The Double Bind of Mr. Rigby (5 page)

We entered the café together. A large, stocky man in a well-padded parka and a Russian fur hat pushed brusquely past us on his way out. Meanwhile, a woman from the shop next door had hurried in to catch us up and said to Mo in faultless American-accented English that no cars were allowed in the square between one and eight p.m. Mo again pirouetted and moved with embarrassment to shift the car, telling me that she would join me in a minute or two.

At a table by a window was Rovde. He grinned cheerfully as I approached and stood up. He hugged me and welcomed me to Tallinn. He had that expansive air of hospitality and generosity that many Americans have, not cultivated but quite natural.

He accompanied me to the counter where I chose a slice of cherry gateau: I took it with cream. He ordered some strong Twinings Assam tea for me. As we went back to the table, Mo reappeared. I went over to her and took her coat, and at the same time introduced her to Rovde. I suggested that she gave us quarter of an hour together to discuss business and our future arrangements, and then that she should join us. She sat at a separate table and contemplated the square. Rovde and I quickly caught up, so far as it was possible, on what we had been doing.  He explained that he had been keeping an eye on Western business interests in the old bits of Soviet leftovers in Estonia. He explained the plight of Russians who had been left behind. The Estonians hated them. They were the relics of the old colonial power, not to be trusted, certainly to be shunned. They lived together in enclaves, kept to themselves, spoke only Russian, and were generally unhappy with their lot. Estonians refused to speak the colonial language, Russian, to them. When it was necessary to communicate, everyone spoke in either English or German. He told me about Paldiski. During the years when it did not even feature on maps because it was so secret, it was a thriving community. It had been built by the Russians as a complex military and naval base. It stretched for a couple of miles along the coast, dockyards, dry docks, huge hangars, industrial workshops, laboratories. Away from the shoreline were administrative blocks, offices, and then behind them, residential buildings, tower blocks of flats, all built in the boring, monumental, wedding-cake style of Stalinist architecture.

At the time of
glasnost
and
perestroika
the site had largely been abandoned. Most Russians had returned to the motherland. Those who remained lived as best they could in a ghost town. The Estonians were not interested in the decaying memorial of a Soviet past. They considered it best to let the whole town slowly disintegrate. There was no need to waste any money on it. Already many of the buildings had become dilapidated. Apartments were without doors: windows were shattered. Unlike any equivalents in Western Europe, they were ignored. There were no squatters, there were no graffiti artists. It was as though the place itself was being ostracised. Estonians were not interested in it. It was in places like this that entrepreneurs thought they could see chances for redevelopment and exploitation. Well-equipped technical labs, wired-up research buildings, were all standing idle; and some of the workers and technicians who were sophisticated in their scientific knowledge eked out a subsistence living in the neighbouring, decaying, residential blocks. Paldiski was currently the object of considerable commercial interest.

Rovde said that he would provide me with any help he could provide while I was in Tallinn. Satisfied that all our interests were very much the same, I said he should meet Mark who was at that time with someone from the Hansa Bank. We made a tentative arrangement to meet for supper that evening.

It was then that I went across to Mo and said that she should join us. I moved her tea and the remains of her sandwich to our table. She was delighted to meet Rovde. He introduced himself as an American journalist posted to the Baltic States. It was clear that he was attracted to her immediately. His manner changed. There was a sparkle in his eyes and he became lively both in talk and gesture. It was as though he had experienced an adrenalin kick-start. I was not sure that Mo was responding in kind; but she was a different sort of person. She, I knew, would be careful. She did not like to commit herself too quickly in personal relationships: she was too afraid of being wounded. She had obviously suffered at some time and was not going to take risks again. If she were to surrender to Rovde’s considerable charms, I knew that it would take time. Mo asked him for how long he would be in Tallinn.

‘On this trip, about a week,’ he said. ‘I shall keep to-ing and fro-ing though. There’s quite a lot going on here now.’

It was not necessary to tell Mo that. There was a story for her to write up nearly every day.

That was how things stood at that particular time in Tallinn. I did introduce Rovde to Mark that evening. We had supper together in a new Italian restaurant, very smart in a minimalist interior design way, with severely muted lighting. The two had got on well, and later Mo joined us for coffee. Uri phoned her on his mobile: obviously they had established a rapport and lines of communication.

I wrote my article on Estonian politics and business, and we returned to London.

A week or two later my editor considered that it was clearly time for me to return to Tallinn to find out just what Myrex corporation were planning to do or even achieving: a potential story lay constantly in the purlieus of the small city. Estonia was the prime candidate for EU enlargement. Its politics were fascinating in that they were adapting fast to Western democratic standards. A brilliant, charismatic, clever generation of young people, all aged between twenty-five and thirty-five, highly qualified, were running affairs, and regeneration, reconstruction, with British backing, was a source of commercial prosperity in our national interest.

I rang Mark. ‘Mark, I’m going to Estonia again. Any chance of you coming too? I should think some time next week might be the thing.’

‘It’s a thought,’ he said. ‘There are some people I should see. Let me make some phone calls and I’ll let you know. Would it be a good idea for us to travel together though? Remember what Willy said last time.’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps because we’ve done it once, it won’t matter from now on. There’s nothing new about it, nothing unusual. Anyway, we can see what he thinks.’

I knew from past experience that once something ceased to be new with security spooks, it failed to catch their interest. I reckoned it would be ideal if Mark were to be there when I was, apart from the delight of having him as a travelling companion.

As it happened, everything turned out well, and the following week Mark and I repeated our journey to Tallinn. I drove down to Gatwick, parked the car, my old, temperamental, turbo-diesel Citroen Xantia, in one of the car parks. A shuttle bus was hovering and since we were travelling light with hardly any luggage, we sprinted about fifty yards and were quickly in the departure building. It was a Thursday morning and there seemed to be few people wanting to travel to Estonia that day: we had no trouble checking in, no boring wait in some interminable queue. There were just two middle-aged men in front of us, both dark-suited, both almost certainly businessmen of some sort.

The plane was three-quarters full which meant we had some choice of seats. Mark and I occupied a run of three and so we were able to spread out. The majority of passengers looked like business people, and in contrast to the previous flight Mark and I had taken to Tallinn our fellow fliers looked dull and ordinary. I looked around for someone like the West Indian rapper. The flight was quiet, reserved, business-like.

At Tallinn airport there were internet points on the concourse. I logged on to see if there was any email from Roxanne. I had tapped one out to her enquiring in a general way about Myrex and asking her if she could give me any contact information since I was going to Tallinn for my newspaper. I had calculated that there was no risk in an innocent question of that nature to do with my journalism.

Roxanne had responded. I experienced that thrill of recognition when I saw her words in front of me. All over again, I had the acute consciousness that she did exist. She was not just a bit of my imagination. She had not forgotten me. She could still be bothered to write to me. It all shows the desperate level of insecurity that I felt in my relationship with her. No matter how much I tried to be blasé about her, her importance to me was paramount. The longer the gaps between our meetings, the more unsure I grew about her caring for me.

She told me in the ether letter that she knew little of the Estonian project, but she did know that there were one or two top Myrex people in Tallinn trying to establish links with scientists and money men who could help them exploit sites in Paldiski. Myrex was definitely active. She had even heard her husband mention the Baltic venture. She said that the lead negotiator was an Estonian known as Arne, a brilliant young man in his late twenties who spoke a perfect but slightly archaic English. Later, after I had met Arne and knew him a little, he explained that he had learned his English at a KGB training school in Moscow. He had been recruited with absolutely no choice in the matter, received a thorough education, especially in English, and then the apparatus that had trapped him had fallen apart in the final years of Gorbachev. His Russian connections disappeared and he was left behind in Tallinn sounding like a precisely educated Oxford graduate. He was an extraordinary figure, brilliant, meticulous, and, I calculated, probably dangerous. I could see clearly why KGB had noticed him and taken him over. Similarly, it was typical of Roxanne’s husband that his talent scouts should have picked Arne up. He existed in the new world of emergent nations as his own man.

On the airport concourse I made a mental note to look out for Arne. I told Mark about him and the rest of what Roxanne said. I restrained myself from replying to her immediately. I wanted to, of course. The email is so easy in facilitating a conversation but I knew it would have been inappropriate with Mark waiting for me. At least I succeeded in making the distinction between what I was supposed to be doing for my newspaper, and my own personal life and, in this case, its attendant pleasures. In absence, Roxanne became more desirable and seductive than ever. My mind saw her with her hand on my arm. I relished her touch. I sensed at thousands of miles’ distance her hair brushing my cheek as she bent to kiss me. I saw her in my mind’s eye waiting for me by the bed in my hotel, undressed, standing just in her white Prudencia pants. I could not allow my imagination to get in the way of my business. I forbore to tap out a reply to her and decided to wait until I was in my hotel room.

That is the trouble with beautiful women: they seduce you from what you are supposed to be doing. I discussed the problem briefly with Mark, but I am not sure he understood altogether the force of what I meant.

We hailed a taxi and it took us to the Gloria. The management had recently opened a few rooms, each with its individual sauna, on the top floor. The rooms were small, clean and comfortable and guests were given the option of eating either in its fashionable, expensive restaurant, or in its cellars that constituted a wine bar and cheaper restaurant with a more restricted menu than upstairs.

Mark and I decided to separate until suppertime. I wanted to email Roxanne and phone Rovde who I knew was travelling to Tallinn at some time during the afternoon. He had been in Helsinki and was coming by hydrofoil, a journey of not much more than an hour and a half. Mark and I would meet in the cellar bar.

In my room I stretched out on the double bed and thought how much more agreeable it would have been if Roxanne had been with me. What reassurance and comfort she would have given me, and what entertainment and gratification. I must have dozed for about twenty minutes because I was suddenly aware of reality. I looked around the room and wondered where I was. My disorientation lasted a second or two, and then I was clear in my mind.  

The sauna was too tempting for me to resist. It promised to reinvigorate me for the rest of the day, so I stripped and spent twenty minutes alternating heat and sweat with the tingling cold of the adjacent shower. I emerged brisk and clean. Rovde eventually answered his mobile and he was keen to join Mark and myself in the cellars later that evening. He needed to settle in at his hotel and proposed to meet us at 7.30. I emailed Roxanne, thanked her for what she had told me, and excised some of my yearning by writing about it to her: ‘There is no doubt, dear, dear Roxanne, that I miss you. You live in my thoughts and usually I can see you clearly. At times, though, I cannot conjure up your exact features, and, no matter how hard I try, I can’t visualise you. Then I feel I have lost you, and that you no longer exist for me. I tell myself that this phenomenon is natural. Everyone experiences this loss of memory and precise vision. Yet I can’t convince myself. I don’t even have a photograph of you. That would restore my vision and my faith. I long for you here. I miss your presence: I miss your touch.’

I felt slightly better, not greatly so. It was necessary to think of other things. Mundane, humdrum matters took over my thinking. I needed more socks, new underwear. Such items were always last priorities, if they were priorities at all. I should go shopping. Then I thought I had better list on my laptop possible features that would interest the
London Journal
. So, inevitably, I allowed my intention to shop drift and sat down at my computer. The ideas that came to me quickly absorbed me and soon it was necessary for me to descend to the cellars to meet Mark.

The wine cellar was extremely well stocked. Mark was already sipping from a glass of 2000 Chilean Syrah. We decided to buy a bottle. Mark told me that while he was in his room, like me, he had taken a sauna, and then scribbled some lines of a poem that he would show me in a day or two if he was confident it was working out right. The gestation period of a poem was always difficult for him. It took time for him to fit form to substance. I was one of very few people he would test his new creations on.

‘What’s the subject?’ I asked.

‘The north lands,’ he said. ‘The chill that they impose on the spirit of those who are not nurtured in them. It was a thought that I had this afternoon, earlier. I was thinking how alien this part of the world is to people like you and me. In spite of the warmth and friendliness of the people here, there is something remote about them. Presumably, the farther north you go, the more distant you feel from these folk. Anyway, I mess around with those kinds of thoughts. Perhaps there’s a splinter or two of ice in their hearts.’

‘A bit different from Pushkin, then. His heart lay in the north “where the lakes face eternity and the cold wind breaks”.’

It was about the only quotation from Pushkin that I could remember, but unusually the translation was good and accurate.

‘Sure. Naturally, we don’t see these territories in the same way as the frozen Russians. I was brought up in the north-east of the US, but the people look warmer and are warmer. They don’t need the fire of vodka to stir their souls.’

What Mark said made me for some reason think of that execrable terrorist, Lenin. He might have been the instrument of the electrification of the Soviet Union, but he neglected the heating system. The Yanks had central heating as a priority.

‘I have to sleep on what I’ve written of this poem so far,’ Mark declared. ‘I’ll see what I think of it tomorrow, and, if I haven’t thrown it away, I’ll let you look at it.’

‘I’d love to. I look forward.’

We were both beginning to feel hungry and impatient for Rovde to show up, when he appeared through the arched doorway. His large figure swayed as he entered. He looked like a sailor recently come to shore. He paused for a moment, looked round, saw us and waved. He joined us at our table tucked away in a corner of the cellar room: a bright log fire burned in a grate and cast moving shadows across the dimly lit floor. A waitress brought another glass and I poured Rovde some of the Chilean wine.

‘Was the crossing all right?’ I enquired.

‘Great,’ Rovde said. ‘It was fast and the waters pretty calm. Those boats really shift. There weren’t many people on board. They were mostly Finns, a few Americans, and one or two new Russians.’

By ‘new Russians’, I knew he meant the new class of entrepreneurial Russian businessman, maybe Russian mafia, who travelled the length and breadth of Europe. They were efficient, well organised, calculating and ruthless.

‘How’s Mo?’ I asked. ‘Have you seen her?’

‘Not for a few weeks; but she’s OK. She leads that peculiar sort of café life you find in cities like this and writes her pieces. That’s what she enjoys doing. I’ve kept in touch with her while I’ve been away. I’m always emailing her, and we talk on the phone.’

I calculated that the Rovde-Mo relationship was developing. Mark asked him if he had been back to Washington.

‘Yeah. I was in DC for a week. Useful information there. There’s a lot come in about Spain and quite a bit about Myrex and your friend’s husband. He’s not all that he wishes to be seen as, and maybe there’s stuff that goes on in his own organisation he’s unaware of. We’re not quite sure about him. If you guys get any interesting info on him, let me know.

‘The weather was good. I went out once or twice into the Virginian countryside. Georgetown looked great. Plenty of sunshine, lots of pretty girls around studying IR. You know the sort of thing.’

‘Was there any news on Belmont?’ Mark asked.

‘He came up once. It was generally assumed that he was murdered, got out of the way for some reason or other. No one offered any reason. He is definitely connected to Myrex though. You ought to see if your lady friend can find out anything.’

He looked at me inquisitively. I said that I reckoned she knew nothing. Her husband kept her well in the dark about details of his business affairs. She belonged to a different, separate part of his existence.

‘The decision was taken – I don’t break any confidences here: everybody’s going to know – to look more carefully at what Myrex is doing worldwide. A higher level of activity by our people here in Tallinn can be expected. We’re very touchy back in DC about what happens to all these old Soviet plants, especially the one at Paldiski. An additional problem is a couple of rotting, rusting, nuclear submarines. They have to be cleared. The Norwegians particularly are very concerned about that little time bomb.’

Mark suggested that we should all stay in touch regularly and pool what we discovered about Myrex. Of course, we all agreed, but, at the same time, Mark and I on the one hand and Rovde on the other knew that we would reveal only selected news: that is the nature of precious intelligence. You have to guess continually what is being filtered out.