Penguin Lost (11 page)

The Lexus conveyed them to Marina’s, where they sat in the lounge drinking Olya’s strong, spicey and, so far as Viktor was concerned, unwelcomely invigorating coffee.

*

“Ever tried what the coffee grounds show?” Marina asked, inverting her cup. “Well, come and see.”

What they showed were two naked, sexually explicit silhouettes, male and female.

“To the bedroom,” said Marina.

A night of vigorous love-making ensued, and after breakfast, a day of the same, with time together in a vast triangular bath by way
of intermission.

At supper, as if remembering something of importance, she got to her feet, went over to the bureau, and took out a wad of $100 bills, most of which she sealed into an envelope.

“The chauffeur will take you to a certain young lady, one Kseniya. Tell her Stanislav left this envelope for her. Otherwise the truth – that he’s dead, and so on – though not about us. Don’t hang about. The chauffeur will be waiting. So shall I.”

Despite the late hour there was no dearth of traffic.

“Much further?” Viktor asked.

“Ten minutes – it’s off the Ring.”

They stopped at last outside a tower block.

“15th floor, flat 137,” announced the chauffeur.

Viktor got out, grateful now for his warm windproof. No keypad, no concièrge here, just a lift with dim, grill-protected bulb, stench of tobacco and walls stripped bare and scrawled with the usual obscenities. Eventually he reached the 15th floor.

As he rang, he looked at his watch. 1.30 a.m.

“Who is it? I’ll call the militia,” came a frightened voice.

“I’m from Stanislav.”

The door opened, revealing a sleepy-faced young woman in a dressing gown over night attire, standing barefoot on brown linoleum, a piggy-eyed pit bull terrier at her side.

“Come in.”

Closing the door behind him, he slipped his shoes off and went with her to the kitchen. The pit bull terrier withdrew into the darkness.

It was a small kitchen with a tap leaking onto a stack of unwashed crockery and three pots of aloes on the windowsill.

“He asked me to give you this.”

“Has something happened to him?”

“I’m afraid it has. He’s dead.”

“Is it money?” she asked, through tears.

He nodded.

“He wouldn’t have sent money. I’ve never needed his money … Would you like some tea?”

Without waiting for an answer, she cleared and wiped the table, and put the kettle on.

Hearing steps in the passage, Viktor swung round in surprise. Kseniya hurried out.

“It’s all right, Mummy, just someone to see me. You go back to bed, Mummy,” he heard her say.

“I’ve had to take her in,” she said, coming back. “She can’t cope – sclerosis, her joints are agony … Are you from Moscow?”

He explained who he was, and said that he’d known Stanislav only slightly.

“Pity. He was a good man. Just naïve. Thought money would solve everything. Bought me a flat on the Arbat, and when I wouldn’t move, said he’d take me to a psychiatrist,” she said, looking at a photograph of Bronikovsky on horseback.

“Promised to teach me to ride, give me an Arab racer – always the grand lord. When he left, I was pregnant, but nothing came of it.”

The dog could be heard worrying at something in the corridor.

“Why do you have a big dog like that?”

“Bosik? I took him in as a stray. He’s a dear. Have you any children?”

Why did she and Marina ask the same thing?

“An adopted daughter.”

“And where is she?”

“With her nanny.”

“I think I’ll adopt too. A son. Though with no Stanislav, it’ll be tough … I always thought he’d leave her … It was
she
who sent the money?”

Viktor said nothing – he didn’t have to. She went over to the window, looked out at the night, then turned off the gas under the kettle.

He was about to offer some word of reassurance, but judged it right not to. She was grieving, as no woman would grieve for him.

Hoping to divert her, he told her about Misha. Did she, he wondered, know of a banker known as Sphinx who had a private zoo? She didn’t, never having moved in such, or indeed any, circles, and she found it odd that bankers should have funny names, like gangsters and dogs – her own was at that moment cheerfully noisy in the passage.

Told of Misha, she listened with interest and was upset at Sonya’s now being without her friend.

Lighting suddenly on the envelope of money, her gaze hardened.

“I would take nothing from her … But Mummy needs medicine. She’s got cancer.”

Time, Viktor judged, to be going. In the passage, he found Bosik chewing one of his shoes.

“Drop!” said Kseniya, darting forward, rescuing the shoe and returning it to Viktor.

“I’m terribly sorry.”

Viktor went his way, deeply depressed and with a decidedly uncomfortable left shoe.

In the lighted Lexus the driver was reading a book. Viktor got into the back seat, and they accelerated away along a deserted street
with lights at amber.

“Could be trouble,” said the driver over his shoulder, referring to two jeeps on their tail, and as Viktor turned to look, one overtook and cut in, forcing the Lexus to slow to a halt, while the other closed up behind – a manoeuvre his driver could have avoided, having the better car.

The door was opened by a thickset tough in a blue tracksuit.

“We’ll deliver,” he told the driver. “Don’t worry, and tell the boss lady not to.”

He turned to Viktor.

“Out you get.”

There was nothing for it but to obey.

Viktor opened his eyes on inky blackness, tried to get up, but was physically incapable. In an attempt to distinguish dream from nightmare reality, he opened his mouth, said “Ah!” But between his making the sound and actually hearing it, there was an appreciable time lag. He had another go. With the same result, except that the sound now took over a minute returning. Something pricked his hand. He raised his head in an effort to see what. So there was hope. He could now move his head. It only remained to decide where he was and what had happened.

A pillow. He was in bed. Suddenly he remembered – two men in blue tracksuits, one in a sweater. While the men in tracksuits restrained him, the third had injected a vein on the inside of his elbow. It still hurt. Worse, it was stabbingly painful, as if the vein was
obstructed by something. And echoing and re-echoing in his head, as if from far, far away through an infinity of intervening walls, the same questions. “Did you actually see him dead? Where did you get that credit card? What are you doing here? Did you actually see him dead?”

The inky blackness thinned. Walls … A tiny room … A window beyond which it was night. A door opened creating a rectangle of brighter light. He raised his hand to shield his eyes, and felt again the pain of the injection.

“How are we?” asked a familiar voice, and lowering his hand, he saw almond-eyed Marina in a wine-red housecoat. Her nails will be wine-red, he thought, but they weren’t, they were their natural colour.

“How did I get here?” Again it took a surprising time for the words to become audible.

She pulled a chair up to his bed.

“They brought you back.”

“What happened?”

“At a guess I’d say you got pulled in for questioning. What’s that in your hand?”

She prised open his fingers, looked at the paper they had been clutching, and laughed.

“It’s the counterfoil for the meal we had. Someone thought Stanislav was back and raised the alarm. So you see the danger of forging dead men’s signatures.”

Her cold indifference to her late husband was in contrast to Kseniya’s reaction.

“How was she?” Marina asked, as if divining his thoughts.

“Tearful.”

“For long?”

“No.”

“She took the money?”

“Not willingly. She knew it wasn’t from Stanislav. He would not have given her money, she said.”

“Little fool! How about a drink?”

“I’d like a cognac.”

She brought cognac and glasses.

With an effort he raised himself into a sitting position and drank.

“So you knew all about her.”

“How could I not, with him sending his driver out to her with food. Somewhere beyond the Ring! Just imagine – our Mercedes S600 driving up outside her grubby high-rise for all the world to see! Should have got her a flat in Tverskaya Street nearer his bank, and nipped out in the odd break. He shamed me.”

“He did give her a flat on the Arbat, but she wouldn’t accept it. Maybe it was true love.”

“True relaxation, more like. Naïve, warm-hearted country bumpkin – the clapped-out old banker’s dream! No pretensions. No demands. Just boundless gratitude for being noticed. Still, enough about him!”

She handed him her husband’s credit card, still warm from her housecoat pocket.

“You have this. I’ve money of my own, I don’t need his.”

Viktor took the card, but being naked, had nowhere to put it.

“Olya and I undressed you, and by now she’ll have your things laundered for you. And so, when you’ve recovered, it’s back to Kiev.”

“I’ve got to find my penguin first. And with this card I should have enough to buy him back.”

“If you haven’t, ring me.”

Woken next morning by the warmth of exploring hands, he responded accordingly.

“Do you know, with a bit of fitness training and massage, one could make a decent job of you,” Marina said. “You’re not, like my husband, past it, though not exactly a box of fireworks.”

Their parting verged on the emotional.

“Whenever you’re in Moscow, be sure to ring,” she said drawing her housecoat about her and closing the door.

Going down in the lift, he felt like an astronaut returning to earth, guinea pig term completed. He regretted the less positive side of his exploitation, of which the discomfort of his left shoe was a painful reminder.

The lift doors parted, and with a nod to the concièrge/security guard, Viktor left the building.

Kutuzov Avenue was a continuous two-way stream of cars. His watch showed 11.30. It would soon be time for lunch, and the place for that was the Peking Restaurant, where he could enlist the help of Andrey Pavlovich’s friend Bim. He was never going to find the banker unaided, and even if he did, would only be kept at arm’s length by his bodyguards. Someone to speak for him was what he needed, someone after the style of Andrey Pavlovich.

The Peking Restaurant was packed, mainly with Caucasians. Viktor hung his jacket on the back of a chair, sat down, and anticipating a
long wait looked around for service. The next minute a young man of eastern appearance presented him with a menu, volunteering that it would be easier and quicker to take the business lunch than order
à la carte
, which, trusting Moscow to know best, Viktor did.

He made short work of the sweet-and-sour soup, spitting unchewable bamboo shoots into the bowl.
Porc à la Sé-Tchouen
with rice followed, then green tea. Inner man satisfied, he turned his thoughts to the matter in hand.

“Where would I find Bim?” he inquired into the tactfully inclined ear of the waiter.

“He will join you,” was the calm reply. “Will that be all?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He drank his green tea and observed the four men at the next table also enjoying a business lunch, and helping it down with vodka. The unhealthy pudginess of their amply-ringed fingers suggested the possibility of early deaths.

“You asked to see me?” said a pleasant-looking man in a nondescript grey suit, seating himself at Viktor’s table.

“Andrey Pavlovich of Kiev said come to you if I needed help.”

Bim smiled. “How is he?”

“Standing as People’s Deputy he was fine. Now, having been demoted to Deputy’s aide, he’s less so.”

“Not to worry. All part of life’s rich tapestry. What’s your problem, then?”

“I’m afraid there’s a bit of a preamble.”

Bim nodded, and Viktor told the story of Misha, the funerals-with-penguin and his own forced flight to Antarctica, omitting his obituary-writing as past history. Mention of Sphinx gave Bim pause for thought.

“The Gas Commerce Bank is no longer with us. But your penguin will be legally Sphinx’s. Snatching him back’s not on. But a
buy-back or swap for a pretty girl might be. Negotiation’s called for. Leave it with me. I’ll try for an appointment with him – or his boys if he’s too high and mighty – for this evening.”

He consulted his Rolex.

“Look in at about 8.00. Meal on the house, then, all being well, we’ll motor.”

*

Light of step and light of heart Viktor strode along Tverskaya Street towards Red Square, indifferent to the fine drizzle, except in so far as wet was penetrating his shoe.

As drizzle turned to downpour, he popped into the People’s Bar for a cognac, and discomforts forgotten, marvelled at anything of the People’s being quite so clean and orderly. When the rain eased, he went his way, and looking into a shoe shop, was outraged at the telephone-number-like prices.

He returned to the Peking Restaurant, footsore but with a feeling of relief. Bim was standing by a palm in the foyer, smoking a thin cigar which, seeing Viktor, he stubbed out against the palm, and replaced in a wooden case.

“This way,” he said, leading the way to a remote table bearing “Reserved” and “No Smoking” notices. “And best stick that in the cloakroom,” he added, as Viktor went to drape his jacket over the chair. “Eats on the way. What are you drinking?”

“Cognac, please.”

An elderly waiter appeared instantly to take their order. Bim re-lit his cigar.

“Is the banker coming?”

“Not so fast. Greetings, by the way, from Andrey Pavlovich. You’re to look him up when you get back.”

“How is he?”

“Fine, and free again,” came the reply in a stream of cigar smoke.

“He got arrested, then?”

“Heavens no! Free because the Deputy he was aide to, died enjoying a call-girl the day after the election.”

Not knowing what to make of this change of fortune, Viktor looked blank. Bim smiled, and at that moment his aniseed vodka and Viktor’s cognac arrived.