

  “Shall we swim?” said Larry.

  He lent me a suit, I changed in a pool house, and for a while we swam silently.

  A powerful swimmer, Larry was clearly a guy who worked out, wiry, compact, big shoulders, no fat at all. Without agreeing, we raced the length of the pool and back, and I knew he expected to win. I let him win. A happy opponent was useful, though there was no reason to figure Larry Sverdloff for the opposition.

  Afterwa
rds, he tossed me a thick blue towel, and used another one to dry his hair. Basha, the housekeeper appeared with a tray of sandwiches and drinks. Larry took a can of Diet Coke, popped the top and drank it. Somewhere a bird tweeted in a tree.

  “You think this is all nuts, somebody like me riding around in that tank of an SUV? Living in this place?” said Larry.

  “Is it?”

  “Fuck knows,” said Larry, smiling suddenly like a regular guy who found himself in an unexpected, almost ridiculous situation.

  “You’ve seen a lot of Tolya the last few years?”

  “Yes,” he said. “He never mentions me?”

  “No.”

  “He probably doesn’t want to involve you,” said Larry.

  “What in?”

  “His business. My business.”

  “He told you that?” I took a beer.

  “He doesn’t have to. He talks about you a lot, I know how he feels.”

  “What’s his business?”

  “Whatever he can get.”

  I drank from the bottle. “What’s that mean?” I said.

  “Look, when we were kids in Moscow, he could always get books, or jeans, or go up to Tallinn to a flea market and come back with Pierre Cardin sunglasses. He would wear those sunglasses and imagine he was somewhere else. The glasses invested him with his own kind of power. They were magic glasses, he always told me. I believed him. ”

  “And now?”

  “He thinks he’s still a rock and roll hero except now his music is the money.”

  “So?”

  “He shoots his mouth off,” Larry said. “People think he’s a wild man.”

  “Do you?”

  “What?”

  “Think he’s a loose cannon?”

  Larry looked up. Clouds, ominous fat purple clouds scrambled across the sky and thunder rumbled through the humid afternoon. I followed his gaze, and saw him glance in the direction of the house.

  “Ten years ago I was living in a nice little suburban place outside Palo Alto,” he said.

  “Yeah, so what made you give it up, I mean other than your wife wanted to live in England?”

  “Greed,” he said. “At first.”

  “And second?”

  “You probably want to know about Valentina. I loved Val,” he said, “I was her uncle and her godfather.”

  “What about the boyfriend? Greg.”

  “I met him at a party. He seemed fine. Val was crazy about him.”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  “I’ll try to help.”

  Larry’s phone rang. He picked it up, listened, got up, a towel still around his neck.

  “I want to get back to London,” I said.

  “What’s the hurry?”

  “I don’t like the country.”

  “Right,” he said. “I’ll try to get hold of Greg for you. Meanwhile I’ll give you a phone number. You might need help, right?” He said it straight, it wasn’t ironic, not sarcastic, just a statement of fact. “Come up to the house,” Larry added. “You can shower and change. I have an office out here, I do a lot of my business instead of my main office in London,” he said. “It’s easier, safer, and I’ve discovered most people are willing to make the trip.”

  “I bet.”

  He shrugged. “If they want something, they come. I might be able to give you something that will help. My driver can take you back to London later,” said Larry, who didn’t wait for my answer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Larry Sverdloff’s office was in a free-standing building in back of the house, out of view of the gardens, or the beautiful rooms I had glimpsed on my way to shower and change.

  In a room next to the office were two sofas and an armchair and in them sat five men, leaning forward, waiting, a little anxious.

  A couple of them were Russians in open-necked shirts. The three Brits sat straight, they were tense, they looked like supplicants, like people who wanted something, needed something from Larry Sverdloff.

  When I came in, they looked up expectantly, then went back to staring at their hands. A woman who said she was Larry’s assistant came out of his office, greeted me and asked me to wait.

  “He’ll only be a minute,” she said.

  Through the window I could see cars in a parking area, could see one leave, another arrive. I got the sense Larry wanted me to see all this, wanted me to understand his power, his authority.

  After a few minutes, Larry came out and said, “Hi, Art, God, I’m sorry I was late. Come in.”

  We started for his office, the men who were waiting got up and greeted him. He shook their hands. There was no trace of irony on his face, no glimpse at all of the guy I had been swimming with an hour earlier.

  He was comfortable with the power he had over the men in his outer office.

  On the wall in Larry’s own office was a huge Matisse, a thing so beautiful, I couldn’t stop looking. Larry followed my gaze, but he didn’t speak, and then from his pocket he got a scrap of paper with a number. “This is somebody you could call if you want help, use my name, okay? It’s a good contact, and safe,” he said.

  I was impatient with all of it suddenly. I stayed on my feet.

  “Don’t you want to sit, Artie?”

  “I’m fine. What’s so fucking hush-hush?”

  “Yeah, okay, I was holding back, but I realized if you’re going to find who killed Val and who wants Tolya dead, there are things you should know. Please sit down, it will take a while,” said Larry, glancing out of the window.

  “Sure,” I said, sitting on a worn leather chair. “You keep looking around, you ride in an armored car, I don’t get it.”

  “You don’t believe it’s necessary?”

  “This is England. They don’t even carry guns here. It feels like a lot’s going on for show.”

  “You mean you think it’s posturing, that I do all this stuff to show people I have power?”

  “You want an answer?”

  “Sure.”

  “Yes. I mean, what’s it for? You think you’re in so much danger? Come on,” I said.

  “They killed Valentina.”

  “In New York.”

  “They killed Litvinenko. There have been others. I’ve had threats. Even my kids. I try to keep it normal for them, I don’t want them going to school with guys carrying loaded AKs, like some people.”

  “Jesus.”

  “No matter where I go, I can’t get away, here, California, vacation, it doesn’t matter.”

  “Because you owe somebody?”

  He smiled just slightly. “Because of who I am.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “I’m a Russian. Like Tolya, like you.”

  “No fucking chance,” I said under my breath.

  Larry got up and looked out of the window, turned back to me but didn’t sit down.

  “You can’t escape from it,” he said. “The religion, the politics, the KGB, FSB, the Kremlin, the power, the paranoia, the fear, the fact that until a century ago most of us were serfs, slaves, really, we didn’t even have last names, all surreal, the fact that thirty-seven per cent of the population can’t see the need for indoor plumbing, that men are dying younger and younger, that we’ve produced the most sophisticated music and literature and graphics in the past, and we’re living in the Middle Ages, and we shoot journalists who tell the truth. It’s getting worse.” In Larry’s face was something I hadn’t seen before, a kind of passion, or was it obsession?

  “I thought you were a businessman, I thought you were in it for the dough.”

  “There will be a lot of shit coming,” Larry said. “Soon. Soon, Artie, they want Georgia, they want Ukraine, I’m betting before the end of the summer, there will be tanks in Tblisi, Art, and nobody will know if it’s a response to the Georgians or if the Georgians wanted it, provoked it. People will take sides, they’ll rattle nukes. There’s only one power and it takes in the whole damn place, the whole former USSR, you get it? You
want me to spell it out, you want me to write the name?”

  “Sure. I’m only a New York cop, help me out.”

  He lowered his voice to a whisper, and said, “Everything comes from the Kremlin,” he said. “Everything goes back to Putin.”

  “What does it have to do with Val?”

  “Tolya,” he said. “Maybe me. A warning.”

  “You have people on it?”

  “I have official friends. The number I gave you is one of them, somebody who can help you with Valentina. Use it.”

  “Official?”

  “I don’t operate like my cousin, I do this stuff inside the system. It works better. And we’ll find them, whoever killed her, the way we found out who killed Sasha Litvinenko.”

  “Who?”

  “Name is Lugovoi. Maybe you read about it. He’s in Russia, no extradition. They’ll protect him, but nothing is forever.”

  “Who’s we? I don’t believe the bullshit about it all being official. There’s other people.”

  “You don’t need them,” he said.

  “Can you fix for me to meet this guy, Greg?”

  “There’s a party tomorrow night. Maybe he’ll be there. Charity thing Tolya cooked up. It would have been for Val, now it will be in her honor,” he said, and his eyes filled up. I couldn’t tell if he was acting or not. “Call me anytime. But be careful.”

  “What of?”

  “There are people like me here who want things to change in Russia, you know their names, these are people who are in much worse danger, they go on TV, they give interviews, they never travel without whole armies of security.” Larry sat close to me now, and leaned forward. “This is where we put our money, this is what we work for, to make it better in Russia, to stop all this. This is why it’s dangerous.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I said, impatient now.