White Hot Silence

by Henry Porter

  ‘I didn’t give you the numbers,’ said Samson.

  ‘I’ve got a good memory,’ she said.

  ‘Tallinn is just a few hours from the Russian border,’ he said, ignoring her slightly annoying smile.

  ‘Four and half hours by road.’

  ‘Does anyone else know this? Macy, for instance?’

  ‘No.’

  They walked on a few paces. ‘Keep this to yourself, Zillah.’

  ‘I have to tell Denis, but I can avoid telling anyone else. Why don’t you want Macy to know?’

  ‘I think the MI6 surveillance on Macy is pretty intense at the moment. I’m sure they know exactly where Crane is and are determined to protect that information. I don’t want them to have any clue that we know his location.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Will you let me hear of any more activity?’

  ‘Yes. Are we done now?’ Zillah had a strictly transactional approach to conversation.

  She turned and hopped into the back of the SUV before he could say goodbye. He kept walking in the direction of the park, but then hailed a cab to take him uptown to Union Square, where he got out and walked until he found another cab, which he asked to take him to the intersection of Varick Street and Canal, and there he went through several cleaning routines to avoid being followed, including diving into the subway and exiting on the other side of the street. It was unnecessary, because anyone could guess where he was going, but he had been aware of the minute barometric pressure exerted on the pursued by the pursuer, and he just wanted to know if he was right.

  CHAPTER 19

  It was late in the forest and Kirill built a fire in the compound from lengths of dead pine which had been sawn to one size, placed in a half oil drum and anointed by him with diesel. In front of this he had his men position two crude chairs, cut from the same pine long ago and pimpled with spots of hardened resin. For the purpose of Kirill’s midnight literary seminar, Anastasia was wrapped in a blanket, handcuffed around one wrist and chained to a man with an automatic weapon. She was thus able to sip at a glass of vodka provided by Kirill, while looking down at The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

  She’d spent so much of the day asleep in the small wooden cell at one end of the dacha that she hadn’t finished the book and had tried to skim it. Yet the first part of Huck’s journey on the raft down the Mississippi and the relationship between the boy and the runaway slave struck her as wonderful.

  It was impossible to get her head around the strangeness of the situation now, the combination of threat and hospitality, and having to endure the literary pretensions of a man who would not hesitate to kill her and bury her in the forest. Kirill was plainly bored and felt the need to toy with her, like a cat playing with an exhausted prey, but he also seemed to crave her approval, an indication that her jailer and potential executioner was at least a man of learning and insight. She watched him, in his hunting gear and still wearing that ridiculous hat, his face glistening in the light of the fire, and wondered if she could ever loathe a human being more. And when he held out his glass of vodka and delivered the speech by Jim, the escaped slave, upbraiding Huck for his cruelty in pretending to be dead – hard for anyone not born in the South of the USA, but impossible for a Russian with a thick accent – she just snorted a laugh of contempt.

  He glared at her. ‘You can do it better, Anastasia?’

  ‘I am not an American.’ She looked up at the sparks shooting into the night sky. ‘I can’t read the dialect – it’s too hard for me.’

  ‘What is story about?’ he demanded, as though her life would depend on the answer.

  She waited before replying. ‘I guess it’s about two refugees, who, like the people I work with, are thrown together and risk everything when they try to escape terrible things in their lives. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the Mediterranean or the Mississippi – those waters are their fate and they are at their mercy. They’ve got no control over what happens to them, or where they end up; they could be drowned or saved. They have nothing and no one except each other and that makes their relationship interesting.’

  ‘Sentimentality! Pure sentimentality. It is the sickness of the West that you do not understand what is important about Huckleberry.’

  ‘I wasn’t being sentimental,’ she said fiercely. If he was going to play with her, she was going to give him a run for his money. She threw back the vodka. ‘You tell me what it’s about then! You tell the sentimental little Western woman how she should read this story.’

  He ignored the challenge. ‘Don’t you see? It’s about freedom. Young boy Huckleberry escapes violent drunken father but also rules of society he hates. The slave flees old woman owner so she cannot sell him. They are fighting for their freedom, Anastasia! Freedom!’

  She let out a bitter laugh. ‘You’re lecturing me about freedom! The woman you’ve chained by the wrist like a slave!’

  He ignored her. ‘You in West do not understand freedoms you have and you do not value them. That is why you lose them.’

  ‘That’s bullshit. People value their freedoms – the freedom to be themselves, to express their sexuality, to defy prejudice and follow their own belief system.’

  ‘Anastasia, those things are the reason the West has failed! You confuse identity politics with freedom.’ He called for more vodka then continued. ‘If you valued freedom, you would understand important message in book.’

  Her glass was filled and she stared into the fire, momentarily forgetting where she was. ‘Despite the differences in race and status, the boy and the slave come to see the humanity in each other,’ she said. ‘The boy plays a sick joke on the slave and then he apologises because he understands Jim is a person like him and he must take responsibility for his own cruelty. It’s very moving.’

  Kirill grinned at the fire. ‘The West is failing because of this kind of thinking. Maybe it has failed already.’

  ‘I am not a political thinker. My job is to help people.’

  He placed the vodka glass by his feet, folded his hands around his stomach and looked contentedly at her. ‘We are strong. Russia knows how to suffer. The West doesn’t know suffering. That is why West loses freedom.’

  ‘We were talking about a book about two people fleeing from their circumstances – two fugitives, two refugees. And now you’re talking about the decline of the West. What’s the connection?’

  ‘Maybe there isn’t one.’ He took a cheroot out of a slim box he had withdrawn from inside his hunting jacket and tapped one end on the box. ‘You know about demoralisation, Anastasia? You know that an entire country like the great United States of America can be demoralised so that no one remembers what their country stands for and democracy rots from the inside? That is what has happened in United States. It required a few years, but we see results now we could not anticipate.’

  She shook her head and looked away. ‘That’s bullshit. The United States is still strong. It has bad times but, deep down, it is resilient. The people are decent.’

  He looked at her as though she were a child. ‘In book boy and Jim perceive reality as it is and they see inequality and hateful conformity of America. They have no delusions. But now Americans have lost their ability to see good or bad. They’ve turned on their country, their greatest enemies are their fellow citizens – imagine that! They are fearful, they see plots where there are none, their information is corrupted and no one is able to form a sensible conclusion about best interests of people.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘And now we watch them abandon principles of Constitution. It’s like dream for us.’

  She yawned. ‘You really think that’s all true?’

  ‘It is fact. It is greatest victory ever won without a war – no bomb exploded, no guns fired, but USA is on its knees. We achieved aims by exploiting America’s ideological weakness. The people are soft and idle and now they cannot tell difference between up and down.’ He bent down to retrieve his vodka, puffed furiously to fire up the cheroot and held the glass hi
gh. ‘I drink to the American people, authors of their own destruction.’ He tossed the glass over his shoulder and it hit the fence with a chink. ‘I can see you do not believe me but, Anastasia, you should know that this is my expertise – I am professional in psychological warfare. I know what I am talking about. I am specialist. Crisis will follow, then normalisation of crisis and great American democracy is kaput for ever!’

  ‘Are you in the intelligence services?’

  He gave her another withering look. ‘It was not espionage that destabilised the United States. It was the vanity and weakness of its people. We played on their weaknesses and they did the rest. Same is true in UK.’

  She shrugged her disagreement. ‘I doubt that people are happier in Russia than in America or Britain. They have no freedom. There is no opposition. Democracy is a sham. Most people are poor. And a few oligarchs own and control everything.’

  ‘Happiness! History is not won by making people happy, Anastasia. History is won by those who persuade the people that there is more to life than happiness and personal autonomy.’ He picked up a long stick and stabbed at the fire, sending a column of sparks into the air.

  ‘You speak like a fascist,’ she said, and for one moment she thought he was going to hit her across the face with the stick. But he dropped it and grinned.

  ‘“Fascist” is old-fashioned word. I prefer “realist”. I am like Huckleberry Finn. I deal with reality and I have no delusions.’ He paused. ‘But now I have business to attend to. Maybe we have some business together later,’ he added. ‘I will give some thought to it.’

  Samson entered a corner deli and bought a packet of cigarettes, lit up outside the store without guilt or much pleasure and thought how to play it with Hisami. His mind kept going back to the photographs on Anastasia’s phone and that wrenching call from the ship. He noted that the closer he came to seeing Hisami, the more present she was in his mind and the greater his anger was towards her husband. The reason was simple: if he hadn’t pursued her with his wealth and power, she would not now be held in Russia.

  When Anastasia told him she was going to move to California to work and live with Hisami – that’s how she put it, with the work before the cohabitation – he’d blamed himself for his lifestyle, which she once observed consisted of equal parts risk and frivolity. Just before his mother died, she had said, in an unsparing assessment of her son’s character, that if he had shown the will to change, he could have persuaded Anastasia to stay and make a go of things. ‘No woman wants to commit to your kind of life,’ she had said, adding, ‘it took a long time for your father to grow up. Try not to be like him, son.’

  It was true – he was at fault and he had lost her. But now he wished his dear old mum could see how things had turned out. Hisami tagged like a crook after a spell in jail and her son hired to find the woman who’d spurned him and who his mother knew was the only woman he’d ever loved, indeed the only woman he was ever likely to love. That would certainly give her pause, and he found himself hoping that she might think of him in a slightly more favourable light.

  He looked at his phone for any message from Tulliver, took out a second cigarette, began to smoke and placed the crushed pack and the book of matches on top of a waste bin nearby. A homeless man soon scooped them up, thanked Samson and retreated to a doorway, where a wretched bundle of possessions was stowed. Samson idly watched the man light up and wondered how he’d survive the coming winter, and this reminded him of Anastasia’s unfailing kindness to people on the street in London. She didn’t just give them money; she stopped to talk and she made them feel valued as people.

  The call came from Tulliver an hour later. ‘I’m really sorry – he has an urgent business meeting at seven and he’s tied up until then. We’re going to have to push it back to eight, eight fifteen?’

  ‘Okay, Jim, but I will need his full attention then because, whatever happens, I’m going to go back to London on the first flight tomorrow. Understood?’

  Denis Hisami sat waiting in a leek-green cardigan and collarless white shirt, the ankle monitor hidden beneath a pair of baggy grey trousers. He had been in the straight-backed wooden chair for half an hour, paying remarkably little attention to what was going on behind the glass screen where Tulliver and three employees worked to keep his business afloat. They had their instructions, and he’d left them to get on with it; there was nothing else he could do until the morning, when he would start a punishing round of calls with the banks.

  Tulliver came over, hovered until Hisami looked up, and said, ‘Martin Reid and Micky Gehrig are on their way over. Gil Leppo is already outside but is in a conference call in his car. He’s going to represent Larry Valentine.’

  In the event, they all exited the lift together and Hisami shook them each by the hand and offered them a drink, as though nothing had happened since they last saw each other. It was an awkward moment, which Leppo filled with a story about Valentine’s marital problems. ‘It turns out that old goat Larry was such a big supporter of family values he had families all over the country. The kids of his first marriage are really pissed because it affects their inheritance.’

  The story fell flat. No one was interested.

  Hisami showed them to one end of a bleached wood dining table that was dominated by two large canvases by Ed Ruscha and Jasper Johns, with a smaller one to the side by the British artist Patrick Heron, which was admired by Leppo, who told them he was in New York to attend a fashionably late evening show at a gallery in the Bowery.

  ‘You called for this meeting, Marty, would you like to start?’ asked Hisami.

  At these moments of intense stress everything slowed – it was his battle calm.

  ‘Are you solvent?’ Reid asked, laying his scarf over an adjacent chair.

  ‘It’s going to be tough, but we’ve got everything covered. I’m here to reassure you that we will honour any commitments we’ve made on investments and collaborations.’

  Reid’s eyes bored into him. ‘Is that the true picture, Denis? What happens if you are re-arrested by the immigration authorities, which I hear is a possibility? No one is going to support you if you go to jail again.’

  ‘I have assets to cover everything. Cash flow is the problem, but we are working on that tonight.’

  ‘How big a problem?’

  ‘To be honest, a really big problem. I need about $150 million in place by the end of tomorrow morning. It’s painful for me to admit it, but I’ve been in worse situations. We’ll get through this.’

  ‘If you’re locked up again, you’re fucked,’ said Gehrig.

  ‘That’s not true, Micky. But I cannot disguise the fact that it’ll be difficult.’

  ‘All this material coming out about your past as a rebel commander, working with the CIA, the Macedonian incident, these things do not help confidence,’ persisted Gehrig. ‘Even if you aren’t a goddam terrorist, it makes you look kind of wild and unreliable.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Hisami. ‘But we’re all, to an extent, prisoners of our past, and mine appears more colourful than most. What you have to know is that none of you will lose money.’

  He was seated a little distance from the trio so that he could watch them. He saw Leppo’s leg jigging. ‘Is there something you want to ask, Gil?’

  ‘I’m worried for you, Denis. It doesn’t look good.’

  ‘It doesn’t – I agree. But then you may all be in the same boat.’

  ‘How so?’ demanded Gehrig, the most hostile of the three.

  ‘Unless you want to find yourself in my position, you must order an immediate investigation into the money flow through the company. I hear that this wasn’t properly discussed at the board meeting so I wanted to say, very clearly, that you all face action from the FBI if you don’t take steps to investigate where this money came from and where it went. You need to place yourselves on the right side of the law.’

  Gehrig pulled his exasperated face. ‘Everything’s fine, Denis. We have accounts. We know th
e money has gone to research projects and joint ventures in Europe.’

  ‘It’s up to you whether you accept my advice.’ He looked at each of them in turn. ‘I have some bad news. I have to tell you that a body was found in a London apartment a few days ago. The victim is likely to be Ray Shepherd, the identity that Adam Crane used in London.’ He waited a beat then added, ‘That leaves you guys holding the baby. I would suggest that you put your lawyers on to this immediately.’

  Reid didn’t need to hear anything else. He pulled out a phone and arranged a conference call with his lawyers in two hours’ time. Gehrig looked doubtful then asked Reid if he could tie his lawyer into the conversation.

  Leppo said he would join them. ‘It was definitely Adam Crane?’ he said. ‘That’s truly terrible!’

  ‘Looks like it,’ Hisami said.

  ‘He was killed?’ asked Reid.

  Hisami nodded.

  ‘Jesus!’ said Gehrig. ‘What the fuck is going on? Why isn’t this in the news?’

  ‘You’re lucky it isn’t and, if I were you, I wouldn’t breathe a word of it to anyone. It gives you time to …’

  ‘Get our shit together,’ said Leppo.

  ‘Is there something you’re not telling us, Denis?’ demanded Reid.

  ‘No. Crimes have been committed – theft and/or money-laundering – and because my letter to the board is on the record, you’ll need to protect yourselves.’

  ‘Nothing more needs to be said.’ Reid gathered his things and clambered to his feet. ‘You coming, Micky?’

  Hisami rose too. ‘Jim Tulliver will stay in touch with you all about any developments.’

  Leppo didn’t stir. ‘I think we all owe you a debt for being straight with us, right, Marty?’

  Reid grunted. ‘Let’s see how things turn out.’

  ‘I mean it, guys,’ said Leppo. ‘It’s been a really tough time for you and Anastasia. I can’t imagine how she has the resilience to keep working in Italy. I hope you’ll send her all our best.’