Red to Black (16 page)

‘I’ll have a Moscow Mule,’ Finn says and for a moment Adrian is knocked off the treadmill of his platitudes. To Adrian, a mule is a drug mule. Is Finn referring to a man with drugs hidden up his arse arriving by plane from Russia? But Adrian swiftly conceals his confusion.

‘Something they feed you at one of your more louche clubs, is it?’ he says.

Finn describes the cocktail and it causes quite a comical stir. One of Adrian’s friends from a City bank says he’ll have one too and then they tell the barman to mix a jug. And suddenly they’re in a conclave, Adrian, Finn, the banker and some other financial big shots, Adrian at the centre, a real partygoer—–a real goer, Finn thinks. He’s seen Adrian in the office chasing skirt, but he’s just as useful at rallying a bunch of all-male lunchtime drinkers around him.

Finn is knocked off balance and can’t recover from what he’s been told. Perhaps Adrian knows he will be knocked sideways. In normal circumstances, the throng of public school City board directors only makes Finn rise to the occasion, to be as public school, as City board director as the next man. He’s lunched with Adrian here many times before, after all. But now he feels out of his depth, his focus is lost, the game is getting on top of him and he sympathises for a moment with one or two of the Service’s senior but grammar-school figures whom he normally scorns for letting themselves be browbeaten by their public schoolboy colleagues. This, perhaps, is what snaps Finn out of his shock: the need to perform, to be as good as anyone.

‘What about this Russian fellow?’ the banker asks Adrian, in a break in the inconsequential chat. ‘The aluminium tycoon, Pavel Drachevsky. Is he good for it? Will he make a proper company that can list here in London, d’you think?’

‘More Finn’s department than mine, I’m afraid,’ Adrian replies. ‘He’s been our Trade Secretary out there for donkey’s years.’

‘Second Trade Secretary,’ Finn corrects him, and wonders what Adrian’s cover is in Boodles, or if he even has a cover here. The crazy notion flashes through Finn’s mind that Boodles is a sort of official dining room for MI6.

‘What d’you think?’ the banker asks Finn. ‘We’ve got to watch these chaps now, they’ve snapped up everything of value in Russia.’

‘Are you an investor?’ Finn replies gamely. The throng laughs.

‘Wouldn’t know how to,’ the banker says. ‘But I hear Rothschild’s are nosing around this chap,’ he adds seriously, and there is clearly a reason for his interest. ‘He must be better than some of the other candidates.’

‘Rothschild’s have a history in Russia,’ Finn says. ‘They’re the only people who ever sued the Tsar, back in the 1860s. They got a lot of points for that.’

‘And won, no doubt.’

‘Yes, they won. Russians couldn’t believe it. The Tsar, a god, had been successfully sued. Rothschild’s balanced it out nicely by suing the Pope too.’

‘If Rothschild’s are interested in Drachevsky, they must be on to something, don’t you reckon?’ the banker prompts Finn.

‘The Russian oligarchs are still sorting out what they legally own and what they don’t legally own,’ Finn says carefully. ‘Pavel Drachevsky has half of Russia’s aluminium, but he’s sharing it with some other co-owners. One of the men connected with the company’s gone to jail. Others aren’t so easy to deal with. There’s a guy in Israel who really holds the strings. And then there’s Stepanovich, who has a finger in the pie. Maybe others. If Drachevsky can consolidate, my guess is he’ll look to London for a listing. In time. The rules are more lax here than in the States.’

‘That so?’ someone says.

‘Surely you mean “relaxed”,’ another Savile Row suit says. ‘The rules are more relaxed.’

Everyone laughs at this.

‘The Russians like it here,’ Finn persists unnecessarily, and receives a warning shot from Adrian, ‘because, unlike the Yanks, we don’t ask them too many difficult questions. The City will welcome them with open arms when they start to arrive, no questions asked.’

It is the winter at the end of the year 2000 and London is fascinated by gaining access to the oligarchs, their raw materials and their unprecedented wealth. The City of London has spotted a gold seam for several years now and, despite the occasional warnings, London wants into Russia more than ever.

Adrian smiles warmly at his protégé’s expertise, but nevertheless takes him by the arm and they steer through the throng like joined contestants in a three-legged race.

Once in the dining room they sit down at a white-napped table in a corner, away from other ears, and the menus are brought, Finn- and Adrian- as always admiring the waitresses the club gets on the cheap from Eastern Europe.

Finn has potted shrimp and Adrian agrees rather than chooses. They order steak and kidney pie to follow.

Adrian leans across the table.

‘Remember ninety-five?’ he says, not wasting any time, Finn notices. ‘Six years after the Wall came down? Russia was in a total mess. Yeltsin was all over the place, gangsters roamed the streets like wolves and the bubble was going to burst. Russia was going bankrupt and the Communists looked like they might win the next election, get back into power.’ Adrian doesn’t wait for a reply. ‘What they needed was hard currency to save the nation. The rich were getting their money out of Russia as fast as they could because they feared the return of the old regime.’

‘The KGB spirited out four hundred billion dollars, according to our estimate,’ Finn says.

‘Well, we like to say it was the KGB,’ Adrian says vaguely. ‘But it was business interests, organised crime, you name it. Anyway, what Russia needed was our help to save the situation. The oligarchs rallied round Yeltsin to keep him in power and Clinton got together with the heads of the world’s three biggest aluminium producers and told them to fix a price. Completely illegal, of course. But brilliant. And the right thing to do. The price was fixed so the Russians could sell their aluminium at a good price and save the economy. That’s what happened. Russia was saved from a return to Communism. Clinton rewarded the head of Alcoa, the world’s biggest aluminium company, with a job running the US Treasury. There was a hell of a stink, the FBI got involved, all the letter-of-the-law sort of people were up in arms. But Clinton was right. He saw the big picture.’

This is a most subtle approach, Finn thinks. Adrian knows that Finn admires Clinton. Adrian has called Finn a bleeding heart liberal on many occasions and, once, even introduced him as a ‘commie student type’, to much laughter. The fact that Adrian, in his praise of the former president, actually despises Clinton for ‘avoiding the draft’ is, for the moment, forgotten.

So Finn knows that Adrian is getting him onside with this anecdote.

Adrian picks up the wine list and makes a big thing of choosing an extremely expensive Burgundy.

‘Special occasion,’ Adrian says. ‘I want you to know there’s no hard feelings for what happened in Moscow. Let alone your little walk in Germany,’ he added.

‘Thank you, Adrian,’ Finn says, but he is thinking about Mikhail, his source, his
raison d’être
for seven long years.

‘Well, right now,’ Adrian continues when the waitress has
gone, ‘we’re in a situation which is not unlike the one back then, in ninety-five. But this time we have a new president, Putin, who can really put the past behind Russia, get rid of the Communists for good. He’s got terrific ratings with ordinary Russians. Which he needs,’ Adrian protests, ‘in spite of your harsh view of him. The point is, Putin can make a difference. Bring Russia into the community of nations at last.

‘OK, so he’s not whiter than white. Chechnya was–is- a bloody sham. But we’re all grown-ups and we need to see that Russia has to be handled by a strongman for the time being.’ Adrian looks sadly serious. ‘They’re not, actually, ready for a true democracy yet, Finn. It’s too early, you know. You know that.’

Somehow Finn bites his tongue on a number of possible protest points. He suddenly feels he isn’t hungry at all.

But Adrian is off on another tack, no doubt connected in some way to the Clinton and aluminium story.

‘Those special reports you did for us a few months ago,’ Adrian reminds him. ‘One of your last reports, I believe. A round-up of the Russian oligarchs, if you like, and where they stand in the line of power and money. They’re the people we need, here in the West, and we need them to have the support of Putin and, for that, we need to encourage Putin, not tick him off every time he sends an army into Chechnya, or bumps off a bloody journalist. There are bigger fish to fry.

‘Anyway, those reports were bloody good, Finn. You really got beneath the skin. You showed us the oligarchs, warts and all. The mafia network, their KGB connections, the rough and tumble of the way business is being done in Russia today. Brilliant stuff. Most of all you showed us just how vast their wealth is. Well, we need that wealth, Finn, we need it circulating in the world’s economy, making more money, not just stuck in trust accounts in the Caymans, bugger all use to anyone.

‘What I’m saying,’ Adrian taps the table, ‘is that, while the reports you did were damn good, they gave us exactly the wrong message.’

Finn is momentarily taken aback by this hairpin turn in Adrian’s line of thought.

‘They gave us the true message,’ Finn counters finally.

‘The truth is not always the whole truth,’ Adrian says abruptly. ‘Those reports you did were compiled by us at the Office in order to be shown to our banks and our investors here in the City. UK plc, if you like. They were compiled in order to
encourage
our banks, our institutions, Finn, to go into Russia. What you wrote, old boy, though containing much truth, would scare off anyone in their right mind from ever investing over there in a million years. Not good.’

Adrian sips the wine and it is excellent. Their wine glasses are filled almost to the brim by the pretty Romanian waitress, and Adrian nudges Finn at her inexperience at pouring wine. But when she’s gone with a nervous smile, he continues.

‘We reviewed them, the reports, at Joint Intelligence and, I must tell you, they received high praise from everyone. The PM was very pleased. But. But. The PM issued an advice to us to tone them down. He knew we have to get our banks and big companies over there, into Russia. Blair’s advice was right. Probably written by Alastair Campbell, though,’ Adrian adds and laughs.

But he is not finished yet.

‘So. Tone them down we did. For Tone,’ Adrian continues forcefully. ‘Because that was the right thing to do. Like Clinton in ninety-five, Mr Blair is doing the right thing with Russia. We can’t get hung up on the
way
business is being done over there, we must get on with actually
doing
business over there. Get me?’

For Finn, this is a first. He has certainly never heard Adrian heap praise on Clinton and Blair in the same meal, or the same year for that matter. But Adrian has made his point about why Putin
must be supported, at apparently any cost-even the falsifying of field reports-and now slices through his steak and kidney pie as if he is partitioning India.

‘Vladmir Putin will be very pleased,’ Finn says.

Adrian halts a second forkful of pie before it reaches his mouth. He puts his knife and fork back on to the plate and looks at Finn. Gone is the camaraderie, the
entre nous
style of his recent exposition of events, the car journey and the meeting at the house in Hackney. His eyes are black with anger.

‘Be very careful, Finn. You’re treading a very thin line indeed. Don’t try me.’ He leans in towards Finn and starts to jab his knife too close to his face. ‘Remember Tony Cardonus? He was with the Office in Bosnia at the end of the nineties. Remember him, do you?’

‘No, Adrian, I don’t.’

‘Yes you do. Married a German woman,’ Adrian says, without taking his eyes off Finn’s, without even blinking. ‘We pulled him out for rather the same reasons we had to pull you out. Insubordination. We paid him off and he went to live with his German bint in Saxony or somewhere. Then he got chippy. Then he demanded more cash. Then he began to make threats. First of all we turned his house over in Saxony. We took everything we needed, computers, the lot. That apparently didn’t work. So we had to go back and we turned his house over again and really made a mess this time. In fact, they couldn’t even live in it. Then, would you believe it, when he still didn’t back off, his kid got kicked out of the local school, thank you very much. Then Cardonus found he couldn’t get another job. His German bint and their son left him. Know where Cardonus is now? Working behind a bar in the Hamburg red light district. When he can stand up straight enough. Get me? When we came back the third time, we didn’t just do his house in. So don’t try me, Finn.’

Adrian returns voraciously to his steak and kidney pie.

Finn describes how, at that moment, he saw the brute in his old
recruiter properly for the first time: the ruthless, single-minded streak that had got Adrian through the Malaysian jungle or the Omani desert thirty, forty years before; not wearing a grey suit in a London club, but a breath away from death, and which has propelled him through the Service nearly to the top.

‘Not hungry?’ Adrian says to Finn between mouthfuls.

Finn picks up his knife and fork and eats so that Adrian won’t know how sick he feels.

‘You must come down to Wiltshire,’ Adrian says when their plates are clean and he’s pouring the rest of the Burgundy equally between them. ‘Pen would love it,’ he adds, as though it has been some third person who, five minutes before, stopped by the table and issued an explicit physical threat against Finn.

They adjourn for brandy as a late appearance by the sun sends a streak of light through the windows at the front of the club.

‘Pen’s very fond of you, Finn,’ Adrian says, returning to the theme. ‘She and I think of you like…well, like family.’

Pen is Penny, Adrian’s wife. At various times in the years since Finn has known and worked for Adrian, Penny has been described by Adrian’s contemporaries as ‘first class’, ‘a top girl’ and, once, as the ‘perfect woman’. This has not stopped Adrian philandering in London during the weekdays and maybe that is part of Penny’s ‘perfection’, Finn thinks: her ability to overlook her husband’s behaviour.