All That Man Is

1

Yesterday. In the afternoon, he left the house in Lowndes Square, the huge house still holding the shock of what had happened. Chelsea, seen through the window of the Maybach. Sloane Street, its familiar shops — Hermès, Ermenegildo Zegna. Cheyne Walk. Traffic heavyish at four. Dark November day. Low tide, the Thames, dull mudflats. That park, on the other side, the south side. Then small streets, and the heliport. The windy platform over the water. The loud, leather-trimmed pod of the Sikorsky. They were about to fly upriver, over the western districts of London. As the helicopter turned over the water, wavelets fleeing from the downdraught, he looked back at it, at London, the place that for some years had been his home. Then it was dropping away, to something merely schematic, a monochrome expanse spread out in the light of the late-autumn afternoon. He would never see it again.

The decision had been made standing at a window in Lowndes Square, staring out. The decision to jump into the sea. To drown himself. It had seemed like some sort of solution.

Farnborough airport.

A two-hour flight to Venice.

From Venice airport, a hired limousine.

Venice itself hidden in darkness and drizzle. It was there, somewhere, on the other side of the water, an eroding monument to lost wealth, to lost power.

The harsh, tall light of the docks. The hum of the pump as the yacht took on fuel. The smell of the fuel. Someone holding an umbrella.

And Enzo, the first officer, waiting for him at the end of a strip of drizzle-wet carpet: ‘Welcome aboard, sir.’

Enzo told him that they would be all set in half an hour, wanted to know where they were headed.

A pause.

He had not thought about it. It made no difference.

‘Uh,’ he said. ‘Corfu.’

Enzo nodded, smiled.

And Mark, the head steward: ‘Will sir be dining this evening?’

‘Just a snack,’ he said to him. ‘Thank you.’

It arrived, later, with a half-bottle of Barbaresco. He did not touch the food. He had a glass of the Barbaresco.

It was from his own estate, a property he had acquired some years ago. An impulsive thing. He has only been there once. He finds it hard to picture the place. They had flown over it in the helicopter, he and the previous owner, a Piedmontese or Savoyard aristocrat, a youngish man, pointing things out to him, shouting over the shriek of the machine…

Silence.

He was lying on the bed, waiting for the yacht to start moving.

He did not mean to fall asleep. He meant to jump into the sea. He meant to drown himself. And yet, for the first time in many days, he simply fell asleep.

2

In the morning, the yacht is at anchor, a kilometre or two from the Croatian shore. Enzo has phoned to say there is a storm out in the Adriatic. He has apologised for the delay, and said they will be on the move again at some point in the afternoon, when the storm out at sea has passed.

Nearer the shore, where the yacht is anchored, it is a windy, unpleasant day. Sometimes rain.

He turns down Mark’s suggestion, in the middle of the morning, to take the launch and visit the little seaside town that they can see.

Instead, he picks at his lunch in the small private dining room — a single table, able to seat only eight — on the middle deck.

He feels like an imposter in the world of the living, still in the same clothes he fell asleep in, still carrying the stale, days-old scent of Cartier Pasha.

When he woke up this morning, grey light was gathering at the windows. Lifting his head, he looked at it, puzzled. Then he understood. One more day.

It would have to be done at night. No one would notice then, and try to save him. No one would notice — just, in the morning, his quarters empty, and all around the inscrutable sea. The long, dissolving wake.

He is a man in his sixties, with a heavy paunch. A hard handsome face. He has lost much of his hair. He is wearing a shirt with an exaggeratedly large collar, black silk. White leather shoes.

The sea is blue like flint and cold and unforgiving. Squally rain speckles the tall windows of the private dining room, and across the restless grey water, the Croatian town huddles on the coast. Stony hills loom above it, collide with clouds.

He puts down his fork and summons Mark. When he appears, he asks him for a cigar, and Mark addresses himself to the humidor.

Mark presents him with the cigar and asks whether he would like a digestif. A shake of the head.

‘Will that be all then, sir?’ Mark asks. Mark is from Sunderland.

‘Yes. Thank you.’

With the laden tray, Mark leaves.

Some minutes later the cigar is still unlit.

He lets himself out onto the terrace and stands there, looking down at the surface of the sea, which moves with smooth, heavy movements.

Smooth, heavy movements.

Heavy shapes finding the light and losing it as they move.

Heavy, more than anything.

Heavy.

And he wonders, half-hypnotised by the heavy shapes finding and losing the light: How much does the sea weigh? And then, his logical mind working on the question: What is the volume of the sea? And then: What is its average depth? What is its surface area? Those two facts, he thinks, must be easy to find out — and then you would have the answer, since the volume of water is effectively the same thing as the weight.

He steps inside, out of the wind, and summons Mark.

When the steward appears, he says, ‘Mark, I want you to find out two things for me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What is the average depth of the sea.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Mark says.

‘And what is the surface area.’

‘Of the sea, sir?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anything else, sir?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll find out for you, sir.’

‘Thank you, Mark.’

Alone, he waits impatiently for the numbers, and sitting at the dining-room table, finally he lights the cigar.

A few minutes later there is a little tap on the door.

‘Yes.’

‘I have that information for you, sir,’ Mark says.

‘Yes?’

‘The average depth is three thousand, six hundred and eighty-two metres,’ Mark says.

‘So deep…?’ he murmurs, writing it down. ‘Okay…’

‘And the surface area is three hundred and sixty-one million square kilometres.’

‘You’re sure?’

Mark hesitates. He googled the questions. His employer, though, only vaguely knows what Google is and probably thinks that Mark has spent the last few minutes phoning marine experts at the world’s leading universities — people who would be happy to be interrupted in order to help him with his important work.

‘I did double-check, sir,’ Mark says doubtfully.

‘Okay. For now this is okay.’

‘Do you need anything else, sir?’

‘Not now. Thank you.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Mark withdraws.

Excitedly, he is already doing the sums — on paper, as he was taught in a Soviet technical school, long ago.

The surface area is in square kilometres, so the first step is to convert that to square metres, one square kilometre being…being one million square metres…

And then multiply that by the average depth…

There are a lot of zeroes to write.

Which is the volume…

Which is the same as the weight in metric tonnes.

1,329,202,000,000,000,000 tonnes.

One point three million trillion tonnes.

Success!

The weight of the sea.

He throws down the pen, and tugs smoke triumphantly from the cigar. Shoves it out through his nostrils.

Then other questions start to trouble him.

The sea is salt water — does that affect the weight?

And what about the pressure? Does the pressure in the depths of the sea make a difference? Does a cubic metre of water, under the enormous pressure of the depths, weigh more than one metric tonne, perhaps?

More questions, then, for Mark, who is sent to look into them while his employer waits, finishing his cigar, hunched over his own reflection in the varnished tabletop.

Mark takes longer this time.

Nearly half an hour has passed when the little knock sounds.

And he finds, listening to Mark talking at some length about factors affecting the weight of salt water, that he has entirely lost interest in the subject.

The question of the effects of pressure on the mass of water is particularly long-winded, and he stops listening totally. He just sits there, studying the stub of his cigar. Mark’s soft Geordie voice keeps talking for a while. Then it, too, stops.

There is a long silence.

‘Sir?’ Mark says.

He seems to snap out of a trance. ‘Yes?’

‘Will that be all, sir?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

—

It is late afternoon. The twin Pielstick diesel engines have started, and the hundred-and-forty-metre-long yacht is on the move again. Light still lies on the open sea. Hard late light on individual dark waves. The distant shore slides very slowly past. It is dissolving in the early twilight, is indistinct now except for the lights that appear, the tiny silent lights of towns.

Enzo, in his smart white uniform, personally delivers the weather outlook — ‘smooth sailing’ — and says that they will arrive at Kérkira in the morning, at about ten o’clock. Will sir wish to dock there? Should he arrange facilities to do so?

‘No.’

And where will we be heading, from Corfu?

‘I don’t know.’

Enzo nods tolerantly. He waits for a moment — sometimes his employer, if he is on his own, as now, invites his Maltese first officer to join him for a drink at this hour. They drink whisky and talk about ships, about the sea. He asks Enzo, sometimes, about his former life as the master of an oil tanker, or lectures him on politics, economics, the state of the world. Not today. He is not in a talkative mood.

He tells Mark he will have his dinner in his quarters.

Mark asks him what he would like to eat.

He just shrugs and says the chef should make him something, whatever he wants.

What arrives on the tray, an hour later, is, Mark explains, a lobster soufflé, a filet mignon with grilled winter vegetables, and a miniature tarte tatin. There is a half-bottle of champagne, and another of Château Trotanoy 2001.

He has eaten hardly anything for twenty-four hours and he is hungry now — a sort of dull emptiness inside him. He eats the soufflé, and the steak and vegetables. He does not eat the tarte tatin. He drinks some of the Trotanoy, none of the champagne.

It is dark outside now, totally dark. Only the lights of the ship lie weakly on the water.

Into that dark water.

Into those frigid depths.

And, actually, how does one jump from a vessel this size? He is standing on the terrace outside his quarters, the owner’s quarters, near the top of the yacht — it faces the stern, and the wind is not strong — looking down at another terrace, much larger, where the swimming pool is. After that there is a still-larger terrace — he is only able to see a small part of it from where he is standing — where there is space for eighty people to eat at tables and afterwards to dance.

There is someone down there on the lower terrace, where the parties once took place, on the part of it that he can see, walking up and down, and smoking a cigarette. A small figure in the dark. He does not know who it is. There are dozens of people on the yacht. He does not know them all, would not know them by sight. There is Enzo and his team. There are the kitchen staff. There is Mark and his assistant stewards. There are the specialist technicians who look after the swimming pool and other leisure facilities, the power systems, the midget submarine. There are always various minor figures mopping the decks. And there are Pierre and Madis, the ex-soldiers, with their weapons. Perhaps it is Pierre down there, smoking. Yes, it is probably Pierre, standing down there and watching the wake spread out on the surface of the sea.

In the darkness, and from up on his terrace near the top of the yacht, it is only half-visible, the wake.

Floating like phosphorescence on the darkness.

Teasingly, half-visible.

From where he is, there is a drop of at least twenty-five metres to the surface of the sea. He would not drown — he would die on impact, possibly with one of the lower decks. Which is not what he had in mind.

He has not fully thought through the practicalities of this.

And with every minute that passes it seems less likely that he will actually do it.

He imagines, with a shiver of horror, himself in the dark wet water.

He will not actually do it.

The feeling that his nerve has failed fills him with despair.

And now what?

If he is to live, what now?

He finds that he is shivering, and steps inside.

—

What now?

—

The question is simplified by the fact that he is, suddenly, extremely tired.

He shuts the terrace door.

‘Lights off,’ he says in a soft dry voice, and the lights go off.

3

The next morning Lars joins him.

Aleksandr stands there, in the warm morning sunlight, watching the stony coast of Corfu, and from the harbour mouth the motor launch skimming over the sea towards where Europa lies at anchor. The launch is Europa’s own, and deploys from a hatch on the waterline in the yacht’s side. As it nears the yacht, it slows abruptly.

From the terrace outside his quarters where he is standing in his dressing gown, he loses sight of it.

It is down there somewhere at the waterline, moving into a position parallel to the opening hatch. The launch, like some space vehicle, has small engines that allow it to move slowly sideways. They will be engaged and it will enter the hatch. When it is in position, the seawater in the hatch will drain away and the launch will settle on a steel frame. A lift travels directly from the dock in the hatch to the upper areas of the yacht.

Some years ago, he had watched a demonstration of this manoeuvre at Lürssen’s shipyard on the Kiel Canal.

He was visiting the shipyard with a view to placing an order for a yacht — Europa, which was then undergoing final sea trials, had been made for someone else.

‘I like it,’ Aleksandr said, watching the demonstration. ‘I want it.’

‘We can make you one just like it,’ the smiling Lürssen’s man said, standing next to him. They were both wearing high-visibility vests, helmets.

‘How long will that take?’

‘Two or three years,’ the Lürssen’s man said, proudly watching the end of the demonstration.

‘I don’t want to wait that long. I want this one.’

The Lürssen’s man’s orange moustache twitched as he laughed.

‘You don’t understand,’ Aleksandr said. ‘You think I’m joking. I’m not joking. I want this one.’

The man tried to explain that this yacht was someone else’s, had been made for someone else…

‘How much is he paying for it?’

The man looked doubtful for a moment. Then he said, ‘Two hundred million euro. More or less.’

‘Offer him two fifty,’ Aleksandr said. ‘Phone him now and offer him two fifty. I want an answer today.’

Hearing the whine of the hatch shutting on the waterline, he pads unhurriedly inside, into the vast oval of the owner’s quarters.

—

When he meets Lars, twenty minutes later on the pool deck, he is dressed and doused in Cartier Pasha.

It is pleasantly warm on the sheltered pool deck, in the November sunshine.

Lars stands when he sees Aleksandr coming towards him.

‘Good morning,’ he says.

Aleksandr says nothing, just pats the lawyer’s shoulder and sits down at the table.

Lars also sits. He is wearing linen trousers, a blue T-shirt, leather sandals. He was semi-holidaying at his villa on Corfu when Aleksandr phoned last night to say he was in the area, and asked for a meeting. He has not finished eating the omelette he was served.

‘Finish it,’ Aleksandr tells him.

Lars presses on with the omelette.

‘How are you?’ Aleksandr asks.

‘I’m okay,’ Lars says tactfully. ‘You?’

‘Not so good,’ Aleksandr admits.

Lars wipes his mouth with a stiff linen napkin.

‘The case in London?’ Lars asks.

Aleksandr shrugs, looks depressed.

The major legal action on which he embarked a year ago has just failed. He had sued a fellow Russian and former protégé in a London court. He maintained that this man, Adam Spassky, had swindled him, many years earlier, out of an enormous amount of money. He was suing him for that money, a ten-figure sum. The judgment, issued only last week, was emphatically in favour of Spassky. Not only that, it had explicitly questioned Aleksandr’s own integrity. ‘It’s not just that we lost it,’ he says. ‘It’s what the judge said. That…whore.’

Lars nods. He says, ‘Yes, that was harsh.’

‘And totally untrue!’

‘Of course.’

‘How much do you think he paid her?’

‘Stranger things have happened,’ Lars says, privately doubtful that an English judge would be so easily for sale.

‘How much, do you think?’

Lars shrugs, unwilling to speculate.

And Aleksandr says, excitedly, ‘I was thinking — we should investigate her, find the money. Eh? It would destroy her. And then the whole thing would have to be heard again. And this time we would win, maybe. What do you think?’

‘It’s up to you,’ Lars says.

‘You think we should do that?’

Pressed, Lars says, ‘I’m not sure it would help.’

‘He paid her, fuck!’ Aleksandr shouts.

‘It’s possible.’

‘Did you hear what she said?’

‘Yes…’

‘She said I was a liar, fantasist…’

‘She didn’t use the word “liar”.’

‘Oh, she didn’t use the word! Fuck. She might as well have.’

‘The language was strong,’ Lars admits.

‘Until now,’ Aleksandr says, ‘I always believed in English justice.’

‘It’s not perfect,’ Lars says philosophically. ‘Nothing is.’

‘It’s rotten.’

‘I wouldn’t go so far…’

‘It’s fucking rotten…’

‘There’s not much we can do about it now,’ Lars says. He advised against the whole thing in the first place — it was, he had thought, obviously doomed. He had wanted no part of it. He does not mention that now. He says, ‘We have to look forward.’

Aleksandr almost laughs. ‘What is there to look forward to?’

Lars smiles, slightly sadly. He has finished the omelette and puts down his fork. ‘Life?’ he suggests. He is wearing very expensive sunglasses with tortoiseshell frames.

‘Life,’ Aleksandr murmurs, looking at the sea.

There is a longish silence.

‘Where do I stand?’ he asks sombrely. ‘Tell me.’

This is the purpose of the meeting — to take stock, now that the legal action has definitively failed. And Lars, the steward of his fortune, the lawyer who hid the assets in a labyrinth stretching from Andorra to the Dutch Antilles, says, after a few moments, ‘The picture is not very positive.’

That, Aleksandr already knows.

His principal asset, Rusferrex, once the world’s second-largest producer of iron ore, is worth nothing now. Fatally over-leveraged, it was sunk by the steep fall in the metal’s price, the end of the super-cycle, which Aleksandr had failed to foresee. Lars, and many others, had advised him against embarking on an ambitious, debt-fuelled expansion programme — anyone keeping half an eye on China could see the danger of that. Aleksandr wouldn’t listen. It never occurred to him that he might be wrong.

His other mining assets went down with Rusferrex in a net of interconnected accounts.

The Ukrainian airline he owns is in liquidation.

(‘The timing,’ as Lars put it, ‘was sub-optimal.’)

(Aleksandr’s less equivocal verdict: ‘It was a fucking stupid idea.’)

They talk for a while about the Moscow-based bank, whether that has any life left in it. No, seems to be the answer.

Then Lars says, ‘You do still have a number of significant assets, that I know of.’

‘Tell me.’

Lars takes a little scrap of paper from the pocket of his linen trousers. There seems to be some sort of list scrawled on it. He says, ‘The house in Surrey. The house in London. The Dassault Falcon. The villa in Saint Barthélemy. The Barbaresco estate and vineyards. And this yacht. All of these assets are held by offshore trusts and can be liquidated without tax liability,’ Lars adds. ‘Plus you have a minority stake in a Belarusian mobile-phone operator with subsidiaries in Moldova and Montenegro, worth perhaps twenty million sterling.’

Aleksandr says, ‘Oh, yes, that.’

‘Those shares are held by a trust in Gibraltar,’ Lars says.

‘Why do we have that?’ Aleksandr asks.

‘When you took over the lignite miner,’ Lars says.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘You were going to spin it off.’

‘Yes.’

‘So those are your outstanding assets,’ Lars says. ‘Total value, about two hundred and seventy-five million sterling. I would estimate.’

A steward — not Mark — wheels a trolley over to them and pours coffee from a silver pot.

Lars thanks him.

They wait until the steward has withdrawn. Then Lars says, taking another scrap of paper from his pocket, ‘Now, the liabilities.’

Aleksandr releases several pellets of sweetener into his coffee. ‘Hit me,’ he says.

‘Legal fees — at least a hundred million and still increasing,’ Lars says.

This includes, though Lars does not spell it out, the two million pounds Aleksandr owes Lars’s own legal practice, itself an opaque trust domiciled in Liechtenstein.

Lars says, ‘Plus additional liabilities arising from ongoing litigation — another hundred million. That’s just an estimate,’ he tells him. ‘So let’s say two hundred million. Maybe a bit more. Which leaves you with.’ Lars, finally, takes off his sunglasses. The understated tan sharpens the blue of his eyes. He is in his mid-forties: he looks younger. He says, ‘Fifty to a hundred million?’

Aleksandr, still wearing his own sunglasses, looks away and says, in a hard neutral voice, ‘There’s something you don’t know.’

‘What’s that?’

The wind is up. Whitecaps are appearing on the vivid blue water. Just perceptibly, the immense yacht moves in the steepening swell.

Aleksandr says, ‘Ksenia is leaving me.’

Lars looks surprised, says nothing.

‘Yes,’ Aleksandr says.

She had sat next to him every day at the trial. Those long hours of lawyers’ voices. Of shuffling feet, and shuffling papers. She had sat next to him, sometimes looking worried and engaged, sometimes stifling a yawn in the middle of the afternoon as the lawyers whispered to each other up near the judge. For more than a month, that had lasted.

And then, on Thursday morning, the judgment.

And it wasn’t just that he had lost — that financially his wipeout was now final, an immovable fact, and all the implications of that.

It was what she had said, the judge.

‘The language was strong,’ even Lars had admitted.

And then while she was speaking, Adam Spassky’s smile — the way he had smiled, nearly imperceptibly and with that usual strange look of vacancy in his heatless blue eyes. Seeing that smile — that’s when Aleksandr understood that this was actually happening, that it was not in fact a nightmare. That it was his life.

Facing the media scrum on the steps outside he had been in a state of shock. Not sure where he was. Still seeing that smile. Minders hurried him to the Maybach, Ksenia hanging on his arm.

Then the house in Lowndes Square. Shadowy hotel-like spaces. Impersonal work of interior designers. And it was then, in the shocked hush of the house, that she told him.

‘I’ve waited long enough, she said. ‘I didn’t want to do it during the trial,’ she said. ‘The trial’s over now.’

She said, ‘It’s no use, Aleksandr.’

He was shouting at her.

‘You say that,’ she said. ‘When was the last time you actually noticed me? When was the last time you thought about what I might want? What do you want me for? You’re not even interested in sex any more…’

That’s when he threw the Japanese vase.

When he threw the Japanese vase, she froze up.

She said, ‘I’m taking the twins to St Barts for two weeks.’

And that afternoon, when the twins got home from their expensive English school, everything was packed, the huge pile of luggage in the hall, and they went to the airport, she and the twins, and her PA, and her personal trainer, and the two English nannies, and all the earpiece-wearing security men — from the window he watched the four-vehicle motorcade move away.

He was too shocked to try to stop her.

His throat was sore from shouting. His eyes were pink.

He was standing at the window, staring out.

‘What does she want?’ Lars asks.

He says, ‘The London house. The villa in St Barts. Money.’

‘How much money?’

‘I don’t know. Her lawyers are talking to mine.’

‘You’re not married?’ Lars says delicately.

‘No,’ Aleksandr says, sounding tired. ‘So what? We’ve been together fifteen years. We have the twins.’

‘How old are they now?’

‘Ten.’

There is a silence.

‘You have children?’ Aleksandr asks.

‘Yes,’ Lars says, surprised.

It is the first time, in all their years of association, that Aleksandr has asked him about his family, has shown any interest in his life.

‘Yes,’ he says again. And then, trying to be friendly, ‘They are a little older than yours. Fifteen and twelve.’

‘Oh, I have older children,’ Aleksandr says. ‘I have been married twice, and divorced twice. The first divorce was okay, not too expensive. The second…’ He sighs heavily. ‘What am I going to do, Lars?’

Lars takes the question to be a practical one. He says, ‘To meet legal fees and other liabilities you will need to sell some assets. I advise you to settle all pending litigation now. The prospect of winning,’ he says, ‘has been materially diminished by last week’s judgment.’ He waits to see what Aleksandr will say.

Nothing. Staring at the sea, he seems to be thinking about something else.

‘To do that,’ Lars goes on, ‘to pay all outstanding fees and settle everything, you will need, as I said, about two hundred million sterling.’

He lets that sink in.

‘With luck,’ he says optimistically, ‘this yacht might fetch that on its own.’

‘No,’ Aleksandr says, evidently listening after all. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘A hundred and fifty?’ Lars suggests.

‘Maybe.’

‘So we need another fifty million,’ Lars says thoughtfully. ‘I think you must sell the Falcon,’ he says. ‘The overheads, I imagine, are very high.’

In fact, Lars does not need to imagine how high the overheads are: he established, some years ago, a trust in the Isle of Man to own and manage the jet and it eats several million pounds a year.

‘So, the jet?’

‘Okay,’ Aleksandr says, absent-mindedly.

‘I hope we will get twenty million,’ Lars says. ‘The market is pretty strong for that sort of aircraft these days.’

‘Okay.’

‘So we need another thirty million.’

Aleksandr says nothing.

‘The London house and the house in St Barts will go to Ksenia?’ Lars asks.

‘She wants them.’

‘And will she get them?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And money?’

‘She will want money,’ Aleksandr says.

‘You don’t know how much?’

‘No.’

‘Not more than ten million, I would say,’ Lars says. ‘She shouldn’t have more than ten million.’

Aleksandr, in his black silk shirt, just shrugs.

‘If you sell the house in Surrey,’ Lars says, ‘and the Barbaresco estate, you will be able to meet your outstanding liabilities and pay her ten million.’

Wind moves over the terrace, which someone is now mopping — an African woman in a white Europa-logoed polo shirt and tracksuit trousers, the uniform of the vessel’s menials, mopping the deck some distance from them.

The wind disturbs the surface of the sea, making it scintillate in places.

Aleksandr says, ‘And what does that leave me with?’

‘It leaves you,’ Lars says, looking at one of his scraps of paper, ‘with that stake in the Belarusian telco.’

‘Only that?’

‘Yes. It’s worth about twenty million sterling,’ Lars points out.

‘Twenty million?’ Aleksandr says vaguely.

‘Yes. And it pays a decent dividend. About five per cent. A million pounds a year, more or less. It is possible, I think,’ Lars jokes, ‘to live off that.’

A pause.

Then he says, no longer joking, ‘With appropriate tax arrangements.’

Lars himself, indeed, manages to live off not very much more than that, with appropriate tax arrangements.

Aleksandr does not laugh at Lars’s joke. He does not seem to have been listening. When he finally looks at him it’s as if he has forgotten what they were talking about. ‘You will stay for lunch, Lars?’ he asks.

—

They eat on the small terrace outside the private dining room — a table set for two. Mark and the young Vietnamese trainee steward wait on them. Aleksandr says he wants sushi. Sushi, unfortunately, is not available. Obviously disappointed, Alexander yells at Mark for a while, while Lars looks the other way. He looks at the sea — a wonderful dark blue, with here and there a foaming wave. In the end, they have grilled salmon with a fennel salad and new potatoes, and a bottle of very nice Pouilly-Fuissé, and Aleksandr tells Lars, forgetting that he already knows the story, about the time when he was in Ulaanbaatar and decided, at some point during the day, that he wanted sushi for his supper.

‘Now then,’ he says to Lars, ‘at that time, it was actually not possible to get a decent sushi in Ulaanbaatar. Maybe it’s different now, I don’t know.’

Trying to look amused, Lars nods.

‘So I said to Alain,’ Aleksandr says — Alain being a man whose job it was to make sure that Aleksandr always had whatever he wanted, wherever he was — ‘I said to Alain, “I want sushi tonight. Proper sushi, okay? Not some local shit, okay?” ’

Lars tries to increase the intensity to his smile a notch or two — from wryly expectant, say, to definitely amused.

‘So you know what Alain does?’ Aleksandr asks him, as Mark, standing at his shoulder, pours more Pouilly-Fuissé.

Still smiling — and though he does in fact know what Alain does — Lars shakes his head, and pats his mouth with his napkin. He murmurs a word of thanks to Mark.

‘He phones Ubon in London,’ Aleksandr says. ‘You know that restaurant?’

‘Yes,’ says Lars.

‘He phones them and he orders something like…something like a thousand quid’s worth of sushi,’ Aleksandr says, ‘to take away.’

Lars’s eyebrows jump up politely.

‘Then he arranges for someone to take the sushi to Farnborough, and has it flown, by private jet,’ Aleksandr emphasises, ‘to Ulaanbaatar.’ He says, ‘It gets there about eight o’clock, local time, just when I want to eat. So Alain is very pleased with himself. And I say to him, “This is excellent sushi, Alain. Where did you get it?” And he tells me from Ubon in London. And I say to him, “London? Are you out of your mind? It would have been quicker to get it from Japan!” ’

Lars manages a quiet laugh.

Aleksandr tells him, quite seriously, ‘That was in the newspapers.’

‘Oh?’

‘The most expensive takeaway in history, they said it was.’

Quietly, Lars laughs again.

‘They said it was fifty thousand pounds. I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s true.’

At that time — not so much any more — Aleksandr kept everything the newspapers printed about him in a large scrapbook. For a while there was quite a lot of material — he was known as the ‘Emperor of Iron’ and his lifestyle and wealth were a matter of fascination to them. It was someone’s job, full-time — an attractive young woman, just out of Oxford — to manage the scrapbook.

‘I should have put some money into commercial property in Ulaanbaatar,’ Aleksandr says wistfully. ‘I thought about it.’

‘It would have been a successful investment,’ Lars says, sipping wine. He does not mention that he himself owns a small amount of stock in an investment trust, managed by an acquaintance of his, specialising in Mongolian property — one of the best-performing assets in the world, the last few years.

Enzo joins them.

Aleksandr had asked to see him. He says, ‘We’re going to Monaco, Enzo. I’ve offered Lars a lift home.’

The offer had been made earlier in the meal.

It is what Lars had hoped for.

It is why he has his suitcases with him.

Though it does mean, for most of the afternoon and evening, listening to Aleksandr talk. Aleksandr does not seem to be able to stop talking now.

—

Over dinner, he talks about Russian history, a subject he is obsessed with. He seems tired, as he explains how Russia ended the twentieth century exactly where it was at the start — a somewhat shambolic authoritarian state lagging behind Western Europe and America in terms of economic and social development, its natural wealth held by a small number of families, with a stunted middle class, and most of the population living in sullen fatalistic poverty. The whole Communist experiment, with all its hope and suffering, had passed like a storm, he says, and left things exactly as they were.

Lars nods at that appraisal.

On the other side of the table, Aleksandr is slouched in a fog of cigar smoke. He is talking about his own attempt in the 1990s to transform Russia, as he tells it, into a liberal free-market democracy, about how that failed.

They are inside, in the small dining room where the smoke hangs heavily in the air.

On the table is a large plate of chocolates. They have an artisanal misshapenness, a dusting of pure cocoa powder. Lars has already eaten two. He says, wondering whether to have another now, or wait until Mark arrives with the coffee, ‘It was a missed opportunity.’

‘It was a historical tragedy,’ Aleksandr tells him.

Historical — his favourite word.

Lars knows that Aleksandr thinks of himself as a historical figure. He likes to talk about the sweep of history as one who knows it at first hand. He had once asked him, ‘How do you think history will see me?’

Lars had not known what to say. After a moment’s hesitation, he had fallen back on a hackneyed quip: ‘It depends who writes the history.’

It was then — in Davos, a few years ago — that Aleksandr had told him about his plan to write a monumental multi-volume account of his own life and times.

He has not, as far as Lars knows, started it yet.

He is talking about his uncle now. Lars has heard about this man before. The KGB officer — a man who sent people to their deaths in the purges of the thirties and forties. And yet — Lars knows the story — someone whom Aleksandr admires.

‘When I was a kid I thought he was just an old fart,’ Aleksandr says. ‘Old-fashioned — you know.’

‘Yes,’ Lars says, trying to seem interested.

‘He wore an old-fashioned hat,’ Aleksandr says.

‘Yes?’

‘He had a shit haircut. That’s what I thought about him. Later I understood he had iron in his soul. He was strong. When the wind changed, in the fifties, he was in a tough position.’

‘I’m sure…’

‘I mean, Stalin,’ Aleksandr says, as Mark arrives with the coffee, ‘was his hero. He worshipped him. Sincerely.’

‘There were some who did.’

‘And then Khrushchev makes that speech.’

‘Yes, the so-called Secret Speech,’ Lars says.

‘And so everyone was supposed to say they’re sorry, and how they never liked Stalin anyway. Well, he wouldn’t say it. Even though he knew he might be killed. He wouldn’t say it. It was like the end of Don Giovanni,’ Aleksandr says, ‘when he won’t say he’s sorry, even with hell opening in front of him. He won’t be a hypocrite. You know.’

Lars just nods.

‘My father, he said sorry,’ Aleksandr tells him.

‘Yes?’

‘Oh, yes.’

Having served the coffee, Mark has slipped out.

‘My father said sorry. My uncle — his name was Aleksandr, like me — he wouldn’t say sorry. In his own mind he had done nothing wrong. It was his enemies who were wrong, he thought. He thought history was on his side. It wasn’t. In the end, he took his own life,’ Aleksandr says. ‘He killed himself.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

Aleksandr shrugs exhaustedly. ‘He was old, then. He had nothing left to live for,’ he says. ‘He had devoted his whole life to the cause of Communism. It was his whole life. He had nothing else.’

Lars nods thoughtfully.

‘What did he have left to live for?’ Aleksandr asks him, insisting on the point.

‘Nothing, I suppose,’ Lars says.

Aleksandr nods and presses out the soggy end of his cigar. ‘Nothing,’ he says. ‘It was over. That was it.’

—

In the morning, Capri passes off the starboard side. Naples under a layer of smog. Lars, from his little terrace, wearing a fluffy Europa-logoed towelling robe, watches them pass. The air is mild, fresh. He did not sleep well. Too much fine wine and pre-war Armagnac last night. And then, when he was back in his cabin, he had found among the hundreds of films available on the entertainment system, Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia. He had started to watch it. It was strange to see Erland Josephson, whose voice, speaking Swedish, was so familiar to him, dubbed into Italian. He had fallen asleep less than halfway through.

There is a knock at the door.

It is Mark.

He says that Aleksandr has invited Lars to join him for breakfast.

Which is exactly what Lars was hoping would not happen.

‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Tell him I’ll be along in a while.’

When he presents himself, half an hour later, Enzo is there informing Aleksandr that he expects to dock in Monte Carlo at about midnight.

Lars sits down. He is wearing a sweater and his hair is still damp from the shower.

‘I had a phone call this morning,’ Aleksandr says, when Enzo has left, ‘from my solicitor in London.’ Aleksandr does not sound pleased.

Lars, eating scrambled egg, looks up quickly.

Aleksandr says, ‘They’ve heard from Ksenia’s lawyers, with her demands.’

‘Yes?’ Lars says, still eating hungrily. ‘What are they?’

‘The two houses…’

‘London and Saint Barthélemy?’

‘Yes.’

‘And…?’

‘And twenty-five million,’ Aleksandr says.

‘Sterling?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s impossible,’ Lars says, forking egg into his mouth. ‘You’ll fight it?’

Aleksandr nods. He is drinking some sort of effervescent liquid — probably he too has a hangover. He looks, anyway, as though he did not sleep well. Actually, he looks as though he did not sleep at all.

‘It’s just an opening shot,’ Lars says. ‘They want to get more than ten, so they ask for twenty-five. They’ll settle for fifteen. And even that’s too much. Fight it,’ he advises. ‘Don’t go above ten.’

‘I will fight it,’ Aleksandr says.

Lars accepts some tea from the steward with the pot.

‘Don’t go above ten,’ he says again. The tea is extraordinary, the finest he has ever tasted — it is like some new thing; not tea at all, something finer, subtler, more intense. He says, ‘Is she aware of your…’ He is not sure how to put it. ‘Impaired position?’

For a moment Aleksandr says nothing. He is still staring at the sea, at the waves pursuing each other towards the grey horizon. He says, ‘I don’t know.’

‘So perhaps she doesn’t understand,’ Lars says, trying to be helpful, ‘that in asking for twenty-five she is in fact asking for…’

Everything you have, he was going to say.

‘You will have more money than me, Lars,’ Aleksandr says desolately, ‘at the end of this.’

Again unsure what to say — it may well be true — Lars just has another taste of his tea, and then says, after a few seconds, ‘We need to discuss the disposal of assets. As we agreed yesterday. The details.’

He looks at Aleksandr, worried that he may have upset him again.

Aleksandr seems okay.

He is eating grapes now — slowly and methodically tearing them from their stems and transferring them to his mouth.

Lars takes out one of his scraps of paper.

For the next hour they talk about the disposal of assets — the sale of the Dassault Falcon, and the Barbaresco estate, and the house in Surrey, and the super-yacht. For most of these assets, Lars has possible buyers in mind.

Aleksandr, eating grapes, is matter-of-fact. He seems more interested in the long green grapes than in the subject under discussion.

Lars expresses the hope that he will end up with some millions in cash, when everything is settled, as well as the shares in the Belarusian mobile-phone operator.

‘This isn’t the first time,’ Aleksandr says, ‘that I’ve been wiped out, you know, Lars.’

‘Ninety-eight, the Russian default?’ Lars ventures, still making notes.

‘Exactly.’

Lars is still writing. He says, ‘Yes, that must have been quite something.’

‘It was, sure,’ Aleksandr says.

Lars murmurs, his thoughts elsewhere, ‘Total mess, wasn’t it.’

‘Sure.’

In fact Aleksandr now thinks of that time with something like love. In his memory, it is one of the most vivid periods of his life, along with the period earlier in the decade when the Soviet Union just suddenly vanished, and he was in his early forties and already a fairly senior official in the Ministry of International Trade. All international trade had been handled by the ministry. The individual enterprises that might wish to trade internationally — most importantly in the natural-resources sector — just had no idea how to do so on their own, and had no access to trade finance. He saw the opportunity. Still, what happened next exceeded anything he might have imagined. For a while nothing seemed impossible. He set up his own bank, InTradeBank, to provide trade finance, and soon it was accumulating stakes in industrial enterprises — especially after the loans-for-shares scheme that financed the second election of Boris Yeltsin and transferred gargantuan portions of formerly state-owned industry into the ownership of a few men. Some ended up with oil, some with nickel, or aluminium, or Aeroflot. He ended up with iron. The Emperor of Iron. In just a few years he went from modestly pampered Soviet official to world’s number-one iron-ore magnate.

The default of ’98 didn’t actually wipe him out. It had the potential to; and though InTradeBank went under in a storm of litigation, he managed to save the Empire of Iron by secreting the shares in an offshore labyrinth — this was when Lars started to play his part — in trusts with mysterious names in the Cayman Islands, and other distant, tranquil places.

Aleksandr is sitting at the table staring, it seems, at something far away, over the horizon. Lars is still writing things down.

The panic of ’98. When he thought he might lose everything, and somehow managed to preserve it. His fiftieth birthday happened that summer, in the middle of the meltdown. ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘I want a party.’ Blenheim Palace hired for the occasion. A party for a thousand people. His hero, Rupert Murdoch, there. Helicopters on the lawn. In his prime, then. New woman on his arm: Ksenia. Fireworks. Those were the days.

Those were the days, my friend.

‘Those were the days, Lars,’ he murmurs.

Lars looks up. ‘When?’ he asks.

‘Then.’

4

And then it sinks, from light into darkness. Up there it was all sunlight, all sun-filled, squint-inducing blue. Then darkening. Deepening. Ever deeper, and ever darker. And then, suddenly, the wet November morning. The sodden land, still lurking in semi-darkness. It is the morning rush hour in south-east England, under a lid of weeping cloud. Headlights hurry along motorways. Houses huddle in dull towns. They are near now, as the jet descends. Drops of water smear across the window, through which he sees a sewage-treatment plant, wind-flattened grass, whizzing tarmac…

Last night they docked at Monte Carlo just after midnight.

The jet was already at Nice airport, having flown in from Venice the previous day.

Early this morning it took off for London. Lars, humiliatingly, had to lend him ten thousand euros for the fuel. The pilot had phoned and said, embarrassed, that Total were wanting payment up front.

Smoothly, the plane is taxiing. The English morning is very real now. It is right there, on the other side of the window’s oval, where the rain is steadily falling.

The small terminal building shines in the twilight.

He was not supposed to see this place again.

The plane stops with a slight jerk.

Ten minutes later he is in the Maybach, on his way into London, slumming it on the packed tarmac with everyone else — visibility is too poor, he was told, to use the helicopter. So it takes an hour of rain-lashed traffic-jamming to reach the Mayfair office, where the solicitor is waiting for him.

Aleksandr is late. He apologises and they sit down. The offices — Iset Holdings, it says on the polished plate next to the front door — are in an eighteenth-century town house near Park Lane. The room they are in is on the first floor — high ceiling, heavy hardwood doors, some contemporary office clutter too.

The solicitor, a Mr Heath, starts to set out Ksenia’s demands, as transmitted to him by her legal team. The London house, the St Barts villa…

‘I know,’ Aleksandr says, ‘you already said.’

Mr Heath looks up from the papers. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘So you know what Ms Viktorovna is asking for.’

‘The London house, the villa, and twenty-five million.’

‘Yes,’ Mr Heath says. ‘And also the use of your plane, precise terms to be worked out between the parties.’

‘The plane is being sold,’ Aleksandr tells him. Though it is a dark day — the taxis passing in the street have their headlights on — the light from the tall windows troubles his tired eyes.

‘Ah,’ Mr Heath says. ‘Alright. I’ll communicate that to the other party.’ He writes something down and has a sip of the coffee they have been served. ‘We also feel,’ he says, ‘that, in addition to the two very valuable houses, the twenty-five-million cash component is excessive.’

‘Yes?’ Aleksandr says, not seeming very interested.

‘We would advise you to contest that,’ Mr Heath says.

‘Contest it?’

‘We think it highly unlikely that a court would award Ms Viktorovna such a large sum, in addition to the houses.’

Aleksandr says nothing.

Mr Heath says, ‘Of course, you may prefer to offer her the sum she wants, plus only one of the houses.’

‘You think I should contest it?’ Aleksandr asks, as if he hasn’t heard the last thing Mr Heath said.

‘Yes, we do.’

‘It would mean going to court?’

‘Not necessarily. I would say probably not, if Ms Viktorovna is being properly advised. But possibly, yes.’

Aleksandr, again, says nothing. He is not looking at the middle-aged solicitor. He seems to be looking at the green exit sign over one of the doors. Enormous dark pouches hang under his eyes. His face seems somehow to have fallen in. He has lost quite a lot of weight, Mr Heath thinks, since they last met, only a few weeks ago. He seems much older.

‘I don’t think you would have anything to fear,’ Mr Heath says, ‘if this should come to court.’

There is another long silence.

Then Aleksandr says, in a soft tired voice, and still not looking at the solicitor, ‘Let her have what she wants. Everything.’

Mr Heath looks puzzled. ‘Everything?’ he says.

‘Yes.’

‘With respect, that isn’t what we advise…’

‘I know.’

Mr Heath tries again. ‘Her solicitors are being aggressive,’ he says. ‘I very much doubt they expect to get what they’re asking for. It’s a negotiation.’

‘I understand.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to take some time to think about it,’ Mr Heath suggests. ‘There’s no hurry.’

‘I don’t need time,’ Aleksandr says. ‘Let her have what she wants.’

Mr Heath seems at a loss. ‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

There is another long pause. ‘Well, alright,’ the solicitor says, looking almost sadly at his papers. ‘If that’s what you want. I must stress — it is not what we advise.’

‘I understand,’ Aleksandr says.

When Mr Heath has gone, he sits alone at the long table, until his secretary finds him there some time later and tells him that, in case he has forgotten, he is having lunch with Lord Satter. They have a table, she says, at Le Gavroche.

He looks at her with a strange, empty expression.

He had forgotten.

He is not supposed to be here.

He is not supposed to be having lunch.

Nevertheless, at twelve thirty, he walks the short distance, followed by Pierre and Madis, to Le Gavroche.

Adrian Satter is already there, sitting in an armchair in the waiting area upstairs. He is about Aleksandr’s age. His half-silvered hair rises in silky corrugations from the rich pink glow of his forehead.

‘Shurik,’ he says, in a single movement slipping his glasses into the pocket of his immense-lapelled suit and standing up. He takes Aleksandr’s hand and pats his shoulder. ‘Good to see you.’

‘Hello, Adrian,’ Aleksandr says.

Pierre and Madis loiter outside, where men are hanging Christmas decorations from street lamps.

Aleksandr and Lord Satter study menus.

‘The soufflé Suissesse, I think, for me,’ Adrian Satter says. ‘And then the turbot.’ An early intimate of Tony Blair, and elevated by him to the peerage, he was now part of the establishment furniture. He was one of many such figures to be wooed by Aleksandr when he arrived in London, around the turn of the millennium. Aleksandr had wanted very much to be part of the British establishment, or at least to be publicly accepted by it — or, if even that was not possible, to be seen by it as an equal of some sort.

‘I’ll have the same,’ he says to the maître d’, and they are ushered down the quiet, dark-carpeted stairs to their table.

‘Awful,’ Adrian says indignantly.

They are talking about last week’s harsh judgment in the High Court.

‘I’ve never heard anything like it. It made me ashamed to be British.’

‘I’m finished, Adrian,’ Aleksandr says.

‘Nonsense. You mustn’t talk like that, Shurik.’ Adrian is looking at the wine list. ‘You’ve taken a knock,’ he says, smiling at Aleksandr. ‘You’ll be back on your feet in no time.’

Aleksandr says, ‘It’s not just that.’

‘You’re one of the great men of our time, Shurik.’

‘I thought that, once.’

‘Well, think it now.’

‘I would like to.’

‘Look at what you’ve achieved.’

Assuming that the meal will be, as usual, on his friend, Adrian tells the sommelier to bring them a Lafon Perrières 2005.

Satisfied, he removes his glasses.

Looking very sad, Aleksandr says, ‘I’m sixty-five years old, and I don’t know what to do any more. I just don’t know what to do. I feel like everything is finished for me.’

‘Tell me,’ Adrian says, after a short pause, pocketing his glasses, ‘have you got a hobby?’

‘A hobby?’

‘Yes. You know.’

‘No,’ Aleksandr says. He has never had a hobby — in his Who’s Who entry, he had listed his ‘interests’ as ‘wealth’ and ‘power’.

‘I suggest you take up a hobby,’ Adrian says. ‘Take an interest in your garden,’ he suggests. ‘Did you know,’ he asks, twinkling, ‘that in his declining years Josef Stalin was more interested in producing the perfect mimosa than in fomenting global revolution?’

‘No, I didn’t know that,’ Aleksandr says.

‘He spent most of his time in his garden down on the Black Sea, pottering about among his mimosas, and pretty much left Beria to run the empire.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘It’s perfectly natural,’ Adrian says. ‘You have to step back. I’m having to slow down a bit myself,’ he admits, as the starters arrive.

‘Somehow…’ Aleksandr looks miserable. ‘I’ve lost the meaning of life. Do you understand?’

Adrian smiles. He says, ‘Who needs meaning when you have soufflé Suissesse?’

Aleksandr tries to smile too.

He wonders, as he tries to smile, whether Adrian knows that he has been wiped out financially. That the Empire of Iron is no more. Adrian, now tucking into his soufflé, has shown no sign of knowing. Though he wouldn’t, would he? Aleksandr picks up his fork. That was the thing with the English — it was impossible to know what was happening in their heads, what was hidden under their mild, ironic manner. Did they know themselves?

He tries to eat some soufflé. Then he puts his fork down next to the heavy, expensive plate and waits for Adrian to finish.

‘Something wrong with it?’ Adrian asks, still feeding himself.

‘No, it’s very good. I’m just not hungry.’

‘Oh?’

Again, Aleksandr tries to smile.

‘Are you alright, mate?’ Adrian asks. ‘You look very pale.’

‘I’m tired.’

‘Yes, you seem a bit tired. What have you been up to? Tell me.’

Unable to think of anything else, Aleksandr says, ‘Ksenia’s leaving me.’

Adrian looks pained. ‘Oh, I am sorry,’ he says.

The turbot in chive-and-butter sauce arrives. Someone tops Adrian up with Lafon Perrières.

Aleksandr just looks at the dead fish on his plate while Adrian, with silver knife and fork, starts expertly to prise his apart.

5

Ampleton House, on the outskirts of Ottershaw in Surrey, is not visible from the road. Only a high wall, and the tops of the tall trees in the famous arboretum, nearly leafless now, are visible. Darkness is falling when they arrive. The long, turning driveway takes them to the expanse of gravel in front of the mansion — Sir Edwin Lutyens, 1913 — where the Maybach and the Range Rover pull up. ‘Here we are, sir,’ Doug says through the intercom, as if his employer might be asleep.

Aleksandr is not asleep. He is just sitting in the silent, padded interior of the Maybach, wishing that he never had to leave it. For a moment he even wonders whether to ask Doug to take him back to London.

‘Here we are, sir,’ Doug says again. His voice sounds tired. He has been on duty since early in the morning, waiting at Farnborough for the Falcon to arrive.

Normally, someone would have emerged from the house by now, with an umbrella, and opened the door for him, and held the umbrella over him as he walked over the wet gravel to the house and into the double-height hall.

The staff, however, are all on leave, or in the London house.

So it is Madis who opens the door of the Maybach for him, and lets him into the house, and, having dealt with the alarm, turns on the lights in the hall.

He asks him whether he needs anything.

‘No,’ Aleksandr answers.

‘I’ll be in the flat,’ Madis says, ‘if you need anything.’

Madis lives in a flat with a separate entrance, at the side of the house, in what was once the stable yard.

‘Okay. Thank you, Madis,’ Aleksandr says.

Alone, he unwinds his scarf and sits down in the hall.

He shuts his eyes, tries to stop thinking.

Wherever his thoughts wander they find something that hurts.

Like the face of Adam Spassky — the way he smiled as the judge delivered her verdict.

His thoughts move from the unendurable humiliation of that moment to the practical fact of his poverty. And then to the humiliation again. And then the poverty. There seems to be nothing else — only those two things.

And he would be able to stomach the loss of his money, he thinks, if it weren’t for the humiliation. And he would be able to take the humiliation, just, if he still had his money — though of course the loss of the money is part of it. The sheer idiocy of losing so much money. His other humiliations, however, would not be so total if he still had the money — the money itself would be a sort of answer to them, as it was always an answer to everything in the past.

He is still just sitting there in the hall, holding his scarf in his hands.

—

Madis opens the door. He seems surprised to see Aleksandr standing there, in the damp darkness.

‘Madis.’ Aleksandr is trying to smile. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’

‘No,’ Madis says.

‘I was wondering.’ The situation is definitely more awkward than Aleksandr thought it would be. ‘Would you like to have a drink with me?’

Madis is wearing a T-shirt, tracksuit trousers, has no shoes on, only white sports socks on his feet. There is the sound of a television from somewhere in the flat. He says, ‘I…I don’t drink.’

‘Oh, of course,’ Aleksandr says. ‘I forgot. Okay.’

Madis, perhaps out of embarrassment, says nothing.

‘Well,’ Aleksandr says. His shoulders are hunched against the frigid darkness — the temperature has dropped and over his silk shirt he is wearing only a thin black sweater. ‘Goodnight, then.’

‘Goodnight, boss,’ Madis says.

He is just shutting the door of the flat when Aleksandr, who has turned to leave, says, ‘Oh, Madis.’

The door is half-open. Madis is looking out at him.

‘You don’t have anything to eat, do you?’ Aleksandr asks, with a small laugh. ‘It’s just that…In the kitchen…There doesn’t seem to be…’

Madis hesitates for a moment. Then he says, ‘Sure.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Aleksandr laughs. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

‘No, sure,’ Madis says. ‘No problem.’ And then he says, ‘I’m just eating now, in fact. Do you want to join me?’

‘Well, I don’t want to disturb you…’

‘No, don’t worry about it,’ Madis says.

‘Okay then. It’s very kind of you.’

Madis opens the door and steps aside to let Aleksandr in.

It is the first time he has seen the inside of Madis’s flat. Madis leads him into a living room with a small dining table and a sofa and a TV which is switched on and showing the early-evening news, and some pictures on the walls. A framed print of Titian’s Allegory of Prudence.

‘Lamb rogan josh,’ Madis says. ‘That okay?’

‘Fine. Of course.’

And then Madis says, as if something has just occurred to him, ‘It’s a supermarket one.’

‘Fine.’

He leaves Aleksandr standing there, and in the small kitchen puts another Tesco’s Finest lamb rogan josh into the microwave.

Madis, Aleksandr knows, lives there with his wife Liz. He is Estonian, originally. He emigrated to the United States as a teenager, and served in the army there, in some sort of special forces unit. He was in Iraq.

He must be about forty. Not very tall. Stocky.

He speaks English with a strange accent.

‘It’ll take a few minutes,’ he says, emerging from the kitchen.

‘Where’s Liz?’ Aleksandr asks.

‘She’s out,’ Madis says. ‘Sit down.’

It sounds almost like an instruction.

‘Thank you,’ Aleksandr says, and sits.

Madis turns off the TV.

Which was perhaps a mistake. There is just silence now — just the hum of the microwave from the kitchen.

Aleksandr sits at the table, and looks at his hands.

There is something strange about the way he is sitting there, looking at his hands, not speaking.

He looks up, and finds Madis watching him. Madis is standing near the kitchen door, waiting for the microwave to finish. ‘It’ll be done in a minute,’ he says.

‘What’s the best way to die?’ Aleksandr asks him. His eyes are shining, as though with tears.

‘The best way to die?’ Madis says, surprised.

‘Yes.’

‘The best way…The best way is to die happy.’

‘No, I didn’t mean…’

The microwave pings.

Madis, in the kitchen, peels back the heat-darkened plastic foil of the packaging and spoons the food onto two plain white plates. He takes the plates to the table and puts them on the straw place mats, then returns to the kitchen for the knives and forks.

‘Thank you,’ Aleksandr says.

They start to eat in silence.

Aleksandr does not seem to want to eat after all — he just pushes the food around the plate.

Eventually he stops, and sits there, while Madis, embarrassed, finishes his own meal.

‘I’m sorry,’ Aleksandr says. He indicates the half-eaten meal on his plate.

‘No problem.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says again. When he stands, Madis stands too, and walks with him to the door.

‘Goodnight, Madis,’ Aleksandr says on the threshold.

‘Goodnight, boss,’ Madis says. ‘If you need anything…I’m here, okay.’

‘Yes. Thank you. Goodbye.’

—

Without undressing, he falls asleep at some point, and wakes in the darkness later — is wide awake and knows he will not be able to sleep again.

Waking itself is a terrible experience. Everything still there, just as it was, there in the darkness.

Except for a second after he wakes there is nothing. An empty second. A sort of peace, for a second. And then it is over, and everything is there again.

He lies there in the darkness.

He is thinking of the last time he saw his father, in that hospital in Sverdlovsk, the nomenklatura hospital. The hospital seemed luxurious then. His father was proud to be treated there. He had told his son, when he visited him, who else was there — some well-known general — and it was almost as if he was happy to have had the heart attack just so that he could share a hospital with such a high-status individual.

And his son had enjoyed the sense of privilege too, sitting in his father’s private room. He had tried to impress his father by translating the German text on a packet of medicine. He was at university in East Germany then, and spoke German perfectly, and his father, who spoke not a word of anything except Russian, was impressed, and he enjoyed impressing him. And that was the last time he saw his father, since the operation went wrong somehow and he was in a coma for a few weeks, and then he died.

There was someone else in the room, he thinks, when he was translating the German on the medicine packet. Someone else was there. Who was it?

Strangely, he imagines Stalin, unshaven, silver stubble on his chin, doddering among plants with a pair of secateurs…

It is light in Surrey.

Light outside. Yellow leaves.

One more day.

He is still just lying there.

He feels numb.

And also tired. Just so tired. So tired of everything.

It was his uncle, he thinks, who was in the room while he was translating the German on the medicine packet.

His uncle, Aleksandr. Aleksandr, like him.

And ten years later he took his own life.

He had nothing left to live for. He had devoted his whole life to something, and it had failed.

What else did he have left to live for?

Nothing.

It was over.

That was it.