The hidden man am-2

by Charles Cumming

Taploe secured his seatbelt and managed to look suitably contrite. He said, ‘We found out shortly after our last meeting. Paul had a call from the Cayman Islands which confirmed it.’

  ‘From the Cayman Islands? Not from SIS?’

  ‘Why would SIS be involved?’

  Mark was sitting opposite Taploe on the leather backseat of an MI5 cab. He frowned and said, ‘Because you said their Station out there was looking into it.’ For the first time, he had begun to doubt Randall’s integrity. He wished Quinn were in the car, somebody whose word he could count on. With Paul Quinn, he knew where he stood. ‘Or was that just a lie designed to make me feel better? Maybe you knew all along that Lander was a red herring. I mean, how hard is it to trace somebody when you have their fucking phone number on my dad’s records?’

  ‘I never lied to you about Timothy Lander.’ Taploe’s nose seemed to twitch, as if he had suffered for Citibank, but nothing under Timothy. It was only by chance that his name came up.’

  Mark shookhis head and looked out of the window.

  ‘Now I need to know more about last night,’ Taploe said. ‘The club. Everything you can recall.’

  Ian, who was driving, switched lanes abruptly on Marylebone Road and shot the cab up on to the Westway.

  ‘I told you most of it on the phone.’

  ‘Well then, let’s start with Tamarov. Why do you thinkhe brought up the subject of your father?’

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’ Mark was tired and fractious. He had left the club at three in the morning and been debriefed by Taploe for thirty minutes on the telephone before grabbing just two or three hours of sleep.

  ‘Well, can you hazard a guess?’

  ‘To clear his conscience?’ Mark suggested. ‘To take me off the scent?’ Taploe appeared to agree with this assessment and nodded discreetly. ‘Or,’ Mark added, ‘because he was actually telling the truth. Because Duchev and Kukushkin really did have nothing to do with what happened to my father. Because the shooting was just a run-of-the-mill murder that is never going to be solved.’

  He wondered whether to tell Randall about Bone’s letter. The more he thought about it, the crazier it seemed just to dismiss the theory about Kostov. What if Jock was lying, as Ben suspected? But then maybe his controller already knew about Mischa. He had recruited him using Kukushkin as a lever, the treachery of Macklin and Roth, yet there was no specific evidence linking any of those figures to the murder. Maybe Five and Six were in it together. Mark stared at the floor of the cab and did not know whom to trust.

  ‘We will solve it,’ Taploe was saying. ‘It’s just a matter of time.’

  ‘Time,’ Mark muttered. ‘Time.’

  ‘Now you said that Tamarov was upset with Macklin for being drunk?’

  ‘That’s right.’ Mark was still staring at the floor.

  ‘How drunk was he, as a matter of fact?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘Can you be more specific?’

  Mark lifted his head with bored indifference.

  ‘You want a urine sample?’

  Ian grinned in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘Well, what about d’Erlanger?’ Taploe asked, ignoring the sarcasm.

  ‘Not booze. Cocaine.’

  ‘I see. And at the bar you said Tamarov openly admitted to you that he was Viktor Kukushkin’s lawyer. Is that correct?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘Now why did he do that, do you think?’

  But Mark had had enough.

  ‘Fucking hell. How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t have answers to these questions. If you don’t know what’s going on, then pull me out. If you think Kukushkin is already on to me, I’m not exactly keen to stick around.’

  ‘Nobody is suggesting for a moment that Kukushkin is on to you. Do you have reason to suggest that that might be the case?’

  Shaking his head, Mark stared at passing cars.

  ‘Look, I am trying to piece things together,’ Taploe told him. ‘I am trying to help you, trying to run this operation. All I want to know is what your instincts tell you. I wasn’t there last night. I need to see things through your eyes.’

  Ian pulled away sharply at a green light and, for the third or fourth time in the journey, Mark was jolted backin his seat. A motorcycle courier buzzed past his window, weaving down the blindside of a singledecker bus.

  ‘My instinct tells me everything is fine,’ he said. ‘Like I told you, the best thing you can do is get to Duchev. He’s on the way out. Retiring. You threaten to confiscate this land he’s bought in Spain, that’s a big lever. Juris has dreams of growing oranges and lemons on the plains of Andalucia. He talked about it for a quarter of an hour. You tell him he’s got more chance of growing cress at Wormwood Scrubs, that’s going to make an impact, believe me.’

  Taploe seemed impressed by the idea. He pinched a tuft of his moustache, as if removing an imaginary speck of food, and steadied his balance on a loop of plastic tacked above the door.

  ‘That is something I’ve been thinking over since we talked this morning,’ he said. ‘But it needn’t concern you. If I pitch Duchev, that won’t affect your ongoing relationship with Tamarov. That is the vital element here. Now, your brother. Why do you think Tamarov was so friendly towards him?’

  Wary of questions about Ben, Mark again answered aggressively.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why he was friendly to Ben. To get him onside? To test him? Isn’t it possible they just liked one another?’ He was conscious that Ben had conceived the plan for Duchev and wanted to protect him. ‘I mean, maybe you guys are looking for conspiracy where no fucking conspiracy exists. You think Timothy Lander is a corrupt investment banker in the Cayman Islands and he turns out to be Jacques Cousteau.’

  Expecting Ian to laugh at this, Mark looked into the front seat, but he saw that Boyle’s eyes were concentrated on the road.

  ‘What about what happened in the toilets?’ Taploe asked. ‘You were talking in there with your brother when Tamarov came in. How did he react at that point?’

  Mark stayed backin his seat and bluffed it out.

  ‘Like he’d just bumped into a couple of guys who were talking in the gents. Like any normal bloke in a club who needs to go for a piss. Ben and I are brothers. Can’t brothers talkin public without somebody getting suspicious?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  Ian overtook an articulated lorry at speed and Mark slammed down his passenger window. The air in the cab had been fuggy and stale and his throat felt swollen with lack of sleep. When the wind funnelled across the seats it dampened Taploe’s eyes.

  ‘That too much for you?’ he asked.

  ‘Leave it,’ Taploe replied.

  The cab slowed.

  ‘You asked about Ben and Vladimir,’ Mark said.

  ‘OK, I’ll tell you. Vlad told me his father died when he was seventeen. So maybe he feels sorry for Ben. Maybe he feels sorry for me. Maybe there’s some empathy there.’

  ‘Excuse me, boss, but that tallies with our diligence.’ Ian was shouting above the noise of the road. ‘Tamarov’s old man was killed in a car accident outside Moscow. March 1982, if I recall correctly.’ Taploe fidgeted in his seat, barely acknowledging the intrusion.

  ‘Well, if that’s the case, that’s certainly something you could use to your advantage in forging a relationship with him.’ Ian appeared to nod in agreement. ‘But you are not, I repeat not to involve your brother in any Security Service operation ever again. That was foolish and unnecessary.’

  Mark should have backed down, but the combination of his already dark mood and a sense of loyalty to Ben got the better of him.

  ‘My brother did all right,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not what I was told.’

  Ian brought the taxi off the Westway and turned towards Shepherd’s Bush. A man wearing a tan overcoat tried to hail the cab by waving a furled-up newspaper frantically above his head. Mark saw him swear loudly as they sped past.
/>   ‘What were you told?’ he asked.

  ‘We had Watchers in the club. Two young men. They went in immediately before Ben and sat down at the next door table.’

  ‘The guys in chinos? The two blokes in polo necks?’

  ‘The very same.’ It was a small moment of triumph and Taploe enjoyed Mark’s discomfort. ‘They said your brother looked nervous all evening. Now how would you explain that?’

  Mark was caught in a lie.

  ‘Well, that’s just their assessment,’ he said. ‘They have to write something, don’t they, to justify their jobs.’

  Taploe cast him a withering look and glanced at his watch.

  ‘Is he conscious?’ he asked, still staring at his wrist.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Ian answered from the front seat.

  ‘It means does your brother know about Blindside? Have you told him that you workfor us?’

  Taploe scrutinized Mark’s face intensely for his reaction.

  ‘Fuck no,’ he said. ‘I’m not stupid.’

  The interrogation might have continued had Mark’s mobile phone not rung. He withdrew it from the pocket of his suit, glanced at the read-out and could hardly believe his eyes.

  ‘It’s him,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Tamarov.’

  The phone was already on its third ring.

  ‘Well, answer it.’ Taploe sounded petulant, fearing the loss of the call, and for an instant Mark saw the depth of his ambition.

  ‘Hello?’ he said, picking up.

  Taploe could only hear Mark’s end of the conversation.

  How you doin’, mate? It was a good night, wasn’t it? Yeah, I’m suffering a bit with no sleep, but I’ll be all right.

  He was forced to concede how naturally Blindside dropped into the role: Mark was improvising with ease, no sign of edginess or nerves.

  Well, he said he enjoyed meeting you too, Vlad. Yeah, sure, absolutely. You wanna meet up, that’s fine, sounds very interesting. OK. Well, I’ll see you there in the morning. Sure, I won’t mention it to anyone.

  There was a smile on Mark’s face as he put the phone back in his jacket, a grin of satisfaction that he wanted them both to see.

  ‘What did he say?’ Taploe asked. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Well, he wants to meet up, doesn’t he? Wants to meet yours truly for a little Sunday breakfast in Hackney. Got a business proposition, apparently.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Well, good for you,’ Ian said.

  ‘Yes, good for you,’ Taploe added, and the business with Ben seemed forgotten.

  40

  The meeting lasted twenty minutes.

  ‘I can learn everything I need to know about a man by the way he behaves at breakfast,’ Tamarov said, standing in the foyer of his new restaurant wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses, a button-down Tommy Hilfiger cotton shirt and Armani denim jeans. It was nine o’clock in the morning. ‘I am a busy man, Mark, a very busy man. We have businesses in Moscow, in London, in Paris, in Belgrade. Later this morning I fly to Amsterdam to eat only lunch. So if a person is to do business with me, I want to see the colour of his eyes in the morning. I want to hear him speak to me. I want to know the truth about him.’

  It was as if they had never met. Tamarov was suffocating Mark with Russian bluster, the browbeating bullshit of a thug used to getting his own way. They weren’t even eating breakfast: Tamarov was in too much of a hurry. Had it not been for his duty to Randall, Mark would have made his excuses and caught a cab back to Kentish Town.

  ‘So what business are we exactly doing together, Vlad? You didn’t mention anything specific on the phone. What kind of thing is it that you have in mind?’ Tamarov put the whole weight of his arm on Mark’s back and began walking with him towards the kitchens.

  ‘Well, I have been thinking,’ he said. Right from the start, Mark had the impression that Tamarov was in a tight spot from which he needed rescuing. ‘I am wondering if you would be interested in a small venture with me?’

  ‘A small venture.’

  ‘I am opening up this bar, this restaurant, in less than two weeks and I need somebody to help me out.’

  Mark looked around him. The restaurant was a shell of scaffolding and fallen plaster. Despite the fact that it was a Sunday, there were workmen everywhere, architects in hard hats and interior designers poring over colour charts. As they came into the kitchen he could see gas burners and extractor fans still boxed in the centre of the room.

  ‘Is Tom not your partner on this?’ he asked. ‘You two have been spending so much time together recently and…’

  ‘No, not on this,’ Tamarov replied firmly. ‘This is not with Thomas any more. I cannot trust him as I could trust you.’

  Mark disguised his astonished reaction to this by slackening off his tie.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Tamarov said, removing his arm from Mark’s back. ‘I have been hearing good things about you from Sebastian for so long and now we meet in the club and it occurs to me yesterday that this would be a good partnership between us. I have in mind to open a chain of restaurants. But I am always in six cities at once, always doing business. I need somebody to be a director in the same way that you are looking after Libra.’

  It didn’t feel like a trap. That was what he told Randall afterwards. For hours they sat around trying to second-guess Tamarov’s motive for making the offer, finally conceding that it had been made in good faith. Kukushkin was expanding into London all the time; Tamarov was the man who had been assigned to make that happen. The Scot he had entrusted to see the restaurant through to completion had either quit at the last minute or failed to come up to scratch. That Mark was Tamarov’s choice to take over was both a reflection of his skills as a manager and a particularly expedient coincidence.

  ‘But I work for Seb,’ he said. ‘I can’t just quit and run this place. I’m not even looking for another job.’

  Mark wondered if that had been the wrong thing to say. If Randall needed him to get close to Tamarov, this was the perfect opportunity. To refuse might jeopardize the relationship.

  ‘Of course we will offer you equity,’ Tamarov was saying, wrongly assuming that Mark was stalling over money. ‘We can discuss arrangements so that you own a portion of the business…’

  ‘No, it’s not that. It’s not that, Vlad.’ He didn’t know which way to go. It occurred to him that Philippe had been ensnared in a similar fashion, headhunted out of Libra. ‘I just don’t understand the sudden offer. Is there something I should know about? Everything seems a bit chaotic.’

  Tamarov looked offended.

  ‘Chaotic? I can assure you that all restaurants look like this a few days before they are opening. You know this, Mark, it is normal. Does your club in Moscow seem like it is ready for opening? No. So let me show you our bathrooms. They are completely finished. There is nothing chaotic about this.

  Nothing.’

  Both bathrooms were indeed completely finished, a mock-Arab nightmare of black tiles and freestanding crimson lamps. Mark continued to waver and Tamarov felt it necessary to force his point.

  ‘My problem is this,’ he said, and actually pressed his index finger against the lapel of Mark’s jacket, as if retaliating to an insult that had never been landed. ‘People in your country are concerned. They think that we are all gangsters in the East, they think that it is a mistake to trust us, to let us invest in your country. Perhaps you think this, Mark, even though you have been in Moscow, you have been in Petersburg, and you have seen these things at first hand. But let me tell you something, as your friend but also as somebody who knows about how work must be conducted. If you were a Russian, you too would be a gangster.’ He let the observation settle on Mark, digging out the pause. ‘You would have no choice. What does this word “mafia” mean, anyway? Does it mean violence? Does it mean that we are criminals? Of course not, and who is to
judge? You think that a mafia did not exist before Mr Gorbachev, before Yeltsin? You think that the Soviet system was not in itself an organized crime? This is naive. At least now the wealth is in the control of the people.’

  ‘Spoken like a true communist,’ Mark said, but Tamarov ignored him.

  ‘The difference today is that the people must now fight for this wealth. A clever Russian, a Latvian, a Georgian, understands that today’s world is about sink or swim. If I am to survive, if I am to put food on the table for my wife, for my children, it is necessary to fight. Not with guns, not with violence, but with the mind.’ Tamarov tapped the side of his head to indicate where his mind might be located. Mark knew for sure that he did not have a wife, nor any children for whom he had to put food on the table, but he let it go. ‘I am in competition with other men,’ Tamarov said. ‘If I make a deal, I make the best deal for myself and for my clients. Does this make me a bad man? Does it?’

  Mark didn’t answer the question, though he conceded that Tamarov was at least right about destiny. In Moscow he had been obliged to authorize and pay perhaps thirty or forty backhanders just to get the club up and running. It was a question of perspective; in London a businessman had the luxury of morality.

  ‘So this place is being financed by Mr Kukushkin?’ he asked. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’

  Tamarov physically withdrew from the question. Stepping aside from Mark, he turned and walked back in the direction of the foyer, his voice assuming the lawyer’s cloak.

  ‘I represent Mr Kukushkin’s interests,’ he said. ‘Mr Kukushkin has many investments.’

  Mark followed him and said, ‘Right. I see.’

  ‘Thomas works with Mr Kukushkin in Moscow. Sebastian has met him on many occasions. Are you seeing this as a problem?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then good.’

  Tamarov stood beside a pile of plastic-wrapped chairs and flattened a hand against the crust of his gelled hair.

  ‘Look, I do not need a decision now.’ He started to lean against a column of chairs. It rocked dangerously. ‘Everything for the completion of the restaurant is already under way.’ In the street outside, Juris Duchev leaned on the horn of Tamarov’s Mercedes, preparing to drive him out to Heathrow. ‘I have to leave now to catch a flight to Holland. Why don’t we meet for dinner tomorrow? The St Martin’s Lane Hotel?’