Quiller Balalaika Read online

  In the silence I said, 'Not your favourite day to remember. Natalya, don't look directly at the man standing at the end of the bar with his foot on the stool. Just glance across him when you next look around.' With her eyes still on mine she said, 'Very well. No, it was not my favourite day. Even before we parted company that night I knew that Vasyl hadn't just fallen for me – he wanted to possess me. At first I think I was flattered, even proud. I knew from what my brother had told me that Vasyl Sakkas was a powerful man, one of the most powerful men in Moscow.' Looking around her: 'He came to watch me dance, with an enormous entourage of bodyguards, and escorted me home to my cramped little apartment in Povaskaya Ulica. He gave me sables, diamonds, and a brand new BMW. It's all right, I know that man – he's just one of my followers, that's all. He never comes up or pesters me.'

  'Fair enough,' I said.

  'And then I was invited to Vasyl's house for the first time, to dine with him alone. And you know what happened? I woke up two days later in his enormous baroque bed, still groggy from whatever drug I'd been given, though the truth didn't occur to me right away. There were three private nurses looking after me, and a doctor came twice a day to question them about my "progress". They said it was some kind of food poisoning, because two of the staff were also taken ill. And you know? I believed it. So did my brother Marius.'

  'And what did your brother Marius feel about your having woken up in Vasyl's bed?'

  With a shrug: 'He knows I have affairs. I think maybe he was rather pleased that his boss favoured me, and that I was responding.'

  'But were you? I don't want to -'

  'No. I refused, the first time Vasyl made a serious pass. I think maybe I wanted to hold him off just to see what it felt like, to show a man as powerful as he was that he couldn't buy me – at least not instantly. Maybe it was that, I don't know. But it must have angered him, even though he never shows anger.'

  'No?'

  'Just cruelty.'

  Two men came in, blunt-faced, hoods, letting the door slam shut on its spring, walking to the bar in step, hands in the pockets of their coats as they stared straight ahead of them.

  'When did you start thinking it hadn't been food poisoning?' I asked Natalya.

  Her mouth twisting with bitterness: 'Pretty soon. He made me stay in bed until the doctor said I could get up, and then -'

  'For a few days? A week?'

  'Maybe a week. By that time it was driving me crazy that I couldn't go to the theatre – I was already a soloist. I told Vasyl they could fire me; work isn't that easy to find, even at my level. He didn't listen. Then I saw the whole picture.'

  A bald-headed man in a velvet smoking jacket and gold-rimmed glasses came out of the room behind the bar and nodded, motioning the two hoods inside.

  'The whole picture,' I said.

  'Yes – I could go back to my work, but I would live in Vasyl's house now, permanently. I would be there when he wanted me, when I wasn't performing. I would be his kept woman. His white slave, if you like.'

  'He didn't put it like that.'

  'Of course not. He says very little, Vasyl, but nobody ever mistakes what he means.'

  'How did your brother feel about this?'

  'May I have another drink?'

  'The same?'

  'Yes.'

  I got our girl over and ordered more Canada Dry.

  'I think Marius saw it as a very good situation developing all round. I seemed to accept Vasyl, and Vasyl seemed to be bringing me into a totally new life-style, like a waif out of the snow. I didn't want to worry my brother at that stage; I knew I was trapped in something I couldn't escape, so I decided to make the best of it, just keep on with my work and cope with the other half of my life as it came.' Hands flat on the table suddenly, her eyes becoming intense: 'Although that's not putting it well. The whole of my life is my work, it always has been. So maybe that was why I found it easier to accept the other things. I don't know.'

  The door behind the bar opened and the two hoods came out, one of them tucking an envelope into the double-breasted coat. The man in the gold-rimmed glasses asked the bartender for a drink as the hoods walked in step to the door and a Hari Krishna acolyte came in, snow on his saffron robes and tonsured head. One of the hoods made a quick movement and the acolyte doubled over with a cry of pain as they went on out, one of them laughing, letting the door slam.

  'When did the cruelty begin?' I asked Natalya.

  'Soon afterwards. I don't want to talk about that.'

  'Did your brother know?'

  'Not at first. He found out last summer. We were by the swimming pool at Vasyl's dacha. I'd forgotten to put make-up over a bruise, and he asked me how I'd got it. I told him.'

  When the drinks arrived we stirred the ice and I asked her, 'Why did you suddenly decide -'

  'To tell him? Maybe I just didn't think anything of it, you see, by then. As long as Vasyl didn't hurt me enough to stop me dancing, I let it go. But -'

  'How did Marius react?'

  'He was appalled. And then furious, so much so that I had to warn him not to let Vasyl know I'd told him what was going on.'

  'He took some persuading?'

  'We argued half the night. Vasyl was away for two days, at the coast.' The candlelight on the ice threw spangles of colour across her face as she stirred her drink. 'Marius is nine years older than me, and he's always been the "big brother", protecting me from things when there was any trouble.'

  'He finally agreed to say nothing to Vasyl?'

  'Yes. I made him.'

  'Not easy for him.'

  'No.'

  'But his attitude to Vasyl, from then on, must have been cooler.'

  Hands flat on the table again. 'Look, Marius was a trusted lieutenant – actually a whole lot more than that: by this time he was managing most of Vasyl's empire, because my brother is a very astute businessman, and very discreet. Maybe his attitude was different, but if Vasyl noticed, he wouldn't have questioned it. Maybe he thought my brother knew everything already, but anyway he wouldn't have cared. Vasyl cares about no one. That's why he has no friends. Only enemies.'

  'Their business relationship went on just the same?'

  'Of course. Marius was enormously important to his boss, much too important to lose – or he was at that time.'

  'At that time?'

  'Three months ago.'

  'Marius isn't managing things now?'

  'No.'

  'Where is he?'

  Natalya looked down, her body going slack suddenly. 'He's in a forced-labour camp in Siberia, for life.'

  14: SHADOW

  Lights flashing, sending waves of colour through the snow as the emergency lamps circled on the roofs of the police cars. The chains bit as I hit the brakes. It was the third crash scene we'd come across since we'd left the Entre'acte Club.

  An illuminated baton made motions, and I put the window down and looked into a raw face buried under a hood smothered in snow. 'This street's blocked! Take the next left, then right, then left again. Get a move on!' The baton swung in practised arcs. Sirens were fading in behind us and the lights of two ambulances flooded the street as I made the turn.

  I glanced down at Natalya. We hadn't spoken since we'd got into the car, and I'd left her to her tears. She said at last, 'Of course it was my fault.'

  'What was?'

  'Marius being sent to the camp. He couldn't help trying to protect me, you see, at first in small ways, and it began to annoy Vasyl. And there was the other thing: for a long time my brother had been worried about the killings.'

  'The ones Sakkas ordered?'

  'Yes.' She pulled her legs up and rested her chin on her knees, and I reached across and checked the seat-belt for tension. 'There were so many.'

  'Did he start objecting to them?'

  'After a time, yes. I once heard voices raised, and my brother saying he was getting sick of it, that business was business, there was no need to kill people. You know? It really worried him.'

>   'So Sakkas broke off the relationship?'

  A short, bitter laugh. 'You could put it like that. What actually happened was that the Ministry of the Interior sent a squad to arrest my brother as he was coming out of a cafe on the Ring one night. The next day there were charges brought and he was summarily convicted of murdering a judge and sentenced to a life term at Gulanka. These days the Ministry can do things like that under the emergency legislation, with so much crime to deal with. It happens a lot – they herd the convicted prisoners out on trains.'

  'You've been to a lawyer?'

  'Of course, secretly. But I've no money, and it's so dangerous to do anything against Vasyl.'

  A huge black Zil came at us through the blizzard with its lights blinding and I swung the Mercedes across the pavement and clouted a sand-bin and ripped away the front wing and got a shout from the limo, then it was gone like a shark in white water.

  When I'd straightened course I said, 'You told me your brother knows everything about Sakkas' "empire".'

  'Of course – he ran it. I'm talking about an international network, world-wide, with offices and warehouses right across Europe and even in America. Last year Vasyl made more than one billion dollars. My brother also knows every one of his major contacts in the government and the Russian army, all of them very high up and all of them paid either to keep their mouths shut or steer "business" his way. Marius has the whole picture, and Vasyl would have had him shot if it weren't for me.'

  It didn't sound right. 'You mean out of his feelings for you?'

  Natalya swung her head to stare at me and her voice was harsh. 'His feelings for me? He doesn't know what feelings are. But he wants to keep me with him, to show off to the other mafiyosa – they vie with each other over their possessions.'

  'So Marius is a hostage.'

  'Of course. That is why I'm trapped.'

  'Did you ever try to leave Sakkas, before your brother was sent to the camp?'

  'Twice. But Vasyl is uncanny, you know? His goons found me within hours, even though I kept away from my friends.'

  I didn't ask her what the punishment was when the goons brought her back, didn't want to know. If she tried it again it would be infinitely worse: Sakkas would have her brother's body sent from the camp to Moscow for her to identify, while he savoured her grief. I was beginning to know him.

  I turned left along the Boulevard Ring, going east, looking for a plush hotel. 'I'm going to put you into a taxi,' I told Natalya. 'Is that all right?'

  'Of course.'

  If I dropped her off at the house I could get shot at, afterwards, or tracked through the streets. 'I've got the number of the stage door at the theatre,' I told her. 'I might need to contact you again.'

  'That would be dangerous. If one of his goons saw us tonight -'

  'They didn't,' I said.

  With a shrug. 'Then we were lucky. They're everywhere.'

  I slid the Mercedes alongside the first taxi in the rank outside the Moscow Waldorf. 'If I can do anything to help your brother, I'll let you know.'

  She looked at me. 'No one can help him. No one.'

  Perfectly right, he was in Gulanka for Christ's sake, in northern Siberia. But for what it was worth I would tell Ferris, see if he could do anything through London.

  'All I can hope for,' she said bleakly, 'is that one day, somehow, he might escape.'

  'Let's pray for that.'

  She unclipped her seat-belt, turning to face me. With formality: 'Thank you for your hospitality. And it was kind of you to take so much interest.'

  'You should talk more to your friends.'

  'They all know my story. I needed a stranger to listen.'

  I got out and spoke to the driver, giving him a $50 bill. 'Take good care of her, my friend, on a night like this.'

  Natalya slipped off her right glove and I kissed her hand and closed the door of the taxi and watched it away, the rear lights slewing in the snow as the Zhiguli bounced across the ruts.

  I was halfway to my hotel when I picked up the tick.

  There had been three vehicles behind me from the moment when I'd watched Natalya's taxi driving away to the present time, but now the scene had changed: two of them had peeled off and the third was still behind me, but now it had pulled back a little and its lights were doused.

  Present time: 11:43.

  I switched off the dashboard displays and left the retinae to accommodate. I didn't think it was a tracker, the other car. I thought it might be a hit team checking on me before it moved in for the strike or decided I was the wrong target. He'll be leaving his office before midnight and going east on Pogrovskij Boulevard. Take him before he reaches his apartment. A banker or some brave chief executive holding out against the pressure to buy protection, or perhaps simply a rival mafiyosa who had started getting in the way.

  The snow was coming almost straight down from the sky now, making a curtain instead of a maelstrom: the main force of the wind had dropped in the past hour and the big flakes drifted until the slipstream of the Mercedes caught them and whirled them behind in the mirrors.

  It couldn't be a tracker because I'd checked three times on my way from Sakkas' house this evening, doubling and making loops and watching the mirrors. There had been no one behind me when I'd pulled up near the Entre'acte Club, no one of any interest.

  I made another loop now, gunning up as far as the ice permitted, using the drifts to sling the rear end straight when we lost traction, a plume of snow flying upwards from the front tyre where the wing had been ripped away.

  Shadow.

  Still there and quite large, another 300 SL perhaps. All I could make out was its general shape as it passed under the street lights, their reflection flashing for an instant across the bodywork before it became dark again, almost invisible. The driver was trained, could hang on to the target without any trouble. But he couldn't be tracking me specifically, because -

  A shrinking of the scalp, the nerves firing and the brain suddenly alerted as it ranged over the possibility that I'd made a mistake at some point after I'd left Sakkas' house.

  Correction, yes: at some time after I'd arrived at the Entre'acte Club with Natalya. And we can do that. We can make mistakes, even the most experienced executives, especially the most experienced, because familiarity with the field can make us cocky, over-confident. And we're talking now, tonight, suddenly, aren't we, about one of the most basic and effective methods of concealing anything.

  Or anyone.

  Hide them in plain sight.

  It's all right – Natalya – I know that man – he's just one of my followers, that's all. He never comes up or pesters me.

  Of course not. He was a Sakkas man.

  Take another loop and do it faster this time, don't worry about ripping some more wings off, go for it, get the chains dug in and use that wall to break down the swing and get me round, first left, first right, first right, with the lights flooding the narrow streets and bouncing off windows, the drumming of the engine bringing echoes from the buildings as the rear wheels sent waves of snow in our wake so that I lost sight of the tracker, could see only whiteness in the mirrors, take another loop and blow the chains off if we have to, push this bloody thing to the limits of the conditions and swing… bounce… swing in a series of tangents, one of the chains snapping and its loose end hitting against the wing with the beat of a mad drummer until I was back in the main street and gunning up for the next intersection in a final attempt to break clear, watching the mirrors.

  Watching the shadow.

  Time off for review: there would be two of them – at least two – in the car behind, and they would be armed with assault rifles, the weapon a la mode for Moscow. I had sent them the distinct message that I didn't want them on my tail, but it had been a calculated risk: I might have got clear with all that busy driving just now. If I stopped, all I could do would be to sit and wait for them to make their approach on foot. I would not get out of the car, on the principle we teach the neophyte
s at Norfolk: never leave shelter if you've got any. There could be a chance, however remote, of gunning up again while they were making their approach on foot, though if there were more than two of them they'd leave a driver behind in case I tried exactly that. If they didn't leave one there and I made the try, they would both start pumping a long-sustained burst, one at the tyres and one at me, unless I could get the chains to bite soon enough and make distance. Those were the options.

  I don't like this.

  Shut up.

  For the moment just keep driving, normal speed for the conditions, fifty kph, sixty, as the snow spreads lace over the headlights and the adrenalin begins flowing out of the glands.

  You're in a trap. You -

  Oh for God's sake shuddup.

  Take a left, head for the short, narrow streets where there was no late-night traffic to get in the way and where I might get a chance to make a right angle and douse the lights and reach the next turn before they closed in.

  Never forget, I would tell them, the neophytes, the technique of hiding things or yourself in plain sight. Never forget that the opposition might also do it at any given time – I ran into this one in Moscow last year, and… if I were there again in Norfolk to tell them at all, if I didn't end the night as just another corpse found in a Mercedes with the driver's-side window gaping to the fusillade of shot and the head blown away, but then we mustn't be morbid, my good friend, we must remain, must we not, stout of heart.

  Take a right, judge the distance, gun up and hit the next street, douse the lights and keep going, the snow coming up in dark waves across the mirrors, take more chances, don't pussy-foot this bloody thing through, the loose chain hammering, filling the streets like cannon fire, keep going, keep -

  Then I was hitting the brakes and swinging left and right as the anti-lock system broke the momentum and the Mercedes reared on one side as we met up with a packed snowdrift and I avoided a roll by letting the wheel go slack to give some equilibrium to the front end, then we were halted, so close to the other car, the second one that was blocking the street, that I could see faces through the windscreen.