Triple Cross by Brian Freemantle

Author:Brian Freemantle [Freemantle, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: calibre
Published: 2004-07-14T22:00:00+00:00

21

It hadn’t been planned for Sam Campinali’s rail journey from Frankfurt, where his delayed plane from Toronto landed, to take longer than Paolo Brigoli’s, who’d evasively zigzagged from Italy by flying from Milan to Cologne, but it gave the waiting Feliks Zhikin the opportunity to judge separately the other two consiglieri. It was important to both to have been booked—under their Russian-designated assumed names—into the Bristol Kempinski, further along Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm from the Am Zoo, in which Orlov’s former KGB surveillance specialist was himself being kept under twenty-four-hour FBI watch easily identifiable by the former critically unimpressed professional.

Briefed upon the father’s abstinence, Zhikin didn’t expect the son to order alcohol, which he did, although only beer, in the hotel’s expansive bar in which Zhikin experimentally let the younger, bespectacled man select their table, acknowledging the apparently casual choice—which was anything but casual—beyond any possibility of their being overheard. Zhikin ordered beer as well.

As they touched glasses, Brigoli said: “They took extreme precautions to get me here. And the name Craxi has unfortunate connotations in my country. He was a politician on our side who got found out.”

If you only knew half of how you’re now being manipulated, thought Zhikin, as he’d increasingly reflected since arriving in Berlin, all the more so after shuttling back and forth to Moscow: his was the name and the face that would be held perhaps even more responsible than Orlov himself. And he again who had to ensure Orlov’s convoluted scheme worked with clockwork precision. Zhikin said, “As our association hopefully progresses, you’ll come to realize we don’t put anything or anyone at risk, particularly no one involved in something as important as that association.”

“It might also be inferred as uncertainty,” said the Italian, ineptly.

“Caution is not uncertainty. It is important, essential, that no one forgets what we are trying to establish here. We get it right, we virtually rule the world.”

“We do that now,” declared Brigoli, bombastically.

Zhikin shook his head, although keeping the gesture short of being dismissive, which was how he genuinely considered it. “Until now we’ve just nibbled at the edges. If this is done properly, we get the whole cake, with all the cherries.”

“We expected the formation meeting to be in Moscow,” announced Brigoli.

“Why?” demanded Zhikin, flatly.

“Don Orlov initially came to us. His respect should have been reciprocal.”

Was it a test or an oversight? wondered Zhikin. “I believed you to understand Russian?”

Brigoli frowned. “We’re talking in Russian now!”

“But not colloquially,” said Zhikin, who believed he could understand why this man had irritated Orlov. “Colloquially in Russian ‘Don’ is not a term of respect. It indicates someone sexually ill equipped. Maybe you should tell your people, to avoid a mistake in the future?”

Brigoli visibly flushed. Sincerely he said, “Thank you.” Then, at once, “We were discussing why the meeting will not be in Moscow?”

“Berlin is conveniently central but at the same time neutral,” said Zhikin, rehearsed as he believed himself to be prepared for every question and eventuality. “This is the formation gathering, no one given—or seeking—the impression of superiority from the venue.

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