in Moscow for seven difficult, fraught and dangerous years. To the irritation of the Service’s chiefs, Finn was the only person Mikhail ever agreed to communicate with.
But Adrian is sharp. He sees an uncharacteristic meekness in Finn’s calm that suggests his humble acceptance of this momentous news. And Finn sees in Adrian’s eyes that he doesn’t believe that Finn has bought the story. Adrian knows or suspects that Finn is agreeing for the sake of agreeing and that Finn’s complicity in this extraordinary story that he has just unfolded is not guaranteed.
So he asks Finn to lunch with him, and this is something that wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been pre- planned; Adrian’s diary is stiff with lunches. Adrian doesn’t believe that Finn is really in the loop at all, that he accepts the debunking of Mikhail.
Outside the terraced Hackney house, the two of them step into a waiting grey car that matches Adrian’s suit and are whisked towards the West End.
‘I didn’t want to break this to you quite so abruptly,’ Adrian says, and for once avoids in this statement his habitual abruptness. ‘But you understand it couldn’t really wait. It’s too important. It draws a line under your excellent career, Finn, truly excellent career. I know now it must seem to be a deeply unsatisfactory line. But it’s not. You’re one of the best officers I’ve ever had, and I mean that as a friend, not just your boss. Right now, I understand, it must seem a terrible blow to you. You’re thinking that those last years in Moscow were wasted. Well, they weren’t. You got hold of a lot of excellent material for us. Perhaps Mikhail was too good to be true. I should have spotted that. That was my mistake, Finn, not yours. You did everything right, everything. You mustn’t beat yourself up about it. I know you won’t, I know you’re too tough for that. You’re one of us,’ Adrian says at last, by which untrue flattery he means, Finn thinks, one of a notional group of exceptional superheroes like Adrian who, camouflaged and with their faces blacked out, go about Her Majesty’s business in the darkest, most dangerous trouble spots of the world.
‘Fancy a walk through the park?’ Adrian says and, without waiting for a reply, barks at the driver to drive under Admiralty Arch and drop them just before the fountain by Buckingham Palace.
They walk up through Green Park, parallel to St James’s in the leafless grey of a London winter day. Adrian is attentive, full of friendship, says how he really wants to see a great deal of Finn, that they have more than just the Service that binds them.
But Finn is still in shock. He says little. His defences are down. Because he knows. He knows that he is being fed a lie and Adrian knows he knows.
They turn into St James’s and enter the white portals of Boodles.
‘Thank God you’re wearing a decent suit,’ Adrian jokes. ‘Some of our new recruits these days! I don’t know if they even possess one.’
They walk through the sitting room of the gentlemen’s club to the small, cosy bar and Adrian greets several other members along the way. Adrian lunches and dines at Boodles with regularity. He lives in the country, but stays up during the week in town and Boodles is his common room.
‘I’ll have a glass of wine,’ Adrian tells the barman, who knows what wine he wants and in what size glass– large. ‘What’ll you have?’ he says to Finn. ‘Something strong, I should think.’
‘I’ll have a Moscow Mule,’ Finn says and for a moment Adrian is knocked off the treadmill of his platitudes. To Adrian, a mule is a drug mule. Is Finn referring to a man with drugs hidden up his arse arriving by plane from Russia? But Adrian swiftly conceals his confusion.
‘Something they feed you at one of your more louche clubs, is it?’ he says.
Finn describes the cocktail and it causes quite a comical stir. One of Adrian’s friends from a City bank says he’ll have one too and then they tell the barman to mix a jug. And suddenly they’re in a conclave, Adrian, Finn, the banker and some other financial big shots, Adrian at the centre, a real partygoer—–a real goer, Finn thinks. He’s seen Adrian in the office chasing skirt, but he’s just as useful at rallying a bunch of all-male lunchtime drinkers around him.
Finn is knocked off balance and can’t recover from what he’s been told. Perhaps Adrian knows he will be knocked sideways. In normal circumstances, the throng of public school City board directors only makes Finn rise to the occasion, to be as public school, as City board director as the next man. He’s lunched with Adrian here many times before, after all. But now he feels out of his depth, his focus is lost, the game is getting on top of him and he sympathises for a moment with one or two of the Service’s senior but grammar-school figures whom he normally scorns for letting themselves be browbeaten by their public schoolboy colleagues. This, perhaps, is what snaps Finn out of his shock: the need to perform, to be as good as anyone.
‘What about this Russian fellow?’ the banker asks Adrian, in a break in the inconsequential chat. ‘The aluminium tycoon, Pavel Drachevsky. Is he good for it? Will he make a proper company that can list here in London, d’you think?’
‘More Finn’s department than mine, I’m afraid,’ Adrian replies. ‘He’s been our Trade Secretary out there for donkey’s years.’
‘Second Trade Secretary,’ Finn corrects him, and wonders what Adrian’s cover is in Boodles, or if he even has a cover here. The crazy notion flashes through Finn’s mind that Boodles is a sort of official dining room for MI6.
‘What d’you think?’ the banker asks Finn. ‘We’ve got to watch these chaps now, they’ve snapped up everything of value in Russia.’
‘Are you an investor?’ Finn replies gamely. The throng laughs.
‘Wouldn’t know how to,’ the banker says. ‘But I hear Rothschild’s are nosing around this chap,’ he adds seriously, and there is clearly a reason for his interest. ‘He must be better than some of the other candidates.’
‘Rothschild’s have a history in Russia,’ Finn says. ‘They’re the only people who ever sued the Tsar, back in the 1860s. They got a lot of points for that.’
‘And won, no doubt.’
‘Yes, they won. Russians couldn’t believe it. The Tsar, a god, had been successfully sued. Rothschild’s balanced it out nicely by suing the Pope too.’
‘If Rothschild’s are interested in Drachevsky, they must be on to something, don’t you reckon?’ the banker prompts Finn.
‘The Russian oligarchs are still sorting out what they legally own and what they don’t legally own,’ Finn says carefully. ‘Pavel Drachevsky has half of Russia’s aluminium, but he’s sharing it with some other co-owners. One of the men connected with the company’s gone to jail. Others aren’t so easy to deal with. There’s a guy in Israel who really holds the strings. And then there’s Stepanovich, who has a finger in the pie. Maybe others. If Drachevsky can consolidate, my guess is he’ll look to London for a listing. In time. The rules are more lax here than in the States.’
‘That so?’ someone says.
‘Surely you mean “relaxed”,’ another Savile Row suit says. ‘The rules are more relaxed.’
Everyone laughs at this.
‘The Russians like it here,’ Finn persists unnecessarily, and receives a warning shot from Adrian, ‘because, unlike the Yanks, we don’t ask them too many difficult questions. The City will welcome them with open arms when they start to arrive, no questions asked.’
It is the winter at the end of the year 2000 and London is fascinated by gaining access to the oligarchs, their raw materials and their unprecedented wealth. The City of London has spotted a gold seam for several years now and, despite the occasional warnings, London wants into Russia more than ever.
Adrian smiles warmly at his protege’s expertise, but nevertheless takes him by the arm and they steer through the throng like joined contestants in a three-legged race.
Once in the dining room they sit down at a white-napped table in a corner, away from other ears, and the menus are brought, Finn- and Adrian- as always admiring the waitresses the club gets on the cheap from Eastern Europe.
Finn has potted shrimp and Adrian agrees rather than chooses. They order steak and kidney pie to follow.
Adrian leans across the table.
‘Remember ninety-five?’ he says, not wasting any time, Finn notices. ‘Six years after the Wall came down? Russia was in a total mess. Yeltsin was all over the place, gangsters roamed the streets like wolves and the bubble was going to burst. Russia was going bankrupt and the Communists looked like they might win the next election,
