Land of Ghosts

by E. V. Seymour

  ‘But I understand from Mr Orlov all is well.’

  ‘Fine,’ Tallis said.

  ‘This is good. I believe you will be asked to test-fly the Agusta tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll be there?’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. Depends on Mr Orlov’s wishes.’ Kumarin’s eyes fell to the glass of champagne in Tallis’s hand. ‘A word of advice, Paul.’ He winked. ‘Next time you’d do better to—how do you say—“oil the wheels”. You might pull off a more successful deal.’ And, laughing loudly, he headed off to refill his glass.

  The heavies Tallis had met earlier at the airport, including the blond-haired Fyodor, were circulating, wordless, among the guests. Several more were posted outside, talking into radios, watching out for signs of trouble.

  They ate in a vast banqueting hall, the epitome of architectural showbiz, plates piled high with caviar, shchuka pike, beef topped with cheese (a Siberian dish, Svetlana later informed him) Russian-style ravioli stuffed with pork, and shashlyk, meat kebabs. There was also a rich array of Georgian cuisine, food influenced by the Middle East and Mediterranean. Tallis found himself sitting next to a big-boned Russian woman called Marina. Her rich chestnut hair was piled in a mass of curls on top of her head and she wore a low-cut white chiffon dress edged in claret-coloured satin. She also had an impressive décolleté. It was like having dinner with a woman from the Napoleonic era.

  Marina was one of the new kids on the block, apparently. Ambitious and dedicated, she did a mean trade in importing clothes and carpets from Turkey. She was already planning on buying property in the form of a number of retail outlets.

  ‘It is a good time for women,’ she said, tasting the wine, Saperavi, a rich full-on red produced from grapes of the same name. ‘We have freedom,’ she said, rolling her r’s. ‘We have stability, at last, after years of economic chaos. We are divorcing our husbands and getting into business, something unthinkable a decade ago. Yes,’ she said, a pragmatic gleam in her eye. ‘Life is sweet. And you, Paul? You like doing business here?’

  ‘I do,’ Tallis said. ‘I thought it might become tricky.’

  ‘Tricky?’ Marina frowned at him with big green eyes.

  ‘Difficult—with the disintegrating political situation.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ She beamed. ‘Most of us are not very interested. You go into a nightclub in Moscow, the talk, my English friend, is not of politics, international or national, but of the best places to eat, to buy clothes, to make money.’

  ‘So Ivanov has been good to Russia?’

  ‘I love the man,’ Marina said. ‘Without Ivanov we would be fucked,’ she said, clipped, ‘and it is good that we have someone strong to lead our great nation, to stand up to the rest of the world, even your country,’ she said with a sudden impish smile. ‘A tip for you, Paul. Art and business thrive even when our leaders do not like each other very much.’

  Later, Tallis drifted onto one of the many balconies to clear his head. After the formal dinner, there had been a number of toasts—to wealth, to health, to life, to love, to business, even to Orlov’s dog. Timur, a thin-faced, urbane-looking man from St Petersburg, was also taking the air. He introduced himself and offered Tallis a cigarette, which Tallis declined.

  ‘You are the British helicopter man.’

  ‘Paul Tallis, that’s right.’

  Timur nodded slowly and lit his cigarette, inhaling deeply and blowing out a perfect smoke ring. King of Cool, Tallis thought, identifying something very contained about the man. Without knowing anything about him, he recognised the type: this guy was a loner. Tallis also wondered whether he was a loser. ‘So another little bit of Western democracy exported to the East,’ Timur said.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ Tallis said affably.

  Timur, pensive, fell silent.

  ‘So what’s wrong with Western democracy?’ Tallis decided to rattle Timur’s cage for no better reason than he’d had more to drink than was good for him. They were both leaning over the balcony. From there, a fine view of the grounds, lit by flaming torches, Olympic style, gave the numerous statues and bronzes a ghostly sheen.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Timur laughed, deep-throated. ‘The United States and the West, that’s what’s wrong. You want nothing more than political overthrow. Look what you’ve done in Iraq, Afghanistan, how you oppose the Serbs, how you expand and position NATO members to further threaten our great nation. And the hypocrisy,’ Timur sneered. ‘You tell us to behave one way and then you act another. You British: warmongers every one of you. How you love to patronise us, to tell us in what way to behave. I tell you, if you don’t stop lecturing us, we will become your enemy.’

  That’s rich, Tallis thought. Russia had not that long ago invaded South Ossetia and recently taken a number of liberties with foreign air space. He suspected it was simply because they wanted to try their luck, test the reaction, and see whether they could get away with it. Now he thought it was a way of flexing their military muscle. ‘Sounds like a threat,’ Tallis said mildly.

  Timur let out a snort and took another drag of his cigarette.

  ‘So what do you do when not engaged in political debate?’ Tallis said.

  ‘I work for the State,’ Timur said flatly.

  Tallis glanced across at him. Timur’s face shone green and chiselled in the moonlight. The State, meaning the FSB? Tallis wondered. He didn’t push it. There were plenty of people who worked for the State, some professional killers.

  ‘Does your work take you to Chechnya?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Timur said, taking another drag, his thin cheeks hollow. ‘Why do you ask?’ he said, suspicion in his eyes.

  ‘Interest.’

  ‘You think the situation there is cruel?’

  ‘All conflict is cruel.’

  Timur agreed. ‘But sometimes a necessary evil.’

  ‘In Chechnya,’ Tallis said, ‘I’m not clear what the goals are.’

  ‘To subdue the enemy, to bring them to heel,’ Timur said, as if it were blindingly obvious. ‘We cannot have a united Russia with these religious madmen waging a guerrilla campaign in our own backyard. It is the same as you British have in Northern Ireland.’

  Actually, Tallis thought, it was quite different but refrained from saying so.

  ‘I will tell you something,’ Timur said darkly. ‘Men love to war. It is an addiction more powerful than sex or love. And the Chechens, my friend, are junkies. But war is not their only addiction: they are also hooked on religion. To feed their habit, they must convert the rest of us to their perversions. You know what the Chechens do to captured Russian soldiers?’ Timur did not wait for a reply. ‘They gut men as easily as a fisherman guts a pike. They even use their own intestines to strangle them.’

  ‘You mean the fundamentalists, the warlords,’ Tallis said, struggling to restrain the images of epic cruelty taking shape in his mind. He hoped to God Graham Darke was not involved in such practices. But, Tallis also recognised, it would be hard for Darke to separate himself from the barbarism around him. His was a straight choice: go along to complete the mission or blow his cover and be killed. A question of ends justifying means, Tallis thought, and sadly something he had experience of.

  ‘I am talking about every one of them,’ Timur said, eyes reptilian.

  ‘You can’t believe ordinary people share those beliefs. They simply want to live in peace.’

  Timur shrugged. ‘They are guilty by default. They shelter terrorists. They hate the motherland.’

  ‘They do now,’ Tallis said, aware that he was treading on dangerous ground. ‘The wanton destruction of towns and villages, the killing of hundreds of innocent people, has produced the next generation of malcontents. For that, your government has to take some responsibility, surely?’

  ‘You do not know what you’re talking about,’ Timur said, cool. ‘They must never be allowed to triumph.’

  ‘You can’t kill them all,’ Tallis said with an easy laugh.

  Timur sa
id nothing. Dropping his cigarette on the floor, he ground it with the heel of his boot. ‘It is important to maintain stability,’ he said softly. ‘It is what the Russian people need and want.’

  ‘At any price?’

  ‘Whatever the cost,’ Timur said, walking back inside.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  TALLIS awoke with a monumental hangover. Timidly, he opened one eye, trying desperately to focus on his surroundings. Gone the thick carpet, the heavy damask drapes at the windows, the works of art and marble, and extravagantly expensive bedroom furniture. Instead he was met with plain white walls, oatmeal-coloured curtains and newly renovated furnishings, Western style. For a brief, terrifying moment he wondered if he’d wound up with Marina, but a quick recce told him that he was entirely alone and that there was no evidence of another.

  He went into the bathroom and took a leak. Events of the previous twenty-four hours cut into his consciousness with all the precision of a scalpel. So maybe he hadn’t been as drunk or relaxed as his body now seemed to suggest. Nevertheless, as he trawled his memory, his recollections appeared to be laced by a particular brand of alcohol.

  Each nuance of every conversation, in particular with Orlov and Timur, sliced through his brain: Orlov affable and generous; Timur cold and mean-spirited. He remembered eating a meat-heavy dinner followed by tooth-shatteringly sweet pastries, all washed down with sugary Georgian wine. He recalled the vodka toasts and, Christ, the konyac. ‘Brandy from the Caucasus,’ Orlov had told him, and no doubt the reason for the concentrated level of pain behind his left eye. Somewhere, in a temporarily misplaced part of his mind, he pulled out the idea that Orlov had promised to take him to his banya—a bit like a sauna only more extreme—that very same day. Lastly, he had a fairly strong image of getting into a taxi and having one of those strange conversations that you had with taxi drivers all over the world. This conversation had not been exceptional, typified as it had been by the long-suffering gloom and doom displayed by most ordinary Russians.

  After a hot and cold shower in a weak effort to flush some of the alcohol from his vital organs, he dressed in the clothes he’d already packed and brought with him. A more detailed inspection of the four-roomed apartment yielded more clothes to fit his muscular physique, including mountain trekking gear, a healthy stash of roubles—money to bribe by—and a false passport and press pass stating that he was a freelance Russian journalist by the name of Nikolai Redko. The kitchen was large and well equipped, although Tallis had no intention of spending any time in it other than for a quick refuel. From the apartment, which was in Spiridonovka Ulitsa Street, he had a fine view of Pushkin Square and the high walls enclosing the Kremlin.

  After forcing down a mug of coffee with painkillers, he left the apartment and went out onto the street. It wasn’t as cold as he’d expected, which was a pity. A lot of the snow had begun to melt, replaced by dirtycoloured slush. Avoiding the smart and expensive shopping avenue, Tverskaya, the equivalent of New York’s Fifth Avenue, Tallis soon found himself among a gathering of hawkers and babushkas selling all manner of goods in the open air. Business appeared brisk; the capital’s desire for commerce and trade reminded Tallis of a recent mission in Turkey.

  Walking along, his gaze flittered and came to rest on a number of disparate people. He observed a lone middle-aged man giving away a free newspaper under the watchful and intimidating eye of a couple of police officers. Teenagers gathered on street corners, smoking, mucking about, as in any other international city, and there were kids zooming about on rollerblades like he’d seen in Berlin. All signs, he noticed, were in Cyrillic so the average tourist was entirely stuffed because they wouldn’t be able to read them. Moscow, he reminded himself, was home to over ten million people. Roads, which were vast, flowed with cars, trucks and trolleybuses, the noise of traffic deafening. He decided to go with the flow, to keep on walking. He had an intuitive feeling that if he could find Lena’s son Ruslan, he would find Darke. Or perhaps it was simply the line he’d sold himself. In truth, Ruslan was a side issue. Finding Darke was his main objective.

  Walking towards the Kremlin, the seat of power, he skirted east past Red Square and headed out towards Lubyanka, stopping briefly to gaze upwards at the greywalled former prison and currently new home and headquarters of the FSB. An involuntary shiver travelled up his spine at the thought of the innocent victims who’d been incarcerated within its forbidding exterior.

  Many streets on, past an amazing amount of construction work, eventually negotiating a dimly lit underpass near Komsomolskaya, he came across two young Russians sitting on a threadbare blanket, drinking vodka, begging. He threw some coins into their bowl and squatted down on his haunches in an effort to talk to them, but their piss-off expressions told him that he’d come to the wrong place for conversation. Taking out a thousand-rouble note from his wallet, he waved it in front of the two lads. Both sets of eyes shifted his way.

  ‘There is more,’ Tallis said, in Russian.

  The lad who looked to be the eldest spoke, ‘I’m Vladimir. This is Viktor.’ Vladimir had straight brown hair that fell over his face, thick eyebrows and a prominent chin. He’d made an unsuccessful attempt to grow a beard. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Information.’

  ‘You a spy?’ Viktor let out a laugh. He had several missing teeth in an otherwise fine-featured face. His hair was spun gold and he had penetrating blue eyes. Tallis didn’t like to apply the phrase pretty to a youth, but Viktor definitely fitted that description.

  ‘No. I’m looking for a Chechen by the name of Ruslan.’

  Viktor’s mouth dropped open. His face turned grey and a sheen of sweat suddenly coated his brow, in an instant turning his fringe of gold to brown. It was as if he’d aged forty years in a second. Tallis recognised that look, the apathy of the brutalised. Vladimir cast his friend an anxious look. ‘Why?’ Vladimir said sharply. Tallis looked from Viktor to Vladimir, knowing that the wrong answer would finish further conversation no matter how much money he offered. He wondered what their story was.

  ‘To kill him,’ he said, keeping his voice low.

  Viktor stirred, vital signs returning. He licked the corner of his mouth. Some of the colour was reappearing in his cheeks. At that exact moment Tallis’s mobile rang. Cursing, he sprang to his feet, walked away a little and answered the call. It was Orlov.

  ‘Good morning, Paul. I trust you are well.’

  ‘Perfect,’ Tallis winced. The painkillers were starting to wear off and the collective pain had dimmed to a dull agonising throb.

  ‘Top-notch,’ Orlov said, much to Tallis’s amusement. Along with architecture, out-of-date vernacular was another example of Orlov’s obsession with all things English. ‘I am calling to firm up arrangements. I shall collect you from your apartment shortly after two.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll be there.’

  ‘Make sure you have your papers with you,’ Orlov added, cutting the call.

  When he turned round Vladimir and Viktor had gone, and so had his money. Tallis cursed, unable to believe his own crass stupidity, especially at such an early stage in the game. Fucked over by a couple of vagabonds, he was going to have to seriously sharpen up his act, he told himself grimly.

  At ten minutes past two, a red Maserati Spider pulled up outside the apartment block, Orlov in the driving seat. Tallis went downstairs and slid in next to him.

  Orlov issued a wide smile. ‘You like?’

  ‘What’s not to?’ As the 4.2 litre V8 engine kicked into action, the thrust sent him flying back into his seat. He imagined the considerable amount of oomph piling out of the quartet of exhaust pipes.

  Orlov zipped up the gears, six-speed F1 shift. ‘What do you drive at home, Paul?’

  ‘A Porsche Boxster.’

  ‘Good car. I have a 911 Turbo,’ Orlov said. You would, Tallis thought. Everything Orlov did was turbocharged. For a bloke of his age he had a terrific fund of energy. ‘But my favourite is the Bentley.’

  �
�Really? Which one?’

  ‘The Arnage. For me, it is so English.’

  ‘I thought Bentley was owned by the Germans.’

  ‘It is still essentially English craftsmanship. You must ride in it some time.’

  Tallis wasn’t sure whether Orlov simply enjoyed showing off or whether he had a genuinely weird obsession with all things Anglo-Saxon. Whatever the truth of the matter, Tallis had the obscure feeling it might play to his advantage.

  Orlov drove to Zelenograd. Fyodor, the blond-haired heavy, was there to meet them. No sign of Kumarin. Perhaps he was surveying another machine for Orlov’s empire, Tallis thought.

  ‘Take the car back to the estate, and don’t scratch it,’ Orlov warned.

  Their papers scarcely looked at, they went to the hangar where the Agusta was stowed.

  ‘Very nice,’ Orlov said, running his fingers smoothly over the paintwork in the same way a man stroked the flanks of the woman he was sleeping with. It was Orlov’s intention for Tallis to fly them back, no more than a short fifteen-minute hop.

  It was starting to spit with sleety rain when Tallis climbed in, Orlov next to him. Tallis pressed one of two buttons in the roof panel to the left, just above his ear, in order to start the engine, followed by a second button for the second engine. After checking the controls and fuel gauge, and maintaining visual contact, they took off, flying west and high to make the most of the tail wind.

  In the air, Orlov resumed his favourite topic of conversation: himself.

  ‘Who’d have thought it? Me, a poor boy from Voronezh and now I’m being flown in my own helicopter.’

  ‘Don’t get too used to it.’ Tallis laughed. ‘I can’t stay in Russia for ever. I have to go back to the UK. You should take some lessons, learn to fly.’

  ‘It is not my way. I prefer others to do the hard work. You know, Paul, I’d like to do more business with you. Kumarin said that you have a very nice outfit back at Shobdon.’

  ‘Well, it’s not exactly my outfit,’ Tallis said. ‘That’s why I’ve decided to start up my own sideline.’