‘That’s enough, girl!’ Mariko, draped in a black shawl like a Spanish mantilla, had come into the room. She placed herself between Katinka and Satinov. ‘You shouldn’t have come here in the first place. What kind of questions are you asking? My father’s tired now. You must go.’
Satinov sat back in the chair, wheezing a little.
‘We’ll talk again,’ he said heavily. ‘God willing.’
‘Sorry, I’ve asked too much. I stayed too long …’
He did not smile at her again but he offered his hand, looking away.
‘I’m tired now.’ There was a piece of paper in his hand. ‘Someone you must meet. Don’t wait. You may already be too late. Say hello from me.’
11
Two days later, Katinka was awakened by the green plastic phone in her tiny, fusty room deep inside the square colossus of the Moskva Hotel. Her bed, bedside table, light and desk were all one piece of wooden furniture. The counterpane, carpet and curtains were the colour of brimstone. She was dreaming about Sashenka: the woman in the photograph was talking to her.
‘Don’t give up! Persevere with Satinov …’ But why was Satinov so obstructive? Would he refuse to meet her again? She was still half asleep when she grabbed the phone.
‘Hello,’ she said. She expected it to be her parents – or maybe Roza Getman, who was phoning regularly for updates of her progress. ‘Hello, Katinka, any jewels in the dust?’ was how Roza always started her calls.
‘This is Colonel Lentin.’ Katinka was amazed: it was the Marmoset of the KGB archives. ‘You wish to see more documents?’
‘Yes,’ she said, heart surging. ‘That would be wonderful.’
‘Wonderful? Wonderful indeed. You’re such an enthusiast. Meet us at the Café-Bar Piano at the Patriarchy Ponds at two.’
Katinka pulled on her boots and the denim miniskirt with the spangles. She was earning money for the first time in her life but still it did not feel like her own. She was using it to pay for her room, food and transport but nothing else. She was only doing this for Roza, she told herself, so that she, like Katinka, would have a family.
She took the elevator down to the grey marble lobby and walked through to another hall, where she climbed the steps, followed a corridor left then right and finally opened a red curtain to reveal a little cubbyhole with three tables and an old woman in a minuscule kitchen. The tempting tang of cooking fat and the music of sizzling eggs welcomed her. A young English journalist and an ancient Armenian man were at their usual tables, sipping espresso coffees.
‘Morning, señorita,’ said the old woman in a blue apron, speaking bad Russian. Her brown face, with its large jaw, was deeply wrinkled. ‘Spanish omelette?’
‘The usual,’ said Katinka. The cook was an old Spaniard who claimed to have been cooking in this cubbyhole since the Spanish Civil War.
‘The best cook in Moscow!’ murmured the Armenian, kissing his hand and blowing it towards the old woman.
An hour later, Katinka walked slowly up Tverskaya – the new name for Gorky Street – and then took a left through an archway that led down to the Patriarchy Ponds, a square with a park in the middle containing two lakes surrounded by trees. Bulgakov, she knew, had lived around here, when he was writing The Master and Margarita. She bought an ice cream at the open-air café and sat watching the couples, the children promenading, the old folk watching her watching them. Why did the Marmoset want to meet her here and not at the Lubianka? Could he be bringing the documents? No, that was impossible. So why? She did not trust these people.
At 2 p.m. she walked out of the square and looked around the far end of the street. There it was – a black and white sign, BAR-CAFÉ PIANO. She went in. Rod Stewart was singing ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy’ on the hi-fi. The small café was empty except for a spectre-thin grey-haired man behind the bar, smoking a cigarette as he poured out three thimbles of vodka, and two men at a chrome table. One of them was the Marmoset, Colonel Lentin, wearing a green sports blazer and a Wimbledon tennis tie. He stood up and offered his hand.
‘Come and sit down, girl.’ He guided her to a chair. ‘Let me introduce you to my comrade here, Oleg Sergeievich Trofimsky.’
‘Delighted, Katinka, delighted. Yes, sit!’ Trofimsky’s head was wide and misshapen and looked as if it had been fired out of a medieval cannon; and his pitchfork beard gave him the air of an ageing magician. The barman brought the vodkas and slammed them down on the table.
‘No, no,’ the Magician remonstrated coarsely. ‘Dima, bring us your oldest Scotch whisky. This young lady’s much too cultured for mere Russian vodka.’
The barman shrugged and returned to the bar.
‘Dima’s a retired comrade,’ explained the Magician to Katinka, ‘so we – shall we say – patronize his establishment. He’s used to my tastes, aren’t you, Dima?’
The barman rolled his eyes, and brought the amber liquid.
The Magician turned back to Katinka. ‘Now, drink carefully. This is fifty years old, aged in oaken barrels in the Scottish isles. Its name? Laphroaig. Taste it: you see? You can taste the peat; that is the soil there. When I was in the London Embassy – my work was, shall we say, clandestine – I toured the Caledonian isles. The British royal family drink only this when they are hunting in the Scottish region. Go on, drink!’
Katinka drank, but only a sip.
‘You’re a historian, are you not?’ asked the Magician, stroking his pitchfork beard.
‘Yes, I specialize in the eighteenth century.’
‘I’ve studied history myself and I know the Velvet Book intimately, the Romanovs, Saxe-Coburgs, even the collateral lines,’ he said. ‘It’s a hobby, shall we say. But now I’ve taught you something about civilized living, let me get straight to the point. You are researching something very different? The period of the Cult of Personality?’
‘Yes, one family,’ answered Katinka, cautiously.
‘I know, I know, Colonel Lentin has told me. And you weren’t satisfied with the documents you were shown?’
‘I would like to see others,’ she said.
‘Well, you may, that is totally possible. You will see them.’
‘Thank you,’ said Katinka, surprised. ‘When?’
The Magician waved a finger at her. ‘We’re adapting to the new era, aren’t we, Colonel Lentin? We’re embracing it! But we’re still patriots. We don’t wish to be American. Make no mistake, girl, we in the Competent Organs are the conscience of this country. We’ll make it strong again!’
‘But what about the documents? When can I see them?’
‘You’re young, in a hurry. As soon as tomorrow?’
‘Yes, please,’ she said, as eager as she was uneasy.
‘Can we do it tomorrow, Colonel?’ asked the Magician.
‘Three days perhaps,’ said the Marmoset, clearly the junior partner here. ‘Maybe a week.’
‘Then that is that,’ said the Magician. ‘And it won’t be too expensive.’
‘Expensive?’ cried Katinka. ‘But …’
‘Ahhh, look at her!’ cried the Magician theatrically. ‘Look at that worried pretty face! Ha ha. You’re new in Moscow, just a kitten in the big city, I can tell. Yes, everything has its price. The Colonel and I are embracing the new mentality! More whisky, Dima. Let’s drink to it!’
12
Just after midday next day, Katinka walked through the high halls and along the vestibules of the new shops in the GUM arcade on Red Square. She had an appointment at the Bosko Restaurant, where slim, tanned girls with long legs in boots and skirts and gleaming Versace chains sat with squat men in Italian suits. The aromas of ground coffee and scented skin filled the air. The place was so chic that Katinka felt she might be in Venice or New York, even though she had never been anywhere but London.
What a place! she thought, not noticing the maître d’, an Italianate Tatar with the profile of a pigeon, scowling at her spangled skirt and white boots. ‘Oh look!’ she burst out. ‘What a view!’
/> She sighed with the sensual pleasure of a provincial girl at Bosko’s wall-sized panorama of Red Square and its expanse of shiny cobbles. From here, the gaudy ice-cream cones of St Basil’s seemed more Tatar than Russian. Just under the Kremlin walls stood that strangely unslavic Egyptian mausoleum in freckled red granite wherein lay the mummified Lenin. There, further away, almost hidden against the Kremlin Wall, was the little green marble bust of Stalin himself, rudely removed from its resting place in the Mausoleum. The Russianness of the Kremlin, with its Orthodox churches, its green and ochre Tsarist palaces, even those red stars, filled Katinka with Slavic pride.
She could see the domed roof of the Council of Ministers building, where Lenin and Stalin had worked. Now President Yeltsin held office there. Sashenka had known Lenin and Stalin in the early years of Soviet power, Katinka remembered – and her obsession jolted her: she was relating to a woman whom she knew only from a photograph and a file.
‘Can I help you, mademoiselle?’ said the Tatar maître d’. ‘A table with a view?’
‘She’s with me,’ said a voice behind her. Pasha Getman towered awkwardly over her. He moved clumsily and none of his clothes quite seemed to fit even though they looked expensive. The trousers were too baggy; the shirt, open-necked, was wrongly buttoned, yet he exuded cosmopolitan confidence, Odessan haughtiness and the pungent smoke of his oversized cigar.
Katinka had spoken to Roza after her meeting with the Magician and the Marmoset, and Roza had asked her to talk to Pasha, who had agreed to meet her straight away.
She was now not sure if he would embrace her. Both leaned towards each other but at the last minute he withdrew and offered his hand. Katinka blushed but was rescued by the maître d’.
‘Welcome, Gospodin Getman! Your usual table in the alcove? Sir and mademoiselle, please follow me!’
Getman’s three bulky, shaven-headed bodyguards, tattoos peeping over their shirt collars, sat at the neighbouring table. Katinka followed Pasha, noticing that he walked like a juggling bear with his paw-like hands ready to catch the balls.
‘I haven’t got long,’ said Pasha, when they were seated.
‘I didn’t know you were here. I thought you were in London.’
‘Water?’ Pasha reached for the water and spilt it. Waiters rushed to clear up but he did not seem to care. ‘I came home again. There’s going to be an election soon. The President needs our help – we must keep out the Communists. Mama’s on her way back from London. You understand that this is her last chance to find out who she really is. Imagine not knowing, Katinka! I knew my parents so well, so intimately, but she has always this burning sense of loss inside her. Do you know your parents?’
‘Of course.’
‘Happy childhood?’
She nodded, unable to conceal her pleasure in the thought. ‘My father’s a doctor. They really love me and we live with my grandparents in their old house.’
‘We’re so lucky, you and I. Now I know you’ve been talking to Mama’ – Katinka was amused that this bear of a billionaire in his mid-thirties still called his mother ‘Mama’ – ‘but I’d like to know myself what you’ve found so far.’
As Katinka explained, Pasha’s mobile phone continued to ring. Once the bodyguards took a call and gave him a message; a red-haired girl in a leather miniskirt and Chanel boots and belt greeted him; and several businessmen came to shake hands – but navigating these interruptions, she managed to reveal her story. While she talked, Pasha leaned forward and listened to her, chewing on his cigar, his sharp, dark eyes looking straight into hers.
‘So Satinov does know something but he’s very old and mysterious. Typical of that generation for whom secrecy is a fetish. You’re doing well.’
Katinka flushed with pleasure. ‘But the documents were incomplete and I met with the KGB to discuss the ones that were missing and I’m so embarrassed – and of course, I told them it wasn’t possible – but they asked …’
‘Asked what?’
‘For money! It’s disgusting!’
‘How much?’ asked Pasha.
‘I told them it was ridiculous.’
‘Look,’ said Pasha, ‘I don’t mean to sound … I’m older than you so … I’m sorry I lost my temper in London. Mama told me off. But you’re so unworldly. I meet a lot of greedy girls. I understand you’re not like that. Mama says too that you’re not doing this for the money – that you genuinely want to help us. So I hope you’ll keep working on this day and night. How much do they want?’
‘But we shouldn’t pay them,’ Katinka objected. ‘Not the Organs! These are not decent people.’
‘Just tell me how much they’ve asked for.’
‘They mentioned … it’s so much, it’s a crime and they’re Mafiosi …’ she sighed. ‘Fifteen thousand dollars. A sin! What has happened to Russians these days?’
Pasha shrugged, the juggling paws opening and closing. ‘Well, this is my gift to Mama. Truth is expensive, but I think family is priceless. Understand that, understand everything. I’ll pay it.’
‘No.’
‘Stop telling me what to do!’ he growled and crumpled up the tablecloth, almost sending all the cups to the floor. ‘It’s my money, and we need their information.’
‘Well, OK …’ Katinka said at last. ‘And there’s one other thing. Satinov gave me this and said I must meet this person and not leave it too long.’ She handed over a scrap of paper.
‘But this is a Tbilisi number. In Georgia.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, what are you waiting for? You must go immediately, Katinka.’
‘Now?’
‘Sure, pick up your passport and case from the hotel. When you get back, I’ll give you the cash and you can meet your KGB crooks.’ He dialled on his mobile. ‘It’s me. Book a flight to Tbilisi for this afternoon. Four o’clock? Fine. Ekaterina Vinsky. Put her in the Metechi Palace Hotel. Bye.’ He called to the next table. ‘Hey, Tiger!’ One of the bodyguards lumbered over. ‘Take Katinka back to the hotel and then on to Sheremetyevo. Right now.’
13
It was already dark in Tbilisi – once known as Tiflis – when Katinka arrived at the airport, a bazaar of shouting taxi drivers, gunmen, traders, soldiers and footpads. But there was a driver waiting for her with a sign that read Vinsky – and a Volga that apparently could only be started with two wires and a hummed song. As they drove into town, the gunshots of a small wild land in the midst of a civil war ricocheted over the half-lit city. The Metechi Palace Hotel, an ugly modern construction with glass lifts and a big open foyer with ranks of green metal balconies reaching up towards a giant skylight, was patrolled by Georgian gunmen in glittery gun holsters toting battered Kalashnikovs.
Leaving her bags at the hotel, Katinka caught a taxi into the city, passing through checkpoints manned by militiamen of motley uniform belonging to any of several private armies. The police themselves looked shabby and lost in their own city. The buildings were grandly decayed, and the streets had the flavour of a Levantine dream of a Paris that never was.
Katinka had never been to Georgia – her family spent their holidays in Sochi on the Black Sea – but she had heard a lot about it, of course: the fruit basket, the wine barrel, the playboy capital, the jewel in the crown, the pleasure dome of the Soviet Imperium with its luscious harvests of grapes and vegetables, its sulphurous Borzhomi water in those famous green bottles, its earthy red wines, its privileged, corrupt Communist bosses who lived like sultans, its argumentative intellectuals, and its flashy Casanovan lovers. But Georgia had its dark side too. It had produced Stalin and Beria – and other famous Communists with unpronounceable, slightly ridiculous Georgian names: Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Abel Yenukidze – and Marshal Hercules Satinov.
The taxi took her right to the centre through Freedom Square (once Yerevan Square under the Tsar, then Beria Square, then Lenin Square) and into the broad and handsome Rustaveli Avenue (Golovinsky during Tsarist times) with its theatres and palaces. The driver did n
ot know the way to the house she wanted: he shouted at people to ask. He turned the car round, oblivious to the hooting traffic, and showed her the burnt-out wreck of the Tbilisi Hotel, once the grandest south of Moscow. Finally they stopped on a steep cobbled hill, beneath a church with a round tower in the Georgian Orthodox style, and the driver pointed into the dark.
‘There!’
Katinka paid him in dollars then walked carefully down the darkened street. Behind high walls the mansions were embraced by long-fingered vines, their courtyards overhung by flower-draped balconies where laughter and lanterns flickered. A bearded man with the thick white hair that Georgians never seem to lose held up a lantern.
‘Where are you going? Are you lost?’
She saw he had a shotgun but did not feel afraid. ‘Café Biblioteka?’ she asked.
‘Come on!’ His Russian was abysmal but he took her arm and led her down the cobbled street until they reached a house almost completely concealed in the vines. He opened the wooden double doors into a crumbling marble hall, lit with a candle, that reeked of Georgian feasts. To the right was a large shabby door and he pushed it open, jabbering in Georgian, the shotgun angled alarmingly over his shoulder. ‘Come on! Here is Café Biblioteka!’
With a gasp of wonder, Katinka entered the café, in the flickering light of candles decorated with wings of wax. She thought it smelt delicious: of tkemali, ginger, apple and almond. It was an old library, the bookshelves still standing in between the tables and behind the bar. Maps, banners of Tsarist Guards regiments, Georgian brigades and Bolshevik workers, drawings, noble and obscene, paintings, icons, pieces of old Georgian uniforms, swords and daggers, busts of Mozart, Queen Tamara, Stalin and Roman senators covered the walls. Some of the bookshelves had rotted and collapsed, tossing their priceless antique volumes on to the floors where they lay, their yellow parchment pages open like fans.
At small tables, a single old man in a black fedora read in the half-light; a group of American backpackers in yellow Timberlands and big shorts with their wallets on belts round their waists (advertising their Western riches to any brigands present) toasted one another in Georgian wine; and two grey-haired Georgians argued loudly about their politicians.
Sashenka Page 45
