Quiller Balalaika

I didn't think Mitzi was needed at the bar. I thought she'd got cold feet at the last minute. We'd been sitting at a table near the doors waiting for Vishinsky to come in, and she'd said she would intercept him and introduce me, but the very pace of his entrance had made any interruption seem unthinkable, and she hadn't even got up.

'Mitzi thought I might do you a favour?' Claudette asked me.

'Yes.'

'I don't owe her.'

'So will you do me a favour anyway?'

I didn't put a price on it yet. She'd do that if she decided to.

'You say you want to do business with him.'

'Yes.'

'What kind of business?'

I made the gesture of looking around before I spoke. 'I've discovered a source of sable.' The Cougar's reket was mainly protection, Mitzi had told me in the fast food cafe, but he also dealt in sable.

A smile glowed in the huge black eyes. 'Vishinsky is the source of sable.'

'Not all of it.'

'All of the highest quality pelts. The rest aren't worth his attention.'

We turned again, her arms undulating like willow boughs stirred by a summer breeze. 'I'm told he's taken by you,' I said.

'Sometimes he pays me attention, yes. But that doesn't mean I can talk any kind of business with him.'

'I don't need you to. Just get me in there and introduce me.'

'You make it sound so easy. That's because you don't know the Cougar.' The music stopped and we moved to the edge of the floor.

'Would you like a drink?'

She glanced across at the patron, who was standing near the bar, hands tucked behind his dinner jacket, small spade beard, eyes everywhere. 'I think so,' Claudette said.

She asked for a Fernet Branca; I ordered Narzan, no ice. She watched me with her chin on her folded hands.

'No,' I said, 'I don't know the Cougar. So tell me about him.'

'There isn't very much one can tell about any of those people, without getting beaten up, maybe killed, according to what one has said, and to whom.'

'Then just tell me why you can't introduce me to this one.'

She shrugged, her bare ebony shoulders lifting and falling like a ballet dancer's. 'It might go all right, but then it might not. It would depend on his mood. If I took you in there and he didn't think the business you discussed with him was worth his time, he would have me beaten up for wasting it. What he would do with you I don't know.'

I thought it was time to change my mind, not wait any longer. 'I'm not asking you to help me without recompense, Claudette, if that's how you'd prefer things.'

The heavy gold earrings swung as she shook her head. 'Men don't understand what happens to a woman when she gets beaten up. The bruises are nothing.'

And suddenly it was over. Unknowingly she had presented the one argument that stopped me in my tracks. Before going out on a mission I always tell the clearance officer the same thing: my only bequest is to Home Safe, and when he asks me if it's a bank I tell him no, it's the abused women's shelter in Shoreditch.

'Then we'll talk,' I said, 'about something else.'

It took me ten minutes, a little more, to assemble a full picture of the huge ornate room in my mind as we sat talking – had she been born in Africa, and if so, how could her grasp of formal Russian be so perfect? And where had she learned to dance like that?

The patron hadn't moved, was still near the bar, still watching the girls, some of them drinking with members, some of them dancing. There were two heavy-bodied men in dinner jackets, standing and watching the room, like the patron. Bodyguards wouldn't be formally dressed. There were fourteen of them standing around, five of them in black jump suits, six in striped track tops, two in clean crisp karate gis and black belts, and one in a white workout suit with a gold cougar emblazoned over the left pectoral, like all Vishinsky's team – he'd brought six of them in with him, so there would be five inside the private room behind the podium. This one was guarding the door.

Two of the mob were dancing, one with a Japanese girl in a jade kimono; the men wore London-tailored silk dinner jackets and both sported carnations. Another mafiya boss was at a table against the red velvet-covered wall, sitting with a Russian woman of great beauty. I could tell which bodyguards were in whose employ by their focused attention.

'How long have you been in Moscow?'

'Five or six years.' The black sable eyes watching me as Claudette sipped her Fernet. 'And you?'

'Since the Reds bit the dust.'

In a moment she said, 'I would advise you to think again.'

I'd looked twice at the door of the private room, often enough to clue her in. This wasn't important in terms of security: she knew why I'd come here. The man guarding the door wasn't big, but thick-necked and a degree muscle-bound: there was too much bulge under the skin-tight suit.

'Think again about what?' I asked Claudette.

'Trying to see the Cougar. That bodyguard would stop you anyway, and if you tried to insist, he'd have you thrown out of the club. There are five more inside. They are not gentle.'

'I appreciate your concern.'

'And hopefully my advice.'

'The thing is,' I said, 'it's very important I talk to this man. Strictly entre nous, millions are involved.' She'd know I wasn't talking in rubles. 'Another Fernet?'

'No.'

Of course it was perfectly true: it was in point of fact important that I saw Vishinsky. There were other capos here, but I didn't have even the slender connection to any of them that I had with the Cougar – an acquaintanceship with Mitzi Piatilova. If I left here without seeing him I would leave here without access for Balalaika, and I would not, my good friend, sleep well. Oh, fair enough, the executive doesn't often gain access on the first day of the mission, though a few of us have done it – Vine, Teaseman, myself. I suppose I wanted to do it now out of pride, since the Chief of Signals himself was my control. But if Croder had known my thinking he would have flayed me with that tongue of his: pride can be deadly if you give it rein.

'Would you be able,' I asked Claudette, 'to find some club stationery for me?'

'I think so.'

'Just one sheet and an envelope.'

When she came back from the office near the doors I wrote the note and sealed it and put it into my breast pocket. 'You've been very kind,' I said. 'Possibly more than you know.'

A shimmering smile, the first I'd seen, a stunner. 'Whatever you're going to do,' she said, 'be very careful.'

'But of course.'

On my way to the private room I passed Mitzi, and she caught my arm. 'Is Claudette going to help you?'

'She already has.'

'You're going to talk to Vishinsky right now?'

'I'm going to try.'

Mitzi got off her bar stool, her eyes concerned. 'Without anyone taking you in there?'

'There would have been a risk for Claudette.'

'So you're going in alone.'

'Don't worry. I shall use great charm.'

'Shit,' Mitzi said.

The bodyguard was still at the door, flexing his ankles, eyeing me with a vacant stare as I went up to him.

He said no, of course, when I gave him the envelope. 'It's a matter of urgency,' I told him. 'I need to make sure the Cougar knows what's happened.'

He turned the envelope over to scan the other side. 'So what's happened?'

'It's for his eyes only. But when he hears the news from someone else and I tell him you stopped me at the door, you'll finish up in the forest. Now move your fucking arse and go in there and give it to him. Move.'

His eyes went hard. 'So who the fuck are you?'

I wasn't making any headway so I used a half-fist under the rib cage and he doubled over and I opened the door and went into the private room. It was full of cigar smoke.

Four men were sitting at a table with cards fanned in their hands. They were perfectly still, looking at me. Ash dropped from one of their cigars onto the polished redwood table. The five bodyguards were standing against the walls, one of them moving into a half-crouch because the man outside was moaning and it must have looked quite clear what had happened. I kicked the door shut behind me.