A Most Wanted Man (10 page)

“Yes, well, that’s very admirable and I’m sure we shall come to that,” said Brue and, as a sign of his businesslike intentions, drew a leather-backed notepad from one inside pocket, and a gold roller-ball pen from another. “But meanwhile, let’s get down a few elementary facts, if you don’t mind. Starting with your full names.”

But this evidently wasn’t what Issa wanted to hear.

“Sir!”

“Yes, Issa.”

“You have read the work of the great French thinker Jean-Paul Sartre, sir?”

“I can’t say I have.”

“Like Sartre, I have a nostalgia for the future. When I have a future, I shall have no past. I shall have only God and my future.”

Brue felt Annabel’s eyes on him. When he couldn’t see them, he still felt them. Or thought he did.

“However, tonight we are obliged to address the present,” he countered glossily. “So why don’t you just let me have your full names?”—pen poised to receive them.

“Salim,” Issa answered after a moment’s indecision.

“Any others?”

“Mahmoud.”

“So Issa Salim Mahmoud.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And are those your given names or names that you have chosen for yourself?”

“They are chosen of God, sir.”

“Quite so.” Brue smiled to himself deliberately, partly to ease the tension, partly to show he was in command. “Then let me ask you this one, may I? We are talking Russian. You are Russian. Before God chose your present names, did you have a
Russian
name? And a Russian patronymic to go with it? What names, for example, might one find on your birth certificate, I wonder?”

Having consulted Annabel with lowered eyes, Issa plunged a skeletal hand inside his overcoat, then his shirtfront, and drew out a grimy purse of chamois leather. And from it two faded press cuttings, which he passed across the table.

“Karpov,”
Brue ruminated aloud when he had read them. “Karpov is who? Karpov is your
family
name? Why do you give me these pieces of newspaper?”

“It is not material, sir. Please. I cannot,” Issa muttered, shaking his sweated head. His hands had rejoined each other. His long thin fingers were fondling the gold Koran at his wrist.

“Well, for me I’m afraid it
is
material,” Brue said, as kindly as he was able without relinquishing the upper hand. “I’m afraid it’s very material indeed. Are you telling me that Colonel Grigori Borisovich Karpov is, or was, a relative of yours? Is that what you are telling me?” He turned to Annabel, whom in his mind he had been addressing all along. “This is really rather difficult, Frau Richter,” he complained in German, starting stiffly, then instinctively moderating his tone. “If your client has a claim to make, he must either say who he is and make it, or withdraw, surely. He can’t expect me to play both sides of the net.”

A moment of confusion intervened while from the kitchen Leyla called something plaintive to Melik in Turkish, and Melik said something soothing in return.

“Issa,” Annabel said when they had all settled again. “It is my professional opinion that, however painful it is to you, you should try to answer the gentleman’s question.”

“Sir. As God is great, I wish only to live a life of order,” Issa repeated in a strangled voice.

“All the same, I’m afraid I need an answer to my question.”

“It is logically true that Karpov is my father, sir,” Issa confessed at last with a mirthless smile. “He did all that was necessary in nature to secure that title, I am sure. But I was never Karpov’s son. I am not now Karpov’s son. God willing, sir, I shall never in my life be Colonel Grigori Borisovich Karpov’s son.”

“But Colonel Karpov is
dead,
it appears,” Brue pointed out, with more brutality than he intended, waving a hand towards the press cuttings lying on the table between them.

“He is dead, sir, and God willing he is in hell and will remain in hell for all eternity.”

“And before he died—at the time when you were born, I should rather say—what first name did he give you in addition to your patronymic, which is presumably
Grigorevich
?”

Issa was hanging his head, rolling it from side to side.

“He chose the purest,” he said, lifting his head and sneering at Brue in a knowing way.

“Purest in what sense?”

“Of all Russian names in the world, the most Russian. I was his
Ivan,
sir. His sweet little Ivan from Chechnya.”

Never one to allow a bad moment to fester, Brue decided on a change of topic.

“I understand you came here from
Turkey.
By an informal route, shall we say?” Brue suggested, in the sort of cheery tone he might have used at a cocktail party. Leyla, contrary to Annabel’s instructions, had returned from the kitchen area.

“I was in Turkish prison, sir.” He had unfastened the gold bracelet he was wearing and was holding it in his hand, agitating it while he spoke.

“And for how long, if I may ask?”

“One hundred and eleven and a half days exactly, sir. In Turkish prison, there is every incentive to study the arithmetic of time,” Issa exclaimed, with a harsh, unearthly laugh. “And before Turkey I was in prison in Russia, you see! Actually in three prisons, for an aggregate period of eight hundred and fourteen days and seven hours. If you wish, I will list my prisons for you in their order of quality,” he ran on wildly, his voice rising in lyrical insistence. “I am quite a connoisseur, I assure you, sir! There was one prison so popular they had to split it in three pieces. Oh yes! In one part we slept, in another we were tortured and in the third part there was a hospital for us to recover. The torture was efficient, and after torture one sleeps well, but unfortunately the hospital was substandard. That is a problem with our modern Russian state, I would say! The nurses were qualified in sleep deprivation but noticeably deficient in other medical skills. Permit me an observation, sir. To be a good torturer, it is extremely necessary to be of a compassionate disposition. Without a fellow feeling for one’s subject, one cannot ascend to the true heights of the art. I have encountered only one or two who are in the top class.”

Brue waited for a moment in case there was more, but Issa, his dark eyes wide with excitement, was waiting on Brue. And yet again it was Leyla who inadvertently succeeded in breaking the tension. Troubled by Issa’s state of emotional excitement, if unable to understand its cause, she scurried back to the kitchen and fetched a glass of cordial, which she placed before him on the table, while fixing first Brue and then Annabel with a reproachful scowl.

“And may one ask
why
you were in prison in the first place?” Brue resumed.

“Oh yes, sir! Please ask! You are most welcome,” Issa cried, now with the recklessness of a condemned scholar speaking from the scaffold. “To be a Chechen is crime enough, sir, I assure you. We Chechen are born extremely guilty. Ever since czarist times, our noses have been culpably flat and our hair and skin criminally dark. This is an enduring offense to public order, sir!”

“But your nose is not flat, if I may say so.”

“To my regret, sir.”

“But one way or another you made it to Turkey, and from Turkey you escaped,” Brue suggested soothingly. “And came all the way to Hamburg. That was quite an achievement, surely.”

“It was the will of Allah.”

“But with some assistance from yourself, I suspect.”

“If a man has money, sir, as you will know better than I, everything is possible.”

“Ah, but
whose
money?” Brue demanded archly, darting in swiftly now that money was in the air. “Who provided the money to pay for your many brilliant escapes, I wonder?”

“I would say, sir”—Issa replied after prolonged soul searching, in which Brue half expected the answer to be Allah again—“I would say his name is very likely to be Anatoly.”

“Anatoly?”
Brue repeated, after allowing the name to resonate in his head—and in some distant chamber of his late father’s past.

“Anatoly is correct, sir. Anatoly is the man who pays for everything. But especially for escapes. You know this man, sir?” he interjected eagerly. “He is a friend of yours?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“For Anatoly, money is the purpose of all life. And death too, I would say.”

Brue was on the point of pursuing this when Melik spoke up from his post at the window.

“They’re still there,” he growled in German, peering through the edge of the curtain. “Those two old women. They’re not interested in the jewelry anymore. One’s reading the notices in the window of the pharmacist’s shop, the other’s in a doorway talking on her mobile. They’re too ugly to be hookers, even for round here.”

“It’s just two ordinary women,” Annabel retorted sternly, going to the window and looking out, while Leyla cupped her hands before her face and closed her eyes in supplication. “You’re being dramatic, Melik.”

But this was not good enough for Issa, who having caught the sense of Melik’s words, was already standing with his saddlebag slung across his chest.

“What do you see there?” he appealed to Annabel in a shrill voice, swinging round accusingly to face her. “Is it your KGB again?”

“It’s nobody, Issa. If there’s a problem, we’ll take care of you. That’s what we’re here for.”

And once again, Brue had a sense that the choirboy voice was trying a little too hard to be nonchalant.

“So now, this
Anatoly,
” Brue resumed with determined purpose, when peace of a kind had been restored and Leyla, on Annabel’s insistence, dispatched to make fresh apple tea. “He must be a pretty good friend of yours, by the sounds of it.”

“Sir, we indeed may say that this Anatoly is a good friend to prisoners, no question,” Issa agreed with exaggerated alacrity. “It also unfortunately happens that he is the friend of rapists, murderers, gangsters and crusaders. Anatoly is broad-minded in his friendships, I would say,” he added, pushing away sweat with the back of his hand while he managed a rather dreadful grin.

“Was he a good friend to Colonel Karpov also?”

“I would say that Anatoly is the best friend a murderer and rapist could possibly have, sir. For Karpov, he acquired places for me at the best Moscow schools, even when I had been rejected for disciplinary reasons.”

“And it was Anatoly who paid for your escape from prison. Why did he do that, I wonder? Had you earned his gratitude in some way?”

“Karpov paid.”

“Forgive me. You just said Anatoly paid.”

“But forgive
me,
sir! Please forgive this technical error! You are correct to rebuke me. I hope this will not appear in my record,” he ran on recklessly, this time including Annabel in his appeal. “
Karpov
paid. That is the unavoidable truth, sir. The money came from the precious gold trinkets round the necks and wrists of Chechnya’s dead, that is very correct. But it was Anatoly who bribed the prison governors and the guards. It was Anatoly who gave me the letter of introduction to your admirable self. Anatoly is a wise and pragmatic counselor who knows very well how to do business with corrupt prison officials without offending their standards of probity.”

“Letter of introduction?” Brue repeated. “Nobody has shown
me
any letter.” He turned to Annabel, but to no avail. She could freeze her face as well as he could. Better.

“It is a mafia letter, sir. It is written by the mafia lawyer Anatoly regarding the death of the murderer and rapist Colonel Grigori Borisovich Karpov, formerly of the Red Army.”

“To whom?”

“To me, sir.”

“Do you have it with you?”

“Against my heart, always.” Slipping the bracelet back on his wrist, he hauled the purse from the recesses of his black coat once more and handed Brue a crumpled letter. A printed heading in Roman and Cyrillic script gave the name and address of a firm of lawyers in Moscow. The text was typed in Russian and began
My dear Issa.
It lamented that Issa’s father had died of a stroke in the company of beloved comrades in arms. He had been buried with military honors. No reference to a Karpov, but the names
Tommy Brue
and
Brue Frères
typed in bold and the word
Lipizzaner
followed by the number of the account inked across the bottom. Signed Anatoly, no surname.

“And what exactly did this gentleman
Anatoly
tell you that my bank and I might do for you?”

Through the frosted screen came sounds of Leyla noisily clanking cups and saucers.

“You will protect me, sir. You will enfold me in your protection, as Anatoly himself did. You are a good and powerful man, an oligarch of your fine city. You will appoint me a medical student in your university. Thanks to your great bank, I shall become a doctor in the service of God and humanity, and live an ordered life according to a solemn oath given to the criminal and murderer Karpov by your revered father, and passed to his son on his death. You are your father’s son, I believe.”

Brue gave a deft smile. “Unlike you, yes, I am indeed my father’s son,” he conceded, and was rewarded with another over-brilliant smile as Issa’s haunted gaze slid towards Annabel, held her for a moment as if in thrall to her and then abandoned her.

“Your father made many fine promises to this Colonel Karpov, sir!” Issa blurted, springing to his feet again as fear and excitement once more got the better of him. He drew a hasty gulp of breath, grimaced wildly and adopted the rasping, autocratic tone of Brue’s imaginary father: “‘Grigori, my friend! When your little boy Ivan comes to me, though let us hope it will be many years hence, my bank will treat him as our kin and blood,’” he cried, flinging out an arm and clawing at the air with his fingertips in order to entrench the sacred vow. “‘If I am no longer on this earth, then it will be my son, Tommy, who honors your Ivan, this I swear to you. This is my heart’s solemn promise, Grigori my friend, and it is the promise also of Mr. Lipizzaner.’” His voice came crookedly down to earth. “Such, sir, were the words of your revered father as they were repeated to me by the mafia lawyer Anatoly, who out of a perverse love of my father has been my savior through many misfortunes,” he ended, as his voice cracked, and his breathing came in rasps.