Arkhangel : A Novel (2020)

by Brabazon, James

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘I knew it. And we’re trying to save her.’

  ‘No, Baaz. I’m trying to save her.’

  He started to drum his fingers lightly on the table.

  ‘You keep asking me what the number on that banknote means, like it has to mean something, like if it does mean something then you’ll be able to help her. Right?’

  ‘Right.’ I put the glass to my lips and swallowed the last mouthful of Goldstar. ‘And by the way, you said it meant something, not me.’

  ‘OK, true. But this brute force business is bloody stressful. Do you want me to help you find a shortcut or are you going to point your gun at everyone we meet?’

  ‘Pretty much. But sure, knock yourself out.’

  ‘All right, but there’s no “I” in “team”. If you want me to help, then you have to level with me.’

  ‘I have to what?’

  ‘Level with me. You want to solve the equation? Then we have to balance it first. And I can’t do the bloody sums if I don’t know the bloody numbers.’

  ‘But you do know the numbers.’ I looked around for the waiter, impatient for another beer. ‘You said you couldn’t forget them if you tried.’ I held up a single finger to the barman mixing a cocktail on the other side of the French windows. He nodded and I turned back to Baaz.

  ‘Not the numbers numbers,’ he said. ‘I mean everything. You, her, the secret mission. That’s the real equation.’

  ‘Baaz, you’re in enough trouble as it is. The more you know …’ I paused as the waiter appeared with a small dish of roasted almonds, ‘the worse it’s going to get.’

  ‘Who led you to the Traitor? Who bought you your bloody plane ride, anyway?’ His voice was rising, scratchy and emotional. ‘Just a kid, am I? A stupid kid you had to save in the catacombs, who’s got in the way ever since? I don’t think so.’ His fingers fell still. And – unlike during his other outbursts – his eyes were dry, and looking directly into mine. ‘So, what do you want to do?’ he continued. ‘Sit on your arse and drink beer all day or do some bloody work?’

  ‘Fair enough,’ I said. ‘You’ve earned that.’

  And he had. The catacombs had been a bloodbath. In the space of three days I’d saved his life, tried to lose him, tried to kill him, and then co-opted him. And in return he’d saved me in Paris, put everything at risk by following me to Israel, and applied himself with more success than I’d had to working out the possible meanings of the hundred-dollar bill. I’d taken him half into my confidence and my conscience – unsure whether he was an asset or a liability, a mate or a mark.

  The wind was picking up. I pulled my jacket tighter across my shoulders. Out to sea the sun was slipping into the Med. On the terrace it was time for a potentially lethal dose of truth. When my beer arrived, I ordered a double Johnnie Walker Black chaser.

  I was going to need it.

  An hour later Baaz knew everything except my real, Irish, name. I’d been careful with my parents’ details, too. But apart from that he knew more about me than anyone alive, except Rachel herself and, just maybe, Commander Frank Knight.

  ‘This information,’ I concluded with the same warning I’d begun with, ‘is a death sentence. Best-case scenario when we get out of this – if we get out of it – you’ll be given a new identity, a new life. Money, sure … but no more trips to see your auntie in London. No visiting your dad doing time in Chandigarh. No more trips to Chandigarh, period. Worst-case scenario, and I’ve been burned, permanently disconnected by London? That doesn’t bear thinking about. You understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I understand.’ He wrinkled his nose and picked up my glass of Johnnie Walker and sniffed the whisky. ‘But what I don’t understand is how you can drink this rubbish.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s disgusting.’

  ‘You and Commander Knight might get on, after all,’ I said. ‘Which is a terrifying prospect.’

  I sat back in the chair, drained from unburdening myself, exhausted at the scale of the investigation ahead. Baaz, by comparison, was giddy, enthused with his new-found responsibilities. His mind was working overtime. His eyes flitted left and right, but no longer settled on mine. His fingers drummed the air again.

  ‘There are,’ he said at last, staring out at the darkened sea, ‘three variables we need to assign values to.’

  ‘That sounds optimistic.’

  ‘Variables,’ he said, emphatically, ‘not unknowns. If we can assign a value to the variables, we can calculate the unknowns.’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘OK,’ he conceded, ‘probably calculate them.’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you need to know who released your passport photograph.’

  ‘First of all,’ I corrected him, ‘we need to know. We’re a team now, remember? And second – that’s not a variable. I already told you, no one but Frank Knight could have done that. So, the question isn’t who did it, but why Frank did it.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s not correct. You assume he did it, but you discount the possibility of unknown factors that might mean he didn’t.’

  ‘Baaz, if this is going to work – between us, I mean – you’re just going to have to accept that there are some things I know that you don’t. And one thing I know is that no one except Frank Knight could have connected that passport photograph to my name.’

  ‘Totally …’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, cutting him off.

  ‘… incorrect. It wouldn’t be an unknown if you knew it, would it? Total contradiction in terms. You said all that stuff – the photos, the passports – are stored online, at the passport office?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘Yes but, no but. If it’s online, some tricky bugger will find it somehow. Trust me,’ he said, smiling, ‘I know.’

  ‘OK, let’s leave that one, shall we? What next?’

  ‘Arkhangel. Totally crucial.’

  ‘We agree on that, at least.’

  ‘So, tell me …’

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘Would you have kept the note if it hadn’t had that word written on it?’

  ‘No, I guess not.’

  ‘Not “guess not”. Of course not. It was completely crazy. There you are in this random cottage, and then shabash! You find something totally personal. It’s like Benjamin Franklin bloody speaks to you. Directly.’

  ‘Yeah, well that’s how it felt. But … it’s the wrong Arkhangel, isn’t it? An actual angel, not the village. That’s what Moshe was telling us.’

  In truth I’d been trying not to think about some of what Moshe had told us, or what to make of it. Looking upon the Destroying Angel was not where I’d been expecting the interrogation to go. No matter which way I cut it, the most likely of all conclusions – and the worst – was that Moshe was right and Rachel had gone insane. The closer I got to her, the further she slipped away. I tried hard to block the image as it assembled in my head, but to no avail. There she was, lying in a crimson pool of her own blood. She’d been on the edge of madness then, as her arteries pumped the life out of her. I’d been crazy, too – running, only running. Stupid, scared Max, losing his lover and then his mother. And here I was, losing Rachel all over again.

  But the word meant something. Azrael. I could see it, hear it, in an endless loop of almost-familiarity. The sound, the feeling of it, danced on the edge of my consciousness: a face in the crowd, a childhood memory – real but unreachable.

  ‘Max?’

  ‘Uh, sorry. What was that?’

  ‘Cyrillic. It’s written in Russian. In Cyrillic.’ He paused, as if summoning up the courage to say something.

  ‘Go on. Spit it out. What is it?’

  ‘Does Rachel speak Russian?’

  ‘No, at least not when I knew her. Her father couldn’t speak it, either. His parents refused to teach him.’

  ‘Exactly!’ he said, triumphant. ‘You see, it doesn’t have to mean one thing or the other. It can mean both at the same time. Tota
lly quantum. Tell me,’ he said, ‘your mother and this Doctor Levy, Rachel’s father …’

  ‘Easy, sunshine.’ I fixed him with a stern look.

  ‘No! No … It’s just, well … Would it …’ he chose his words more carefully, ‘have meant anything to him? The place where your mother was born, that is.’

  I looked out to sea. I saw my mother at home, laying her hand lightly on Doc’s arm. During my father’s long absences they would sit together, side by side in the gathering Wicklow dusk, saying little, sharing a drink. And then, out of nowhere, that peal of laughter, light and bright and full of joy, bringing her to life.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think it would.’

  ‘OK. So, let’s assume Rachel wrote it on the banknote. Maybe not insane, after all then, hmm?’ He left that idea and moved on, aware enough, at least, of the effect of his questioning on my mood. ‘That just leaves Moshe,’ he said. ‘He was right about the money.’

  ‘What about the money?’

  ‘About what it’s being used for. Its purpose. Not just your note, though. You said there was more money?’

  ‘Uh-huh. A lot more.’

  In the 1980s, the Lebanese plates had printed over a billion dollars of forged fiat. Frank Knight would have known that, and most likely used the size of Moshe’s run to calculate the numbers he’d quoted in Doherty’s pub. If the Israelis had printed that quantity of fakes then, there was no reason to doubt that the Russians could do the same – or more – now.

  ‘OK, so we follow it. That’s what they say, isn’t it? “Follow the money.” It’s so Hollywood, huna? Who do you think will play me in the movie?’ Baaz burst out laughing.

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What did I do to deserve this?’

  ‘Heaven knows, but right now you’re guilty of starving a poor Punjabi boy half to death. I could eat a horse.’ Then he looked worried, and added: ‘If I wasn’t a vegetarian, of course.’

  Baaz was right. I was hungry again, too. I stood up to fetch a menu, and looked out across the city for a moment, considering what he’d said. It seemed to me there were far more than the three variables he had lit upon. Chief among them was whether or not Frank Knight had known that it was Rachel’s colleague Amos Stein, and not Chappie Connor, waiting for me in the cottage. And finding out what Stein was doing there in the first place didn’t seem likely while I was stuck in the Middle East.

  ‘I’d give my kingdom for a bloody horse, never mind eating one,’ I said under my breath. ‘Anything to get out of here.’

  And then a window opened in my mind and through it I looked back into the Traitor’s studio. And then another, through which I saw Rachel’s office. The images began to run together. Doc patching my shoulder, me turning a quick circle around the corpse in the cottage. There it was. Mane flowing, nostrils flaring, the pale mare galloping across the Irish countryside. There they were.

  ‘That’s it!’ I said out loud. ‘Baaz, that’s fucking it!’

  ‘That’s what?’ He looked nervous – worried, probably, that I was about to do something violent or unpredictable.

  ‘Go and get your laptop. We’re going to do some bloody work sitting on our arses.’

  ‘OK, what are we looking for?’

  Baaz sat poised over his screen, veggie burger in one hand, fruit juice in the other. Although it was chilly on the terrace, it made a good office. I’d ordered a steak and another Scotch.

  ‘Title deeds. Is there any way you can see who owns the cottage in Donegal?’

  ‘Probably. Let’s see …’ He bit a mouthful out of the burger and started typing.

  ‘Anonymously.’

  ‘Thank goodness you reminded me. I was totally going to post this on Facebook,’ Baaz sighed. I ignored that and he tapped away. ‘OK, Citizens Information …’ He paused and clicked his tongue. ‘Property deeds …’ Another pause. ‘Land registry. OK. Here we go. What’s the address?’

  ‘It doesn’t have one; not an official one, anyway.’ I leaned in next to him and looked at the map he’d loaded. ‘Zoom in here, to Gortnalughoge. That’s where I did the recce from, the holiday park. Go east across the bay. Stop. There.’ I pointed at the screen. ‘That’s it.’

  Baaz clicked on the oblong outline of the old cottage.

  ‘The property isn’t registered,’ he said. He chomped on the burger again and mumbled, ‘What next?’ But before I could answer, he’d loaded a new page. ‘Hang on.’ He typed and then swallowed. ‘This is going to cost five euros.’

  ‘Anonymous, remember?’

  He gave me a sideways glance.

  ‘Right. No, nothing on the house. It’s going to be tricky to determine ownership.’

  ‘Great.’ I sat back and chewed a mouthful of steak. ‘It’s never bloody easy, is it?’

  ‘But the land it’s on,’ he continued, a grin spreading across his face, ‘is registered.’ He paused dramatically. ‘Drum roll, please.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’

  ‘OK! Registered … in the name of one Jacob Benjamin Israel Levy.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘But you knew!’ For once he looked genuinely impressed. ‘How?’

  ‘The horses. Moshe said he met Rachel because she bought paintings from him, paintings of horses that reminded her of home. There was one on Moshe’s wall, in the storeroom. There’s one on her office wall, too. And another in Doc’s house, in the room where he stitched me up.’

  ‘And there was one in the cottage, too?’

  ‘Yeah, there was. And that’s not all. The painting, there,’ I pointed at his laptop, as if it were a magic portal back home, ‘the fourth horse. It was of a pale mare.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, look it up, clever clogs.’ He did, and his face dropped. ‘Let me see.’

  He turned the laptop towards me. The screen was filled with the image of a painting by Viktor Vasnetsov, a Russian artist, reproductions of whose pictures my mother had adorned our house in Ireland with. In it the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ran amok. They were led by a white horse and its mounted archer; a swordsman followed on a brown steed; and in the hands of a third horseman, astride a black stallion, a set of scales dipped menacingly. But at the back, slightly distant from the others and carrying a spear, a fourth figure rode a sickly, pale mare: staring down over the land he’d laid waste to, sat the shroud-wrapped skeleton of Death himself.

  Baaz closed the screen.

  ‘Man,’ he said, blowing out hard through puffed cheeks, ‘you Christians are, like, totally nuts.’

  27

  ‘More coffee, please.’

  It was a bright, breezy morning – already nearly twenty degrees. There was a stiff wind from the south that cut across the hotel terrace, carrying with it the harsh, flinty taste of the city. In Jerusalem it always felt as if I was on the edge, caught between the ideal of the city and the reality of the desert that surrounded it. I preferred Tel Aviv. The sea was constant, the horizon fixed. Just like home, I thought to myself. But the truth was that home, like the Holy City, was just an idea. It could mean anything you wanted it to. The waitress cleared away the remains of breakfast.

  ‘And for your friend?’

  I shrugged. There was no sign of Baaz. She smiled and headed back inside. There was no sign, either, that shaking down Moshe had stirred up trouble. I looked at the date on the copy of Haaretz I’d brought with me from my room. Thursday 18 January.

  Shit.

  Ten days ago I’d blown the top of Amos Stein’s head off. He might have lived as a mathematician, but he’d died as a courier. I worked backwards and pieced the dates together. His run from Tel Aviv to Donegal had taken him two days, via Moscow. Ellard was right: A rabbit never bolts straight for the burrow – Stein included. If Avilov was on to him, then Stein’s forged passport slowed his pursuit. If Baaz and I could work out that Doc Levy owned the cottage, so could Avilov – too late to intercept Stein at the cottage, but in time to intercept me by the shore of Lough Conn. Talia said Stein had a
rrived in the UK on the thirtieth, so he must have left Israel on the twenty-eighth. That put him in the cottage two days before I showed up to do the recce – which tallied with the date Frank had given me.

  Stein had also left Israel a full twenty-four hours before Rachel had gone missing. It was possible that his departure had triggered her disappearance; and possible, given how terrified Moshe said she’d been, that she’d known something was going to happen to her. Perhaps she’d sent Stein and his message back home while she still could – as a failsafe, an insurance policy in Moshe’s words. But against what?

  ‘Sorry I’m late.’

  Baaz sat down in the chair next to me and set his laptop on the table. It was as if he was connected to its shiny silver case by an umbilical cord; a digital witch’s-familiar for the twenty-first century. He’d switched his simple black turban for a crimson one and marshalled what passed for his beard into a neat series of wisps. I ran the back of my hand over my chin and made a mental note to ask housekeeping for a razor.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about the dates,’ he said, ‘and about that Russian joker, too, who you said turned up in Paris, in the catacombs.’ Baaz sipped from my untouched glass of orange juice. ‘The boss man.’

  ‘Who, Avilov?’

  ‘Yeah. By my calculation, he arrived here in Israel a couple of days before you started the stakeout, at the cottage.’

  ‘Reconnaissance. We do reconnaissance, not stakeouts. But yeah, that’s correct – assuming Talia isn’t spinning us a line.’

  Which was always possible, of course. Ezra had said that she was on the side of the angels – though from where I was standing that was no longer necessarily a good thing. The fact she had that book of matches meant she’d definitely known more than she was letting on. It seemed unlikely that she’d given them to me in Rachel’s office by accident.

  ‘OK, whatever. But then he pops up again on that ship in the English Channel, where he’s trying to keep you alive – sort of. That’s when you first meet him, right?’ Baaz was speaking fast now. I got the feeling sometimes that if he could entirely dispense with words and just use numbers, he would.