‘I am so –’ Natasha broke out, grabbing Gail’s hand, but then couldn’t finish the sentence.
‘We wait,’ Gail said firmly, to Natasha’s downturned head. ‘We have time. We put our feelings on hold, we enjoy life, and we wait. That’s all we need to do, either of us. Are you hearing me?’
Nod.
‘Then sit up. Don’t give me my hand back, just listen. In a few days you’ll be in England. I’m not sure whether your brothers know that, but they know it’s a mystery tour, and it’s going to begin any day now. There’s a short stop-over in Wengen first. And in England we’ll find you a really good woman doctor – mine – and you’ll find out how you feel, and then you’ll decide. OK?’
Nod.
‘In the meantime, we don’t even think about it. We just wipe it out of our minds. You get rid of this silly smock you’re wearing’ – plucking affectionately at her sleeve – ‘you dress slim and gorgeous. Nothing shows, I promise you. Will you do that?’
She will.
‘All the decisions wait till England. They’re not
bad
decisions, they’re sensible ones. And you make them calmly. When you get to England, not until. For your father’s sake, as well as yours. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Again.’
‘Yes.’
Would Gail have spoken in the same way if Perry hadn’t said it was the way Luke wanted her to speak? – that this was the absolute worst moment for Dima to be hit with shattering news?
Fortunately, yes, she would. She’d have made the same speech word for word, and she’d have meant it. She’d been there herself. She knew what she was talking about. And she was telling herself this as their train pulled into Interlaken Ost Station for their connection along the valley to Lauterbrunnen and Wengen, when she noticed that a Swiss policeman in smart summer uniform was walking down the empty platform towards them, and that a dull-faced man in a grey suit and polished brown shoes was walking beside him, and that the policeman was wearing the kind of rueful smile that, in any civilized country, tells you that you haven’t got much to smile about.
‘You speak English?’
‘How did you guess?’ – smiling back.
‘Maybe your complexion actually,’ he said – which she reckoned quite pert for your ordinary Swiss policeman. ‘But the young lady is
not
English’ – glancing at Natasha’s black hair and slightly Asian looks.
‘Well, actually she could be, you know. We’re all everything these days,’ Gail replied in the same sporty tone.
‘Do you have British passports?’
‘I do.’
The dull-faced man was also smiling, which chilled her. And his English was a little too good too:
‘Swiss Immigration Service,’ he announced. ‘We are conducting
random checks
. I’m afraid that these days with open borders we find certain ones who should have visas and do not. Not many, but some.’
The uniform was back:
‘Your tickets and passports, please. You mind? If you mind, we take you to the police station and we make a check there.’
‘Of course we don’t mind. Do we, Natasha? We just wish all policemen were so polite, don’t we?’ said Gail brightly.
Delving in her handbag, she unearthed her passport and the tickets and gave them to the uniformed policeman, who examined them with that extra slowness that policemen all over the world are taught to exhibit in order to raise the stress level of honest citizens. The grey suit looked over the uniformed shoulder, then took her passport for himself, and did the same thing all over again before handing it to her and turning his smile on Natasha, who already had her passport ready in her hand.
And what the grey suit did then was, in Gail’s later account to Ollie and Perry and Luke, either incompetent or very clever. He behaved as if the passport of a Russian minor were of less interest to him than a British adult’s passport. He flipped to the visa page, flipped to her photograph, compared it with her face, smiled in apparent admiration, paused a moment over her name in Roman and Cyrillic, and handed it back to her with a light-hearted ‘thank you, madam’.
‘You stay in Wengen long?’ the uniformed policeman asked, returning the tickets to Gail.
‘Just a week or so.’
‘Depending on the weather maybe?’
‘Oh, we English are so used to the rain we don’t notice!’
And they would find their next train waiting for them on platform 2, departure in three minutes, the last connection up tonight, so better not miss it or you have to stay in Lauterbrunnen, said the polite policeman.
It wasn’t till they were halfway up the mountain on the last train that Natasha spoke again. Until then she had brooded in seeming anger, staring at the blackened window, misting it over with her breath like a child, and angrily wiping it clean. But whether she was angry with Max, or the policeman and his grey-suited friend, or herself, Gail could only guess. But suddenly she raised her head and was staring Gail straight in the face:
‘Is Dima criminal?’
‘I think he’s just a very successful businessman, isn’t he?’ the deft barrister replied.
‘Is that why we’re going to England? – is that what the
mystery tour
’s all about? Suddenly he tells us we’re all going to great English schools.’ And receiving no reply: ‘Ever since Moscow the whole family has been – has been completely
criminal
. Ask my brothers. It’s their new obsession. They talk only of crime. Ask their big friend Piotr who says he works for KGB. It doesn’t exist any more. Does it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s the FSB now. But Piotr still says KGB. So maybe he is lying. Piotr knows everything about us. He has seen all our records. My mother was criminal, her husband was criminal, Tamara was criminal, her father was shot. For my brothers, anyone coming from Perm is completely criminal. Maybe that’s why the police wanted my passport. “Are you from Perm, please, Natasha?” “Yes, Mr Policeman, I am from Perm. I am also
pregnant
.” “Then you are
very
criminal. You cannot go to English boarding school, you must come to prison immediately!” ’
By then, her head was on Gail’s shoulder, and the rest of what she said was in Russian.
*
Dusk was falling over the cornfields and it was dusk in the BMW hire car as well, because by mutual consent they were allowing themselves no lights, inside or out. Luke had provided a bottle of vodka for the journey and Dima had drunk the half of it, but Luke wasn’t giving himself as much as a sniff. He had offered Dima a pocket recorder to record his memories of the Berne signing while they were fresh, but Dima had brushed it away:
‘I know all. Got no problem. Got duplicates. Got memory. In London, I remember everything. You tell that to Tom.’
Since their departure from Berne, Luke had used only side roads, driving a distance, finding a place to lie up while his pursuers if they existed went ahead of him. There was definitely something wrong with his right hand, he still seemed to have no feeling in it, but provided he used the strength of his arm and didn’t think about the hand, the driving wasn’t a problem. He must have done something to it when he coshed the cadaverous philosopher.
They were talking Russian in low voices like a pair of fugitives. Why are we keeping our voices down? Luke wondered. But they were. At the edge of a pine forest he again parked, and this time handed Dima a labourer’s blue tunic, and a thick black woollen ski cap to cover his bald head. For himself he had bought jeans, anorak, a bobble hat. He folded Dima’s suit for him and put it in a suitcase in the boot of the BMW. It was by now eight in the evening and turning cold. Approaching the village of Wilderswil at the mouth of the Lauterbrunnen Valley, he yet again stopped the car while they listened to the Swiss news and he tried to read Dima’s face in the half-darkness because to his frustration Luke had no German.
‘They found the bastards,’ Dima growled in a Russian undertone. ‘Two drunk Russian assholes had a fight at the Bellevue Palace Hotel. Nobody know why. Fell down some steps and hurt themselves. One
guy in hospital, the other one OK. The hospital guy pretty bad. That’s Niki. Maybe the fucker choke. Told a bunch of stupid lies the Swiss police don’t believe, each guy different lies. Russian Embassy want to fly them home. Swiss police are saying, “Not so goddam fast, we want to know a couple more things about these assholes.” Russian Ambassador’s pissed off.’
‘At the men?’
‘The Swiss.’ He grinned, took another pull from the vodka bottle and waved it at Luke, who shook his head. ‘Wanna know how it works? Russian Ambassador calls the Kremlin: “Who are these crazy fucks?” Kremlin call the bitch Prince: “What the fuck are your assholes doing beating the shit out of each other in fancy hotel in Berne, Switzerland?”’
‘And the Prince says?’ Luke demanded, not sharing Dima’s levity.
‘The bitch Prince call Emilio. “Emilio. My friend. My wise advisor. What the fuck my two nice guys doing, beating the shit out of each other in fancy hotel in Berne?”’
‘And Emilio says?’ Luke persisted.
Dima’s mood darkened: ‘Emilio says: “That shithead Dima, world number-one money-launderer, he disappeared off the fucking planet.” ’
No great intriguer himself, Luke was doing his sums. First the two so-called Arab policemen in Paris. Who sent them? Why? Then the two bodyguards at the Bellevue Palace: why had they come to the hotel after the signing? Who sent them? Why? Who knew how much when?
He called Ollie.
‘All quiet, Harry?’ – meaning, who’s arrived up there at the safe house and who hasn’t? Meaning, am I going to have to deal with a missing Natasha too?
‘Dick, our two stragglers clocked in just a couple minutes back, you’ll be pleased to hear,’ Ollie said reassuringly. ‘Found their own way here without any bother much, and everything hunky-dory. Tenish over the other side of the hill about right for you? Nice and dark by then.’
‘Ten o’clock is fine.’
‘Grund Station car park. A nice little red Suzuki. I’ll be first right as you drive in and as far from the trains as we can get, then.’
‘Agreed.’ And when Ollie didn’t ring off: ‘What’s the problem, Harry?’
‘Well there’s been quite a police presence at Interlaken Ost railway station, I’m hearing.’
‘Let’s have it.’
Luke listened, said nothing, returned the mobile to his pocket.
*
By
the other side of the hill
, Ollie was referring to the village of Grindelwald, which lay at the opposing foot of the Eiger massif. To reach Wengen from the Lauterbrunnen side by any means except mountain railway was impossible, Ollie had reported: the summer track might be good enough for chamois and the odd foolhardy motorcyclist, but not for a four-wheeled vehicle with three men aboard.
But Luke was determined – as Ollie was – that Dima, in whatever garb, should not be subjected to the glances of railway officials, ticket inspectors and fellow passengers as he approached the place of his concealment: least of all at this late hour of evening, when railway passengers were fewer and more conspicuous.
Reaching the village of Zweilütschinen, Luke took the left fork that led by a winding river road to the edge of Grindelwald. The Grund Station car park was packed with the abandoned cars of German tourists. Entering it, Luke saw to his relief the figure of Ollie in a quilted anorak and peaked cap with earflaps, seated at the wheel of a stationary red Suzuki jeep with its sidelights on.
‘And here’s your rugs for when it gets nippy,’ Ollie announced in Russian as he bundled Dima in beside him, and Luke, having handed Ollie the luggage and parked the BMW under a beech tree, settled himself in the back. ‘The forest track is forbidden, but not for locals with business to do, like plumbers and railway workers and such. So if it’s all the same to you, I’ll do the talking if we’re checked. Not that I’m a local, but the jeep is. And its owner told me what to say.’
Which
owner
and
what to say
was Ollie’s alone to know. A good back-door man is not forthcoming about his sources.
*
A narrow concrete road led upward into the blackness of the mountain. A pair of headlights descended towards them, stopped, and pulled back into the trees: a builder’s lorry, unladen.
‘Whoever’s coming from the top reverses,’ Ollie pronounced approvingly under his breath. ‘Local rule.’
A uniformed policeman stood alone in the centre of the road. Ollie slowed down for him to peer at the triangular yellow sticker on the Suzuki’s windscreen. The policeman stepped back. Ollie raised his hand in leisurely acknowledgement. They passed a settlement of low chalets and bright lights. Woodsmoke mingled with the smell of pine. A fluorescent sign read
BRANDEGG
. The road became an unmade forest track. Rivulets of water ran towards them. Ollie turned on the headlights and shifted gear levers. The engine took on a higher, plaintive drone. The track was pitted by heavy lorries and the Suzuki was hard-sprung. Perched on its back seat with the luggage, Luke clutched the sides as it bounced and swung. In front of him rode the swathed figure of Dima in his woollen hat, the blanket flapping like a coachman’s cape round his shoulders in the wind. Beside him, and scarcely any smaller, Ollie leaned tensely forward as he navigated the Suzuki across open meadow and set a pair of chamois scampering for the shelter of the trees.
The air turned thinner and colder. Luke’s breath came faster. An icy film of dew was forming on his cheeks and brow. He felt his eyes glistening, and his heart quickening to the scent of pine and the thrill of the climb. The forest closed round them again. From its density, the red eyes of animals flashed at them, but whether they were large or small Luke had no time to find out.
They had passed the tree-line and again broken free. Light cloud covered a starry sky, and at the very centre towered a black starless void, pressing them into the mountainside, then squeezing them out
on to the world’s edge. They were passing beneath the overhang of the Eiger North Face.
‘You been to Ural Mountains, Dick?’ Dima yelled at Luke in English, swinging round.
Luke nodded vigorously and smiled yes.
‘Like Perm! Perm we got mountains like this! You been Caucasus?’