Lime's Photograph (43 page)

I thought for a moment.

“OK. Let’s drive out there tomorrow. If I could hire you to keep the heavies at a distance while I talk with my former friend and hear his explanation, then I would be able to say that it has been a pleasure doing business with a man as efficient as yourself, Mr Sjuganov.”

“Shall we provide you with a weapon?” asked Sjuganov.

“No. That won’t be necessary. There will be no shooting. Just an amicable conversation.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Sjuganov.

“Let’s do it tomorrow,” I said.

“That’s fine with us. The client decides. That’s the fundamental law of the market economy. Please be ready here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. But we’ll have to get you some more appropriate clothing at the very least,” said Sjuganov.

He looked me up and down, almost as if he was appraising a woman.

“I think I’ve got something that will fit. What size shoe do you wear?”

I told him.

He held out his hand formally, and I shook it. “Will you be coming?” I asked.

“I don’t go into the field so much any more, but yes, for Derek’s sake and for your sake I’ll come along, with Igor here. We know one another from the old days.”

“And when were the old days?”

“Way back, to the days of the hammer and sickle. More recently, a couple of years serving the new Russia. Igor was on my last team, working for a new President in a new nation, but our work was the same – gathering intelligence, carrying out sabotage, infiltration, and elimination of the enemies of the State. He’s one of the best I’ve had, but the State could no longer provide us with the pay we had a right to, so I allowed myself to be privatised.”

“Well, it’s a good thing that the new Russia needs your skills.” I said. I meant it ironically, but the irony was lost on this sturdy Russian.

“I’m unlikely to become unemployed for the time being,” he said, nodding to the silent man by the door and they went on their way, leaving me in the hotel room with its view over the snow-clad roofs with hundreds of tiny pennants of smoke rising from their chimneys and a feeling of emptiness which I didn’t understand. I should have been either frightened or tense, but I was neither. I was tired, but as I looked at the photographs of Oscar and Lola, I could feel anger creeping up on me again. It wasn’t that Oscar had lived a double life for all those years, that he had served a totalitarian state. That was past, and it wasn’t an issue between him and me. It wasn’t my place to judge him for having planned terrorist operations, or at least being the one who took care of the logistics. That was an issue between him and the countries that had suffered the consequences.

But he had let Amelia and Maria Luisa be murdered, whether he had done so himself or got others to do it. I wanted to know why the two people who had meant more to me than anything else in my
life should have been the innocent victims of his egotism and lust for power. Of his desperate attempts to bury the past. He had gone to great lengths to wipe the slate clean, but
Lime’s photograph
had shown him that he would never be able to. Because there is always someone who remembers and there is always one more photograph.

Sjuganov knocked on the door just after 8 a.m. I had slept badly. The room was hot and stuffy and it didn’t seem possible to turn the radiators down. I had been sorely tempted to visit one of the many bars or casinos in the hotel. But I didn’t. Instead, I drank the best part of a bottle of wine and watched CNN. I lifted the receiver of the American AT&T telephone to ring Gloria and Clara, but thought better of it. I looked out across the rooftops and watched the wintry city slowly settle down for the night, and finally I fell asleep in the early hours.

Sjuganov stepped briskly into the room, dressed in black from top to toe. He was carrying a sports bag that contained a thick pair of trousers, a warm undershirt, a sweater, socks, a ski jacket, a stout pair of winter boots and a pair of lined, expensive gloves, plus a blue woollen ski cap.

“It’s a cold day,” he said. “And the snow will arrive earlier than the meteorologists anticipated. Put these on and then we’ll go. I’ve got two men out in the field. They’ll inform us when the target makes a move. If he doesn’t, we’ll have to repeat the procedure tomorrow.”

The clothes and boots fitted. Outside the hotel it didn’t seem all that cold. The air was damp and felt like snow. A huge thermometer on the building next door read minus six and the road was a swamp of slush and grit. Pedestrians had to jump for their lives as cars sent a cascade
of muck and water across the pavement. I had given up on breakfast, which consisted of a dry bread roll wrapped in plastic, a slice of cheese with turned-up corners and a little packet of butter which was yellow with age, making do with a bottle of mineral water and a weak cup of instant coffee.

We got into the back of the black Mercedes and Sjuganov handed me a large plastic mug of coffee and a fresh cheese roll. Igor was sitting in the front, next to an Igor clone, with the same crew cut, thick leather jacket and blank expression.

We drove through Moscow and left the city via a broad boulevard. The traffic was heavy and traffic officers in black jackets and body warmers were everywhere. They stood in the middle of the swarming lanes, misshapen in their bulky uniforms, batons swinging, their breath hanging round their faces like fog. At one point we were waved into the side of the road. Sjuganov ignored the policeman who came over and addressed his fur cap. I saw the driver give him a document and a green note. The document was returned to him and we drove off.

I drank the hot, sweet coffee and felt strangely normal. It was as if I was on one of my usual assignments, had hired someone to find a celebrity somewhere in the world. As if I had prepared myself for the assignment and days, weeks or months of research and investigation were about to bear fruit. The celebrity was unaware that I was on my way to take the photograph that would earn me a great deal of money and cause that other person problems, even change their life. It was as if I had done it all before, that this was a repeat performance. I was on my way to a hit as I had been on my way to so many. I was tense, but it was in anticipation of the hunt. I would take my photograph, leave the scene and deposit the money in the bank. That was the normal routine. But this time I wasn’t carrying my Leica or my Nikon with its long telephoto lens.

When we had driven for ten or fifteen minutes, the car slid up
towards a large triumphal arch and further along on the left I could see an enormous area with cannons, an obelisk rising into the sky, a little church and at the far side a monument like a big Roman wall with columns and arcades. It looked very Soviet.

“What’s that?” I asked Sjuganov.

“Two memorials. The triumphal arch is for the first great patriotic war. The victory mound over there is for the second one. In 1812 we beat Napoleon. In the second we defeated the Germans. We are a nation built on blood and bones. We don’t have so much to be proud of, so we cultivate war. Our victories in war. Our victory over Hitler in particular unites us. It is the only purity we have left. The only thing we share, Mr Lime. My father’s brother died. My aunt starved to death during the siege of Leningrad. My wife’s uncle died, my wife’s grandmother died of starvation in the Ukraine. My wife’s grandfather vanished without trace during one of the large-scale purges. Russia equals suffering – 20 million died in the great patriotic war. In this accursed land, there is not a single family that does not have a story of death to tell.”

He spoke in his elegant upper-crust English, but I could tell he was moved. I couldn’t help saying “I’ve heard the number was 26 million. But that the extra six million were murdered by comrade Stalin and the good Chekists.”

Sjuganov turned to face me.

“That is undoubtedly correct. Blood and violence and terror are our heritage, but from 73 years of communism, the Second World War is all we have which is not tainted. So the extra six, along with the other hundred million who have been murdered in this century alone, are just a footnote in my country’s grim history, and we don’t talk about them. Every family has enough to weep about already. We labour under a legacy of brutality. We don’t include human life in our calculations. Look at our latest military enterprise in Chechnya.
How many were killed – 50,000, 80,000,100,000? No one knows and only a few are interested. We concern ourselves with those we are closest to. Strangers are strangers.”

We turned off to the right and drove alongside some large blue blocks of flats, then the road narrowed and there were birch trees on either side. Oscar sprang to my mind, but I wanted to repress all thought of the approaching meeting.

“What do you think about the change? The collapse of communism. The new Russia?” I asked Sjuganov.

He turned his head towards me.

“The old regime foundered. I served the State. I didn’t ask questions. We are mid-stream, Mr Lime. We live in a ruthless capitalist society where criminals occupy the Duma and the Kremlin. But it’s a period of transition. I served socialism, not from great conviction, but because I am a Russian patriot. I remain so. Now I advocate democracy and a market economy. The latter because it has made me wealthy. The former because that is the future. And if one has children, one also has to consider the future.”

“You’ve got children?”

“A boy of 17. A girl of 14. The boy is at boarding school in England. The girl goes to an English private school here in Moscow. They are the new Russia. They will forget the bloody legacy. I believe we are on the right track, but it will be up to the next generations to lift Russia out of the darkness.”

“What do the children think of their father’s work?”

He looked at me with his cold, blue eyes.

“The children are not acquainted with the nature of my work. I am a businessman. I have worked 18 hours a day all my life. For most of my life the State and the Party gave me pocket money and scrupulously handed out privileges in response to my contribution. Today I earn it all myself. I have a comfortable home, my wife is able
to shop in the new supermarkets. She can buy whatever clothes she wants. We go on holiday to Florida. My life is almost as it has always been. I no longer receive medals, but money as a result of my own endeavours. I have given up considering the moral implications of my life. It revolves around the welfare of my family and the satisfaction of my client. I can’t imagine anyone would condemn that principle, would they?”

“It would never even cross my mind,” I answered.

We drove in silence and the traffic thinned out as the road meandered further into the birch forest. I hadn’t seen so much snow for a long time. The road was clear, but snow lay thick on the trees and the little wooden houses we passed. There were carved wooden bears dotted along the roadside, sometimes together with a deer. It looked very odd – little toys covered in powdery snow in a landscape you could imagine extending thousands of kilometres eastward. We drove through a smallish town and passed a café and a vegetable market. There were big Western cars parked in front of the café and expensively dressed men and women wandered around looking at the market stalls. I thought I recognised it from the photograph and Sjuganov looked at me and nodded.

“We’re nearly there,” he said.

We turned right and drove up a road full of pot holes, with more little wooden houses on both sides, then big, red-brick villas surrounded by high fences, and drove deeper into the forest. Out here the road was white and compact, with a solid surface of ice, and despite its studded winter tyres, I could feel the Mercedes skid now and then. We pulled into a clearing in the forest and the driver turned off the engine. Igor and Sjuganov got out of the car. They each took a pair of white overalls, like a boiler suit but with a hood, from the boot. They put them on. Sjuganov spoke quietly in Russian into a walkie-talkie and received a brief, crackling reply.

“The target hasn’t left the villa yet. You’d be better off in the car, so you don’t get frozen. I’m sending Igor to a location along the route; he’ll be between you and the villa, I’ll lead you, OK?”

I wasn’t freezing at all, although it was biting cold. I was too tense. It was completely silent in the forest, which seemed untended and natural, despite the little footpaths running off a broader path that disappeared into the woods. The tracks of cross-country skiers ran back and forth between the trees.

Igor put on a pair of short skis and set off smoothly and effortlessly into the forest. In his white outfit, he soon vanished and became one with the yellowish-white bark of the birch trunks. I got back into the car. The driver switched on the heater and Sjuganov gave me another cup of coffee. It was like being at work. You got there, you had done all the preparation, you were ready. Now there was nothing else to do except wait.

But compared to other occasions, when I’d lain on my stomach or stood in a doorway waiting for a victim for hours, this time my patience wasn’t tested for long. After half an hour, Sjuganov’s walkie-talkie crackled to life and he answered briefly. I got out of the car. There was snow in the air. The clouds were heavy and grey and a plane could be heard not very high up in the cloud cover, as if we were under a flight path. Perhaps I had flown in over these very trees, streams and lakes.

“The target is on his way,” said Sjuganov. “The woman is with him and the big Irishman is acting as bodyguard. As usual he’s walking 20 metres or so behind them. Even though they speak German to each other, they obviously want him kept a little out of earshot.”

“OK,” I said, putting on the gloves and woollen hat. I wasn’t used to the cold, but fortunately Sjuganov had provided me with practical, warm clothes.

“Do you ski, Mr Lime?” he said.

“Not at all,” I said.

“I had not anticipated that you would. I shall lead you to a position ahead of the target. Then I will go back a little way and step in between the bodyguard and the target and leave it up to you. How much time do you need in order to conclude your business?”