Charles Cumming - The hidden man

Expecting Ian to laugh at this, Mark looked into the front seat, but he saw that Boyle’s eyes were concentrated on the road.

‘What about what happened in the toilets?’ Taploe asked. ‘You were talking in there with your brother when Tamarov came in. How did he react at that point?’

Mark stayed backin his seat and bluffed it out.

‘Like he’d just bumped into a couple of guys who were talking in the gents. Like any normal bloke in a club who needs to go for a piss. Ben and I are brothers. Can’t brothers talkin public without somebody getting suspicious?’

‘You tell me.’

Ian overtook an articulated lorry at speed and Mark slammed down his passenger window. The air in the cab had been fuggy and stale and his throat felt swollen with lack of sleep. When the wind funnelled across the seats it dampened Taploe’s eyes.

‘That too much for you?’ he asked.

‘Leave it,’ Taploe replied.

The cab slowed.

‘You asked about Ben and Vladimir,’ Mark said.

‘OK, I’ll tell you. Vlad told me his father died when he was seventeen. So maybe he feels sorry for Ben. Maybe he feels sorry for me. Maybe there’s some empathy there.’

‘Excuse me, boss, but that tallies with our diligence.’ Ian was shouting above the noise of the road. ‘Tamarov’s old man was killed in a car accident outside Moscow. March 1982, if I recall correctly.’ Taploe fidgeted in his seat, barely acknowledging the intrusion.

‘Well, if that’s the case, that’s certainly something you could use to your advantage in forging a relationship with him.’ Ian appeared to nod in agreement. ‘But you are not, I repeat not to involve your brother in any Security Service operation ever again. That was foolish and unnecessary.’

Mark should have backed down, but the combination of his already dark mood and a sense of loyalty to Ben got the better of him.

‘My brother did all right,’ he said.

‘That’s not what I was told.’

Ian brought the taxi off the Westway and turned towards Shepherd’s Bush. A man wearing a tan overcoat tried to hail the cab by waving a furled-up newspaper frantically above his head. Mark saw him swear loudly as they sped past.

‘What were you told?’ he asked.

‘We had Watchers in the club. Two young men. They went in immediately before Ben and sat down at the next door table.’

‘The guys in chinos? The two blokes in polo necks?’

‘The very same.’ It was a small moment of triumph and Taploe enjoyed Mark’s discomfort. ‘They said your brother looked nervous all evening. Now how would you explain that?’

Mark was caught in a lie.

‘Well, that’s just their assessment,’ he said. ‘They have to write something, don’t they, to justify their jobs.’

Taploe cast him a withering look and glanced at his watch.

‘Is he conscious?’ he asked, still staring at his wrist.

‘What does that mean?’

Ian answered from the front seat.

‘It means does your brother know about Blindside? Have you told him that you workfor us?’

Taploe scrutinized Mark’s face intensely for his reaction.

‘Fuck no,’ he said. ‘I’m not stupid.’

The interrogation might have continued had Mark’s mobile phone not rung. He withdrew it from the pocket of his suit, glanced at the read-out and could hardly believe his eyes.

‘It’s him,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘Tamarov.’

The phone was already on its third ring.

‘Well, answer it.’ Taploe sounded petulant, fearing the loss of the call, and for an instant Mark saw the depth of his ambition.

‘Hello?’ he said, picking up.

Taploe could only hear Mark’s end of the conversation.

How you doin’, mate? It was a good night, wasn’t it? Yeah, I’m suffering a bit with no sleep, but I’ll be all right.

He was forced to concede how naturally Blindside dropped into the role: Mark was improvising with ease, no sign of edginess or nerves.

Well, he said he enjoyed meeting you too, Vlad. Yeah, sure, absolutely. You wanna meet up, that’s fine, sounds very interesting. OK. Well, I’ll see you there in the morning. Sure, I won’t mention it to anyone.

There was a smile on Mark’s face as he put the phone back in his jacket, a grin of satisfaction that he wanted them both to see.

‘What did he say?’ Taploe asked. ‘What did he say?’

‘Well, he wants to meet up, doesn’t he? Wants to meet yours truly for a little Sunday breakfast in Hackney. Got a business proposition, apparently.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Well, good for you,’ Ian said.

‘Yes, good for you,’ Taploe added, and the business with Ben seemed forgotten.

The meeting lasted twenty minutes.

‘I can learn everything I need to know about a man by the way he behaves at breakfast,’ Tamarov said, standing in the foyer of his new restaurant wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses, a button-down Tommy Hilfiger cotton shirt and Armani denim jeans. It was nine o’clock in the morning. ‘I am a busy man, Mark, a very busy man. We have businesses in Moscow, in London, in Paris, in Belgrade. Later this morning I fly to Amsterdam to eat only lunch. So if a person is to do business with me, I want to see the colour of his eyes in the morning. I want to hear him speak to me. I want to know the truth about him.’

It was as if they had never met. Tamarov was suffocating Mark with Russian bluster, the browbeating bullshit of a thug used to getting his own way. They weren’t even eating breakfast: Tamarov was in too much of a hurry. Had it not been for his duty to Randall, Mark would have made his excuses and caught a cab back to Kentish Town.

‘So what business are we exactly doing together, Vlad? You didn’t mention anything specific on the phone. What kind of thing is it that you have in mind?’ Tamarov put the whole weight of his arm on Mark’s back and began walking with him towards the kitchens.

‘Well, I have been thinking,’ he said. Right from the start, Mark had the impression that Tamarov was in a tight spot from which he needed rescuing. ‘I am wondering if you would be interested in a small venture with me?’

‘A small venture.’

‘I am opening up this bar, this restaurant, in less than two weeks and I need somebody to help me out.’

Mark looked around him. The restaurant was a shell of scaffolding and fallen plaster. Despite the fact that it was a Sunday, there were workmen everywhere, architects in hard hats and interior designers poring over colour charts. As they came into the kitchen he could see gas burners and extractor fans still boxed in the centre of the room.

‘Is Tom not your partner on this?’ he asked. ‘You two have been spending so much time together recently and…’

‘No, not on this,’ Tamarov replied firmly. ‘This is not with Thomas any more. I cannot trust him as I could trust you.’

Mark disguised his astonished reaction to this by slackening off his tie.

‘I’m sorry you feel that way.’

‘Don’t be,’ Tamarov said, removing his arm from Mark’s back. ‘I have been hearing good things about you from Sebastian for so long and now we meet in the club and it occurs to me yesterday that this would be a good partnership between us. I have in mind to open a chain of restaurants. But I am always in six cities at once, always doing business. I need somebody to be a director in the same way that you are looking after Libra.’

It didn’t feel like a trap. That was what he told Randall afterwards. For hours they sat around trying to second-guess Tamarov’s motive for making the offer, finally conceding that it had been made in good faith. Kukushkin was expanding into London all the time; Tamarov was the man who had been assigned to make that happen. The Scot he had entrusted to see the restaurant through to completion had either quit at the last minute or failed to come up to scratch. That Mark was Tamarov’s choice to take over was both a reflection of his skills as a manager and a particularly expedient coincidence.