They used a US embassy pool car, a complaining Ford which looked very much the orphan among the Mercedes and BMWs and Porsches clustered around the Nightflight, in what Kestler insisted people still called Gorky Street, despite its post-communism name change. Charlie wasn’t sure he would have been admitted if Kestler hadn’t confidently led the way and Charlie mentally apologized for thinking it was only the shambling Lyneham who might have been a hindrance.
It was vast and cavernous and half-lit, a plush-seated and expansive balcony overlooking a heavy dance floor, a viewing gallery from which to watch fish shoal. Charlie contentedly followed the American’s lead, ignoring the downstairs bar for the larger and better-lit one upstairs. A glass of wine and a whisky purporting to be scotch but which wasn’t cost Kestler $80 and Charlie realized he hadn’t negotiated his allowances as well as he’d thought.
They managed to get bar stools close to one end of the curved, glass-reflecting expanse, giving them a spread-out view. Each table was a separate oasis of competing party people. The predominant female fashion was bare shoulders or halter-necks, featuring valleyed cleavage and neon displays of what looked like gold and diamonds and which Charlie decided probably were. A lot of the material in the men’s suits shone, like the gold in their diamond-decked rings and identity bracelets and the occasional neck chain that fell from open-collared shirts. Champagne bottles – French, not Russian – stood like derricks on the biggest oil lake ever struck and quick-eyed waiters ferried constant supplies to ensure the gushers never stopped bubbling. There were a lot of quickly smiling girls offering uplifted invitations at various stretches of the bar: two actually extended their attention to Charlie.
‘You’ve got to be careful,’ advised Kestler. ‘They’re virtually all professional. Anything ordinary runs out at about $400 to $500 a trick and that’s practically a fire sale. And there’s a lot of infection about.’
‘I’ll be careful,’ promised Charlie, solemnly.
‘You need to be,’ said Kestler, looking past Charlie to the assembled tables. ‘Make another sort of mistake and hit on someone’s wife or regular girlfriend and you end up chopped liver. Literally.’
‘I’ll remember that, too.’ Charlie thought Kestler’s earlier description of a zoo at feeding time was very apposite: most of the men did look dangerously unpredictable and those who didn’t were closely escorted by companions who did and a lot of whom sat slightly on the sidelines, waiting to be told what to do. Capone country, recalled Charlie. Lyneham’s description was apposite, too: it was like being in the middle of every gangster movie Charlie had ever seen. He remarked just that to Kestler, as he gestured for refills. The American grinned back and said, ‘That’s exactly how it is. This is performance time, each strutting their stuff for the others. The jewellery is compared and the tits and the ass is compared and the macho is compared and even the size of the bankroll is compared.’
Charlie watched his $100 note disappear into the till. The receipt came but no change. ‘You ever tried to make up case files?’
‘Mug shots and criminal records and stuff like that?’
‘Stuff like that,’ agreed Charlie.
Kestler smiled at him, more sympathetic than patronizing. ‘Ask me that at the end of the evening.’
They left Nightfiight an hour and $200 later. There was an even larger cast posturing and performing at Pilot, on Tryokhgorny Val and it cost Charlie a further $300 to sit in the audience. ‘I think I know what your answer’s going to be,’ said Charlie, as they left.
‘Like they say in the movies, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet,’ parodied Kestler.
Upstairs at the Up and Down club a striptease dancer of breathtaking proportions was ending the tease as they negotiated their way past a shoulder-to-shoulder cordon of granite-faced men all of whom Charlie believed from Kestler’s assurance to be former spetznaz Special Forces. The dance floor was downstairs. The two drinks at the bar there cost Kestler $200 before they went back upstairs to watch another stunning girl disrobe during the most sensuous dance Charlie had ever witnessed.
‘Shit, that makes me horny!’ declared Kestler.
‘Think of the cost,’ cautioned Charlie. He’d already fantasized of bringing Gerald Williams to the Up and Down if the inevitable reimbursement dispute ever brought the financial director personally to Moscow on a fact-finding enquiry.
‘It’s the only thing holding me back,’ admitted the American. He looked, with obvious reluctance, from the gyrating girl, but swept his hand out in the embracing gesture of an ancient farmer dispensing seed. ‘This is the creme de la creme…’ The man hesitated, for the prepared joke. ‘Or crime de la crime, if you really want to get it right. You do a bust here tonight, I guarantee you’d get someone from all the big Families… Ostankino… Chechen… Dolgoprudnaya… Ramenski
… Assyrian… Lubertsky… All of them. And probably a few making up their international links with Italy and Latin America and the United States as well.’
‘Has it ever been done?’
‘Why should it have been done? There’s no statute in Russian law to justify a raid. And all these motherfuckers know it…’ Kestler looked around the room again. ‘These guys would love it, if it happened. It would polish their macho image to be publicly hauled off and then be back on the street again, in hours. Giving the authorities the stiff middle finger.’
‘Is that why there is so little action here? That there isn’t legislation for the law to move in the first place!’
‘One of the excuses why there’s so little action. Along with about a hundred others, a lot of which I’ve forgotten.’
‘Which is why you’ve never bothered with a mug shot comparison from any of the clubs?’
‘They all laugh at me, Lyneham particularly, for running around in circles. But there are some circles that even I won’t waste my time revolving in.’
A barman stood demandingly before them and their empty glasses. Charlie, who reckoned he had enough for just one more round, nodded. To Kestler he said, encouragingly, ‘Things seem a little easier between you and Lyneham in the last few days?’
‘He’s OK,’ defended Kestler, loyally. ‘Just cranky, sometimes. Haemorrhoids or something.’ He regarded Charlie with sudden intensity. ‘Say, you don’t jog, do you? I run most mornings. We could do it together!’
Charlie winced at the idea. ‘No, I don’t jog.’
Kestler shook his head. ‘No, I guess you don’t.’
Charlie watched the departure of his last $200. The situation between Kestler and Lyneham was not one for him to become overly concerned about, but definitely not one to be overlooked: squabbling children often upset their dinners over innocent bystanders and the way things seemed to be going Charlie was reconciled to having to stand pretty close to both men in the foreseeable future.
Charlie ended the evening having spent $850 but with carefully pocketed discarded till receipts of others as well as his own amounting to $1,200, a vague headache from drinking fake whisky and a difficulty in deciding what the evening had actually achieved. In positive terms, very little. But in the long term, perhaps a worthwhile investment. By itself – and essential to validate the expenditure – he had a lengthy report to London about the apparently blatant openness of organized crime in the city, which had genuinely surprised him. And an equally lengthy query to Jeremy Simpson in London to confirm the weakness of anti-crime legislation in Russia.
It meant he was fully occupied the following morning, although he managed to finish early enough for a brought-forward lunch with Umberto Fiore. Wanting to acquire as much as possible for the following day’s report, he fixed dinner that evening with Jurgen Balg.