In the factory-office reception room Green wrote a short note and asked for it to be handed to the owner. Lobastov received his visitor straight away.
'Good morning, Mr Green.'
The short, solidly built man with a plain peasant face on which the carefully tended goatee beard looked entirely out of place came out from behind his broad desk and shook his visitor firmly by the hand.
'To what do I owe this honour?' he asked, screwing up his lively, dark eyes inquisitively. 'It must be something urgent, I suppose? Could it perhaps be connected with yesterday's mishap on Liteiny Prospect?'
Green knew that Timofei Grigorievich had his own people in the most unexpected places, but even so he was astonished that the industrialist could be so exceptionally well informed.
He asked: 'Do you really have someone in the Police Department on your payroll?' and then immediately frowned, as if he were withdrawing the inappropriate question.
Lobastov wouldn't answer in any case. He was a meticulous man, with that dense ochre colour that comes from great internal strength and unshakeable self-belief.
'It is written: "Cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days,'" the factory owner said with a cunning smile, lowering his round head as if he were going to butt - the forehead was heavy and bullish. 'How much did they relieve you of?'
'Three hundred and fifty.'
Lobastov whistled and stuck his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat. The smile disappeared from his face.
'Goodbye, Mr Green,' he said crisply. 'I'm a man of my word. You are not. I do not wish to have any more dealings with your organisation. I paid my last contribution in January, absolutely on the nail - fifteen thousand - and I asked not to be bothered again until July. My purse is deep, but not bottomless. Three hundred and fifty thousand! Why not ask for more?'
Green paid no heed to the insult. That was just emotion. 'I only answered your question,' he said in a calm voice. 'We have urgent payments to make. Some people are waiting, others simply won't. We must have forty thousand. Otherwise it's the gallows. They don't forgive that sort of thing.'
'Don't you try to frighten me,' the factory owner snapped. '"They don't forgive"! Do you think I give you money out of fear? Or that I'm buying indulgences against the possibility of your victory?'
Green didn't say anything, because that was exactly what he thought.
'Oh no! I'm not afraid of anything or anybody!' Timofei Grigorievich's face began flushing crimson in anger and one cheek started twitching. 'God forbid that you should ever win! And you never will win. I suppose you imagined you were using Lobastov? Like hell you were! It's me who's been using you. And if I speak frankly with you, it's because you're a pragmatist, without any emotional histrionics. You and I are berries from the same field. Although we taste rather different. Ha-ha!' Lobastov gave a short, dry laugh, exposing a set of yellowish teeth.
What have berries got to do with anything? Green thought; why speak in jokes if you can speak seriously?
'Then why do you help?' he asked, and then corrected himself: 'Why did you help?'
'Because I realised our idiotic stuffed shirts needed a good scare, a few spokes stuck in their wheels, so they wouldn't stop intelligent people hauling the country out of the mire. The stupid asses need to be taught a lesson. They need their noses rubbed in the dung. So you go and rub them in it. To make them get it through those thick heads of theirs that Russia either goes with me, Lobastov, or goes to hell with you. There's no third choice on offer.'
'You're investing your money,' Green said with a nod, 'that's clear enough. I've read about it in books. In America they call it lobbying. We don't have a parliament, so you use terrorists to put pressure on the government. So will you give me forty thousand?'
Lobastov's face turned to stone, leaving the nervous tic agitating his cheek. 'I will not. You're an intelligent man, Mr Green. My budget for "lobbying", as you call it, is thirty thousand a year. And not a single kopeck more. If you like, take the fifteen thousand for the second half of the year now.'
Green thought for a moment and said: 'Fifteen, no. We need forty. Goodbye.' He turned and walked towards the door.
His host came after him and showed him out. Could he possibly have changed his mind? Hardly. He wasn't that kind. Then why had he come after Green?
'Was Khrapov your work?' Timofei Grigorievich whispered in his ear.
So that was why.
Green walked down the stairs in silence. On his way back through the factory grounds, he thought about what to do next.
There was only one answer: it would have to be an expropriation.
It was actually no bad thing that the police were preoccupied with the search. That meant there would be fewer men assigned to the usual requirements. For instance, to guarding money.
He could take some men from Needle.
But he still couldn't manage without a specialist. He'd have to send a telegram to Julie and get her to bring that Ace of hers.
Once outside the control post, Green stopped behind a lamp post and waited for a while.
He was right. An inconspicuous individual who looked like a shop assistant came hurrying out of the gates, turning his head this way and that and, when he spotted Green, pretended to be waiting for a horse-tram.
Lobastov was cautious. And curious.
That was all right. It wasn't hard to get rid of a tail.
Green walked a little way along the street, turned into a gateway and stopped. When the shop assistant slipped in after him, he punched him hard on the forehead. Let him have a lie-down for ten minutes.
The strength of the party lay in the fact that it was helped by all sorts of different people, some of them quite unexpected. Julie was precisely one such rare bird. The party ascetics took a dim view, but Green liked her.
Her colour was emerald: light and festive. Always gay and full of the joys of life, stylishly dressed, scented with heavenly fragrances, she set Green's metallic heart ringing in a strange way, simultaneously alarming and pleasurable. The very name 'Julie' was vibrant and sunny, like the word 'life'. If Green's fate had been different, he would probably have fallen in love with a woman just like that.
It wasn't done for members of the party to talk much about their past, but everyone knew Julie's story - she made no secret of her biography.
She had lost her parents when she was a teenager and been made a ward of a relative, a certain high-ranking official of advanced years. On the threshold of old age the old fool had run riot, as Julie put it: he squandered the inheritance entrusted to him, debauched his young ward and shortly thereafter a stroke left him paralysed. Young Julie had been left without a kopeck in her pocket and without a roof over her head, but with substantial carnal experience. The only career that lay open to her was that of a professional woman, and in this field Julie had demonstrated quite exceptional talent. For a few years she had lived as a kept woman, moving from one rich mentor to another. Then Julie had grown weary of'fat old men' and set up her own business. Now she chose her own lovers, as a rule not fat, and certainly not old, and she didn't take money from them but earned her own income from her 'agency'.
The women Julie employed in her agency were her friends -some of them kept women like herself, and some perfectly respectable ladies in search of additional income or adventures. The firm had rapidly become popular among the capital's pleasure-seekers, because Julie's female friends were all first-class beauties who enjoyed a laugh and were keen on love-making, and confidentiality was maintained meticulously.
But the women had no secrets from each other, and especially from their merry madam, and since their clients included important civil servants and generals, and even highly placed police officers, Julie received a constant stream of the most various kinds of information, some of which was extremely important for the party.