A Darker Place (19 page)

It wasn’t particularly crowded. The bar was very Victorian: mirrors, lots of mahogany and marble. The beer pumps were porcelain. The Salters were sitting in a corner booth, two hard-looking men leaning against the wall behind listening to the conversation. As he discovered later, they were Joe Baxter and Sam Hall, Harry Salter’s minders. Nobody noticed him, and he hesitated and turned to the bar, where an attractive blonde was serving. She looked curiously at him, as did two or three customers standing enjoying a drink together.

“What’s your pleasure, love?” she asked.

“Vodka, if you please, Madame.”

“Tonic?”

“No, as it comes.”

She put the glass before him and he took off his woolen hat. She winced perceptibly. “Are you all right, love?”

“Absolutely.” He took the vodka straight down.

Billy appeared. “Henri, my old friend, we’d just about given you up. You’ve met our Ruby, Mrs. Moon? She’s captain of the ship, keeps us all in order. Henri Duval, Ruby.”

She seemed uncertain, and Kurbsky said, “You have been very kind, Madame.”

Billy whisked him away, and she watched as Harry greeted him, and Baxter and Hall were introduced, and then Billy returned. “Another large vodka for him and a scotch for Harry.”

“Is he all right?” she said. “Or does he have what I think he has?”

“Answering your first question, he gets by, and yes, he has lung cancer. He’s on chemotherapy at the Marsden.”

“So he’s French?”

Billy proceeded to give her Henri Duval’s background, which included his lack of relatives. “He normally lives in Torquay, but he needed to be in London for the treatment. His mother was a cousin of Harry’s.”

“I see. I feel so sorry for him.”

“Well, you’ve got a good heart, Ruby, we all know that.”

She took the drinks across and said to Kurbsky. “I’m so pleased to meet you. Billy’s been telling me all about you. When you feel like something to eat, let me know. Steak-and-ale pie tonight.”

“Sounds marvelous,” Kurbsky told her.

“We’ll all have a go at that,” Harry said.

Ruby nodded and went away, and Baxter and Hall drifted to the other end of the bar and joined two men drinking there.

Harry nodded at the vodka. “Should you be drinking that in your condition?”

“I’ve checked it out. It varies with people.” He took it down, Russian style. “I suppose it reminds me that there’s still a real me lurking around inside.”

“I take your point,” Billy said. “How’s it going?”

“So far so good. I walked down from the safe house, hailed a cab. Dropped off in Wapping High Street.”

“And walked down here?” Harry asked. “You’ve got to watch that,” Harry told him. “What with all those streets empty and waiting for the developers, you get some funny people hanging around.”

“Not that I noticed,” Kurbsky said.

“Anyway, it does seem to be working?” Billy asked.

“So it seems. Take Ruby, she was troubled. I had a cabdriver who asked me if I was okay. He said I didn’t look too well.”

“Yes, well, he was sorry for you.”

Kurbsky didn’t even smile. “I’m not used to that, but Katya Zorin would be pleased. It’s all working out exactly as she had hoped.”

“And where’s it all going to end, that’s what I’d like to know,” Billy said.

Kurbsky shrugged. “Don’t ask me, I’m just passing through.”

Ruby waved from behind the bar, and Harry said, “That’s enough for now. Let’s have you in the back parlor for a big slice of Ruby’s steak-and-ale pie. You’ll love it, believe me.”

 

 

AROUND TEN, Kurbsky decided he’d had enough and said he’d order a taxi back to Holland Park, but Billy wouldn’t hear of it and insisted on taking him in his scarlet Alfa Romeo.

“It’s no hardship—I like driving by night, particularly after midnight. I find it calming, locked in tight in your very own world.”

“And rain,” Kurbsky said. “There’s something special about that, the windscreen wipers clicking back and forth. It’s hypnotic.”

Billy said suddenly, “When I finished
On the Death of Men,
I felt such a sense of loss, I started again at the beginning straightaway.”

“I’m flattered.”

“It’s the truth. I may be a gangster, but one day years ago, I was in some waiting room when I found a paperback about famous philosophers. It bowled me over. I loved that stuff, then Dillon came into our lives spouting the same ideas.”

“Dillon was that important to you?”

“Harry, me, and the boys were handling a hot package from Amsterdam on one of my uncle’s riverboats. Diamonds from Amsterdam. There was a police sting. We’d have gone down the steps for ten years, only Dillon diverted the package.”

“What happened then?”

“He worked for Ferguson and drew us in. We’ve never looked back. To be honest, Harry’s made millions out of development.”

“So who needs to rob banks?”

“Something like that.”

They drew up at Holland Park. “Are you coming in?” Kurbsky asked.

“Just give Roper my love, and good luck tomorrow.”

Kurbsky got out, watched the Alfa Romeo drive away. It was quiet, and he turned and walked to the Judas in the main gate, was about to speak into the voice box when the Judas swung open. He stepped inside, walked forward, and it closed behind him.

Roper was seated in his usual spot, gazing at the screens. He turned. “Did you have a good night? Tell me about it.”

Which Kurbsky did, sitting down and helping himself to another vodka. “There is one thing,” he said. “People do look at me, because I’m unusual . . .”

“Or because they recognize you for what you are, an outpatient on chemotherapy, which means cancer. Most people know that, if only because it’s a staple of medical soaps on television. They feel sorry for you.”

“Or uncomfortable. There were fifty or sixty customers in the bar just before I left, and I’ve got the feeling a number of them were happy to see me go.”

“I know what you mean. It’s like people not wanting some soldier who’s lost a leg in Afghanistan swimming in the local pool.”

“Human nature,” Kurbsky said, glancing up. “Just a moment, what’s that?”

“A late-night news program.”

“It said something about Shadid Basayev, or maybe I was wrong.”

“You weren’t. General Shadid Basayev, a Chechen general. He’s been granted asylum. It was on about an hour ago. I recorded the program because there was an end piece I needed on Al Qaeda. Hold on, I’ll rewind. Here we go.”

There was some footage from the first Chechen war, the general in a tank, then inspecting men at some hill station, a burly man with a brutal hard face and the cheekbones of some Mongol warrior. His uniform was understated, the cap crumpled, the military shirt of a common soldier, a worn leather coat, boots. As he walked along the front rank, men turned their faces toward him.

“That’s a nice touch,” Roper said.

“Yes, Nazi style. He introduced it to his men.”

“Did you know him?”

And Alexander Kurbsky, who had known him very well indeed, said, “Everybody in the Russian Army in Chechnya knew the bastard.”

The television program said Basayev had applied for and been granted political asylum after fleeing the Russian Federation and living for a while in Monaco. Political pressure aimed at his extraction had forced him to move to London, where similar pressure from Russia had proved futile, judges of the High Court having accepted that to return him would most certainly put his life in danger.

“So, asylum granted,” Kurbsky said.

“It seems that while he was in charge of certain affairs in Chechnya, oil revenues or something like that, he succeeded in transferring millions into the City of London.” Roper shook his head. “He has it all. It’s been crawling through a court for nine months, but he’s finally made it.”

“What happened to the war crimes charges?” Kurbsky asked, although he knew very well what had happened.

“Witnesses disappeared, intimidation. Nothing came of it. I like this bit.” They were interviewing Basayev in his house in Mayfair, and he was speaking of going to evening mass every Sunday. They even showed the church. It was Roman Catholic—St. Mary and All the Angels. Basayev was a Christian, not a Muslim. Kurbsky remembered that, remembered it well. He had a memorial to his wife in the churchyard and visited it on a daily basis in the morning.

“Many Chechens are Christian,” Roper said. “But surely they’d have been Russian Orthodox or something like that? Let’s look at his details.” Roper tapped the keys and the facts came up. “What do you know? He was a Muslim, did a law degree in Rome in his early twenties, and changed religion to marry a Rosa Rossi, a fellow student. That explains the Roman Catholicism. Involved in politics for years in Chechnya. No children. There was a bomb attack on his car in Grozny in 1989. Unfortunately, he’d been delayed and it was his wife who was traveling. He blamed the KGB very publicly.”

“He would, but then, it probably was them,” Kurbsky said.

The show switched back to the Church of St. Mary and All the Angels. It was of late-Victorian vintage, because that was when Roman Catholics had been allowed to build again in England. It wasn’t very pretty, and there was a clock tower. A limousine drew up, and Basayev got out and his driver gave him flowers. The camera showed the time on the clock tower as ten. Then it cut to the cemetery. Basayev appeared and paused at a memorial stone with a photo inset, which he kissed before changing the flowers.

“You’d think he’d paid to be able to look that good,” said Kurbsky.

“Oh, the BBC let him have his interview, but their documentary on his activities in Chechnya totally condemns him.”

“Which won’t bother him in the slightest. The truly wicked do seem to survive rather well in this life, but I suppose that’s the way of the world. I’m going to bed. I’ll see you in the morning, and then it’s off to Chamber Court and the ladies.”

 

 

HE LAY ON the bed thinking about it, the hell of Grozny, the Chechen capital, of General Shadid Basayev and what had happened a long, long time ago.

CHECHNYA

1995

G
rozny, the Chechen capital, resembled hell on earth, and in spite of constant rain, there were fires everywhere. Heavy tanks had thrown everything they had at the place and the aerial bombardment had been constant, and yet the Chechens stubbornly resisted, street by street, house by house, urban guerrilla warfare at its most intense.

Alexander Kurbsky, a lieutenant by rank, was the only officer left in what had two weeks earlier been the Fifth Paratroop Assault Platoon, a special forces unit consisting of fifty men. Now they had been reduced to eighteen men, having spearheaded their way into the heart of the city, using on occasion the sewage system, and in those filthy and foul-smelling tunnels they had found an enemy that fought like rats.

They finally emerged via manholes in the central square, a wilderness of half-standing buildings and fires smoking in the heavy rain, and found themselves facing what was left of the Astoria Hotel.

Yuri Bounine sprawled close to Kurbsky. Bounine was an unlikely-looking paratrooper, with his chubby face and steel army-issue spectacles fastened together with tape. His bulky combat uniform was filthy, but then, so was everyone else’s. His rank of sergeant was temporary, because Kurbsky and he had become friends, and Kurbsky trusted him for his brains as much as for anything else.

“Are we going, then?” a man named Nebit called, someone who didn’t take kindly to discipline and resented Kurbsky anyway because of his youth. “We might get a cup of coffee in there.”

“Keep your head down,” Kurbsky told him, but Nebit was already standing up, and two men next to him followed. A burst of fire blew away his combat beret, fragmented the back of his skull, and hurled him over a pile of bricks. A machine pistol had obviously caused the damage, knocking down the other two also. Instant death, for there wasn’t a sound from them.

“So now we are fifteen,” Kurbsky said.

Bounine nodded. “So what do we do?”

Kurbsky raised his voice. “Follow me back to the sewer. We’ll see where it comes out a little closer to the hotel, slowly and with care and covering each other. Nebit was stupid, so he paid the price.”

He led, disappearing down into the tunnel and proceeding, half bent over, checking the outfalls to left and right. There was water running a couple of feet deep, a mixture of brown sludge in it that didn’t bear thinking about. He came to a kind of concrete chamber, a notice saying “Astoria Hotel,” and paused, and the others closed up.

“I’ll go—you cover me, Yuri.” He went up cautiously, found a steel door, depressed the handle, and pushed, finding himself in a room containing the central heating system. He went to the end door, opened it cautiously, and found what must have been the kitchen staff’s working quarters, white chef’s uniforms hanging from pegs, toilets and a row of open showers. There was a door marked “Kitchen.”

The others cried excitedly, “Great, there must be food,” and Kurbsky turned, saying, “No, wait.”

He was too late. Four crowded through, and as he got to the door there was heavy firing, a cry of agony, two of the men blown back, shot several times. He scrambled over them to the shelter of a steel food bench, keeping low as sustained firing continued, found a grenade at his belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it over to the other side of the kitchen. There was a cry that was more like a scream, and he jumped up and fired a burst from his AK-47 at the wide doorway opposite.

He moved forward cautiously over the bodies of his men and found what he was looking for, a Chechen soldier, uniform soaked in blood, trying to breathe, and nothing but a death rattle there. A steel helmet had come off, and very slowly, the head turned, hair cropped, eyes staring at him mutely.