Quiller Balalaika

4: SMOKE

She was extraordinarily supple, using the whole of her body in a wave of sinuous movement that flowed from her arms downward across her hips and into her long slender legs as she placed her feet with an instinctive precision, following me so closely that I had the feeling we were a single creature prowling through the jungle beat of the music.

Her name was Claudette, and the heavy gold necklace she wore had the flamboyance of solid gold.

Sometimes as we turned I saw Mitzi sitting at the end of the bar, the rainbow colours of its lights playing across her face. She hadn't looked in this direction since my partner and I had moved onto the small raised floor.

'Can you get me in?' I asked Claudette.

'To see him?'

'Yes.'

'Why should I?' Her eyes were huge, glinting with the sheen of black sable under snowlight as she watched me, amused, I think, because I couldn't dance with this serpentine grace that she possessed, give me a chance for God's sake, she was the soul of Africa and I was a runt from London.

'Because I want to do business with him,' I said. 'Mitzi said you might do me a favour.'

We were talking about Vishinsky. He was in the private room across there behind the podium where the band was playing. Vishinsky the Cougar. He had come in twenty minutes ago, two of his bodyguards pushing open the twin gilded doors and leading him along the wall past the rose-shaded lamps where people sat with their drinks. Reproduction? They could be original – this was a rich man's haunt, appointed with an understated splendour: the owner was French, Mitzi had told me.

'I'm needed at the bar,' she had also told me when Vishinsky and his entourage had swept into the place. 'Go and dance with the black girl – her name's Claudette. Tell her I want her to help you.'

We turned, turned again, borne along by the music while these huge eyes watched me, never looked away. More than one man, I thought, must have drowned in them.

I didn't think Mitzi was needed at the bar. I thought she'd got cold feet at the last minute. We'd been sitting at a table near the doors waiting for Vishinsky to come in, and she'd said she would intercept him and introduce me, but the very pace of his entrance had made any interruption seem unthinkable, and she hadn't even got up.

'Mitzi thought I might do you a favour?' Claudette asked me.

'Yes.'

'I don't owe her.'

'So will you do me a favour anyway?'

I didn't put a price on it yet. She'd do that if she decided to.

'You say you want to do business with him.'

'Yes.'

'What kind of business?'

I made the gesture of looking around before I spoke. 'I've discovered a source of sable.' The Cougar's reket was mainly protection, Mitzi had told me in the fast food cafe, but he also dealt in sable.

A smile glowed in the huge black eyes. 'Vishinsky is the source of sable.'

'Not all of it.'

'All of the highest quality pelts. The rest aren't worth his attention.'

We turned again, her arms undulating like willow boughs stirred by a summer breeze. 'I'm told he's taken by you,' I said.

'Sometimes he pays me attention, yes. But that doesn't mean I can talk any kind of business with him.'

'I don't need you to. Just get me in there and introduce me.'

'You make it sound so easy. That's because you don't know the Cougar.' The music stopped and we moved to the edge of the floor.

'Would you like a drink?'

She glanced across at the patron, who was standing near the bar, hands tucked behind his dinner jacket, small spade beard, eyes everywhere. 'I think so,' Claudette said.

She asked for a Fernet Branca; I ordered Narzan, no ice. She watched me with her chin on her folded hands.

'No,' I said, 'I don't know the Cougar. So tell me about him.'

'There isn't very much one can tell about any of those people, without getting beaten up, maybe killed, according to what one has said, and to whom.'

'Then just tell me why you can't introduce me to this one.'

She shrugged, her bare ebony shoulders lifting and falling like a ballet dancer's. 'It might go all right, but then it might not. It would depend on his mood. If I took you in there and he didn't think the business you discussed with him was worth his time, he would have me beaten up for wasting it. What he would do with you I don't know.'

I thought it was time to change my mind, not wait any longer. 'I'm not asking you to help me without recompense, Claudette, if that's how you'd prefer things.'

The heavy gold earrings swung as she shook her head. 'Men don't understand what happens to a woman when she gets beaten up. The bruises are nothing.'

And suddenly it was over. Unknowingly she had presented the one argument that stopped me in my tracks. Before going out on a mission I always tell the clearance officer the same thing: my only bequest is to Home Safe, and when he asks me if it's a bank I tell him no, it's the abused women's shelter in Shoreditch.

'Then we'll talk,' I said, 'about something else.'

It took me ten minutes, a little more, to assemble a full picture of the huge ornate room in my mind as we sat talking – had she been born in Africa, and if so, how could her grasp of formal Russian be so perfect? And where had she learned to dance like that?

The patron hadn't moved, was still near the bar, still watching the girls, some of them drinking with members, some of them dancing. There were two heavy-bodied men in dinner jackets, standing and watching the room, like the patron. Bodyguards wouldn't be formally dressed. There were fourteen of them standing around, five of them in black jump suits, six in striped track tops, two in clean crisp karate gis and black belts, and one in a white workout suit with a gold cougar emblazoned over the left pectoral, like all Vishinsky's team – he'd brought six of them in with him, so there would be five inside the private room behind the podium. This one was guarding the door.

Two of the mob were dancing, one with a Japanese girl in a jade kimono; the men wore London-tailored silk dinner jackets and both sported carnations. Another mafiya boss was at a table against the red velvet-covered wall, sitting with a Russian woman of great beauty. I could tell which bodyguards were in whose employ by their focused attention.

'How long have you been in Moscow?'

'Five or six years.' The black sable eyes watching me as Claudette sipped her Fernet. 'And you?'

'Since the Reds bit the dust.'

In a moment she said, 'I would advise you to think again.'

I'd looked twice at the door of the private room, often enough to clue her in. This wasn't important in terms of security: she knew why I'd come here. The man guarding the door wasn't big, but thick-necked and a degree muscle-bound: there was too much bulge under the skin-tight suit.

'Think again about what?' I asked Claudette.

'Trying to see the Cougar. That bodyguard would stop you anyway, and if you tried to insist, he'd have you thrown out of the club. There are five more inside. They are not gentle.'

'I appreciate your concern.'

'And hopefully my advice.'

'The thing is,' I said, 'it's very important I talk to this man. Strictly entre nous, millions are involved.' She'd know I wasn't talking in rubles. 'Another Fernet?'

'No.'

Of course it was perfectly true: it was in point of fact important that I saw Vishinsky. There were other capos here, but I didn't have even the slender connection to any of them that I had with the Cougar – an acquaintanceship with Mitzi Piatilova. If I left here without seeing him I would leave here without access for Balalaika, and I would not, my good friend, sleep well. Oh, fair enough, the executive doesn't often gain access on the first day of the mission, though a few of us have done it – Vine, Teaseman, myself. I suppose I wanted to do it now out of pride, since the Chief of Signals himself was my control. But if Croder had known my thinking he would have flayed me with that tongue of his: pride can be deadly if you give it rein.

'Would you be able,' I asked Claudette, 'to find some club stationery for me?'

'I think so.'

'Just one sheet and an envelope.'

When she came back from the office near the doors I wrote the note and sealed it and put it into my breast pocket. 'You've been very kind,' I said. 'Possibly more than you know.'

A shimmering smile, the first I'd seen, a stunner. 'Whatever you're going to do,' she said, 'be very careful.'

'But of course.'

On my way to the private room I passed Mitzi, and she caught my arm. 'Is Claudette going to help you?'

'She already has.'

'You're going to talk to Vishinsky right now?'

'I'm going to try.'

Mitzi got off her bar stool, her eyes concerned. 'Without anyone taking you in there?'

'There would have been a risk for Claudette.'

'So you're going in alone.'

'Don't worry. I shall use great charm.'

'Shit,' Mitzi said.

The bodyguard was still at the door, flexing his ankles, eyeing me with a vacant stare as I went up to him.

He said no, of course, when I gave him the envelope. 'It's a matter of urgency,' I told him. 'I need to make sure the Cougar knows what's happened.'

He turned the envelope over to scan the other side. 'So what's happened?'

'It's for his eyes only. But when he hears the news from someone else and I tell him you stopped me at the door, you'll finish up in the forest. Now move your fucking arse and go in there and give it to him. Move.'

His eyes went hard. 'So who the fuck are you?'

I wasn't making any headway so I used a half-fist under the rib cage and he doubled over and I opened the door and went into the private room. It was full of cigar smoke.

Four men were sitting at a table with cards fanned in their hands. They were perfectly still, looking at me. Ash dropped from one of their cigars onto the polished redwood table. The five bodyguards were standing against the walls, one of them moving into a half-crouch because the man outside was moaning and it must have looked quite clear what had happened. I kicked the door shut behind me.

He would be the one on the far side of the table, Vishinsky. He was watching me in silence, his eyes smouldering with rage, his long narrow face paler, perhaps, than normal: this was my impression. His hair was cut en brosse, and shone with oil; his mouth was a bloodless slash across the lower part of his face, and I found myself thinking that his smile, if ever it came, would bear semblance to the look of a predator on sighting prey. He was wearing a perfectly cut dinner jacket – they all were, the men at the table – and the bow was black velvet, the corner of the handkerchief in his breast pocket monogrammed. Then at last he moved, with just a jerk of his head, and two of the bodyguards closed in on me, one of them frisking me, and thoroughly.

'Where is your gun?' This from Vishinsky.

'I don't carry one.'

'Why not?' His eyes were fixed on me now with a reptilian stare: he'd got the rage out of his system.

'It's not the way I do business. Call me a peaceful trader.'

'You're lying. There's no such thing in Moscow.'

'There's a first time for everything.'

The man outside was still moaning, and Vishinsky looked at one of the guards. 'Go outside and take over. Tell him I want to see him at nine o'clock in the morning, unarmed.'

Looking back to me: 'What did you do to him?'

'Nothing very much.'

'He sounds in a lot of pain.'

'He's just winded.'

'Why did you do that to him?' Vishinsky's voice was suddenly very quiet. 'What could have made you even contemplate such a thing, with one of my bodyguards?'

'I asked him to bring a note in for you. He refused.'

'You haven't answered my question.'

At the edge of my vision I was taking in what I could of the other people in the room. Their heads turned to look at Vishinsky when he spoke, to look at me when I answered. They reminded me of umpires at Wimbledon.

'I thought I had,' I told him.

By now I was having to keep the impatience out of my tone. He'd decided to treat me like a schoolboy, possibly for the benefit of the other three men. But there was no point in getting impatient; the thing was to leave here with what I'd come here for: access for Balalaika.

'No,' Vishinsky said. 'You weren't listening. I asked you what made you even contemplate such a thing, with one of my bodyguards.'

'I came here tonight to do business with you. I don't like being obstructed by minions.'

'And do you think I like being insulted?'

'That's just the way you're taking it. I heard you were a businessman, and I came here to talk business. When do we start?'

He left his stare on me, looking for something in my eyes: apprehension. I don't suppose he ever looked into any man's eyes without seeing it. Apprehension or fear. I didn't think the bodyguard would go to see Vishinsky tomorrow; by nine o'clock in the morning I thought he would probably be in St Petersberg, or out of the country; even with a neck that thick he must have a modicum of sense.

'I do business in my office,' Vishinsky said. 'Not in gaming rooms.'

'It's rather urgent. The shipment just came in, and I want to make a deal as soon as I can.'

'You don't listen, you see. I told you I don't do business in gaming rooms.'

'As a businessman, you'll see that this can't wait, when I tell you about the pelts, and the price.'

In a moment, 'Who told you I was a businessman?'

'No one in particular. It's your reputation.'

'Reputations are built on what people say. I want to know who said that. I want to know who said anything at all about me.

I decided not to use Mitzi Piatilova's name after all. She was perfectly right: this man was dangerous, and might take it out on her if he objected to anything I said – he'd already objected to what I'd done. In any case I hadn't intended to use the Boris thing as my reason for coming here: the proposal of a deal worth only fifty thousand dollars would only enrage him again, and I needed to use him.

'I can't remember who told me about you,' I said. 'You're quite famous, as I'm sure you know. Everyone respects the Cougar.'

'Except you.'

'I have the greatest respect for you, or I wouldn't have come here.' The cigar smoke was getting to my lungs, and I had to make an effort not to cough: it would be a sign of weakness.

In a moment Vishinsky laid his fan of cards on the table, and the other three men did the same, and instantly. 'You said you brought a note for me.'

I got it out and went closer, and both guards beside me took a sudden grip on my arms, so it was with a certain awkwardness that I dropped the envelope onto the table. When I stood back, my arms were released.

Vishinsky ripped open the envelope and read the note. 'So you want to sell some sable.'

'More specifically, I want to sell it to you.'

'And why is that?'

'You deal in only the best.'

'You seem to have been listening to a lot of people – whose names you can't remember.'

'I think we've been through all that.'

'You're rather cocky.'

'I'm sorry you think so.'

'I do, and I don't like it. Since you've heard so much from so many people, you must know that when I don't like something I take the appropriate action.'

I backed off and leaned against the wall, folding my arms. 'Vishinsky, you've got a very good brain, but at the moment you're thinking with your gut, and that won't get us anywhere. I want this deal made tonight, and if you're not interested I'll let you get on with your game of poker. So far you seem to be doing rather well.'

The stack of banknotes at his end of the table was larger than the other players', but that could just be because they had to let the Cougar win. Or he wouldn't like it.

'I always do well,' he said, his voice growing quiet again. 'And I don't always play at a table.'

'That's encouraging. I respect an intelligent opponent.'

'How long,' he asked in a moment, 'have you been dealing in merchandise?'

'Years.'

'Legitimately?'

'Of course.'

'You're not, then, in the brotherhood.'

'Actually, I am. But the deals I've made with members of the brotherhood have usually been honest on both sides.'

'Usually.'

'Yes.'

'And when they're not?'

'I take appropriate action. There are things I don't like either.'

Ash dropped again onto the table from one of the cigars, but the man smoking it didn't take any notice, or didn't think it was important. I thought it was important because it emphasized the mood in this room: these three men were totally attentive to Vishinsky's every word, and if he'd told them to go outside and shoot themselves I think they would have done that. He was the Cougar, and I was becoming aware of his power, which could only have been achieved by total ruthlessness. This was the most immediate danger: if it amused him to order a hit on me, simply out of caprice, he would do it almost without thinking.

'What do you mean,' he asked me, 'by appropriate action?'

'The last man who tried to screw me on a deal jumped out of a window.'

'Jumped.'

'There was no evidence that anyone had pushed him.'

'You made sure there wasn't any.'

Nothing but bloody questions, and I decided we ought to start doing some work. 'Look,' I said, 'you're wasting my time, Vishinsky, and in any case I don't like being put through third-degree, bamboo sticks or not.'

The stare took on a glitter. 'They could be provided. They will, in fact, be provided if you don't satisfy me as to your identity. You should have thought twice, Berinov, before you decided to insult me and come barging into my private room, a complete stranger.'

Knew my name because I'd signed the note. I unfolded my arms and stretched, taking my time, doing it thoroughly. If there was going to be any kind of action the muscles would need to be in tone.

'We'll get better acquainted,' I said, 'as we go along. Now listen carefully. There are exactly four thousand black pelts of premium quality. Some of them are attractively flecked with silver but none of them have white underparts. They were tanned by top professionals who've been working all their lives in the region where the sable were hunted. The pelts are in hermetically sealed containers here in Moscow. If I had time to take them to London or Paris my asking price would be one million dollars. But I haven't got time, so I'm ready to unload them here, since I don't normally deal in sable. My price to you would be five hundred thousand. I hope you're beginning to see that I came here to offer you a deal you can hardly refuse. All you have to do is get those pelts shipped to London or Paris yourself.'

He'd looked down, just once, to mask his eyes, and I knew he was interested, knew I'd got him. This wasn't surprising: with a deal like this he could pocket half a million dollars for the thirty minutes of his time I'd so far taken up.

When he looked at me again there was no stare: the eyes had intelligence in them, attentiveness. 'You say you don't normally deal in sable.'

'No.'

'What do you normally deal in?'

'Diamonds.'

Vishinsky shifted on his chair. 'Did you come here tonight with your bodyguards?'

'I haven't got any.'

Head on one side. 'You say you're in the brotherhood, but you don't use bodyguards and you don't carry a gun but you deal in diamonds. You see how difficult I'm finding it to fit you into the picture.'

I remembered Legge: 'There's something you've got to understand. If you're going to be infiltrating the mafiya they'll expect you to dress correctly, I mean you get into a bad situation and they frisk you and there's no gun, it's going to look ' and I'd interrupted him, told him I'd take care when it happened. But he'd been perfectly right to warn me – Vishinsky was taking me up on it, though it didn't change anything. If I'd worn a gun here tonight, what earthly good would it have been?

'You don't really need,' I told Vishinsky, 'to fit me into any picture. You want those pelts? I'll sell them to you.'

'How did you get possession of them?'

'Somebody owed me. He gave me the source.'

'What did he owe you?'

'I saved one of his sons from getting shot.'

Fingers drumming on the table: 'You say you normally deal in diamonds. What sort?'

The two closest bodyguards moved as I put a hand into my pocket and went to the table, but Vishinsky stopped any action with a jerk of his head.

'Like these,' I said, and rolled the three blue diamonds out of their bag. Under the green-shaded overhead lamps they burned with a brilliant fire. In a moment Vishinsky picked one up to look at it, and the three other men leaned forward, dazzled.

'Where did you get these?' Vishinsky asked. I could see the reflection of the stones in his eyes.

'They're from the Jagersfontein mines in South Africa and I got them raw in Antwerp and brought them here for cutting.'

'What are they worth?'

'Two million pounds sterling.'

'You bought them in Antwerp?'

'Yes.'

'At a dealer's price?'

'At that particular dealer's price to me – a discount of fifty per cent. I sell him stones from Siberia, and he does very well. These'll be going to Rome.' I leaned forward, picking up two of the diamonds, and in a moment Vishinsky gave me the third, looking up at me with a new expression, not quite of respect, but attention.

'Why are you carrying them on you tonight?'

'Because there's nowhere safer.'

'You're extraordinarily confident.'

'It's just that I know my way around.'

'Even onthe streets of Moscow?'

'Especially on the streets of Moscow.'

He dismissed this with a shrug, then for a full minute there was totalsilence in the room as he looked away from me and down at the cards on the table as he immersed himself in thought. The cigar smoke drifted upward to the lamps, swirling as it met the heat. At last he looked up and said, 'I'll have someone inspect the merchandise. Where should he go?'

'By tomorrow night it'll be at the base of the crane on the Simonovskaya dock at Wharf thirty-nine. I'll be there at ten o'clock.'

Vishinsky looked at one of the men at the table. 'Viktor?'

'Sure, patron. No problem.'

I looked at him, scanning his face and noting the broken nose, the heavy black eyebrows, the stubble. The hair wasn't important: tomorrow night he'd be wearing his fur hat.

'This is Viktor Stroykin,' Vishinsky said. 'He is my chief lieutenant.' The man looked up at me, his eyes indifferent, and we nodded.

'I'll be alone,' I told him. 'And so will you.'

In a moment he glanced across at Vishinsky, who looked at me.

'Unlike yourself,' Vishinsky said, 'we use bodyguards.'

'All the same, I want him to go there alone.'

'Why?' The dead stare was back.

'I prefer it like that.'

'You prefer it.'

'That's right.'

Silence again.

'I too have my preferences, Berinov. There will be four bodyguards accompanying my lieutenant tomorrow night.'

'In that case,' I said, 'the deal is off.' I turned to the door, and one of the guards closed in on me, presumably in case Vishinsky didn't want me to leave.

'Berinov.'

I turned back.

'You're being very difficult.'

'I'm sorry you think so.'

'And rather suspect. Why do you want my lieutenant to go to the rendezvous alone?'

'Because we'll need to be discreet, and I don't want an army of minions hanging around. Take it or leave it, deal or no deal, your choice.'

We locked eyes, and the silence became absolute, gathering tension until one of the men at the table felt the need to cough, but stifled it. Vishinsky went on waiting for me to break, and it took a long time for him to understand that I wasn't going to. Finally he turned to Stroykin.

'No bodyguards. Is that understood?'