Kremlin Conspiracy
Page 13
Lydia knew that too but didn’t want to spoil his attempt at worldliness. Instead she said, ‘I think that’s beautiful.’
‘I’m glad,’ he said.
‘About what?’
‘That you think it’s beautiful. And were brave enough to say so, without imagining this place full of listening devices and cameras.’
‘Is it?’ said Lydia, at once concerned.
Again he laughed at her. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not: that’s from books, too.’
‘Can you be sure?’
‘No.’
‘You’re mocking me,’ she protested. ‘Why are you mocking me?’
‘I’m not mocking you,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to make you less serious.’
‘How can I be less serious!’
‘Just by being less serious,’ he said unhelpfully.
‘You’re making me uncomfortable instead.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you are.’ Lydia was enjoying the flirtation, hoping it wasn’t going to end at just that. Away from the official surroundings Malik was relaxed and easy. What was his body like under that discreet grey suit? she wondered.
‘I don’t mock you,’ he insisted.
‘It seems you do, sometimes.’
‘I’m surprised.’
‘About what?’
‘Inferiority, in someone like you.’
She flared at the accusation. ‘I am not inferior!’
‘I didn’t say you were.’
‘Of course you did.’
‘I said you felt an inferiority: and that I was surprised at it.’
She thought of running through an endless procession of rooms and of Malik laughing at her, and wished she was better able to defend herself in situations like this; it was a bizarre irony – almost an obscene one – that she could confidently confront international financiers across a negotiating table and yet in a social environment she wanted so desperately she had no knowledge of the words to use or the attitudes to adopt. ‘I don’t have an inferiority complex.’
‘Good,’ he said, pleased at the effect he was having upon her.
‘Why good?’
‘It would be a disaster for all that we’ve planned if you did have one, wouldn’t it?’
‘Damn you, Vladimir Malik! Damn you in hell!’
‘I hope there aren’t recording devices,’ he said. ‘Hell opposes Heaven and we don’t believe in either; we just believe in the man.’
‘There aren’t …?’ she started again, stopping herself abruptly, knowing that she had run into another blocked room.
He reached across for her hand. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said. ‘Of everyone I know, you’ve least cause to be frightened. Or to feel inferior. Or to be uncertain. Believe in yourself.’
‘I’m confused,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how to feel.’
‘Why not be yourself?’
There was a part of herself that Lydia was frightened to recognize; frightened, even, to admit. She’d subjugated the need for her financial scheme, but increasingly the financial scheme wasn’t enough. God, how she hated her financial scheme! Yet it had given her everything she had ever craved and wanted. Except what she craved and wanted more than anything and which ambition couldn’t dominate any more.
‘I didn’t think it was going to be like this,’ she said.
‘Like what?’
‘I feel like you’re chasing me and every time I find a place to hide you discover it.’ Fuck the dream, she thought. Fuck it! fuck it! fuck it!
‘Don’t hide from me,’ said the man.
‘That’s another corner.’
‘I know.’
‘Stop being such a shit.’
‘What do you think of the boar?’
‘Shit!’
‘Good,’ he said.
‘What the hell’s good?’
‘Good is you saying “shit” and actually getting angry and not behaving like one of those stupid computers.’
‘I’m not a computer! I’m a woman!’
‘You disguise it well.’
She felt the accusation going deep into her like a knife, so sharp she could feel the pain. ‘You are mocking me,’ she said. She stopped and then said, ‘All right, mocking isn’t the right word. Taking advantage of me: playing with me. Everything I say is wrong, so you can turn it against me.’
‘Inferiority!’
‘Stop it!’
‘Why?’
‘It isn’t fair!’
‘I don’t want to be fair.’
‘You’re doing it again.’
‘I’ll do it as long as I think it’s necessary.’
‘That’s patronizing!’
‘Be a woman, Lydia Fedorovna.’
She started to cry then, helplessly at first, like a child suddenly lost. And then like she was lost hopelessly and sobbing. ‘Bastard!’ she said. ‘Bastard!’
Malik lived, like Lydia did, in the Kutuzovsky complex, so there was no embarrassment about entry. He looked in frank admiration at her apartment and said, ‘I have never seen anything like it!’ And she was pleased, wanting to impress him, as he had wanted to impress her at the restaurant.
She undressed in the bathroom, nervous that it was finally about to happen. Malik kept the side lamps on and she was glad he did because she’d explored her own body so many times and knew it was good.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said.
‘Let me see you,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘It’s going to be part of me: I want to see.’
He pulled the bedclothes away and she felt the excitement blaze through her. Instinctively she bent to kiss him and he moaned at the movement.
‘Now me,’ he said.
‘Not yet.’
‘When?’
‘Not yet.’ How would he react, when he discovered?
‘This is wonderful,’ he said.
It was for her, too: more wonderful that she’d imagined, in all the fantasies.
‘Let me,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
His mouth was soft yet properly hard and she held him, wanting to feel him there: keep him there, too, because she didn’t want any of this to end.
He stayed obedient for a long time and then he said, ‘I want to make love to you.’
‘Don’t hurt me,’ she said.
‘I won’t: I promise I won’t.’
Chapter 14
The uncertainties remained unresolved – indeed, as far as the government changes were concerned, they’d worsened – and Pike felt frustrated. Which he recognized to be a wrong and even ridiculous attitude and certainly not fitting for a supposedly objective analyst. But still an attitude he couldn’t avoid. A lot of the feeling was personal annoyance at what he now recognized to have been the totally unfounded optimism with which he’d arrived in France. It hadn’t taken long for the optimism to falter, during the two days of talks with French Finance Ministry officials. It was Pike’s first experience of Gallic insularity and he was bemused by it. And worried, too. From the discussions it was quite clear that the French had attempted no detailed analysis. In fact, towards the end of the second day, when he tried to argue the possible connection between the ministerial replacements in Moscow with the Argentinian and Polish agreements, balanced by the Soviet debt repayments, Pike had found himself being listened to with patronizing tolerance but almost complete disinterest.
That hadn’t been the attitude in Bonn, but he still hadn’t heard the answers he wanted. The Bundesbank officials confirmed that the German clearing banks had reported prompt and in some cases premature settlement of debts and interest, both from the Soviet Union and Poland, but refused to agree with him that it was further indication of improved financial thinking in Moscow. They wouldn’t interpret the government changes in his way, either. They argued that periodic shake-ups were not uncommon and that the apparent financial responsibility was one of necessity, to impress the West – and particularly
America – from whom they wanted wheat and grain.
There was a headwind against the flight from Germany and then congestion over Heathrow, so Pike was later than he expected landing in England. Remembering it was Friday and suspecting that the City might start its weekend as early as most of the people he knew in Wall Street, Pike telephoned Jane from the airport, glad when she answered the telephone on the second ring.
‘I was late getting in,’ he said. ‘I thought you might be getting ready to leave.’
‘No,’ said Jane. She tried to conceal the relief in her voice.
‘I said I’d call.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘How are you?’
‘OK. And you?’
‘OK. Trip working out well?’
‘So so,’ he said. ‘I wondered if we might meet sometime while I’m here. Dinner or something?’
For God’s sake don’t be so casual about it, she thought. ‘Why not?’ she said, trying to match his attitude. Which she had to. They’d been out once and she’d found him reasonably pleasant, that was all. It wasn’t fair to consider him a surrogate for Paul. How could he be?
‘What about tonight?’
‘I’m not doing anything tonight.’ She was managing to maintain the lightness, she decided gratefully.
‘It’ll take me a while to get into town, I guess.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘The Churchill.’
She gave him her home number and said, ‘Why not call me when you get in?’
Jane was still experimenting with her promotion, adjusting to her own secretary and support staff and the right to come and go as she pleased. She hadn’t taken advantage of the freedom until this afternoon. She was in Kensington by four, standing undecided in front of the regimented wardrobe as she’d stood undecided before it the previous night, hoping that he would telephone. Paul had been very generous to her when their affair began, and a lot of the clothes there he had bought her. She chose a grey dress she had purchased herself, after the break-up, a gesture for her own benefit but one which was important to her.
It was past seven when he telephoned. ‘Took longer than I thought,’ he said.
‘I’ve only just got in,’ she said
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘It’s your town, Jane Rosen,’ he said.
And she knew it not at all, she realized. The restaurants were the ones Paul had taken her to: in the first weeks, when he was impressing her, he’d taken her to Annabel’s and to a club that had since closed down in the King’s Road, but he’d been the member: it had never seemed important to get membership for herself.
‘Soho’s the name in all the guide books,’ he said, breaking the silence.
‘Covent Garden is better,’ she said. It had been a remark of Paul’s.
‘Let’s go there then.’
‘It’s not the same as Georgetown.’
‘I don’t want it to be,’ he said. ‘Shall I pick you up?’
‘Yes.’
‘Half an hour?’
‘Forty-five minutes,’ she insisted, maintaining the pretence.
He arrived in forty, carrying a single chrysanthemum which he confessed to having stolen from an arrangement in the hotel foyer. He didn’t try to kiss her, as if they were more friendly than they were, or shake her hand, which would have been too formal, and she was glad on both counts. There was a slight embarrassment when he let her give the cab driver the address and she said Covent Garden and the man asked where; she covered by choosing the opera house so they could walk through the redevelopment behind. Pike seemed to enjoy her guided tour and there was an added advantage in that it allowed her to examine the restaurants and choose one as if she knew it well. It was fortunate there was a table available.
‘Better than Georgetown,’ he declared, when they sat down.
‘That’s not true, but thank you for being gallant,’ she said.
‘Here’s to resumed friendships,’ he toasted, raising his wine glass. Would she sleep with him? he wondered.
‘I was surprised to get your call,’ she said, drinking with him.
‘I’m surprised to be here.’
‘Why are you?’
‘It’s shop,’ he warned.
‘I enjoy shop.’
He told her of his Russian analysis and of his briefing by Volger but not about the composite study requested by Washington because that was government information that he regarded as classified. He looked at her curiously when she began shaking her head and smiling at him. ‘What is it?’ he said.
‘I made the same assessment,’ she said. ‘I started when I saw our clearing bank returns and realized the Russians were settling on time.’
Pike put aside his knife and fork, no longer interested in the meal. ‘What’s the verdict?’ he demanded. ‘Financial control or coincidence?’
‘Control,’ she said at once.
‘Thank Christ for that!’ he said. ‘I’ve a meeting with your people on Monday: it’ll be good to get the same opinion as I’ve got and talk it through.’
‘It isn’t the same opinion,’ she said shortly.
‘But you said …’
‘My verdict,’ she qualified. ‘I suppose I’m breaching convention by telling you in advance, but the bank’s view is that it’s unconnected.’
‘It can’t be!’
‘Yes it can,’ she said. ‘I went right back to the immediate post-war: there are examples of things occurring just like this and of financial experts making just the sort of analysis that you’ve done and I’ve done and then suddenly it falls apart.’
He should have gone back as far as she’d done, Pike realized, disconcerted; he guessed someone in the Treasury or the CIA would have done so and would be able to argue against the Federal opinion when it was presented in Washington. He’d have to warn Volger to prevent the man’s embarrassment. Which would seem to be tempering his own conviction. Shit, he thought.
‘I know I’m right,’ he insisted.
‘You can’t be,’ said Jane, with even stronger insistence. ‘You don’t know enough; none of us do. Which is the problem. We can assemble everything we know so far and make from it whatever we want.’
‘That’s not the view in America,’ said Pike. An exaggeration, he realized: he didn’t know anyone’s view in America, apart from the Federal Reserve’s. His own, he thought again.
‘Then it should be,’ said Jane. ‘Personally I believe you’re right and personally I believe that in weeks or months or whatever time we’re going to be vindicated. But objectively, which is surely what we’ve got to be, I can see the stronger counter-argument.’
‘Certainly it’s what Germany seems to be accepting,’ said Pike. ‘And France doesn’t seem to believe anything is happening at all.’
‘The French traditionally distrust banks and keep their gold under the bed,’ reminded Jane. ‘Sometimes I think they’re right, too.’
‘It’s not people I’m talking about,’ said Pike. ‘It’s financiers and bankers, who should know better.’
‘That’s the biggest problem,’ she said reflectively.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Have you studied the history of banking?’
‘Of course.’
‘Hasn’t something ever occurred to you?’
‘What?’
‘That bankers should know better. I accept the argument that money is a commodity, to be sold, like every other commodity is sold. But traders in market places don’t hand over their goods without getting their value back, in return …’ She pointed out the now crowded restaurant. ‘We’ve eaten their food and if we don’t pay for it they’ll call the police; they certainly wouldn’t serve us the same meal tomorrow night if we didn’t pay for this one. But that’s what banks do. Too often.’
‘Thank you, for “Banking Made Easy!” ’ he said.
She blushed, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean to lecture.’
‘Don’t you ever worry?’ she asked.
‘About what?’
‘Everything collapsing.’
‘Financially you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Not often.’
‘Always a resolve?’
‘There always seems to be.’
‘I was wrong,’ she said. ‘In Washington.’
‘About what?’
‘Being a feminist figurehead. I got my promotion.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘You sound like an offended feminist.’
‘I deserved it.’
‘Would you have got it, if you hadn’t deserved it?’
‘No.’
‘So why the need to justify yourself?’
‘Now you’re lecturing.’
He extended his finger and said ‘Touché’ and she met his touch and said, ‘I don’t know the fencing term for an even score.’
‘I don’t either,’ he said. ‘Settle for evens?’
‘Yes.’
‘How old are you?’ he demanded.
‘That’s a rude question,’ she said, unoffended.
‘Thirty?’
‘That’s even ruder. I’m twenty-eight.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’
‘Why aren’t you locked up in some tower, by some loving husband, with guards outside to keep the other guys out?’
‘He was somebody else’s husband.’ She hadn’t meant to make the admission: she was actually enjoying the flirtation, recognizing it as harmless, and now she knew she’d ruined it, making the whole thing serious.
‘Bet he regretted it,’ he said.
She appreciated he was trying to help her and liked him for it. ‘Actually he didn’t,’ she said.