The Spanish Game (23 page)

‘He is an associate,’ Tamarov replied after a pause. Both men glanced backat the table. Ben, Mark was pleased to see, was now talking to Ayesha in the corner. That would keep him out of trouble. Macklin, Raquel, Duchev and Philippe were laughing amongst themselves in a separate conversation.

‘And your brother?’ Tamarov asked. ‘What does he think?’

‘Ben?’

‘Yes. Ben.’

‘Oh, all brother cares about is paintings.’

Tamarov’smouth dipped.

‘I like him very much,’ he said. ‘Benjamin is good person. It is not easy for him to live with everything that has happened. I also lose my father, when I was seventeen year old.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘A car crash outside Moscow. He was killed with a friend, coming backfrom a day of fishing in the country. My mother was very sickand I had to inform my younger sister and brother of this news. They are twins, only ten years old at the time. When I tell them what has happened they are screaming, like animals on the floor.’

‘That’s terrible. I’m really sorry.’

Two girls approached them at a gentle sway but Tamarov waved them off.

‘I remember afterwards, going through his…’ he searched for the word ‘… his possessions. My mother was ill for some time and it was left to me, only a young man in Soviet Russia, to arrange the funeral. This was an intimate thing, you understand, for a boy to go through his own father’s books, his clothes.

Later I read an American author. He says: “There is nothing more terrible than to face the objects of a dead man.” I always remember this.’

‘I had to do the same thing,’ Mark said, and for a moment he was out of the role, alone in Keen’s flat that first time: finding a razor lying beside the bath, clogged with his father’s hair; suits and ties in cupboards, never to be worn again; a Bible in a drawer just a stretch away from his pillow; even an unopened packet of condoms gathering dust under the bed.

‘So we have something in common,’ Tamarov announced.

‘Yes we do.’ And for no better reason than that he was unsettled and short of ideas, Mark picked up his drinkand proposed a toast.

‘To the future,’ he said.

Tamarov looked pleasantly surprised.

‘Yes, to the future,’ he responded, and smiled. He appeared to be on the point of adding more when Duchev approached. Acknowledging Mark with a granite nod, he said something quickly to Tamarov in a language which was not Russian.

‘
Es atnacu uzzinat ka klajas. Nu, ka iet?
’

‘
Vies iet labi
,’ Tamarov replied. ‘
Esmu parliecinats ka bracli neka nezina
.’

Latvian, Mark assumed, and attempted to commit certain phrases to memory. Tamarov had used the word
labi
, which he knew meant ‘fine’ or ‘good’, but he would struggle to remember anything useful for Randall.

‘Juris is wondering where we get to,’ Tamarov said. ‘I was just telling him that we come backand sit down.’

Again the pair spoke briefly in Latvian, this time with distinct names emerging from the flow of language.
Philip. Toms
. Something about
piedzerussies
. Mark noticed that Tamarov dealt with Duchev as a young, successful executive might speakto his foreman or chauffeur: with an authority checked by respect for the older man’s experience and loyalty.

‘What’s happening over at the table?’ he asked. Duchev seemed to wait for permission to speak. Air conditioning had rendered the club almost odourless, but Mark could pickout the strong smell of his sweat.

‘We find out,’ he said.

Together they returned to the group and found Macklin holding court at the table, spittles of champagne now staining his electric blue suit. Raquel, Ayesha, Philippe and Ben were listening with rapt attention to a high-volume monologue about prostitution.

‘Thing about hookers,’ Macklin was saying, ‘is you have to watch out for the fibs. I learned this early on, Benny boy, right from the word go. Brass says she’s seventeen, more than likely she’s five years older, ten from time to time. You go for someone who’s thirty, take it from me she’s getting on for the menopause and it’s like fucking your mum. “Mature” is the same deal. You know what they mean by that, don’t you, Ben? Ropey as fuck. Ditto “Sophisticated”. Don’t make me laugh. About as classy as these birds get is watching
Countdown
on theircoffee break.’

Tamarov did not bother sitting down. A tall black girl with muscular, gym-stiffened arms had caught his eye and he returned with her to the bar. Noticing this, Macklin raised his voice and directed it at Duchev.

‘Good for old Vladimir,’ he shouted. ‘Lookat your boss having fun. You wanna get some yourself, Juris, before it gets cold. Bit like the Hungry Duck in Moscow, eh?’

Duchev said nothing, and Macklin turned his attention back to Mark and Ben.

‘So, Keeno, I was just telling your brother here about my life of iniquity and vice.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’ There was a layer of gleaming sweat like fat melting on Macklin’s face. ‘Shall I tell you my golden rule, Benny boy, my golden little rule?’

‘Why not?’ Ben said tiredly.

‘If it flies, fucks or floats, rent it, don’t buy it.’

When Ben failed to laugh, Macklin launched a further tirade.

‘Well, lookat that,’ he said. ‘He’s like Sebastian fucking Roth, your little brother. Clean as a whistle and tied to the sink.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Ben said, and might have lost his temper.

‘I mean our Seb is too busy kissing government arse to have himself a good time. Spends his nights at the opera with the cream of New Labour, having intimate little dinners with the movers and shakers of Whitehall. God knows why he bothers. Fancies himself for a place in the House of Lords, I reckon. Very ambitious, our Mr Seb.’

‘Easy, Tom,’ Mark said, but Macklin was on a roll.

‘Come on, you know what I’m saying, Keeno. Those trips abroad, we hardly ever see him.’ He started talking directly at Raquel, at Ayesha, at anyone who would listen. ‘Me and Mark, we go off to Moscow nowadays and we have ourselves a right good time. But Seb, no, he keeps his distance, hob-nobbing with his cronies in the Kremlin. Who does he thinkhe is?’

‘Tom, leave it,’ Mark said again, and this time his tone was more forthright. Duchev had turned away, but was surely processing every word.

‘Fine,’ Macklin replied. ‘Fine. I’m only telling you the truth. Way I see it, Benny boy, man like you wants to give himself a treat from time to time. I saw you when I came in here, Raquel giving you the once over. You were loving it, mate,
loving
it. Wasn’t he, sweetheart?’ Raquel smiled obligingly. ‘I’ll tell you this for nothing. I had a Thai bird last night, fucking unbelievable. Nipples like indoor fireworks. You don’t know what you’re missing.’

Ben lit a cigarette. At that moment he would rather have been anywhere else in the world but listening to Macklin talking about his sex life.

‘Philippe’s been there, haven’t you, mate?’ D’Erlanger, who had been quiet for some time, looked awkwardly at the table. ‘Don’t be shy, Hercule, don’t be shy. Down the Caymans, wasn’t it? You and Timmy Lander went retail. He told me all about it.’

Neither Ben nor his brother could prevent the looks of shock that sprang on to their faces.

‘Timothy Lander?’ Mark said quickly.

‘That’s right.’ Macklin’s hand was scraping up Raquel’s back. ‘Night on the tiles, wasn’t it, Poirot?’

‘Do I
know
him?’ Mark asked. ‘From Libra?’

‘Tim?’ Macklin frowned. ‘Don’t think so, mate. Top bloke, though. Old friend of mine from college; runs a diving school out there.’

‘You sure?’

‘Sure I’m sure. Philippe was going out a while back and I asked Tim to - how shall I put this delicately? - show him a good time.’ Macklin appeared to be affected by a memory, pleasure briefly leaving his face. ‘Matter of fact, I tried to hookyour old man up with him, Keeno, when he was planning a holiday out there. Told me he wanted to do some diving out in the Caymans, so I gave him Tim’s number. That was just before the, er, accident, you know. Sorry about that. Here, have another drink.’

39

‘Timothy Lander is a fucking
diving
instructor.’

‘I knew that.’

‘You
knew
that?’

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 fuckshould 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 drunkwas 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 thinkTimothy 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 overtookan 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 darkmood 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 lookand 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.

‘Fuckno,’ 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 backin 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.