Red to Black

‘A month ago,’ Sergei says, leaning in towards Finn again, ‘the president of the Banque Leman was invited to Moscow. He has a weakness from a long time back. But this time they photographed him indulging in this weakness–for underage girls–in an apartment in the city. Now they use the pictures to tell him what to do.’

‘What’s new?’ Finn says.

‘This is what’s new. The regime isn’t only interested in funding the Forest’s operations abroad any more. It has very big plans, very big money from business, mafia sources, billions. There are accounts being opened up in the Banque Leman in the name of foreigners who hold very senior positions in the West. So they say. Bribe money is bottomless. That’s just one bank. There are others.’

‘Why’s it different from their normal Forest operations?’ Finn says calmly.

‘This time they plan to use their vast capital like the West does,’ Sergei says. ‘They’re in a no-limit poker game with the markets as the pot.’

The small children Finn has seen with Sergei on the quay earlier run into the restaurant and look at Finn.

‘What’s the name of this bank’s president?’ Finn says.

‘Naider. Clement Naider.’

‘Can you get me the pictures, the photographs with these underage girls your side has of him?’ Finn says.

‘You ask too much,’ Sergei says. ‘I tell you, I’m watched.’

One of the boys tugs his arm and his brother comes in to join them.

‘I’m taking too big a risk just by being here. I have to go,’ Sergei says. ‘You will help me?’

‘Soon. When it’s time. I need the pictures, Sergei,’ Finn says. ‘Naider and the girls.’

‘No more now please.’

Finn stands up as Sergei does. ‘I’ll help you if you do this,’ Finn promises. ‘We’ll have you in a nice big house in Surrey, near Boris, all yours, with a brand new passport.’

‘There isn’t much time for me,’ Sergei says, and drinks back the tumbler of vodka. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

Finn leans in to the Russian.

‘No one’s interested in helping you, Sergei,’ Finn says harshly. ‘Not us, not the Americans. They’re in bed with Putin. If you want me to get you out, find the pictures.’

Beads of sweat break out across the Russian’s forehead. Then he takes the boy’s hand and leaves the restaurant without a word.

Finn watches the small boy looking back at him. Who’s that man, he seems to hear him say. They step out on to the warm lawn, and Finn wonders how much grace Sergei really does have left with the Kremlin.

20

I WAKE EARLY the next morning unable to sleep, the worst night since Finn disappeared ten days ago. It is Thursday, the beginning of the third day since my arrival in Tegernsee, and outside the town fills with market shoppers.

At first I don’t know where I am, then I see Finn’s journal and then the mountains beyond the window. My first thought is of Finn, and then of Mikhail.

Apart from the pink house, Mikhail was the one secret Finn had kept from me, and I thought the clue to Finn’s disappearance might lie not just here in Tegernsee, but in the identity of Mikhail.

Somewhere down in the cellar, I am sure, Finn would have left something that explained Mikhail. Until I have searched for this, the deepest secret of Finn’s, I know I can’t concentrate on anything else.

I take the book back down to the cellar, lock everything, and leave to find breakfast. There is nothing to eat or drink in the house except some half-empty liquor bottles. I walk to a small cafe, up near Schmidtke’s house on the Graubstrasse, a few hundred yards away, and try to eat a croissant, but eventually I can’t postpone my sense of rising anticipation. I take the croissant and a cup of coffee and return to the house, buying a few supplies on my way back.

I descend to the cellar again, shutting everything up behind me, and light the oil stove. First I take the pile of Finn’s books that I have yet to read and flick through them, but I don’t expect Mikhail to be so easily discovered. Mikhail would be special, separate, if Finn had acknowledged Mikhail at all in his records. Mikhail would not be someone anyone could discover when they eventually found the pink house. How would Finn leave a record of Mikhail?

The cellar contains very little: a table where Finn seems to have edited some of the books before depositing them here, a small, empty metal filing cabinet, a rolled-up carpet that looks as if it hasn’t been moved for years, some odds and ends from a plumbing job- offcuts of plastic pipe and a tub of hardened white paste–a waste-paper basket filled with screwed-up paper, a rickety chair with a reed seat, dust, endless dust, and an empty picture frame.

I begin to look at everything and the more I look the more I know that Mikhail won’t be here. If Finn had written about Mikhail at all, there would at least be a clue here. And the clue, I knew, would be something that I, and only I, would understand.

I check the cellar completely and am covered with dust, then finally I empty the waste-paper basket and begin unscrewing the paper. It is mostly old envelopes and scraps of paper torn from his books with a single word on them, or a sentence, or nothing at all. I examine each one and can get no answer from any of the scribbled notes. When I unscrew a piece of paper near the bottom of the basket, a single sheet, I see that one line is written on it.

It is underlined, like a title, and reads Bride of the Wind. I stare at it. There is nothing else. I swiftly turn out the rest of the basket, unscrewing all the remaining paper, but they are all blank. There is nothing else as clear as this one sheet.

I turn off the oil heater and ascend the wooden steps again, open the metal door and shut it firmly behind me. I draw the false wall across it, with its built-in fireplace, check the ornaments on the mantelpiece, and assure myself that all is as it should be.

Then I put on my coat and woolly hat and, clutching the paper in a ball, leave the house again for the second time in two hours.

Down along the path by the lake where I’d walked the night before to the gasthaus, a brittle layer of ice creeps a few feet into the water. There is a clear sky, it is bitterly cold, and the snow on the path has frozen into crusts. I walk fast to keep warm and because it suits my sense of urgency.

I come to the first of three lidos, closed up for the winter, the water frozen solid in the man-made harbours. There is a metal rail fence around the lido, and inside the fence plastic covers are pulled over some refreshment stalls.

By the path, there is a low metal gate in the fence, shut with a chain and padlock. By the gate is a wooden pillbox to fit one person to take the money and dispense the tickets when the lido is open. The stand is closed up with padlocked stable doors.

It is easy to step over the gate. The fence and the gate are there just to deter summer visitors from entering the lido unnoticed, without paying. I walk past the pillbox ticket office, across the icy wood surface and past the boarded-up refreshment stands.

Behind them, on a broad wooden slatted deck area, are several dozen upturned rowing boats, sailing dinghies, tenders for larger boats anchored in the lake for the summer–nything that their owners had too little space or too much money to bother to take home with them at the end of the season. Most are covered, but the blue plastic covers are stretched across the hulls in such a way that I can pick out the boats’ names written on the bow or on the transom.

I walk up and down the rows of boats, pausing to look at names, and lift the flap of a hanging cover, here and there, for a better sight. I translate the mostly German names, the type of silly, fond names that people give boats: Our Boys, Jaws, Titanic, Beautiful Melinda. By the time I reach the end of the last row, I