head this way and he called me. Apologies, Artie.”
“How come you’re telling me all this?”
“So you’ll trust me,” he said. “What are you looking at?”
Just behind Larry, a guy with the square jaw and sloping shoulders of a piece of Russian muscle was hovering. Wanting to get into Larry’s eye line, to signal him, tell him it was time to get out of here, I figured. I mentioned it. Larry turned around, then got up from his chair and put some money on the table.
He held up the newspaper. “You saw the story?” He gestured to a piece on Litvinenko. “The Brits are saying what everybody already knows, that this was an act of state terrorism. Now it’s official. I should go. Why don’t you ride with me, come have some lunch, if you want, or else my guy will take you back to London. His name is Pavel. He’s a good man, by the way.”
Half an hour later, we arrived at Larry Sverdloff’s house. There was a high black wrought-iron gate which opened as if somebody had been watching for us. Larry’s driver, Pavel, went through it, up a circular drive and parked in front of a long low-slung stone mansion. The sun had come out and it gave the stones a golden color.
We had come in the Merc-the Brits loved their cars, and gave them nicknames-with a Range Rover behind and in front. Through the narrow country lanes we had come like a military convoy. These Russians, Tolya, his cousin, others, used their drivers, their guys, like little armies. They used them as advance parties to protect them, spies to watch out for them, servants to do their bidding. Other things, too. Under his jacket, Pavel carried a gun.
I had a vision of them constantly in motion, driving around the countryside, through the London streets, the drivers reporting back to headquarters. England was a crowded little country, too many cars, too many drivers, too many cameras hanging from buildings and trees, like strange fruit.
From the front door of the house, a woman appeared. Larry greeted her in Russian, introduced me, we shook hands. Basha was her name, she said, and smiled. I saw in the way Larry Sverdloff talked to her, the way she used his first name, he played at being a benign laid-back guy. He was still in charge. The people who worked for him were modern-day serfs. Most were Russian. I was betting plenty of them were illegal. If they left him, where would they go?
Around the huge house were gardens planted thick with flowers, neon blue hydrangeas, purple iris, creamy roses. Ancient trees spread green shade over lawns. Beyond them I could see huge vistas of green, more trees, a lake glittering in the distance. I could see how jealous Tolya would have been. His cousin was a player with a castle and the courtiers to go with it.
“Shall we swim?” said Larry.
He lent me a suit, I changed in a pool house, and for a while we swam silently.
A powerful swimmer, Larry was clearly a guy who worked out, wiry, compact, big shoulders, no fat at all. Without agreeing, we raced the length of the pool and back, and I knew he expected to win. I let him win. A happy opponent was useful, though there was no reason to figure Larry Sverdloff for the opposition.
Afterwards, he tossed me a thick blue towel, and used another one to dry his hair. Basha, the housekeeper appeared with a tray of sandwiches and drinks. Larry took a can of Diet Coke, popped the top and drank it. Somewhere a bird tweeted in a tree.
“You think this is all nuts, somebody like me riding around in that tank of an SUV? Living in this place?” said Larry.
“Is it?”
“Fuck knows,” said Larry, smiling suddenly like a regular guy who found himself in an unexpected, almost ridiculous situation.
“You’ve seen a lot of Tolya the last few years?”
“Yes,” he said. “He never mentions me?”
“No.”
“He probably doesn’t want to involve you,” said Larry.
“What in?”
“His business. My business.”
“He told you that?” I took a beer.
“He doesn’t have to. He talks about you a lot, I know how he feels.”
“What’s his business?”
“Whatever he can get.”
I drank from the bottle. “What’s that mean?” I said.
“Look, when we were kids in Moscow, he could always get books, or jeans, or go up to Tallinn to a flea market and come back with Pierre Cardin sunglasses. He would wear those sunglasses and imagine he was somewhere else. The glasses invested him with his own kind of power. They were magic glasses, he always told me. I believed him. ”
“And now?”
“He thinks he’s still a rock and roll hero except now his music is the money.”
“So?”
“He shoots his mouth off,” Larry said. “People think he’s a wild man.”
“Do you?”
“What?”
“Think he’s a loose cannon?”
Larry looked up. Clouds, ominous fat purple clouds scrambled across the sky and thunder rumbled through the humid afternoon. I followed his gaze, and saw him glance in the direction of the house.
“Ten years ago I was living in a nice little suburban place outside Palo Alto,” he said.
“Yeah, so what made you give it up, I mean other than your wife wanted to live in England?”
“Greed,” he said. “At first.”
“And second?”
“You probably want to know about Valentina. I loved Val,” he said, “I was her uncle and her godfather.”
“What about the boyfriend? Greg.”
“I met him at a party. He seemed fine. Val was crazy about him.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“I’ll try to help.”
Larry’s phone rang. He picked it up, listened, got up, a towel still around his neck.
“I want to get back to London,” I said.
“What’s the hurry?”
“I don’t like the country.”
“Right,” he said. “I’ll try to get hold of Greg for you. Meanwhile I’ll give you a phone number. You might need help, right?” He said it straight, it wasn’t ironic, not sarcastic, just a statement of fact. “Come up to the house,” Larry added. “You can shower and change. I have an office out here, I do a lot of my business instead of my main office in London,” he said. “It’s easier, safer, and I’ve discovered most people are willing to make the trip.”
“I bet.”
He shrugged. “If they want something, they come. I might be able to give you something that will help. My driver can take you back to London later,” said Larry, who didn’t wait for my answer.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Larry Sverdloff’s office was in a free-standing building in back of the house, out of view of the gardens, or the beautiful rooms I had glimpsed on my way to shower and change.
In a room next to the office were two sofas and an armchair and in them sat five men, leaning forward, waiting, a little anxious.
A couple of them were Russians in open-necked shirts. The three Brits sat straight, they were tense, they looked like supplicants, like people who wanted something, needed something from Larry Sverdloff.
When I came in, they looked up expectantly, then went back to staring at their hands. A woman who said she
