Lime's Photograph (41 page)

I took a cab home and rang Clara, but either she hadn’t got back yet or she had unplugged her phone. There wasn’t even an answering machine to leave a message on. I drank the better part of a bottle of whisky, but the image of the Lieutenant Colonel’s battered face was a little too clear in my mind, and I stopped myself before it got out of hand. I staggered into bed with one of my favourite Danish poems running through my mind. It was a verse from Tom Kristensen’s first collection that I had fallen for as a young man because of its title,
Buccaneer Dreams
. The line was “The world has turned chaotic anew” and I became desperate when I found I couldn’t remember the next line. In my drunkenness I couldn’t remember where I had put my few volumes of Danish poets among all Don Alfonzo’s books. They had got lost in the disorganised, teeming shelves and after a while I gave up trying to find the next verse and maybe the meaning of the poem, even though in actual fact I understood it all too well.

Derek Watson in London helped me make my next move. I knew that he had done a lot of work in Moscow and when I rang him and said that I needed a contact, or more precisely a fixer, he knew what I meant. He asked after Oscar and Gloria and I said that they were fine. I was fine too, and he was fine, everything was fine. Once we had got through that ritual dance, Derek asked me what I needed.

“Someone who can find a man for me, point him out and then keep away.”

“OK. You’re back on the turf again, Lime,” he said.

“That’s exactly what I am.”

“I know there’s no point asking who the target is, but I’m going to anyway.”

“The Second Coming in Moscow,” I said.

“OK. Just the picture for you, but you might need a partner.”

“You know I always work alone, Derek,” I said.

“OK. There’s a guy I’ve used a couple of times. He’s really good, efficient, a bit scary and he costs …”

“The money doesn’t matter,” I said.

“OK. He’ll probably want a couple of thousand dollars a day plus a bonus for finding your target.”

“That’s fine. What kind of guy is he?”

“Lime! He’s a new Russian. He’s a former Spetznats or KGB or something. They’re all over Moscow. Most of them are small fry, but this one’s good. He delivers the goods. Maybe he’s Mafia, maybe he’s just a businessman. The borders are a bit hazy in Moscow. Like all the others, he owns what he refers to as a security and consultancy company. What do I know? I don’t know what that means, but he’s always come up with the goods.”

“Fine, Derek,” I said. “Give me his number.”

“He’s a bit particular too,” said Derek. “He’s very cautious with his clients, so I’ll have to ring him and then he’ll ring you when he’s checked you out, and he’s not always easy to get hold of.”

“OK, Derek. Ring him. Tell him it’s urgent. Say it’s a contract that’s got to be wound up now. And then I owe you one.”

Derek’s husky smoker’s laugh was loud and clear.

“Forget it, Lime. You got me started. I’ve got a lot of debts to you. You don’t owe me a damn thing.”

“Say it’s urgent,” I said.

“Pronto. And say hello to Oscar and Gloria and thank them for a great evening in London.”

“Will do,” I said. “I’ll certainly say hello to Oscar and Gloria.”

I spent a couple of days in Don Alfonzo’s house, which I didn’t really feel I could call my own yet, struggling to keep off the booze. I tried
to put the books in some kind of alphabetical order and I ate the food which Doña Carmen prepared for me dutifully every day. She had carried on coming to the house after Don Alfonzo’s death and I didn’t have the heart to say she should stop. I didn’t ring Clara again, but spoke on the phone with Gloria a couple of times a day. There was a frailty hidden in her voice, but she was businesslike, and talked about extricating herself from her life with Oscar as if it was an important and challenging assignment she had taken on by choice. It was a case of getting a marriage annulled in a Catholic country, legally closing various accounts and procuring documents from Herr Weber and others in the dusty rooms full of files of the former GDR. The work kept her going, but she sounded like she might collapse once the process had reached a meaningful conclusion. We were a sorry pair.

Sergej Sjuganov finally rang one morning. He spoke English as if he had been to one of England’s top boarding schools, but it was more likely the result of time spent at Moscow’s diplomatic school and perhaps a posting at the embassy in London.

“Mr Lime. You want to do business with me,” he said.

“I’d like you to find someone for me. It’s to do with …”

He interrupted abruptly, but politely.

“Excuse me, Mr Lime. But I never discuss business on the telephone.”

“Then let’s meet,” I said.

“Frankfurt airport, the VIP lounge in the central hall, next to the duty free shop, tomorrow afternoon. The are flights from Moscow and Madrid arriving almost simultaneously.”

“Fine. How will I recognise you?”

“I’ll find you, don’t worry. Tall, slim, leather jacket, ponytail, jeans. Be reading tomorrow’s
El Pais
.”

“Pretty accurate,” I said.

“And bring a photograph of the target. Until tomorrow, Mr Lime.”

Most people use the airports of Europe and the rest of the world as points of arrival and departure, but for modern businessmen or researchers working internationally, airports are practical meeting places. You can hire meeting rooms and you don’t waste time getting into the city and finding a hotel. You can work between an arrival and a departure and never see anything other than the airport. I had used airports as meeting places myself, so I wasn’t surprised by his choice. And Frankfurt was situated conveniently between Madrid and Moscow.

I bought a cola and sat at a table with the day’s
El Pais
, and waited. The airport was swarming with travellers, many of them carrying parcels as if they were going on an early Christmas holiday. The transit hall of an international airport is one of the safest and most anonymous places in the world. You’re just one among many, and unless you’re on some wanted list or you’re being shadowed, no one notices you.

A chunky, athletic man of about my age sat down opposite me and we shook hands.

“Sergej Sjuganov,” he said. He was wearing an immaculate, dark suit with a dazzling-white shirt and a smart tie that was held in place by a gold tie pin sporting a fine little diamond. He had a Rolex on his wrist and smelled of an expensive cologne. His face was covered with tiny, delicate lines and he was tanned, as though he went on expensive holidays or perhaps used a solarium. His eyes were very blue and he had a little scar near one corner of his mouth. His handshake was firm.

“Coffee, Mr Sjuganov?” I asked.

“Please. We have a little under half an hour, Mr Lime. I’m taking Lufthansa back.”

I went to the bar and got a coffee for him and another cola for me. I had brought along a couple of recent photographs of Oscar. Photographs I had taken. There was a full-length picture, a full-face
portrait and one where he was seen more in profile. I passed them to the Russian and he studied them.

“He’s a tall man,” said Sjuganov. “About 50. Well-dressed. Self-confident. Money. Keeps himself trim, but with a tendency to a slight paunch. He’ll stick out. Language, nationality, background?”

I told him about Oscar. That he was a German national, but his past was a bit murky. Besides German, he spoke English and Spanish, perhaps a little Russian. He was well travelled. He’d been trained by the Stasi. I explained the background.

This brought a gleam to his cold, blue eyes.

“Ah-ha. That of course somewhat complicates the matter.”

“In what sense?” I asked.

“It’s a little more difficult to find a man who has learnt to cover his tracks. It will make it slightly more expensive for you, Mr Lime. And what exactly do you want me to do?”

“Find him. I think he’s in Moscow. He went there just over a week ago. That’s all I know really,” I said.

“I charge one thousand dollars per day. You transfer ten thousand dollars as a deposit to an account in Switzerland. You cover all expenses incurred during the operation. And you pay a bonus if I find him, of ten thousand dollars.”

“And if you don’t find him?”

Sjuganov smiled.

“A six-foot German who has been in Moscow for only a week or so? We’ll find him. We have our contacts. As with so much else in the new Russia, it’s just a question of money. If the target has left Moscow, it will be somewhat more complicated, but not impossible. If the target is still in Moscow, then it’s unlikely to take more than a week. If we don’t find him, you just pay the actual expenses, but that won’t happen. We’ll find him, dead or alive.”

“Good,” I said.

Sjuganov leant across the table.

“What do you want us to do once we have located the target?”

“I’ll need a guide. I don’t speak Russian.”

“That goes without saying, but do you want us to do anything regarding the target? I don’t need to know why you want to find the target, whether it’s personal or business. But usually there’s a reason that someone goes to ground and someone else wants to find that person. So what do you want us to do once we have located the target? An active response necessitates separate fee negotiations. If you understand me.”

He was businesslike and detached, as if discussing a small issue in a standard commercial contract, but I had no doubt as to what he meant.

“No,” I said. “You lead me to the address, I’ll take care of the rest.”

“And if the target has protection?”

I thought for a moment.

“If I think it necessary that someone keeps an eye out in case there’s an attack from the rear, then I’d like to engage your services,” I said.

“No problem,” he said, getting up, and we shook hands. “I know you pay your bills.”

“So it’s a deal,” I said. “You’ll find Oscar.”

“Consider it done. Stay by the telephone. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Mr Lime. Have a good trip back to Madrid. See you in Moscow,” he said, and faded into the crowd. The back of one more well-cut suit among all the others.

Russia looked like her old self. I hadn’t been there since it was just one of 15 Socialist republics within the Soviet Union. like the GDR, it had disappeared from the map, not with blood and violence, but signatures on a piece of paper, signed by three half-drunk presidents in a hunting lodge in Minsk. Seen from the air it looked as I remembered it. As the plane broke through the heavy cloud cover and began its descent, I could see the landscape speckled with snow and small, deserted villages where only smoke from the chimneys of the snow-clad houses gave any sign of life. The countryside with its frozen lakes looked timelessly Russian and flat, as if the huge changes hadn’t washed over it.

As soon as we were in the buildings of Sheremetyevo Airport, the new began to mingle with the old. There were still long, winding queues at passport control, but the airport was full of advertisements and promises of quick returns at the casinos. There were advertisements for computers and Russians of all types were chatting on mobile phones. They had mountains of luggage. The halls were still dimly lit and strangely oppressive and they smelled just as I remembered. A mixture of frost outside, heat inside, black tobacco and low-octane fuel. A grating female voice announcing take-offs and landings in incomprehensible English sounded as if it were the same woman
who had been there for years. The customs officials worked in the anarchic way they always had done, either casually letting people through without a glance or laboriously checking everything. Russians returning home mingled with business people and tourists, and they were better dressed and more arrogant than I remembered, but there was absolutely no mistaking that I had arrived in Moscow.

Sergej Sjuganov had kept his word and phoned ten days after our meeting. The target had been located, observed, and a reservation had been made for me at the Hotel Intourist near the Red Square. It was below my usual standard of hotel, but it was less conspicuous than the renovated Metropol or National. Sjuganov hoped I would understand. He gave me a fax number and asked me to notify him of my time of arrival. I would be met at the airport.

I rang Gloria and told her that Oscar had been found and that I was going over to talk with him. Gloria wanted to come too, but I said no, and she let herself be persuaded fairly easily. I got the feeling that she didn’t really want to confront him, that she would rather conclude the divorce and total dissolution of their union under cover of unemotional writs. Everything was going according to plan, she said. Accounts had been blocked; business went on as usual. She had asked if I would rejoin the company, and this time I hadn’t said no outright, but I knew in my heart that I wouldn’t do it. I had thought about it again on the plane, and also thought about Clara and the possibility of starting a new life. Just before I left Madrid, I had sat by Amelia and Maria Luisa’s grave and was overwhelmed by as intense a feeling of grief as if they had died the day before, but they hadn’t spoken to me. The feeling of loss was as strong and I still felt anger, which was really desperation and frustration over what had happened. A feeling of impotence. Rage against the injustice of life.

The female customs officer in her dreary, grey uniform glanced briefly at my currency voucher as my travel bag went through the
screening apparatus. She had painted her lips and nails bright red, and her face was sullen as she stamped my passport and papers with a heavy hand and pushed them towards me. Without so much as looking at the next person in the queue, she pulled his papers across her desk. I walked into the dark arrivals hall and saw a young man in his late 20s. He was wearing a leather jacket, and stood in the throng holding up a cardboard sign on which was written in large, black letters: Lime. He was clean-shaven, and looked like the type who spent hours in the gym, but I could see that his physique wasn’t pumped up, but was genuine muscle. I wouldn’t like to take him on.

He greeted me with a nod, took my bag and with a movement of his head indicated that I should follow him. His black Mercedes was parked right outside. The cold hit me like a sledgehammer. I was wearing only jeans and my leather jacket over what I thought was a thick sweater. It was a dry cold, and the air was dense with diesel and petrol fumes. The car’s engine was running and the exhaust swirled in the breeze. He held the door for me and I was grateful to get into the back of the warm car. The man who had met me got in beside the driver and the car pulled away from the kerb with hardly a sound, just the rumbling of the studded tyres on the asphalt. The man keyed in a number on his mobile and said a single sentence in Russian. Sjuganov was expensive, but you couldn’t complain about the service.