all?"
"All what?"
"Is that the full range of his motivation or were there more practical considerations?"
"He was lured by the glamour. We told him there wasn't any, but that only whetted his appetite. He saw himself as some sort of heretic Templar knight, paying his tribute to orthodoxy. He liked having two fathers, even if he never said
so—the KGB and us. If you asked me to write it all down you'd have a string of contradictions. That's Larry. That’s joes. Motive doesn't exist in the abstract. It's not who people are. It's what they do."
"Thank you."
"Not at all."
"And the money?"
"I'm sorry?"
"The money that we paid him. The substantial tax-free income. What part did the money play in his calculations, do you suppose?"
"Oh, for God's sake, Marjorie, nobody worked for money in those days, and Larry never worked for money in his life. I told you. He called his pay Judas money. He's money illiterate. A financial Neanderthal."
"Nevertheless he got through an awful lot of it."
"He was feckless. Whatever he had he spent. He was a touch for everyone with a sob story. He had one or two expensive upper-class habits, which we encouraged because Russians are snobs, but in most ways he was totally unmaterialistic."
"Like what?"
"Like buying his wine from Berry's. Like having his shoes
"I don't call that unmaterialistic. I call it extravagant."
"That's just words," I flung back.
For a while no one spoke, which I took as a good omen. Marjorie was making yet another tour of her unvarnished fingernails. Barney was looking as if he would prefer to be safely back among his policemen. Finally Jake Merriman, emerging from his unnatural trance, straightened himself, smoothed his hands over his waistcoat, then ran a finger round the inside of his stiff white collar to free it from the ties of flesh that threatened to engulf it.
"Your Konstantin Abramovich Checheyev has milked the Russian government of thirty-seven million quid and rising," he said. "They're still counting. Friday last, the Russian ambassador here sought parley with the foreign secretary and presented him with a file of evidence. Why he chose a Friday when the secretary was just leaving for his dacha, God alone knows. But he did, and Larry's hoofprints are all over the file. Daylight, premeditated banditry, Tim Cranmer, by your ex-agent and his former KGB controller. Odds are, Checheyev got word that the balloon was about to go up and hightailed it to Bath to advise Larry to do a runner before the ambassador made his demarche Are you trying to say something? Don't."
I had shown no sign of this that I knew of, so shook my head, but he was already talking again.
"It's a simple enough racket they were working, but don't let's knock it for that. Very few Russian banks are empowered to transfer money abroad. Those that are tend to have close links with the former KGB. A U.K.-based accomplice sets up a bogus U.K. company—import, export, you name it—and bangs in bogus bills to his mates in Moscow. The bills are authenticated by crooked officials, mafia linked. Then they're paid. There's a gloss I like particularly. It seems the Russian legal code hasn't yet got round to addressing such modern eccentricities as bank fraud, so nobody gets hammered and everyone who might make a stink gets a cut instead. Russian banks are still in the ice age, profits are an abstraction nobody takes seriously, so in the immortal words of Noel Coward, whistle up the caviar and say, 'Thank God.—
Another hiatus while Merriman raised his eyebrows at me in invitation, but I remained silent.
"Having landed the cash, Checheyev did what we'd all do. He buried it in a string of no-see-um accounts in Britain and abroad. In most of these enterprises your old friend Larry functioned as his intermediary, bagman, and red-toothed accomplice: registering the companies, opening the accounts, presenting the bills, stashing the loot. In a minute you're going to tell me it's all in Checheyev's
"All what?"
"Is that the full range of his motivation or were there more practical considerations?"
"He was lured by the glamour. We told him there wasn't any, but that only whetted his appetite. He saw himself as some sort of heretic Templar knight, paying his tribute to orthodoxy. He liked having two fathers, even if he never said
so—the KGB and us. If you asked me to write it all down you'd have a string of contradictions. That's Larry. That’s joes. Motive doesn't exist in the abstract. It's not who people are. It's what they do."
"Thank you."
"Not at all."
"And the money?"
"I'm sorry?"
"The money that we paid him. The substantial tax-free income. What part did the money play in his calculations, do you suppose?"
"Oh, for God's sake, Marjorie, nobody worked for money in those days, and Larry never worked for money in his life. I told you. He called his pay Judas money. He's money illiterate. A financial Neanderthal."
"Nevertheless he got through an awful lot of it."
"He was feckless. Whatever he had he spent. He was a touch for everyone with a sob story. He had one or two expensive upper-class habits, which we encouraged because Russians are snobs, but in most ways he was totally unmaterialistic."
"Like what?"
"Like buying his wine from Berry's. Like having his shoes
"I don't call that unmaterialistic. I call it extravagant."
"That's just words," I flung back.
For a while no one spoke, which I took as a good omen. Marjorie was making yet another tour of her unvarnished fingernails. Barney was looking as if he would prefer to be safely back among his policemen. Finally Jake Merriman, emerging from his unnatural trance, straightened himself, smoothed his hands over his waistcoat, then ran a finger round the inside of his stiff white collar to free it from the ties of flesh that threatened to engulf it.
"Your Konstantin Abramovich Checheyev has milked the Russian government of thirty-seven million quid and rising," he said. "They're still counting. Friday last, the Russian ambassador here sought parley with the foreign secretary and presented him with a file of evidence. Why he chose a Friday when the secretary was just leaving for his dacha, God alone knows. But he did, and Larry's hoofprints are all over the file. Daylight, premeditated banditry, Tim Cranmer, by your ex-agent and his former KGB controller. Odds are, Checheyev got word that the balloon was about to go up and hightailed it to Bath to advise Larry to do a runner before the ambassador made his demarche Are you trying to say something? Don't."
I had shown no sign of this that I knew of, so shook my head, but he was already talking again.
"It's a simple enough racket they were working, but don't let's knock it for that. Very few Russian banks are empowered to transfer money abroad. Those that are tend to have close links with the former KGB. A U.K.-based accomplice sets up a bogus U.K. company—import, export, you name it—and bangs in bogus bills to his mates in Moscow. The bills are authenticated by crooked officials, mafia linked. Then they're paid. There's a gloss I like particularly. It seems the Russian legal code hasn't yet got round to addressing such modern eccentricities as bank fraud, so nobody gets hammered and everyone who might make a stink gets a cut instead. Russian banks are still in the ice age, profits are an abstraction nobody takes seriously, so in the immortal words of Noel Coward, whistle up the caviar and say, 'Thank God.—
Another hiatus while Merriman raised his eyebrows at me in invitation, but I remained silent.
"Having landed the cash, Checheyev did what we'd all do. He buried it in a string of no-see-um accounts in Britain and abroad. In most of these enterprises your old friend Larry functioned as his intermediary, bagman, and red-toothed accomplice: registering the companies, opening the accounts, presenting the bills, stashing the loot. In a minute you're going to tell me it's all in Checheyev's
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