size of the net and the rapidity of the response were formidable. He could no
longer take anything for granted.
Sight lines were everywhere. He had to be attuned to the kinds of anomalies that
would ordinarily pass without notice. Trucks that were parked that should not
have been parked; cars that drove too slowly, or too fast. The gaze from a
passerby that lingered an instant too long—or was averted an instant too soon.
Construction equipment where there was no construction. Nothing could pass
without notice now.
Was he safe? Conclusive evidence was impossible. It was impossible even to say
that the mail truck was simply what it appeared to be. But his instincts told
him that he could enter the club unobserved. It was not a meeting place he
himself would have selected. For his immediate purposes, though, it would be
helpful to meet Grigori Berman on his own terms. Besides, the venue was, on
reflection, a highly advantageous one. Public parks offered freedom of
movement—it was what made them popular rendezvous points—but that freedom could
also be exploited by observers. At an old-fashioned gentleman’s club, it would
be difficult to station an unfamiliar face. Janson would be there as the guest
of a member. He doubted whether members of a surveillance team could gain
similar access.
Inside the club, he identified himself and the member he was awaiting to a
uniformed guard who sat at a booth by the front door. Then he proceeded to the
polished marble floors of the foyer, which was four-posted with large, gilded
Corinthian pillars. To his right was the smoking room, filled with small round
tables and low-hanging chandeliers; to his left, the large dining room. Ahead,
past a sea of red and gold carpeting, a broad marble staircase led up to the
library, where coffee was taken and periodicals from all over the world lay
stacked on a long table. He seated himself on a tufted leather bench by one of
the pillars, beneath the portraits of Matthew Arnold and Sir Humphry Davy.
The Athenaeum Club. A gathering spot for members of the political and cultural
elite.
And the unlikely rendezvous for a most unlikely man.
Gregori Berman was someone who, if he had developed a nodding acquaintance with
morality, preferred to keep the relationship at arm’s length. Trained as an
accountant in the former Soviet Union, he had made his fortune working for the
Russian mafiya, specializing in the complex architecture of money laundering.
Over the years, he had set up a thicket of IBCs—international business
corporations—through which the ill-gotten gains of his mafiya partners could be
cycled, and thus hidden from the authorities. Several years earlier, Janson had
deliberately let him slip through a dragnet that Consular Operations had run.
Dozens of international criminals had been apprehended, but Janson—to the
annoyance of some of his colleagues—let their financial whiz kid go free.
In fact, the decision represented reason, not whim. Berman’s knowledge that the
Cons Op officer had decided to let him escape meant that he’d be in Janson’s
debt: the Russian could be converted from adversary to asset. And having someone
who understood the intricacies of international money laundering represented a
very significant asset indeed. Moreover, Berman was clever in his manipulations:
it would be difficult for the authorities to build a case against him. If he was
likely to get off anyway, why not let him off with a debt on which Janson could
collect?
There was something else, too. Janson had reviewed hundreds of pages of
intercepts, had come to know the principals of the scheme. Many were
cold-blooded, thuggish, menacing figures. Berman, for his part, deliberately
insulated himself from the details; he was cheerfully amoral, but he wasn’t
unkind. He was perfectly happy to cheat people out of their funds but could be
quite generous with his own. And somewhere along the line, Janson acquired a
trace of sympathy for the high-living rogue.
“Paulie!” the bearlike man boomed, opening his arms wide. Janson stood and
allowed himself to be enveloped in the Russian’s embrace. Berman fit none of the
stereotypes of a numbers man; he was all emotional effusion, mixing a passion
for things with a passion for life.
“I hug you and I kiss you,” Berman told Janson, pressing his lips to both his
cheeks. Classic Berman: whatever the circumstances, he would display not the
wariness of a man under pressure but the swagger of a larger-than-life bon
vivant.
The fabric of Berman’s pinstriped bespoke suit was a feltlike cashmere, and he
smelled faintly of Geo. F. Trumpers extract of limes, the scent said to be
favored by the Prince of Wales. In his caricatured way, Berman sought to be
every inch the English gentleman, and there were many inches of him at that. His
conversation was a cataract of Britishisms, malapropisms, and what Janson
thought of as Bermanisms. As absurd as he was, though, Janson could not help
feel a certain affection for him. There was even something winning about his
contradictions, the way he managed to be at once devious and ingenuous—he always
had an eye for the next scam, and he was always delighted to tell you about it.
“You’re looking … sleek and well fed, Grigori,” Janson said.
Gregori patted his generous midriff. “Inside I’m wasting away. Come, we’ll eat.
Chop-chop.” He squired Janson to the dining room, with an arm around his
shoulder.
Inside, waiters in morning suits beamed and bobbed their heads as the ebullient
Russian appeared, ushering him immediately to a table. Though tipping was
prohibited by club rules, their bright-eyed attentiveness revealed that Berman
had found a way to manifest his generosity.
“Their cold poached salmon—the best in the world,” Berman said, settling into
his cushioned seat. Berman said that a lot of things were the best in the world;
he invariably spoke in superlatives. “But have lobster à la nage. Never fails.
Also recommend roast grouse. Maybe both. You’re too thin. Like Violetta in third
act La Traviata. Must build you up.”
He summoned a wine steward with a glance.
“That Puligny-Montrachet we had yesterday? Could we have bottle of that,
Freddy?” He turned to Janson. “It’s the greatest. You’ll see.”
“I have to say I’m surprised to find you here, ensconced at the heart of the
British establishment.”
“A rogue like me, you mean—how could they ever let me in?” Berman roared with
laughter, his belly quivering through bespoke broadcloth. In a lower voice, he
said, “It’s a great story, actually. You see, about two years ago, I found
myself invited to house party at Lord Sherwyn’s, and ended up playing billiards
with very nice gentleman I met there … ” Berman had made a habit of helping
certain people out of trouble with timely loans, specializing in dissolute
scions of venerable baronies. These were people who, Berman imagined, might have
influence in the world. It was, in his book, sound investing.
“You’ll have to tell me about it another time,” Janson said blandly but
pointedly. It was all he could do not to drum his fingers.
Berman was undeterred. “I suppose he had bit too much to drink, and he was
winning big, big sums off me, and so I invited him to double up … ”
Janson nodded. The scenario was predictable. A more-than-pleasantly-buzzed
British gentleman, winning outrageous sums from a seemingly sloppy-drunk Russian
with seemingly infinite reserves of cash. The sozzled Russian who, all evening,
had shown no sign that he knew one end of a cue stick from the other. The last
game, when the British gentleman’s substantial winnings were just about to
become a true fortune. The gentleman thinking, perhaps, of acquiring the
apartment adjoining his in Kensington; or buying that place in the country he
and his family had been renting for so long. Almost unable to believe his luck.
You just never knew about these things, did you? An invitation, reluctantly
accepted—the scion was disreputable, but with a family name that still opened
doors—had led to a laughably easy stack of money.
And then that game, that last crucial game, when suddenly the Russian didn’t
seem drunk at all and grasped the cue stick with the serene mastery of a concert
violinist holding his bow. And watching dreams of free money dissolve into a
reality of ruin.
“But Paul, this bloke I played with—you’ll never guess who he was. Guy
Baskerton, QC.” Baskerton was a prominent lawyer, a queen’s counselor, who had
chaired a commission on the arts set up by Whitehall. A rather self-important
man, with a thin, David Niven mustache, and that distinctly knowing look common
to the more oblivious men of his class, he would have been an irresistible
target for Berman.
“I’m beginning to get the picture,” Janson said, sounding more relaxed than he
felt. He had to ask Berrnan for a big favor; it would not do to hector. It would
not do to appear desperate, either, or Berman would press his advantage,