Alex Dryden - Red to Black

‘So Exodi is a secret fund that amasses Russian government money. It adds into this pot the billions from drug and arms sales, brought over the old Soviet borders in Reiter’s trucks. Some powerful people in Luxembourg protect Exodi’s illegal account and other powerful people in Germany protect Reiter, Otto Roth’s brother. The five names are there to provide information to buy just one compan–a huge company that has close to a controlling interest in Europe’s defence industry.’ Finn pauses. ‘So who else are the Russians paying? What’s next? What other industrial giant do they have in their sights?’

‘Look at the list of the companies in the Dresden file,’ Dieter says. ‘That is the Russians’ list.’

‘I can go to Adrian with this,’ Finn says. He looks at Dieter. ‘And you’ll have to tell your bosses at the BND.’

‘Former bosses,’ Dieter corrects him. ‘No.’

‘What do you mean? Why not? It’s your government that’s best placed to stop what’s happening with Hammerein. You have to tell them.’

Dieter looks off into the darkness.

‘We’re close to the truth, Finn.’

‘We have the truth,’ Finn protests.

‘Why don’t we leave it at that?’ the German replies quietly. ‘Why bang our heads against a wall trying to get others to believe it, when it’s evident that they know and that they’re ignoring it? For whatever reason, I don’t know, but they are ignoring it. You know what happened with Schmidtke, what already happened to me fifteen years ago. The whole operation was closed down. Do the BND want to hear this, do you think? Nothing’s changed since then. Nothing. And that, you’ll find, is true with London too. Our governments are either walking blindfold into this, or they know, and are conniving in it for some short-term gain in terms of Russian energy supplies, for access to Russian oil and gas. Finn, our countries don’t want to upset the status quo with inconvenient facts.’

‘Then what?’ Finn says.

‘Tell me about Liechtenstein.’

Finn shows Dieter the photographs from the farmhouse in the mountains and Dieter leans over the pictures to identify the figures.

And Dieter knows all the faces in the pictures.

I can feel Finn’s childish triumph at this. He has found in these pictures what Dieter has been looking for for fifteen years, what the German was close to finding when his investigation of Schmidtke was terminated by the BND. He has found a picture of one of Roth’s brothers, who all along was at the head of one of Germany’s great firms.

‘With these pictures and your information, Dieter, the circle is closed,’ Finn says.

‘Yes,’ Dieter says when he has struggled to put his reading glasses on and looks at the photographs a second time. He points at the German politician. ‘Finn, you think I can take these pictures to the BND along with what we know about Hammerein and Exodi? The chances I would live–that either of us would live–are nil. The BND is not some organisation independent of political control. If this politician is involved, as he obviously is, who else knows? Who in our intelligence services, in government…? This politician isn’t acting in some vacuum.’

‘It’s really so bad?’

‘Of course it is. All I know is how much was covered up fifteen years ago. I don’t think anything’s changed, do you? The German government is locking itself into dependency on Russian energy every day’.

‘Then get a message to the company. To Hammerein itself. Give them the evidence.’

‘Yes. I can do that. Anonymously. But will they believe an anonymous contact?’

‘With this evidence, yes. Or take them to a newspaper.’

‘That too. It’s possible.’

When they walk back along the path through the forest, Finn is heady from the approaching end, and I guess from the fuel of the drink. And Dieter is worried. Finn is not listening to anyone any more.

That night in his hotel room, Finn writes in scrawled biro: ‘Exodi is the vehicle to buy what the Russians lost in 1989. Exodi overturns seventy years of their failed communist experiment, since the day Lenin arrived in Petersburg. And Exodi achieves what the occupation of half of Europe failed to achieve.’

FINN’S EXCITEMENTis so naive. The almost boyish enthusiasm he exhibits in the lead-up to the final meeting with Adrian is doomed to disappointment.

But he writes about the meeting in two sections: the first section he wrote before the two of them met and is exuberantly optimistic; the second section he wrote after the meeting, about the meeting itself, and I can feel his anger and despondency leaping out of the pages. I can’t bear to record now what his earlier mood was, it’s too painful to see the contrast. But this is how he tells the encounter with Adrian, between 12.45 and 2.35 on a Monday in June 2006.

‘It’s the same scene at Boodles, with the same crew braying about whatever it is today that they think they know better than anyone else. This time it’s the French tennis championships at the Roland Garros, and the way they talk about the players you’d think they were all ex-Wimbledon champions instead of desk-bound, money-bound public schoolboys who, if you put them in a car park in the Gorbals without a set of car keys, would be begging for mercy to the first bag lady who walked by. When you scratch the veneer you find there’s just more veneer underneath.

‘In this closed world, uncertainty or change of any kind is unknown, anathema, disgusting even. They have inherited the progressive empowerment of generations of privilege; a superiority that is by now in their DNA.’

Adrian is waiting for Finn by the door of the club, as if afraid he might talk to anyone without him, out of his earshot. He takes Finn’s arms in his big red hands and gives him a broad smile from his rubicund face. But Finn sees that his eyes are dead.

‘Finn, I’m so glad you got in touch. Where the fuck have you been?’

But Finn is too full of his own impending victory over Adrian to see the menace behind Adrian’s usual crude bonhomie.

‘Can we talk in private?’ he says.

‘Don’t you worry about that, old boy. We have a private room. I thought we should. I guessed. What have you brought me in that case? The head of Vladimir Putin?’ Adrian lets out a big, unnatural laugh that makes him sound like a clown who, tired of entertaining children, decides to devour them instead.

‘Come on, we’re drinking first. Business later. Over lunch.’

And once again, just like the last time, Adrian takes Finn by the arm and guides him through this club Finn knows so well, as if he’s making a gentle citizen’s arrest, so as not to alarm the other lunchers, but it will turn into a brutal assault if Finn so much as twitches.

And there they are, the herd, all leaping over each other’s sentences to trump the last speaker with some dreadful witticism about the awful state of this tennis player’s forehand, or the magnificently revealing skirt length of that one. And Adrian comes in amongst them like a priest leading a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter.

‘Finn…Philip, Richard, Andrew, Peregrine…’ On and on, the introductions keep reeling out like some lost fishing line, and Finn feels their disinterested eyes wash over him. ‘You pretty much know everyone, don’t you?’ Adrian says chummily, but with his eyes expressionless, and as cold as a fish on a slab. ‘And you all know Finn. My best boy. My ex-best boy, I should say.’ And now Adrian’s eyes have changed to the narrow, pitiless look that bores into people. ‘Or should I say my best ex-boy?’ he says.

But Finn doesn’t flinch or look away, because he knows he’s got him this time. He knows he has the goods and Adrian can’t squirm out of it. Not this time.