‘You notice I’m not touching that money? Don’t know it’s there,’ said the man. ‘You’ve got to get up much earlier in the morning to trick me, asshole. You know what I think I’m going to do? I think I’m going to stop here and throw you out of the cab. That’s what I think I’m going to do.’
As close as he had to be, Yuri saw that the collar of the driver’s coat was even blacker than before from his greased hair and the miasma of tobacco appeared stronger, too. As the car began to slow and move to the side of the highway, Yuri took another fifty-dollar note from his pocket and held it up, like the previous one. ‘You know whose portrait that is?’ he said. ‘That’s Ulysses S. Grant.’
The man looked from Yuri to the money and back to Yuri again. He said: ‘I asked you who you were.’
‘And I said I wanted help.’
The driver’s eyes went back to the money, briefly, and he said: ‘What sort of help?’
‘Garages which repair cars that have been in accidents that can’t be reported. For unaccounted money.’
‘You…?’ began the man and then stopped, looking back at the airport and shaking his head. He said: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Yuri let the fifty-dollar note drop beside the first and said: ‘I’m talking about money.’
‘Who told you?’
‘About what?’
‘Me.’
‘This isn’t a trap.’
‘Convince me.’
‘Look closely.’
The tobacco breath was disgusting as the man turned fully to him. ‘So?’
‘Recognize me?’
‘No.’
‘Try harder.’
‘Why should I?’
‘For the hundred dollars beside you.’
‘I don’t know anything about a hundred dollars beside me.’
‘You weren’t so careful last time. You wanted to deal in anything American that I wanted to sell or barter.’
‘I don’t remember any last time: there wasn’t one.’
‘You wanted to sell vodka and to buy dollars and anything American that I had,’ repeated Yuri.
‘I’ve never seen you before.’
‘You took me to the KGB building on the ring road.’
‘I did not.’
‘I could have reported you then to the anti-corruption militia,’ said Yuri, remembering how strong the temptation had been and glad he had not succumbed to it. ‘I didn’t. If I had done and you’d been intercepted how would you have explained the vodka? And all the cash you were carrying as a money black marketeer?’
‘There wasn’t another time,’ insisted the man.
The denial was weak and Yuri knew the man had at last remembered him. He said: ‘I didn’t do it then. I am not going to do it now. Not unless I have to.’
‘What’s that mean, unless you have to?’
‘It means there’s two ways,’ said Yuri. ‘One way makes you money. The other way makes you unhappy: subject to stop and search and harassment, whenever, however.’
‘I’m supposed to be frightened?’
The bravado was weaker than the denial. Yuri said: ‘What would a search squad find right now, where you live?’
‘Two hundred dollars,’ capitulated the driver.
‘If it’s worth it.’
‘Now.’
‘Later, when we find the garage.’
‘There are a lot: the anti-corruption campaign is a joke.’
‘Keep the meter running, all the time.’ The man’s physical presence could be an advantage.
‘You looking for engine damage? Engineers?’
Yuri hesitated. ‘Bodywork,’ he said.
‘What happened?’
‘No need for you to know.’
There appeared to be a lot, as the man said. Because it was on the way into Moscow from the airport they stopped at Khimki and after there near the Dynamo sports stadium and crossed to the northern river terminal, where they unsuccessfully checked two places from which the driver, who by now had identified himself as Leonid (‘like Brezhnev: he enjoyed living well, too’) said stolen cars were sold as well as unrecorded repairs carried out. At every garage there was a wall of rejecting hostility towards him and Yuri quickly realized just how much he needed the man with him. The pattern developed of the questions being put through the driver rather than directly from him. Yuri became hopeful at a service station on the road to Krasnogorsk when a paint-sprayer remembered a 1984 Lada and was just as quickly disappointed when he said the colour had been green.
‘Sure you want to go on?’ asked Leonid as they turned off the ring road to appraoch the centre of Moscow.
‘Quite sure.’
‘You see what’s on the clock?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘This must be pretty important to you.’
‘It is.’
There were four more garages and two more wrongly coloured Ladas before the taxi pulled into Begovaya Street. It appeared to be a three-man business, one of the owners the sprayer himself, anonymous behind a protective mask, his overalls multi-coloured from previous jobs. From the attitude Yuri guessed he knew Leonid personally: instead of answering the first question the man nodded in Yuri’s direction and said: ‘He OK?’
‘Yes,’ said the driver.
‘How OK is OK?’
Yuri didn’t understand until the driver said: ‘Of course he’ll pay; he’s with me, isn’t he?’
‘A 1984 Lada?’ queried the garageman. He had lifted the visor of his mask but it was still not possible to see what he really looked like.
‘Around October fourteenth,’ prompted Yuri.
‘Fifteenth,’ said the man at once.
He’d got this far before, thought Yuri, curbing the optimism.
‘What was the damage?’ asked Leonid.
‘Scraped nearside wing,’ said the man. ‘And the light assembly was smashed.’
‘What colour?’
‘Fawn. Managed a good match.’
A feeling of satisfaction engulfed Yuri. Abandoning their established system and taking over from the driver, he said: ‘Remember anything about the man?’
‘He was a soldier,’ declared the sprayer at once.
‘A soldier!’ demanded Yuri. ‘You mean he wore uniform?’
The man shook his head. ‘The way he walked; held himself. Always tell a military man.’
The fit was there, decided Yuri. He said: ‘What else about him? Anything at all?’
Instead of replying, the sprayer said to Leonid: ‘You sure this is all right?’
‘Dollars,’ promised Leonid.
‘How much?’
‘Twenty,’ opened Yuri.
‘Fifty,’ bargained the man.
The ultimate satisfaction would be charging it to KGB expenses, Yuri decided as he handed the money over:
