Fucking Russians, Churcher thought for perhaps the ten thousandth time, as he looked across at Nikolai and then to Savich with what felt like that old, soft, friendly film over his eyes.
CHAPTER
3
BUSINESS WITH THE SYSTEM DONE, NIKOLAI AND SAVICH were underway on Clerkenwell Road, being driven in one of the Soviet embassy’s black Daimlers. About the only amenity of the embassy that Savich took advantage of whenever he was in London was a car with driver. Rather than stay at the embassy he always occupied a corner suite at Claridge’s. The reason he gave was an allergy to some undetermined flowering shrub or tree that grew in the embassy’s vicinity in Kensington Palace Gardens, which could hardly have been the case in winter. Savich didn’t give a damn that his excuse was transparent, nor was anyone injudicious enough to look through it. He stayed at Claridge’s, where he could have comings and goings as he pleased, and while he was there the hotel flew the Soviet flag alongside the Union Jack and others on one of the poles above its main entrance.
Now, with the Daimler stopped at an intersection, Savich appreciated the gaits of two attractive girls who were crossing the wide way. It was a warm and windy afternoon, so the girls’ light dresses were being blown against their figures and they were letting their hair fly wild. Savich said: “You handled matters well today, Nikolai.”
Nikolai thanked him for the compliment. “Churcher will counter with an offer to agree to a lesser increase, probably three percent,” Nikolai said. “He’ll claim his board wouldn’t hear of anything higher, even though he won’t yet have put it to his board.”
“You know your man.”
Another compliment. Nikolai’s cup was running over.
Savich told him: “Churcher will be hoping to settle for four. Three if he can but with four in mind.”
“We stay firm on five?”
“Absolutely. Those bastards are way out of character playing poor boy. They’ve plenty of margin. In a couple of years we’ll squeeze them again.” Savich worked the electric window control switch situated on his armrest, just fidgeting with it, causing the window on his side to lower about halfway, then abruptly reverse direction and close. “It was a bit surprising today that Churcher took us on alone,” he said. “I expected some of his troops. The only reason I had Vysotsky along was so we wouldn’t feel too outnumbered.”
Savich alone could easily have dealt with a whole roomful of them, Nikolai believed.
“You know,” Savich went on, “I thought Churcher looked a bit drawn.”
“Really? I suppose that’s not as apparent to me because I see him so often.”
“How are you spending the weekend?” Savich asked.
“I don’t know,” Nikolai replied. “I seldom know.”
The Daimler was again underway, now close alongside a bus. Savich looked up to a window of the bus and caught the merest glimpse of a pretty passenger. A moment later it occurred to him that she was now forever in his mind but lost, and it saddened him slightly. “Are you still seeing your Vivian?”
Nikolai was mildly surprised that Savich remembered her name, had said it as though it were frequently in his thoughts. Savich had never met Vivian, only knew of her. Nikolai told him, yes, he was still seeing Vivian. He wondered what “seeing” included. “We may drive down to Devon tonight or tomorrow,” he said. “Vivian mentioned that possibility earlier in the week, but she may have changed her mind by now.” Nikolai, out of politeness, almost inquired about how the minister would be spending his weekend time.
“You like it here in London, don’t you, Nikolai?”
“Yes.”
“After six years it must be getting to feel like home to you.”
“Not like home,” Nikolai said, because he thought he’d better and it was somewhat true.
“Keeping the System in hand is no easy task. They’re such a slippery bunch. It’s good to have someone of your competence on top of them. However, if you want to come home and step up, I’d say you’ve earned such a request.”
Nikolai detected a note of pride in the minister’s tone. Was it sincere or was he being nicely told that his time in London was waning? He waited a moment before looking for a hint on Savich’s face. Savich was turned away, giving his attention to the sidewalk and an outstanding, well-dressed woman, a handsome British type giving up some of her composure to her desperate need for a taxi. Nikolai believed if he hadn’t been along Savich would have ordered the Daimler pulled over so he could offer her rescue. Nikolai also believed the woman, despite her unapproachable air, would have accepted.
Savich continued to gaze out the window, although the Daimler’s progress in traffic had taken the woman from his eyes. “What did you make of Churcher’s complaint?” he asked.
“The excess diamonds?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he brought it up at the right moment.”
“Those lots of D-flawless one-caraters he spoke of are in his mind, not on the market.”
Nikolai agreed.
“No doubt Churcher will bring up that nonsense again, try to use it as a negotiating point against our increase. The only reason he planted it today was so he’d have it to dig up later.”
Nikolai said that he’d be aware of the ploy.
Savich smiled and expressed his confidence with a nod. His eyes held on Nikolai’s eyes for a moment, but Nikolai felt incapable of correctly reading them. Possibly he was mistaking fondness for professional respect, and even that might be projection on his part.
The Daimler continued westward through congested London on a route made circuitous by many one-way streets. Finally it was on Brook Street. Nikolai expected he’d have to catch a taxi from Claridge’s on, but they passed that hotel, went a block farther, and took a right on Gilbert Street to pull over at the entrance to number 39. Evidently Savich had given the driver instructions earlier.
“Have him take you to your Vivian,” Savich said with a rakish grin as he got out. Nikolai watched Savich’s brown plaid back go at a sprightly rate up three steps and enter the well-kept limestone-and-brick building. He noticed on one of the varnished oak double doors a polished brass nameplate: Atkins & Pomeroy, Solicitors. What business could Savich have with a London law firm? Nikolai asked himself. The obvious, immediate answer was that it probably wasn’t business but a personal visit. For all he knew either Atkins or Pomeroy or both were female.
Nikolai told the driver his destination, and just moments later he was amid the scurry of Park Lane and down among the swirl of Hyde Park Corner and, like something centrifuged, spun off into Halkin Street for, almost instantaneously, the comparative repose of Belgravia. At Belgrave Square he felt his anticipation inflating. Each turn of the Daimler’s wheel was a pumping up within him, and although he appeared composed when they reached the little triangular private park of Chesham and turned into Loundes Place, Nikolai had the urge to tell the driver never mind, he would run the rest of the way.
The Daimler stopped at the left curb about midway down the block. Nikolai, despite himself, took his time getting out. He thanked the driver and was left standing there to straighten his double-breasted jacket, tug down his shirt cuffs, and admire an arrangement of vivid rununculas through the window of a nearby flat. He casually surveyed the street in both directions. Not a car in motion on it, all its buildings of a past, fine age, their clean cream and white protected by the ominous black-painted wrought-iron spears of five-foot fences. Nikolai read again the sign on the left of the arch at the entrance to Loundes Close: EXERCISING OF DOGS PROHIBITED. He always thought the phrasing exemplified British obliquity, for what it meant was not to let one’s dog relieve itself there.
From where he was standing Nikolai knew by heart he had 134 steps to go. He was through the archway and on the cobbles of Loundes Close before he spotted Archer’s Silver Spirit Rolls limousine with Paggett, his driver, waiting in it. The sight of it shortened Nikolai’s strides, but then he realized that and lengthened them, all the way t
o the tidy three-story white-trimmed brick house at the end.
He let himself in. With the key she’d given him a year ago after three torturous and ecstatic months of equivocation. The key of penetrability, she called it. How smoothly it now turned the bolt. Nikolai closed the door louder than he would have if Archer’s car hadn’t been there. He went up the stairs to the living room and them.
Archer was in an upholstered chair with a long drink. He transferred the tumbler from his right to his left as he stood to shake hands with Nikolai and say, “Nice to see you again, old boy,” along with a smile that was supposed to certify that.
Vivian was pacing, which Nikolai knew was a good sign. She paused long enough to put a kiss on Nikolai’s mouth, just a good wet smack, possessive in its brevity. She immediately resumed her pacing. Her cat, an oriental silver tabby named Ninja, followed after her, imitating her every move, quick about-faces and all, just waiting for when she sat so that he could claim her lap. Vivian usually paced when things were going well. When troubled she would find a corner. Today she was even very suitably dressed for pacing, in a white silk rather sheathy number that, though split with shameless confidence very high in front, still somehow cupped the rounds and undercurve of her buttocks. White calfskin open-sling sandals with four-inch heels also helped. Not that she needed the height. Barefoot she was five-ten.
Without missing a pace she opened the flap of the flat black box she had in hand, undid a crinkle of foil, and broke off a square of Bendick’s military-type chocolate, her most bitter favorite. She plopped the chocolate into her mouth. As though it were snuff, her tongue positioned it between her cheek and gum, where it would gradually melt while not impeding her speech.
“Nickie, darling!” she exclaimed. “Look what Archer brought me. Isn’t it god-sent ugly?”
She didn’t have to indicate the three-legged Louis XVI table, it stood so removed both in form and place from everything else in the room. The table was about thirty inches tall and two-thirds that around. Some table. It was as though whoever had made it two hundred or so years ago had saved up all his woodworking and aesthetic errors for this piece. Its legs were too thick, so the Louis curve of them didn’t achieve grace. Its feet, covered with ormulu, looked like oversize bootees. Practically every inch of its veneered surface was inflicted with some sort of parquetry or marquetry. Its bombé cabinet part appeared painfully swollen, and perhaps in an attempt to compensate for its lack of beauty, its functions were made tricky: an inset curved door slid open, and its top was apparently hinged to lift up.
Vivian demonstrated the top. “It has to be worth at least thirty,” she said, closely examining its interior.
“Forty,” Archer estimated with authority.
Kopeks, thought Nikolai, but knew, of course, they were talking about pounds in the thousands. He went to the regular unpedigreed side table that served as a bar and helped himself to a scotch neat from a nearly empty bottle of Glenfiddich. Take it in stride, Nikolai advised himself, and Vivian unknowingly punctuated his thought by letting the Louis XVI table’s top slam down.
She began happily pacing again, and so did Ninja.
Pages of that day’s newspaper were strewn on the seat of a second upholstered chair, where Nikolai wanted to sit. He started to gather up the paper rather carelessly, but Vivian stopped him, took the pages from him, and folded them just so with the racing section exposed. The fields at various racetracks were marked with a red felt-tip pen, personal meaningful circlings and underlinings and cross-outs and scribbled notations. The sure thing her hopes had ridden on yesterday had run out of the money, Nikolai recalled. He asked what she had going today.
“Gareth rang up around noon,” she said, as though that were equal to a call from Prince Charles. “He’d been in a trance since eight this morning, was thoroughly exhausted, but he rang me up as soon as he came out of it to tell me what he’d been given.” She paused a beat for emphasis. “Eyesore, a maiden filly in the seventh at Doncaster.”
Gareth was her tout. But no ordinary tout. A tout with supernatural connections. He himself was not a punter, merely a sensitive, he claimed. It would be a sin for which he would surely be cut off forever if he wagered on a horse that was “given” to him by the “racing angels,” as he referred to his otherworldly informants. It was, however, permissible for Vivian, if she so desired, to bet on his behalf an extra tenner or more on the nag, something she invariably did. When one of Gareth’s “given” horses lost, the only explanation he offered was that the racing angels were known to be capricious. They had to have their fun too. Couldn’t expect them to always be dead serious, he would say whimsically. There were times, such as a short while ago when a “given” horse had been beaten by twenty-two lengths, that Vivian thought perhaps the racing angels, instead of winging it, ought to take at least a peek at the form.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Four-thirty,” Archer said before Nikolai could.
“The seventh’s been run,” Vivian thought aloud. “I wish I could ring up and get the results.” She couldn’t, because in keeping with some divine rule only Gareth could impart the good news. When a horse didn’t win he just didn’t call.
A couple of times Nikolai had expressed his opinion of Gareth. Vivian defended him, saying that indicated how short Nikolai was on faith. Nikolai didn’t tell her how clearly he pictured Gareth choosing a race with a field of only five or six horses entered, then telephoning five or six people such as Vivian and touting each onto a different “given” horse. With a bet placed for him on every horse in the race, Gareth was indeed blessed with a sure thing. Vivian didn’t mention it either. She also realized that was a possibility, but it just so happened she was perfect for Gareth’s game, as much an avid believer in the supernatural as she was a habitual gambler.
Nikolai watched her mouth another chunk of chocolate bitterness and continue pacing. Her every step was provocative, a parting of the high slit skirt front to reveal her exceptional legs and flash of bare inner thigh. Archer had a slightly better view, Nikolai thought, because his chair was directly in line with Vivian’s pacing and her turn was right in front of him, well within mental reach.
“Do you honestly think forty?” Vivian asked with a dubious glance at the three-legged Louis XVI monstrosity.
“At least,” Archer replied.
“Well.” She sighed, just heavily enough. “I’d love to accept it, Archie, I really would, but, as you can see, it just doesn’t suit the rest of my things. If only it were Regence or whatever. Do you think it might by any stretch of taste go well enough in the country?”
“I doubt it,” Archer replied too quickly. “If anything it would be worse in the country, don’t you think, Nick?”
“Yes,” Nikolai replied, his single line.
“Then I guess you’ll just have to return it,” Vivian told Archer. “Surely they’ll refund, or if they’re stubborn about that just drop it off and cancel your check. I assume you paid by check.”
“Cash,” Archer fibbed.
“Where did you buy it?”
“A place on Davies Street. It was part of a shipment just in from Monaco.”
“They’ll refund,” Vivian said.
“Their policy is no refunds. They were quite clear on that.”
“Or exchanges?”
“Or exchanges.”
“Oh dear,” Vivian agonized.
“Hell, just shove it in a corner behind a screen, or put it in the back of a closet,” Archer said. “One thing for certain—I’m not about to suffer the embarrassment of trying to return it, nor am I or Paggett going to lug it down the stairs. It’s yours,” he said, as though the problem had depleted his patience.
Vivian did a little moan, a wordless compound of despair, resignation, and delight.
Nikolai had once been entertained by such charades, but they had long become too predictable. Each time the same play and characters; perhaps variations of the dialogue, yet always the same e
nding.
Archer Hamlyn-Howe was Vivian’s ex-husband. At age twenty-five she had married him, age thirty-eight. She’d married him right enough, but he hadn’t altogether married her. For too many years he had been assessed as a most splendid catch. Too long he’d been an automatic on most of the most-eligible lists, pictured time and again looking Savile Row as all get-out or fortunately yachty or eminently horsey or whatever in the magazines in which his sort of people approved of seeing themselves.
The accompanying caption usually went something like: Archer Hamlyn-Howe, called Archie by his numerous admirers and well-wishers, schooled at Eton, member of Boodle’s and Brooks’s, a whiz at tennis, refuses to play bridge, reads Greek for pleasure, an ardent lepidopterist, immensely wealthy, for some time now has been on the lookout for a gratifying professional niche, very choosy when it comes to women, says he’d much rather continue hanging about than risk being disastrously married, spends at least half his time at his twenty-thousand-acre family estate in Devon.
Such billing spoiled Archer. He became stuck on himself, not in the usual vain sense, but rather stuck in the psychological slosh that no woman worth a damn would want him if it weren’t for his having been born, as they say, on the sunny side of the hedge.
If Archer had asked Vivian before their nuptials if she was marrying him for his money he could have saved them both legal bother. He put that to her in the middle of a night in the middle of their second week and she was absolutely forthright about it, told him of course his money had been a potent persuasive factor. Archer said nothing more. He got up, dressed, and went to a bed at one of his clubs.
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