The Soviet Minister of Foreign Trade was Grigori Savich. He didn’t take the System’s bait. He just nosed around it and eyed it carefully.
Churcher casually extended an invitation to Savich to come to London for a friendly chat.
Savich told Churcher to come to Moscow and talk business.
Churcher went.
The Soviets did not mention how the System had made them pay dearly for diamonds right after the war, but no doubt they kept it in mind. They politely permitted Churcher to say his opening piece about how the System with its years of marketing experience and its established setup could be put to profitable use by the Soviets. That was true, and the Soviets agreed. They were most cordial. They agreed to everything up to the point of terms. When it came to stating terms, Churcher was interrupted by Savich. From Savich’s unequivocal tone, Churcher gathered that the Soviets knew the System was negotiating from weakness. He just assumed his soft face and nodded.
The deal was cut. All the way to its small print.
The Russians would from then on supply the System with the diamonds it needed for the world market.
The System was saved. Just a few months short of having to fold.
It was never publicized that the System and the Soviets had become such cozy business bedfellows. That would have been bad for business, especially damaging in the West on the retail level. Why give the men in the United States, for instance, a political excuse for not buying a diamond bauble or two for their lady loves? Instead, the System saw to it that Russian diamonds in general were disparaged, said to be on the small side, to be rather undesirably grayish and difficult to cut because they were brittle. Everyone, even the best-informed diamondaires in the trade, bought the scenario.
The Soviets and the System.
Over the years their secret collaboration prevailed.
Rupert Churcher prevailed.
However, on that Friday afternoon in May in the late 1980s, as Churcher studied himself in the mirror above the commode in his private lavatory off his private office on the fourth floor at 11 Harrowhouse, he had doubts that he would last long enough to get his knighthood. Yesterday the Africans, today the Russians, he mentally complained. It was a dreadful much. Just moments ago he had excused himself and left the three Russians seated in the special boardroom, the smaller, more elegant room normally reserved for when the senior members of the board, such as Sir Hubert Brightman and Sir Nelson Askwith, got together for an insiders’ chat. Churcher had excused himself because he’d felt he was on the edge and it was giving way. “Nature calls,” he’d said with a casual shrug and taken this breather.
Churcher broke his gaze in the mirror, made his eyes avoid his eyes. He glanced down and was astonished to see his fly undone, a portion of his starched shirttail poking out. He didn’t recall having unzipped. Hell, he didn’t have to piss. That had only been an excuse. Was his mind that far off? He shook his head as if that might rearrange his thoughts to a more comfortable order. He did up his fly and decided on a splash of Wellington. Sometimes his spirit could be lifted by a little thing like that. Wellington from Trumper’s on Curzon Street had for many years been Churcher’s cologne of preference.
He twisted the tiny gold crown-shaped cap from the cologne bottle. The cap slipped from his fingers, dropped to the marble floor, and came to rest a few inches to the left of the base of the toilet bowl. When Churcher bent down to retrieve it he got a close-up look at that white porcelain convenience into which he defecated each morning. He took such distasteful proximity as another personal infliction. Fuck the Wellington. It had betrayed him. He screwed the cap back on and left the lavatory, went through his office and down the deeply carpeted main hall to the special boardroom.
For some reason it was set in his mind that the three Russians would be exactly as he’d left them. Not fixed like a tableau but still seated in their places at the oval conference table. He found Grigori Savich and Nikolai Borodin standing at the window, their backs to the room. The third, Vadim Vysotsky, was also up; he had the glass-fronted bookcase open and seemed to be mildly amused, perhaps by the fact that the deckled pages of the well-patined edition of Thackeray he was thumbing through had never been cut. Evidently Vysotsky had looked into other things; he’d helped himself to a Havana from the seventeenth-century carved ebony box on the sidetable. While Vysotsky puffed away and nearly obscured his entire head with dense Cuban smoke, Savich and Borodin were speaking in Russian.
Churcher always felt uneasy when the Russians spoke Russian in his presence. He had resolved any number of times to take at the least a conversational course in the language. However, he knew and was brave enough to use only a few words and phrases that he’d picked up, such as skolko, “how many,” and pozhalsta, “please,” and Ty shto spizdy sarvalsa, “Where have you been all my life?”—which Churcher did not realize translated literally to “Did you just pop out of a cunt?” From the inflections and gestures in the exchange between Savich and Borodin, Churcher gathered their topic had something to do with the cityscape as seen from that window. Churcher felt ignored, undeservedly insignificant, as he sat down in the petit-point lap of the seventeenth-century winged armchair. Finally, Savich turned partially and acknowledged Churcher by inquiring: “Where exactly is that statue?”
Churcher knew the statue being referred to, the only one that could be seen from that vantage, a half-dozen streets away. “It’s on the top of Old Bailey,” he replied.
“Old Bailey?”
“The Criminal Court Building.” Churcher welcomed the interest, the diversion. “Newgate Prison used to be on that spot. In fact, most of the granite stones of old Newgate were used in putting up the Criminal Court Building.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Savich, dismissing the information. “But the statue … Nikolai and I were just agreeing there is something wrong with it.”
“Oh?”
“It is not wearing a blindfold.”
Churcher got up, went over, and squinted out at the robed figure of Justice standing high up on Old Bailey’s oxidized copper dome, sword in one of her hands, scales in the other, right enough, but no blindfold. He’d never noticed that before.
“Unusual, isn’t it?” said Borodin, a tinge pointedly. “For your Justice not to be symbolically depicted as impartial?”
A capitulating grunt from Churcher. He went back to his chair.
“I wouldn’t take it as indicative,” said Savich, and in so saying conveyed the opposite. He resumed his place at the conference table directly across from Churcher. Borodin, appropriately, took the chair to Savich’s right. Vysotsky sat apart a bit and away from the table, as witness or mere background.
It occurred to Churcher that the statue thing might have been premeditated, intended to put him on the defensive. That Savich himself was there for this regular monthly meeting did not bode well, he thought. The Soviet Minister of Foreign Trade did not just happen to be in London and come to sit in. Normally, business was done with this Nikolai Borodin fellow. Something was up.
Churcher tried to read Savich. He hadn’t been face to face with him for two years, but Savich did not seem older or in any way different. The dossier that the System’s Security Section had on Savich was extensive, and perhaps back in a more priggish era it would have been meaningful. That Savich at age sixty-two was still a bachelor and an accomplished womanizer did not discredit. If anything it contributed to the testimony that he was very much the man. Females, from youngsters to matrons, found him appealing, a man who would be a challenge to try to resist. He appeared to have strengths, all the various kinds, inward and outward. There wasn’t a hint of stoop to his posture, as though not a single day of his life had ever beaten him. He was tall, thickly built, his head set solidly, rather defiantly, in place. One might say he gave the physical impression of being the kind of man who, if condemned to hang, would dangle and kick for an exceptionally long time. The dark brown pupils of his eyes were ringed by black. His eyes never changed, seemed
to constantly present the entire emotional spectrum, depending upon what one searched for in them. The Russian broodiness was, naturally, always evident in that rich brown, as was melancholy. Two of Savich’s most striking features were his brows. He allowed them to grow long and bushy, and he trained them so they came to a rather sharp peak. The effect was that he appeared to be raising his brows at everything, not necessarily faultfinding, just effortlessly reacting. They were black brows in match with his straight hair, but his brush mustache was variegated gray.
Grigori Savich did indeed make colorful reading, Churcher thought, momentarily admitting to himself a measure of envy. However, he did not approve of Savich’s attire. The least Savich could have done was come in a proper suit. Borodin had. As usual, he’d come in a double-breasted navy worsted, acceptable cream shirt, and appropriate subdued tie. Savich, on the other hand, looked dressed for the country. In, of all things, a brown, large-patterned plaid jacket, hard-finished herringbone brown trousers, blue pin-dot shirt, and brown woven silk tie. A small-figured purple silk square was nonchalantly fluffed out of his breast pocket. It did not matter that the jacket and trousers were of fine cloth and well tailored, and that apparently the shirt was also made to measure. They were an impropriety, an affront. Churcher wished he were in a position to let Savich know how put out he was about this. He smiled a slight, tight-lipped smile.
Silence.
Savich sat forward, apparently to get down to business. He seemed about to speak but then, as though following an impulse, he turned and nodded to Nikolai Borodin, deferring to the younger man.
Nikolai hadn’t expected that but was ready for it. Without having to collect his thoughts or hyphenate with a fragment of stammer he went right to it. “Mr. Churcher,” he said, “the prices of our rough are being increased five percent.”
“You want to increase the amount of rough we handle for you, is that it?” Churcher pretended to have misunderstood while he bettered his balance.
“The prices of our rough,” Nikolai reiterated.
Churcher didn’t flinch. “Five percent, you say.”
“Five.”
Churcher brought his hands together at chest level, fingertip lightly to fingertip, demonstrating lack of tension. “I can’t see how we’d be able to agree with that,” he said calmly. “Which category of rough are you talking about, anyway?”
“Across the board,” Nikolai told him.
Churcher made a negative mouth and shook his head. “Perhaps there’s room for an ever so slight increase in the price of bort, but not on gem-quality. Definitely not on gem-quality. As prices now stand on gem our margin is extremely thin.”
“I think you should know that our first inclination was an eight percent increase.”
That elevated Churcher’s voice a notch. “I’m trying to tell you the profit’s just not there. But don’t take my word for it. Go over our accounting figure for figure, see for yourselves.”
“Computers make marvelous liars,” Savich remarked.
“I beg your pardon,” Churcher huffed.
“I’m not insinuating that you would intentionally cheat us.” Savich’s tone softened his stance just enough.
Nikolai admired, as he had numerous times before, how well Savich could do that.
“I should certainly hope not,” Churcher said. “We’ve been square as a block with you on every carat you’ve ever placed in our hands.”
Nikolai told him, “It was only the spirit of partnership that brought us down from an eight percent increase to five.”
Churcher reached to a small silver plate on the table and broke the edge off one of the Carr whole-wheat crackers it contained, little more than a crumb, but it served to occupy his mouth momentarily.
At that moment Nikolai discounted Churcher’s stuffiness, his duplicitous ways, and allowed a twinge of compassion for this man who, in this instance, could only squirm and lose. To offset such feelings, another part of Nikolai reminded him of the time before his time when the System had had its knee on Russia’s neck.
“Assuming that some small percentage price increase was feasible—just assuming, mind you—when did you see it taking effect?” Churcher asked.
“The first of June.”
“You know, I find it hard to believe that you’re not more adequately acquainted with the way our business is conducted,” Churcher said. “If you were, you’d know that June first, two weeks from now, would be impractical.” He went on to explain. “Naturally, we would pass a portion of any increase on to our clients …”
Portion was bullshit; all would be more like it, Nikolai thought.
“… and our next sight is set for the sixth of June. Packets have already been made up. Rather than jolting our sightholders with a sudden, unexpected increase, we would, as we have in the past, want to let the prospect of such a thing sink in. Make it appear to be information that has inadvertently leaked out and spread. That would give the industry a chance to predigest the bad news.”
“For the June and July sights the System could absorb the increase,” Nikolai suggested.
“Out of the question!” Churcher snapped.
“Take it up with your board,” Savich advised, punctuating the end of the subject.
Churcher didn’t say he would or wouldn’t. He fumed silently for a long moment, then pinched his thumb and second finger into his vest pocket and brought out something. Tossed it onto the conference table. A diamond. It bounced a few times as though acrobatically demonstrating its liveliness before coming to rest on the highly polished mahogany surface. Directly in front of Savich. It wasn’t a large diamond. Only one carat, but it looked lovely just lying there.
“I’m sure,” Churcher said, “you’re aware of the close watch we keep on the market. We’re sensitive to every movement of any consequence. We know day by day what kind of goods are being sold and in what quantities.” Churcher paused to blow his nose into a tissue. He balled up the tissue and deposited it delicately, as though it were something valuable, in the ashtray. He sniffed once and went on: “Off and on over the past year and a half—actually a bit longer—diamonds of this quality have been appearing on the market in unanticipated amounts. One time they turn up in Hong Kong, next in New York. The last large lot came to light in Milan a little over a month ago. It consisted of two thousand pieces, all D-flawless investment-type one-carat stones, perfectly identical.”
Nikolai did some swift mental figuring. At present prices a D-flawless one-carat diamond, the standard unit by which the trade set its selling and buying scale, was worth eighteen thousand dollars. Times two thousand pieces came to thirty-six million dollars.
Churcher removed a pair of tweezers and a ten-power magnifying loupe from a drawer and pushed them across to Savich.
Savich ignored them.
Nikolai took up the tweezers and used them to pick up the diamond, which he examined with the loupe. He saw immediately from the diamond’s perfectly proportioned cut, crisp faceting, and clear, icy whiteness that it was typically Siberian. Nikolai had witnessed the electronic cutting and polishing of many such diamonds during his annual mandatory visit to the Aikhal installation last September. “It’s ours,” he informed Savich in a matter-of-fact tone.
“I’ve held back calling this to your attention,” Churcher said.
“So why bring it up now?” Savich said.
“We avoid such distasteful matters whenever we can.”
Sure you do, Nikolai thought, knowing otherwise from his six years of experience dealing with the System.
“We had hoped all it would amount to was a few isolated incidents,” Churcher said. “However, it is now apparent to us that a pattern is developing. We want it nipped before it gets more serious.”
“A thousand or two extra carats now and then won’t rattle the market,” Nikolai said.
“We just can’t have it,” Churcher said emphatically.
“I gather you believe if you got to the bottom of this you would find
us.”
“Well, they are your goods,” Churcher retorted.
“That means nothing,” Nikolai contended. “Practically all the goods the market is now cutting are ours. The diamonds you’re so concerned with could be from any one of a number of sources. Have you considered that?”
“And dismissed it for good reason,” Churcher parried.
Savich came back into it. “Perhaps, Mr. Churcher, instead of sneaking about playing Sherlock Holmes, KGB, or whatever, your security people should review the terms of our pact with you.”
“That, Minister Savich, goes both ways,” Churcher said with more belligerence than he’d intended.
Savich didn’t rise to it. Level-voiced, every syllable deliberate, he told Churcher: “According to our agreement we retain the right to sell certain quantities of finished gems through our trade organization, Almazjuvelirexport.”
Churcher nodded.
“Possibly,” Savich continued, “your dislike for that arrangement is so intense that you mentally blank it out.”
“Possibly,” Churcher said rather than all he wanted to say. He knew for damn certain those two thousand Milan carats and, as well, those other prior mysterious lots that had been marketed in New York and Hong Kong were in excess of the stipulated quota the Russians were supposed to sell through Almazjuvelirexport. The System’s figures had been gone over and gone over and were indisputable. Churcher had a summary printout of them back on his desk that he’d planned on having brought in to him today at the proper moment. But now, having assessed Minister Savich’s response, especially its manner with its notes of defiance and admonition, Churcher decided it prudent not to carry the matter further. He supposed the Soviets would always be leaping over the boundaries of the System’s agreement with them. Whenever they needed a few million they would just dip into their hoard of diamonds and go to market. That was the uncomfortable fact the System would have to bear, being reminded time and time again of its subordinate position.
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