Europe in Winter (The Fractured Europe Sequence)(71)

“I don’t know about him,” Forsyth said. “You already know what I think about you.”

“To see Babykiller is to die,” Crispin said stoically.

“Must be tough on his barber.”

“You’re so f*cking funny.”

“I’m also f*cking helping you out of the kindness of my f*cking heart, and don’t you f*cking forget it.”

“Yeah, all right, man,” Crispin said, all contrition. “I’m wound up, yeah? Got a lot riding on this deal, okay?”

“Not least the continued custody of your balls.”

Crispin laughed nervously. “Yeah. Right. See, the deal’s like this. Babykiller lets me have the stuff on account and I offload it on somebody. I got to offload it for a certain figure, right? But anything over that I get to keep. Can’t fail.”

Forsyth could think of any number of ways it could fail. He said, “You’ve sold it to the Georgians, haven’t you.”

Crispin smiled.

Forsyth stopped on the darkened street and stared at Crispin. “How many times have I told you?” he shouted. “Russians, Chechens, Ingush, Georgians. They’re all the same. You can’t trust any of them.”

“I think you’re a bigot, you know?” Crispin said calmly.

“At least I’m not wandering around Warsaw in fear for my life from Babykiller and the Georgians. Oh Christ.” Something had just occurred to Forsyth. “Not a f*cking war.”

Crispin shrugged. “Dunno if you could call it a war.”

“Well what in Christ’s name would you call it?”

Another shrug. “I guess they have a lot of old scores to settle. Hey, I only sell the stuff. If they sell it on and use the proceeds to buy weapons of mass destruction, that’s their business. I don’t get involved with the end-user thing.”

Forsyth raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry, Crispin. I’m not getting involved in financing a ruddy war.”

“Oh man,” Crispin said sadly. “They don’t like the f*cking Russians. I don’t like the f*cking Russians. You don’t like the f*cking Russians, as I recall.”

Forsyth remembered a long couple of months working on the Moscow Metro extension. Chandeliers and all. He stood listening to the night.

“I know you loved the Moscow Metro, man,” Crispin said, “but this is business.”

“You can’t trust the Georgians, Crispin,” Forsyth said. “All they want to do is kill Russians.”

“I’m not going to blame them for that,” Crispin sniffed. “Evil empire and etcetera, right? Just doing my bit for the Cold War a few years too late, right?”

If anything was guaranteed to piss Forsyth off, it was people trying to play Central European politics. He had hated that sort of thing even before he had come to Poland. He said, “Nobody wins in a situation like this, Crispin.”

Crispin laughed. “You poor sap, Snowy. Everybody wins. Babykiller gets his money and is happy, I get my money and am happy, the Georgians get their guns and get to kill Russians and are happy.”

“You’re just spreading sunshine around Central Europe, in other words,” Forsyth said.

“This is a complicated region,” Crispin allowed sagely.

“Well, thank you, AJP Taylor.”

“Don’t try to talk me out of this, Snowy,” Crispin said seriously. “I’m in too deep.”

“And stop calling me Snowy. You know I hate that.”





STARE MIASTO, THE Old Town Station, had turned out to be the most contentious of the stations in the Metro project. In 1944, after the Uprising, the Germans had taken their anger out on the Old Town and completely rubbled it. When the War was over, the Poles had rebuilt the Old Town. The original plans had been destroyed, the story had it, so they did it from Canaletto paintings. Poles could work miracles when they put their minds to it, although the reconstruction was undertaken using cheap materials and the area was starting to take on a rather shabby look. Still, hundreds of thousands of tourists still came each year, took their photos, and left again, believing they had been looking at the original buildings.

Varsovians tended to be protective of the Old Town, and hands were flung in the air when the plans for Stare Miasto Station were produced. The original plans had called for extensive excavation and selective demolition, and a ghastly faux-mediaeval edifice to house the station concourse. Escalators. Beltways. Forsyth couldn’t remember who the architects were – some Swedish firm, he thought – but he thought the place should have won them some kind of award for the collision of kitsch with state-of-the-art transport technology.

After a number of rowdy public meetings and demonstrations, the Swedes had had the contract taken away from them. A new firm – Forsyth didn’t have a clue who they were – came in with a huge amount of capital and produced plans which involved the minimum of disturbance. Everything underground; discreet entrances; no beltways. Work was begun – got quite a long way, relatively speaking – and then the Government changed, and after a few weeks the workers Forsyth represented began to drift away across Europe to other projects.

Forsyth and Crispin walked across the Square to one of the station entrances. The entrance was covered with a small, notionally temporary, concrete blockhouse, its sides decorated with brightly-coloured but unimaginative graffiti and peeling flyposters advertising films and rock bands Forsyth had never heard of.