She saw the laughter in Alexey’s eyes and knew he understood what she was thinking. “Sorry, Helen,” he said, as they sat down and ordered cocktails. “Couldn’t resist teasing you. You looked so sweetly serious and practical. Kolya would approve. He’s always at me not to be extravagant. To be careful.”
She was blushing even more now, not only because of the funny little compliment, but because of the warmth in his eyes. She said, primly, “Well, one does have to be careful, doesn’t one?”
He laughed. “Oh, does one?” His expression changed and he added, seriously, “Trouble is, Helen, when does one live, then, eh?”
Their eyes met. She said, very quietly, “I don’t know.”
The cocktails arrived. Alexey said, “Shall we make a toast, Helen?”
She nodded.
“To life,” he said, and she echoed, “to life,” and drank.
“One toast is never enough,” he said. “You need at least three. The best things come in threes.” He looked at her with an impish smile. “You choose the next one.”
She returned his smile. “Okay, then. To magic.”
“I’ll second that,” he said, laughing. “To magic!” And they clinked glasses and drank.
“And now?”
“One more. What’s it to be, Helen?”
“To joy,” she cried and he looked at her with the strangest look on his face, so that for an instant she thought that somehow she had offended him. Then he whispered, “My God, that was exactly what I was thinking,” and she knew now that the expression in his eyes was awe. She felt awed herself, thrilled beyond words by what was happening to her, to them. As they drank the toast, she thought, I can’t describe it. Only feel it filling up my whole body, my mind, my heart, my whole being, infusing the world with a sparkling sweetness much more intoxicating than the Crimean champagne cocktail I’m drinking.
The timeless moment was ended by the waiter bringing their shared entrée, red caviar and lobster salad with tiny, perfect buckwheat blinis and a tangy mayonnaise on the side. It was delicious and for a short while all they talked about was things to do with food. Alexey turned out to have quite a fondness for cooking shows, while Helen disliked them on principle, but loved food blogs and was even thinking of starting her own. At least, she’d decided on the spur of the moment she would, and then Alexey jokingly suggested some silly titles for it. The main course arrived – pike-perch fillet with fennel for him, and duck breast in lemon sauce for her – and by then they were both so easy and mellow with each other that it felt perfectly natural for Helen to say, “Yesterday, you said you thought that a company is only as good as the people who work for it. That sounds like you’ve really thought about it. But I thought you weren’t interested in running your father’s company?”
Too late she realized that her words revealed she’d been reading up about him. He noticed all right, but he didn’t seem to mind. He said, “It’s true I wasn’t, at first. When I came back to Russia, it was just to bury Dad next to my mother, as he’d wanted. I fully intended to get rid of Trinity. I never had anything to do with it before – my father kept me well away from it – but the little I knew about how it operated didn’t make me feel well-disposed to it. I certainly didn’t want to be lumbered with it, anyway. Plus, I thought I was too young to think of taking anything like that on. And then everything changed.”
“Why? If you don’t mind telling me.”
He smiled. “I’d love to! It’s just I’m afraid of boring you with my pet subject.”
“Try me,” she said, smiling back. “I’ll tell you if I feel like yawning.”
He laughed. “Deal! Really, it was all down to Kolya. You see, as well as being my godfather, he’s also Trinity’s general manager and he’s been running the company since Dad died. And Kolya pretty much ambushed me. He said I must understand that as my father’s heir, I had responsibilities. That I had to realize that many people, including him, had given years of their life to the company and it wasn’t fair to simply wipe out its existence without facing them in person. They deserved at least that.”
“Oh! And what did you say to that?”
“Well, I was stung, of course. I told him okay, get all the staff together for a meeting. I was all set to tell them that I appreciated they’d worked hard, but that it was over. And then I met them. These were good people, Helen. Hard-working, intelligent, dedicated. And so I had to face it. The age thing – that was a total cop-out. Dad and his mates had started Trinity when they were not much older than me. And I did have to take responsibility, no matter what I decided. You see, if I closed down the company, the staff would be out of work and good work isn’t necessarily easy to come by here. But if I sold it on, it was likely the new owners would be dodgy. I’d already had offers for it from a couple of people who looked legit but who Kolya told me were a front for gangsters.”
Helen’s eyes widened. “Wow. That would have freaked me out.”
“I didn’t like it, I can tell you. I didn’t want the staff to be at the mercy of people like that. And so I couldn’t tell them I was abandoning them. I just said that I needed time to think about our options, but that as far as I was concerned, they could get on with their work, with Kolya as acting director. I still thought I might pull out, even then. But I wanted to do it from an informed viewpoint.”
Her pulse raced. Imagine being in that position at his age, having to decide such things! It was awe-inspiring, extraordinary. Terrifying. She asked, eagerly, “So what did you do then?”
“I went on a crash course about Trinity. Talked to Kolya and the rest of the staff at length. Waded through hundreds of files to check out what Trinity had been up to over the years. Basically, it’s a private investigation firm, specializing in business cases, such as breaches of company security or industrial espionage, and a few hand-picked personal cases. For instance one guy, this wealthy banker, wanted his daughter’s boyfriend investigated. Also, Trinity does some work for government departments, and in recent years consultancy for foreign companies setting up branches here. The company’s methods weren’t always what you’d call absolutely ethical – but it wasn’t what I had feared.” Again he paused, and now Helen said, “You don’t have to go on, Alexey. It’s okay. I understand.”
“No. I want to tell you.” His eyes were fixed on hers. “From that first moment in the woods, I knew that there was a deep connection between us. And that I can trust you, absolutely. As I hope you know you can trust me.”
She nodded, shakily, not trusting herself to speak.
“But if you’d rather not know,” he went on, “if it scares you – I quite understand. We can talk about something else.”
“No!” she said, so explosively that he looked a little startled for a moment. “I mean – I want to hear. I’m glad – honoured. Please – go on. What was it that you feared?”
His expression changed, became grim. “I thought, you see, that Trinity might have been a front. That it was actually a criminal organization carrying out hits and major fraud for selected clients.” She stared at him, stunned. “You really thought that your father might be that kind of—”
“I know it sounds extreme, but my father – he was an extreme sort of guy. Secretive, remote, ruthless. And his family background …” He paused. “Well, let’s just say ruthlessness ran in the family. His father was in the KGB. Not the external service either, but the internal one, the really terrifying bastards. Worked out of the Lubyanka. And his father before him.”
Helen’s eyes widened. Even though the Soviet regime had fallen before she was born, she’d heard stories, watched movies about the KGB. The dreaded secret police of Soviet days and its Moscow headquarters had a fearsome reputation.
“You see why I thought it was possible,” Alexey said quietly. “Quite a few of those KGB guys switched to dodgy business after the fall of the Soviet Union. I knew Dad had clients who’d diversified like that.” His mouth twisted wryly. “Dad might have turned his back on a ca
reer in the security services but he thought like them, in some ways. And I knew nothing really about what he’d been up to with Trinity. Anyway, there was nothing like that to be seen in any of the records. Not at least in the stuff that was officially recorded. But then Kolya told me that occasionally the three directors took on a case themselves. Nobody else at Trinity knew what went on. There was no paper trail. No computer records. It was totally secret.”
Helen spoke softly, “Do you have any idea what those cases were?”
“No. Not a clue. Still don’t. Not sure I want to know, actually. What really matters was that the staff hadn’t been involved. So I decided I would keep Trinity going. But how? Did I want to be directly involved, or leave things in Kolya’s capable hands while I continued my studies? To be honest, I think that’s what Kolya expected. He thought I was all set on a career in music.”
“And weren’t you?”
“In those weeks at Trinity I’d changed. And I’d realized something important. That this was what I wanted, now.” His eyes were shining. “Running Trinity was not what I’d ever imagined myself doing before, but that was what really excited me, the sheer unexpectedness of it! It’s such an adventure, such a challenge, I feel like I’m ten times more alive than I was at the conservatorium, much as I love music. And being back in Russia – it’s been such a big thing for me! Oh, don’t get me wrong, I really like Australia. It was my home for twelve years. I had friends there, a life. But back here, I realized that this was where I truly belonged.” He looked at Helen. “Have you ever read Gogol? The writer Nikolai Gogol I mean?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well, in one of his stories he compares the Russian character to a ride in a troika, you know, one of those three-horse sleighs. You just race along, not afraid of getting hurt, of consequences, just going for it, no matter what might happen. Well, that was me. I jumped on board that troika and went for it. Just keeping on Trinity wasn’t enough. I decided to change it. No more dark secrets. No more being snoops for corrupt bullies. Trinity would be transformed.”
So just like that, she thought, he’d changed his entire life. Thrown himself into something whose path he couldn’t even predict. It was startling, brave, mad, inspirational, magnificent! Her voice trembling a little, she said, “How, Alexey?”
“In my country ordinary people have always been left out of the picture. And I hope we might use Trinity’s skills to help them when they’re in trouble.”
“That’s beautiful,” said Helen, deeply moved by the simplicity and modesty of what he’d said. “So right. So real.”
His smile was very sweet. “You understand. I’m so glad.”
“So what’s happened? How many new cases have you taken on? Or can’t you talk about them?”
He smiled at the tumble of questions. “Well, I would if I could, Helen – but I can’t. Not because it’s secret but because we haven’t taken on anything new yet. It’s very early days. Not everything’s settled, legally. But it shouldn’t be long before it’s all done and we can make a fresh start.”
Helen blurted out, “Oh, Alexey, aren’t you just a little bit – nervous about it?”
“Of course.” His expression darkened. “Sometimes I’m freaking terrified of what I’ve started. I wake up in the middle of the night and my heart’s pounding and I’m thinking, what in God’s name am I doing? How on earth do I think I can make a go of this? And then …”
“Yeah, what then?” she breathed.
“Then I just roll over and go back to sleep,” he said, lightly.
She frowned, not sure whether he was being serious or not. “As easy as that?”
“Not easy at all,” he replied. “Just the only way it can be, Helen. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” she whispered, and her throat felt dry. “I think I do.”
Chapter 7
Maxim Antonovich Serebrov was troubled. And when he was troubled, he turned from a gentle giant into a growling bear of a man. At least, that’s what Marina used to say. In the days when she could be bothered to say anything even halfway agreeable about him, anyway.
Maxim knew that in this mood, he didn’t help himself. He knew that, coupled with his impressive physical bulk, a bad mood made him intimidating to the general public, and challenging to his superiors. The first wasn’t a problem – he always managed to surmount the fury and treated even insolent urkas, street thugs, with as much impassive calm as he could muster. The second had always been more of a problem because Maxim, a natural rebel who’d grown up in a tough Moscow suburb, had always had an issue with authority.
He knew that his kind usually hated the militsiya, the police. And were much more likely to join the ranks of the urkas than the mients, the cops. But he’d been different. Emerging from a scarifying experience as a young army recruit in the First Chechen War of the mid-1990s, he’d gone to university and studied languages. With his experience and background, he could have joined the intelligence services afterwards, but he stunned everybody – his family, who hated the police instinctively, and Marina’s intellectual family, who thought that only thick-headed country clods with no education or ambition would even think of such a thing – by joining the police force.
Truth was, Maxim had dreamed of change. Of a world where ordinary people could live in peace and respect, and not be treated as cannon fodder or brain-washed sheep or prey to be exploited. In the intelligence services, it was the State you protected from its enemies. In the police, you protected ordinary people from predators. That was what he wanted to do. Oh, he knew the force was a very long way from perfect. It had a bad reputation in Soviet days. But he’d thought that now things had changed, it would be reformed.
He’d soon realized he was kidding himself. Not only were the time-servers and bully boys of the past still in the force, but with the lawless chaos that reigned in the country at that time, the police, now not merely under-resourced as in the Soviet past but starved of even their meagre pay packets, had morphed into a gangsters’ protection society and vicious extortion racket. Many officers had left the force for much more lucrative positions in private security. Others supplemented their pathetic pay with bribes. Worse still, some police became involved in violent crime, from armed robbery to rape and murder. Psychopaths, thugs and alcoholics held sway, and guidebooks for foreign travelers warned that the militsiya were much more dangerous than gangsters. And, of course, criminal investigation fell into the absolute doldrums.
Marina begged him to leave the force and join one of the private agencies or at least to retrain for work in the procurator’s office. But he refused. He had no illusions anymore but he was determined. He wasn’t going to be beaten, he told Marina. In our country, people too often allow themselves to be beaten down by bastards. Or join them. But he wasn’t going to do either. For a while Marina had seemed to accept it, especially after he was given his one and only promotion, from lieutenant to senior lieutenant, by some miracle of oversight. But there he’d stagnated.
And then one day he was approached by an ex-colleague, who was now a frontman for one of the city’s most powerful crime gangs. Maxim was offered a good salary and conditions if he came to work for them as a consultant investigator – for apparently his intelligence and initiative had been noted. Maxim had sent him packing – but it had been the end for him and Marina. She’d collapsed in tears of fury, accusing him of being a selfish good-for-nothing who was deliberately trying to destroy their lives, and walked out. She didn’t return.
Things had become better in recent years – not between him and Marina, that was over long ago – but in the country itself, and in the force. But Maxim knew it would need more than codes of conduct, the doubling of police pay packets, Ministry of the Interior video clips about helpful police action, and the renaming of the force from the Soviet term “militia” back to the more civilian sound of “police” to change ingrained public perceptions. It would take years. Generations, maybe. And there was
nothing Maxim could do to hurry that along. He was just a miniscule cog in the huge wheel of history. But he could do something about his instinctive attitude to his superiors when they thwarted him. He should be more cunning. More patient. Sometimes, it worked and he actually managed to keep a guard on his tongue. This time, though …
“You’re off the Rusalka case,” Korolev had said when Maxim entered his superior’s office that day.
Maxim stared at him, trying not to show how stunned he was. “May I ask why, Fyodor Mikhailovich?”
“The procurator’s pissed off that there’s not been a resolution to this case. It’s all going far too slow for his liking.”
Maxim stiffened. “I’ve tried my hardest,” he growled, “but there aren’t enough resources, we have to do everything on the cheap, and I get stonewalled all the time by people who’d much rather make us think those Trinity deaths were accidents. What the hell does the procurator expect?”
Korolev shrugged. “He expects us to wrap this up, and double quick, Serebrov. It doesn’t look good for it to drag on. Besides, nothing you’ve uncovered yet points the finger at any suspect.”
“I just need more time.” It wasn’t in Maxim’s nature to beg, but he forced himself to add, “Please.”
Korolev shook his head. “Sorry. Can’t be done. The procurator’s already decided the case is going to the Organized Crime Unit.”
“What?” Maxim was livid. “Those OC gorillas will make a hash of it as usual. Might as well bury the case completely.”
“That’s enough!” Korolev snapped. “Your own report raised the possibility Trinity had links to organized crime, so it’s bizarre you should question what’s being done.” He glared at Maxim. “You have obviously lost all sense of proportion, Serebrov. You’ve got too close to the damned case.” His mouth twisted. “Do you think you’ll make a name for yourself at last, if you solve it? Or is there something else you’re not telling me?”
Trinity: The Koldun Code (Book 1) Page 6
