Alex Dryden - Red to Black

And so they all drink and shout and drink again, and the starched-white-jacketed barman, from Romania or Mexico or wherever they got him, keeps pouring the drinks like an automaton.

And to Finn, this herd is far more menacing than the herds that normally afright the citizens of England: the gangs of immigrants that hang around on street corners in Dover and Ramsgate, or the hooded yobs in the inner cities.

‘I wonder…’, Finn is thinking. ‘If I feel as if I’m on another planet in here, what’s it like for him, the barman, Marco or Rudi or Chico or whatever his name is? What’s it like to be utterly ignored, to be treated merely as a drinks dispenser? Or does he just shut down until he gets home from all this money and jazz and glitz and privilege to his wife and kid and his semi-squat in Balham?

‘Suddenly I know why I’m doing what I’m doing; for people like him, the guy pouring the drinks. It’s that simple.’

And then he catches himself in this thought and remembers what his aunt once told him as he came home from some anti-missile march and was railing against some American president when he was still a student at Cambridge.

‘Why don’t you become the peace you’re trying to create?’ she had asked him.

But Finn didn’t listen then and he’s not listening now.

‘Moscow Mules, that was it,’ someone barks, and Finn realises they’re looking at him. ‘You were drinking something called a Moscow Mule, weren’t you? Bloody hell.’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Finn replies, and gets a look from Adrian who notes the sneer in his tone of voice.

‘We’ll go in now, I think,’ Adrian says, far earlier than usual and with the diplomatic nicety of a scalping hatchet. ‘Drink up. We’ll get something special at the table.’

So they down their glasses of chilled Chablis and put them back on to the bar and the condensation runs down the sides over the wooden counter.

They enter the dining room, with its cute aproned Eastern European waitresses and, sure enough, Adrian has a private room on the far side, making sure they can talk openly–or that he can, at any rate. And the last ten years of Finn’s working life, he now realises, have been building to this moment, to wipe the self-satisfied smirk off Adrian’s face. Is that what it’s all been about? Has it all been for this?

‘Why don’t you become the peace you’re trying to create?’ Finn says to himself, but it doesn’t seem to be working in here. It’s like trying to say the Lord’s Prayer at a Motorhead concert.

‘We’ll have the Corton Charlemagne,’ Adrian says to the non-English-speaking waitress who enters the room as they sit down, and Adrian prods the menu angrily until she can connect it with the wine he’s prodding. ‘We’ll have the potted shrimps and the steak and kidney pud…that’s steak and kidney pudding. Got it? Twice. For both of us, in other words.’

This inelegant removal of choice in what Finn eats is vintage Adrian. You’re mine, it says. You’re in my club, sitting at my table, drinking my wine, and you can reconfigure the word ‘guest’ any way you like, but to me it means you’re here at my bidding. Got it?

Maybe, it occurs to Finn, Adrian no longer even likes human beings. Maybe he never did and that’s the problem. They get in the way. Certainly if they’re not part of the herd, of which he’s the bull elephant.

‘Give me what you’ve got,’ he snaps at Finn, without any preliminary. There are no first names any more, no ‘Come-down-for-the-weekend-and-Pen-would-love-to-see-you’ preamble.

Finn withdraws a few sheets of folded A4 from the briefcase and puts them in front of him.

‘Read that, Adrian.’

Adrian puts on his half-moon spectacles and angrily picks up the papers and reads them through fast, as if he’s checking for spelling errors. Without putting the papers down, he looks over the half-moons.

‘Well, you have been a busy boy, haven’t you?’

Finn doesn’t reply.

‘What’s it all mean, d’you think?’

‘You know damn well what it means, Adrian.’

For a moment they stare each other out and then Adrian pretends to look back at the papers.

‘It’s everything, Adrian,’ Finn says. ‘Names, companies, banks, secret accounts, Roth’s brother and the transportation of laundered money and arms. It’s Reiter’s, or Roth’s, itineraries and where his trucks can be stopped by you and our German friends, and at which borders. It’s a panorama of the corrupt and the corrupted. In Europe, Adrian, the Europe you love to hate. Well, here it is, on a plate for you. It’s the whole scheme. The Plan. It’s what the KGB does these days and what I’ve been saying to you for over five years. This is just a peek behind the curtain. I have a list here…’Finn takes out another piece of paper with dozens of the biggest company names in Europe written on it-‘this demonstrates the sheer scale of what’s going on. You can ignore it, Adrian, but if you do, how will you call yourself a patriot again? How will you be able to say with pride that you work for Her Majesty’s government if you’re prepared to look the other way while it’s being sold down the river?’

This, as Finn anticipates, almost draws Adrian’s physical wrath across the table, but Finn watches as the redness drains from his face and he keeps himself under control.

‘And we haven’t even had the first course yet,’ Adrian murmurs.

‘What are you going to do about it, Adrian? Pretend it doesn’t exist? Just like you did with “Mikhail”?’

The waitress arrives with two pots of shrimps and goes to fetch the wine on Adrian’s orders.

‘Those buffoons in there,’ Finn says, waving in the direction of the bar, ‘your friends, Adrian, they seriously believe that the City of London is on the march to Russia, that the wealth of our old enemy is up for grabs, that Russia is like Africa or something. They can walk all over it, that’s what they think, isn’t it? They’re going to be cut to pieces, Adrian. Surely you can see that with that big brain of yours. There’s nothing in Russia of any importance that isn’t controlled by the Kremlin and all the KGB spooks who inhabit the bloody place. And meanwhile the buffoons are being outflanked by the Russians. There’s enough bent and laundered cash coming round behind them to buy their companies out and to snap up all their houses in the country and all their kids’ places at Eton, I dare say. What are you going to do about it?’

Adrian gorges half the pot of shrimps in one go and the wine arrives. When he’s swallowed his mouthful of shrimp, wiped his lips, tasted the wine and pronounced it ‘excellent’, he leans with one elbow on the table and gives Finn his special paramilitary murderer’s look.

‘You poor fucking fool,’ he says. ‘Drink up. This may be your last meal. How dare you let me invite you here, you little shit.’

‘Do nothing. That’s the new policy, is it? You and the Prime Minister. What’s in it for you, Adrian? They going to make you chief?’

But Adrian is coldly calm now and Finn feels the ground sliding under his feet.

‘We’re going to drink this and then we’re leaving,’ Adrian says. ‘I’ve got someone for you to meet. Should be very interesting. Might blow the lid off your fabulous ignorance. I’ll bring forward the meeting.’

Adrian picks up the bottle and sloshes the wine glasses dangerously full and presses a button for a waitress.

‘Get us the bill,’ he says.

‘But you haven’t finished—’

‘Get us the bloody bill, woman.’

There’s a human being getting in Adrian’s way again and now he’s just the kind of brute you can find in any backstreet anywhere, but he’s wearing a well-cut suit.