Chameleon. Mark Burnell

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       7

       He looks disappointed to see me. Maybe it’s the black long-sleeved T-shirt I’m wearing. As I shrug off my donkey jacket, I catch him staring at it. Across the chest in gold letters it says: DON’T SEND A BOY TO DO A MAN’S JOB.

       Alexander doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. I know he disapproves, as surely as I know it’s childish of me to wear it.

       ‘We’ve been unable to identify Koba.’

       ‘What a surprise. Who are the candidates?’

       ‘Vladimir Vatukin, the man who succeeded Oleg Rogachev as boss of the Tsentralnaya crime syndicate, and Anatoli Medayev, who was Rogachev’s right-hand man. Since Rogachev’s murder in Paris, Medayev has drifted out of the picture.’

       ‘Unlike Vatukin, who’s benefited directly.’

       ‘There’s another man who might point us in the right direction, though. Konstantin Komarov. A Russian businessman. He’s not a member of any gang in particular but he’s affiliated to several. Or none, depending on your point of view. If the gangs are the cogs in the Russian criminal machine, he’s the oil between them.’

       ‘A lubricant? How tasteful.’

       ‘Komarov travels a lot but he’s based in New York.’

       ‘Like George Salibi. Let me guess. You thought you’d save Magenta House an air-fare and get me to do two jobs for the price of one?’

       ‘Komarov is a known associate of Koba’s.’

       ‘What does he do?’

       ‘He’s an investor. And a financial advisor.’

       ‘A money-launderer …’

       ‘Technically, he’s clean.’

       ‘A crook by proxy, then.’

       ‘Not quite. He’s done his fair share. But it’s all in the past.’

       ‘What’s the deal?’

       ‘You use Komarov to get to Koba.’

       ‘How?’

       ‘By masquerading as a buyer for Plutonium-239. Komarov won’t want to know himself. But he’ll see the chance to take a percentage by passing the business on to Koba.’

       ‘And if that doesn’t work?’

       ‘Throughout the Russian criminal world, Komarov’s reputation – and, by extension, his fortune – depends upon his integrity. If that reputation was undermined, he’d be in trouble. First things first, though. The approach to Komarov must look legitimate. If he suspects anything, it’ll be a dead end. However, once he’s vouched for you –’

       ‘What if he won’t?’

       ‘You’ll have to find a way to make sure he does.’

       ‘How do we get to him?’

       ‘There’s someone here in London who can help. A Pole named Zbigniew Sladek. Rosie Chaudhuri will provide you with all the information you need.’

       ‘Could Vatukin or Medayev have been responsible for Paris?’

       ‘You’re asking me?’

       ‘Oh, for God’s sake …’

       As I get up, Alexander looks at my breasts again and, perhaps, at the slogan which runs across them. DON’T SEND A BOY TO DO A MAN’S JOB. I gather my tatty jacket from the back of my chair. This gives him the opportunity to see what’s written between my shoulder blades: SEND A WOMAN.

       ‘Is that your idea of a joke?’

       I return his glare with interest. ‘No,’ I reply. ‘You’re my idea of a joke.’

      Rosie Chaudhuri’s eyes widened. ‘God, what happened to your hair?’

      ‘Don’t ask.’

      Magenta House, Basement Level Four, Room 2A, an octagonal room without windows. The halogen spots embedded in the ceiling were dimmed. All Stephanie could hear was the soft breath of air conditioning and the murmur of computer terminals. She sat down in the high-backed leather swivel chair next to Rosie. The three twenty-one inch terminals formed a curve in front of them. Rosie typed as she spoke. ‘Sladek, Zbigniew, V. Birth date, 1963, September the fourth. Place of birth, Cracow, Poland.’

      The three screens changed simultaneously. The one on the right subdivided into sixty-four squares, the monitor on the left drew down three script lists. On the central screen, there was a photograph of a young man with flat features, grey eyes with grey smudges beneath, and wispy light brown hair.

      Rosie said, ‘On the right screen, we have parcels of information. If you squint hard enough, you’ll see that each has a heading. Just touch the one you want and it’ll appear on the central monitor. On the left, you have reference tags to guide you to associated general information. It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it.’

      Sladek ran the London branch of Almatinvest from a rented office in the Hyde Park Business Centre. The head office was based in Almaty, Kazakhstan. He lived alone in a first-floor, one-bedroom flat in Cadogan Square and drove a silver Mercedes Kompressor. Since his arrival in Britain two years before, his life had been a picture of propriety. Before that, however, he’d been a financial cowboy in the Wild East, pioneering new forms of banking in places where livestock was still the predominant currency. As a thirty-year-old, he’d run a small private bank named Vassex in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Rosie went to one of the associated topics. A picture of snow-capped peaks formed on the central screen.

      ‘This is the Tian Shan which straddles China and Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan is a tiny, mountainous country which, since the collapse of the СКАЧАТЬ