Lime's Photograph

by Leif Davidsen

  Sjuganov let me study the photographs. I don’t know what I felt. I had engaged him to find Oscar, and he had. Now what should I do? I wasn’t surprised that Lola was there, and this didn’t make any difference, but what was my next move to be? I had just arrived in Moscow. I guessed that Oscar had taken refuge in Moscow because Lola was here and he thought he would be safe until it had all blown over. It was a country where money could buy both influence and security.

  “Are you ready to hear what we know?” asked Sjuganov in his strange upper-class English.

  “Yes,” I said simply.

  “OK, Mr Lime. The target is living in a newly built villa outside Moscow, in an old dacha district. A dacha, if you don’t know, is a Russian holiday cottage, but today it can also mean a large brick villa, built outside the city by very rich people. The Party elite used to stay in that area, but now it has been privatised and developed by – how can I put it – enterprising people who want peace and quiet and maximum security. Do you follow?”

  “I do,” I said, and he continued in the same neutral tone of voice.

  “The target has problems. Over the last two days the target has tried to cash a cheque, draw money by Visa, Eurocard and American Express, but the cards have been stopped. The target has become furious each time. However, the target does have some cash and he uses it. The target goes out now and then, but mostly stays in the villa. The target drinks too much and argues a lot with the woman. They sleep together, even though they each have their own bedroom in the villa. At least we think so.”

  “Do you know who the woman is?” I asked.

  Sjuganov put the photographs aside.

  “Checking her identity was not part of the assignment, but we know what she is in Moscow at the moment,” he said.

  “And that is?”

  “She’s rich. It’s her house. She has connections in the Ministry of Culture and I know whom she bought it from. In record time, she has been certified as an art dealer. She is authorised to buy and sell Russian works of art and to export them, including works that are more than 50 years old. This licence has been expensive for her, but she will quickly capitalise on it. My country is selling off its assets, one way and another. One can deplore it, or help oneself to a slice of the cake. This is just a statement of fact. Once, Lenin talked in this city. Now money talks. Each, in their time, have held the keys to power, and if you have access to them, you can do pretty well what you like.”

  “What does she call herself these days?” I asked.

  “Svetlana Petrovna. She’s good. She’s already been admitted to circles close to the President, thus she is regarded as being untouchable. I have the impression that she is a woman who could sell sand in the Sahara.”

  “Or snow in Moscow,” I answered.

  I looked at the photograph of the black-haired, but still beautiful Lola, and the scornful way she looked at Oscar, as they stood in the snow outside the villa. Gloria’s tentacles had already reached far. It seemed that Oscar was now financially dependent on good Lola, and their curious relationship had undoubtedly never encountered this before. It wouldn’t be long before Oscar would have to borrow pocket money from her. Oscar hated playing second fiddle.

  “It looks like a very new house, Mr Sjuganov. Did she have it built?”

  “All of that kind around Moscow are new, Mr Lime,” said Sjuganov, looking at the photograph. “It was built by a director of one of the first private banks. Apparently he had connections with the Mafia, but his business partners became dissatisfied. He was shot outside his bank. The villa was taken over by a boy of 22 who moved in with his two wives and 14 bodyguards. He had the swimming pool built. The boy was one of the most popular producers and studio hosts on the new private television channel, but his two wives disagreed about which of them he loved the most, so they killed him. Got him drunk and high on cocaine and drowned him in his own pool.”

  “What a house,” I said.

  “It’s Russia,” said Sjuganov, and continued.

  “The owner before Madame Petrovna was a well-known Mafioso who controlled the vegetable markets in Moscow. He had problems with his business partners too. One day he vanished. Madame Petrovna bought the house through a front man I know. She got it cheap and other prospective bidders were given the hint that they should stay away.”

  “Who was the front man?”

  Sjuganov looked at me. I couldn’t read anything in his strangely dead eyes. He poured himself another vodka and one for me.

  “I am not obliged to give you that information, but Derek’s a friend from earlier days, from before my business grew, so I’m willing to give you a bit of leeway. The front man was a colleague from the KGB era, Victor Ljubimov. Considering Madame Petrovna’s past history in a sister organisation, I think he was merely repaying an old debt. There is a certain honour between comrades. In some matters money takes a back seat.”

  “But this won’t compromise your loyalty to me?” I said.

  “You are my client and I have nothing to do with the woman. She is not part of my assignment or of my current or earlier life.”

  “OK, Sjuganov. Then where do I find the happy couple?”

  Sjuganov permitted himself a little smile and spread the map out on the table. He showed me the Hotel Intourist, on the edge of Red Square, and led me with his finger westwards out of the city, along a wide boulevard called Kutusovsky, and then to the right into what looked like a big forest and an area with lakes and little side roads leading up to a narrow highway. The map showed a multitude of small villages. Sjuganov explained that during the Soviet era it had been a prohibited area, but now it had been opened up and the families with new money were building houses out there on a grand scale. The thought that Oscar was in one of those houses, not quite 40 kilometres from the city centre, made my heart beat faster.

  “OK,” I said. “Let’s drive out there tomorrow.”

  Sjuganov folded the map and cleared his throat. His bodyguard was still sitting calmly by the door with his hands on his knees, alert and relaxed at the same time.

  “The choice is yours, Mr Lime. But the target has protection. There are two Irishmen, possibly ex-IRA, staying at the villa. Lola has two bodyguards who live in the old wooden dacha in the grounds. There are surveillance cameras, so access is tricky. May I ask how you propose getting in?”

  “I intend to ring the door bell,” I said.

  He hadn’t been expecting that, and looked taken aback. He straightened his perfectly straight tie.

  “I would advise against that,” he said. “I have an alternative suggestion.”

  Sjuganov produced some more colour photographs. They had also been taken with a long telephoto lens, but you could see Oscar and Lola quite clearly. They were walking in the snow in what looked like a birch forest. It was a very Russian, attractive scene, like a picturesque postcard, with the sun sparkling in the trees and on the deep, white snow. In one of the photographs they looked like they seemed to be having another furious argument, in another one they were walking side by side. Oscar looked rather strange, in a long, thick coat with a brown fur cap pulled down over his ears. Lola was elegantly dressed in a full-length fur coat and a fur cap covering her dyed black hair. Oscar was carrying something that looked like a golf club. Possibly a long 5-iron.

  “Does he think he can play golf in the snow?” I said.

  Sjuganov laughed.

  “He takes it everywhere. Golf hasn’t yet arrived along with the market economy. The season is too short here in Russia. I think it’s a lucky charm or perhaps he has it for protection. Look at this.”

  He placed a new photograph in front of me. The air in the suite was hot and dry and I began to sweat. It was the big Irishman. He was walking a few metres behind the couple, his hands deep in the pockets of his black leather coat. He was wearing a knitted hat. He looked freezing cold and bored.

  “The target seldom goes out alone. So I have to ask you again, Mr Lime. What do you want me to do? What a
re you going to do? My assignment is finished. I have located the target for you.”

  “Does he go for a walk every day?” I asked.

  “He usually goes for a walk in the morning. We haven’t had him under surveillance for long enough to be able to establish a fixed routine, but that seems to be the case. He stayed indoors on the day of the snowstorm.”

  “What’s the weather forecast for tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Fine. Frost and sun, snow later in the afternoon. A winter day of the kind we Russians prefer. A good day to go for a walk in the forest,” said Sjuganov, and looked at me as if to say that the ball was in my court and either we concluded our business now or I should start things moving.

  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.

  24

  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 purge
s. 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.”