Whispers of Betrayal

They held each other’s gaze, testing.

‘You pick your moments, Tom,’ Rankin eventually responded. His tone was considered, contemplative. Not dismissive. ‘The tom-toms are beginning to beat from Downing Street. Testing the tune of an early reshuffle. One or two braves to be burnt at the stake, so rumour has it. Somebody will need to take their place.’

‘I’d like it to be me.’ There, he’d said it. No ambiguity, ambition to the fore. It felt good, like favourite shoes.

‘Ah, the appetite returns!’

‘Put it down to menopausal vanity. An insane desire for a higher profile. Before I have to start dying my hair.’

‘And suddenly you’ve become enamoured of our beloved leader?’ There was no hiding the sceptical note. Rankin was a musician, he could recognize a duff score.

‘You know me better than that, Eddie. Y’know Brother Bendall better than that, too. One day there’ll be a great shaking of the ground and he’ll get buried beneath an avalanche of his own bullshit. But while History makes up her mind as to when the burial will be, I can be helpful. I want to be helpful.’

‘And some might say he needs all the help he can get,’ Rankin responded, so softly that it wouldn’t carry as far as the walls.

‘Will you put my name forward?’

‘It’s my duty, now you’ve offered.’

‘But will you recommend it?’

The Chief Whip took a slug of whisky. ‘Recommend you? Bit like recommending jumping as a cure for vertigo. Who knows? You’re such an awkward sod, Goodfellowe …’

The McDonnell Douglas MD-82 banked gently over the sea as it positioned itself for a final approach to the airport at Odessa. The sight that greeted her through the cabin window was remarkable and Elizabeth hoped it would prove to be something of an omen.

Through the window of the Austrian Air flight she could see a fleet of aircraft set out beside the runway, a testament to the might of the infant and independent republic of Ukraine. Bombers, transports, fighter planes, helicopters, MIGs, Tupolevs, Yaks and Sukhois, all ranged in straight rows like the tentacles of a great war machine ready to form a guard of honour.

‘Our air force,’ the male passenger in the seat beside her indicated. ‘Big bloody air force,’ he added. Yuri’s English was not good and was very guttural, like an engine running on its last drop of oil, but somehow throughout the afternoon flight from Vienna he had managed to make his meanings entirely transparent to his unaccompanied companion. She had already turned down his repeated invitation to dinner.

As they taxied past the aircraft on the ground he returned to his theme, jabbing his finger for emphasis. ‘Air force in mothballs. Big bloody moths, eh?’ A laugh originated from somewhere near his large intestine. ‘But no bloody balls!’

She could see what he meant. The aircraft that at a distance had looked so imposing at closer quarters revealed nothing but disaster. The place was an aeronautical knacker’s yard. There were old military planes with engines stripped, their sides still covered with Soviet stigmata, single-seater fighters shorn of their canopies and propped up on concrete slabs, helicopters with some rotors missing, the others sagging in surrender. Passenger planes, too. One huge hurry-before-they-rot-and-rust clearance sale. You could buy anything here, she’d been told, even buy a navy to match if you took a trip to Sebastopol, and for a price that was always right. An omen, indeed, she hoped.

She had heard about the wine from a Ukrainian customer who had come to dine at The Kremlin after delivering his son to his Wiltshire public school. The wine was not his personal business, that at least she had managed to gather from his fragmentary command of the language, although what his business was remained something of a mystery. When she had enquired, he frowned in concentration, hunting for elusive English words, then picked up an imaginary weapon in both hands and, with a juddering motion, sprayed the restaurant with bullets. ‘Ah, a soldier,’ she had deduced. He shook his head. ‘A policeman, then?’ He scowled in contempt, at which point she had let the matter rest. A man with access to weaponry and sufficient hard currency to send his son to English public school was not someone she wanted to press too hard. Anyway, he left a substantial tip along with a mysterious reference to wine. There was a specific mention of the Tsars, and mutterings about a lost cellar.

A few days later she received a warbling international phone call from someone who called himself Vladimir Houdoliy and whose English was, thankfully, exceptional, although delivered with intonation that was entirely American. His mastery of metaphor also left something to be desired. He introduced himself as a man who ‘has a lot of experience tucked away beneath my belt,’ which left her crippled for days. He apologized for the intrusion, called her Madam Proprietor, and explained his purpose.

He spoke in colourful tones, so engaging to Elizabeth on a day of leaden London skies, of his homeland and of a magnificent palace that overlooked the sea. A place of dreams, he said, somewhere on the coast of the Black Sea, a former summer residence much favoured by the last Tsar and Tsaritsa and equipped, in their time, most magnificently. Vast floors of the coolest Italian marble. French chandeliers that outshone diamonds. Statuary that would have graced Florence, fountains whose waters tumbled like a constant peal of bells, and beneath it all, dark and secure, an extensive wine cellar whose contents were the pride of the owner of the palace – Vladimir’s grandfather.

In those ancient times when riot and unrest had rushed towards revolution, Vladimir’s grandfather had grown increasingly concerned. The Bolsheviks showed such little respect for palaces let alone for French chandeliers, and no respect at all for cellars, particularly those holding the Tsar and Tsaritsa. So he had shipped out the statues, turned off the fountains, draped sacking around the chandeliers, even allowed peasants to sleep in the stables. He also decided to brick up the wine cellar in the hope that he could liberate it at a later time.

That time had never come. Grandfather had been put to the purge, the palace had been stripped of its marble and then nationalized. Lenin had promised to turn it into a sanatorium, but instead it became a munitions factory and, after a period in World War II when it had been occupied by the Germans, it had been used as a mental asylum. No one had bothered with the cellar, its secrets preserved behind crumbling brick and in faded family legend.

Yet, thank God and Gorbachev, the New Revolution had changed all that. Vladimir had been able to reclaim his inheritance and was planning to restore life to the crumbling palace by transforming it into a headquarters building for a Western company. A great opportunity for him – except for the problem of his cash flow. The chaos in those wretched currency markets, you understand? So would Elizabeth be interested in some rather fine wines? Mostly reds, of course, fortified, from the Crimea, plus a wide range of local spirits. All Russian imperial, pre-1917 vintage? At prices in hard currency that would do them both a favour?

Timing is everything in a woman’s life and Vladimir Houdoliy found his timing was all but perfect. Elizabeth needed Vladimir, or someone just like him. Recession had begun to nibble at Westminster’s sense of well-being and takings at The Kremlin were down. Not desperate, but down. There was a black hole emerging in her accounts and her bank manager, although appropriately primed with an excellent lunch and one of Elizabeth’s most daringly cut dresses, had proved unsympathetic. He had accepted a large Remy then whined throughout the refill about the slim margins and poor security of the restaurant trade. Wanker.

Elizabeth was resolved. A little fun needed to be put back into the business, and a few cases of good Tsarist vintages at the right price might prove a very considerable source of amusement.

Houdoliy turned out to be fun, too. Tall, sixty-something, with a sea of silvery waves for hair, he greeted her at the terminal with a chauffeur-driven Audi and a look of gentle mischief in his grandfatherly eyes. There was also a bouquet of yellow roses. ‘For a beautiful and most welcome guest,’ the card announced.

They had driven along the gentle tree-lined boulevards of Odessa with its pastel-painted mansions, once clearly a graceful mercantile capital, now desperately wrinkled at its many edges. ‘But safe!’ Vladimir had emphasized. ‘At night, the most dangerous things on our streets are the potholes.’

‘Why so safe?’ she had enquired.

‘Because our local mafia requires all muggers to be off the streets by sunset,’ he had exclaimed, before clasping her hand and bursting into laughter. She noticed he had smooth hands, not at all leathery like some men of his age.

He made her most welcome. He had booked her into the Shevchenko, a floating hotel moored in the harbour that had been converted from an old passenger ferry. Its rooms were small but comfortable, although the main attraction for most visitors seemed to be the much larger bar. That night he took her to The Valday, a restaurant that stood at the very top of the Potemkin Steps. The exterior was inconspicuous but it was beautifully decorated inside and offered the most absorbing dishes of fish, both fresh and smoked. There was also black and orange caviare by the forkful, a little vodka and a remarkably good local sparkling wine. Modern Ukrainian wines had a poor reputation but by heavens they were getting better – although nothing like the pre-1917 vintages, of course, Vladimir had insisted forcefully.

She discovered that for herself the following afternoon. The palace was a short drive along the coast, at a point where the cliffs swooped down to the great sand beaches of Odessa Bay to play tag with the sea. A place of princes, exactly as he had described, although not as large as she had imagined, brooding, with a cracked whitewashed portico. Outside in the grounds there was nothing but a toppled sundial and a few empty plinths, crumbling like long-forgotten graves in gardens that had been tended by nothing but a few grazing cattle for more than half a century. Inside, the palace was guarded by echoes that swirled around columns and scurried across floors that had been stripped of their marble and patched with bad cement. And deep within, behind a new steel door, he led her to the cellars, rows of musty underground enclaves that smelled of old souls where the bottles were laid out like corpses.

Oh, but what a confusion of wines! Dessert wines that had been protected by their high sugar and alcohol contents, some of which were still improving. Heavy ports, red and white Muscats, Tokays. Many of the wines were from Massandra, the bottles bearing the double-headed eagle that marked them as once belonging to the Tsar himself. Like a magician, Vladimir would produce yet another surprise, stroking away the layers of dust and encrustation with the tenderness of a young lover to reveal still more wonders. An 1896 Prince Golitzin Lacrima Christi. An Alupka White Port. A Muscat in a bulbous bottle with a huge royal seal on its shoulder, made for the Tsar in the very year they had dragged him from his throne.

They sat at an old wooden table stained the colour of dried blood from the lees, and in the candlelight Vladimir subjected her to a series of temptations, first with a wine from the Crimea, then a bottle from further along the coast. They tasted wine after wine, nine in all, mostly reds but with two darkly sweet whites and a brandy. Not all of them had worn as well as Vladimir, but they inspired in spite of that, simply because of their history. From the shadows of the wall an icon of a gilded Madonna smiled contentedly, while Vladimir entertained Elizabeth with more stories of his family, of the palace, and of the purge that had emptied it of his grandfather’s family.

‘He was killed in this cellar by the NKVD,’ Vladimir explains, with a hint of pride. ‘Stood up against the same wall he had built to hide this wine and shot. On the very day they murdered the Tsar and Tsaritsa. This is more than wine, this is the blood of my country.’

‘You must find it difficult to part with.’

He nods, a short bow of his head as though submitting to God. ‘Of course. But necessary in order to restore the palace. Sadly, our bank managers are less trusting than yours.’

Which must put them in the Crippen league, she muses. Money has been mentioned. It is time to begin. ‘I suppose you’ll be expecting a good price for the wines?’

He holds his head to one side, as though considering the matter for the first time. ‘A good price, yes. But not a great price. I need to sell some of the wine quickly. Direct, not through an agent. They’re all mafia! They would charge a huge commission on the wine they sold, then steal the rest as soon as they knew of its whereabouts. No, by selling direct to you we can both gain.’

‘So … how much?’

‘Ah, Elizabeth. You are young. You are beautiful. And you are impatient!’ He chuckles as though scolding a granddaughter, but his smile is anything but grandfatherly. He is a man of refined tastes, in both wine and women. ‘Before we discuss business, let us try one last wine. Not a great vintage but a young Ukrainian wine. A Cagur. A little sweet. Like port. But strong and honest. Like our friendship!’

It is as he has promised, clean, honest, brimming with the taste of blackcurrant. This bottle they drink, not taste, as they sit across the flickering flame of the candle and he quotes the prices he expects. For the Tokay, twenty thousand hryvna a case. Which is fair. For the Madeira, nearly thirty. But it is too dense, she protests, like ink. It is like a woman’s virtue, he replies, you will get double for it in London.

She laughs, returns his stare, which in the candlelight suggests more than simply business. He is exceptionally good-looking for his age, his frame elegant and self-disciplined. Undoubtedly experienced. To her surprise she wonders what he is like in bed. She’s never been to bed with a man over sixty.

‘You are wondering, perhaps, what an old man like me is doing with such longing for a beautiful woman like you, Elizabeth?’ he enquires with startling insight. ‘Have no cares,’ he laughs. ‘Before we are even halfway through this bottle I shall probably not even be able to stand.’

Suddenly she feels elated. For as they discuss the wines she might buy and she struggles with the mental arithmetic of conversion, it’s as though a great weight has been lifted from her. She will take twenty cases. Average cost quoted by Vladimir of £2,600. She will sell half the cases at auction through Sotheby’s for what she estimates will be double the price paid. Which will leave her with another ten cases absolutely free, and available for sale at an even larger mark-up at The Kremlin. With only a little luck she might clear £75,000 on this deal, enough to sort out all her own cash-flow problems. Next time that undersized, illegitimate and copulatory bank manager of hers can pay for his own lunch.

‘Vladimir, I like this place. I like this wine.’ Without wanting to admit it, she likes him too. ‘I think we have a deal.’

‘Magnificent! So tonight we shall have a little party, you and I. But first, a toast. To beauty.’

Vladimir drains the last of his wine and with an agile flourish throws the empty glass against the cellar wall. Elizabeth, giggling and a little intoxicated from the alcohol and excitement, does the same.

Vladimir leans across and kisses her, in celebration, and not like a granddaughter. He feels warm, smells good, masculine. She notices he isn’t having the slightest trouble standing.

FOUR (#ulink_0ef4fdb0-4658-5bbb-8d28-85e1f875a3e0)

Mary Wetherell climbed out of her taxi in front of the Army & Navy Club, wondering what dinner might hold in store for her. You could never tell with Amadeus. Bit of a mad bugger, was the Colonel.