They take a right fork along another path and walk at a diagonal across the park towards the walls of Buckingham Palace and Adrian’s Queen. Adrian is angry. He’s angry that he ever hired Finn in the first place, angry that he doesn’t control Finn, angry that Finn might even end up damaging his credibility. He’s angry like those Russians, standing on the podium for the great march past of Soviet military might. He’s angry that, no matter how much effort he puts in, how red his face gets, he cannot control everything. Human beings keep getting in the way. He’s angry that he doesn’t have a barren depeopled world to control.
They head towards the trees in the centre of the park. But as they close on a park bench away from the paths that criss-cross the area, Finn sees there’s a man sitting there, with his back to them. He’s wearing a kind of pork-pie hat and a black shapeless coat and Finn seems to recognise his back.
They come around to the front of the bench and Finn sees this is where they’re stopping, to meet this man. And then Finn sees it is Lev.
‘Hello, Finn,’ Lev says, without moving, and ignoring Adrian.
‘Lev,’ Finn says.
Finn doesn’t know whether to be disappointed that Lev has been talking to Adrian, even though it was inevitable.
‘Tell him,’ Adrian says.
Finn sits down next to Lev and Adrian stands in front, a little too close, and looks angry while the rain drips off the edges of his umbrella on to Finn’s head.
‘Are they offering me more money?’ he asks Lev in an attempt at light-heartedness.
‘No, I’m afraid not.’
‘Ten million not enough?’ Adrian snaps. ‘More than I’ll earn in a bloody lifetime, you wanker.’
‘Well, it was only dollars, Adrian,’ Finn says, and sees that Adrian would now really like to have him on his own, in a soundproofed room.
‘I can tell you who’s behind the offer, the bribe, the payment-call it what you like,’ Lev says. ‘It’s not the Russians, not anyone from Russia, either.’
‘Oh?’
‘The offer comes from a bank,’ Lev says, and he gives Finn the name of the bank and Finn’s lost for a second in confusion. ‘But this bank represents a whole consortium of banks,’ Lev continues. ‘All of them, like this one, are American. You were being offered the money by American banks to stop your investigation, not by the Russians.’
Finn notices the past tense.
‘These all-American banks have deposits of Russian cash, some legal, most not, which amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. If the origins of this cash are brought into doubt, if the cash is shown to be laundered or illegal in some way, there will be big turmoil, Finn. The flies on Wall Street say that, if these deposits are shown to be of questionable legality, it could bring the whole edifice tumbling down. They talk of financial meltdown, the sums are so great. So the legality of this money cannot be questioned.’
‘Get it?’ Adrian says to Finn. ‘The financial system of America tumbling down.’
‘But what about Europe?’ Finn asks Adrian. ‘Isn’t that where we live?’
‘You’re even more of a fucking fool than I thought,’ Adrian says.
Lev puts his hand on Finn’s knee.
‘Listen, Finn. America is the hope, the future, for your country and for mine. It always has been and maybe always will be. Not Europe. Europe is all but lost. You know that from your investigations in Germany. Europe is riddled with collaborators, Europe’s assets are being handed over to the Russians bit by bit. In Europe they’ll be able to hold off the KGB for a while, but not for long. There’s not the will. America is the only power strong enough, and willing enough, to stand up to the Kremlin. That’s why we have to look to the Americans, not Europe. It’s just about money, Finn, that’s all. It’s about the power of money and we can be glad that the Americans have the sense not just to see that, but to act on it. They hold the Russian loot in America, that’s good. It’s got to go somewhere, and we’re better off that it’s there. But if you or anyone tries to tamper with that, the flies are right. It will bring down the system, there’s too much money involved. Your ten-million-dollar offer represents less than petty cash compared to the cash deposits we’re talking about, deposits whose origins, if brought into question, can bring down the whole house. You don’t want that, do you, any more than me or Adrian or our countries do?’
‘It’s the kind of thinking that makes a lot of sense when there are no human beings in the way,’ Finn answers him. ‘Let the KGB make mincemeat of the European economy and institutions, and in the process build up a richer, more powerful America.
‘The Cold War’s back on, that should please Adrian,’ he says, looking at Adrian. ‘But this time the front line is really going to crumble, right? Europe doesn’t matter any longer. Why didn’t you tell me?’ Finn says facetiously to Adrian.
But Adrian ignores Finn and walks to a nearby tree and makes a phone call. When he comes back, he looks at Finn.
‘It only remains for me to decide what’s to be done with you,’ he says, as if he’s the headmaster talking to a prep school boy who’s posted a turd through his letter box. And then he stares back at Finn in his victory. ‘I don’t know if we can afford to have you wandering about any more. Not with all this shit you’ve managed to vomit up. Perhaps you’ll turn out to be insane,’ he says mysteriously, as if insane is a colour he’s considering for his new bathroom. ‘That would keep you quiet.’ And now Adrian’s warming to his happy thoughts of revenge. ‘And then there’s your girl, isn’t there. Your wife, isn’t she? The Russian hooker. I bet she gives good head in uniform. That what you like about her, is it?’
He looks at Finn, hoping he might lunge at him, so he can chop him down with some specialist move, and then kick him half to death. But Finn remains calm.
‘Yes,’ Adrian says nastily. ‘We can always fit her up so it looks like she’s ratted on her own people. They’ll really give her a good time at the Forest, I should think. There won’t be much of her left to fuck, that’s for sure.’
Then he turns away without another word and walks back on to the path and up through the park to his waiting car. Lev and Finn watch in silence as he blurs into the rain.
37
IT IS JUST MORE THAN a week later. Finn and I are at Willy the Hungarian’s little ramshackle wooden empire on the beach near Marseilles. Willy is absent for a reason I don’t know. But we expect him any day now.
Willy drove Finn and me out to the cabin with its restaurant at the beach on a beautiful blue day. He hid us in the back of a van. Anyone watching would think that it was just a maintenance man going down there to do some winter repair work. He even put a ladder on the roof of the van to complete the fiction. But there was nobody about in the bleak, remote place Willy had carved out for himself, nobody to see who turned on or off the three-mile track to the beach. And if you looked along the track, across the saltpans from the road, all you saw were dunes, and even then only if the day was clear enough. The huts were always hidden.
Willy had brought books and told us there was wood in a store for unseasonably cold evenings and that, bearing in mind that this store would run out quickly, we’d better start collecting driftwood right from the start. There was plenty of it on the beach, he said, from last year’s violent Mediterranean storms that scoop up debris from the land or sweep it from the decks of ships.
Finn and I enjoyed a week of being alone without the hippies who had not yet returned from wintering in India.
‘For Adrian,’ Finn explained one night as we sat by a fire on the beach, ‘destroying me would be like destroying part of himself. He hates me, don’t get me wrong, Rabbit; he loathes everything there is about me. But I’m the part of himself that he hates. Even if he’s not conscious of it himself. He won’t kill a part of himself.’