Quiller Balalaika

10: PLAY

The small head was hooded, making it look much larger, and the jaws were opening, the fangs curving back into the pink rippling throat. The eyes were black, reflecting the light and only half-concealing the anger of the predator disturbed.

It was swaying, the head, with a slow sinister rhythm, only inches from my face, so close that my eyes were losing focus.

Then it stopped and drew back, preparing for the strike.

I rocked as icy water hit me and ran down to my chin.

'More.'

Water again, bursting between my eyes, ice cubes bouncing like stones, the skin contracting to the chill. But I hardly noticed it, was worried about the snake, the hooded cobra.

'Again.'

This time I closed my eyes in time, and when I opened them I saw that the thing's head had stopped swaying. And now I could see it wasn't a cobra, though a cobra would have been more fitting. The jaws were feline, the head capped with tufted ears. A cougar. I could see the whole of the gold silk pocket now, with the head emblazoned on it, then Vishinsky leaned back to watch me from his chair.

Vishinsky the Cougar, right, made sense, consciousness coming back.

Must, I must have smashed my head against the wall when I'd landed on the ground in the alleyway, last remembered image was the muzzle, the muzzle of the gun.

Some degree of concussion, then, or I'd lost blood when Jakub's bullet had grazed my skull on the roof. Memory clear enough, thank God for that.

'Again?'

'No.'

Watching me, elegant in his gold silk dressing-gown, his eyes shimmering with fury.

No tree, then, behind me, no rat-tat-tat. But I could remember the car now, the inside of the car, the sharp athletic stink of sweat, I wish these bloody people would wash sometimes. Watching the play of street lights across the reflective surfaces of the car, I'd thought they were taking me to the forest. But later there'd been that impression of lightness as they'd carried me through a doorway and into a lift with mirrored walls, heard the drone of the cables, then another blackout.

'Do you recognize me?'

Vishinsky.

I wasn't sure, I'd have to give it some thought. It might be better to fake it for a few minutes, the syncope, take a bit longer to pull out, give myself time to orientate.

'More water, boss?'

'No.'

'I'm not sure,' I told the man in the black-and-chromium chair.

'I am the Cougar.'

Reminded me of the way he'd done this before, talked of himself in the third person, presenting, as a psychiatrist might put it, a degree of megalomania, might be useful, something to work with.

Head ached a bit, blood caked on the left side of the skull, I could feel it as I flexed the skin. Something blue underneath me, royal blue, a bath towel, I was sitting on a bath towel with my back to the wall. He didn't want to spoil the carpet, Vishinsky, with bloodstains, what infernal nerve, I was a guest here, if you want to stretch your imagination a bit.

'Oh,' I said, 'the Cougar. Yes, I remember now.'

'Good.' The tone cutting, soft with rage. I knew why, of course: they would have searched me for weapons, found Jakub's wallet.

Taste of blood in the mouth: perhaps my tongue had got between my teeth when I'd come unstuck in the alleyway. I didn't think there was any internal bleeding going on: there'd been no trauma to the lungs.

I looked around me and saw four bodyguards, all on their feet and watching me in a concerted focus of attention; star, I was the show, star of the show, head throbbing, take your time, we must take our time, there was no hurry to run through the final stages of my life in this particular reality before the man in the chair decided to bring it to a screaming halt because of what I'd done to Jakub, a modern suite, this, modern hotel, black glass and chrome surfaces with a whole console of communications equipment bristling with antennae over there near the long and sumptuously stocked bar, a big Rousseau print, the jungle one, and a brushed-aluminium-framed painting of a cougar, snarling and back arched, above the fireplace where artificial logs were flickering unconvincingly, and look at that, a miniature guillotine, cute little basket and all - fingers, would that be the game, then, first the tips and then the rest of them, working down through the knuckles and the blood-crimson haze of the mind that refused to speak on its way to the only exit available, insanity? Because he had some questions for me, I knew that now: he'd had me taken alive.

Twelve-thirty on the chic figureless clock on the wall over the bar, the witching hour well past and the morrow already here. And perfume in the air: a woman had been here and not too long ago. He would have many of those, the Cougar.

'You killed one of my men,' he said, his tone almost hushed.

'What? That's right.'

I managed to get him in focus again, felt a bit better now, not what you'd call operational, but able to think. That was going to help, if I wanted to get through the first hours of this new day still alive and mentally intact. Even all of the day.

'His wallet was found on you,' the Cougar said softly.

'Yes?'

'Why did you take his wallet?'

'I wanted information.'

'Information on what?'

'Whatever there was to find.'

In a moment: 'You've called yourself a "businessman" on several occasions, Berinov. So I'm interested to know why a "businessman" should be able to knock out three trained bodyguards and almost get out of a trap by going down the wall of a building in the dark.'

This was the first of the major questions he would obviously ask me and I'd worked out the answer already. 'I was with the Komitet.' The KGB.

'I see. Which department?'

'Department Four.' Terrorist training and operations. 'I liked the excitement, but of course I was younger then.'

'Go on.'

'Then I got interested in money when I found out how expensive women were, and how much they liked diamonds. The pay in the Komitet wasn't quite adequate.'

He thought about that. 'So how did you acquire your acumen as a "businessman"?'

'Oh, look, it's not difficult to make money in Moscow these days, you know that. Or anywhere else, if you set a goal and go for it.'

His sleek pomaded head tilted an inch. 'That's very true. But it's difficult for me to believe that a former Komitet terrorist-agent now doing business in the mafiya no longer carries a gun. It's inconsistent. Perhaps you can help me.'

I gave a shrug. 'The fact is that I find making money – big money, huge money – so attractive that I've changed my self-image. Guns don't go with silk shirts and deerskin shoes and London-tailored suits. And if I get into trouble, I don't normally need a gun to help me to get out of it. Tonight I was simply out of luck.'

Thin ice, terribly thin ice, I could hear it cracking.

'You were out of luck, yes,' Vishinsky said. The fury still hadn't left his eyes: it was creating that glint of crystal in their depths. 'Add you'll be interested to know we've got something in common. I was also in the Komitet, working with Stasi in East Germany until the Wall came down.' He allowed a pause. 'I was sent there to train their people in advanced interrogation techniques.'

I found my attention drawn to the cute little guillotine near the bar, but I didn't move my eyes or my head.

'So let me guess,' I said. 'You've got some questions for me tonight.'

He nodded slowly. 'The first one is, where are the diamonds?'

He couldn't leave them alone.

Suddenly I knew my direction, the only chance I had of seeing the dawn. This man was for sale. But I wasn't buying him in diamonds. 'They're for Sakkas' mistress,' I said. Ballerinas, Croder had told me.

'Antanova?'

'Yes.' Mental freeze – it had been such a long shot.

'You know her?'

'I've seen her dance. I thought the diamonds might be a suitable introduction. Look, Vishinsky, if -'

The Cougar was leaning forward. 'You had the idea of picking up Vasyl Sakkas' mistress?'

'They say she's stunning.'

Vishinsky leaned back, his eyes glimmering: perhaps he thought I was having him on, didn't like it. 'There are various ways,' he said, 'of committing suicide. In any case he never lets Natalya wear jewellery. To Sakkas she's cattle.'

I waited, but he didn't say anything more and I left it, took the heat off the subject in case I blew things. 'Look,' I said, 'if you're short of a couple of million dollars I can steer you into something a lot more profitable than those little baubles, believe me. You know what they say – don't stop the parade to pick up a dime.'

He went on watching me for a moment, then glanced upward at something beside me – someone standing against the wall, out of my vision field. Five guards, then, and noted. I think Vishinsky was on the point of ordering this one to beat me up until he got straight answers; then he seemed to change his mind and looked back at me.

'Go on,' he said softly. I'd first heard this tone at the Baccarat Club; it meant that if I said something wrong he would let me know.

'Let's call it five million,' I said. 'I'm talking about icons now, antiques. There's a very good market for that sort of thing in London and New York, for any kind of Russian art, especially from the Tsarist period. It's very in now – miniatures, Faberge eggs, gold snuff boxes, jewellery – and people here are busy searching out the sources: museums, banks, private collections, nowhere's safe. I was in London last week and I came back with fourteen million US dollars after only three days.'

I waited, but Vishinsky didn't say anything. I didn't know if he was paying attention or even listening, and there was the uneasy feeling that the more rope I paid out the more he'd have to hang me with. But I couldn't stop now.

'If that interests you, I can give you introductions to some of the major collectors in the West, the most profitable sources of merchandise here and the most reliable courier services.'

He took a long time, the Cougar.

'Why should you?'

I shrugged. 'I'm putting a price on my head that I can pay.'

'Explain that.'

'It's pretty obvious. I muscled my way into your poker game at the club and you didn't like that. I left two of your men in bad shape just afterwards and then I was forced to kill a third, and you don't like that either. I think you would have had me shot on sight tonight if you hadn't wanted the diamonds first, so you at least know the basics of good business, but that won't save my neck if you suddenly decide to order the kill to get rid of the anger that's in you.'

Let the defence rest.

He watched me for a while, the crystalline light still playing deep in his eyes and replacing intelligence with raw emotion, so that I hadn't got a chance of knowing how I was making out.

'Yes,' he said at last, 'there's a great deal of anger in me, and killing you would give me much satisfaction. You have offended the Cougar.'

'Mea culpa.'

Then he made one of his non-sequential leaps, and it worried me.

'Do you think this is a nice suite?'

I looked around. 'Very nice.'

'All the suites are like this one. There are seven floors. This is the Hotel Nikolas. I named it myself – I'm a monarchist at heart, you know.'

'Really.'

'I own the hotel.'

'And how many others?'

He frowned. 'This is the only one. I'm not in the hotel business.'

'But that's very profitable too, Vishinsky. There are three hotels along the Boulevard Ring, fully furnished and going for a song. Fin-de-siecle, a lot of class, bronze, gilt, moulded ceilings, tapestries. I could arrange for you to buy all three of them.'

The shiny head tilting. 'For how much?'

'Five million. They're worth fifty.'

'How can you do that?'

'The owner is in my debt.'

'For fifty million?'

'Much more. He owes me his life.'

'I see. It will be very easy, of course, for me to check out this line you've been giving me.'

'I'm expecting you to. I'm putting a generous price on my own life tonight. Don't miss this grand opportunity.'

Mistake, and I froze mentally. Vishinsky's head was tilting again. He wasn't familiar with that last phrase, because I'd given it a literal translation. To protect and maintain a foreign-national cover you haven't only got to speak the language fluently, you've got to watch the idiom – I'd just used some American – and follow the customs, respect the etiquette, the taboos, adopt the characteristic attitudes to life: in France, philosophical; in the UK, polite but a touch suspicious of strangers; in Germany, brisk and efficient; in Russia, cynical to the bone. But I couldn't change the 'grand opportunity' thing now, would have to rely on Vishinsky's impression that I did business in New York as well as London, knew my way around there.

'You visit the United States?' Hadn't missed it.

'I spent six months there a few years ago. These days I'm there every month or two. It depends on what I can dig up in the icon mines here, and who wants to buy it in the Big Apple.'

'The big -'

'New York. I'm not sure why they call it that.'

'I see.'

He was giving things a lot of thought again, and I let the silence in and did some thinking of my own. If this man was going to play ball I would ask for the use of a telephone and call Legge – not Ferris – 'Oh, this is Berinov. I want you to set up a few things for me. I need a supply of some really good icons, rare ones, make it a half dozen and throw in some jewellery, Faberge if you can locate it at short notice. I'll come round for them when you name the contact point – use the utmost discretion as always.'

Take it from there, leave it to Legge's imagination: perhaps he could find some good reproductions, put up a show, give me the time and the chance to get out of this place and meet him at the contact point heavily escorted, right, but once in the open streets again I could use some imagination of my own, create a last-ditch chance and go for it, shit or bust, life or death, I shall need your prayers, my good friend, and I would ask you to be generous with them, even stylish, indulge me, think of some Latin.

'I'm not sure,' Vishinsky said at last, 'if I should believe all your -' and then the telephone rang and the nearest bodyguard picked it up and listened. Vishinsky had stopped what he was saying at once: the call was important and he'd been expecting it.

The guard brought him the phone. 'Moskolets, boss.'

Vishinsky took it. 'Well?'

I could hear the caller's voice faintly, couldn't catch the words, but Vishinsky's eyes had changed. The fury in them was suddenly explicit, blazing, and I was warned: this man was capable of anything, any act, however appalling, once he had enough rage to drive him.

'What?' Very softly.

I took a quick look at the guard standing behind him and saw the skin draw tight on his face and the fear come into his eyes.

'Why not?' – Vishinsky.

The time on the clock over the bar was now midnight plus forty-seven, and I noted it simply because the scene in here was going to change and it might become important to remember when things had happened. I heard a sound, slight as the rustle of a dry leaf, from behind me as the man there shifted his feet, and the silence was so intense now that I heard him swallow.

Vishinsky was looking nowhere, at no one, his eyes set in a brilliant stare as he listened for another five seconds, ten, and then said, 'Get here. Get up here,' and threw the phone for the guard to catch.

I leaned the back of my head against the wall to conserve the energy of the vertebrae, breathing a little deeper, tensing the major muscles and not finding any soreness critical enough to stop mobility, ultra-mobility if a chance came to do anything while Vishinsky was dealing with Moskolets, offering a diversion.

With five guards in here?

Christ, not you again.

To no one Vishinsky said in a different tone now, of a honed knife slitting snakeskin, 'He didn't make the kill.'

A soul saved, then, somewhere out there in the night, a banker or a judge on his late way home, or just some merchant tardy with his dues. But the Cougar was not pleased, and I thought of the guillotine again: perhaps he used it for purposes other than interrogation, for the teaching of lessons, par example.

'There were people around,' he said, and I saw the guard near him flinch. 'There were people around, so he thought it wasn't a good time to do it. He thought it wasn't a good time.'

He got out of his chair so fast that it was sent spinning as he stood staring at the guard. 'What do you think of that, Vitali?'

'He should've made the kill, boss.'

'Of course he should have made the fucking kill!'

Metal vibrated somewhere on the bar, perhaps the handle of the ice bucket. I tensed the muscles again, relaxed them, took slow, deep breaths. Five guards, right, but they were all scared to death of this man and the degree of fear in them would diminish their muscle tone by half, more than half, and slow their reactions, decisively if I could make any kind of move.

You're out of your -

Shuddup. I'm handling this.

Vishinsky had swung round again and was staring at me now, the rage so hot in his eyes that I could see he was trying to remember who I was, what I was doing here propped against the wall with blood caked on my head.

Then a buzzer sounded and he jerked his attention away, stood perfectly still in the middle of the room and watched one of the guards go to the door and look through the security lens before he opened it.

Moskolets came in quickly as if someone had pushed him, his thick body sloping ahead of his feet, a clot of caked snow coming off one of his boots. He saw Vishinsky and brought himself to a halt, his eyes tensed as if he were looking into strong light.

'Boss,' he said, 'I -'

'Get over there. Against the wall.'

'Boss, I can explain – there were too many people in the -'

'Get over there.'

The man ducked his head, pulling off his fur hat as he trotted across the room, turning when he reached the wall and standing there with the collar of his coat still turned up against the chill of the streets, one lapel bent back untidily, his thin hair pulled away from the bald patch by the action of taking off his hat, his face grey as he forced himself to look into the eyes of the Cougar. A hit man, Moskolets, older than the chorus boys in their monogrammed jump suits, a more experienced attendant, a specialist in the art of the distant kill, rat-tat-tat, wishing perhaps that he had his gun out now and ready to make the most important hit of his life, the one that would end the terror that was in him now.

In the silence I could hear tyre-chains clinking in the street below, even through the double-glazed and possibly bullet-proof windows. Snow must be falling again, and this too was noted as a change in the environment. A red sector is a red sector, and the most trivial factors can suddenly become critical.

Vishinsky moved at last, going back to the chrome-and-vinyl chair and sitting down, and as he turned I saw his eyes had changed again, were almost expressionless as he looked across at the man standing against the wall.

'Explain, then,' he said, sing-song, as if to a child.

'Boss, there were five or six people – more than that – maybe seven or eight people, and two of them were -'

'Don't fiddle with your hat, Yuri.'

The man looked down at his hands, stilling them, bringing his head up again with his face crumpling. This new role-playing – of parent and child – began to fascinate me as I was shown yet another side to Vishinsky's psychotic character: from a blaze of explicit rage he was capable of getting himself back under control, of driving his emotions inwards and holding them there with the potential of an unexploded bomb. And there was something appropriate in the parent-child relationship – the Russian word 'sobri' was as close as the mafiyosa could get to the Al Capone title of 'boss', but it also had a suggestion of 'father' about it, as in the French 'patron'.

'Two of them were cops, boss. You wouldn't have wanted me to make a hit in front of the cops, I knew that, I was sure of that.' His small mouth hanging open, his breath fluttering, his eyes pleading now.

'Was it snowing, Yuri?'

'Snowing? Yes. Starting to come down quite a bit. The cops – '

'How was the street? '

'The street, boss?'

'The surface. Try and understand what I'm saying, Yuri. And straighten your collar.'

The man's hands fumbled with it, then he looked up again – was this better, was this pleasing to his sobri? 'The – the surface,' he said, lost, then made a try. 'The surface had got some snow on it. Not much, just a little.' Was that the right answer?

'So you could have made an immediate getaway,' Vishinsky said, his tone light, chiding, 'as soon as you'd got the shots in. Isn't that right?'

'Boss, I -'

'Isn't that right?'

'With the cops there, I -'

'Vitali,' Vishinsky said to the guard near him. 'Bring me that imbecile's revolver.'

'Boss,' the man against the wall said, 'Boss, I did what I thought was right -'

'Shut your mouth.'

Moskolets unbuttoned his coat and the guard took his gun and brought it over to Vishinsky, presenting the butt with deference, his eyes uneasy. This had been enacted before, then, this little charade; it had its own traditional choreography, and every man in the room was familiar with it, and on edge.

Moskolets: 'Boss, don't do this to me. Don't -'

'Shut up, you stupid son of a whore! You know that fucking judge is going to be in court tomorrow, and he's got my brother up on a charge? Didn't you know that?'

'Yes, boss, but I -'

'Shut the fuck up!'

Vishinsky's hands were trembling as he hit the chamber of the gun open and shook five of the bullets out, scattering them onto the carpet and snapping the chamber back and giving the gun to the guard.

'Boss' – the voice of Moskolets, high-pitched now, a small boy's whimper – 'Boss, I didn't mean to -'

'Vitali, give him the gun.'

'Sure, boss.'

'Don't make me do it, for the sake of the holy Christ -'

'I'm giving you a chance, Moskolets. You do this or they take you to the forest, don't you understand? You spin that thing six times. Do it right and you can get out of here with your fucking skin, don't you know charity when you see it?'

'Boss, please, boss, for the sake -' his voice cracking.

But he took the gun, looked at it as if he'd never seen one before, silent now, his mouth shaking, his eyes wide, such are your typical hit men, put them on the wrong side of their favourite toy and this is what you see, call it a jelly-fish, not good to look upon without a sour rush of contempt into the mouth.

'Play,' Vishinsky cut across him, 'play!'

The guard Vitali stood away from the man quickly, perhaps bearing in mind how far a jet of blood will reach when an artery's hit, and there was a click as Moskolets pulled the trigger, another click as he pulled it again, wanting suddenly to get it over, know the worst, was that it?

I watched Vishinsky's face, the eyes of the Cougar, as he stared at the roulette-player, unblinking. Behind him the guard had his own eyes narrowed, his mouth compressed, his head jerking a degree as Vishinsky's voice came.

'Play, you fucking clod, come on, three – fire!'

Another click, the man's finger moving as if to the force of the other man's voice, the face of Moskolets now bright with sweat, his hand shaking as he kept the gun held to his temple, his eyes no longer registering anything as his mind passed beyond terror and beyond despair, dwelling in oblivion, already -

'Play, Moskolets, you -'

Crash of the gun and the guard jumped forward to catch the man as the blood bloomed crimson across the skull and the thick squat body jack-knifed into Vitali's arms.

'Mind the carpet, don't get blood on the carpet!'

'Okay, boss,' cradling Moskolets' head against his jump-suit as he lowered the body, two of the other guards moving in to help him.

'Get a bag.' Vishinsky's voice quiet now as the cordite fumes curdled in the air below the lamp. 'Put him into a bag and give me his gun.'

'Sure, boss.'

One of them left the room, his feet quick, bouncing in their fancy Nikes across the carpet. Vishinsky didn't move, sat with his legs crossed and the revolver on his lap as he stared at the mottled face of Moskolets, his body propped against the wall, a guard holding the palm of his hand over the bloodied cavity in the skull.

It was a black bag the other man brought back, the standard model. It must, I suppose, have been tempting for the Cougar to have his escutcheon printed on it in gold – he must have kept a supply of these things, for God's sake. The Russian-style syndicates, Croder had said, make the Italian and Sicilian operators look like harmless amateurs, yea, verily, in all sooth.

A dull musical note sounded, long-drawn-out and with a tone of finality in it as a guard pulled the zip-fastener shut on the bag.

'Two of you, take him to the forest.'

'Sure, boss.'

They lifted the body together, one at its shoulders and the other holding its feet. A third guard opened the door for them, closed it again, its sheet steel booming faintly like the echo of a prison gate. The fumes of the cordite hung on the air, bitter-sweet.

Vishinsky picked up one of the bullets from the carpet and slipped it into the chamber of the revolver and slapped it shut and threw the gun across to me.

'Now you,' he said. 'Play.'