agents might develop after a few years’ running around in designer Minis selling overpriced properties to Sloanes or the Notting Hill mob.
Their hair was well cut but over-gelled, and they were cleanshaven. They wore Armani jeans and shirts, with rugby-ball cufflinks. You saw a lot of guys like them around town, with money to burn and plenty of drop-dead beautiful Svetlanas and Nadias happy to help them – for a suitable fee. These were sex-pats. They’d be down here later tonight, no doubt, watching the women who danced in cages, and buying shots from the ones wearing bikinis and vodka bottles slung in hip-holsters.
The ex-pat women didn’t get left out. There were plenty of Russian men looking to provide the same service. This was an equal-opportunities town.
Companies that sent staff to dangerous places showered them with incentives. Forget bankers’ bonuses. On top of their monster salaries, these guys got free rent, foreign service premiums, and cost-of-living allowances. No wonder money lost its meaning for them. After a thousand-dollar dinner at the Café Pushkin, they went to clubs like Gunslingers and ordered vodka tonics at thirty dollars a time. Then they’d select their sofas and wait for the girls to come say hi. Behind each was a private room. The menu on the table – in Russian, Japanese and English – helped you budget for what happened in there: Intercourse 30 minutes: $500 .
Then they all turned up at their banks and law firms the next morning after about half an hour’s sleep. By lunchtime they’d be having the first one of the day in the company bar or snorting a line of coke on their desk to steady their nerves.
Anna had a word for their disease: anomie. ‘It means a breakdown of social norms or values, Nicholas. Distance from home puts personal values out of mind.’
It was just the kind of thing her favourite Russian authors banged on about. My new best mate Fyodor Dostoevsky certainly went for it in Crime and Punishment . The main character was trying to justify murder by saying it was not people he was killing but a principle.
Good luck to them. Why not? It didn’t bother me. I just got on with my own life and let those jokers get on with theirs.
Mitchell, the well-fed one with the side parting, turned to me. ‘You’re a Brit, aren’t you?’
I looked up from reassembling the weapon. ‘Yep.’
‘We are too.’
He pointed at the Glock. ‘We like them. That your own?’
I nodded.
‘I’ve seen you shoot a couple of times. We’re thinking of joining, buying some Glocks, having some fun.’
Webb, taller, with dirty-blond hair, was concentrating on the TV. RT ran the intro to the ten o’clock news.
‘Yeah, that’d be good.’
‘What do you do with the gun? Do you have it locked up at home, or is it better to leave them here? Is it a drama carrying a pistol across town?’
The RT announcer was a very bland-looking guy with thinning hair and rimless glasses. The headlines kicked off with Libya. Anna would be on soon. Gaddafi had launched his first bombing raids on Benghazi. The West had called for a no-fly zone and Russia was sitting back and laughing at it all.
‘I just leave mine here, mate. I don’t need it at home. And I don’t want it burning a hole in my pocket.’
I glanced at the screen above his head. Anna was gobbing off into her mike, with crowds of chanting Libyans around her.
Mitchell got the hint and went back to his showbiz partner, who was now watching Mong get even more pissed off with the Germans. They were larging it in front of an increasingly long queue of tourists waiting their turn.
7
ANNA LOOKED AS good as ever. The water in Benghazi must have been back on. The last email I’d got from her, the day before yesterday, told me the water had been cut off and she hadn’t washed her hair for a week. Her two-minute piece was done. I’d watch the full-length version when it came on later. The three o’clock news was more in-depth.
I zipped
Their hair was well cut but over-gelled, and they were cleanshaven. They wore Armani jeans and shirts, with rugby-ball cufflinks. You saw a lot of guys like them around town, with money to burn and plenty of drop-dead beautiful Svetlanas and Nadias happy to help them – for a suitable fee. These were sex-pats. They’d be down here later tonight, no doubt, watching the women who danced in cages, and buying shots from the ones wearing bikinis and vodka bottles slung in hip-holsters.
The ex-pat women didn’t get left out. There were plenty of Russian men looking to provide the same service. This was an equal-opportunities town.
Companies that sent staff to dangerous places showered them with incentives. Forget bankers’ bonuses. On top of their monster salaries, these guys got free rent, foreign service premiums, and cost-of-living allowances. No wonder money lost its meaning for them. After a thousand-dollar dinner at the Café Pushkin, they went to clubs like Gunslingers and ordered vodka tonics at thirty dollars a time. Then they’d select their sofas and wait for the girls to come say hi. Behind each was a private room. The menu on the table – in Russian, Japanese and English – helped you budget for what happened in there: Intercourse 30 minutes: $500 .
Then they all turned up at their banks and law firms the next morning after about half an hour’s sleep. By lunchtime they’d be having the first one of the day in the company bar or snorting a line of coke on their desk to steady their nerves.
Anna had a word for their disease: anomie. ‘It means a breakdown of social norms or values, Nicholas. Distance from home puts personal values out of mind.’
It was just the kind of thing her favourite Russian authors banged on about. My new best mate Fyodor Dostoevsky certainly went for it in Crime and Punishment . The main character was trying to justify murder by saying it was not people he was killing but a principle.
Good luck to them. Why not? It didn’t bother me. I just got on with my own life and let those jokers get on with theirs.
Mitchell, the well-fed one with the side parting, turned to me. ‘You’re a Brit, aren’t you?’
I looked up from reassembling the weapon. ‘Yep.’
‘We are too.’
He pointed at the Glock. ‘We like them. That your own?’
I nodded.
‘I’ve seen you shoot a couple of times. We’re thinking of joining, buying some Glocks, having some fun.’
Webb, taller, with dirty-blond hair, was concentrating on the TV. RT ran the intro to the ten o’clock news.
‘Yeah, that’d be good.’
‘What do you do with the gun? Do you have it locked up at home, or is it better to leave them here? Is it a drama carrying a pistol across town?’
The RT announcer was a very bland-looking guy with thinning hair and rimless glasses. The headlines kicked off with Libya. Anna would be on soon. Gaddafi had launched his first bombing raids on Benghazi. The West had called for a no-fly zone and Russia was sitting back and laughing at it all.
‘I just leave mine here, mate. I don’t need it at home. And I don’t want it burning a hole in my pocket.’
I glanced at the screen above his head. Anna was gobbing off into her mike, with crowds of chanting Libyans around her.
Mitchell got the hint and went back to his showbiz partner, who was now watching Mong get even more pissed off with the Germans. They were larging it in front of an increasingly long queue of tourists waiting their turn.
7
ANNA LOOKED AS good as ever. The water in Benghazi must have been back on. The last email I’d got from her, the day before yesterday, told me the water had been cut off and she hadn’t washed her hair for a week. Her two-minute piece was done. I’d watch the full-length version when it came on later. The three o’clock news was more in-depth.
I zipped
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