The Kremlin Device (5 page)

In a few minutes we were heading west on the M4.

‘Your first time in the West?'

‘
Da
.'

‘How come you speak English so well?'

‘I learn in school. Also from American attached to our unit.'

‘I see. Can I call you Alexander?'

‘Sasha, please. Sasha is small name of Alexander. The diminution. Your name is George?'

‘Geordie. That's a kind of diminutive, as well.'

‘
Khorosho!
And second name?'

‘Sharp.'

‘That is family name. I mean patronymic.'

‘What's that?'

‘Your father name. My father is Vassily. So I am Aleksandr Vassilyevitch Ivanov. Your father is . . . ?'

‘Was. Michael, I think.'

‘You think? You don't know?'

‘I never knew him.'

‘I am sorry. Well – anyway, you are Geordie Mikhailovitch.'

His accent made him pronounce my name ‘Zheordie', but who was I to complain? His English might be fractured, but at least he could get along in it – whereas my Russian was limited to about twenty words.

Already I liked his enthusiasm, the keen interest he took in everything he saw – for instance, the surface of the motorway. ‘This street!' he said. ‘He is vairy good. Our streets are full of holes. Cars soon break. The suspenders – always breaking.'

Another thing that fascinated him was the smallness of the suburban houses, and their gardens.

‘How many families live in such a house?' he asked, pointing at a row.

‘Those are what we call semis – semi-detached, two joined together. Two front doors, you see. Probably one family in each side.'

‘In Russia we have all big house. Not like this.' He saw me glance across and said, ‘Apartment blocks. Fifteen, twenty pieces high. These are like
izbas
.'

‘What's that?'

‘
Izba
is old house in the country. Peasant house.'

‘A cottage?'

‘Yes, but very old. And such a house . . .' He gestured at a thirties villa standing in a large garden. ‘This belongs to government?'

‘No, no. I'm sure it's private. A private individual. I think I read somewhere that you can buy houses in Russia now.'

‘Yes – it is just starting.'

‘And land? Could you buy a farm, for instance?'

‘By no means. No land can be sold, except for gardens.'

The afternoon traffic was light and the fast lane was often clear, but I kept my speed down to eighty and let the BMWs whip past. I explained the system of number-plates: how S indicated the current year, just started in August, that next autumn there'd be a scramble for Ts, and that freaks paid huge sums for special numbers. Just at the right moment to illustrate my point, we were overtaken by a hell-driven Peugeot 205 with the number P1NTA.

We started to compare British and Russian special forces, and I asked about the base at Balashika.

‘It is home of our famous Dzerzhinsky division. That belongs to Ministry of Interior. They have many facilities at Balashika. Beeg
strelbilshze
.'

‘Barracks?'

‘
Nyet
. Barracks is
kazarma. Strelbilshze
is ranges. Beeg ranges, beeg training area. Between town and forest. Town this side, forest this side. Only thirty kilometres from Moscow, to the east. All behind concrete fences.'

‘Fences?'

‘Walls. Concrete walls, two metres tall. From outside you see nothing.'

When I brought up the subject of the Mafia, he instantly became indignant and twisted round in his seat to look at me. ‘They keell everybody! Half the population has become what we call
vor v zakone
. That means “thief in the law”. In other words, creeminals.

‘They keell businessmen, bank managers, property men – anyone. Last year they even kill Larisa Nechayeva!'

‘Who?'

‘Nechayeva? Boss of Spartak football club. They shoot her in her
dacha
, her country house. Another woman with her. And why? Because she refused to pay them money. Also they kill Valentin Sych, ice hockey president.'

‘What's the motive?' I said. ‘Why kill all these different kinds of people?'

‘Marney!' Sasha held up his right hand, rubbing thumb and forefinger together. ‘Marney, marney, marney! Everyone wants more. Always US dollars. Russian money no good. You know how we call it?
Deregannye dengi
or
deregannye rubli
. That means wooden money, wooden roubles. Throw it in the stove!'

‘But you've just had a revaluation. Didn't they divide by a thousand?'

‘
Konechno
. Of course. Before, it was seven thousand roubles to one dollar. Now it is seven. But what is the difference? Prices are still crazy. No change.'

‘These murders – who's carrying them out?'

‘Contract killers. Almost all. With one bullet, a man can earn half million dollars.' He looked at me and went on in a soft, menacing, ingratiating voice: ‘Eemagine. You are manager of bank, big boss, yes? Somebody telephones. “Look, Meester Sharp, you should pay us some marney.” You tell them, “Get to hell.”

‘Another call. “You know, Mr Sharp, you are in danger. You need pratyection. We do not like you to be hurt. We can pratyect you. We can look after your family. But it will cost you: two per cent. Two per cent of bank takings – a lot of money.”

‘Again you say, “Get lost.”'

He paused, and when he went on, his voice was even more reasonable, more wheedling, more sinister.

‘A week passes. Another call. “Now look, Meester Sharp. Are you not concerned for your safety, for your little children, for their lives?”

‘“No,” you say.

‘“All right, then. Wait. Wait. Just wait.”

‘You think you are safe. Why? Because you have closed-circuit TV on your block. You have modern security system. You have former KGB on duty outside. But you are under terrible pressure – from your bosses to resist the threat, from the criminals to pay.

‘Then one morning you go out to your car. Sunny day. Very nice. Guards are sitting there. Only twenty-five metres to walk, but that is enough.
BASH! Bang!
The contract killer fires one shot from his car – finish.'

‘Nasty,' I said.

‘Is very bad, and always getting worse. Now all politicians are in danger, even the President and the Prime Minister.'

‘That's why we're coming over, I guess.'

‘
Konechno
.'

He gave me such a long run-down on Mafia activities that we reached camp almost without noticing it. ‘Here we are,' I said as we turned in towards the gate. ‘Welcome to Stirling Lines.'

The police on security duty had been briefed to expect him, and I checked him through without difficulty. Then we headed for the officers' mess, where a room was booked. At that time of the afternoon the place was deserted except for Larry, the steward, who was busy cleaning the regimental silver, so I took Sasha through to show him his room, which was small but cheerful, with a shower and lavatory cubicle attached.

‘Even own bathroom!' Sasha grinned. Then, pointing at the washbasin, he recited a little poem: ‘
Tolko pokoynik, Ne ssit v rukomoynik
.'

‘What's that?'

‘It is joke about Russian hotels. Usually bathroom is a kilometre away along passage. It means, “Only a dead man does not piss in the basin.”'

He was delighted with the accommodation; but when we got back into the anteroom, with its sofas and armchairs and little tables, and scenes from regimental history on the walls, he became nervous.

‘Zheordie,' he said. ‘I am shamed.'

‘What's the matter?'

‘This place . . .' He gestured round the room. ‘My clothes . . .' He looked down at himself, pointing to his black jacket, his faded jeans, his ancient trainers. ‘Not smart.'

‘Don't worry. Everyone's very relaxed round here. No formality.'

‘Perhaps . . .'

Still he looked anxious, so I said, ‘Tell you what. I'll run you into town and we can buy you some new stuff at Marks and Sparks.' I saw him hesitate, and explained, ‘That's a chain store. Good cheap clothes. Have you got money?'

He produced his wallet, opened it and fished out some notes. ‘This is enough?'

He had two fivers and two ten-dollar notes.

‘Is that all you've got?'

He nodded.

Jesus! I thought.

‘Zheordie, you must understand. In the army, now, we do not get paid. Five months, no marney.'

I stared at him. ‘In that case,
we'll
get you something.'

‘No, please. You should not pay.'

‘Not me – the system. There's a fund for this sort of thing. I can square it away.'

I dived into my room in the sergeants' mess to pick up a chequebook. Thus equipped, we drove into town and got Sasha kitted out with a lightweight, dark-blue blazer, grey slacks, a pair of black moccasins, a couple of shirts and a tie. The bill came to nearly £200, but I knew I could recover the money from Bill Tadd, the quartermaster.

By 5.30 we were back in camp, and I realised that to Sasha it was already 8.30 – so I suggested that he had a shower and got his head down for an hour before I came back and collected him for supper.

The meal went fine. There were one or two young ruperts about, but we two sat in a corner of the dining-room and no one bothered us. Sasha's new gear did him proud. He couldn't help preening himself a bit, shooting the cuffs of his pale-blue shirt and brushing invisible bits of fluff off the sleeves of his blazer.

As we chatted it became apparent that he'd had quite a lot of fighting experience – more than I had. One of the pictures on the wall was of the Jebel Akhdar in Oman, where the Regiment had won a famous victory in the fifties, and it set him reminiscing about Afghanistan, where he'd been posted for a year in hellish conditions. The mountains, he said, looked very similar – but in contrast with the heat of the Gulf, the winter cold in Afghanistan had been horrendous.

Towards the end of the meal, though, our conversation became rather stilted. Several times Sasha didn't understand something I'd said, and he seemed to be preoccupied with his behaviour, eating his cheese carefully and often glancing round. So I proposed we go out for a couple of beers and his mood lightened again.

The main thing was to steer clear of other guys from the Regiment and of the local slappers, whose intelligence network is shit hot. Bush telegraph keeps all the Hereford talent fully informed about who's who and who's where – who's on the standby squadron, who's on the SP team and so on. The last thing I wanted was for those women to see a Russian walking around with me in the evening – so we drove off to The Lamb, a pub in one of the outlying villages, and Sasha put down his first pint of Theakston's Old Peculier like he hadn't had a drink in months.

With the beer came relaxation.

‘Cheers!' He raised his glass for the third or fourth time. ‘Tell me your family. You are married?'

‘No. I was. How about you?'

‘The same.'

‘What happened?'

‘My wife – she was killed.'

‘I'm sorry. How?'

‘She was shot. It was street battle. Some Mafia persons were shooting a bank manager from their car. They keelled him, but also three persons on the pavement. Olga was one.'

‘An accident, then?'

‘By no means!' He turned on me indignantly. ‘On purpose. The Mafia keell all witnesses.'

He paused before adding, ‘Olga came from Alma Ata, in Uzbekistan. That was her home.'

‘You didn't have children?'

‘She was pregnant. Six months. I think it was a boy. My son.'

‘When was this?'

‘Ninety-three . . . ninety-four. Four years ago.'

‘Well – that makes two of us.'

‘Excuse me?'

‘My story's much the same.'

Keeping it short, I told him about my marriage to Kath, a Northern Irish girl, and how she'd been killed by the premature explosion of an IRA bomb outside a supermarket in Belfast. ‘Our son Tim was only three then, so he went to live with Kath's parents in Belfast,' I explained – and that led on to an account of my feud with the man I held responsible for her death, the leading IRA player Declan Farrell.

Sasha listened sympathetically, then said, ‘It is your own Mafia, I think, the IRA.' He pronounced the name ‘Ee-ra'.

‘Not really. The IRA's driven by politics and religion. Political and religious hatred, more than money. Anyway, because we couldn't get this guy on legitimate operations, I was stupid enough to go after him on my own.'

In a few minutes my reminiscences led me to describe the kidnap of Tracy and Tim.

‘Tracy?' Sasha interrupted. ‘She is who?'

‘A girlfriend . . . Jesus!' I hadn't meant to get into all this. I pushed back my stool, looked at my companion and said, ‘We need another drink.' When I stood up and went to the bar to fetch two fresh pints, Sasha came with me, pulling out his wallet.

‘Put it away,' I told him. ‘In England, you're our guest.'

He gave a little nod by way of saying thank you.

‘Yes,' I resumed as we sat down again. ‘Tracy. A great girl. At least, she
was
. A redhead. Taller than you. Good fun to be with. She worked as a receptionist at the med centre, in camp. There'd been nothing between us before, but after Kath was killed we gradually got together, and a few months later she moved in with me. It was fantastic the way she took over Tim as if she were his mother . . .