EF06 - The State Counsellor (14 page)

As he walked to the main office past the workshops, past the snow-covered flower beds and the elegant church, he gazed around curiously.

Lobastov managed his business in capital fashion. Even in the very best American factories you wouldn't often see such good order.

The workers Green encountered on his way were striding along with a purposeful air that was not Russian somehow, and he didn't spot a single face puffy and swollen from drink, even though it was Monday and still the morning. He'd been told that at the Lobastov plant the mere smell of drink would get you sacked on the spot and put straight out of the gates. But then the pay here was twice what it was at other plants, you got free company accommodation and almost two weeks of holiday on half-pay.

What they said about the holiday was probably a fairy tale, but Green knew for a certain fact that the working day at Timofei Grigorievich Lobastov's enterprises was nine and a half hours, and eight hours on Saturdays.

If all the capitalists were like Lobastov, there'd be no reason left for kindling any conflagration
- Green was suddenly struck by this surprising idea when he saw the sturdy brick building with the sign 'Factory Hospital'. But it was a stupid idea, because in the whole of Russia there was only one Lobastov.

In the factory-office reception room Green wrote a short note and asked for it to be handed to the owner. Lobastov received his visitor straight away.

'Good morning, Mr Green.'

The short, solidly built man with a plain peasant face on which the carefully tended goatee beard looked entirely out of place came out from behind his broad desk and shook his visitor firmly by the hand.

'To what do I owe this honour?' he asked, screwing up his lively, dark eyes inquisitively. 'It must be something urgent, I suppose? Could it perhaps be connected with yesterday's mishap on Liteiny Prospect?'

Green knew that Timofei Grigorievich had his own people in the most unexpected places, but even so he was astonished that the industrialist could be so exceptionally well informed.

He asked: 'Do you really have someone in the Police Department on your payroll?' and then immediately frowned, as if he were withdrawing the inappropriate question.

Lobastov wouldn't answer in any case. He was a meticulous man, with that dense ochre colour that comes from great internal strength and unshakeable self-belief.

'It is written: "Cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days,'" the factory owner said with a cunning smile, lowering his round head as if he were going to butt - the forehead was heavy and bullish. 'How much did they relieve you of?'

'Three hundred and fifty.'

Lobastov whistled and stuck his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat. The smile disappeared from his face.

'Goodbye, Mr Green,' he said crisply. 'I'm a man of my word. You are not. I do not wish to have any more dealings with your organisation. I paid my last contribution in January, absolutely on the nail - fifteen thousand - and I asked not to be bothered again until July. My purse is deep, but not bottomless. Three hundred and fifty thousand! Why not ask for more?'

Green paid no heed to the insult. That was just emotion. 'I only answered your question,' he said in a calm voice. 'We have urgent payments to make. Some people are waiting, others simply won't. We must have forty thousand. Otherwise it's the gallows. They don't forgive that sort of thing.'

'Don't you try to frighten me,' the factory owner snapped. '"They don't forgive"! Do you think I give you money out of fear? Or that I'm buying indulgences against the possibility of your victory?'

Green didn't say anything, because that was exactly what he thought.

'Oh no! I'm not afraid of anything or anybody!' Timofei Grigorievich's face began flushing crimson in anger and one cheek started twitching. 'God forbid that you should ever win! And you never will win. I suppose you imagined you were using Lobastov? Like hell you were! It's me who's been using you. And if I speak frankly with you, it's because you're a pragmatist, without any emotional histrionics. You and I are berries from the same field. Although we taste rather different. Ha-ha!' Lobastov gave a short, dry laugh, exposing a set of yellowish teeth.

What have berries got to do with anything?
Green thought;
why speak in jokes if you can speak seriously?

'Then why do you help?' he asked, and then corrected himself: 'Why did you help?'

'Because I realised our idiotic stuffed shirts needed a good scare, a few spokes stuck in their wheels, so they wouldn't stop intelligent people hauling the country out of the mire. The stupid asses need to be taught a lesson. They need their noses rubbed in the dung. So you go and rub them in it. To make them get it through those thick heads of theirs that Russia either goes with me, Lobastov, or goes to hell with you. There's no third choice on offer.'

'You're investing your money,' Green said with a nod, 'that's clear enough. I've read about it in books. In America they call it lobbying. We don't have a parliament, so you use terrorists to put pressure on the government. So will you give me forty thousand?'

Lobastov's face turned to stone, leaving the nervous tic agitating his cheek. 'I will not. You're an intelligent man, Mr Green. My budget for "lobbying", as you call it, is thirty thousand a year. And not a single kopeck more. If you like, take the fifteen thousand for the second half of the year now.'

Green thought for a moment and said: 'Fifteen, no. We need forty. Goodbye.' He turned and walked towards the door.

His host came after him and showed him out. Could he possibly have changed his mind? Hardly. He wasn't that kind. Then why had he come after Green?

'Was Khrapov your work?' Timofei Grigorievich whispered in his ear.

So that was why.

Green walked down the stairs in silence. On his way back through the factory grounds, he thought about what to do next.

There was only one answer: it would have to be an expropriation.

It was actually no bad thing that the police were preoccupied with the search. That meant there would be fewer men assigned to the usual requirements. For instance, to guarding money.

He could take some men from Needle.

But he still couldn't manage without a specialist. He'd have to send a telegram to Julie and get her to bring that Ace of hers.

Once outside the control post, Green stopped behind a lamp post and waited for a while.

He was right. An inconspicuous individual who looked like a shop assistant came hurrying out of the gates, turning his head this way and that and, when he spotted Green, pretended to be waiting for a horse-tram.

Lobastov was cautious. And curious.

That was all right. It wasn't hard to get rid of a tail.

Green walked a little way along the street, turned into a gateway and stopped. When the shop assistant slipped in after him, he punched him hard on the forehead. Let him have a lie-down for ten minutes.

The strength of the party lay in the fact that it was helped by all sorts of different people, some of them quite unexpected. Julie was precisely one such rare bird. The party ascetics took a dim view, but Green liked her.

Her colour was emerald: light and festive. Always gay and full of the joys of life, stylishly dressed, scented with heavenly fragrances, she set Green's metallic heart ringing in a strange way, simultaneously alarming and pleasurable. The very name 'Julie' was vibrant and sunny, like the word 'life'. If Green's fate had been different, he would probably have fallen in love with a woman just like that.

It wasn't done for members of the party to talk much about their past, but everyone knew Julie's story - she made no secret of her biography.

She had lost her parents when she was a teenager and been made a ward of a relative, a certain high-ranking official of advanced years. On the threshold of old age the old fool had run riot, as Julie put it: he squandered the inheritance entrusted to him, debauched his young ward and shortly thereafter a stroke left him paralysed. Young Julie had been left without a kopeck in her pocket and without a roof over her head, but with substantial carnal experience. The only career that lay open to her was that of a professional woman, and in this field Julie had demonstrated quite exceptional talent. For a few years she had lived as a kept woman, moving from one rich mentor to another. Then Julie had grown weary of'fat old men' and set up her own business. Now she chose her own lovers, as a rule not fat, and certainly not old, and she didn't take money from them but earned her own income from her 'agency'.

The women Julie employed in her agency were her friends -some of them kept women like herself, and some perfectly respectable ladies in search of additional income or adventures. The firm had rapidly become popular among the capital's pleasure-seekers, because Julie's female friends were all first-class beauties who enjoyed a laugh and were keen on love-making, and confidentiality was maintained meticulously.

But the women had no secrets from each other, and especially from their merry madam, and since their clients included important civil servants and generals, and even highly placed police officers, Julie received a constant stream of the most various kinds of information, some of which was extremely important for the party.

What no one in the organisation knew was why this frivolous creature had started helping the revolutionary cause. But Green found nothing surprising in that. Julie was just as much a victim of a villainous social system as an oppressed peasant woman, a beggar woman or some downtrodden mill hand. She fought injustice with the means available to her, and she was far more useful than some of the chatterboxes in the Central Committee.

Apart from providing highly valuable information, she could find a convenient apartment for Green's group in just a few hours, more than once she had helped them with money, and sometimes she had put them in touch with the right people, because she had the most extensive contacts at all levels of society.

She was the one who had brought them Ace. An interesting character, no less colourful in his own way than Julie herself.

The son of an archpriest who was the preceptor of one of St Petersburg's main cathedrals, Tikhon Bogoyavlensky was an apple who had rolled a very long way from the paternal tree. Expelled from his family for blaspheming, from his grammar school for fighting and from his secondary college for stealing, he had become an authoritative bandit, a specialist in hold-ups. He worked with audacious flare and imagination, and he had never, even once, fallen into the hands of the police.

When the party needed big money last December, Julie had blushed slightly as she said: 'Greeny, I know you'll think badly of me, but just recendy I got to know a very nice young man. I think he could be useful to you.'

Green already knew that in Julie's lexicon the words 'get to know' had a special meaning, and he had no illusions concerning the epithet 'nice' - that was what she called all her transient lovers. But he also knew that when Julie said something, she meant it.

In just two days Ace had selected a target, worked out a plan and assigned the various roles, and the expropriation had gone off like clockwork. The two sides had parted entirely satisfied with each other: the party had replenished its coffers and the specialist had received his share of the expropriated funds - a quarter.

At midday Green sent off two telegrams:
'Order accepted. Will be filled very shortly. G.'
That one went to the central post office in Peter, poste restante. The second went to Julie's address:
'There is work in Moscow for a priest's son. Terms as in December. He will select the site. Expect you tomorrow, nine o'clock train. Will meet. G.'

Once again Needle omitted to greet him. She clearly regarded the conventions as superfluous, just as Green did.

'Rahmet has turned up. A note in the post box. Here.'

Green opened the small sheet of paper and read:
'Looking for my friends. Will be in the Suzdal tea rooms on Maroseika Street from six to nine. Rahmet.'

'A convenient spot,' said Needle: 'a student meeting place. Outsiders are obvious immediately, so the police agents don't stick their noses in. He's chosen it deliberately so we can check he's not being tailed.'

'What about tails near the post box?'

She knitted her sparse eyebrows angrily: 'You're too high and mighty altogether. Just because you're in the Combat Group, that doesn't give you the right to regard everyone else as fools. Of course I checked. I never even approach the box until I'm certain everything's all right. Will you go to see Rahmet?'

Green didn't answer, because he hadn't decided yet. 'And the apartment?'

'We have one. There's even a telephone. It belongs to the attorney Zimin. He's at a trial in Warsaw at the moment, and his son, Arsenii Zirnin, is one of our combat squad. He's reliable.'

'Good. How many men?'

'Listen, why do you talk in that strange way? The words just drop out, like lead weights. Is it meant to impress people? What does that mean - "how many men"? What men? Where?'

He knew the way he spoke wasn't right, but it was the only way the words came. The thoughts in his head were precise and clear, their meaning was absolutely obvious. But when they emerged in the form of phrases, the superfluous husk simply fell away of its own accord and only the essential idea was left. Probably sometimes rather more fell away than ought to.