The translator, p.14
The Translator, page 14
Inside the flat, the mess was incredible, with empty Coca-Cola cans and plastic cartons of half-eaten food lying about. All the windows were shut, and the room was unbearably stuffy.
Marina pushed aside some dirty plates to make space for her bag on the table. Carefully, she lifted out some smoked sturgeon, red caviar, bread, butter, a knife, a cutting board, plastic plates, beers, cups and a bottle of vodka.
“Now you’re talking!” said Vanya, smiling from ear to ear as he began to eat. When he’d cleaned his plate, Marina handed over a photograph that she had taken of the two brothers five years earlier. It was at Peterhof, against a background of cascading fountains. Pasha had his arm around Vanya, and their heads were touching. Vanya propped up the photograph against an empty beer bottle next to his laptop, and, with his index finger, he stroked his brother’s face.
“Vanechka… With these emails, if we play our cards right… together we can bring down Varlamov. Destroy him.”
“Really?” said Vanya, backing away from Marina. In a second, his mood had changed, his eyes full of mistrust. “Really? I saw you on the telly, standing next to Serov and Varlamov. How do I know they haven’t sent you here, those FSB shits?”
“Vanechka, look at me! In all the years we’ve known each other, have I ever lied to you? Have I? No one knows I’m here. No one! We’re on the same side, you and me. I swear on Pasha’s soul. Let’s talk business,” she said gently. “You asked me if I could find a buyer for the emails. I have.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
Marina took out a white envelope from her bag and laid fifty hundred-dollar bills on the table. Vanya picked them up and counted them out again, fingering the last between his thumb and forefinger.
“New notes,” he said.
“I’ve been negotiating on your behalf. This five grand is for one day’s worth of Varlamov’s emails on a flash drive, which I need to take with me. It’s bait. If they like what they see…”
“They?”
“You don’t need to know. If they like what they see, then you give me another flash drive with the rest of the emails, twenty-three thousand of them, and you get the big bucks.”
“How much?”
“Three hundred thousand dollars.”
Vanya opened his blue eyes wide, and a smile spread across his face.
“I’m not part of this deal, Vanechka,” Marina continued urgently. “It’s important you know that. I’m just the broker. Unpaid. The email money is all yours. So, shall we get to work? I need to see what I’m buying.”
Vanya sat down in front of his laptop.
“Let’s start with you… Why not? I bet you’re mentioned somewhere…”
Vanya typed “Volina” into the search box, then tipped back in his chair and burst out laughing.
“‘Marina Volina is too clever for her own good…’ The dickhead doesn’t like you much.”
“Who’s he’s writing to?”
“Viktor Romanovsky, from the office of the deputy prime minister.”
“Viktor Romanovsky is the deputy prime minister.”
“Well, he likes you. Look at his answer. ‘Not true. And by the way, Volina has the complete confidence of the president.’”
Marina smiled. It was nice to know she had friends in high places. She was going to need them if she was going to get out alive.
“Vanechka, do me a favour,” she said. “Put ‘microsatellites’ into the search box.”
Vanya did as she asked, but nothing came up.
Marina trawled through the general’s emails for three hours straight, until her eyes ached. Along the way, she made a note of dates and times and gave herself cryptic clues as to what was in the emails. She drank one black coffee after another to keep awake.
Dawn was breaking when Marina woke Vanya. She asked him to put all the emails sent and received on 23 August onto a new flash drive she had brought with her, but Vanya shook his head. He reached up to a tin marked “tea” and pulled out a flash drive.
“No foreign stuff gets into my devices,” he told Marina.
The job took ten minutes, and, when it was done, he held up the USB stick between his thumb and his forefinger.
“This is the bait?”
“Yes.”
“And if your friends like it, they’ll get the rest of the emails, and bring the bastard down?”
“Yes.”
By the time Marina got home, it was light. As she climbed the chipped marble stairs to the landing, Oxana raised a sleepy head from her narrow bed.
“My, you’re late!” she said, rubbing her eyes. “New boyfriend?”
12
Clive was on edge. It was Wednesday morning, and he hadn’t heard from Marina. Was it all bravado? Fantasy? And the one-off, was that something for old times’ sake? Clive felt foolish because he had allowed himself to dream that she would pull it off, that he would see her again… that… that…
And there was something else. This “tail” business was getting to him. Even as he ate his breakfast in the world’s most majestic dining room – according to the Metropol website – he could not shake off a feeling of unease, and, as he sipped his coffee beneath an enormous vaulted stained-glass roof thirty metres above his head, he kept looking for a sleazy face, a crooked smile. He glanced up at the balcony, half expecting to find a man in dark glasses staring at him. He searched behind the giant candelabra, ablaze with lightbulbs and gilt, for a pair of eyes looking in his direction. And he gazed across a sea of white tablecloths to the gurgling fountain at the far end of the huge room, almost sure that he would see a man, or indeed a woman, leaning against a red alabaster pillar, eyes fixed on him.
Suddenly, Clive lost patience with himself and his fears, and, leaving a half-eaten croissant on his plate, he walked out. He was about to pass through the revolving doors of the hotel for another day of pointless trade talks when he saw Narek, and Narek saw him. The Armenian smiled and nodded. Clive walked over and sat down in the high chair and waited, but this time Narek had nothing to give him, no newspaper or in-house magazine. Instead, he took up where he had left off, about his love for Liza, and the life he wanted to make with her, which was still a pipe-dream, because he had no money and her mother wasn’t keen. Mothers are always a problem, Clive sympathized. When Narek had finished polishing, he handed Clive first the left shoe, which Clive slipped on, and then the right. Clive felt something in the toe. He thanked Narek for doing such a great job, gave him a handsome tip and disappeared into the men’s lavatory, where he locked the door, took off his right shoe and pulled out a tiny parcel. On the wrapping paper was scribbled: “NB 11.27.” Inside, he found a USB stick, the size of a domino, which he slipped into his pocket.
The embassy car was waiting in front of the hotel to take him to the trade talks, and he asked Fyodor to step on it. He felt like an idiot for doubting Marina; she had kept her word. Slipping his hand in his pocket, he felt the USB stick cool against his palm. He rested his head against the back of the seat and closed his eyes. Everything was going well. Too well.
Clive had completely forgotten about the security at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and by the time he remembered, it was too late; he was already inside the marble entrance hall, staring at the steel structure shaped like a square arch: the metal detector. There was no escape. He dragged the palm of his hand down the alabaster pillar, leaving behind a trail of sweat. The stone felt cool. That’s what I must be, cool, he told himself as he looked at the armed security guards.
Clive passed under the metal frame. When the alarm went off, he looked up at the ceiling, surprised, and shrugged his shoulders at the high-pitched wailing that bounced off the alabaster pillars. The security guards all looked directly at him. Emptying his pockets onto a table, he stared down at a jumble of coins, a Metropol keycard and a USB stick.
The guard held up the memory stick between his thumb and forefinger and called over to his boss, who was sitting at a desk in the corner.
“Do we check it?”
Clive could hear the sound of a prison door shutting.
The head of security glanced up from his iPad hidden under the desk. He was watching a replay of a football match between Spartak and TSK the night before, which had gone to penalties. The head of security looked resentfully at the guard, who was waiting for an answer, shook his head, then stared back at his screen.
Clive steadied himself against the table, then stuffed his keycard and small change back into his pocket. The security guard tossed him the USB stick. Clive caught it.
That same morning, the trade talks ended in a blazing row. The first secretary of Her Britannic Majesty’s embassy lost his rag. Right in front of the Russian delegation, he tore up the agenda sheet, relishing the ripping, tearing sound, as he declared, in English, the game was over. As long as Russian tactics were simply to obstruct, the trade discussions were a waste of time. With that, he wished everyone good day and walked out.
From the back seat of a stale-smelling Golf, Clive sent Martin Hyde a text: “Trade discussions have collapsed. Need to discuss. Am especially concerned about JCB diggers and Tiptree jam.” He made himself comfortable in one of the big leather armchairs in the Metropol lobby, picked up a discarded copy of the New York Times’s international edition and turned to the cartoons at the back. Now and then he slipped a hand into his pocket, to make sure the USB stick was still there.
“Is that it?” said Hyde as he and Clive strolled across Red Square. “Have you told me everything?”
It was early afternoon, and the two men had distanced themselves from the tourists around St Basil’s and were heading down towards the river. Hyde’s FSB tail, a tall man in a leather jacket, was not even attempting to hide; he kept a distance of about ten metres and didn’t even bother to glance at his guidebook. And where is mine? Clive wondered as he looked around. Is it the young woman dragging along the bored child with the balloon?
“I’m quite sure you haven’t told me everything,” Hyde continued. “No one ever does. But… you’ve told me enough. And eventually you’ll tell me everything, because you are going to need help.”
“I’m just the messenger… This isn’t my world.”
“Isn’t it? We’ve entered a new era, Franklin, with the internet, social media, hacking… It is your world… It’s everybody’s world.”
They walked in silence. Then Hyde stopped dead, glanced behind at his tail and looked around. Hyde assumed there would be CCTV cameras on the surrounding buildings, which could pick out individuals but not, he thought, what they were saying. That was the job of the tails, and it was his job to make their lives as difficult as possible. Hyde also assumed both tails, his and Clive’s, would be carrying the most sophisticated recording equipment, which meant that he had to keep as close as possible to the folk music blaring out of amplifiers or to the guides bellowing through loudspeakers. Yes, Hyde concluded, giving Red Square one sweeping look, this is as good a place as any to have a top-secret conversation.
“Why did you wait so long, Franklin? Why didn’t you come to me after the Bolshoi? Or on Tuesday after your meeting at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? Why the wait?”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“About?”
“Her. Me. Everything.”
Hyde stuck close to a Japanese tour guide, who was booming information through a loudhailer.
“She didn’t try to recruit you? Really?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Are you in debt?”
“No.”
“In love?”
Clive shook his head vigorously.
“Then she’s got her work cut out… If that’s her game.”
“I don’t think it’s a game. She’s not a spy.”
“Sometimes these lines are blurred,” said Hyde.
They walked in silence towards Lenin’s tomb.
“Why is she ready to take such a risk? What does she want?”
“As I’ve told you, a new life. A new identity.”
“And money.”
“Money is secondary.”
A Chinese schoolgirl came up to Hyde and asked if he would take a picture of her and her school friends with St Basil’s in the background. Hyde obliged, as if he had all the time in the world.
The two men kept close to the blood-red Kremlin wall until they reached the Spasskaya Tower, where a crowd had gathered to hear the noonday chimes of the famous clock. Clive and Hyde pushed their way into a group of garrulous tourists. “Finns,” whispered Clive, as he stood among the tall, flaxen-haired men and women who were counting down the minutes, eyes fixed on the clock face. Hemmed in on all sides, he slipped the USB stick into the pocket of Hyde’s smart suit.
“We need a reason for you to stay on in Moscow now that the trade talks have collapsed,” Hyde murmured in a voice that was barely audible against the raucous Finnish chanting. “Any ideas?”
“I wouldn’t mind running the Moscow marathon. I’ve never completed the course. In New York, I collapsed. In London, two years ago, I pulled a hamstring. One of these days, I’d like to cross the finish line.”
“What a good idea. And the president himself suggested it. Do put it to your friend, won’t you?”
Hyde glanced around. His tail was elbowing his way through the crowd only a few metres away.
“See you at the embassy in an hour,” said Hyde loudly, looking in the direction of the tail. He had a certain sympathy for the lower orders of espionage. Now and again you had to throw these foot soldiers a bone. “The embassy, not the residence. We’d like your take on the trade talks.”
At the stroke of midday, the Spasskaya Tower clock chimed out four musical phrases, one for each quarter, followed by twelve single notes. Hands shot up, holding smartphones, snapping photographs.
“Did you know,” said Clive, “that this clock was designed in 1624 by a Scottish engineer and clockmaker called Christopher Galloway? Britain had good relations with Russia in the seventeenth century.”
“He’s definitely an odd one, your friend Franklin.”
It was Wednesday morning, and Marina had slept for only two hours. Her eyes ached from the hours she had spent staring at the computer screen in Vanya’s flat and sifting through General Varlamov’s personal emails. And here he was, the man himself, back in her office, uninvited, and this time he had taken a seat in her “thinking chair”. Marina leant forward, to object, then checked herself.
“The British storm out of the trade talks… It was bound to happen. So, Franklin has the day off. He wanders around Moscow like some lost soul. He goes to the Tretyakov and moons about in a room full of…” The general hesitated. “Kuindjee?”
“Arkhip Kuindzhi. Wonderful romantic painter. Ukrainian of Greek descent.”
“Then he goes to the Pushkin and spends four minutes in front of just one Picasso, a cubist rigmarole. Six minutes in front of a Matisse. Then he sees a film about Queen Victoria and an Indian servant, in Russian, before meeting up with that woman from the British Council, Rose Friedman. She’s a lesbian. Did you know? Your friend goes to a nightclub, with a lesbian, on a Tuesday, when there’s no dancing, no life. Does any of this sound normal to you?”
“Grigory Mikhailovich, what exactly is ‘normal’? He’s doing what interests him…”
“Is he? Or is he on some special mission? How do we know? This morning at the trade talks, the British first secretary tore up the agenda, but not before your friend read a summary of yesterday’s discussions – first in English, then in Russian – and had the nerve to tell our people that we’d left things out or changed the meaning.”
“Had we?”
“Language isn’t an exact science. Everything’s always open to interpretation! I tell you in all honesty, Marina Andreyevna, he’s a nuisance.”
“Maybe he was just being thorough. Doing what he’s paid to do.”
“Well,” said Varlamov wearily, “I’m paid to be suspicious.”
“But you’re right to be suspicious, Grigory Mikhailovich!” Marina said with sudden animation. “We’ve all got something to hide.”
Marina knew what she was talking about. She’d spent most of the night looking into every nook and cranny of Varlamov’s personal life. She knew where he had his hair cut (at the Four Seasons), which banya he liked (the new one in Malaya Dmitrovka), which football teams his son supported (Spartak and Manchester City), which singer was his daughter’s favourite (Beyoncé). She also knew that Varlamov had taken a nice fat commission ($300,000) for helping (i.e. not blocking) Boris Kunko’s application for a five-a.m. alcohol licence for his newest nightclub, High Tide – and she knew the general would pocket a great deal more over the years to come. She knew, moreover, that he had a girlfriend called Dasha. But these were trifles. She had found a nugget of pure gold in the general’s personal emails.
Marina watched as Varlamov walked over to the window and gazed down at Red Square, his head still, his pale-blue eyes watching and waiting, just like a wolf. Isn’t that what Clive called him? The Wolf?
“He’s down there now, the Englishman, walking about with the spy, Martin Hyde.” Varlamov glanced down at his phone. “They’ve been standing for four and a half minutes in front of the monument to Minin and Pozharsky. What can possibly be their motive?”
“General, I honestly have no idea. Interest in historical monuments? The pleasure of sightseeing?” The general didn’t turn his head and Marina could feel his displeasure. “Or could it be the trade talks?” she asked helpfully. “You said just now that there’d been a row.”
“More than a row,” Varlamov said. “The talks have collapsed.”
