Panshin began shaking his head, but a second blow with the barrel of the gun snapped his head back, making it appear loose and doll-like. The man cried out with pain. He fumbled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it with the greatest solicitation against his cheek. The wet, pained eyes regarded Lock with impotent hatred. Lock forced casual, indifferent satisfaction into his expression. It wasn’t difficult, he realised.
He said quietly: ‘Pete Turgenev had my sister killed, Panshin.
After that, why should I care what happens to you, what happens here?’ He raised the gun and Panshin flinched away, hands waving feebly as he began to drown in the danger to himself.
‘No!’ Vorontsyev lurched forward out of an apathy of fascination and revulsion towards the desk and the cameo of Lock’s control of Panshin. He experienced a pang of empathetic fear for the club owner, even as he reminded himself of the gangster’s background.
Panshin’s features greeted him with relief as he lunged against the desk.
‘Leave it!’ Lock snarled.
‘Sod you, Yank!’ Vorontsyev growled back. Then he banged the fist of his free hand on the desk and said urgently: ‘Val, it’s all going down the tubes and I don’t know if I can keep this American from killing you! Just tell us what we want to know.’
‘What in hell are you doing playing around with this, Vorontsyev?’
Panshin demanded. ‘This isn’t how it’s done!’
The remark was ludicrous. Vorontsyev felt diminished, as if he had been making a fraudulent insurance claim.
‘Well, damn you, Val — it’s how he does it!’
Panshin’s features creased into sulky folds; uncertainty now dominated his horizon.
‘See, Val,’ Lock said, ‘the rules have been changed. Guys like him-‘ He tossed his head in Vorontsyev’s direction. ‘- didn’t have the motive to go up against Turgenev. It was all getting by and making a rouble and losers are assholes and keep your nose clean. The cops and the bad guys played to the same script. Don’t tell me about it, Val — my country invented those rules!’ He leaned forward. ‘It isn’t about superpowers and systems, Val — it’s about whether or not I kill you. And the rules don’t apply. Do we deal?’
He was on the point of raising the gun, but there was no remaining need. Panshin believed him.
‘I don’t know where … I swear it — but he’s going to get them out today, this morning. Airport. There’s a break in the weather coming … his plane …’
There was nothing more. Panshin slowly subsided onto his desk, his folded arms cradling his head. The coiffured grey hair was glossy in the light of the desk lamp; he seemed to continue to exude power and money, even in decline.
Lock was staring at him.
‘There’s nothing more!’ Vorontsyev stormed. ‘That’s all he knows, all we need to know.’ It was as if Panshin was an actor resting after a performance of sincerity. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘Him?’
Vorontsyev snatched Panshin’s head off the desk by jerking at the thick hair. He turned the man’s terrified, bemused features towards Lock. ‘Tell him you won’t ring Turgenev, Val — tell him you’ll be signing the order for your own execution if you so much as lift the phone.’ He shook Panshin like a rat. ‘Tell him, Val, and he’ll let you live!’
‘It’s true,’ Panshin muttered, too submerged in the moment and the most distant consequences to give his assertion any authority. ‘It’s true.’
When Vorontsyev let go of his hair, Panshin let his head decline onto his arms once more. Vorontsyev nodded to Lock, who got up from the desk obediently and followed him to the door.
The phone in Vorontsyev’s pocket trilled.
‘Yes?’
‘A friend at headquarters gave me your number.’ It was Bakunin. ‘I know where you are. I’m calling from just down the street. In my night-glasses, I can make out the head of your girl detective, sitting in her car. So can one of my marksmen through his nightscope. Will you come out or shall I give the order to fire?’
Turgenev whirled round in triumph, erasing the expression from his features. The Iranian had not knocked, simply emerged into the study as if by right. The phone in his hand seemed to Turgenev to betray something.
‘Yes,’ he said carefully, ‘I quite agree. Put that into operation right away, would you.’ He cut off the connection to Bakunin and put down the receiver. ‘Hamid — I’m sorry, but I do have other concerns.’
‘Of course, my friend. I simply came to collect the files on our passengers to Tehran. I hope that is in order?’
Turgenev plucked up from the desk a thick wodge of files, bound with red ribbon.
‘Appropriate, I think — the colour of celebration?’
‘Perhaps. Thank you.’
And now, get out, Turgenev thought. Get out and allow me to attend to more important matters.
He admitted tiredness, the erosion that bouts of unaccustomed excitement, much like sudden debaucheries, had brought on.
The punctuations of Bakunin’s reports, on which he had insisted, had dragged at his reserves. That Vorontsyev and more especially Lock were trapped in Panshin’s club was a line drawn beneath the whole business — but instead of being able to turn freely to the matter of Grainger Technologies or his other American interests, he must attend to this medium-ranking officer in Iranian Intelligence. It demeaned him; the man’s presence was no longer tolerable.
‘If you’ll excuse me, Hamid, there are things I must attend to.’ He ushered the small Iranian to the door.
‘Of course. My apologies.’ Then he was gone, at least for the moment.
Turgenev carried a sheaf of faxed reports to the desk, a whisky in his other hand. Putting both down, he fumbled in his pocket for his half-glasses and sat down. There were at least a dozen urgent phone calls, faxes He plucked off his glasses and stared at the blank of the window behind the desk, turning his chair with a slight squeak.
His gaze travelled past the paintings and porcelain that invaded even the one room that was intended as a workplace, a puritanical domain. The storm continued to fling the snow across the window, almost horizontally in the glare of the security lights.
Around eight, they continued to predict.
Very well, he would believe them. It would be little more than a diversion, now that Bakunin was on the point of eliminating all immediate risk. Lock, the anxious, eager-to-please boy, the young man never-quite-there, the stereotype, would soon be bagged rubbish to be carted away. He smiled, almost sadly, with recollection. It had been Billy Grainger who had described Lock as the best and worst kind of American — the Peace Corps boy with a handgun. They had agreed, over the vodka and caviar in the rude hut in the Afghan mountains, while Lock patrolled outside on guard, that the world had killed a lot of Americans just like him in a lot of foreign wars.
Which is just what this encounter was. Billy had even added that America had killed a lot of Americans like Lock.
Turgenev shook his head, again with some proximity to sadness.
Then he replaced his glasses and checked the most urgent faxes and retyped phone messages. Yes, he decided, he would sell his small holding in that Far East satellite TV corporation to Murdoch … no, he would not sell that much sterling at the moment… yes, he would take that offered stake in the Kuwaiti exploration company seeking to nuzzle into the trough of the Asian republics’ oilfields … no, not that, yes, that was OK …
‘Then torch the place yourself — before they do it for you!’ Lock shouted, rounding on Vorontsyev.
They were collected like the dispirited remnants of an audience for a concert that would never begin, amid the stacked tables of the club’s auditorium. Dmitri was to one side, on Vorontsyev’s instructions, and Lock’s raised voice angered him because it might alarm Marfa, make her next movement precipitate and suspicious.