It was eight time zones away, and eight o’clock in the morning. And it was a very curious piece of news.
He knew he must have read it wrong.
He read it again. The print was so poor, it was hard to read anyway. His eyes were bad today. He looked up from the newspaper and blinked at the sea. It was at the other end of the short side street and he could see just a bit of it, beyond the promenade, the water a surly lead colour. A palm tree was lashing about there.
He had drunk a lot last night, for his cold. It hadn’t done anything for his cold but it had given him a bad head. God, how he hated the Black Sea!
Alexei ‘Alyosha’ Ponomarenko sat under the flapping awning outside the café and longed for the north. He’d never had a cold in the north. Wonderful Green Cape. Wonderful Kolymsky. Pure, pure snow; good comrades, plenty of money. New frost outside every morning. Good dry heat inside. Not draughty, not damp. He longed for the princely apartment he had left behind in June. Here he lived like a pauper. Above this shitty café! Him! Even apart from the civil war now messily spluttering on here, his money was running out and he’d had to move from his decent place on the front to this back street.
He lit a cigarette but left it smouldering in the ashtray, and went in to get another cup of coffee. A kerosene stove was stinking away inside, which was why he was sitting outside. Nowhere in the place was there central heating.
‘Put a shot of brandy in it,’ he said.
‘Cash,’ the surly proprietor said.
Ponomarenko slammed the cash on the counter. The coffee he’d poured himself: it came with the breakfast.
‘And who gave you exclusive rights in the newspaper? Others are waiting for it.’
‘Buy another paper,’ Ponomarenko told him. He hung on to the paper.
‘There’s no hurry,’ one of the other guests said. A few disconsolate individuals were sitting about eating their lousy breakfasts; ghosts, wrecks, pensioners. ‘It’s all lies, anyway. They tell you what they want to tell you. Who’s winning today?’
‘Everybody’s winning,’ Ponomarenko said, and took the newspaper and his coffee out with him.
The paper was full of tanks going here, there. Sod the tanks. He swallowed the improved coffee and felt his eyes improve. He concentrated on what interested him. The two panels were side by side, one in Georgian, one Russian. He read the Russian one again. Edict of the Government: Ministry of Justice.
He read it twice more. Very tricky, the bastards here. Very. There was bound to be a catch in it somewhere.
He lit another cigarette and thoughtfully smoked it, blinking in the distance at the threshing palm tree. Then he folded over a few pages so they wouldn’t figure out what interested him and took the paper inside.
‘Tell me,’ he said to the fellow behind the counter, ‘is there a respectable lawyer anywhere in this town?’
The lawyer was a small man with a very large moustache, and he was an Armenian, which made Ponomarenko anxious; he had wanted a Georgian, one who knew all the shifts and changes of Georgian law anyway. He was also not impressed with the premises. To enter the lawyer’s office he had had to walk through a room with a dentist’s chair in it. The man reassured him on both points. He had practised for twenty years, he said, both in Batumi and Tbilisi; this was his week in Batumi. The dentist’s chair was his brother-in-law’s, who was this week in Tbilisi.
The lawyer first of all had a point of his own to make. He understood his visitor had come to consult him on behalf of a friend. Did the friend understand that such consultations were on a cash basis, and the cash was US dollars?
Ponomarenko put twenty down and when the man merely looked at it explained that his friend wanted only one simple question answered before deciding whether to go further. The lawyer remained looking at the money, but he nodded, and Ponomarenko told him the question.
There had been a government announcement in the paper that an amnesty was being offered to drug offenders who disclosed the source of their supply; what was the meaning of this announcement and what was the catch in it?
The lawyer nodded again.
The meaning of the announcement was that the government had recognised that an enemy of good government was organised crime. For the maintenance of law and order in the present turbulence it had identified it as a principal enemy. Organised crime was based in this region upon powerful drug rings. To isolate the rings it had been decided to pardon lesser offenders. That was the meaning of it. There was no catch.
Ponomarenko remained silent for some moments.
‘Your friend is known to the police?’ the lawyer quietly suggested.
‘No.’
‘Is being blackmailed, perhaps, forced to continue with … certain activities?’
‘Not exactly … ’
‘It’s a well-known squeeze. Speak freely.’
‘Well — what if certain things came to light — after he’d gone and said everything — things that aren’t really, sort of, to do with it?’
The lawyer looked at Ponomarenko and then he looked quite hard at the twenty dollars.
‘That’s not the same simple question,’ he said.
Ponomarenko put another twenty on the table.
‘If I understand you,’ the lawyer said, leaning back more comfortably, ‘your friend is worried that the police might start investigating other misdemeanours, once they’ve got him. Forget it. They’re interested in drugs. They want to eliminate the small offenders. A fault of the previous system was the harsh sentencing — capital punishment, life terms. They want to wipe the slate. Once the facts are given, that’s the end of it. Finish. Nothing on the record. Have no fear — for your friend. Unless it appears, when they look into it,’ he said jovially, ‘that he’s committed a couple of murders. Has he?’
‘Christ, no!’ Ponomarenko said indignantly. ‘Not that. But supposing, if they look into it, they find out he has a wife and — various things. That maybe he hasn’t kept up with, like payments. Things like that.’
The lawyer laughed heartily. ‘My dear friend,’ he said, ‘they are interested in powerful forces challenging the state. Once your friend has reported the facts regarding drugs, he will be pardoned. It’s guaranteed. Take my word for it.’
‘Well, I would,’ Ponomarenko said. ‘But there’s my friend. How do I get him to believe this guarantee?’
The lawyer leaned back and hoisted a telephone directory from a shelf. He leafed through the pages. ‘You read Georgian?’
‘A bit.’
‘What does it say here?’
‘Ministry of Justice.’
‘Call them.’ The lawyer pushed the phone across. ‘Ask for the Chief Prosecutor’s office. When you’ve got somebody — I’ll talk.’
Ponomarenko dubiously dialled the number and followed instructions. He got the deputy prosecutor, and handed over the phone.
The lawyer identified himself and spoke affably to the deputy prosecutor. He said that on behalf of a client he would like today’s amnesty announcement for drug offenders explained in simple terms, and listened, nodding for a few minutes.
‘Quite so … Well, I have here, Deputy Prosecutor, a friend of the client. He would like it confirmed that no action whatever would be taken against his friend once the full facts have been given. And that a pardon would be automatic — nothing on the record, and no other areas investigated. Exactly. And the same with revenge evidence? … Oh, I expect the usual — photographs, tape-recordings. Yes. Yes. Destroyed and no copy taken — very good. Well then, Deputy Prosecutor, if you would not mind repeating that to my visitor I think I can deliver the first success in your campaign. Eh? Very good, ha-ha. Yes. Here he is.’