‘But why was / telephoned?’ Bakunin asked angrily.
It might have been drink, more than lack of sleep, that rendered Bakunin’s chilly, broad features as coarse and brutal as they appeared; it was neither. The man was brutal, the reddened eyes like those of some malevolent boar glaring at a hostile world.
‘I don’t know. Colonel,’ Vorontsyev replied. ‘Someone evidently requested your presence. You’d be involved eventually though, wouldn’t you, with the murder of an American? Perhaps our mysterious caller was just saving time.’
Another big helicopter transporting workers out to the wellheads and rigs passed low over them. He waited until the rotor noise began to fade, watching the ugly, tenement-like blocks of apartments and offices that were Novyy Urengoy, as if puzzled by his location. The streetlighting was fading as the day lightened. The near-tundra of the frozen marshland stretched shadowy and empty to the horizon in every direction. The town was sitting in the landscape like a spilt box of building-blocks, isolated and bleak, ringed by the watchtowers of the gas rigs.
‘Someone wanted both of us to know about this death. I don’t know why. Does the name mean anything to you. Colonel? You move in more exalted circles than myself, after all.’ Dmitri’s mouth cracked like a cold sore for an instant, behind Bakunin’s shoulder.
‘Not immediately. I’ll have it checked.’
‘Are you assuming control of the investigation?’
Bakunin shook his brutal head. ‘You’re the detective. It’s just a murder — for the moment. The motive was probably robbery ‘
‘He didn’t walk all the way from town in those shoes. If he was brought, then he knew his murderer … at least, knew who he was coming to meet or who drove him here.’ Bakunin nodded like a pedagogue, lighting another cigarette, cupping his hands around a gold lighter.
‘How long has he been dead?’
‘Who knows? I doubt the pathologist could be accurate. I’d say three hours, roughly.’
‘My call came two hours ago — yours, too?’ Vorontsyev nodded. ‘Whoever wanted us to find him was keen we should get on with it. He wouldn’t wait, just in case someone found the body and …’ He paused, then added softly:
‘In case someone walked off with the clothes and the Amex card.’ He glanced again at the makeshift town hunched in aggressive defence on the frozen land. Lights on in the tower blocks, unlit streetlights straggling out towards larger homes and to scattered copses sheltering new hotels. Rawls would have been booked into one of them, probably the best, the Gogol. Hyatt part-owned it, had part-paid for its construction. It had the biggest lobby and the best whores. The Japanese, the Germans, the Americans, all had bought into Novyy Urengoy … flats, hotels, company offices. The town had trebled in size in four years. There were dozens of companies involved in leasing, owning, exploring and exploiting the gasfield, some with Russian partners, some not.
Rawls had belonged to one of them.
‘I don’t understand,’ he announced.
‘What?’ Bakunin returned.
‘People like him are normally sacrosanct. Remember — no, you wouldn’t, it was a small matter. An oil company executive got mugged in the summer, outside his hotel. The culprit was knee-capped by one of the local mafiosi, just to enforce the holiness of golden geese like Rawls. So why has he been murdered?
It’s usually the gangsters and racketeers and the drug dealers who execute each other.’
‘You’re suggesting he was a gangster? All the best ones were American, weren’t they?’ Even the smile was sadistic, leering with command.
‘I don’t know.’ Addressing the corpse, he added: ‘Who are you, Mr Rawls? Why are we supposed to take special notice of you, dead as you are?’
Bakunin stamped his feet, as if bringing a royal audience to an end. He turned away, waving one gloved hand and calling:
‘I leave it up to you, Vorontsyev. You’re the policeman.’
Dmitri Gorov grinned as Bakunin all but lost his footing on the rutted snow as he walked towards his limousine. The driver flung away a cigarette and snapped open the rear passenger door.
Vorontsyev turned back to the body as Bakunin’s ZiL lurched out of the slight depression where it had been parked and onto th^ main highway. A car tooted its intrusion into the fast lane, but the horn was muted, as if the military insignia had suddenly been recognized.
Rawls’ hands, even with the nails blued, were soft and manicured.
The man, when alive, would have reeked of power and money. The wind rattled the leafless birches and swayed the firs of the copse. Novyy Urengoy seemed more alien than a minute before, and the landscape that tolerated it more vast than ever.
Someone had ordered this corpse, and demanded it be made to look like a professional hit. Was it intelligence work? He glanced towards the highway but Bakunin’s car was already out of sight. Gangsterism, or something else …?
We were meant to notice — but who is being warned?
PART ONE
THE WEALTH OF NATIONS
‘Their market is not confined to the countries in the neighbourhood of the mine, but extends to the whole world.’
ONE
Family Portrait
He had walked through the last sunshine of the brief afternoon, the leaves brown and crackling beneath his shoes. John Lock’s cheeks were chilly, then almost at once stingingly warm as he entered the lobby of the Mayflower Hotel, shrugging himself out of his overcoat. It had been an invigorating walk from the State Department, pleasant even as the early autumn dark closed on Washington and the streetlights glared out. Aircraft, navigation lights winking, had thundered overhead, but he had been able to hear and see then impassively. He wouldn’t be travelling again for a good while. The city had begun to fit itself comfortably around him, just as his office had already done; as the whole of the State Department had agreeably done.
The barman recognized Lock with the slightest lifting of heavy eyebrows and his favourite drink was silently remembered and served. The olive fell into the martini like a small bird’s egg into clear oil. He toasted himself, then glanced at his watch, smiling.
Just time for two drinks, then back to the apartment to change.
He felt a reluctance that he wouldn’t have time to play even one of the batch of new CDs he had bought during the lunch break. The latest Marriage of Figaro, a new Handel recording, something special in the way of a Beethoven cycle — all very promising. He grinned. It was, after all, Beth’s birthday. Anyway, he no longer had to snatch at hours with the hi-fi or novels or the book he was trying to write. And wouldn’t a while yet. State had given him a tour of duty at his desk in the East Europe Office. Definitely a minimum of travel involved.
Even his answerphone messages, each evening, possessed an unexpected, comforting charm. Fred with tickets for a basketball game; the prim, severe lady who was secretary for the early music group in which he occasionally sang baritone — he was supposed to be editing a performing version of an obscure seventeenth-century opera for them; his dry cleaning ready for collection, which was a statement of intent rather than just a message. He was staying home, staying put. He grinned, shrugging his shoulders as if into an old and comfortable jacket.
The mobile phone bleated in the pocket of his topcoat as it lay across his knees, ruffling his mood like a brief wind. The barman passed him, ice like Latin percussion in his cocktail shaker. He unfolded the phone’s mouthpiece.
‘John Lock.’
‘John-Boy!’ It was Billy, his brother-in-law.