Flawless

by Tilly Bagshawe

  Her audience seemed to divide into two distinct camps: the glarers and the leerers. On the whole, she thought she slightly preferred the latter, who at least took the trouble to muster the occasional smile. But they were hardly the world’s most welcoming bunch, and it took all of Gregori’s cajoling to get them quiet enough to allow her to begin speaking at all.

  “Thank you all for coming,” she began falteringly. “I know some of you have traveled a long way to be here, and I really appreciate it.”

  A few men in the front row began talking among themselves. Scarlett looked helplessly to her translator, a fat, bored-looking woman who relayed her words without an iota of enthusiasm first in Russian and then in the local Yakut. By the time she’d finished, the front-row conversation was already spreading backward and becoming quite animated, with miners laughing and passing cigarettes among one another like naughty schoolboys.

  Suddenly Gregori bellowed something in Russian. A couple of hecklers yelled back, after which a full-scale slanging match erupted for almost a minute. When it was over, Gregori turned back to Scarlett, as calmly as if he’d just been adjusting her mic.

  “You can continue now,” he said brightly. “Everybody is very interested in what you have to say.”

  For the next twenty minutes, Scarlett plowed through her speech, stopping every thirty seconds or so for the suicidal translator to do her thing. With the exception of the night she lost her virginity to a clumsy schoolboy named Roland with a nervous sweating problem, it was without doubt the longest twenty minutes of her life.

  “O’Donnell Mining Corp is systematically killing you.”

  Silence.

  “The power to fight Brogan O’Donnell lies within your own hands.”

  More silence.

  “Yakutia’s diamonds are your wealth, your resources, your livelihood. They should be paying for the best health care, the best hospitals, the best schools in the federation. You don’t have to see that money disappear into American pockets, into Brogan O’Donnell’s pockets, while you suffer in silence.”

  Not a murmur.

  In the end, hoarse with the effort of making herself heard and winded with deflation at the lack of reaction, she sat down to the faintest ripple of forced applause. No one, it seemed, had any questions, and within sixty seconds the hall had emptied almost completely.

  “What a fiasco.” Dropping her head into her hands, she groaned loudly. “You know, it’s ironic. I came out here to make a difference, to prove to myself that I wasn’t going to let Brogan intimidate me, that I was going to bring the fight right to his bloody doorstep. But these people don’t want a fight.” She shook her head in exasperation. “All they want is a free bar.”

  “You’re wrong.” The Scottish accent caught Scarlett’s attention immediately. “Isn’t she, Gregori? Why d’you think they traveled so far to be here? They want help. And they’ll have listened to what you said tonight, even if they don’t show it. They’re not used to being lectured by pretty wee girls, that’s all, and they don’t know Trade Fair from a horse’s ass. Let’s just say you’re not the messiah they’ve been expecting.”

  “That’s just what I’ve been telling her,” said Gregori, clapping the small, red-haired man on the back. “Scarlett, this is Andy Gordon. He’s the BBC correspondent out here, God help him. Andy, meet Scarlett Drummond Murray.”

  “A pleasure.”

  “You’re the one who did the report for Radio Four at Christmas,” said Scarlett, impressed. “That was a terrific piece, by the way. It’s what first got me interested in Yakutia, in fact. Up until this year Trade Fair’s been almost exclusively in Africa.”

  “Well, we’re happy to have you, believe me,” beamed Andy. “These poor bastards need all the help they can get. I don’t suppose you’d like a drink, would you?”

  “Another one?” groaned Scarlett.

  “Please,” mocked Gregori and Andy in unison. “We’ve hardly started.”

  The three of them soon found themselves ensconced in a comfortable corner booth at one of the lesser-known hotel bars in downtown Yakutsk.

  “It’s as ugly and soulless as every other waterhole in this godforsaken town,” said Andy cheerfully, “but they know me here, which means we won’t get ripped off, and they actually serve some decent Scotch if either of you get bored with vodka.”

  The Yakut clientele eyed them warily as they sat down; unsurprisingly, thought Scarlett, given what an odd trio they made: Gregori, all brooding Dr. Zhivago handsomeness, led the way, followed by the pint-sized figure of Andy, grinning like a ginger garden gnome, and Scarlett bringing up the rear, a willowy, freckled Alice in Wonderland and quite clearly the only nonprostitute female in the room.

  “I feel like such an idiot.” Scarlett began beating herself up again the moment her Glenfiddich arrived, noticing with alarm that the barman seemed to have left them the entire bottle. “I should have done more research, understood a little of the culture before flying out here half-cocked, thinking I could actually make a difference. I was just so determined to bring the fight to Brogan, to get involved…but he was right. I am naive.”

  “There are worse crimes than naïveté, you know,” said Andy kindly. “Anyone can sit on their ass and pontificate about the world’s injustices. But not many people get on the fucking plane, write a speech, pull off an event like tonight with all the organization that entails. No wonder Trade Fair’s got O’Donnell rattled.”

  “Thanks,” said Scarlett. “But I’m not sure I did pull it off. Those men thought I was a joke. They don’t believe I can help them.”

  “You can’t,” said Gregori. “No one can unless they’re prepared to help themselves. But tonight was a step forward. They came to hear you speak, they listened, they stayed to the end.”

  “You mustn’t take it personally,” agreed Andy. “Rapturous applause was never in the cards. These blokes don’t do emotion, OK? I’ve watched some of them listen to their doctors telling them they’ve got inoperable lung cancer, and it barely elicits a shrug.”

  For the next forty-five minutes he filled Scarlett in on everything he’d learned researching the O’Donnell miners for his BBC report and for the in-depth feature he was currently writing for the Sunday Times.

  “The cancer cases are compelling,” he told her, “but you’ll never pin that on O’Donnell in a court of law, not in a million years.”

  “So what are you saying?” Scarlett’s frown deepened. “We should just give up?”

  “Not at all. The diamond industry is acutely sensitive to bad press, as you know—Brogan O’Donnell more so than most. I’m doing my bit to get this story out there. But Trade Fair can help. Enough media pressure and Brogan will have to act. At the very least I’d like to see him paying for medical care.”

  “Meanwhile, we unions have to get our own act together,” said Gregori. “We have to insist on better mine safety, better pay, better conditions. And we will. It’s a slow road, but we’re getting there.”

  “Well, you can count me in,” said Scarlett, her cheeks flushed with alcohol and renewed passion. “Brogan O’Donnell’s nothing but a schoolyard bully. He’s already tried to intimidate me into keeping my mouth shut, but he doesn’t scare me a bit.”

  “He should,” said Andy, deadly serious all of a sudden. “This is Russia. Inconvenient people ‘disappear’ here every day. The hoods call themselves mafia, but that’s a polite term. The truth is they’re nothing more than hired assassins, farming out their services to the highest bidder, no questions asked. And your friend Brogan’s one of the highest bidders in Siberia.”

  Scarlett fell silent. When Cameron had tried to warn her off provoking Brogan, she’d dismissed him out of hand. But here was someone who truly cared about these diamond miners, who was risking his own life and reputation to help bring them justice—and even he was urging caution. She thought about the bulletproof glass in her hotel room window, and for the first time felt a cold prickle of fear beneath her skin.


  “I’m not telling you to drop it, and I really hope you don’t,” said Andy, sensing her change in mood. “I’m just saying you can do as much good, if not more, from London or New York than you can out here.”

  “But even at home you should take basic precautions,” chimed in Gregori. “Check your phones. Make a habit of looking underneath your car before you start it in the mornings.”

  “Oh, come on,” laughed Scarlett. But neither of the men cracked a smile.

  “Sorry to be the harbinger of doom, sweetheart,” said Andy, refilling her glass. “But they’ve disposed with much tougher targets than you.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AIDAN LEACH JERKED his wiry hips to Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body” with about as much sense of rhythm as a deaf, elderly nun.

  By far the oldest, ugliest, and uncoolest individual of either sex on the dance floor, Brogan O’Donnell’s chief attorney and self-proclaimed friend was nonetheless surrounded by female admirers in various stages of undress. Bungalow 8 was usually renowned for its strict, Studio 54-style door policy. It wasn’t enough simply to be rich here. You must also be suitably beautiful, famous, or otherwise captivating to be admitted as one of New York’s genuine “in” crowd. And yet somehow, Aidan Leach, a man with all the charm of a festering bedsore, had become a semipermanent fixture.

  Brogan’s influence helped. As did Leach’s bank balance, persistence, and the fact that he owned a 20 percent share in Premiere, and so was guaranteed to turn up with some of the most beautiful girls in Manhattan on his arm. Even so, you’d have thought management would have drawn the line somewhere. With his dandruff-splattered shoulders and cheap, shiny suits—he could easily have afforded the best tailoring money could buy, but was notoriously penny-pinching, one of the character traits that Brogan admired in a lawyer—he looked more like a New Jersey accountant than a top attorney. Instantly recognizable for his height (he was six foot five); tiny, deep-set, birdlike eyes; and prominent Adam’s apple, his ugliness was not even mitigated by being generic. Nor did he possess the sort of wit, charm, or dynamism that can sometimes make an unattractive but successful man desirable in the eyes of women. No, Aidan Leach had one thing and one thing only that the girls fawning over him wanted—access to Brogan O’Donnell. Happily for him, many of them were prepared to do just about anything to get it.

  “Come over here, baby,” he crooned, summoning a nubile young Latina into his inner circle. “Hurry up, ’cause you’re taking too long,” he added, grimacing in a cringeworthy attempt at JT karaoke. The girl made her way over, smiling as she nudged disgruntled rivals out of the way, and began gyrating her gold-lamé-clad butt in Aidan’s direction.

  “What’s your name?” he bellowed in her ear, trying to make himself heard over the din as his bony hands slid all over her breasts, like a horny BFG.

  “Carrrrrla,” she purred, rolling her r’s in a sultry Salma Hayek fashion.

  “Aidan,” he shouted back, pulling her against his body so she could feel his meager erection pressing into her back. “You wanna take a break, Carla? Go get a drink?”

  “Sure,” she beamed, aware of the envious dagger looks of the other models as she slipped her arm around his waist. “Lead the way, Meester Leach.”

  “Ah, so you know who I am?” Aidan smiled smugly.

  “Of course,” said Carla, quite prepared to massage his ego as well as his dick if it would catapult her to the front of the line on the best jobs. “You’re an important man in this city. Everybody know who you are.”

  The bar was packed, but as soon as Aidan arrived a stool materialized out of the ether. Immediately taking it for himself rather than offering it to the girl, he sat down, spreading his gangly legs like a crab opening its pincers, and ordered two martinis.

  Positioning herself between his legs with her back to the bar, Carla ran a long, red-taloned finger up the inside of his polyester-covered thigh.

  “So,” she drawled. “Now that you have me here…what d’you want to talk about?”

  Aidan was about to make some quip about talking being the last thing on his mind, when his inside jacket pocket began vibrating. “Sorry,” he said, whipping out his cell phone with a flourish, like a cowboy brandishing a gun. Seeing the name “Brogan” flash across the screen, he turned it around to show the girl, who looked duly impressed, before lifting it to his ear.

  “Hey boss,” he yelled. “Whassup?”

  “Whassup?” Even on the crackly long-distance line, Brogan sounded scathing. “Jesus, Aidan, enough with the jive talk, all right? You are not black.”

  Stung but grateful that no one else could hear him being so summarily put down, Aidan smiled and nodded, trying to act like nothing had happened. Tragically, his hero-worship of Brogan was not an act. It always hurt him when the boss exposed their “friendship” for the master/servant relationship it really was.

  “How’s Moscow? Have you had time to do any scouting while you were out there? Find us some new girls?” he asked, trying to get back in Brogan’s good books. Premiere had professional employed model scouts in all the major capitals, including Moscow, but both Aidan and Brogan liked to indulge themselves with a little freelance dabbling when they traveled. It was one of the few interests they genuinely had in common.

  “One or two,” said Brogan, without enthusiasm, thinking of the dead-eyed Georgian twins he’d amused himself with last night. “Nothing to write home about.”

  “Well, worry not,” oiled Aidan. “I’ve got us a great Latina here. If she’s any good in the sack I’ll pass her on to you when you get back. My treat.”

  “I don’t need you to find me pussy,” snapped Brogan. There were times when he was happy to play along with his attorney’s drooling schoolboy enjoyment of the “freebies” on offer at Premiere, but tonight wasn’t one of them. This trip had been a washout. He was pissed off with Russia, with the unions, with the shitty excuse for a hotel his assistant had booked him into, and with being away from home generally. Diana was starting yet another IVF cycle this week—her fifth—and he didn’t like leaving her.

  “It’s insanely hot over here,” he grumbled. “I’ve been in Yakutia the past two days, trying to sweet-talk the unions into dropping their demand for health insurance. Why can’t these people get it through their thick, Slavic skulls that I am not about to admit liability for those wheezing, work-shy sons of bitches? I mean, do they have any idea how much lung cancer treatment costs?”

  Aidan shook his head and mumbled something conciliatory.

  “You’d have thought they’d be happy to be employed,” Brogan ranted on. “It’s not as if they have so many other, more attractive options.”

  “Exactly. So why sweet-talk them?” said Aidan. “Tell them pay and conditions are what they are, no health coverage, and they can take it or leave it.”

  “Hmm,” growled Brogan, who’d certainly thought about it. “Maybe I should. But the men are scared. Some upstart from the union, Gregor something-or-other, has been whipping them into a frenzy. When’s that Harvard report gonna be finished?”

  As soon as the first cancer cases emerged, Aidan had taken the precaution of commissioning an official scientific investigation to disprove any link between air quality in OMC mines and the workers’ respiratory problems. With a multimillion-dollar research grant at stake, there was never much doubt about what the eminent scientists’ findings would be. But Brogan wanted his answers today, in black and white, for shareholders, the press, and anyone else who asked.

  “All this bad feeling isn’t good for business,” he complained. “An unhappy worker is an unproductive worker, and I’ve got a lot at stake out here.”

  “I know,” said Aidan. “I’m on it.”

  “Really?” Brogan’s tone sounded ominous. “The way you were supposed to be ‘on’ Trade Fair and that meddlesome Drummond Murray woman?”

  Carla’s hand had been creeping ever farther up Aidan’s thigh while he was on the phone, and was now coiled u
nashamedly around the modest bulge in his pants. As enjoyable as this was, it was making it hard for him to concentrate. Holding up five fingers to indicate he’d be back shortly, he slipped outside to take the rest of the call in the relative quiet of the street.

  “Scarlett Drummond Murray?” he asked, playing for time, as if there could possibly be another. “She’s no threat to us. Trade Fair hasn’t been active for months.”

  “Wrong again,” seethed Brogan. “The stupid bitch was here, in Yakutsk, less than a week ago.”

  Aidan swallowed nervously. “In Yakutsk? That’s not possible. Are you sure?”

  “Am I sure?” Brogan roared. “Yes, Aidan, I’m sure. Three hundred of my miners turned up to hear her speak! The whole fucking province is talking about it.”

  “All right, all right. Calm down,” said Aidan firmly, struggling to conquer his nerves. This was a major fuckup on his part—how the hell had Scarlett arranged this without his knowledge?—but he’d learned long ago that it never paid to apologize to Brogan, or admit a mistake. There were no prizes for honesty with the boss.

  “So she gave one stupid speech. So what? We’re squeezing her tighter and tighter in London, financially, professionally, personally. Soon she’ll have to drop the ball with this ridiculous campaign of hers.”

  “I’m not interested in soon,” spat Brogan. Pacing his suite at the Ararat Park Hyatt in his purple silk pajamas, he picked up a brass paperweight from the desk and hurled it across the room in frustration, shattering the bedside lamp. Fucking ugly thing anyway. Three thousand bucks a night and his suite looked like it had been furnished from a goddamn Kmart catalog. “I want that girl out of my hair now. Yesterday.”

  He’d always prided himself on his cool, even-tempered public image. When he lost his temper, or lashed out at enemies or business rivals, he preferred to do it in private. At the Tiffany party, he’d been no more than mildly reproving of Scarlett when she’d shown him up in front of Michael Beerens and his wife, spewing her socialist nonsense like Trotsky with Tourette’s. But he never forgot a slight. Nor did he ever knowingly leave a declared enemy unpunished or allow threats to his business or personal life to go unchecked.