Kremlin Conspiracy

by Brian Freemantle

  ‘There should be a time limit,’ Korobov qualified further.

  ‘Three months,’ Pushkov said, extending the pressure.

  Anything, thought Lydia. ‘Three months,’ she agreed.

  She sat away from Malik in the car taking them to her apartment. ‘Is anything the matter?’ he asked finally.

  ‘I’m tired, that’s all. They were difficult: they’re stupid.’

  ‘What sort of man was he?’

  ‘Who?’ she said, knowing what he meant but pretending she didn’t.

  ‘The American.’

  ‘Very good,’ she said. She was looking away, out of the car. Very good, she thought.

  ‘Was it difficult?’

  She looked back at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Extremely difficult.’

  In the apartment he kissed her and Lydia forced herself to respond. Why were her needs more than he could provide?

  ‘Look!’ he said.

  Lydia saw he had used his own key and arranged champagne: it was French, not Russian. She should love him, not compare him.

  ‘I’ve got some news,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told Irena,’ he announced.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Just oh?’

  ‘What did she say?’ He must never know. She couldn’t hurt him by ever letting him know.

  Malik pulled the cork and poured the wine, offering her a glass. ‘She’s agreed to a divorce: whenever we want it! Isn’t that marvellous!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lydia quietly. ‘Marvellous.’

  He looked at her curiously, glass held before him. ‘You sure there’s nothing wrong?’

  ‘Just tiredness,’ she said. ‘I told you.’

  ‘Happy?’

  She sipped, to give herself a pause. Then she said, ‘Yes. Very happy.’

  Chapter 37

  With his preference for caucus decisions, the American President spread as wide as possible the discussion of the IMF plan. There was a conference of the entire Federal Bank board of governors, which included the five Reserve Bank presidents forming the policy-making Open Market Committee, another private Oval Office discussion with Pike’s father, and a further one with Henry Ambersom. Nelson Jordan sought discussion papers from every member of the cabinet and when they finally met to discuss it, there was immediate support from Henry Bowen, the Secretary of State who had argued control through lending at the first meeting at which the Russian financial changes had been discussed, months before. Jordan’s careful preparation allowed time for people to assess attitudes. Guessing the President’s, the Commerce Secretary William Johnson pressed American involvement, which left the Treasury Secretary as the only serious dissenter. It was very clear that Bell’s opposition was futile but he persisted until the impatient President publicly humiliated the man by demanding a practical alternative proposal to that of the IMF. The conclusion was an agreement in principle to giving entire responsibility for safety-net funding to the United States and to an additional – and majority – quota contribution to the IMF’s General Arrangement to Borrow facility. With the backing of the implied confidence of America, the approaches to the other member countries of the IMF were initiated. Pike was allocated a staff to co-ordinate the creation of the package, to register the country by country response and also to monitor Africa and warn immediately if Moscow carried out its threat of default. He worked with his customary absorption, arriving at the Fund headquarters early and rarely leaving before ten in the evening, which was the reason he gave for postponing Jane’s arrival from England.

  Saudi Arabia proved difficult. Representatives of the IMF’s Interim Committee, headed by Stephen Wilder, formed the delegation to Riyadh. The Saudi response was that they had already provided substantial emergency funding to the IMF and that their dollar-maintained reserves were affected by the lowering of world oil prices, restricting the liquidity available. It took a week of arguing that those dollars would be worthless anyway if there was a world financial collapse before any concession was made and then it was only for $3,000,000,000, leaving the emergency package short by $40,000,000,000. Renewed approaches were made to member countries and Japan, Germany and England agreed to increase their already enlarged quota by one per cent. There was a further special meeting of the United States cabinet at which it was agreed that the remaining shortfall of $23,000,000,000 would be covered by an increase in the extent of America’s specially created safety-net finance.

  With existing loans this represented the biggest extension in the history of world banking.

  Pike felt a curious deflation when he met with his father on the day the second approach was made to Moscow through the Soviet embassy in Washington. His attitude was in marked contrast to his father’s ebullience.

  ‘We got it together!’ said his father.

  ‘There’s no guarantee the Soviets will accept it.’

  The older man shook his head at his son’s caution. ‘The alternative was default,’ he said. ‘And if they were going to declare default they would have done so by now.’

  It was a reasonable assumption, Pike supposed. Which meant another personal success. There was still no lift to his feeling. ‘I’d like to go if they respond,’ he said. This time the Russians could always send another representative, he realized. Perhaps it would be better if they did. He frowned at the thought, unsure why it had occurred. It had been sex, nothing more. No, not nothing more. The best ever.

  ‘After all the activity, it’s going to be a quiet time until they react,’ said his father.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Pike. There was no reason to delay Jane any longer. Maybe there’d also be time to see Janet’s psychiatrist in Connecticut.

  ‘Thought about what you’d like to do?’

  ‘Do?’ said Pike, unsure of the question.

  ‘In the future,’ said the older man. ‘It’s not just me. You’ve made it, too, Tom. Everybody knows it. Whatever you want.’

  ‘No,’ said Pike. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’

  The man frowned at his son’s lack of interest. ‘This isn’t a city to stand back in, you know.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Pike. ‘I know.’

  In his own office, Pike decided that his father was right: everything did suddenly seem quiet. He made the call to Connecticut and then to Jane in England. She asked to fly out immediately and he agreed, thinking about her properly for the first time in a month. Which was, he supposed, a sobering realization. But why should it be? He’d called often enough, despite the fourteen-hour day – and with a work schedule like that there’d been no point in her coming earlier. He’d give her enough attention, once this thing had been settled. And not fool around, like he had with Janet. He wished the psychiatrist had said what he wanted on the telephone.

  There was an obvious nervousness when he met Jane at the airport. She seemed almost embarrassed when he kissed her and Pike thought it seemed much longer than a month since they had last been together. A lot had happened since then. On the way into the city he told her about the creation of the emergency package and she said. ‘It’s an odd sensation but I feel very much on the outside of things now.’

  ‘I’m sorry about the job,’ he said.

  ‘So am I,’ she said. ‘The circumstances, that is.’ She paused and said, ‘I’ve put the flat up for sale. Is that all right?’

  Pike frowned at being asked the question. ‘I guess so,’ he said.

  ‘That’s another funny feeling,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Coming here, like this. I feel I’ve cut myself off.’

  ‘An immigrant to the New World!’ he said.

  Jane shivered. ‘Want to know a secret? – I’m frightened.’

  He looked at her briefly. ‘What of?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Just frightened.’

  Pike had taken a suite at the Mayflower again and arranged flowers. Once inside they kissed more fully than they had done at the airport.

  ‘Glad t
o see me?’ she said.

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘It is going to be all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘You know it is.’ He found her uncertainty irritating.

  ‘I’m going to try so very hard.’

  ‘You won’t have to.’

  ‘Want to know another secret?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I got very worried when you didn’t suggest I come out right away.’

  ‘You know why!’

  ‘Yes,’ she said hurriedly, frightened of annoying him. ‘And I understand. But by myself in London I started thinking that maybe you’d changed your mind.’

  ‘Why should I do that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jane. ‘I suppose I was upset by what happened at the bank.’

  ‘That’s all over now.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘All over.’

  Because he had made arrangements to go up that weekend, Pike told her about Janet. ‘It’ll only be for the day; you won’t mind being by yourself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You could go out to my parents’ house if you wanted to.’

  ‘We’ll see,’she said, then,’You would tell me, wouldn’t you? If you stopped loving me, I mean.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Isn’t this kind of a strange conversation, before we’re even married!’

  She shook her head positively. ‘I think there should be proper understandings, before we’re married.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pike patiently. ‘I’d tell you. Would you tell me?’

  She came towards him to be kissed again. ‘I’m never going to stop loving you,’ she said.

  Jane decided to remain in Washington and visit the Smithsonian, and Pike flew up to Connecticut on the first available plane. The psychiatrist was waiting when Pike arrived at the clinic. Pike sensed a stiffness in the other man.

  ‘Janet’s due for discharge very soon now,’ said Harris.

  ‘I guess she is,’ said Pike.

  ‘She’ll start scoring again,’ predicted the doctor.

  ‘That’s the feeling I got when I visited her.’

  Harris frowned. ‘Didn’t you think of telling anybody?’

  Yes, remembered Pike. ‘You’re the expert,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t any right to intrude.’

  ‘I would have hardly regarded that as intrusion,’ said the psychiatrist.

  ‘Would it have helped?’

  ‘It might.’

  ‘You realized it anyway,’ said Pike. ‘Can’t you prevent it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He hadn’t travelled five hundred miles to be lectured like some recalcitrant child, thought Pike. ‘Didn’t you want to discuss something with me?’ he said.

  Harris hesitated before he spoke. ‘Janet and I have had some long sessions together; talked about a lot of things. She says California was attention getting. Trying to shock you into some reaction. She says you made it into an experimental marriage … experimental with drugs and with sex and that she went along with it not because she wanted to but because she didn’t want to lose you.’

  Did an oath of secrecy apply to a psychiatrist like it did to doctors? wondered Pike. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he said.

  Ignoring the question, the psychiatrist went on, ‘She says that when she came back East, after the Californian marriage broke up, she thought there was a chance of your going back together again.’

  ‘That’s bull,’ said Pike. ‘It’s all bull.’

  ‘It’s important that I know,’ said Harris. ‘It’s very common for someone going through the sort of difficulties that Janet has to blame someone else, rather than themselves. She sure as hell won’t stay here as a voluntary patient after her sentence is up. So in the time available I’ve got to know the truth if I’m going to stand any sort of chance at all.’

  For several moments Pike stared down at the floor. Then he looked up and said, ‘Janet Ambersom is a promiscuous woman in every way: she always has been. She cheated on our marriage and she’d fooled around with drugs for years, starting with grass at college. Coke, too, I think, although I don’t know for certain. If it would help I could make the divorce papers available to you: everything is set out there.’

  ‘So she’s lying, when she says you led and she followed?’

  ‘This isn’t very pleasant,’ said Pike.

  ‘It’s not meant to be pleasant,’ said the psychiatrist. ‘It’s meant to save someone.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Pike. ‘She’s lying.’

  The American suggestion for a second meeting lay between them on the table directly in front of Yakov Lenev, and Lydia felt an excitement from just looking at it.

  ‘From your discussions in Zurich last time, to declare Zambia in default would achieve what we want?’ said the Politburo committee chairman.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Lydia. Her proposals had been discussed and examined too exhaustively for her to make any other reply. Why did the fool need further reassurance?

  ‘So is there any purpose in our responding to this invitation?’

  ‘I think so, as I have already stated,’ she said. As she spoke she was looking at the small strip of paper, wanting to be with him again.

  Ivan Pushkov, sitting to the left of the chairman, said, ‘From the Zurich meeting we know their concern; we know we’ve succeeded. Why endanger everything by going further?’

  ‘I do not consider there would be any danger,’ said Lydia. She was careless of Malik’s obvious curiosity.

  ‘Throughout everything Comrade Kirov has never been wrong,’ reminded the Finance Minister.

  Taking the point Lenev continued, ‘In your judgment is there sufficient value in agreeing to further contact?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lydia. ‘Every value.’

  Chapter 38

  The first flights from Moscow landed in Zurich earlier than those from Washington so Lydia was already in the suite, tensed, when he arrived. Pike didn’t enter the room at once but remained standing in the corridor, looking in at her.

  ‘They could have sent somebody else,’ he said.

  ‘I thought about that too.’

  ‘Christ, I’m glad they didn’t.’

  ‘Don’t stand there,’ she said.

  ‘We’re supposed to talk.’

  ‘Later.’

  The first time was too quick, both over-anxious. The next time they relaxed, unhurried. ‘The other way,’ she insisted. ‘No one else does that,’ and he did. They established a rhythm, one leading, the other following, changing each time.

  ‘You’re amazing,’ she said.

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘Do you think I’m a nymphomaniac?’

  ‘No,’ he said, surprised at the question.

  ‘I worry about it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it wouldn’t work with anyone else.’

  ‘I don’t think you are.’

  ‘Would you believe I hadn’t ever made love less than a year ago?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘It’s true. How long can you stay this time?’

  ‘About the same as last time,’ he said. ‘I’d like it to be longer.’

  ‘Couldn’t it be?’

  ‘I don’t think so: there’s a limit to madness.’

  ‘Is that what it is, madness?’

  ‘You know it is,’ she said.

  ‘Marvellous madness.’

  It was the same pattern as before, loving and resting, loving and resting. In the evening they finally got up and ordered food in the room.

  ‘We’re supposed to be talking,’ he reminded her.

  ‘We’ve talked.’

  ‘About other things,’ he said. ‘Your people didn’t declare a default.’

  ‘There was never a time limit to their doing it.’

  ‘You mean they still might?’ He felt a flare of alarm.

  ‘There’s still a strong argument being put for doing so.’

  This discussion was necessary, she s
upposed, but she wished it weren’t.

  ‘Didn’t you explain what that would mean!’

  ‘Of course I did,’ said Lydia. ‘The reaction was that the West could stand it: they’ve withstood things before.’

  ‘No,’ said Pike urgently. ‘Not a sovereign default: not for a very long time. And then conditions were different. Now the commitments are too interlocked.’

  ‘There was agreement at least for this meeting,’ she said, rekindling his hope. It was ludicrous to imagine the chance of another.

  ‘There’s finance available,’ said the American. ‘I can tell you that officially.’

  ‘Rescheduling is expensive,’ complained Lydia. ‘Averaged on last year’s interest rates, it could cost us an additional $400,000,000.’

  ‘That’s a generalization,’ he argued.

  ‘Still an approximate figure.’

  ‘The rates would be advantageous, believe me.’

  ‘It would still only be postponing the problem, not curing it,’ said Lydia. She had to do it: would he remember precisely, later?

  ‘They are repaying,’ said Pike. ‘I know that hasn’t been the case in the past and I know that there seems to be a problem for you at the moment, but over the past six months our banks have been paid by the Third World.’

  ‘And we haven’t,’ said Lydia. ‘Isn’t there an expression for it in the West – robbing Peter to pay Paul.’

  ‘They owed Paul first,’ he said.

  ‘And you think that indicates the system is working?’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’

  ‘What if it’s a temporary attitude to establish confidence before the application for further loans?’

  ‘There’s no indication that it is.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be, at this stage, would there?’

  ‘I’m not sure I follow your argument,’ said Pike.

  ‘Do you think Western bankers have shown proper caution?’

  The American hesitated. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t think they have.’

  ‘Neither do we,’ said Lydia. ‘Money has been handed out as if it came from a bottomless pit so every developing country has been borrowing without any thought of repayment …’ Now she paused, smiling. ‘And we made the same mistake,’ she admitted. ‘Only we don’t intend getting caught in a spiral from which we can’t disengage ourselves.’