I nodded. ‘So?’
‘So that means he’s behind the curve. Don’t you see? He’s trying to solve a problem, too. He’s got his own equation and the reason he, or whatever boss-Russian he works for, wants you alive is because they think you can solve it for them – just like the Israelis, probably.’
‘OK. But why not just take the banknote? He had me strung up by my ankles – and what, his goons didn’t even think to search my pockets? Any amateur would have done that. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Variables. Your equation has variables. His equation has variables. Unknown variables. Same–same. You’re both in the dark. And then, boom!’
‘There have been a lot of booms so far, Baaz. Which one is going off now?’
‘Bloody Paris, Max! Before you meet this – what did you call him, “bad Bulgarian”? – no one knows you’ve even got the banknote. And then you tell … Ah, what is his name?’
‘Lukov, Sergei Lukov.’
‘Right. You tell Lukov, and he tells bloody everyone, and the next thing you know Bob’s your bloody uncle: the whole city’s a war zone, and some Russian bastard is trying to drown me in the catacombs.’
He had a point. Until Lukov started the auction, the only people who’d known I’d laid hands on the hundred-dollar bill were Frank and the shooter in the cottage. I’d told Frank I’d lost it, and the shooter had no way of knowing whether I’d managed to hang on to it in the surf. Prior to Lukov going public, my connection to the note rested on whether Frank bought my lies – or, maybe, whether the shooter had survived.
The waitress arrived with more drinks. We both fell silent and looked awkwardly out to sea while she refilled my coffee cup and poured tea for Baaz.
‘So,’ I said quietly, ‘Rachel uses her colleague Amos Stein to send a message to her father. But nobody, not even Moshe, knew she had. Maybe not even Doc knew it. To everyone else it would just look like she was sending him cash. Like you do, to your auntie.’
‘Will do,’ he corrected me, blushing. ‘Totally unremarkable.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘The gunman in the cottage was waiting for someone, not something. Otherwise why stick around?’
‘Well done, Maximilian. Professor Bhavneet Singh awards you an A-minus for effort.’
‘Yeah, but who the hell was he?’
‘That,’ replied Baaz, ‘is one hundred per cent your department. But from what you’re saying, he can’t have been a Russian. The dates don’t work, do they?’ He looked around for the waitress again. ‘I wonder if they have bagels? I mean, it’s Israel. They’ve got to have bagels, right?’
He was right. The shooter in the cottage couldn’t have been one of Avilov’s men. The dates didn’t tally. Until my name and face had popped up in The Times, Avilov hadn’t even known what to call me – at least, he hadn’t spoken my name in the ship’s hold.
The same couldn’t be said of Doc. He could have been killed on Avilov’s orders – though my money was on one gunman, with that signature shot to the heart. Most terribly of all, if the shooter in the cottage had survived, and then killed Doc, I’d led him straight to my oldest friend’s door, after all.
It was heartbreaking and infuriating in equal measure. As soon as one question was answered, another presented itself. But we were getting somewhere. While Doc had worked on my wounds, he’d told me that I’d been lucky to find him, that he’d had a shooting trip planned. And there’s good shooting in Donegal in January – snipe and woodcock, particularly. The more I looked at everything, the more it seemed Doc must have been the intended recipient – even if he might not have known he was, or what the banknote signified. But as soon as he’d spotted the name of my mother’s birthplace, he – like me – would have understood it meant something important. But if Doc had known what was going on, or if he’d had the means to work it out, then that knowledge was gone, too – incinerated in the remains of his eccentric mansion.
Trying to work out what it all added up to didn’t make me feel like an A-grade student. It made me feel sick to my stomach. No matter how hard I tried to wash it off, Doctor Jacob Levy’s blood still clung to my hands. I went back over every detail of the firefight in the cottage, sieving my memory for anything that might help point to the path ahead.
Discovering the banknote and then deciphering its significance had been woven inextricably into my own personal quest to find Rachel. Seeing my photograph in the paper had forced me to run. Sure, it had shrunk the world around me. But as much as it had made life more complicated, it had also released me. The press reports were like a knife, cutting the bonds that tied me to process and procedure. However difficult it was operating beyond orders, I was free to do what I liked, how I liked. There were no rules, and no one to answer to except myself.
I didn’t know if Rachel had made a run for it or had been abducted. I didn’t even know if she was still alive. But if Avilov was as much in the dark about her whereabouts as I was, I might still get to her first.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘we’ve only got one lead left, so we may as well use it.’
‘What’s that?’ Baaz asked.
I put Moshe’s book of matches face up on the table. The black 7 logo danced on its yellow flame. Then I opened the book and pulled the matchheads forward to reveal the hidden cell phone number scrawled on the cardboard backing. Baaz half rose out of his seat in excitement.
‘You’re going to call it?’
‘Not yet.’ He sat down again, disappointed. ‘Let’s scope out this Gallery 7 online first. Look nationwide, not just in Tel Aviv.’
Baaz opened the case to his digital demon and clicked away at the keys.
‘It’s definitely a gallery.’ He typed some more. ‘A gallery bar. Art and cocktails. “The most relaxed VIP vibe in Tel Aviv.”’ He looked over the screen at me. ‘It’s a few blocks south of here, in the centre of town.’
‘I wonder,’ I said, finishing my coffee, ‘if the punters know they’re buying Moshe’s interpretations?’
28
Baaz and I got out of the taxi simultaneously and cut north, across Rothschild Boulevard, up Allenby Street. I’d assumed we’d be followed. So, as a precaution, we’d changed car three times, splitting up for an hour and then rejoining for the final, short drive. I couldn’t discount the possibility that Talia had given me her book of matches by accident – but equally I’d never seen or heard the Israelis do anything that wasn’t deliberate. Whatever the case, even the slimmest edge of surprise counted for something.
There were any number of ways the visit to Gallery 7 could play out. In anticipation of it going wildly wrong – which wasn’t unlikely – I’d spent the rest of the morning familiarizing Baaz with the SIG semi-auto. By the time we left the hotel he could strip, reassemble and load it, make ready and make safe. He said he’d never even picked up a gun before, but after an initial bout of unease his fingers moved confidently around the steel frame. The point at which Baaz needed to use my pistol was the point at which it probably didn’t matter whether he managed to successfully or not. But instructing him gave us something to talk about other than endless unanswerable questions and intractable equations.
We went through the basics of what to do if the shit hit the fan (if he forgot everything else, just get small, fast), and then I’d broached the delicate issue of concealment: there was no way I was walking to the bar unarmed, and no way I could risk trying to conceal a weapon from the inevitable security search at the entrance.
‘No!’ he’d said at first, so vehemently that I was physically taken aback. ‘Impossible. I’m not a bloody Nihang warrior. It’s manha. Forbidden. Totally out of the question.’
It had taken an afternoon of persuasion and perseverance, but eventually he agreed – on the condition that he did it himself, entirely alone and without me looking, never mind helping. I consented. And forty-five minutes later Baaz had emerged from the bathroom resplendent in his now oversized, tightly wrapped crimson turban – this time concealing not
just his hair but also the compact frame of the SIG 9mm.
‘OK,’ I’d said, ‘now you have to practise walking and talking. Back straight, no nodding. Think of it like spy finishing school.’ He didn’t laugh.
By the time we’d climbed – carefully – into the taxi at The Lemon Tree he was so slick that, if I hadn’t known, I’d never have guessed he was carrying. In the security line outside the bar he was quiet and concentrated – a dignified ramrod trying and failing to make small talk.
‘This,’ he said, still unsmiling, ‘is absurd.’ His voice wavered with nerves. His fingers drummed the air by his sides.
‘It’s OK,’ I tried to reassure him.
‘I can’t do it,’ he blurted out. ‘Max, really …’
I put my hand on his shoulder, and gripped him tight. The couple in front of us turned to stare at him. I smiled and they looked the other way.
‘Five minutes,’ I hissed in his ear, ‘and we’re in. And then it’s off. It’s done.’
‘But …’
‘Baaz?’ I stepped back a fraction and looked him straight in the eye. He stared at the pavement. ‘Be cool, OK? You can do it. It’s all good. Everything’s going to be fine.’
He breathed out slowly. When his fingers stopped drumming, I saw that his hands were shaking.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘It’s OK. I’m OK.’ Then he turned around and his fingers resumed their silent dance.
The entrance was on the ground floor of an uninspiring modern block, fringed by a line of evergreens. The faint thumping of electronic bass trickled out into the street. Above the door a black 7 was embossed on to a bright yellow flame; in front of the door a thickset bouncer with an earpiece and a bulging suit waved down would-be punters with a handheld metal detector. The crowd was well-heeled and had a few years on the bright young party things we’d seen queuing up elsewhere from the taxi windows. The security check was so second nature it didn’t even interrupt conversation.
Baaz went first.
‘Ma kore,’ he greeted the doorman in Hebrew. Good evening. His nervousness manifested as arrogance. He fitted right in.
The bouncer’s reply was inaudible, but within another couple of minutes we were both inside the building.
‘Since when could you speak Hebrew?’
‘The waitress at the hotel. She’s been teaching me. Easier than French.’ He winked. ‘Good accent, eh?’
I stepped in front of him, parted a velvet curtain on the far side of the coat-check and walked into the bar first. The electronic beats that had seeped outside deepened and expanded, filling the cavernous low-lit joint with a disconcerting, undulating rhythm. Centre stage was an island bar, orbited by beautiful women and older, manicured men. The walls were lined with paintings – all the same size, all reworkings of the same drowning-man motif in different shades of red and blue, pink and white. Limbs twisted. Mouths gulped. Silent screams engulfed in a horror-kitsch art-aquarium. Above them, at the far end of the room, a glass staircase led to a mezzanine. Short skirts flashed above the parapet. A DJ kept the beats going on a set of turntables behind them. It was busy, but not crowded – the atmosphere fine-tuned to make men in their forties feel as young as their girlfriends. There’s nothing quite so effective as the promise of eternal youth to part men from their money.
‘You find the bathroom; I’m going to get a drink. Remember what I said about how to do this?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, but he looked suddenly unsure of himself.
‘Don’t worry. You’ll be grand.’
He headed off, back straight, avoiding the clusters of drinkers orbiting the bar. I took my time and spiralled around the perimeter, checking out the paintings and the people who might purchase them, eventually winding up at the far end of the bar, where there were no tables and no punters to hem me in. After pretending not to see me for an almost-but-not-quite unprofessional moment, the barman drifted over and jerked his head towards me. He looked like he should have been shaking down customers out the back, not shaking cocktails for them behind the bar. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Six-four, two-twenty pounds and ripped. It was like looking at a hologram of my younger, fitter self. I rolled my shoulders and felt the wound left by the shooter in the cottage pulling at itself. I remembered, again, that I needed a shave. Right then I didn’t feel even forty-two, never mind twenty-two.
‘Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. A double. And, hey, is it OK if I use the house phone? I left my cell in the cab. Pain in the arse.’
He looked at me in such a way as to leave no doubt that I was, leaned over and handed me the receiver from a wireless landline docked beside the till. As he did so, his shirt gaped open at the neck. Hanging there on a gold chain was a traditional three-barred Russian cross. I thanked him, squinting over his shoulder at the expensive bottles lined up behind him. Individual labels drew into focus: vodka. A lot of vodka.
I looked around for Baaz, but there was no sign of him in the crowd on the other side of the room. While blondie poured the Scotch, I dialled the number in the book of matches and counted the rings. On the sixth tone the line clicked. Coming back to me, in a distorted reverb, was the fractionally delayed thump-thump-thump of the music smothering the bar. Avraham Landau was on the premises.
‘What the fucking shit do you want, Yossi? I told you not to disturb me.’ Pure foul-mouthed mother-tongue Russian. I took a deep breath.
‘I’ve got a problem,’ I said, also in Russian. ‘At the bar.’
‘Then fucking deal with it,’ came the reply.
‘Nyet,’ I said. ‘It’s a big problem. Shabak.’
‘Fuck. OK. Offer them a drink on the house. I’ll come down.’
I hung up and exchanged the handset for a heavy tumbler of whisky. As I did so, Baaz sidled up beside me. The plan was a simple one: he would remove the SIG from his turban in the bathroom, retie it and then hide the pistol in his folded jacket – which he would then pass to me in the dimly lit jostle of the bar. He stood next to me, nervously swaying from one foot to the other, out of time with the music.
I stepped back from the bar to give a lone, black-eyed woman with an elaborate hairdo and an expensive smile a shot at getting served.
‘OK, let me have it.’ I was looking over Baaz’s shoulder, scanning the room for any response to my call. He didn’t move. ‘Baaz?’ I faced him properly. He was rooted to the spot. He was still wearing his jacket.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘There was a … a problem.’
‘What, in the bathroom?’
He nodded. I looked around. A short guy with a black ponytail, wearing a red shirt and a deep frown, bounced down the stairs. Avraham Landau. I watched him skirt around the customers and rock up to the bar. The frown evaporated into a shit-eating grin.
‘Yossi,’ I saw him mouth at the barman in Russian. ‘Where are our friends?’
The barman shrugged, kicking off the inevitable ‘you said, he said’ exchange.
‘Baaz, I need it now. Is it in the bathroom?’ He nodded, eyes downcast. Landau put his hands on his hips and looked up at the ceiling. The barman was looking for me. ‘Fuck it. Which stall is it in?’
‘It’s in …’
‘Where, Baaz? Where is it?’
He looked up at me, eyes pleading. ‘It’s in the hotel. I couldn’t do it. It’s not … It’s forbidden.’ Tears welled up in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’
The barman clocked me and turned to his boss.
Fuck.
I gave Baaz my whisky glass and headed straight towards them. The barman’s hands went under the countertop.
Two metres.
The black-eyed woman who’d been served after me turned on her heels, martini glass in hand, the DJ’s rhythm moving her hips, smile dancing on her lips.
‘Hey,’ I said, wrapping around her, ‘you look great.’
I drew her close to me. She froze, rigid, the movement of the music draining out of her. Our cheeks touched. My fingers found the back of her head and slid up her neck,
withdrawing the long, forked silver slide holding her hair in place. With my left arm I swept her away from me, gently. Her glass fell and smashed. Vodka evaporated into the barroom night. She stumbled and I heard her gasp. My right hand kept moving, arcing forward and then down, hard. The barman’s fist was wrapped around the grip of a Jericho 9mm. I drove the pointed metal tongues between his knuckles, trapping his trigger finger beneath the steel of the guard and the wooden countertop.
I twisted the hairpin and brought my wrist across his face, striking his left temple. He reeled backwards, gun hand relaxing. I wrenched the barrel of the pistol up and out, snapping his index finger, the limp digit still caught in the guard. Then I brought the Jericho to bear on him at point blank. His left hand came around, gripping the neck of a vodka bottle. I leaned in, ramming the muzzle into his sternum. I put my thumb on the back of the slide and fired. The 9mm round tore a wound channel straight through his chest, severing his spine – the noise of the shot absorbed by his lungs and the unopened breech. He dropped. Six seconds from grabbing his gun to hitting the deck.
The bass rumble of the music thundered on, overwritten by the bright notes of an electronic crescendo shifting from one turntable to another. I’d blocked the line of sight of the black-eyed woman I’d robbed, and there wasn’t anything more unusual to hear than the vodka bottle hitting the ground. No one turned around. If they had, all they’d have seen was an unattended bar. I racked the Jericho. The spent cartridge case leapt out, clattering like a brass ice cube into a tumbler on the bar. The only other person who knew what was happening was Landau.
He started to run but ploughed into a couple dancing. Entwined in hair and limbs, he stumbled. The pissed-off dancing partner pushed him back towards me and I caught him by the wrist, twisting it up into a lock behind his back.
‘Prostite,’ I said in Russian to the dancers. Sorry. ‘Too much vodka.’ They shrugged it off and wrapped their arms around each other. I dug the Jericho into Landau’s ribs, hard enough to bruise them.
‘Move. Your office. Now. Keep smiling or I’ll kill you here. Ponyal?’ He told me he understood. I turned to Baaz as we moved off towards the stairs. ‘Don’t go to the hotel. I’ll meet you on the beach, by the marina. OK?’ He nodded. ‘And ditch the turban.’ He nodded again and we went our separate ways.
Arkhangel : A Novel (2020) Page 25