Sold. Blair Denholm

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СКАЧАТЬ be happy with what you have. The grass is not always greener on the other side.’ To which he always replied, ‘Mother, there is no bloody grass here.’ A fair comment when he considered the grey, gloomy hell of his home city of Murmansk, perched under the Arctic Circle. But mother was wrong. She didn’t know about the Gold Coast.

      Ivan stood on the balcony of the top-floor apartment on Orchid Avenue and gazed upon the throngs of tourists milling about on the streets below. The endless Pacific Ocean was a mere two blocks away; even at this early hour hundreds of bare bodies and multi- coloured umbrellas dotted the sugar white beach. There’d be barely enough room to place a towel by lunchtime. Snug in his fluffy black dressing gown, a fresh orange juice in his hand, he looked down upon the wonderful scene of brightness and light and smiled. This was Utopia.

      Ivan’s mother had called Irina a stuck-up cow with ambition beyond her station. But here she was, taking him and their two girls overseas to a place beyond their craziest dreams; Australia, for God’s sake.

      Not much of a traveller, Ivan had only once been away from Murmansk. One night at the factory, a stray fish hook impaled his eye. It was agony and worse – threatened his vision. Irina’s boss flew him to Moscow for emergency surgery. Only the skilful hands of the world’s leading eye surgeon saved his vision in the injured eye. The boss put them up at the Hotel National – luxury on a scale Ivan never imagined.

      Through his one good eye he saw the crazy, multi-coloured onion domes of Saint Basil’s cathedral, the shiny cobblestones of Red Square, the red bricked Kremlin and its massive walls, gaudy billboards and bright neon lights. Not to mention the department stores brimming with consumer products unavailable in Murmansk. To Ivan, Moscow was a shiny gold nugget, while his home town was the kind of nugget that dropped out of a dog’s arse.

      But that day at the tail end of a brief wet autumn, when the daylight faded faster and faster into endless black nights, Irina announced the forthcoming expedition to the antipodes. His head spun like sizzling sprats in a frypan.

      Now as he scanned the long, uninterrupted arc of sand narrowing into the distance, he could just make out the hotels and holiday units at Coolangatta, he thought Irina was the cleverest, most wonderful woman in the world.

      On the last Monday of that rainy autumn, Irina’s boss Fil Muzhasov – head of the Murmansk General Catering Open Joint Stock Company and monopoly supplier of kitchen equipment to local restaurants and factory cafeterias – sent an email to all employees asking for volunteers to travel to Australia to seek out new business opportunities. Unbelievably, of the many eager applicants, Irina was chosen to lead the mission. Ivan felt his face turn as purple as borsch, bursting with pride when his wife came home with the news.

      Irina admitted later the job was hers from the start; the boss only put it out to tender for the sake of propriety. They’d be allowed to keep any assets they acquired to the value of two and a half million dollars so long as they followed all instructions on how to invest other funds transferred to their account.

      Irina’s mission was to build a portfolio of property assets purchased through special bank accounts and with the help of an Australian national. Fil’s crack team of IT programmers would eventually close and expunge all traces of the accounts’ existence. Irina admitted she didn’t understand all the technicalities, but in essence the operation hinged on a software application that worked like a cloak of invisibility.

      The app made it possible to open bank accounts in any of the major Australian banks, complete with online facilities, passwords and all that jazz, operate them up to the end of the financial year then make them disappear. With an override of daily withdrawal limits, ATMs could be stripped bare of cash. Best of all, the banks couldn’t see the open accounts or money going in and out of them. But it was critical to set up the accounts, deposit and withdraw the money as fast as possible. Irina as a book-keeper was in awe. Just like rubbing out numbers in the ledger book, only on a majestic scale.

      ‘Shut up, Ivan. I’ll be ready when I’m ready!’ Irina’s shrill voice ricocheted off the tiles in the cavernous bathroom. Her vocal versatility amazed him: low and syrupy for sexy, mid-range for negotiations, high and piercing for putting people back in their box.

      ‘Okay, my love,’ came the meek reply.

      Ivan wandered into the lounge room and stared at his craggy face in the mirror. He adjusted his bright red tie about seven times, but Irina would have to re-tie it anyway. Wearing formal clothes felt unnatural, like putting a saddle on a cow. Irina had spent thousands at a Cavill Avenue boutique for men. She picked a wardrobe full of suits and shirts, several pairs of shoes (most of which pinched and rubbed painfully) and a variety of pants in conservative colours and styles. He was only allowed to dress down on weekends when they cruised the shopping malls and relaxed on the beach, unless there was business to attend to. Ivan had only frolicked in the surf a handful of times; once he’d been left itching from a combination of sea lice, sunburn and a rash between his thighs from walking too far in wet board shorts.

      Their teenage daughters were at the beach every day, damn them. He hated how Irina spoiled Anya and Tanya. Even buying cars for them, for God’s sake. They were just learning to drive and Irina wanted to let them loose on the streets in a couple of fancy autos.

      ‘Ivan,’ she’d said to him, ‘they’re too scared to learn to drive in Russia. You know how dangerous it is there. People get shot for not giving way, or for calling another driver a goat’s arsehole. Not to mention the awful roads full of craters. It’s better they learn here, believe me.’

      And he believed her. Even if their daughters were a couple of conniving, manipulative bitches. They were at the beach now, tanning themselves and splashing about in the waves while mummy and daddy bought them a car each. He shook his head, bewildered by his wife’s largesse. He’d never owned a car in Russia and would have given anything as a young man to have one. Even a shitty Russian-built Zaporozhets, a forty horsepower weakling of a car that couldn’t pull a skinny old babushka out of her sandals. Along with the toiling masses he’d suffered the rattling, freezing buses and trams to get around.

      Irina sashayed out of the bathroom, looking as comfortable in her business attire as Ivan looked uncomfortable in his. Primrose pants suit, a single string of pearls with matching earrings and stilettos sharp enough to penetrate a man’s throat. A shimmering aubergine crocodile-skin handbag completed the ensemble.

      ‘Okay, Ivan. Listen to me.’ Irina took a menthol cigarette from a silver case and tapped it twice on the dining table. ‘I want you to be the boss, like last time.’ She lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘Make a good impression on this foolish Gary. I’m sure we can use him later on. If you get stuck, just ask me and I’ll tell you what to say.’

      She stubbed out her barely smoked cigarette. ‘Let’s go, baby.’

      

      ‘I’m pleased to see you done what Mr Mackenzie asked.’

      Bradley Jones spoke with a soft voice, almost effeminate, belying his menacing appearance. Gary twitched. Men like Jones are supposed to snarl and foam at the mouth. Then he remembered seeing a movie with Mike Tyson playing a cameo and how the vicious boxer spoke like a sheila with a lisp. Dammit. His balls were starting to itch again.

      Jones opened the manila envelope, tipped out wads of cash and counted out the money on Gary’s table. He flicked through the cash with the skills of an old-school bank teller. He snapped the thick rubber bands around four bundles of notes and dropped them back in the envelope.

      Gary СКАЧАТЬ