Archangel (Mass Market Paperback) Page 11

  They had to go up Leningradskiy Prospekt, make a U-turn and come back down the other side to reach the stadium of the Young Pioneers. The taxi, an old Zhiguli that stank of sweat, turned off right, through a pair of iron gates, and bounced down a rutted track and into the sports ground. A few cars were drawn up in the snow in front of the grandstand, and there was a queue of people, mostly girls, outside an iron door with a peep-hole set into it. A sign above the entrance said 'Robotnik'.

  Kelso paid the taxi driver a hundred roubles - a ludicrous amount, the price of not haggling before the journey started - and watched with some dismay as the red lights bucked across the rough surface, turned and disappeared. An immense noise, like a breaking wave, came from the phosphorescent sky above the trees and rolled across the white sweep of the pitch. 'Three-two,' said a man with an Australian accent. 'It's over.' He pulled out a tiny black earpiece and stuffed it into his pocket. Kelso said to the nearest person, a girl, 'What time does it open?' and she turned to look at him. She was startlingly beautiful: wide dark eyes and wide cheekbones. She must have been about twenty. Snow flecked her black hair.

  'Ten,' she said, and slipped her arm through his, pressing her breast against his elbow. 'Can I have a cigarette?'

  He gave one to her and took one himself and their heads brushed as they bent to share the flame. He inhaled her perfume with the smoke. They straightened. 'One minute,' he said, smiling, and moved away, and she smiled back, waving the cigarette at him. He walked along the edge of the pitch, smoking, looking at the girls. Were they all hookers? They didn't seem like hookers. What were they, then? Most of the men were foreigners. The Russians looked rich. The cars were big and German, apart from one Bentley and one Rolls. He could see men in the back of them. In the Bentley, a red tip the size of a burning coal glowed and faded as someone smoked an immense cigar.

  At five past ten, the door opened - a yellow light, the silhouettes of the girls, the steamy glow of their perfumed breath - a festive sight, thought Kelso, in the snow. And from the cars now came the serious money. You could tell the seriousness not just by the weight of the coats and the jewellery, but by the way their owners carried themselves, straight to the head of the queue, and by the amount of protection they left hanging around at the door. Clearly, the only guns allowed on the premises belonged to the management, which Kelso found reassuring. He went through a metal detector, then his pockets were checked for explosives by a goon with a wand. The admission fee was three hundred roubles - fifty dollars, the average weekly wage, payable in either currency and in return for this he got an ultra-violet stamp on his wrist and a voucher for one free drink.

  A spiral staircase led down to darkness, smoke and laser beams, a wall of techno-music pitched to make the stomach shake. Some of the girls were dancing listlessly together, the men were standing, drinking, watching. The idea of Papu Rapava showing his scowling face in here was a joke, and Kelso would have turned round there and then, but he felt in need of another drink, and fifty dollars was fifty dollars. He gave his voucher to the barman and took a bottle of beer. Almost as an afterthought, he beckoned the bartender towards him.

  'Rapava,' he said. The barman frowned and cupped his ear, and Kelso bent closer. 'Rapava,' he shouted.

  The barman nodded slowly, and said in English, 'I know.'

  'You know?'

  He nodded again. He was a young man, with a wispy blond beard and a gold earring. He began to turn away, to serve another customer so Kelso pulled out his wallet and put a one-hundred thousand rouble note on the bar. That got his attention. 'I want to find Rapava,' he shouted.

  The money was carefully folded and tucked into the barman's breast pocket. 'Later,' said the young man. 'Okay? I tell you.

  'When?'

  But the young man smirked and moved further up the bar.

  'Bribing bartenders?' said an American voice at Kelso's elbow. 'That's smart. Never thought of that. Get served first? Impress the ladies? Hello, Dr Kelso. Remember me?'

  In the half-light, the handsome face was patched with colour and it took Kelso a couple of seconds to work out who he was. 'Mr O'Brian.' A television reporter. Wonderful. This was all he needed.

  They shook hands. The young man's palm was moist and fleshy. He was wearing his off-duty uniform - pressed blue jeans~ white T-shirt, leather jacket - and Kelso registered broad shoulders, pectorals, thick hair glistening with some aromatic gel.

  O'Brian gestured across the dance floor with his bottle. 'The new Russia,' he shouted. 'Whatever you want, you buy, and someone's always selling. Where're you staying?'

  'The Ukraina.'

  O'Brian made a face. 'Save your bribe for later's my advice. You'll need it. They're strict on the door at the old Ukraina. And those beds. Boy.' O'Brian shook his head and drained his bottle, and Kelso smiled and drank as well.

  'Any other advice?' he yelled.

  'Plenty, since you ask.' O'Brian beckoned him in close. 'The good ones'll ask for six hundred. Offer two. Settle on three. And we're talking all-night rates, remember, so keep some money back. As an incentive, let's say. And be careful of the real, real babes, 'cause they may be spoken for. If the other fellow's Russian, just walk away. It's safer, and there's plenty more - we're not talking life partners here. Oh, and they don't do triples. As a rule. These are respectable girls.'

  'I'm sure.'

  O'Brian looked at him. 'You don't get it, do you, professor? This ain't a whorehouse. Anna here -' he curled his arm around the waist of a blonde girl standing next to him and used his beer bottle as a microphone ' - Anna, tell the professor here what you do for a living.'

  Anna spoke solemnly into the bottle. 'I lease property to Scandinavian businesses.

  O'Brian nuzzled her cheek and licked her ear and released her. 'Galina over there - the skinny one in the blue dress? -she works at the Moscow stock exchange. Who else? Damnit, they all look alike, after you've been here a time. Nataliya, the one you spoke to outside - oh, yes, I was watchin' you, professor, you sly old dog Anna, darlin', what does Nataliya do?'

  'Comstar, R.J.,' said Anna. 'Nataliya works for Comstar, remember?'

  'Sure, sure. And what was the name of that cute kid at Moscow U? The psychologist, you know the one -'

  'Aiissa.'

  'Alissa, right. Alissa - she in tonight?'

  'She got shot, R.J.'

  'Boy! Did she? Really?'

  'Why were you watching me outside?' asked Kelso.

  'That's commerce, I guess. You wanna make money, you gotta take risks. Three hundred a night. Let's say three nights a week. Nine hundred dollars. Give three hundred for protection. Still leaves six hundred clear. Twenty thousand dollars a year - that's not hard. What's that - seven times the average annual wage? And no tax? Gotta pay a price for that. Gotta take a risk. Like working on an oil rig. Let me get you a beer, professor. Why shouldn't I watch you? I'm a reporter, goddamnit. Everyone comes here watches everyone else. There's half a billion dollars worth of custom here tonight. And that's just the Russians’.

  'Mafia?'

  'No, just business. Same as any place else.'

  The dance floor was packed now, the noise louder, the smoke denser. A new kind of lightshow had been switched on - lights that made everything that was white stand out dazzlingly bright. Teeth and eyes and nails and banknotes flashed in the gloom like knives. Kelso felt disorientated and vaguely drunk. But not, he thought, as drunk as O'Brian was pretending to be. There was something about the reporter that gave him the creeps. How old was he? Thirty? A young man in a hurry, if ever he'd seen one.

  He said to Anna, 'What time does this finish?'

  She held up five fingers. 'You want to dance, Mister professor?'

  'Later,' said Kelso. 'Maybe.'

  'It's the Weimar Republic,' said O'Brian, coming back with two bottles of beer and a can of Diet Coke for Anna. 'Isn't that what you wrote? Look at it. Christ. All we need is Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo and we might as well be in Berlin. I liked your book, professor,
by the way. Did I say that already?'

  'You did. Thanks. Cheers.'

  'Cheers.' O'Brian raised his bottle and took a swig, then he leaned over and shouted in Kelso's ear. 'Weimar Republic, that's how I see it. Like you see it. Six things the same, okay? One: you have a big country, proud country, lost its empire, really lost a war, but can't figure out how - figures it must've been stabbed in the back, so there's a lot of resentment, right? Two: democracy in a country with no tradition of democracy

  - Russia doesn't know democracy from a fuckin' hole in the ground, frankly - people don't like it, sick of all the arguing, they want a strong line, any line. Three: border trouble - lots of your own ethnic nationals suddenly stuck in other countries, saying they're getting picked on. Four: anti-semitism - you can buy SS marchin' songs on the street corners, for Christ's sake. That leaves two.

  'All right.' It was disconcerting, hearing your own views so crudely parroted; like an Oxford tutorial -'Economic crash, and that's coming, don't you think?'

  'And?'

  'Isn't it obvious? Hitler. They haven't found their Hitler yet. But when they do, it's watch out, world, I reckon.' O'Brian put his left forefinger under his nose and raised his right arm in a Nazi salute. Across the bar, a group of Russian businessmen whooped and cheered.

  AFTER that, the evening accelerated. Kelso danced with Anna, O'Brian danced with Nataliya, they had more drinks the American stuck to beer while Kelso tried the cocktails:

  B-52s, Kamikazes - they swapped girls, danced some more and then it was after midnight. Nataliya was in a tight red dress that was slippery, like plastic, and her flesh beneath it, despite the heat, felt cold and hard. She had taken something. Her eyes were wide and poorly focused. She asked if he wanted to go somewhere - she liked him a lot, she whispered, she'd do it for five hundred - but he just gave her fifty, for the pleasure of the dance, and went back to the bar.

  Depression stalked him. He wasn't sure why. He could smell desperation, that was it: desperation stank as strongly as the perfume and the sweat. Desperation to buy. Desperation to sell. Desperation to pretend you were having a good time. A young man in a suit, so drunk he could barely walk, was being led away by his tie by a hard-faced girl with long blonde hair. Kelso decided he would have a smoke at the bar and then go - no, on second thoughts, forget the cigarette - he stuffed it back into the pack - he would go.

  'Rapava,' yelled the barman.

  'What?' Kelso cupped his hand to his ear.

  'That's her. She's here.'

  'What?'

  Kelso looked to where the barman was pointing and saw her at once. Her. He let his gaze travel past her and then come back. She was older than the others: close-cropped black hair, black eyeshadow like bruises, black lipstick, a dead white face at once broad and thin, with cheekbones as sharp as a skull. Asiatic-looking. Mingrelian.

  Papu Rapava: released from the camps in 1969. Married, say 1970, 1971. A son just old enough to fight in Afghanistan. And a daughter?

  My daughter's a whore...

  'Night night, professor -' O'Brian swept past with a wink over his shoulder, Nataliya on one arm, Anna on the other. The rest of his words were lost in the noise. Nataliya turned, giggled~ blew Kelso a kiss. Kelso smiled vaguely, waved, put down his drink and moved along the bar.

  A black cocktail dress - fabric shiny, knee-length, sleeveless - bare white throat and arms (not even a wrist watch), black stockings, black shoes. And something not quite right about her, some disturbance in the atmosphere around her, so that even at the crowded bar she was in a space, alone. No one was talking to her. She was drinking a bottle of mineral water without a glass and looking at nothing, her dark eyes were blank, and when he said hello she turned to face him, without interest. He asked if she wanted a drink.

  No.

  A dance, then?

  She looked him over, thought about it, shrugged.

  Okay.

  She drained the bottle, set it on the bar, and pushed past him on to the dance floor, turned, waited for him. He followed her.

  She didn't make much of a pretence and he rather liked her for that. The dance was merely a polite prelude to business, like a broker and a client spending ten seconds inquiring after each other's health. For about a minute she moved idly, at the edge of the pack, then she leaned over and said, 'Four hundred?'

  No trace of perfume, just a vague scent of soap.

  Kelso said, 'Two hundred.'

  'Okay.'

  She walked straight off the floor without looking back and he was so surprised by her failure to haggle that for a moment he was left alone. Then he went after her, up the spiral staircase. Her hips were full in the tight black dress, her waist thick, and it occurred to him that she didn't have long to go at this end of the game, that it was a mistake to invite immediate comparison with women eight, ten, maybe even twelve years her junior.

  They collected their coats in silence. Hers was cheap, thin, too short for the season.

  They went out into the cold. She took his arm. That was when he kissed her. He was slightly drunk and the situation was so surreal that he actually thought for a moment that he might combine business and pleasure. And he was curious, he had to admit it. She responded immediately, and with more passion than he'd expected. Her lips parted. His tongue touched her teeth. She tasted unexpectedly of something sweet and he remembered thinking that maybe her lipstick was flavoured with liquorice: was that possible?

  She pulled away from him.

  'What's your name?' he said.

  'What name do you like?'

  He had to smile at that. His luck: to find the first postmodern whore in Moscow. When she saw him smiling, she frowned.

  'What's your wife's name?'

  'I don't have a wife.'

  'Girlfriend?'

  'No girlfriends either.'

  She shivered and thrust her hands deep into her pockets. It had stopped snowing, and now that the metal door had closed behind them the night was silent.

  She said, 'What's your hotel?'

  'The Ukraina.'

  She rolled her eyes.

  'Listen,' he began, but he had no name to ease the conversation. 'Listen, I don't want to sleep with you. Or rather,' he corrected himself, 'I do, but that isn't what I had in mind.'

  Was that clear?

  'Ah,' she said, and looked knowing - looked like a whore for the first time, in fact. 'Whatever you want, it's still two hundred.'

  'Do you have a car?'

  'Yes.' She paused. 'Why?'

  'The truth is,' he said, wincing at the lie, 'I'm a friend of your father's. I want you to take me to see him -'

  That shocked her. She reeled back, laughing, panicky. 'You don't know my father.'

  'Rapava. His name's Papu Rapava.'

  She stared at him, slack mouthed, then slapped his face -hard, the heel of her hand connecting with the edge of his cheekbone - and started walking away, fast, stumbling a little: it couldn't have been easy in high heels on freezing snow. He let her go. He wiped his mouth with his fingers. They came away black with something. Not blood he realised: lipstick. Oh, but she packed a punch, though: he was hurting. Behind him, the door had opened. He was aware of people watching, and a murmur of disapproval. He could guess what they were thin king: rich westerner gets honest Russian girl outside, tries to renegotiate the terms, or suggests something so disgusting she can only turn and run bastard He set off after her.

  She had veered on to the virgin snow of the pitch and had stopped, somewhere near the halfway line, staring into the dark sky. He trod along the path of her small footprints, came up behind her and waited, a couple of yards away.

  After a while, he said, 'I don't know who you are. And I don't want to know who you are. And I won't tell your father how I found him. I won't tell anyone. I give you my word. I just want you to take me to where he lives. Take me to where he lives and I'll give you two hundred dollars.'

  She didn't turn. He couldn't see her face.

  'F
our hundred,' she said.

  FELIKS SUVORIN, IN a dark blue Crombie overcoat from Saks of Fifth Avenue, had arrived at the Lubyanka in the snow a little after eight that evening, sweeping up the slushy hill in the back of an official Volga.

  His path had been eased by a call from Yuri Arsenyev to his old buddy, Nikolai Oborin - hunting crony, vodka partner and nowadays chief of the Tenth Directorate, or the Special Federal Archive Resource Bureau, or whatever the Squirrels had decided to call themselves that particular week.

  'Now listen, Niki, I've got a young fellow in the office with me, name of Suvorin, and we've come up with a ploy ... That's him . . . Now, listen, Niki, I can't say more than this:

  there's a foreign diplomat - western, highly placed - he's got a racket going, smuggling... No, not icons, this time, wait for it - documents - and we thought we'd lay a trap

  That's it, that's it, you're way ahead of me, comrade -something big, something irresistible . . Yes, that's an idea, but what about this: what about that notebook the old NKVDers used to go on about, what was it? . . . That's it, "Stalin's testament" . . . Well, this is why I'm calling now. We've got a problem. He's meeting the target tomorrow .

  Tonight? He can do tonight, Niki, I'm certain - I'm looking at him now, he's nodding - he can do tonight...'

  Suvorin hadn't even had to repeat the tale, let alone elaborate upon it. Once inside the Lubyanka's marble hall, his papers checked, he'd followed his instructions and called a man named Blok, who was expecting him. He stood around the empty lobby, watched by the silent, uncurious guards and contemplated the big white bust of Andropov, and presently there were footsteps. Blok - an ageless creature, stooped and dusty, with a bunch of keys on his belt - led him into the depths of the building, then out into a dark, wet courtyard and across it and into what looked like a small fortress. Up the stairs to the second floor: a small room, a desk, a chair, a wood-block floor, barred windows -'How much do you want to see?'