‘ He called it a party car. Then he spat on the ground.’
‘Maybe he’s asthmatic.’ Donald was only half joking. He had a growing feeling that Nemeth wasn’t the sort to push for a story where there wasn’t one. ‘What else?’
‘He clammed up after that. I hinted at cash, but he looked at me like I’d offered to buy his sister.’
‘What did he mean by a party car? A stretch limo?’ Donald tried to picture one of the monster vehicles used by hen-night organisers to carry clutches of drunken women on tours of their favourite pubs. Somehow, it didn’t quite gel. Nemeth confirmed it.
‘No. He was referring to the old Communist Party – the Interior Ministry. They used to drive around in big, black saloons with blacked-out windows. The only difference was, this was a black BMW X5 instead. Easy to follow,’ he added cheerfully. ‘I got a kid on a motorbike to tail them.’
‘That was bloody brave of you.’
‘They drove from the flat to a freight forwarding depot. When the passenger got out, he was carrying a box, all taped up and labelled. I think he’d parcelled up the stuff he’d collected from the apartment along the way.’
‘Anthony,’ Donald almost crooned down the line, ‘if you got the address where that parcel was going, I swear I’ll get you so much work, you’ll think your feet are on fire.’
Nemeth’s smile as he read out the address - one of the PO Box numbers Riley had provided - was evident in his voice and seemed to beam all the way into the room.
Donald had a sudden, chilling thought. ‘Wait. You said Interior Ministry. You mean it was a government car?’
‘The way they drove around the place, it had to be,’ the reporter replied. ‘I’m guessing the old guy spat because he was referring to the Russians. They’re currently called the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘It’s the FSB to you. They used to be called the KGB.’
*********
19
‘You should kick this job into the long grass.’ Palmer was looking grim.
After picking up Riley, they had decided to go to Donald Brask’s Finchley base for a conference. Palmer had just finished relaying Pell’s revelation about the murder of Annaliese Kellin. It had left a charged atmosphere in the room.
‘Why?’ Although shocked by the news, Riley instinctively challenged the notion of backing off from a job. Any job. ‘Are you going to let Helen’s murder go?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Crap,’ she replied with mild bluntness. ‘Pell’s jumping to conclusions. There might be no connection between the two murders. It could be random. Annaliese Kellin may have simply picked the wrong car for a lift.’
It was Palmer’s turn to look cynical. ‘She was tied up. That doesn’t sound very random to me.’
Riley shook her head obstinately and glared at him, daring further argument. She’d had the same thought herself. She switched her attention to Brask, who had remained quiet while Palmer was speaking.
The agent held up both hands. ‘Sweetie, I’m on your side. But Frank’s so right.’
‘I disagree. If there’s a connection here, it would be better if I was on the inside.’
Donald opened his mouth then shut it again. Instead, he changed the subject. ‘There’s something you should both know. The publisher’s address you sent me is a post box in a run-down residential block. Most of the flats are empty or used by illegals.’
Riley stared at him. ‘How did you find that out?’
He looked pleased with himself. ‘Contacts, sweetie. As always, contacts.’
‘How reliable are they?’ Even as she asked, Riley knew that it was a pointless question. The credentials of Donald’s various sources of information were impeccable.
Donald, however, seemed unmoved. ‘Totally. His name is Tony Nemeth. He discovered that at various times of the month, a parcel is collected along with any other mail, bundled and forwarded to London.’ He studied his fingernails, playing the part of the all-seeing puppeteer to the full. ‘The package is sent to a PO Box in London, which is the same as the editorial office listed in the magazine. That turns out to be a mailing facility in north London.’ He slid a piece of paper across his desk to Frank Palmer. ‘I don’t know what you can do with this, but I understand the packages arrive courtesy of an Aeroflot flight into the Heathrow cargo terminal. They’re delivered to the mailing facility and presumably split up there. I haven’t had time to check yet, but I suspect the Madrid and Brussels PO Boxes feed into London. They’re probably no more than a bit of gloss for impressionable readers.’
Riley glanced at Frank, who was staring intently at the ceiling.
‘You’ve lost me,’ she said. ‘If this magazine is a hole-in-the-wall affair, how can it pay the kind of money Varley is offering? And who reads it?’
Donald cleared his throat. ‘Well, to answer your first question, every magazine throughout history which continued against all the odds was usually bankrolled by someone with plenty of money. There’s no way round it. As to the readers of this one, by all accounts, there are some very influential people.’
‘Like?’
‘People in the White House…some Whitehall mandarins, and I gather a few copies are read avidly in the halls of the Elysée Palace and some of the darker corridors in Bonn, Rome and Brussels. It’s available on annual subscription, and only then at a high price. It would have to be, because the subscriber base is probably restricted and exclusive.’
Riley nodded. ‘That’s what Varley implied. I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Perhaps you weren’t meant to.’
Riley looked puzzled. ‘I still don’t get it.’
‘I think it’s designed,’ said Donald, ‘to disseminate information from the East for consumption by eager little eyes in the West.’
‘The purpose being?’ Palmer had returned to earth.
‘Entente. Understanding. Hands across frontiers, call it what you will. It’s not the first one ever published. Storm was one, allegedly with links to Soviet Intelligence, but never proved. That was during the sixties, put out via India. Soviet Time was another. They served a noble purpose - on the surface.’
‘Which was?’
‘To help spread understanding. To make us feel comfortable in our beds at night.’
‘And otherwise?’
‘Cynics would say they were used to tell us simpletons in the West only what the Kremlin wanted us to know.’ He shrugged. ‘The old guard may have gone, but the game hasn’t changed. Publications just like it are still around, telling us things the current powers would like us to know without appearing to. They don’t have to turn a profit, at least, not in the usual sense, because that’s not the aim.’
‘Especially,’ murmured Palmer, ‘if they’re run by wealthy individuals with the quiet connivance of the state. Nice arrangement.’
Donald nodded. ‘Smoke and mirrors.’
‘God, you two are cynical,’ Riley said darkly.
‘True, sweetie. But we’re also right.’ Donald reached across to his desk and picked up another piece of paper, which he passed across to her. ‘I’ve done some digging. This lady is a lecturer in Russian and Post-Soviet studies at the London School of Economics. Worth a visit, I think. She agreed tomorrow at two.’
Riley read the name off the paper. ‘Natalya Fisher? Sounds like a ballet dancer.’
‘She was probably that, too, in her time,’ he said enigmatically. ‘She came to the west twenty years ago and married a British scientist. She’ll tell you more about the Russian mindset in fewer words than anyone else I know. There’s a chance she might point you somewhere useful.’
‘You make her sound as if she has some special knowledge in this area,’ said Palmer.
‘Well, I suppose she has.’ Donald beamed, before dropping his bombshell. ‘In a former life, Natalya Fisher was a KGB officer.’
********
20
; Natalya Fisher was a short, plump academic in her sixties with a soft, generous mouth. Dressed in various shades of grey, even her eyes had the quality of wood smoke, settling lightly on Palmer and Riley as the two investigators entered her cluttered office. But her smile was genuine and warm, and sharp with interest.
She indicated two chairs and bade them sit, then surprised them by leaping up and opening a window, before firing up a cigarette. ‘You have to excuse me,’ she continued uncompromisingly, waving away a cloud of noxious smoke. ‘But I have lived with worse things than smoking bans, and I need my nicotine. Please, join me if you wish. Nobody will disturb us here.’ Her accent was soft, overlaid with a mixture of influences, but echoing her origins a long way east of this dusty, paper-strewn hideaway. She took a huge drag of the cigarette, the tip glowing like molten steel, and sat down with a sigh of pleasure, lifting her legs and waggling her feet as if she had just walked a long way. ‘Now,’ she continued, ‘Donald Brask said you were interested in whatever I can tell you about certain Russians, yes?’
‘That’s right,’ said Riley. ‘Specifically, oligarchs.’
‘Oligarchs?’ Natalya queried flatly, ‘or mafiya?’ Her eyes flicked between the two of them, the hint of a smile tugging at her mouth. Donald must have given her an idea of what they wanted to discuss, but she sounded sceptical.
Riley said, ‘Aren’t they the same thing?’
‘No. Not really. But there’s an old Russian saying which says that one snowflake never settles far from the other.’ She inhaled deeply and blew smoke towards the window, where it billowed with startling clarity into the outside air like smoke over the Vatican. ‘Put another way, if you discover cow shit in your living room, why go looking for sheep?’
Palmer grunted. ‘Another old, Russian saying?’
‘No,’ she admitted, and gave him a coy grin. ‘I just made that up. What I mean is, you shouldn’t be too surprised if you find that oligarchs – what you in the west used to call moguls, I think - are viewed elsewhere as not so very different from the mafiya.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘Same heads, different hats.’ She shuffled her feet and seemed to go into deep thought for a moment, before stirring. ‘You have to understand, such men are still relatively new to Russia. They came to prominence under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, many with friends – even family – in the old Party.’
‘The Communist Party?’ interjected Palmer.
‘Yes. That surprises you?’
‘A little. They’re hardly soul-mates, I’d have thought.’
Natalya raised an eyebrow. ‘Where money and power are concerned, Mr Palmer, all men are soul-mates. The first oligarchs made their money because they were allowed to, not necessarily because they were clever. It suited everyone to have the appearance of a free market. There were many crooks, of course, and corrupt officials, and they are drawn together like maggots to fresh meat. Then, with new investment from outside, came the others – the modern businessmen. Smarter, politically and financially, they soon realised that without connections, even their money and power could be taken away very easily. Some of them stayed, working with the new administration, others moved abroad, taking their fortunes with them.’
‘Buying football clubs and big yachts,’ said Riley dryly.
‘As you say, buying their big toys. Many of the early oligarchs were not sophisticated and lost everything. But there are many others who survived.’ She studied the tip of her cigarette. ‘In my experience, there are three levels of these people you call oligarchs. Level Three is the lowest. They are rich, with many interests, but not influential enough to be really important. The reason for this is, they don’t have the right… mmm… resources.’
‘Resources?’
‘Friends. Contacts. Nothing is accomplished in Russia without knowing people. People with power… people who can provide assistance.’ She tapped ash from her cigarette into the palm of her hand without apparent discomfort. ‘Level Two,’ she continued, fluttering her hand over a waste bin, ‘are those with lots of money and influential friends. In my opinion, these are the ones who always want more. They work to make more contacts who can help them become richer and more powerful.’
‘But isn’t that how you said most of them got there in the first place?’ said Riley. ‘Through patronage?’
‘Most. But not all.’ Natalya’s eyes squinted through the smoke. ‘With all these things, there are changes; people are moved, contacts are lost… some fall out of favour, which in my country is often fatal. Then there are those I call Level One. They operate in what mountaineers would call rarefied air. They are very few in number, extremely rich, extremely powerful with many friends in high places. They have everything, but they still need to protect what they have. Some are in the east, others have come to the west to live and run their empires in exile… but even these men are missing something that not even their money can buy.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A welcome home.’ She pulled a face at the blank looks of her two visitors. ‘All Russians,’ she explained, ‘wherever they live, eventually want to go home. A Russian out of his homeland is first of all a man with an aching heart. It pulls him back, even when he knows that going back is the last thing he should contemplate. That is why you will notice many Russians have a darkness around them – a sadness which eats into the soul.’ She flicked the cigarette butt out of the window with practiced ease. ‘It makes them drink too much and dream of what they used to know. Because in the end, they wish to take their place where they were born.’
‘Even the oligarchs?’
‘Sure. Especially them. Can you imagine, to have all that money, yet not be able to buy a ticket home?’ She dusted the front of her skirt and gave her visitors a measured look, as though judging their powers of understanding. ‘Money in the west does not equate to happiness in the homeland. You think having big yachts or a football club or owning a small island is to warm the heart of such a person? It is playing with money and newspaper headlines only – a sport for bored men, usually trying to impress beautiful women.’ She smacked a hand against her chest. ‘But it does nothing to fill up the void in here.’
‘But going back,’ Riley guessed, ‘would mean losing everything?’
Natalya nodded. ‘For some, yes. But they don’t give up, these men. They are like children going home from school.’ She smiled and raised a demonstrative finger. ‘What better way to impress your parents than by taking home a big school prize?’ She peered at them for a sign of understanding, no doubt as she did with her students in class. ‘For the right prize, parents would forgive almost anything.’ She smacked a hand on her thigh. ‘That is the heart of their thinking – a welcome home.’
‘As well as,’ Palmer put in cynically, ‘guaranteeing you don’t get a visit from a man with a phial of Polonium.’
Palmer felt Riley’s eyes on him as a sudden silence descended on the room. Nobody spoke for several seconds. If Natalya felt insulted because of her background in the KGB, she gave no sign. But then, as Palmer knew well, the KGB hadn’t been known for breeding sensitive souls. All the same, he couldn’t help but wonder what special qualities had permitted a former KGB officer to settle in the UK. Maybe she had interesting photos of someone in authority.
He was beginning to worry that they were wasting their time. So far, the conversation showed signs of moving along a separate and slowly diverging path. If all they were going to get were her opinions on the melancholy soul-searching of her exiled countrymen, it wasn’t going to help them find out what they wanted to know.
‘This searching for approval,’ he said, to jolly things along. ‘Would it make them dangerous?’
‘All such men are dangerous,’ she said without hesitation. ‘Some worse than others. Those looking for something they have lost inside, for example. What you have to decide, Mr Palmer, is which one you are dealing with.’ She blinked and reached for another cigarette. ‘And that, I cannot tell you for sure. I hear rumours, but it is
not fact. All I will say is, try taking away any of their toys and you will very quickly find out how dangerous they can be.’ She smiled, amused by the idea, and lit up in a cloud of smoke.
He decided to try another tack. ‘Have you ever heard of Richard Varley?’ He carefully avoided looking at Riley, but was aware of her turning to stare at him. He spelled out the name.
‘Varley? No.’ Natalya frowned at the tip of her cigarette. ‘I used to know a Varliya, once, but that was Anna - a girl at school. She was good at music, but died young. Her parents drank. Everybody drank. Who is he?’ More smoke billowed towards the window.
‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. It’s a name we came across.’
‘But is it a real one?’ the professor replied enigmatically and lifted her eyebrows. ‘Is he rich? What does he do?’
Palmer waited, sensing Riley wanted to answer.
‘He’s in publishing,’ she said finally. ‘Business magazines.’
‘Ah. Donald said something about that. If he is in magazines, he is not Russian.’
‘He sounds American.’
Natalya shrugged. ‘Then that is probably what he is. Russians who want to be rich prefer petroleum, metallurgy or real estate. Not publishing.’
‘I see.’
‘These men you speak of - these oligarchs - are ambitious. They wish to dominate… to own. They are what critics would call control freaks. They are also of the earth. The earth and what is in it gives them the control and the ownership they crave.’ Her hand sliced through the smoke like a cleaver. ‘You have men like this, too, of course. It’s not unusual. Just unusual for Russians… until recently, anyway.’
‘What about the magazine?’ said Riley. She produced the copy Richard Varley had given her and passed it across.
Natalya took it and thumbed through it, then turned back to the inside front cover and scoured the publisher’s details. She hummed a few times, then flicked through again before passing it back to Riley with a nod.
NO KISS FOR THE DEVIL (Gavin & Palmer) Page 10
