*
Next morning, Dimka sent for the KGB file on Nik Smotrov
He was in a rage. He wanted to get a gun and kill Nik. He had to keep telling himself to remain calm.
It would not have been difficult for Nik to get past the doorman yesterday. He could have faked a delivery, entered close behind some legitimate residents so that he looked part of the group, or just flashed a Communist Party card. Dimka found it a little more difficult to figure out how Nik could have known that Grisha would be moving from one part of the building to another on his own, but on reflection he decided Nik had probably reconnoitred the building a few days earlier. He could have chatted to some neighbours, figured out the child’s daily schedule, and picked the best opportunity. He had probably paid off those local policemen, too. His aim was to scare Dimka half to death.
He had succeeded.
But he was going to regret it.
In theory, Alexei Kosygin as premier could look at any file he liked. In practice, KGB chief Yuri Andropov would decide what Kosygin could and could not see. However, Dimka felt sure that Nik’s activities, though criminal, had no political dimension, so there was no reason for the file to be withheld. Sure enough, it arrived on his desk that afternoon.
It was thick.
As Dimka suspected, Nik was a black market trader. Like most such men, he was an opportunist. He would buy and sell whatever came his way: flowered shirts, costly perfume, electric guitars, lingerie, Scotch whisky – any illegally imported luxury difficult to obtain in the Soviet Union. Dimka went carefully through the reports, looking for something he could use to destroy Nik.
The KGB dealt in rumours, and Dimka needed something definite. He could go to the police, report what the KGB file said, and demand an investigation. But Nik was sure to be bribing the police – otherwise he could not have got away with his crimes for so long. And his protectors would naturally want the bribes to continue. So they would make sure the investigation got nowhere.
The file contained plenty of material on Nik’s personal life. He had a mistress and several girlfriends, including one with whom he smoked marijuana. Dimka wondered how much Natalya knew about the girlfriends. Nik met business associates most afternoons at the Bar Madrid near the Central Market. He had a pretty wife, who—
Dimka was shocked to read that Nik’s wife was having a long-term affair with Dmitriy Ilich ‘Dimka’ Dvorkin, aide to Premier Kosygin.
Seeing his own name felt horrible. Nothing was private, it seemed.
At least there were no pictures or tape recordings.
There was, however, a photo of Nik, whom Dimka had never seen. He was a good-looking man with a charming smile. In the picture he wore a jacket with epaulettes, a high-fashion item. According to the notes, he was just under six feet tall with an athletic build.
Dimka wanted to pound him into jelly.
He put revenge fantasies out of his mind and read on.
Soon he struck gold.
Nik was buying television sets from the Red Army.
The Soviet military had a colossal budget that no one dared question for fear of being thought unpatriotic. Some of the money was spent on high-technology equipment bought from the West. In particular, every year the Red Army bought hundreds of expensive televisions. Their preferred brand was Franck, of West Berlin, whose sets had a superior picture and great sound. According to the file, most of these TVs were not needed by the army. They were ordered by a small group of mid-ranking officers, who were named in the file. The officers then declared the televisions obsolete and sold them cheaply to Nik, who re-sold them at a huge price on the black market and shared out the profits.
Most of Nik’s dealings were penny ante, but this scam had been making him serious money for years.
There was no proof that the story was true, but it made total sense to Dimka. The KGB had reported the story to the army, but an army investigation had turned up no proof. Most likely, Dimka thought, the investigator had been cut in on the deal.
He phoned Natalya’s office. ‘Quick question,’ he said. ‘What brand of TV do you have at home?’
‘Franck,’ she said immediately. ‘It’s great. I can get you one, if you like.’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I’ll explain later.’ Dimka hung up.
He looked at his watch. It was five. He left the Kremlin and drove to the street called Sadovaya Samotyochnaya.
He had to scare Nik. It would not be easy, but he had to do it. Nik had to be made to understand that he must never, ever, threaten Dimka’s family.
He parked his Moskvitch but did not get out immediately. He recalled the frame of mind he had been in throughout the Cuban missile project, when he had to keep the mission secret at all costs. He had destroyed men’s careers and ruined their lives without hesitation, because the job had to be done. Now he was going to ruin Nik.
He locked his car and walked to the Bar Madrid.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside. He stood still and looked around. It was a bleak modern place, cold and plastic, insufficiently warmed by an electric fire and some photographs of flamenco dancers on the walls. The handful of customers gazed at him with interest. They looked like petty crooks. None resembled the photo of Nik in the file.
At the far end of the room was a corner bar with a door next to it marked ‘Private’.
Dimka strode through the room as if he owned it. Without stopping, he spoke to the man behind the bar. ‘Nik in the back?’
The man looked as if he might be about to tell Dimka to stop and wait, but then he looked again at Dimka’s face and changed his mind. ‘Yes,’ he said.
Dimka pushed open the door.
In a small back room four men were playing cards. There was a lot of money on the table. To one side, on a couch, two young women in cocktail dresses and heavy make-up were smoking long American cigarettes and looking bored.
Dimka recognized Nik immediately. The face was as handsome as the photograph had suggested, but the camera had failed to capture the cold expression. Nik looked up and said: ‘This is a private room. Piss off.’
Dimka said: ‘I’ve got a message for you.’
Nik put his cards face-down on the table and sat back. ‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘Something bad is going to happen.’
Two of the card players stood up and turned to face Dimka. One reached inside his jacket. Dimka thought he might be about to draw a weapon. But Nik held up a cautionary hand, and the man hesitated.
Nik kept his eyes on Dimka. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘When the bad thing happens, you’ll ask who’s causing it.’
‘And you’ll tell me?’
‘I’m telling you now. It’s Dmitriy Ilich Dvorkin. He’s the cause of your problems.’
‘I don’t have any problems, asshole.’
‘You didn’t, until yesterday. Then you made a mistake – asshole.’
The men around Nik tensed, but he remained calm. ‘Yesterday?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you the creep she’s fucking?’
‘When you find yourself in so much trouble that you don’t know what to do, remember my name.’
‘You’re Dimka!’
‘You’ll see me again,’ said Dimka, and he turned slowly and walked out of the room.
As he walked through the bar, all eyes were on him. He looked straight ahead, expecting a bullet in the back at any moment.
He reached the door and went out.
He grinned to himself. I got away with it, he thought.
Now he had to make good on his threat.
He drove six miles from the city centre to the Khodinka Airfield and parked at the headquarters of Red Army Intelligence. The old building was a bizarre piece of Stalin-era architecture, a nine-storey tower surrounded by a two-storey outer ring. The directorate had expanded into a newer fifteen-storey building nearby: intelligence organizations never got smaller.
Carrying the KGB file on Nik, Dimka went into the old building and asked for General Volodya Peshkov.
A guard said: ‘Do you have an appointment?’
Dimka raised his voice. ‘Don’t fuck around, son. Just call the general’s secretary and say I’m here.’
After a flurry of anxious activity – few people dropped by this place without a summons – he was directed through a metal detector and led up in the lift to an office on the top floor.
This was the highest building around and it had a fine view over the roofs of Moscow. Volodya welcomed Dimka and offered him tea. Dimka had always liked his uncle. Now in his mid-fifties, Volodya had silver-grey hair. Despite the hard blue-eyed stare, he was a reformer – unusual among the generally conservative military. But he had been to America.
‘What’s on your mind?’ said Volodya. ‘You look ready to kill someone.’
‘I’ve got a problem,’ Dimka told him. ‘I’ve made an enemy.’
‘Not unusual, in the circles within which you work.’
‘This is nothing to do with politics. Nik Smotrov is a gangster.’
‘How did you come to fall foul of such a man?’
‘I’m sleeping with his wife.’
Volodya looked disapproving. ‘And he’s threatening you.’
Volodya had probably never been unfaithful to Zoya, his scientist wife, who was as beautiful as she was brilliant. But that meant he had scant sympathy for Dimka. Volodya might have felt differently if he had been so foolish as to marry someone like Nina.
Dimka said: ‘Nik kidnapped Grisha.’
Volodya sat upright. ‘What? When?’
‘Yesterday. We got him back. He was only shut in the cellar of Government House. But it was a warning.’
‘You have to give up this woman!’
Dimka ignored that. ‘There’s a particular reason why I’ve come to you, Uncle. There’s a way you could help me and do the army some good at the same time.’
‘Go on.’
‘Nik is behind a fraud that costs the army millions every year.’ Dimka explained about the TV sets. When he had finished, he put the file on Volodya’s desk. ‘It’s all in there – including the names of the officers who are organizing the whole thing.’
Volodya did not pick up the file. ‘I’m not a policeman. I can’t arrest this Nik. And if he’s bribing police officers, there’s not much I can do about it.’
‘But you can arrest the army officers involved.’
‘Oh, yes. They will all be in army jails within twenty-four hours.’
‘And you can shut down the whole business.’
‘Very quickly.’
And then Nik will be ruined, Dimka thought. ‘Thank you, Uncle,’ he said. ‘That’s very helpful.’