The Spanish Game (24 page)

40

The meeting lasted twenty minutes.

‘I can learn everything I need to know about a man by the way hebehaves at breakfast,’ Tamarov said, standing in the foyer of his new restaurant wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses, a button-down Tommy Hilfiger cotton shirt and Armani denim jeans. It was nine o’clockin the morning. ‘I am a busy man, Mark, a very busy man. We have businesses in Moscow, in London, in Paris, in Belgrade. Later this morning Ifly to Amsterdam to eat only lunch. So if a person is to do business with me, I want to see the colour of his eyes in the morning. I want to hear him speakto me. I want to know the truth about him.’

It was as if they had never met. Tamarov was suffocating Mark with Russian bluster, the browbeating bullshit of a thug used to getting his own way. They weren’t even
eating
breakfast: Tamarov was in too much of a hurry. Had it not been for his duty to Randall, Mark would have made his excuses and caught a cab backto Kentish Town.

‘So what business are we exactly
doing
together, Vlad? You didn’t mention anything specific on the phone. What kind of thing is it that youhave in mind?’ Tamarov put the whole weight of his arm on Mark’s back and began walking with him towards the kitchens.

‘Well, I have been thinking,’ he said. Right from the start, Mark had the impression that Tamarov was in a tight spot from which he needed rescuing. ‘I am wondering if you would be interested in a small venture with me?’

‘A small venture.’

‘I am opening up this bar, this restaurant, in less than two weeks and I need somebody to help me out.’

Mark looked around him. The restaurant was a shell of scaffolding and fallen plaster. Despite the fact that it was a Sunday, there were workmen everywhere, architects in hard hats and interior designers poring over colour charts. As they came into the kitchen he could see gas burners and extractor fans still boxed in the centre of the room.

‘Is Tom not your partner on this?’ he asked. ‘You two have been spending so much time together recently and…’

‘No, not on this,’ Tamarov replied firmly. ‘This isnot with Thomas any more. I cannot trust him as I could trust you.’

Mark disguised his astonished reaction to this by slackening off his tie.

‘I’m sorry you feel that way.’

‘Don’t be,’ Tamarov said, removing his arm from Mark’s back. ‘I have been hearing good things about you from Sebastian for so long and now we meet in the club and it occurs to me yesterday that this would be a good partnership between us. I have in mind to open a chain of restaurants. But I am always in six cities at once, always doing business. I need somebody to be a director in the same way that you are looking after Libra.’

It didn’t feel like a trap. That was what he told Randall afterwards. For hours they sat around trying to second-guess Tamarov’s motive for making the offer, finally conceding that it had been made in good faith. Kukushkin was expanding into London all the time; Tamarov was the man who had been assigned to make that happen. The Scot he had entrusted to see the restaurant through to completion had either quit at the last minute or failed to come up to scratch. That Mark was Tamarov’s choice to take over was both a reflection of his skills as a manager and a particularly expedient coincidence.

‘But I workfor Seb,’ he said. ‘I can’t just quit and run this place. I’m not even looking for another job.’

Mark wondered if that had been the wrong thing to say. If Randall needed him to get close to Tamarov, this was the perfect opportunity. To refuse might jeopardize the relationship.

‘Of course we will offer you equity,’ Tamarov was saying, wrongly assuming that Mark was stalling over money. ‘We can discuss arrangements so that you own a portion of the business…’

‘No, it’s not that. It’s not that, Vlad.’ He didn’t know which way to go. It occurred to him that Philippe had been ensnared in a similar fashion, headhunted out of Libra. ‘I just don’t understand the sudden offer. Is there something I should know about? Everything seems a bit chaotic.’

Tamarov looked offended.

‘Chaotic? I can assure you that all restaurants look like this a few days before they are opening. You know this, Mark, it is normal. Does your club in Moscow seem like it is ready for opening? No. So let me show you our bathrooms. They are completely finished. There is nothing chaotic about this.

Nothing.’

Both bathrooms were indeed completely finished, a mock-Arab nightmare of black tiles and freestanding crimson lamps. Mark continued to waver and Tamarov felt it necessary to force his point.

‘My problem is this,’ he said, and actually pressed his index finger against the lapel of Mark’s jacket, as if retaliating to an insult that had never been landed. ‘People in your country are concerned. They think that we are all gangsters in the East, they thinkthat it is a mistake to trust us, to let us invest in your country. Perhaps
you
think this, Mark, even though you have been in Moscow, you have been in Petersburg, and you have seen these things at first hand. But let me tell you something, as your friend but also as somebody who knows about how work must be conducted. If you were a Russian, you
too
would be a gangster.’ He let the observation settle on Mark, digging out the pause. ‘You would have no choice. What does this word “mafia”
mean
, anyway? Does it mean violence? Does it mean that we are criminals? Of course not, and who is to judge? You thinkthat a mafia did not exist before Mr Gorbachev, before Yeltsin? You thinkthat the Soviet system was not in itself an organized crime? This is naive. At least now the wealth is in the control of the people.’

‘Spoken like a true communist,’ Mark said, but Tamarov ignored him.

‘The difference today is that the people must now
fight
for this wealth. A clever Russian, a Latvian, a Georgian, understands that today’sworld is about sinkor swim. If I am to survive, if I am to put food on the table for my wife, for my children, it is necessary to
fight
. Not with guns, not with violence, but with the mind.’ Tamarov tapped the side of his head to indicate where his mind might be located. Mark knew for sure that he did not have a wife, nor any children for whom he had to put food on the table, but he let it go. ‘I am in competition with other men,’ Tamarov said. ‘If I make a deal, I make the best deal for myself and for my clients. Does this make me a bad man? Does it?’

Mark didn’t answer the question, though he conceded that Tamarov was at least right about destiny. In Moscow he had been obliged to authorize and pay perhaps thirty or forty backhanders just to get the club up and running. It was a question of perspective; in London a businessman had the luxury of morality.

‘So this place is being financed by Mr Kukushkin?’ he asked. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’

Tamarov physically withdrew from the question. Stepping aside from Mark, he turned and walked back in the direction of the foyer, his voice assuming the lawyer’s cloak.

‘I represent Mr Kukushkin’s interests,’ he said. ‘Mr Kukushkin has many investments.’

Mark followed him and said, ‘Right. I see.’

‘Thomas works with Mr Kukushkin in Moscow. Sebastian has met him on many occasions. Are you seeing this as a problem?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then good.’

Tamarov stood beside a pile of plastic-wrapped chairs and flattened a hand against the crust of his gelled hair.

‘Look, I do not need a decision now.’ He started to lean against a column of chairs. It rocked dangerously. ‘Everything for the completion of the restaurant is already under way.’ In the street outside, Juris Duchev leaned on the horn of Tamarov’s Mercedes, preparing to drive him out to Heathrow. ‘Ihave to leave now to catch a flight to Holland. Why don’t we meet for dinner tomorrow? The St Martin’s Lane Hotel?’

‘Sounds good,’ Mark said. But he wondered if he had blown his chance. He had tried not to reject the offer out of hand, but Tamarov now seemed angry. He could surely find someone else to manage and run a restaurant. Then where would Mark be? Most probably their paths would never cross again.

‘I just need twenty-four hours to thinkthings over,’ he said. Tamarov was signalling to the car. ‘It could be that the timing is right for this. It could be that I could find myself interested.’

‘Then I am glad to hear it.’ Out on the street, Duchev was holding the car door open, but he did not acknowledge Mark’s presence. ‘I will call you. And then we will meet on Monday.’

‘Which is when you want my answer,’ Mark said.

‘Which is when I want your answer.’

41

In the beginning, Roth had telephoned Alice at least once every two days. After their first lunch together, he had called three times in a single afternoon and sent flowers that raised eyebrows at the
Evening Standard
. Each time he found a fresh reason for getting in touch: to chat about Ben or Mark; to discuss the latest developments on the new restaurant in Kensington; to give Alice the telephone number of a friend whose first novel might make the subject of a decent piece on the features page. All in all, she had met him for lunch three times and for dinner twice before they had slept together for the first time at his house in Pimlico. There had also been cocktails at The Hempel with some of his political contacts in the government, one of whom had later furnished Alice with a decent diary story.

She had always flirted with men of consequence, had done so since her teens. There was something about the buzz of flattery, the empowering thrill of constant male attention. But only once before - in the very earliest stages of her relationship with Ben - had Alice toyed with the idea of an infidelity, and succumbed to a one-night stand. Usually the moral justification for her behaviour lay in keeping men at arm’s length: sex, after all, changed everything. It was best just to keep them ticking over, best just to enjoy them as a game. And then Roth had come along and ruined everything. Roth had come along and humiliated her.

That afternoon at the hotel, just a few minutes before she was due to leave, he had told Alice how uncomfortable he was with ‘the concept of adultery’, how bad he felt for ‘cuckolding Ben’. Maybe it was best if they just ‘cooled off’ for a little while; maybe it was best if it just ended. At that moment - less than an hour after Roth had been inside her - Alice had seen him for what he was, and glimpsed her own stupidity. An argument had ensued in which she had accused him of using her, of treating her like a whore. What made it worse was that Roth had refused to retaliate: he understood why she was so upset, he understood that the timing was bad. But in a few days she would come to realize that this was the best decision for everyone. ‘This is a time when you should be with Ben,’ he had told her, and Alice had even wondered if he was hinting at blackmail.

Work was harder now. She thought that people knew about what had happened. Roth’s friends, the contacts he had so willingly given up and whom she had so gleefully cultivated, stopped calling. She was certain her reputation had been permanently damaged by their association. And for what? The sex hadn’t even been all that good. All the way through it Alice had been comparing Roth with Ben and wondering what the hell she was doing. But there had been such excitement in the seduction, such novelty, and the affair had provided the perfect distraction to all Ben’s grief and torpor.

She was terrified now of losing the marriage. Ben’s life was her entire structure: his loyalty, his friends, his love. Without that, Alice was nothing, a hackwith no friends, and single on the wrong side of thirty. She started to worry about her looks, about her career. In those first days, the insecurity was like an illness.

She called Ben all the time, wasn’t even aware that she was doing it. Just to talkto him, just to hear his voice. Alice needed to know that there was still somebody out there who found her attractive, somebody whom she could still rely on as a friend.

She missed the call to her mobile from Michelle Peterson at Customs and Excise. It was three o’clock on Monday afternoon. A bustle of male subs and journalists had gathered near her desk, discussing layout and trying to catch her eye. Were they laughing at her, or had nothing really changed? That was one of the things she had liked about Sebastian: there was nothing sleazy about him, nothing furtive or sly. He had been predatory in a way that most men would never understand.

Michelle left a text message and when Alice connected to the switchboard in Portsmouth she made a point of saying: ‘Customs and Excise?’ in a voice loud enough to be heard by the news editor, who was standing just five or six feet away from her desk. She wanted him to thinkthat she was engaged on a story more edifying than hemlines or hairstyles.

‘I’ve just had a message from Michelle Peterson,’ she told the receptionist. ‘Could I speakto her please?’

She had to wait while the call was connected. To her delight, the news editor honoured her with a smile, the first good thing to happen in days. Then she heard Michelle’s voice on the line, anxious and close to a whisper.

‘Als?’

‘Shell?’

‘Call my mobile, will you? But give me a minute to get outside.’

Alice waited and dialled back, the news editor now replaced by a young work-experience boy from public school looking ineffectual near the water cooler.

‘Hello?’

Michelle was outdoors. Alice could hear cars, sky noise.

‘Can you hear me?’ she asked.

‘Just about. How’s it going?’

‘Fine. Fine.’

‘Listen, I’m talking from the car park. Can’t really chat.’ Alice heard what sounded like the clunk of a van door, a metal sound. ‘I found out about Leonid Sudoplatov. Somebody using that name entered the UK on the first of December last year. Is that any help to you?’

‘I think so.’ Alice scribbled
Sud. Dec 1st
on a pad. ‘I’d have to checkthe dates.’

‘We have him as a Russian national. Sixty-three years old. Birthday sixth of December 1939. Records say it was a new passport, all the right channels issued eighteen months before. He stayed in the UK for eleven days and then caught a Heathrow flight back to Moscow on the morning of the twelfth. British Airways.’

Alice was writing a sequence of notes in shorthand. She said:

‘December the twelfth?’

‘That’s right. That’s about all I’ve got.’

A seagull squawked in Portsmouth.

‘I really, really appreciate it.’

It was a godsend. She thought that Ben would be pleased when she told him. She thought that this was exactly what she needed in order to make things up to him.