The Double Bind of Mr. Rigby (10 page)

I envied him though. I thought back: it was good to be in love. Six years ago I had been in love with Annie. That definitely was the real thing. She was tall, slim, elegant, fashion conscious in the extreme, even-featured, blonde, considerate, loving, intelligent, mesmerising company, and a great lover. I could not bear to be out of her company. I used to pretend that we were mature enough to lead, at times, our separate existences. Yet when we did, or tried to, we were constantly in touch, mostly telephoning each other. We lived in each other’s heart and soul. When we were together we lived in each other’s eyes. We could not stop looking at each other. When we were apart, I could not remember the details of her looks. Her features faded. I used to make myself practise a disciplined exercise of conjuring up in my mind her exact image; and it was never entirely successful. I always managed an impression that was not precise. When we met again, it was a renewed surprise to discover her so attractive, so demanding in the unspoken insistence that she was the one person I wanted to be with. That was real love I experienced with Annie: she was gorgeous and she made you literally lust after more of her presence with you all the time, both when you were with her, and when you were apart.

Rovde asked me about love because he knew something about Annie and me. I explained that quality of urgency you felt about being with your beloved, the insistency of that feeling, the helplessness to change or to do anything at all about it. I reckoned he was in the toils of love, or, at any rate, approaching close to the tender trap. He knew, too, that my idyll had dissipated, vanished. Suddenly, without warning, Annie had turned: she took another direction. The reciprocity necessary to the shared, intimate, experience of love, dissolved. She went her own way and stopped phoning me. She told me where she was going and by certain circumstances that combined to torment me, I found out that she was not telling the truth. She had been besieged by another man. He had tempted her away from me and she had gone. He was successful, moderately good-looking, well travelled, worldly: he enticed her. It was a very bad time for me. Recovering from that state of love is difficult. You have to deal with depression, loss of self-esteem, lack of confidence, acute jealousy, hatred of the rival. The only remedy is to suffer agony, endure patiently and wait for time to dissolve the longing and the pain. It is an old story, as old as existence; and it is mundane. Yet for those who have never been in love, it is the new world. Rovde was embarked on the voyage of discovery.

I suppose I gradually recovered from dear Annie – I choose to remember her as she was my first lover – and I had not experienced anything quite so powerful since. Roxanne? I loved her, but differently. I could bear to be away from her. I could easily endure her being with her husband; and besides we had no real conjunction of souls. That was the point. I told Rovde that you had to be able to be with someone for twenty-four hours of the day and night, and still be talking non-stop; or, you had to know that you were communicating even in silence. Uri, I sensed, wanted to be there, even if he were already and did not quite know it.

I told Rovde that I would ring him later. It was time I made some moves towards Myrex even if it was late. I thought I would walk round to the grand house on Lai Street near St Olaf’s church where Myrex and Arne had their offices. There was just a chance that someone would still be there. I was disappointed. The house was in darkness apart from a light glimmering from a basement where, I calculated, a caretaker probably lived. So far as Lai Street was concerned, Myrex had shut down for the night. I wondered where Arne went, where he lived when he was in Tallinn. It was all idle: I had no idea. My mind was a complete blank. Arne had given me no clues to inspire my imagination about his domestic arrangements.

There was no alternative but to leave everything until the morning. I went back to the Gloria, decided to write my plan of campaign down on paper, and then relax. Since I had bought a bottle of whisky on the way out through Heathrow, I poured myself a generous slug, added some sparkling water, and allowed myself the luxury of sipping it while I wrote. I took no more than a page of A4 to sketch what I intended to do, aware that such plans were liable to change at any time as circumstances varied in the flux of developing events. I wrote that I should ring Rovde round about ten that evening. I should also ring Mark: he had to be kept in touch in his role as friend and confidant. The next morning I had to pursue Arne, and if not him, then someone at Myrex had to be talked to. I would also visit the offices of the Estonian government’s department of economic affairs: someone there might be able to give me a view on what the then current state of commercial development was like. There might, too, have been an official spin on the murder that the government was putting out. At the end of the day, I would contact Rovde again so that we could confer and see if he had news that might help me. My plan clear on paper and in my head, I enjoyed my whisky, lay back on the bed wishing that Roxanne, or come to that, Lena, were with me, and watched repetitive CNN news bulletins. The business news showed a slight rise in the market in New York and much the same percentage gain in London. There was a short feature on developing trade in Sweden, Finland and the Baltic states. A number of companies were mentioned, among them Myrex. The woman commentator, power-dressed and wearing heavy-rimmed glasses, her hair petrified into a blonde wave that rested securely over her right eyebrow, recommended that punters should watch one or two enterprising companies that were expanding to do business in the Baltic, one of which was the Spanish- and Swiss-based Myrex Corporation. So, I reflected, Myrex was now making headway, growing in prominence, in international news programmes, and I wondered if this had happened by chance, or whether Arne had orchestrated the publication and broadcast of Myrex’s Baltic affairs.

I rang Rovde at about ten. The call was brief. He was at Mo’s apartment. He had met her earlier, dined with her in the Gloria cellar and then they had gone back to her place. He sounded satisfied and cheerful. There was a relief in his voice, no trace of anxiety. Mo was back: he could see her and be with her. She was no longer a worry. It was possible to sense his contentment by the subtle change in his tone of voice on the phone. I estimated that he was almost there. The doors of the tender trap were about to close on him. An inch or two more, a few moments longer, and there would be no escape. There was nothing to report. Nothing had happened. The evening progressed. I wished him joy, and decided to ring Mark. I did not dwell on any image of Rovde and Mo. The idea of Rovde making love was repellent. I simply could not picture him doing what was necessary. Some people you can see in the actual physical process of lovemaking: others you cannot. Their intimate actions seem impossible, unacceptable, repugnant. I shut my mind to envisaging what Rovde might accomplish, whereas with someone like Mark, the passionate scene was entirely credible. I had no difficulty in imagining him in the process of making love.

So, I rang Mark, and that for me was a relief. I spent nearly half an hour talking to him. He told me that he had dispatched his poem to the magazine and that the editor had rung him to say how much she liked it. He had been reading a book on economic development recently written and published by a Fellow of a Cambridge college he knew. This economics tutor had been drifting through Cambridge for the last twenty years, had published little apart from three or four papers, and suddenly had produced this significant tome that had taken the political world by storm. He told the political world that it had to consult, and decide, on the direction of economic government for the ensuing fifty years. Tough decisions had to be taken, old orthodoxies scrutinised, new ideas assessed. The prosperity and wealth of Europe and America were about to be seriously challenged by the countries of the Pacific rim and China. Western governments had to take stock and a debate had to be started so that strategies could be intelligently worked out. By writing the book, exposing a multitude of issues and factors in numerous arguments, he planned to open up the debate that would prove definitive for economic policy over the following fifty years. It had happened. The book was seized upon, first by the academic community, then by politicians in every country in Europe and in the States. Newspaper articles, magazine features, radio and television broadcasts, were devoted to discussion of his book over a period of six weeks or so, and consistently the book was being cited anywhere a discussion on economics took place. The ineffectual tutor of twenty years’ standing was rarely in Cambridge. He had become an international celebrity, courted by universities and think-tanks, learned societies and economic forums. The book had to be read. I promised to do so. I would buy it on the way back through Heathrow.

As I was about to say goodbye and hang up, Mark told me to hang on. He said he had heard some rather nasty things about Myrex. A city contact, who, in the past, had dealings with Myrex in Spain and Germany, said that he had once been threatened.

‘This guy was informed that if he didn’t agree to the terms of the particular deal that Myrex was pursuing, then his life would be made difficult,’ Mark told me. ‘He took no notice, and then two or three days later his car windscreen was smashed in. A few days after that, on a crowded escalator, he was pushed hard in the back and he fell forward grazing his shins and both his hands on the ridged metal of a step. It might have been worse but the crush of people saved him from further damage. Whoever had pushed him had vanished into the crowd.’

I countered, ‘Both incidents were probably coincidental. Those things are always happening.’

‘That’s what the police said, but the guy wasn’t convinced. On the evening after each incident, a Myrex person rang him to ask him if he was ready to sign. He obviously made the connection and was more obviously meant to. Fortunately, the whole business was taken out of his hands and given to someone else. But he reckoned he was being targeted. The moral is, watch out, Pel.’

‘Thanks for the warning. I have no illusions. I’ll look after myself.’

I slept well that night and Lena came back to haunt me nicely. I could have done with her in the Gloria’s double bed.

By nine o’clock the next morning I was outside the Myrex house. I thought it best to appear in person. Arne was more likely to see me if I was there on his doorstep than if I were entreating on the end of a phone. There was quite a long delay before anyone spoke through the intercom. Then a male voice responded and asked who I was. I explained my connection and my previous meeting with Arne and asked if he could possibly see me. The voice invited me to enter. I went up the steps and ascended to the Myrex floor. A smart-looking man, dark-haired, suave, smelling of eau de cologne met me and apologised for Arne’s absence. He wondered if he could help in any way. I asked if Arne would be in at all that day. The answer was that Arne was abroad: he was in Newcastle where Myrex was concerned with a property development deal. Arne was inspecting a site and working out an agreement with the owner. He was also having talks with someone in the university’s computing department in the hope of employing him.

‘You might be able to help me,’ I said him. ‘I wanted to know how things are going in Paldiski. Is the development of the computer labs on schedule? When will the set-up be a really profitable going concern? You may know.’

He deflected my questions with practised diplomatic skills. He said he was just a mere menial, which I doubted, and that he knew no details.

‘I am a mere functionary in administration,’ he explained. ‘I simply keep the ship afloat. I don’t know anything about our policy in Paldiski or about expansion strategy. You will have to talk to Arne, I’m afraid. The only people who know what’s going on there are our main board people, Arne, and one or two of our scientists.’

It was clear to me that he would know the score, so close in Tallinn, but it was equally obvious that he was saying to me that I would receive no information from him. He suggested I wait for Arne to return, although it was not known when he would be back. He was in Newcastle for the next three days, and then it was thought he might go on to Seville. Otherwise I might like to contact the Myrex offices in Seville or Geneva. He did his job well. He was polite and considerate. He gave the impression of being extremely helpful: nothing was too much trouble. I thanked him and said I would think what I should do next.

I left the Myrex house, the portraits watching my every step downstairs. I turned into Lai Street, descended into Pikk Street and made towards the town hall. I passed the Club Havana. I could not think of a more unsuitable name for a club in this cold northern clime. The Raekoja Plats, in which the town hall with its sharply acute-angled roof stood, was deserted. I walked along Harju past the Church of St Nicholas, looked in the window of the Max Mara shop and thought how lovely Roxanne would look in one of the dresses displayed in the window.

The government Department of Economic Affairs stood in Muurihave not far from the Gloria opposite a stretch of the old city wall. The brass nameplate next to the glass doors announced the department in Estonian and English. I went in and a smart girl at a reception desk greeted me. I explained that I was a British journalist and asked if it were possible to speak to one of the officials or a press officer if there was one. She dialled an extension number that I observed was 120, spoke briefly in Estonian, and said that someone would come and speak with me. A minute or two later, a young man in his late twenties came into reception from an interior office, held out his hand, shook mine and asked me into his office. He hoped he could help me. I told him I was writing about expanding trade opportunities in Estonia for the European Community and about Estonia integrating in the EC when the proposed enlargement takes place. An American had recently been murdered in the dockland area. Some companies had been made uneasy by alleged connections with organised crime. I asked him what the Estonian government’s line was on those allegations. He was well drilled. It immediately struck me that he was prepared for that sort of question.

‘We are extremely disturbed by the murder, and, yes, we do think that there is an involvement with certain criminal organisations. We deplore that. We know that Estonia, and Tallinn in particular because of its strategic importance in trade with Russia, are vulnerable to criminal exploitation, but we are doing, and shall continue to do in the future, everything we can to stop such activity. We shall do all we can to reassure our European partners that we are a stable and profitable place in which to invest. We do not want any erosion of confidence.’

I began to wonder when he would stop talking. It was obvious to me that he was speaking carefully from a well-prepared brief. I wanted to shift the conversation to a more informal level.

‘Well, that’s very good to hear. Have you anything written down, some sort of press release, then, about this murder that I could use?’

‘No. We have not done that. I can only tell you what our thoughts are on the matter.’

‘Could I ask you a straight question? Is there a firm called Myrex suspected of being involved in this affair?’

He turned and looked at me directly in the eyes. ‘I can’t say exactly that. Let me say this though, people with business interests based in Spain and Switzerland are suspected of having some connection with this murder. You can draw your own conclusions, and you can be sure that we are determined to root out any form of criminal activity, extortion, bribery, smuggling, that we find. Our government is determined to meet the standards that are required of us. I can also say this without being undiplomatic, that we are able to rely on the assistance of our friends in tracking down any criminals who think they can exploit our newly won freedom. They think we are naïve, but they forget we have waged a hidden war for many years against a formidable occupying power. We have experience and know what to do.’ He had reverted to the official line again. I knew that the friends his government could rely on were the Americans. Rovde’s was a favoured presence in the country.

I tried to bring the discussion down from the official level again and talked about how much I admired the welcoming atmosphere that exists in Tallinn and anywhere you go in Estonia. I did not mention the inhospitable nature of Paldiski; but then that was a one-off blight on the Estonian landscape. He proved an amiable young man. I discovered that he had worked for a time with the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia: he held an economics doctorate from the London School of Economics. We ended up on friendly terms. As I left, I suggested that at some future time when I happened to be in Tallinn, we should have a drink together. He said he would enjoy that. I thanked him and went out through reception. I thought to myself how nice it would be to invite the really very presentable girl who had first spoken to me for a drink. She looked welcoming and attractive. I wondered if she would be inclined to start a little affair or whether she had a boyfriend to whom she was faithful. I made no move. It could all wait for another day.

I repaired to the English Café and had an espresso and a glass of water. I needed the caffeine to make me think. The interview at the Department of Economic Affairs had not told me much more than I had known already. My mind drifted to Roxanne. I wondered what she was doing and where she was. I had no idea: my reverie was pointless. After ten minutes or so, I decided my course of action should be to visit Paldiski to see what was happening there; and then I should return to England and travel to Newcastle and search out Arne. He would know that I had been asking for him. He might be surprised, or suspicious, if I trailed him to Newcastle, but then the persistency of journalists is a necessary part of their stock in trade and should not be unexpected. I gambled on him realising that.

I rang Rovde on his mobile and asked him if he could join me that afternoon on a trip to Paldiski. I would hire a car. We could drive through the flatlands and pine forests. It might make an agreeable afternoon out. He thought he could be ready by 1.30 p.m. and told me to pick him up outside the Italian hotel.

We met on time. The car I had been given was a well-looked-after C series Mercedes. I thought it a little old for a hire car, but it ran smoothly and was smart inside. Rovde sat next to me. I turned up the heating and we headed out of the city. It was a dull, cold day, overcast and gloomy, the sort of day when you could easily nosedive into deep depression. For some time we kept to the coast, passing through dockland and industrial settlements. Then we went inland for some time and cut through mile after mile of pine forest, hemmed in by dark green and occasional swirls of mist. We did not hurry and I approached the outskirts of Paldiski mid-afternoon. As we came up to the shoreline, the road to the left was closed. Warning notices and metal barriers shut off the road leading towards vast naval sheds and some dry docks. Radiation alert logos were clearly visible on the warning signs. Rovde reckoned the road led to a derelict nuclear submarine. There was no official information about it: he thought the Estonian government had put a security blackout on it. From what I knew, I thought he was right and commented that there was nothing like a radiation sign to keep inquisitive people away from something you did not want them to see. It was important in a place like Paldiski to be sceptical about radiation signs, especially when used by private companies. They were used as a means of countering industrial espionage.

We turned right about a third of a mile from the water’s edge and followed a concrete road, more like an airport runway than a road, drove past dilapidated buildings that could once have been office blocks, and then passed a huge length of low concrete slab buildings of the old fifties Soviet sort. Once they had been white: now they were a dirty grey. In places there were no doors, at others doors hung aslant from one hinge, windows were broken or non-existent. It was a scene of devastation and neglect. They were terminally ill buildings.

Behind the long range of rotting concrete, tower blocks of apartments in the same dreary Stalinist style rose grubbily up into the dark sky. You could see in those skeletal structures empty windows that no longer held panes of glass. A few of the flats were lived in. An occasional roughly hung, makeshift curtain draped a window. It was an indication that some of the original occupying Russians had chosen not to go back to the motherland. The centre part of the settlement – it could hardly be called a town – was run down. Most premises were shut. A few, mostly food shops, had boxes of goods stacked up and displayed outside on what remained of the pavement. Potatoes and vegetables, cabbages and onions predominated in the Paldiski diet. Here and there small groups of men stood and talked. As we drove past, all eyes turned to watch us. We had been warned early on in our visits to Estonia not to stop where there were people around. Paldiski was a dangerous place. An obvious foreigner in a hire car was prey for determined, unscrupulous, scavengers.

On the far side of what might be called the centre, there was a long line of naval hangars, one of them huge: it looked as though it could house an aircraft carrier. Near it was a brick and concrete, single-storey building that had been newly painted white. A small but prominent sign above the main door proclaimed Myrex. Elsewhere on the building, and on the large hangar, were notices that read
Danger: Keep Out
. They alternated, written in Russian, Estonian, and English.

There was no one about, so I stopped the car and we sat there viewing the site of Myrex’s operations. The low building, we worked out, must have been the technical lab.

‘But what’s the hangar for?’ I asked Rovde.

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ he retorted.

‘What do they need that space for? It’s got huge storage facility, of course. But Myrex isn’t into goods or commodities. Maybe it’s just property speculation, long-term stuff, investment for the future.’

‘That doesn’t sound like Myrex’s style here,’ Rovde said. ‘They’ve never been interested in that sort of deal. They must have something going on there. Maybe they are doing a bit of import/export. It might be transit storage for stuff going into Russia. We have to remember, Tallinn is the gateway into Russia. It’s open all year round. I’ll bet Arne and his people see it as an acquisition for benefit in the future.’

One dim light shone from a window in the low lab. That was the only sign of life. We got out of the car and walked to the back of the lab. As we did so, the lowering sky lightened, clouds in the far western distance melted into a fierce dull red glow of sunset. It lasted no more than a few minutes, before the sun, already low in the sky and only just visible, sank altogether out of sight. The deep red glow settled and disappeared as though someone had gradually turned off a dimmer switch. Behind the lab, a well-polished, navy blue Saab was parked. It made our old Mercedes look the poor relation.

‘We’d better move off,’ I said. ‘We don’t want to be caught snooping.’

‘Right,’ Rovde agreed. ‘Let’s go on up to the end of the waterfront, see what else is here, and then get back to the city. At least we know that Myrex is operational in some way here.’

We drove slowly along a badly surfaced road to its end. It ran up against a metal barred barrier behind which there was a large field, then the beginnings of the usual pine tree plantations. An unmade track went off into the hinterland away from the sea. It looked like a farmer’s track to a barn: it then disappeared into the pine trees.

I was beginning to feel depressed. It was a gloomy place. The half-light and shade had been momentarily relieved by the late glimmer of sunset. That had been the only cheering aspect of the grim settlement. As we retraced our route and found our way out of Paldiski, the windscreen drizzled with sleet. The temperature gauge showed outside measurements between zero and minus two degrees. We left the miserable, derelict, inhospitably grim outpost, a last reminder of old Soviet power.

I turned up the heating in the car and shivered involuntarily, not I think from cold but rather from anxiety. I could not figure out where our investigation was leading us. I had no wish to go back to Paldiski; but somehow I felt I was destined to see more of the awful place.