‘This Rami uses prostitutes,’ she said, apropos of nothing, her tone still matter-of-fact.
Julian laughed. ‘Whoa, steady on, lady, he has a girlfriend.’
She looked at him again as if he were stupid and shook her head. ‘He gambles also.’
Bloody hell, Julian thought, could that be true? Maybe that’s where the expenses money had gone – gambling. Was there no one who could be relied on?
‘Are you nearly finished?’ he asked. ‘I need to get this to the client and get Sheila back.’
‘Sheila is your wife?’ she asked, stressing the ‘la’ in Sheila’s name.
‘She’s not my wife, she’s my partner, not my business partner, but my … life partner, which is why I was confused earlier when you … Never mind, just finish, please.’
She nodded. ‘I’m debugging now,’ she said. ‘It’s important.’ After some moments of odd silence she unplugged the circuit board and put away her netbook. ‘Do you have a pen and paper?’
Not wanting to go anywhere, he took the Scrabble box from the shelf underneath the coffee table and recovered the score pad and a pencil. The woman’s face changed when she saw the Scrabble board, like he’d shown her something inappropriately personal.
‘You play this game with her?’ Her voice had changed.
‘Yes, we play Scrabble.’
‘With Sheila, your life partner?’ It sounded natural, that phrase, when she said it, as if it were a perfectly normal way to describe someone.
‘Yes,’ he said as she took the pencil and pad.
‘I saw her at Hadfish, no?’
‘Yes, that was her.’
She nodded as if this explained something. ‘You have to get her back from where?’
‘From Boris,’ Julian said.
She closed her eyes and moved her lips, then wrote something down carefully on a fresh sheet of the score pad, ripped it off and handed it to him. It looked like an email address, nondescript, just letters and numbers, an @ sign.
‘What’s this for?’
‘I’m hoping whoever you give it to will know what to do with it. You will give the circuit to Boris in return for your Sheila, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he asked you to do the work on it?’
More nodding.
‘Then he will know what to do with it.’ With that she put her netbook away, took her case and the gun and went to the door.
‘I will leave this’ – holding up the gun – ‘next to the front door, in case you need it. Good luck.’
As he heard the front door close he wanted to ask about how she’d got Naomi to stay at home but he already felt like he’d been subjected to a barrage of toxic information. He sat back, exhausted and disconcerted, as if he’d just woken from a vivid yet surreal dream.
FORTY-TWO
Once Salma, or whatever her real name was, had left, Julian pondered his options. He thought more alcohol might help, but then thought better of it; something told him that tonight, of all nights, he needed to regain his wits and keep hold of them. He didn’t have a clue what was going on, and although he had done what Boris had asked, there was no sign of Sheila, and it wasn’t as if he could call Boris – his calls were always made from a withheld number. So here he was, pacing up and down, frustrated and helpless.
On the basis that any action was better than none he decided to see what Salma had programmed into the circuit board, so he hooked it up to his laptop and looked for changes. She had modified his library function slightly and added a range of GPS coordinates, rather than specific ones. He typed a few into Google Maps, just out of curiosity, and they popped up in Iran, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. From what Boris had told him he’d expected them to be in Israel. He was about to delve a little closer into what this meant when he was brought to his feet by a lightning thought. Fuck. Fucking idiot. Fucking GPS coordinates. He shook his head at his own stupidity. Sheila’s smartphone, since he knew it had location services switched on (he’d done it himself when she’d asked him), would have logged its position when the video was taken and the GPS coordinates would be embedded in the fucking video. He sat down again, and it took him a frustrating five minutes to find and download some software that could read embedded metadata in videos. Then he plugged in his phone and copied the video on to the laptop. The GPS coordinates were revealed like a charm. Fingers trembling with anticipation, he had to key the numbers into Google Maps three times before getting them right, and the little flag popped up on the north side of Onslow Square in Kensington. Yes, she’d mentioned a house on Onslow Square. Zooming out, he realized it was not that far away – five minutes in the car. Unable to stand still, he paced to the French doors and back to help him think.
He could call the police, but that would involve a long-winded explanation of what had happened, about the blackmail, and about why he was being blackmailed. He could lie to them, just say that she’d been kidnapped, but then things could get messy and there could be a stand-off. Furthermore, Boris probably had some connection with the Israeli security service and by default the British. He just wanted Sheila to be safe and back at home, that was his priority. Calling the police might do that, but that seemed like abrogating his responsibility to act; after all, he had caused this situation in the first place with his lies and omissions. Talking to the police would also take too long and he wasn’t going to wait until morning. He could be there in minutes. It was time to put things right. He thought about ringing Rami but if Salma said he knew Boris then he would probably warn him. Julian needed to act directly, to go to the source of all his woes.
He put the circuit board in a Jiffy bag, gathered his phone and wallet and headed for the door. There in the hall, on the narrow antique table he and Sheila had picked out in Notting Hill some years ago, was the small handgun that the woman had threatened him with. She’d left it for him, as she’d said she would. If Boris was resistant to giving Sheila up, and became violent, he might need it to subdue him. He picked up the weapon and tucked it into the back of his trousers, covering it with his jacket. The cold steel felt reassuring against his coccyx, and he was glad to have it, even though he hadn’t a bloody clue how it worked.
FORTY-THREE
As soon as he drove to the end of the street he had come up with a potential problem: GPS coordinates just weren’t that accurate; the exact house was going to be difficult to find. If only he’d paid more attention to what she’d said about it, or shown more interest, but there was no reason on earth she would have told him the exact address. But she might have told her assistant, David. Julian had met him once at a barbecue they’d thrown when Sheila had set up her little business, but he had no way of contacting him and didn’t even know his last name. There might be a record or an address in Sheila’s office at the house, or even better, an address of the house on Onslow Square. He drove round the block only to find his parking space was gone. Typical. He reversed back up the street to a space he had passed. He was about to get out of the car when he saw a young couple approach his front door. They were dressed like Jehovah’s Witnesses but it was far too late for proselytizing. They pressed the doorbell. Julian, who could make them out by the light he’d left on in the hall coming through the frosted glass of his front door, didn’t recognize them. He was about to get out and see who they were when the man seemed to shield the woman as she bent down to pick something up from the porch. Then she stood up and the door miraculously opened. Julian was so surprised it took him a few seconds to realize that no one had opened the door to them – she must have picked the lock. The door closed behind them. Julian thought about going into the house and challenging them with the courage imparted by the weapon tucked into his jeans, but the hall light went out and this gave him pause; these were people who were happier working in the dark. Julian felt scared, and besides, his overwhelming desire was to get to Sheila; nothing in the house was worth a confrontation. He restarted the car and resumed his journey.
Once he had
parked on the north side of Onslow Square, which is where Google Maps indicated the video had been taken, Julian had no clue as to which house to go to. He spotted Boris’s taxi, the bonnet of which was cold to the touch, but there was no knowing how close to the house it was parked. If anything Boris may have deliberately parked it on the opposite side of the square. It was after eleven, and Julian walked by the houses, discounting those where there were lights on behind blinds or curtains, or which had plants outside the door, or any sign of life at all. The houses were big, multi-storeyed and elegant. Sheila would make a healthy commission from it, if it ever sold. He knew little about Sheila’s finances, or how much she made. She had never asked him for money, and had insisted on a joint mortgage of their house, and he paid half of the payment into her account every month. She also took every care to pay half the bills, to the point of distraction. They could afford to be relaxed about it, and Julian didn’t really care – to him his money was her money, but with her it was a matter of principle. It was irksome, and whenever he’d mentioned it she’d mutter something about not wanting to end up like her mother, which, when he thought about it, implied to Julian that she thought he was like her father, who, from what he could gather, was emotionally crippled. Well, that was something he was determined not to be.
He was torn between two houses that looked unoccupied. They were about five houses apart and he walked towards one as the ticking diesel engine of a slow-moving taxi pulled up outside it. He stopped, stepping back behind one of the white pillars that framed the entrances to the houses. He couldn’t see the door from where he was but heard heels on the steps and a woman walked from the house to the taxi. Her movement looked familiar to him but the light was dim and she only appeared for a few seconds before getting into the taxi. As it passed him he looked inside and the woman looked out at him. It was Cassie, her eyes widening in recognition.
He went up the steps she’d just left and took the gun from his trousers before trying the doorbell, which didn’t work. He was about to use the brass knocker instead when the door swung open to reveal Boris, his smiling face eerily lit by the sodium glow of the street light.
FORTY-FOUR
Boris looked far from surprised to see Julian standing there, and didn’t lose the smile when he saw the gun Julian was brandishing in a manner mimicked from many films. No doubt Cassie had immediately rung Boris after seeing him. For his part Boris was armed with a plastic cup of a full-bodied red wine, judging by the smell coming from it.
‘Come in, old comrade,’ he said, stepping aside. Julian stepped inside and Boris closed the door quietly behind him, putting the chain on. ‘Through there,’ he gestured with his cup. Julian obeyed, following the light from a candle that burned in a back room. ‘No electricity, I’m afraid.’
‘Where’s Sheila?’ Julian asked, lifting the gun. He didn’t know if the safety was on or not, but maybe Boris couldn’t tell in this light. It had also bruised his coccyx on the ride over.
‘She’s safe,’ Boris said, nodding at the gun. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘Never you mind,’ Julian said, trying to sound menacing. Boris shrugged and took a deep drink.
‘What the fuck is going on, Boris? And no flim-flam.’
‘Flim-flam? What is it you want to know?’ He sat down in a camping chair that was set up next to a sleeping bag on an inflatable mattress. The candle stood on a sideways box that contained Boris’s large collection of books. Julian saw the leather-bound diary that he had spotted in Boris’s taxi, open with a pen in the middle. Boris picked it up and closed it, carefully binding it before putting it next to a tiny chess set on the makeshift table. Julian had to wonder how Boris, with fingers like his, managed to move the pieces.
‘Why don’t we start with what Cassie was doing here?’
‘Cassie? You mean Cassandra. She was providing a service,’ Boris said, smiling.
‘What do you mean? What sort of service?’
‘A personal service. One that requires skill and dexterity and at my age a little imagination and perseverance. Anyway, she is not relevant to the matter in hand, like I say, that’s a personal matter.’
Julian shook his head to rattle his brain into making sense of what was going on.
‘But she’s my business partner’s girlfriend,’ he said.
‘She’s nobody’s girlfriend, Julian. She’s Rami’s girlfriend when I pay her to be.’
‘Pay?’
‘You are straying from what is important. Focus, tovarisch, focus.’
Julian rubbed his temples. Maybe that’s what the woman in his house had meant about a prostitute. He’d had an odd feeling about Cassie, about the way fake way she’d interacted with Rami. But Boris was right, this wasn’t important at the moment. ‘OK then, the woman who was at Hadfish, pretending to be the office manager, she came to my house tonight,’ Julian said. ‘She did some work on your control board. Who is she?’
‘Ah, the woman you thought I’d put there. What does she look like, this woman?’
‘Middle Eastern, small, lots of black hair, sometimes she wears a headscarf, attractive.’
‘Then I am sorry I don’t know her.’
‘I said no bullshit.’
‘So this is what flim-flam means. You think you know a language …’
‘Enough, Boris, enough. You blackmailed me to work on this thing, ostensibly to test its vulnerability in the face of GPS spoofing, presumably by the Iranians. And then this woman, the same one who somehow got herself working at Hadfish, comes into my house at gunpoint and adds GPS coordinates that are in Iran, not Israel. She told me you know Rami.’
‘She knows who I am?’
‘She knows of you. From Rami, or from his emails or computer.’
Boris shook his head as if disappointed, whether in her or Rami, Julian couldn’t tell. ‘Did she give you the gun?’
Julian nodded. ‘Is she Iranian?’
‘Probably,’ said Boris. ‘Now put the gun away and have a seat.’
But Julian focused on why he was really there. ‘Where’s Sheila? I’ve got the control unit with me. It works. I tested it and that woman tested it when she’d done her bit.’ He took the small Jiffy bag from his jacket pocket. ‘Here.’
Boris shook his head. ‘I don’t want it. You have to get it back to the company, through your partner. It’s important it goes through the right channels. I’m quality control, remember, not the client.’
Exasperated, Julian put the Jiffy bag back in his jacket. ‘Where’s Sheila, then. Is she here?’
‘Sheila is nearby. I’m sorry I had to keep her but it was imperative that you finish and she was the only thing that seemed to motivate you into action. I didn’t hit her, by the way; that was an accident that I exploited. I can try to explain things, a little, anyway.’
‘I don’t really care enough to hear your justifications for blackmail and kidnapping.’
Boris put the cup down and looked annoyed. ‘You don’t care? You don’t care why all this has happened? You used to care at one point, didn’t you, tovarisch? You were prepared to betray your country, the company you worked for, your workmates, even lie to Sheila. Now you claim you don’t care. Now, all you want is to have your cosy little bourgeois life back, where all you have to worry about is whether your house has lost value in a recession caused by short-term money-grabbing capitalists. I really think, don’t you, that banks should have five- and ten-year plans like we used to have back in the USSR.’
Julian snorted but Boris was on a roll.
‘That’s the trouble with the world today – people just sit back and let things happen to them. They moan, sometimes they sign things, sometimes they give money. Whatever happened to people acting on their beliefs?’
‘Because when they do, like taking to the streets to protest, it makes no difference. The days of a proletarian revolution are over, Comrade Reznik,’ Julian said.
‘Maybe you’re right, which is why sometimes other forms of action
become justified.’
‘Really? You mean terrorism?’
Boris shook his head but Julian ignored it.
‘This from the man who came to me talking about making himself comfortable in old age. All your ex-KGB friends are probably oligarchs now, while you’re still grubbing around in the same murky intelligence field you were thirty years ago, just with different puppet-masters. And while we’re at it, you were the one who came to me way back when, saying I could make a real difference in the world. Well, that didn’t really happen, did it? So don’t start lecturing me on what I chose to do with my life after I came to my senses. I was deeply unhappy, creeping around, lying to people.’
‘You have a point, if crudely put. But this isn’t about you, Julian, and it was never about money, it’s about setting constraints, reining in people who’ve gone rogue. I just mentioned the pension because I thought money would appeal—’
‘So this Iranian woman is working for you?’
Boris shook his head. ‘No, no, no, she was working for someone else; a young man I had an understanding with. You see, I’ve been disappointed a lot of my life, Julian. Disappointed with the Soviets, and now disappointed with the Zionists. I thought when I moved to Israel that I’d be going home, but far from it. In Russia I was looked down on for being a Jew, even though I didn’t feel like one, and in Israel I was looked down on for being a Russian, even though I tried, am trying, to be a proper Jew.’
‘But you told me the other day, in your taxi, that you looked for Zionist Jews to help you out.’
‘I told you what you needed to hear at the time, Julian, you should know how this business works by now. Listen. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, working through things, and it’s difficult for me to move on at my age. In my profession, I have few options, but I want to have done something, however small, to stop the madness, to reclaim being a Jew.’
Disengaged Page 16