Fortunately, in this most modern of Russian hotels, where piped music plays in all the lifts and toilets, Pol was a familiar and honoured guest. His suite was equipped with three telephones, push-button radio, colour television, soap and towels, and a bowl of crystallized fruit ‘with the fraternal compliments of Intourist’. Two hours after his arrival his suitcases were brought up, scarred and spattered with mud.
His next day began with exhausting efficiency. He was woken at 8.30 a.m. by a phone call from the Ministry of Trade. A car arrived for him half an hour later, and he was driven to a series of lavatory-tile palaces: passed from one scrupulously polite official to another, each accompanied by a pedantic interpreter: refreshments consisting of biscuits and sweet black tea, while piles of documents were produced and translated and discussed, but never signed.
In the evening he learned that he was booked to see Swan Lake at the Bolshoi. Pol disliked the ballet, and Tchaikovsky in particular; but with a subtlety rare among Russians, his hosts implied that a refusal would not be acceptable. His foot was still swollen and painful; and the performance, with three fifteen-minute intervals, lasted four hours. Afterwards, he was entertained at a banquet where toasts were drunk to Franco-Soviet friendship and to certain French political figures whose names were almost as distasteful to him as the sweet Georgian wines.
His spirits sagged, his foot throbbed, and he longed for his vine-trellised patio above Lac Leman, with his Corsican manservant pouring him Dom Perignon from a chilled bottle wrapped in a white napkin. His deal with Aeroflot, he reflected, should bring him a profit of nearly five million French francs. He was beginning to wonder if it was worth it.
Next day his doubts became misgivings. The enigmatic machinery of Soviet State bureaucracy slipped into top gear. This time it was a Volga saloon that collected him from the hotel and drove at high speed, with its headlamps on full-beam and the militiamen at the intersections holding up the traffic with their lighted batons. They drew up in front of a building that looked like a pre-war wireless-set, where he was escorted by plain-clothes officials into a room lined with marble cherubs and grave, pale men in black suits sitting on either side of a long table. Pol was shown to a seat near the top, next to a man who was introduced as the Deputy Minister of Transport.
The first two hours passed with the usual preambles through interpreters, and the exchange of documents. Then the trouble started. Until now Pol had been dealing with the financial experts, whose job was to haggle over prices; but gradually, ominously, it became apparent to him that several of the dark-suited men at this meeting were not the usual State functionaries, but scientists and aeronautical engineers. The laborious mouthings of negotiation began to give way to questions — many of which, to Pol’s growing dismay, were addressed directly to him, often in fluent French.
But he refused to lose his nerve. Russian bureaucrats, he told himself, were like animals: they only grew méchants when they smelt fear. And Pol had nothing to fear; he had not been openly dishonest in his dealings. All the invoices and bills of conveyance were in order, up to a point. They specified that the engines of the aircraft, which he was negotiating to sell to Aeroflot, in order to help restock their fleet of ageing Tupolovs, were modern. It was just that the bodies into which they were fitted, while renovated, were in many cases more than a decade old; and the Russian experts had discovered that at least three of them were Nord Atlas transport planes which had probably seen service in Algeria.
The mood of the Russians turned chilly. However Pol was a man of spirit who enjoyed a challenge. He argued, blustered, prevaricated, lied, even wept; he puffed and swelled with outraged pride, claiming that if anything was wrong it was the fault of Capitalist cartels and unnamed banking interests who had swindled all of them together.
His protestations were only partly successful. Most of the experts showed their contempt by leaving; but the bureaucrats stayed to haggle over more documents, more figures and dates and details. The Deputy Minister also remained; for Pol still held his trump-card: the giant Troika-Caravelle airbus, whose maiden flight for the benefit of the international Press was now scheduled to take off from Leningrad next week. Pol’s company was the sole agent for the enterprise, and he lost little time in making clear to the Deputy Minister that should either his own or his company’s reputations be impugned, he might be inclined to solicit other clients. The Argentinian Government had shown interest, he said.
The Deputy Minister was politely enigmatic; and Pol knew that he was on probation. He was peeved rather than worried. The situation represented not so much a financial threat as an affront to his judgement; for until now he had entertained many warm illusions about the Soviet Union. These included a firm opinion that where business matters were concerned, the Russians were a soft touch. Any modern nation, he argued, which ordered its affairs according to the teachings of an exiled German Jew who had died in London more than a century ago could be no match for the fiscal agility of Charles Pol.
At the same time he was aware that in any country with a sensible and alert administration he might now be in serious trouble. But here in Russia — while he went on blindly swearing that any irregularities were the work of malign forces in the West — the Soviet officials also began passing blame and responsibility on to anonymous superiors, each reluctant to risk being the cause of an embarrassing
