Читать книгу The Hidden Man - Charles Cumming - Страница 15

A man of sixty looks back on his working life and feels, what? A sense of regret at opportunities lost? Shame over badly handled investments, businesses that might have turned sour, a colleague treated with contempt by the board after forty years’ loyal service to the firm? Keen simply did not know. He had lived his life in a separate world of deliberate masquerade, a state servant with carte blanche for deceit. Waiting for Mark in his son’s favourite, if overpriced, Chinese restaurant at the south end of Queensway, Keen had the odd, even amusing sensation that most of his professional life had been comprised of social occasions: Foreign Office dinners, embassy cocktail parties, glasses of stewed tea and mugs of instant coffee shared with journalists, traitors, disgruntled civil servants, ideologues and bankrupts, the long list of contacts and informants that make up a spy’s acquaintance. Indeed it occurred to him – over his second glass of surprisingly decent Sancerre – that he was a scholar of the long, boozy lunch, of lulling strangers into mistaken beliefs, of plying dining companions with drink and sympathy and then sucking them dry of secrets. It was his talent, after all, the knack they had spotted at Oxford, and the reason now, more than thirty years later, that Keen could charge Divisar £450 a day for his old-style flair and expertise. But to use those skills on his own son? To do that, if he looked at it for too long, would seem horrific. But Christopher Keen never looked at anything for too long.

Mark was late by half an hour, a mirror image of Keen’s own father at thirty-five, coming into the restaurant at a brisk walk mouthing, ‘Sorry, Dad,’ from fifty feet. Keen thought he looked tired and preoccupied, but that might have been his paranoia over Taploe.

The Service would like your assistance in clearing up Libra’s position, in revealing the exact nature of their relationship with Kukushkin. We just need you to pick your son’s brains, find out what he knows.

‘Where the hell have you been?’

He said it without anger, because Mark looked genuinely contrite.

‘I’m really, really sorry.’ He placed a hand on his father’s shoulder. ‘Meetings. All morning. Fucked electrics at the club and a tabloid hack giving me gyp.’

He was wearing a dark blue corduroy suit and, for want of something better to say, Keen remarked on it.

‘Bespoke?’ he asked.

‘Thought you might notice that.’ It was a shared passion between them, the luxury of fine clothes. Mark sat down and flapped a napkin into his lap. ‘This here is a Doug Hayward original in navy corduroy, a sympathetic cloth flexible enough to accommodate today’s retro styling.’ He was beginning to relax. ‘The jacket has high lapels, as you can see, with long double vents and three buttons at the front. Furthermore, if I stood up you’d notice an immaculately tailored flat-fronted trouser with straight legs that flare just above the tongue of the shoe.’

‘Indeed,’ Keen said. ‘Indeed,’ and enjoyed Mark’s charm. He poured both of them a glass of Sancerre and ordered another bottle from the waiter. ‘What’s in the bag?’

Mark said, ‘Oh yes,’ and leaned over to retrieve two bottles of vodka from a duty-free bag he had carried into the restaurant. Three litres of Youri Dolgoruki, his father’s favourite brand.

‘Present for you,’ he said. ‘Picked them up in Moscow three days ago. Know how you prefer the real thing.’

‘That was immensely kind of you.’ Keen put the bottles on the floor beside his chair and wondered if they would clink in his briefcase. ‘You shouldn’t have bought me anything at all.’

‘For all the birthdays I missed,’ Mark replied lightly, as if the observation held no resonance. Then he opened his menu.

Keen had noticed this about Mark before: the way he gave presents to people at Libra and Divisar, little surprises to lighten their day. The cynic in him had decided that this was an unconscious way of keeping colleagues onside, of buying their trust and loyalty. It was the same with his memory: months after meeting them, Mark could recall the names of personal assistants who had brought him cups of coffee during fifteen-minute meetings in downtown Moscow.

‘How do you do that?’ he asked.

‘Eh?’

Mark was staring at him and Keen realized he had been thinking aloud.

‘Sorry, I was just mulling something over. Your ability to remember names. I was thinking about it while you were late.’

Mark clumped the menu shut.

‘Trick I was taught by Seb,’ he said frankly, and put his jacket on the back of the chair. ‘Remember someone’s name and it makes them feel special. Tack on a fact or two about their lives and they’ll practically offer themselves up. It’s all vanity, isn’t it, Dad? We all want to feel cherished. Bloke comes to work to fix the sound system and I remember he’s got a ten-year-old kid who supports West Ham, he’s gonna be touched that I brought it up. Good business, isn’t it? How to win friends and influence people.’

Keen nodded and could only agree. At a table near by, a decent-looking woman in a reasonable suit was eating lunch with her husband and giving him the occasional eye. Mutton dressed as lamb, Keen thought, and wished she were ten years younger.

‘Will you order for me?’ Mark said. ‘My brain’s gone numb.’

Lacquer-black walls and a low oppressive ceiling patterned with dimmed halogen bulbs lent the interior of the restaurant the atmosphere of a mediocre seventies nightclub. Mark was always impressed by his father’s knowledge of the more obscure dishes on a menu – in this case, preserved pork knuckle, fragrant yam duck, a soup of mustard leaf with salted egg and sliced beef. He even ordered them in an accent that sounded authentically Chinese.

‘You spend time in Beijing?’ he asked. ‘In Shanghai, Hong Kong?’

‘Not really.’ Keen refilled Mark’s glass with the new bottle. ‘A fortnight in Taiwan in the seventies. Overnight stop in Kowloon harbour a few years ago. Rather a lovely ketch, if I recall, French owner. Otherwise just homogeneous Chinese restaurants the world over. Anxious-looking fish in outsized tanks, ducks flying anticlockwise around the walls.’

Mark listened intently. He was good at that. Keen wondered if he had an image, in technicolour, of his father calmly going about the Queen’s business, standing on the prow of a luxury yacht wearing a battered Panama hat.

‘Why does everyone insist on calling it “Beijing” nowadays?’ he asked. ‘You don’t say “Roma”, do you? You don’t talk about “Milano” or “München”?’

‘It’s just the fashion,’ Mark replied.

‘Ah yes, the fashion.’ Keen sighed and let his eyes drift towards the ceiling. He enjoyed playing the fuddy-duddy with Mark, assumed that it was a part of his paternal role. ‘I sometimes think that everything these days is about fashion, about not doing or saying the wrong thing. Common sense has gone right out of the window.’

‘I guess.’

A smooth-skinned waiter, working in tandem with a pretty Chinese girl wearing a sky-blue silk dress, ferried plates of dim sum and steamed rice to their table. They were on to their third bottle of wine – a characterless Ribera del Duero – by the time Keen got round to Taploe’s business.

‘Oh, by the way,’ he said. ‘I had a call from Thomas Macklin while you were away.’

‘Oh yeah? Tom? What did he want?’

‘Just a couple of routine questions. Divisar business. Tell me about him. How do you two get on?’

Mark was swallowing a mouthful of prawn satay and for some time was able only to nod and raise his eyebrows in response.

‘Why do you want to know?’ he asked eventually, wiping a napkin over his bottom lip.

‘He intrigued me. As you can imagine, we get a lot of lawyers coming into the firm. He’s still relatively young, highly competent, somebody whom I imagine would be an asset to Libra.’

‘Tom’s all right. A bit flash, bit lippy. Good lawyer, though.’

‘Does your work dovetail?’

Mark could not hear the question over the noise of the restaurant and he cocked his head to one side to encourage his father to repeat it. Keen leaned in.

‘I said, does your work dovetail? How much of him do you see, apart from when you’re both abroad together?’

‘I was out with him last night, matter of fact. Tom’s a big drinker, likes to whip out the company credit card. If there’s a new secretary in the office he’s always the one who asks her out. Champagne and oysters, loves all that shit. Never has any luck with the birds, mind, but you’ll have a good time if you tag along.’

Whenever Mark discussed Libra business, his voice unconsciously dropped into a mannered sub-Cockney that cloaked its true origins in private education. His work accent, his music industry drawl, deliberately shaved off consonants and slackened vowels. It was an affectation that irritated Keen, though he had never mentioned it.

‘And what happens when you go on these trips?’ he asked, pouring himself a glass of water. The woman with whom he had briefly flirted rose from her table and managed a final seductive glance. Keen ignored her. ‘You must get sick of the sight of one another.’

‘Not necessarily.’ Mark was using a pair of chopsticks to pick up a pork dumpling. He held it in the air for some time, like a jeweller examining a gem for flaws. ‘I like the company, to be honest.’ He popped the food into his mouth and began chewing it vigorously, smiling as he ate.

All of this was of interest to Keen. Is Viktor Kukushkin’s syndicate providing Libra with protection in Russia, or is there a larger conspiracy evolving here in London? Taploe had almost whispered his requests, eyes glued to Keen’s lapel. Mark could prove vital in giving us a clear picture of Roth’s and Macklin’s activities. We’d like to know everything you can find out. But Mark did not appear unsettled by the line of questioning: on the contrary, he seemed comfortable and relaxed, just chatting and enjoying his lunch.

‘Good, these, aren’t they?’ he said, and picked up another dumpling.

‘Yes,’ Keen nodded. ‘I must say I was impressed by all of your people. Sebastian, of course, though we met only briefly. The two marketing girls as well. And that Frenchman you brought in last time, Philippe d’Erlanger.’

‘Philippe, yeah. He’s Belgian, actually.’

Keen acknowledged the mistake.

‘But Macklin stood out. Very bright, very capable. During our initial meetings he impressed me a great deal. I acted only as a conduit, as you know, so I have no idea how he’s behaved latterly. But he was very well informed, seemed to know his stuff. A bit pushy, clearly, not necessarily someone one would want to buy a used car from. Do you trust him?’

‘No,’ Mark replied, swallowing. ‘But I wouldn’t have thought he trusts me either.’

‘Now why do you say that?’

‘Best policy, isn’t it? Rule of thumb. Never trust the people at the top. Don’t put yourself in a position where you have to rely on anyone. That way you won’t be too disappointed when they fuck you over.’

Keen’s eyes narrowed. He wondered if the sentiment had its origins in Mark’s childhood.

‘Do you think he’s capable of that?’

But he had pushed too hard.

‘Why are you so interested in Tom?’ Mark asked. ‘Have Divisar had trouble with him? Has he not been paying our bills?’

‘No, no. I’m just fascinated by the way your partnership works. He obviously has the ear of Roth, so where does that leave you?’

‘Well, I’m not a lawyer, am I? That’s not my area of expertise. So the relationship he has with Seb is different from the one he has with me. More personal, if you like. Those two share a lot of secrets which nobody else is privy to.’

Perhaps there was something here for Taploe.

‘What kind of secrets?’ Keen asked.

‘Well, they wouldn’t be secrets if I knew, would they? Financial stuff, I guess; plans for the future. That sort of thing.’

‘I see.’ Mark looked vaguely bored, but Keen was anxious to probe further. ‘Just while we’re on the subject,’ he said, ‘were there any developments on your trip that I should know about? The position on the roof, for example?’

‘No. Tom’s handling it. He deals with those boys.’

‘So you’ve had no contact with the gangs?’

‘I wouldn’t say no contact.’ The waitress picked up two plates from the table, smiled at Mark and walked off. ‘They’re everywhere out there. Hotel foyers, restaurants, sitting in their shiny four-by-fours on Novy Arbat. You can hardly move without bumping into some wanker in a cheap leather jacket who thinks he’s Chechnya’s answer to Al Pacino. Mack’s all for it, of course, loves hanging out with them. Acts like he’s landed a walk-on part in The Sopranos. But they’re not for me. Far as I’m concerned, the mafia makes a living out of other people’s misery and that’s not a good reason to go drinking with them.’

Keen registered this last remark: at SIS he had been trained to be wary of the man who declares his innocence unprompted. It was usually the case that those who made a frequent expression of their moral outrage were most often the ones who turned out to be unscrupulous.

‘Surely Macklin’s just doing his job, just trying to get the best deal for Libra?’ he suggested. ‘I would have thought it was important to keep them onside.’

Mark smirked.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘He keeps them onside, all right.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Whenever we’re in Moscow, Tom makes sure to get a hooker up to his suite. Her twin sister as well, if he’s feeling perky. He’d like to call that “keeping them onside”. That way he could run it through expenses.’

Keen frowned.

‘He’s got sucked into that, has he?’

‘Well, let’s face it, no one else is going to sleep with him.’

Keen duly grinned but the conversation appeared to have exhausted itself. As he had both hoped and expected, there had been nothing of any content to unsettle him, nothing he would feel obliged to reveal to Taploe. He felt an odd, protective urge to tell Mark that his flat was most probably wired, that the grass skirts had eyes and ears in the homes of every one of the senior employees at Libra. Yet he was bound by an older loyalty, barred even from advising caution. He placed his chopsticks to one side, put his napkin on the table, and was quiet.

‘You look worried about something.’

Mark had also finished eating.

‘I do?’

‘Yeah.’

Keen frowned and said, ‘No, I’m fine. Just digesting.’

‘Is it Ben?’

The question took him by surprise, if only because, for once in Mark’s company, Keen had not been thinking about Ben. It was a rare occasion on which the two failed to discuss the possibility of reconciliation. Their last two meetings, for example, had descended into an awkward row about Ben’s stubborn refusal to put the past behind him. Mark had been sympathetic to his father’s position, but his first loyalty was to his brother.

‘Have you thought any more about that?’ If this was an opportunity to reopen the subject, then Keen would grasp it.

‘Not much,’ Mark said.

‘I see.’

‘But you’re still eager to make amends, to tell him how sorry you are?’

‘Something like that.’ Keen wondered if Mark had a plan, but his manner seemed dismissive and offhand. ‘Have you seen him lately?’

‘Matter of fact, I have.’ Mark finished off the last of the wine. ‘Had dinner with him the night I got back. Brother cooked up a green curry and spent most of the evening arguing with Alice.’

‘That seems to happen a lot.’

‘All the time lately.’

‘Are they unhappy?’

Mark breathed in deeply and puffed out his cheeks.

‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Sometimes I wonder what he sees in her, beyond the looks, the lifestyle.’

‘Yes, you’ve said that before. But Alice was very helpful to Ben when your mother died, wasn’t she? Isn’t that the case?’

‘That was the case.’ Mark paused briefly. He was reluctant to betray Ben’s confidence, but the wine had got the better of him. ‘But there’s more to it than that,’ he said.

‘Expand.’

A waiter placed two steaming napkins on a plate in front of them. Mark turned his hands heavily through the cloth and then wiped his mouth.

‘It’s like this,’ he said. ‘They’ve been together a long time. Brother helped to get her career started and Alice supported him when he wanted to get into painting. Far as I can tell they have great sex, you know, so that helps when things turn nasty. And besides, a part of me reckons they love all the arguments, that they feed off the aggro and tension.’

Keen leaned back in his chair.

‘Interesting,’ he said, with apparent empathy. ‘So you don’t suppose he’s any closer to the idea of meeting up?’ He was aware that the question was cack-handed, yet determined to make an approach. ‘You don’t think he’d be amenable to, say, a drink or perhaps dinner?’

Mark laughed and stared at the ceiling.

‘Is that what this is about?’ he said. ‘You want to have this conversation every time we meet up?’

‘Until he’s prepared to forgive and forget, yes.’

Keen had not intended to sound angry, but his words had a remarkable effect. Mark, ever the conciliator, resolved to calm his father down.

‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘You just have to understand that Ben is stubborn, that he’s very set in his ways. For him to agree even to talk to you would mean a betrayal of Mum. That’s how he feels about things. We’ve spoken about this. In his mind, it’s either you or her.’

Keen managed to look appropriately dismayed, but he had been taken with a sharp, persuasive idea. Earlier in the day, he had collected a signet ring from a jeweller in Paddington who had reset the bloodstone. The box was in his briefcase. He could use this as a lever, something to play on Mark’s sense of decency.

‘I had your photograph framed,’ he said.

‘My photograph?’

‘Of Ben’s wedding. It’s hanging in the flat.’ Two weeks earlier, Mark had given him a photograph of Ben’s wedding day, taken moments after he had first emerged from the church with Alice at his side. Keen had had the picture enlarged and framed and it now hung in the sitting room of his London flat. ‘I thought that I might give you something in return.’

‘Oh yeah?’

Keen was quickly into the briefcase, leaning down beside his chair. The box was covered in a thin mock-velvet cover and he handed it to Mark.

‘Are we getting married?’

‘Just open it. Have a look.’

‘What is this?’

Keen was improvising.

‘Call it a present. Of a family nature. More accurately described as an heirloom.’

Inside, Mark found the gold-banded signet ring, set with an engraved bloodstone.

‘This is for me?’

‘I’ve wanted you to have it for some time. It was your grandfather’s.’

Mark was oblivious to any deception. Prising the ring from its box he began turning it in his fingers. A small smudge of grease formed on the gold and he wiped it away with his napkin.

‘This is really kind of you,’ he said, finding that he was actually blushing. ‘You sure about this, Dad?’

‘Of course I’m sure. Why don’t you put it on?’ Mark looked briefly around the restaurant, as if conscious of being watched. Then he placed the ring on the fourth finger of his left hand and held it up for inspection.

‘That’s where it’s supposed to go, right? The “pinky”? Is that what it’s called?’

‘I believe so.’ Keen cleared his throat. ‘I don’t suppose they’re really the fashion these days among the nightclub classes, but you can always give it a go.’

‘I’m really touched. Thank you.’

And now he played the ace.

‘I wonder how Ben would feel if I were to do the same for him.’

From the direction of the kitchen there was the sound of a plate smashing on stone. Silence briefly engulfed the restaurant before conversations resumed.

‘I’m not following you.’ Mark looked slightly worried.

‘There are two signet rings in the family,’ Keen explained. ‘One belonged to your grandfather, the other to his brother. As you may know, Bobby died without producing any children. I’ve always thought his ring should be passed on …’

‘So you thought you’d wait twenty-five years and get me to do it for you?’

Keen acknowledged the slight with just a tilt of his head. He was determined that the plan should succeed.

‘Point taken,’ he said. ‘But would you be prepared to have a word with your brother, to perhaps sound him out?’

Mark ground his chair a foot back from the table.

‘Haven’t we just had this discussion?’

‘It’s just that I feel we’ve never really given Benjamin a chance to come forward, to give his side of the story.’

‘To come forward?’

Keen pushed his glass to one side, as if making a clear channel through which any request could not realistically be turned down.

‘I apologize,’ he said. ‘I’m obviously not making myself clear. Call it a symptom of my frustration. You have always presented Ben’s reluctance to talk to me as a fait accompli. The idea that he might change his mind has simply never been tabled. Well, I propose that we should give it a shot, ask him straight out what exactly it is that he’s afraid of.’

‘Brother’s not afraid of anything. I’ve told you that …’

‘Then let’s at least clear the air. I would rather have the opportunity of being castigated face-to-face than endure this rather childish stand off.’

‘Well, you see, that’s just the problem. Ben doesn’t really care what you think.’

Mark’s candour had the effect of silencing his father. Like a man who has suffered a losing hand at poker, he fell back in his chair, as if conscious of the hopelessness of his position. It was the first time that Mark had ever observed any trace of defeat in his father’s face. And it worked.

‘Look, I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

‘Would you really?’ Keen’s eyes lit up with hope. ‘I think it would be in everyone’s best interests. Imagine if we could all just get along, make a fresh start. You, me, Benjamin, Alice. I’d like to get to know her, too.’

‘I’m sure you would,’ Mark muttered.

‘I mean, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could get this thing knocked on the head by Christmas?’

Mark was simply amazed by his attitude. It was as if his father had an assumed right of access, an inherent belief that the past should be ignored in the interests of his own peace of mind. Nevertheless, he felt a duty at least to make an effort.

‘Leave it to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to him and see what I can do.’

And that was enough to satisfy Keen. His work done, he closed the briefcase, cleaned his hands with the napkin and within moments had asked for the bill.