Chapter XXIII Colorbis Travel

 

 

I booked a cab and sat back to wait. I gave Melanie another kiss as she sat in her armchair. She wrapped her arms round my neck and half got up. I kissed her on her mouth which was ready and waiting for me. With one hand I rubbed one of her breasts through her nightdress. She did not make to stop me but disengaged herself from my kiss.

“Look, you bastard,” she whispered to me affectionately. “Don’t complicate my personal life now. We have a task to do. I don’t know if I’ve told you too much. So keep quiet about it until you’re told more. It could be anytime in the next couple of days. In the meantime don’t rock the boat. Please. Don’t challenge anyone. Let things cool.”

“Melanie, I’ll take in what you’ve said. But, please, let me reserve my judgement.” (That is what I said to her, but actually I was thinking this woman was still stark raving mad.) “I promise I’ll keep quiet for the next few days and I won’t move the goalposts. Thank you for the evening.”

“Yes, thank you,” she answered slyly. “Perhaps I can reciprocate sometime. Just don’t fall foul of me in the Council chamber, Councillor Axtell. Or other parts of your body may have to answer for it.”

“That goes for you too, Councillor Miss Sheldrake. We can always have a repeat performance if you overreach yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah. Promises, promises. Typical bloody male. Now sod off.”

The cab arrived. I gave her a final squeeze and I was off.

I checked the messages on my phone. There was one from Andy Trosser congratulating me on the results of that evening’s public meeting. I wondered if he too was on the take. Melanie had not mentioned Trosser in her list but then what did she know? The more I thought about her intervention the madder she seemed to be. I felt like Scrooge who had been spooked by Marley’s Ghost into expecting 3 visitors who will tell him more. The Ghost of Christmas Past and all that. What a load of rubbish! “Humbug!” as Scrooge would say.

And yet, like Scrooge, I was beset by doubt and anxiety. She had only been confirming some of my most secret fears as I had gathered hints left by Valentina and my own observations of my colleagues’ behaviour and near obsession with getting this scheme through. Yet when push came to shove, they all seemed to back away from fronting it. Grayson and Emil kept putting me in the firing line. At first, I had been naively flattered to think that I had been allowed more room to develop my own style and that I was leaping opportunistically into a vacuum which I could fill by advancing my own political career. But was I just being a patsy? Was I leaping in or had I been thrown in? Was I just a fall guy in case things went wrong and the shit hit the fan? Especially now that Bill Kitson and Donald McClintock seemed to be part of it. And who fronted for them? Those poor saps, Meena and Stelios, of course. How bloody convenient for them! Or was I falling foul of a ranting conspiracy theorist who had grabbed my attention because she shared my S&M fantasies?

A second message from my mobile was from Meena. She confirmed that she had collected my briefcase from the earlier cab. And will I please ring her when I was free. I looked at my watch. It was well past midnight. I left her a message saying it was too late to contact her. I thanked her for my briefcase and reassured her that I would collect it in the morning.

Just as my cab reached my home my mobile rang again. It was Meena. She had got my message. She was out walking her dog, Ching. Can she still drop round to tonight? I was now emotionally exhausted so I told her that I would contact her in the evening just before my usual Friday surgery at St Edmunds School. I told her to drop round to my flat at 6pm. For convenience’s sake, in case I was out still and my mother had not heard her bell I even gave her the entry code for the building and told her where I had a hidden key to the door of the flat.

The apartment was dark when I returned. I could hear my mother’s gentle snore in her bedroom. I crept into her darkened room and switched on the bedside lamp. Her breathing was temporarily interrupted as her sleep-bound persona protested at this incursion into her private darkness with a loud grunt like a snore backfiring up the nose. Her face and body turned away subconsciously from the encroaching light. Yet she remained fast asleep. I waited about twenty seconds to make sure she did not wake and then I shamelessly reached for her handbag lying by her bed and took it out of the room into the kitchen, remembering to switch off the bedside light as I left the room.

Seated at the breakfast table I rummaged through her bag and was immediately rewarded with the sight of the envelope containing her Mediterranean cruise tickets. I examined them carefully. The destinations looked like fun: Praia da Rocha in Portugal, Gibraltar, Rome, a French port on the Cote d’Azur called Villefranche, Ajaccio in Corsica, Barcelona, Lisbon, Vigo in Northern Spain and return to Southampton. It was a 2 week cruise of the so-called “Classic Mediterranean”. Despite the destination the cruise line was still called Royal Caribbean International, but the booking agent was Colorbis Travel which was based at an address just off Regent Street in the West End. I made a note of their telephone number. The cruise sailed from Southampton in 2 days’ time. I realized that I had been so busy that I had not even helped my mother to pack or asked if she wanted anything. I fingered the tickets gingerly. Were they genuine? Were they really a coincidental prize? Or was there a more sinister story? Were they, in short, an unwitting bribe? One for which I would pay later, either in delivering something or else facing the music in court?

And if it was a bribe, what then? Try and cancel my mother’s well-earned holiday to which she had been looking forward with her friend Salcha for over a week now? She would never live down the disappointment and frankly neither would I.

 I rang the telephone number and was told by a recorded message that the office was closed (not surprising as it was now 3 o’clock in the morning). The office opened at 8. I quietly replaced my mother’s handbag by her bed but kept the tickets in my hand, as well as her passport. I watched the late night news on television, where the lead story was the resignation of Owen Draycott, and mention was made of “a stormy meeting over the Pinkerton Plaza development in Framden Borough, where there are unconfirmed reports that two Councillors had even come to blows.” “And how!” I thought. To my surprise, there was a short excerpt of an interview with me in the pub. So much had happened that day I had even forgotten about the interview. I went to bed. I can vaguely remember that I tossed and turned for some time, but eventually sleep must have overcome me, because after that I don’t remember anything.

My electronic alarm failed to wake me, but my human alarm did not.

“What time are you getting up Peter?” I could hear my mother’s voice, “Do you want breakfast?”

Luckily she appeared not to have noticed that I had rummaged in her handbag. As I ate my breakfast I realized that my mother would overhear any conversation with the travel agency. There was nothing for it but to leave the house and contact them on my mobile. Yet I always felt uncomfortable shouting down the mobile phone in the street over such delicate matters. I always resented the way we are often obliged to listen to the loud voices of mobile phone users oblivious to the presence of the public as they follow up their office work or chit chat with friends. We are obliged to endure their world and are prevented from sinking into our own silence. I could make the call from my car but I had no wish to take a car into the centre of town in the weekday rush hour. I had no place to park the car at my office and no wish to spend money on the London Congestion Charge or on parking in some overpriced back street parking lot. There was only one option. I had to travel to Colorbis in person by tube and sort out the matter myself.

At precisely 8 o’clock I rang the office to make the appointment to see the manager and gave them details of my mother’s ticket. Then I caught the tube.

At a quarter to nine I had reached their office near Oxford Circus. Colorbis did not have a street frontage like the more popular travel agencies. It had 3 rooms on the fifth floor of a traditional 1930’s office block where it dealt with more discreet corporate bookings for large companies, embassies, rock bands and the like. The overwhelming majority of its correspondence was done by mail, telephone and the internet. They did not need clients to arrive personally and expected payment by bank transfers and cheques.

When I pressed the Colorbis button at the street entrance to office block I had to give my name and confirm that I had an appointment. I was then told to catch the lift to the fifth floor and turn right from the lift down an L-shaped corridor. At the end was a door with the nameplate “Colorbis Travel”. Here I walked into a discreet reception area and was greeted by a smiling young lady.

I preferred not to melt under that smile, though it was tempting. I was not yet sure how to play, so stiff upper lift and Phileas Fogg-type reserve and formality were the order of the day. “My name is Axtell. Could I speak to the manager please? I have an appointment for ten minutes to 9.”

“Please take a seat Mr Axtell. Mr Kolovetsky will be with you shortly. He is expecting you but he did ask me,” and her voice dropped to a barely audible whisper, “to find out a little more about the nature of your business.”

“It is to do with my mother’s ticket for a Mediterranean cruise sailing on July 3rd. I have the tickets here for her and her friend in a twin bed cabin.”

“What is the nature of the problem?” asked the receptionist. “Is your mother ill? Does she need to cancel?”

Enough of this informality. I resisted her charming curiosity. “This is something I need to discuss with your Manager in private, I’m afraid.”

“Very well. Coffee or tea, Sir?”

“Coffee would be nice. A dash of milk and no sugar, please.”

The receptionist disappeared. I looked around the room. To my surprise it was full of reproduction Soviet tourist propaganda, There were photos of Lenin’s tomb, a Mayday parade outside the Kremlin, the monument at Volgograd, scenes from Eisenstein films, and even an old “Hands off Cuba” poster. It was obvious where the company management’s sympathies lay. Even now, more than 10 years after the collapse of Communism.

Two minutes later she was back. “Mr Kolovetsky will see you now,” she said. “Please follow me. I will bring your coffee to the room.”

Mr Kolovetsky was a fat slob of a man in his sixties with a wan sly little smile and a weak floppy handshake. What with his mannerisms plus the Russian sounding surname, I felt I should remain on my guard. He waved me to a chair in his room. From his window he had a view down Upper Regent Street ending at the old BBC headquarters which were now covered with scaffolding and a peculiar little round church with an attractive steeple.

Mr Kolovetsky had obviously heard something from the receptionist of my mission. He remained intrigued and asked if there was anything wrong with the tickets or whether my mother had a problem with taking part in the cruise.

I had been turning over in my mind whether I should be implying that my mother was too ill to go but decided in the end that this raised a lot of unnecessary questions which would leave me no better informed about how these tickets came about. What if there was actually nothing wrong with the tickets? What if I had allowed Melanie Sheldrake to spook me? Then my mother and her friend would be denied a cruise for no particular purpose. I needed to take the bull by the horns, even if it meant trusting the rather flaky Mr Kolovetsky.

Just then the receptionist came in and encouraged me with a warm cup of coffee and even a warmer beatific smile in my direction.

“My mother is an old-fashioned lady who doesn’t desist from looking a gift horse in the mouth. In fact, (here I lowered my voice) she is an old Communist Party member,” I was lying through my teeth now, “very dedicated to the old Soviet Union. As you can imagine, she is very principled and when she won these tickets she wanted to be sure that they are not paid for by one of those giant US corporate multinationals that have been exploiting Third World countries in Africa and Latin America.”

Mr Kolovetsky was obviously a little surprised, even amused, by this request. He looked with a questioning glance at the receptionist who was just leaving the room with her smile and poise intact. “I must say straight away, Mr Axtell, that it is not company policy to reveal details about our clients to third parties. Is your mother able to come here or send us a letter making that request?”

“I am afraid that she is still recovering from a summer cold, so she wasn’t able to come. She needs to be sure to recover her health fully in time for the cruise. But she was insistent that if she was not happy with the donors of this holiday prize, she wanted to cancel her ticket. I have her ticket here and her passport as evidence that she has authorized me to represent her. I am her only son and we live in the same apartment together.”

“Sir, your mother, whose principles I greatly respect and admire, cannot cancel this ticket even if she and her friend do not go. This ticket is a prize and is already paid for.”

“I understand,” I countered, “but surely both you and I and my mother and the company underwriting this trip would all want her to go. Is there anyway of satisfying her curiosity so that her conscience can be clear. She really would like to go after a lifetime of toil and she deserves it.”

Kolovetsky smiled. “She is a tough old bird, your mother, if it is not impolite for me to say so. They don’t make them like that anymore. All right, I see no problem in making an exception here. Please assure her that this prize seems to be awarded by an education charity trust registered in the UK. It is called the Volga Education Trust. We get many bookings from them for third parties.”

I froze. The name sounded a bell, if only because of the Russian connotations springing from the name of Russia’s biggest European river. Volga Education Trust? Where did I hear that name before?

Suddenly, I remembered! Valentina had mentioned this organization as the fund responsible for paying her university fees. It was an obvious front for Yakov Sheremovsky and Nafta Ural. So Melanie was right, after all! At least in this respect.

So what now? My mind raced overtime. Cancel my mother’s trip notwithstanding and bring her enormous last minute disappointment or shut my eyes to the whole thing? Here was a true moral and financial dilemma.

“Unfortunately, my mother will not be happy with this. She gave me a list of three Russian organizations that she wanted to avoid. She said that they were set up as slush funds by the C.I.A. for that traitor Mikhail Gorbachov who betrayed the Soviet Union and dismantled the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately the Volga Education Trust was one of them.”

“She will want to cancel? It will make no difference. The money, as I have said, has already been spent as it has now been paid to Royal Caribbean International. There will be no refund. It will be an empty gesture”

“Can you tell me how much were the tickets?”

Kolovetsky checked his file. “A total of £2100. For the 2 tickets.”

Holy shit! What to do? Two thousand pounds was a lot of money. Yet the thought of my mother’s face when she hears that her cruise has been cancelled would kill me. Also, I was now convinced that these bribes were being monitored somewhere. I needed to be taken off the hook and make a clean break. There was only one thing to do.

“Do you accept payment by American Express?”

“Pardon?”

“I would like to pay the full amount myself. Can I use American Express?”

“I don’t understand. The cruise has been paid for.”

“My mother does not want charity from traitors to the Soviet Union,” I said with as much ferocity as I could muster. “She would rather she paid for it herself. Can I pay with this card?” I waved my green Amex card at him. “You can reimburse the Volga Education crowd yourself. Neither you nor the cruise people need lose a penny.”

“Are you a registered charity organization?”

I shook my head.

“Well, we can do it. But that will be £2467 and fifty pence.”

“Why so much?”

“I am afraid that you would have to pay V.A.T.,” Kolovetsky said almost too smugly. “American Express will be acceptable.”

“OK, but I want a receipt for that amount.”

“Very well, Mr Axtell.” There was not a trace of sympathy or admiration now in the voice of Mr Kolovetsky. My presence now seemed tiresome to him.

I was furious at being landed in this situation by unwitting emotional blackmail. On the other hand my hands were clean. I realized now that I had to tread very gingerly.

Perhaps I could recover some of this money by selling knick-knacks on e-bay? Perhaps I could borrow the money? Either way I would have to live on a tighter budget. It was not an expense that I had budgeted for.

As I departed rather glumly from the Colorbis Travel office I passed the cheerful receptionist. Her smile had not changed. If anything, it had got bigger. A real little Miss Smiley. “Good bye, Mr Axtell. Your mother would be proud of you.” 

Not if my Thatcherite mother had heard that I had signed her up to the Communist Party, she wouldn’t be!