Alina walked in with a cup of coffee and handed it to him. Misha recognised the two-ply cream cashmere roll neck from a new Italian supplier.
‘Ilaria has been on the phone for you.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll call her back.’ He twirled the dimmer again. ‘Beats the old place.’
He took a sip of boiling hot coffee and winced at its bitterness before taking another. Below, two men with AKs slung over their shoulders lingered in front of the high steel gate. Misha watched as Rodion walked up to one of them and said something.
He turned back to the room and took the card Ivan had given him out of his pocket and looked at the graphic outline of a topless angel. He dialled the number. A woman with a sing-song voice answered the phone and asked him how he had heard of Leningrad Angels, did he have any preferences? ‘A friend’… ‘attractive’, and ‘two’ was all he said in response, slightly disappointed with himself when nothing more definitive immediately came to mind. He agreed the money – US dollars of course – and gave her the name of the new restaurant: Canali, next to the Mariinsky Theatre.
How much was it all going to cost this time, just to open a currency account?
That morning he had appeared at the bank laden with small gifts and had asked to see a manager. He had sat there for an hour and a half mesmerised by the clack clack of a hundred typewriters and the elongated zip of the carriage return. A legion of clerks, sitting at grey metal desks, typed forms in triplicate. Eventually a manager had appeared. Heavyset, in a dark grey ill-fitting suit, Misha guessed him to be in his early forties. He had introduced himself as Grigory Vasiliev and led him to a wooden and frosted-glass cubicle.
‘How can I help you?’ he had asked, distracted. A clerk had entered without knocking and placed a form in front of him to sign.
‘I want to open a foreign currency account, US dollars… to pay suppliers,’ Misha had continued when the clerk had left. He chose to omit the bit about siphoning money off to a Swiss account.
Vasiliev had simply stared at him.
‘You’ll need Central Bank permission… three to four months, if you are lucky.’
That was when he had suggested dinner.
Misha made it to the restaurant earlier than planned. He took the Zhiguli and parked it on the embankment. As he stepped out of the car a sudden gust of Arctic wind forced him to take a step back. He grabbed the iron balustrade and looked down onto the canal. He shivered. Ice stretched in every direction, a silver filigree knitting snow-covered island to snow-covered island. A man wrapped up in a wool blanket, standing next to a bucket, stood over a hole cut in the ice holding a fishing rod in one hand and a lantern in the other. He wondered if he’d had any luck.
Canali made Misha feel he was back in Milan. Konstantin had done a good job, no doubt with input from Viktoriya. An open, custom-built, stainless steel kitchen gave on to a limestone floor dining area, where low lighting illuminated exposed brick and discretely placed tables.
At the bar, two women sipped champagne while balanced on elegant cream leather stools. The blonde caught Misha’s eye as he stepped down into the restaurant from the entrance. No doubt the Angels he had ordered, he thought. She introduced her raven-haired friend as Sveta and herself as Dasha. Misha guessed them both around twenty. They were certainly dressed for the part. Dasha wore a short black tube dress and Sveta a diaphanous gold-coloured loose blouse over leggings. Misha took two envelopes from his inside jacket pocket and gave one to each.
No sooner had he finished explaining that he and, by implication, they were entertaining a business associate did the door open and Vasiliev appear. Gone was the ill-fitting crumpled suit Misha had seen in the bank. Grigory wore an expensive-looking three-piece under a half-open navy wool coat. A man of many parts, thought Misha. Grigory looked over to the bar, caught sight of Misha chatting to the two girls, and raised his hand in acknowledgement.
Vasiliev took an instant liking to the blonde Dasha. The girls turned out to be well educated and from cities east of Moscow; occasional escort work at university had gravitated to full-time after they had moved to Leningrad. They could earn more in one night than they could in a month in some boring and grim state factory or office job. The punters, they said, generally had more going for them than the loser boyfriends they had knocked around with in the past.
Outside, an old lady carrying an almost empty string shopping bag caught Misha’s eye as she walked, stooping, past the side window of the restaurant. When he returned his attention to the group, he found Sveta studying him.
‘I don’t want to end up like her,’ she said seriously.
‘Well that makes two of us… Come on, let’s eat.’
The maître d’ led them to their table. Misha had asked for a private corner. As it turned out, it was a quiet night. Dasha sat opposite Vasiliev – who insisted on being called Grigory – and Misha, Sveta, whose long legs stretched under the table, occasionally brushing his.
They ordered food and a good bottle of Georgian wine. Dasha rarely broke eye contact with Grigory, constantly running her jewelled fingers through her long hair, flirting outrageously. Grigory was clearly enjoying himself. Why wouldn’t he! Misha thought. Sveta sat quietly taking it all in.
‘So tell us more about your business,’ said Grigory, turning to his host.
‘Import, about to move bigger into export… fashion, perfume, computers, you name it.’
‘You have a tie-up with Leningrad Freight, I understand.’
‘Yes, you are well informed.’ He wondered how well informed. Did he know he was also bringing in merchandise across the border at Smolensk to avoid the prying eyes of the military customs in Leningrad?
Misha felt the tip of Sveta’s high heel rub against his leg. She looked at him across the table in a steady gaze and smiled. It was hard not to be aroused. She was striking, now he looked at her again, with thick, straight shoulder-length hair, high Slavic cheekbones and wide, dark oval eyes that sparkled in the subdued restaurant lighting.
It was after coffee that Misha asked the two girls if they could wait at the bar while he talked to Grigory privately.
‘Pretty girls, Grigory.’
The banker added his confirmation. ‘Will they be staying?’ he asked, clearly afraid Dasha might leave.
‘That depends,’ said Misha. ‘What will it take to open that foreign currency account within the next two weeks?’
‘Two thousand US dollars.’
Nothing came cheap, thought Misha. ‘How about one thousand dollars and Dasha stays?’ he countered.
Grigory considered the proposal.
‘I’m interested in long-term business relationships,’ said Grigory. ‘I appreciate this might not be the case with Dasha.’
Misha watched Grigory take a sip of brandy and replace his glass slowly on the table.
‘Can I ask you what you want to use this account for?’
Misha considered giving him a flat no, but the banker would have access to his account anyway. He’d see what he was doing, or at least guess.
‘A number of reasons: firstly, paying overseas suppliers – the business is getting too big now to be making payment via suitcases; secondly, the rouble is headed in only one direction as far as I can see… who wants to be holding a currency worth less and less every day; thirdly, moving money to safer jurisdictions; and finally, receiving hard currency payment for exports.’