Adrian Magson - No Kiss For The Devil

Riley stared at him. ‘How did you find that out?’

He looked pleased with himself. ‘Contacts, sweetie. As always, contacts.’

‘How reliable are they?’ Even as she asked, Riley knew that it was a pointless question. The credentials of Donald’s various sources of information were impeccable.

Donald, however, seemed unmoved. ‘Totally. His name is Tony Nemeth. He discovered that at various times of the month, a parcel is collected along with any other mail, bundled and forwarded to London.’ He studied his fingernails, playing the part of the all-seeing puppeteer to the full. ‘The package is sent to a PO Box in London, which is the same as the editorial office listed in the magazine. That turns out to be a mailing facility in north London.’ He slid a piece of paper across his desk to Frank Palmer. ‘I don’t know what you can do with this, but I understand the packages arrive courtesy of an Aeroflot flight into the Heathrow cargo terminal. They’re delivered to the mailing facility and presumably split up there. I haven’t had time to check yet, but I suspect the Madrid and Brussels PO Boxes feed into London. They’re probably no more than a bit of gloss for impressionable readers.’

Riley glanced at Frank, who was staring intently at the ceiling.

‘You’ve lost me,’ she said. ‘If this magazine is a hole-in-the-wall affair, how can it pay the kind of money Varley is offering? And who reads it?’

Donald cleared his throat. ‘Well, to answer your first question, every magazine throughout history which continued against all the odds was usually bankrolled by someone with plenty of money. There’s no way round it. As to the readers of this one, by all accounts, there are some very influential people.’

‘Like?’

‘People in the White House…some Whitehall mandarins, and I gather a few copies are read avidly in the halls of the Elysee Palace and some of the darker corridors in Bonn, Rome and Brussels. It’s available on annual subscription, and only then at a high price. It would have to be, because the subscriber base is probably restricted and exclusive.’

Riley nodded. ‘That’s what Varley implied. I’ve never heard of it.’

‘Perhaps you weren’t meant to.’

Riley looked puzzled. ‘I still don’t get it.’

‘I think it’s designed,’ said Donald, ‘to disseminate information from the East for consumption by eager little eyes in the West.’

‘The purpose being?’ Palmer had returned to earth.

‘Entente. Understanding. Hands across frontiers, call it what you will. It’s not the first one ever published. Storm was one, allegedly with links to Soviet Intelligence, but never proved. That was during the sixties, put out via India. Soviet Time was another. They served a noble purpose — on the surface.’

‘Which was?’

‘To help spread understanding. To make us feel comfortable in our beds at night.’

‘And otherwise?’

‘Cynics would say they were used to tell us simpletons in the West only what the Kremlin wanted us to know.’ He shrugged. ‘The old guard may have gone, but the game hasn’t changed. Publications just like it are still around, telling us things the current powers would like us to know without appearing to. They don’t have to turn a profit, at least, not in the usual sense, because that’s not the aim.’

‘Especially,’ murmured Palmer, ‘if they’re run by wealthy individuals with the quiet connivance of the state. Nice arrangement.’

Donald nodded. ‘Smoke and mirrors.’

‘God, you two are cynical,’ Riley said darkly.

‘True, sweetie. But we’re also right.’ Donald reached across to his desk and picked up another piece of paper, which he passed across to her. ‘I’ve done some digging. This lady is a lecturer in Russian and Post-Soviet studies at the London School of Economics. Worth a visit, I think. She agreed tomorrow at two.’

Riley read the name off the paper. ‘Natalya Fisher? Sounds like a ballet dancer.’

‘She was probably that, too, in her time,’ he said enigmatically. ‘She came to the west twenty years ago and married a British scientist. She’ll tell you more about the Russian mindset in fewer words than anyone else I know. There’s a chance she might point you somewhere useful.’

‘You make her sound as if she has some special knowledge in this area,’ said Palmer.

‘Well, I suppose she has.’ Donald beamed, before dropping his bombshell. ‘In a former life, Natalya Fisher was a KGB officer.’

Natalya Fisher was a short, plump academic in her sixties with a soft, generous mouth. Dressed in various shades of grey, even her eyes had the quality of wood smoke, settling lightly on Palmer and Riley as the two investigators entered her cluttered office. But her smile was genuine and warm, and sharp with interest.

She indicated two chairs and bade them sit, then surprised them by leaping up and opening a window, before firing up a cigarette. ‘You have to excuse me,’ she continued uncompromisingly, waving away a cloud of noxious smoke. ‘But I have lived with worse things than smoking bans, and I need my nicotine. Please, join me if you wish. Nobody will disturb us here.’ Her accent was soft, overlaid with a mixture of influences, but echoing her origins a long way east of this dusty, paper-strewn hideaway. She took a huge drag of the cigarette, the tip glowing like molten steel, and sat down with a sigh of pleasure, lifting her legs and waggling her feet as if she had just walked a long way. ‘Now,’ she continued, ‘Donald Brask said you were interested in whatever I can tell you about certain Russians, yes?’

‘That’s right,’ said Riley. ‘Specifically, oligarchs.’

‘Oligarchs?’ Natalya queried flatly, ‘or mafiya?’ Her eyes flicked between the two of them, the hint of a smile tugging at her mouth. Donald must have given her an idea of what they wanted to discuss, but she sounded sceptical.

Riley said, ‘Aren’t they the same thing?’

‘No. Not really. But there’s an old Russian saying which says that one snowflake never settles far from the other.’ She inhaled deeply and blew smoke towards the window, where it billowed with startling clarity into the outside air like smoke over the Vatican. ‘Put another way, if you discover cow shit in your living room, why go looking for sheep?’

Palmer grunted. ‘Another old, Russian saying?’

‘No,’ she admitted, and gave him a coy grin. ‘I just made that up. What I mean is, you shouldn’t be too surprised if you find that oligarchs — what you in the west used to call moguls, I think — are viewed elsewhere as not so very different from the mafiya.’ She tapped the side of her head. ‘Same heads, different hats.’ She shuffled her feet and seemed to go into deep thought for a moment, before stirring. ‘You have to understand, such men are still relatively new to Russia. They came to prominence under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, many with friends — even family — in the old Party.’

‘The Communist Party?’ interjected Palmer.

‘Yes. That surprises you?’

‘A little. They’re hardly soul-mates, I’d have thought.’

Natalya raised an eyebrow. ‘Where money and power are concerned, Mr Palmer, all men are soul-mates. The first oligarchs made their money because they were allowed to, not necessarily because they were clever. It suited everyone to have the appearance of a free market. There were many crooks, of course, and corrupt officials, and they are drawn together like maggots to fresh meat. Then, with new investment from outside, came the others — the modern businessmen. Smarter, politically and financially, they soon realised that without connections, even their money and power could be taken away very easily. Some of them stayed, working with the new administration, others moved abroad, taking their fortunes with them.’