‘No, it’s not that. It’s not that, Vlad.’ He didn’t know which way to go. It occurred to him that Philippe had been ensnared in a similar fashion, headhunted out of Libra. ‘I just don’t understand the sudden offer. Is there something I should know about? Everything seems a bit chaotic.’
Tamarov looked offended.
‘Chaotic? I can assure you that all restaurants look like this a few days before they are opening. You know this, Mark, it is normal. Does your club in Moscow seem like it is ready for opening? No. So let me show you our bathrooms. They are completely finished. There is nothing chaotic about this.
Nothing.’
Both bathrooms were indeed completely finished, a mock-Arab nightmare of black tiles and freestanding crimson lamps. Mark continued to waver and Tamarov felt it necessary to force his point.
‘My problem is this,’ he said, and actually pressed his index finger against the lapel of Mark’s jacket, as if retaliating to an insult that had never been landed. ‘People in your country are concerned. They think that we are all gangsters in the East, they thinkthat it is a mistake to trust us, to let us invest in your country. Perhaps you think this, Mark, even though you have been in Moscow, you have been in Petersburg, and you have seen these things at first hand. But let me tell you something, as your friend but also as somebody who knows about how work must be conducted. If you were a Russian, you too would be a gangster.’ He let the observation settle on Mark, digging out the pause. ‘You would have no choice. What does this word “mafia” mean, anyway? Does it mean violence? Does it mean that we are criminals? Of course not, and who is to judge? You thinkthat a mafia did not exist before Mr Gorbachev, before Yeltsin? You thinkthat the Soviet system was not in itself an organized crime? This is naive. At least now the wealth is in the control of the people.’
‘Spoken like a true communist,’ Mark said, but Tamarov ignored him.
‘The difference today is that the people must now fight for this wealth. A clever Russian, a Latvian, a Georgian, understands that today’sworld is about sinkor swim. If I am to survive, if I am to put food on the table for my wife, for my children, it is necessary to fight. Not with guns, not with violence, but with the mind.’ Tamarov tapped the side of his head to indicate where his mind might be located. Mark knew for sure that he did not have a wife, nor any children for whom he had to put food on the table, but he let it go. ‘I am in competition with other men,’ Tamarov said. ‘If I make a deal, I make the best deal for myself and for my clients. Does this make me a bad man? Does it?’
Mark didn’t answer the question, though he conceded that Tamarov was at least right about destiny. In Moscow he had been obliged to authorize and pay perhaps thirty or forty backhanders just to get the club up and running. It was a question of perspective; in London a businessman had the luxury of morality.
‘So this place is being financed by Mr Kukushkin?’ he asked. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’
Tamarov physically withdrew from the question. Stepping aside from Mark, he turned and walked back in the direction of the foyer, his voice assuming the lawyer’s cloak.
‘I represent Mr Kukushkin’s interests,’ he said. ‘Mr Kukushkin has many investments.’
Mark followed him and said, ‘Right. I see.’
‘Thomas works with Mr Kukushkin in Moscow. Sebastian has met him on many occasions. Are you seeing this as a problem?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then good.’
Tamarov stood beside a pile of plastic-wrapped chairs and flattened a hand against the crust of his gelled hair.
‘Look, I do not need a decision now.’ He started to lean against a column of chairs. It rocked dangerously. ‘Everything for the completion of the restaurant is already under way.’ In the street outside, Juris Duchev leaned on the horn of Tamarov’s Mercedes, preparing to drive him out to Heathrow. ‘Ihave to leave now to catch a flight to Holland. Why don’t we meet for dinner tomorrow? The St Martin’s Lane Hotel?’
‘Sounds good,’ Mark said. But he wondered if he had blown his chance. He had tried not to reject the offer out of hand, but Tamarov now seemed angry. He could surely find someone else to manage and run a restaurant. Then where would Mark be? Most probably their paths would never cross again.
‘I just need twenty-four hours to thinkthings over,’ he said. Tamarov was signalling to the car. ‘It could be that the timing is right for this. It could be that I could find myself interested.’
‘Then I am glad to hear it.’ Out on the street, Duchev was holding the car door open, but he did not acknowledge Mark’s presence. ‘I will call you. And then we will meet on Monday.’
‘Which is when you want my answer,’ Mark said.
‘Which is when I want your answer.’
41
In the beginning, Roth had telephoned Alice at least once every two days. After their first lunch together, he had called three times in a single afternoon and sent flowers that raised eyebrows at the Evening Standard. Each time he found a fresh reason for getting in touch: to chat about Ben or Mark; to discuss the latest developments on the new restaurant in Kensington; to give Alice the telephone number of a friend whose first novel might make the subject of a decent piece on the features page. All in all, she had met him for lunch three times and for dinner twice before they had slept together for the first time at his house in Pimlico. There had also been cocktails at The Hempel with some of his political contacts in the government, one of whom had later furnished Alice with a decent diary story.
She had always flirted with men of consequence, had done so since her teens. There was something about the buzz of flattery, the empowering thrill of constant male attention. But only once before - in the very earliest stages of her relationship with Ben - had Alice toyed with the idea of an infidelity, and succumbed to a one-night stand. Usually the moral justification for her behaviour lay in keeping men at arm’s length: sex, after all, changed everything. It was best just to keep them ticking over, best just to enjoy them as a game. And then Roth had come along and ruined everything. Roth had come along and humiliated her.
That afternoon at the hotel, just a few minutes before she was due to leave, he had told Alice how uncomfortable he was with ‘the concept of adultery’, how bad he felt for ‘cuckolding Ben’. Maybe it was best if they just ‘cooled off’ for a little while; maybe it was best if it just ended. At that moment - less than an hour after Roth had been inside her - Alice had seen him for what he was, and glimpsed her own stupidity. An argument had ensued in which she had accused him of using her, of treating her like a whore. What made it worse was that Roth had refused to retaliate: he understood why she was so upset, he understood that the timing was bad. But in a few days she would come to realize that this was the best decision for everyone. ‘This is a time when you should be with Ben,’ he had told her, and Alice had even wondered if he was hinting at blackmail.
Work was harder now. She thought that people knew about what had happened. Roth’s friends, the contacts he had so willingly given up and whom she had so gleefully cultivated, stopped calling. She was certain her reputation had been permanently damaged by their association. And for what? The sex hadn’t even been all that good. All the way through it Alice had been comparing Roth with Ben and wondering what the hell she was doing. But there had been such excitement in the seduction, such novelty, and the affair had provided the perfect distraction to all Ben’s grief and torpor.
She was terrified now of losing the marriage. Ben’s life was her entire structure: his loyalty, his friends, his love. Without that, Alice was nothing, a hackwith no friends, and single on the wrong side of thirty. She started to worry about her looks, about her career. In those first days, the insecurity was like an illness.
She called Ben all the time, wasn’t even aware that she was doing it. Just to talkto him, just to hear his voice. Alice needed to know that there was still somebody out there who found her attractive, somebody whom she could still rely on as a friend.
She missed the call to her mobile from Michelle Peterson at Customs and Excise. It was three o’clock on Monday afternoon. A bustle of male subs and journalists had gathered near her desk, discussing layout and trying to catch her eye. Were they laughing at her, or had nothing really changed? That was one of the things she had liked about Sebastian: there was nothing sleazy about him, nothing furtive or sly. He had been predatory in a way that most men would never understand.
Michelle left a text message and when Alice connected to the switchboard in Portsmouth she made a point of saying: ‘Customs and Excise?’ in a voice loud enough to be heard by the news editor, who was standing just five or six feet away from her desk. She wanted him to thinkthat she was engaged on a story more edifying than hemlines or hairstyles.
‘I’ve just had a message from Michelle Peterson,’ she told the receptionist. ‘Could I speakto her please?’
She had to wait while the call was connected. To her delight, the news editor honoured her with a smile, the first good thing to happen in days. Then she heard Michelle’s voice on the line, anxious and close to a whisper.
‘Als?’
‘Shell?’
‘Call my mobile, will you? But give me a minute to get outside.’
Alice waited and dialled back, the news editor now replaced by a young work-experience boy from public school looking ineffectual near the water cooler.
‘Hello?’
Michelle was outdoors. Alice could hear cars, sky noise.
‘Can you hear me?’ she asked.
‘Just about. How’s it going?’
‘Fine. Fine.’
‘Listen, I’m talking from the car park. Can’t really chat.’ Alice heard what sounded like the clunk of a van door, a metal sound. ‘I found out about Leonid Sudoplatov. Somebody using that name entered the UK on the first of December last year. Is that any help to you?’
‘I think so.’ Alice scribbled Sud. Dec 1st on a pad. ‘I’d have to checkthe dates.’
‘We have him as a Russian national. Sixty-three years old. Birthday sixth of December 1939. Records say it was a new passport, all the right channels issued eighteen months before. He stayed in the UK for eleven days and then caught a Heathrow flight back to Moscow on the morning of the twelfth. British Airways.’
Alice was writing a sequence of notes in shorthand. She said:
‘December the twelfth?’
‘That’s right. That’s about all I’ve got.’
A seagull squawked in Portsmouth.
‘I really, really appreciate it.’
It was a godsend. She thought that Ben would be pleased when she told him. She thought that this was exactly what she needed in order to make things up to him.
42
She told Ben as soon as she walked in the door. He was slumped on the sofa reading Archangel. They no longer kissed when they saw one another; merely an eye contact, a sort of shrug.
‘Listen, I talked to Michelle Peterson.’
Nothing.
‘My friend from university. You remember? The one who works for Customs and Excise.’
Ben turned a page.
‘A man calling himself Leonid Sudoplatov arrived in London on December the first last year. That’s eight days before your father was killed. He left from Heathrow on the morning of the twelfth. And he was Russian. Sixty-three years old.’
Now Ben rose from the sofa with the sluggishness of genuine surprise. The novel dropped to the floor. He might have said that it was impossible, that McCreery and Mark had disproved Bone’s theory. He might have told Alice to mind her own business and suggested with a lookthat things had moved on. But Kostov was alive, and his existence made perfect sense.
‘Did you tell Mark about this?’ Embarrassed by his behaviour in the club, Ben was wary of upsetting his brother, of making further mistakes.
‘He’s not answering his phone,’ Alice said.
‘I always knew that fucker was lying to me.’
‘Who? Mark?’
‘No. Not Mark. McCreery. Jock McCreery. I always knew he was hiding something.’
To Ben’s surprise, Alice came over and kissed him on the forehead. They both sat down.
‘McCreery said the letter was disinformation,’ she said.
‘I know. I know. And I sat in the pub and I listened to him smooth things over and I bought what he was saying, but in the back of my mind I always had this element of doubt. And then, when…’
‘… when what?’
‘Nothing.’ Ben had to checkhimself. He was about to mention Mark’s work for MI5. ‘McCreery is definitely covering for SIS,’ he said. ‘There’s something going on.’
‘Maybe somebody else is using Sudoplatov’s identity,’ Alice suggested, running her hand through his hair. ‘Is that a possibility?’
‘It’s a possibility.’ Ben wondered why she was being so affectionate towards him, so helpful and understanding.
‘You don’t think that’s what’s happened?’
‘Well, Kostov had his own false identities. Sudoplatov would have belonged to him. Unless somebody was trying to frame a dead man for murder, why would they bother using his passport?’
Alice nodded and looked at the floor. Was she hoping for a reconciliation, for an end to all the silences and the ill feeling? Ben wondered if talking to Michelle had been her way of making things up between them. He wondered if she was tired of his moods and anxiety. He wondered if she had spent the entire afternoon fucking Sebastian Roth.
‘How’s your piece going?’ he asked. ‘The one about the restaurant?’
Without a flicker, Alice said, ‘It got spiked.’
‘Spiked?’
‘Yeah. Seb just pulled out all of a sudden and Features said it was a bad idea. Anyway, I hadn’t heard from him in ages.’
There was a beat of distrust between them, nothing more. Then Alice said, ‘It was probably a good thing, anyway. I’d looked into Seb’s file atwork. He’s not a particularly pleasant man.’
‘How’s that?’ Ben was jealous of Roth and any criticism of him - particularly coming from Alice - was music to his ears.
‘When Libra was first starting out,’ she said, ‘Seb employed dealers to go into rival clubs and sell pills and trips to customers. Did you know about that? Does Mark know about that?’ Ben frowned and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Then he would tip off the police and get the club closed down. And when journalists have questioned him about this, he’s disguised what happened as a moral crusade, denied that he had any part in it.’
‘Yeah,’ Ben said. ‘You notice that about corrupt people. Always the ones pointing the finger. Always someone else to blame.’
‘That’s right.’ Alice nodded and appeared to warm to her theme. ‘Roth’s so tight, so money conscious, that he won’t even have people pouring themselves a glass of water in the toilets at Libra. You go in there with an empty bottle of Evian, security have instructions to confiscate. You’ve got tobuy water at the bar, just like everything else. No matter that there are dealers authorized by Libra on the sly selling pills to dehydrated punters who are already forty quid out of pocket just for coming in. The only thing Seb really cares about is the Libra share price. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable writing a piece about someone like that.’
‘Exactly,’ Ben said. ‘And you thinka guy like Roth, a man with his contacts, his leverage, doesn’t know a thousand journalists who could have written a puff piece about a restaurant opening? It was all a game. He was trying to get you into bed.’
Alice managed to make her embarrassment resemble modesty.
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said.
‘I’m serious. I’ve talked to Mark about it. The concept of adultery, of stealing someone’s wife, it’s meaningless to him. He sees it as competition.’
Alice tooka cigarette out of her bag and was pleased that her hand did not shake as she lit it.
‘Well, I don’t know…’
‘It’s funny.’ Ben looked relieved.
‘I thought you fancied him. I thought you two had a bit of a crush.’
The sentence died away in his mouth, a moment of frankness that he had not intended.
‘Fancied him?’ Alice made a face of appalled disgust, like a child swallowing medicine. ‘He’s revolting. How could you think that?’
A great wave of relief, of confidence-boosting pleasure, swept through Ben’s body. He smiled.
‘Just a hunch,’ he said. ‘Just a paranoia.’
Again Alice ran her hand through his hair. They kissed now, the sweet forgiveness, and Ben felt the skin on her back, reaching for the soft exquisite warmth of her stomach. For the first time in days he was at peace.
‘We should do something about Michelle,’ he said, galvanized and relieved. Alice looked taken aback as he rose from the sofa and lit a cigarette.
‘We should,’ she said instinctively. ‘She told me Sudoplatov was using a new passport, issued in the last couple of years. If he was in the KGB, he’d still have contacts in the Russian government, in the mafia, people who could get him passports, lines of credit, information.’
Ben inhaled deeply.
‘Then we should try to get in touch with Bone,’ he said, aware that he was slipping backinto a role for which his temperament was ill suited. ‘Would you know how to do that?’
‘Sure,’ Alice said.
‘I haven’t got a contact address for him, and I gave fucking McCreery my only copy of the letter. I don’t remember the number of the PO Box. There’s probably no way of finding him.’
‘Of course there is.’ Alice stood and tookhis hand in hers. ‘We’ll find him on the Internet. Let me get a glass of wine and we’ll go upstairs.’
Ben was technologically backward; he barely knew how to switch on Alice’s computer. In her study - a small, windowless cupboard on the same floor as their bedroom - he stood behind her as she opened Internet Explorer.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked. He had his hand on the back of her neckand was stroking her hair. The prospect of tracking down Bone seemed secondary to the knowledge that they would very soon be in bed together.
The Hidden Man (2003) Page 25
