“What trade?”
“Ask your father. I am married to Hoban.”
“Yevgeny’s regrouped,” says Tiger approvingly next evening. “He had a setback, he recovered. Randy breathed new life into him. With help from Hoban.” Oliver sees Yevgeny’s embattled head staring across the valley at the lights, and the tracks of tears running down his wrinkled cheeks. The scent of Zoya’s juices is still on him. He can smell it through his shirt. “Still dreams of his fine wine, you’ll be pleased to hear. I’m looking out for some books on viniculture for him. You can take them over on your next trip.”
“What business is he into suddenly?”
“Shipping. Randy and Alix have persuaded him to revive his old naval contacts, call in a few promises.”
“Shipping what?”
A wave of the hand. The same wave that dismisses the unwanted pudding trolley. “The spectrum. Whatever’s in the right place on the right day at the right price. Flexibility, that’s his watchword. It’s a fast trade, it’s cutthroat, but he’s up to it. Given help. That’s where we come in.”
“What sort of help?”
“Single’s are facilitators, Oliver”—little head to one side, eyebrows sanctimoniously raised. “You forget that —you’re young. We are maximizers. Creators.” One small index finger points to God. “Our job is to provide our clients with the tools they need and to husband the harvest when they bring it in. Single’s aren’t where they are today because they clip their clients’ wings. We go where others fear to trade, Oliver. And we come out smiling.”
Dutifully Oliver tries his hardest to reflect his father’s enthusiasm, hoping that by mouthing the words he will believe them. “And he’ll jolly well come up trumps, I know he will,” he says.
“Of course he will. He’s a prince.”
“He’s an old robber baron. They’ll have to drag him out feet first.”
“I beg your pardon?” Tiger has risen from his desk to take Oliver by the arm. “I’ll trouble you not to use that term, thank you, Oliver. Our role is a sensitive one and it will need a careful use of language. Is that understood?”
“Absolutely. I’m sorry. It was just a turn of phrase.”
“If the brothers make the kind of money Randy and Alix are talking about, they’re going to want our whole package: casinos, nightclubs, a chain or two of hotels, holiday villages, everything we’re best at. Yevgeny once again insists on total confidentiality, and since I am similarly minded, I have no problem humoring him.” Back to his desk. “I want you to deliver this envelope to him personally. And take a bottle of the Berry’s Speyside out of the strong room with my compliments. Take two. One for Alix.”
“Father.”
“My boy.”
“I need to know what we’re dealing in.”
“Finance.”
“Derived from what?”
“Our own sweat and tears. Our intuition, our flair, our flexibility. Our merit.”
“What comes after blood? What’s worse?”
Tiger’s wafer-thin lips have drawn together in a white crease. “Curiosity is worse, thank you, Oliver. Idle, callow, misinformed, selfindulgent, gratuitous, moralistic problem making. Was Adam the first man? I don’t know. Was Christ born on Christmas Day? I don’t know. In business, we play life as we find it. Not as it is handed down from the infant throne of the liberal newspapers.”
Oliver and Yevgeny sit on the balcony, drinking cuvée Bethlehem. Tinatin is in Leningrad caring for a distressed daughter. Hoban is in Vienna, Zoya and Paul are with him. Mikhail brings hardboiled eggs and salted fish.
“You are still learning the language of the gods, Post Boy?”
“Indeed I am,” Oliver answers untruthfully, afraid to cause the old man disappointment, and promises himself that he will telephone the awful cavalry officer as soon as he gets back to London.
Yevgeny accepts Tiger’s letter and passes it unopened to Mikhail. In the hall, luggage and packing cases are piled to the ceiling. A new house has been found, Yevgeny explains, in the tone of someone submitting to authority. Somewhere more appropriate to future needs.
“Will you get a new motorbike?” Oliver asks, striving for a more hopeful note.
“You want me to?”
“But you must!”
“Then I get a new motorbike. Maybe I get six.”
And then to Oliver’s horror, he weeps, long and silently, into his clenched fists.
It is terrible that you are not a coward, Zoya writes, in a letter waiting for him at his hotel. Nothing breaks you. You will kill us all with your politeness. Do not deceive yourself that you cannot know the truth.
It is the Eve of Christmas party at Single’s. In the Trading Room everything that is movable has been pushed against the walls. Modern music, which Tiger at all other times of the year abhors, is about to howl from stereophonic loudspeakers, vintage champagne flows, there is lobster in pyramids, foie gras and a five-kilo bucket of Imperial caviar, which, according to Randy Massingham’s amusing speech, was “landed informally” by clients of the House of Single “with a line to the Caspian, where virgin sturgeons keep their legs crossed in order to produce these delicious little eggs for us.” The traders cheer, a Tiger redux cheers along with them, straightens his tie and steps onto the rostrum to deliver his annual rousing speech. Single’s, he says to his excited audience, is today in a stronger position than it has been in its entire history. The music strikes, the first revelers are advancing on the table to take a frugal spoonful from the bucket as Oliver discreetly climbs the back staircase, past his native Legal Department, until he arrives at the partners’ strong room, to which he and Tiger alone possess the combination. Twenty minutes later he is back again, pleading a temporary sickness of the stomach. But the sickness is real, even if the stomach is the least-affected part of him. It is the sickness of a nightmare realized. Of sums so vast, so sudden, so swiftly hidden that they can have only one source. From Marbella, twenty-two million dollars. From Marseilles, thirty-five. From Liverpool, a hundred and seven million pounds. From Gdansk, Hamburg, Rotterdam, a hundred and eighty million dollars cash awaiting the attentions of the Single laundering service.
“You love your father, Post Boy?”
It is dusk, it is philosophy time in the living room of the newly appointed twenty-million-dollar villa on the European bank of the Bosphorus to which the brothers have been elevated. Catherine the Great’s majestic Karelka furniture from St. Petersburg—the same precious gold-brown birch sideboards, corner cupboards, dining table and chairs that in the days of Oliver’s innocence graced the villa outside Moscow—stands about the ground floor waiting for a home. Russian snowscapes with horse-drawn sledges queue for places on the newly painted walls. And in the drawing room stands the most splendid, glistening BMW motorcycle that hot money can buy.
“Ride it, Post Boy! Ride it!”
But Oliver for some reason doesn’t feel the urge. Neither does Yevgeny. Wet, unusual snow lies on the descending garden. On the straits, freighters, ferryboats and pleasure barges spar nose to nose in a constant duel. Yes, I love my father, Oliver assures Yevgeny vaguely in reply. Zoya stands at the French window, willing Paul to sleep on her shoulder. Tinatin has lit the tiled stove and dozes thoughtfully beside it in her rocking chair. Hoban is in Vienna again, opening a new office. It is to be called Trans-Finanz. Mikhail crouches at Yevgeny’s shoulder. He has grown a beard.
“He makes you laugh, your father?”
“When things are going well and he’s happy—yes, Tiger can make me laugh.”
Paul grizzles and Zoya comforts him, her hand splayed on his naked back inside his shirt.
“He makes you mad, Post Boy?”
“He means American mad,” Zoya explains. “Hoban’s kind of mad. Angry.”
“Sometimes he makes me mad,” Oliver concedes, not understanding where this catechism is leading. “But I make him mad too.”
“How you make him mad, Post Boy?”
“We
ll, I’m not exactly the Rolls-Royce son he wanted, am I? He’s a bit mad at me all the time, if he only knew it.”
“Give him this. He will be happy.” Reaching inside his black overcoat, Yevgeny pulls out an envelope and hands it to Mikhail, who passes it silently to Oliver.
Oliver draws a breath. Now, he thinks. Go. “What’s it about?” he asks. He has to repeat his question. “The letter you just gave me—what’s it got in it? I’m beginning to worry that I’ll be stopped at Customs or something.” He must have said this louder than he intended, for Zoya turns her head and Mikhail’s fierce dark eyes are already staring at him. “I don’t know the first thing about your new operation. I’m on the legal side. That’s all I am—legal.”
“Legal?” Yevgeny repeats, raising his voice in angry puzzlement. “What is legal? How come you are legal, please? Oliver is legal? You are alone among us, I would say.”
Oliver shoots a sideways glance, intended for Zoya, but she has disappeared and it is Tinatin who is lulling Paul to sleep. “Tiger says you’re in general trade,” he stumbles on. “What does that mean? He says you’re making huge profits. How? He’s going to take you into the leisure industry. All in six months. How?”
In the glow of the reading lamp beside him, Yevgeny’s face is older than the mountain crags of Bethlehem. “Do you lie to your father, Post Boy?”
“Only in small matters. To protect him. The way all of us lie.”
“This man should not lie to his son. Do I lie to you?”
“No.”
“Go back to London, Post Boy. Stay legal. Take the letter to your father. Tell him an old Russian says he’s a fool.”
Zoya is waiting for him in his hotel bed. She has brought gifts for him in small brown paper parcels: an icon that her mother, Tinatin, wore secretly on saints’ days through the years of Communism; a scented candle; a photograph of her father Yevgeny in naval uniform; poems by a Georgian poet who is precious to her. His name is Khuta Berulava and she is a Mingrelian who writes in Georgian, her favorite combination. Oliver’s desire for her is an addiction. A finger to her lips for silence, she undresses him. He is strung to bursting point. But he forces himself to lie apart from her.
“If I am going to betray my father, you’ve got to betray your father and your husband,” he says carefully. “What does Yevgeny trade in?”
She turns her back on him. “It is all bad things.”
“What’s the worst thing?”
“All things.”
“What’s the one worst thing? Worse than all the rest. What’s making all the money? Millions and millions of dollars?”
Flinging herself round to him, she traps him between her thighs and lunges at him with ferocity, as if by taking him inside her she will silence him.
“He laughs,” she says, panting.
“Who does?”
“Hoban”—another lunge.
“Why does Hoban laugh? What at?”
“ ‘It is for Yevgeny,’ he says. ‘We are growing a new wine for Yevgeny. We are building him a white road to Bethlehem.’”
“A white road made of what?” Oliver insists breathlessly.
“Of powder.”
“What is the powder made of?”
She screams it, loud enough for half the hotel to hear: “It is from Afghanistan! From Kazakhstan! From Kyrgystan! Hoban has arranged it! They are making the new trade. Across Russia from the East.” And her choking, abject cry of shame as she desperately assaults him.
Pam Hawsley, Tiger’s Ice Maiden, sits at her crescent-shaped desk behind framed photographs of her three pugs, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and the red telephone that links her directly to the Almighty. It is the morning of the following day. Oliver has not slept. Lying wide eyed on his bed in Chelsea Harbour, he has tried unsuccessfully to convince himself that he is still in Zoya’s arms, that he never in his life sat in a papier-mâché interviewing room at Heathrow, telling a uniformed Customs officer things that till then he has not told himself. Now, standing in the huge anteroom to Tiger’s state apartments, he is assailed by altitude sickness, speech loss, sexual remorse and a hangover. He clutches Yevgeny’s envelope first in his left hand, then in his right. He shuffles his feet and clears his throat like an idiot. Nerve ends tingle up and down his back. When he speaks he sounds to himself like the worst actor in the world. It can only be a matter of moments before Pam Hawsley closes the show for its sheer lack of verisimilitude.
“If you could just give Tiger this, Pam? Yevgeny Orlov asked me to hand it to him personally, but I reckon you’re personal enough. Okay, Pam? Okay?”
And it really might have been okay if the ever-charming Randy Massingham, freshly back from Vienna, had not chosen that moment to appear in his doorway. “If Yevvers said personal, then personal is what it’s got to be, Ollie boy,” he drawls. “Name of the game, I’m afraid”—beckoning with his head to the fatal doors crowned with Wedgwood ribbons—“only your dad, for Christ’s sake. Thump on the door and charge in, if I were you.”
Ignoring this gratuitous advice, Oliver sinks twenty fathoms into the boneless white leather sofa. The embossed S&S colophon brands him whenever he leans back. Massingham continues to loll in his doorway. Pam Hawsley’s head sinks among her pugs and screens. Its silvered top reminds Oliver of Brock. Clutching the envelope to his heart, he embarks on an in-depth examination of his father’s credentials. Testimonials from diploma mills nobody has heard of. Tiger in wig and gown being called to the bar by handshake of some ghastly earl. Tiger in the fatuous habiliments of a doctor of whatever, clutching an engraved gold plate. Tiger in suspiciously perfect cricket gear, acknowledging applause of unseen spectators with a wave of pristine bat. Tiger in polo mode, accepting silver cup from turbaned princeling. Tiger at Third World conference, enjoying camera-conscious handshake with Central American narcotyrant. Tiger rubbing shoulders with the great at an informal German lakeside seminar for senile untouchables. One day I’ll do a prosecuting counsel’s job on you, starting with your date of birth.
“Mr. Tiger will see you now, Mr. Oliver.”
Oliver rises without oxygen from the seabed where he has fallen into an escaper’s waking sleep. Yevgeny’s envelope is sodden in his hand. He raps on the Wedgwood double doors, praying Tiger will not hear. The dreadfully familiar voice calls “Come” and he feels the love rise in him like old poison. He stoops his shoulders and urges his weight into his hips in a routine effort to reduce his height.
“Heavens above, dear boy, do you know what it costs an hour to have you sitting out there?”
“Yevgeny asked me to give you this personally, Father.”
“Did he, though? Did he? Good on him”—not so much accepting the envelope as tweaking it from Oliver’s fist at the same moment as Oliver hears Brock refusing to accept it: Thank you, Oliver, but I’m not quite as familiar with the Orlov brothers as you are. So what I’d suggest is that, tempting as it is, we leave this envelope just the way it was given to us, virgin and intact. Because what I’m afraid of here is our old-fashioned biblical loyalty test.
“And he has a message for you,” Oliver tells his father, not Brock.
“Message? What message?”—selecting a ten-inch silver paper knife. “You’ve given me the message.”
“A spoken message. It’s not terribly polite, I’m afraid. He says to tell you an old Russian says you’re a fool. It’s the first time I’ve heard him call himself a Russian, actually. He’s usually Georgian”—meekly softening the blow.
Tiger’s all-weather smile is still in place. The voice is richer by an extra drop of unction as he makes the dangerous incision, draws out a single sheet of paper and unfolds it. “But dear boy, he’s so right, of course I am! . . . A total fool . . . Nobody else would give him the terms we’re giving him . . . Nothing I like better than a fellow who thinks he’s robbing me . . . Won’t be taking his business round the corner, will he? What? What?” Tiger folds up the sheet of paper, replaces it in its envelope and tosses th
e envelope in his in tray. Has he read it? Hardly. But Tiger rarely reads anything these days. He has armed himself with the cloudy vision of a seer. “I expected to hear from you last night, Oliver. Where were you, if I may ask?”
Oliver’s brain cells shrivel in rejection. My bloody plane was late!— but his plane was early. I couldn’t get a bloody cab!—but there were cabs galore. He hears Brock’s voice: Tell him you met a girl. “Well, I did mean to ring you, but I thought I’d pop round and see Nina,” he lies, blushing and rubbing his nose.
“Did you, though? Nina, eh? Old Yevgeny’s grandniece once removed, or whatever she is.”
“Only she hasn’t been too well. She’s got this flu.”
“Still fancy her, do you?”
“Well, I still do quite, actually, yes.”
“Not losing your edge?”
“No—not at all—quite the reverse.”
“Good. Oliver.” Somehow they are arm in arm, standing in the great bay window. “I’ve had a spot of luck this morning.”
“I’m very glad.”
“Quite a large spot. Luck in the sense that good men make their luck. D’you follow me?”
“Of course. Congratulations.”
“Napoleon, when he was considering an applicant, would ask his young officers—”
“ ‘Are you lucky?’” Oliver supplied for him.
“Precisely. That piece of paper you brought me just now is the confirmation that I have made ten million pounds.”
“Splendid.”
“Cash.”
“Better still. Brilliant. Fantastic.”
“Tax free. Offshore. Arm’s length. We shall not be troubling the Revenue.” The grip tighter. Oliver’s arm spongy. Tiger’s sinuous and strong. “I’ve decided to split it. Do you follow me?”
“Not really. I’m a bit slow this morning.”
“Overexerting yourself again, were you?”
Oliver simpers.
“Five mill for me, for the rainy day I do not propose to experience. Five mill for our firstborn grandchild. What do you make of that?”
“It’s incredible. I’m extremely grateful. Thank you.”
Single & Single Page 17
