Brian Freemantle - The Bearpit

‘You weren’t so careful last time. You wanted to deal in anything American that I wanted to sell or barter.’

‘I don’t remember any last time: there wasn’t one.’

‘You wanted to sell vodka and to buy dollars and anything American that I had,’ repeated Yuri.

‘I’ve never seen you before.’

‘You took me to the KGB building on the ring road.’

‘I did not.’

‘I could have reported you then to the anti-corruption militia,’ said Yuri, remembering how strong the temptation had been and glad he had not succumbed to it. ‘I didn’t. If I had done and you’d been intercepted how would you have explained the vodka? And all the cash you were carrying as a money black marketeer?’

‘There wasn’t another time,’ insisted the man.

The denial was weak and Yuri knew the man had at last remembered him. He said: ‘I didn’t do it then. I am not going to do it now. Not unless I have to.’

‘What’s that mean, unless you have to?’

‘It means there’s two ways,’ said Yuri. ‘One way makes you money. The other way makes you unhappy: subject to stop and search and harassment, whenever, however.’

‘I’m supposed to be frightened?’

The bravado was weaker than the denial. Yuri said: ‘What would a search squad find right now, where you live?’

‘Two hundred dollars,’ capitulated the driver.

‘If it’s worth it.’

‘Now.’

‘Later, when we find the garage.’

‘There are a lot: the anti-corruption campaign is a joke.’

‘Keep the meter running, all the time.’ The man’s physical presence could be an advantage.

‘You looking for engine damage? Engineers?’

Yuri hesitated. ‘Bodywork,’ he said.

‘What happened?’

‘No need for you to know.’

There appeared to be a lot, as the man said. Because it was on the way into Moscow from the airport they stopped at Khimki and after there near the Dynamo sports stadium and crossed to the northern river terminal, where they unsuccessfully checked two places from which the driver, who by now had identified himself as Leonid (‘like Brezhnev: he enjoyed living well, too’) said stolen cars were sold as well as unrecorded repairs carried out. At every garage there was a wall of rejecting hostility towards him and Yuri quickly realized just how much he needed the man with him. The pattern developed of the questions being put through the driver rather than directly from him. Yuri became hopeful at a service station on the road to Krasnogorsk when a paint-sprayer remembered a 1984 Lada and was just as quickly disappointed when he said the colour had been green.

‘Sure you want to go on?’ asked Leonid as they turned off the ring road to appraoch the centre of Moscow.

‘Quite sure.’

‘You see what’s on the clock?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘This must be pretty important to you.’

‘It is.’

There were four more garages and two more wrongly coloured Ladas before the taxi pulled into Begovaya Street. It appeared to be a three-man business, one of the owners the sprayer himself, anonymous behind a protective mask, his overalls multi-coloured from previous jobs. From the attitude Yuri guessed he knew Leonid personally: instead of answering the first question the man nodded in Yuri’s direction and said: ‘He OK?’

‘Yes,’ said the driver.

‘How OK is OK?’

Yuri didn’t understand until the driver said: ‘Of course he’ll pay; he’s with me, isn’t he?’

‘A 1984 Lada?’ queried the garageman. He had lifted the visor of his mask but it was still not possible to see what he really looked like.

‘Around October fourteenth,’ prompted Yuri.

‘Fifteenth,’ said the man at once.

He’d got this far before, thought Yuri, curbing the optimism.

‘What was the damage?’ asked Leonid.

‘Scraped nearside wing,’ said the man. ‘And the light assembly was smashed.’

‘What colour?’

‘Fawn. Managed a good match.’

A feeling of satisfaction engulfed Yuri. Abandoning their established system and taking over from the driver, he said: ‘Remember anything about the man?’

‘He was a soldier,’ declared the sprayer at once.

‘A soldier!’ demanded Yuri. ‘You mean he wore uniform?’

The man shook his head. ‘The way he walked; held himself. Always tell a military man.’

The fit was there, decided Yuri. He said: ‘What else about him? Anything at all?’

Instead of replying, the sprayer said to Leonid: ‘You sure this is all right?’

‘Dollars,’ promised Leonid.

‘How much?’

‘Twenty,’ opened Yuri.

‘Fifty,’ bargained the man.

The ultimate satisfaction would be charging it to KGB expenses, Yuri decided as he handed the money over: ‘payment for essential information’ perhaps. He said: ‘So what else about him?’

‘Nothing about the man: just that he had a positive military bearing.’

Yuri felt a flare of irritation, imagining he had been tricked into parting with money upon the promise of something more, and then recognized the qualification in the reply. He said: ‘What else, if it wasn’t about the man?’

‘You sure this isn’t official?’

‘You often get paid in American dollars by the police?’

The man hesitated and then went into the cubby-hole office in one corner of the paint shop, re-emerging at once with a ledger-sized book. ‘Wouldn’t have mattered if it had been official,’ he said, offering it already opened at a page.

Double book-keeping, as a protection against any police raid! Yuri realized. He took the book eagerly but before he could study the work record, the man said: ‘Everything is properly detailed. Everything. Even the registration.’

‘Registration!’

‘On the first line.’

Yuri didn’t ask, unwilling to risk a refusal. He walked to the cubby-hole and copied MOS 56-37-42 on to a scrap of blank paper on the desk top, put it in his pocket and left the account book there. He could actually feel the throb of his own heartbeat and wondered if he were flushed with the excitement. He’d got the most positive evidence yet. And already knew how he could use it further! He was close, he decided: close enough to reach out and touch!

‘Thank you,’ he said, with more sincerity than either of them knew.

‘You ever need a car resprayed, you know where to come.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

‘Where now?’ asked Leonid, back in the car.

‘The ring road building,’ said Yuri.

When they got there Yuri handed over the additional hundred dollars and settled the meter fare, which registered a hundred and seventy-five roubles. Yuri guessed it had been tampered with, to run quicker.

‘By the time any search squad gets to where I live, there won’t be anything there,’ said Leonid.

‘You’re safe,’ said Yuri.

‘You really KGB?’

‘What do you think?’ said Yuri.

‘What I’ve always thought,’ said the man, turning the remark. ‘You can’t trust the KGB: they’re assholes. Money’s good, though.’

Yuri did not report at once to the reception area. Instead he took the elevator to the basement garage, where he’d once regarded the people who’d cleaned and looked after his father’s car – the car in which he’d lost his virginity – as allies if not friends. His luck held. The duty clerk was a man he recognized: Andrei, he thought. The smile of recognition was returned but faded at once, embarrassment at a misplaced expression. ‘Sorry about your father,’ Andrei said.

‘It’s being investigated,’ said Yuri.

‘Let’s hope they get the fucker.’

‘Let’s hope,’ said Yuri. He produced his official accreditation and said: ‘I want to know from records if a Lada numbered MOS 56-37-42 is one of our cars. And if it was booked out on fourteenth October.’