wanted to laugh, and squeezed her hand. ‘Yes, I also felt reckless. Because I like you too.’ He felt like a teenager.
‘Because you think I am sexy?’
‘Because you are very sexy, and very beautiful, and because you are a very nice person.’
‘How do you know? All I did was take your money and say let’s fuck, like a prostitute.’ She smiled: ‘Because you wanted me to be a nice person? Because you are unhappy with your wife?’
Her perspicacity surprised him. ‘How do you know I even have a wife?’
‘In my business you learn about people. You looked like a man who is not experienced in talking with prostitutes, you were very polite, so I thought you are probably a nice married man and such a man must be unhappy with his wife if he has followed me to my night-club when he should be at home with her.’ Before he could respond she added, ‘Is she nice, your wife?’
He was surprised that he wanted to talk to her about it: he had never confided in anyone except Jake McAdam, and for the last seven weeks he’d been too embarrassed about the shooting incident to show his face socially, yet here he was sitting over breakfast with a Russian prostitute and it felt as if he wanted to open his heart. But he only said:
‘Yes, she’s nice. However, she’s gone back to America now, we’re getting divorced.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ She looked concerned. Then she snapped her fingers. ‘Of course! That scar on your chest – you said it was an accident. But she shot you, your wife! I read it in the newspaper.’
He was surprised and embarrassed. Even a Macao prostitute knew about his humiliation? ‘You read the Hong Kong newspapers?’
‘And your photograph, I recognize you now!’ She pointed a scarlet fingernail at him. ‘You told me you are a business man, but really you are a big lawyer!’ She swept both hands down over her golden locks. ‘That big English wig!’
Hargreave smiled wanly. ‘So you do read the papers.’
‘For my English. So,’ she smiled, ‘you are a lawyer. So your nice wife is asking for lots of nice money in her divorce?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And now you are spending so much money for me!’ She took both his hands across the table and sparkled mischievously: ‘So I will make it a very good day for you, don’t worry, darling! We will make love as much as you like. Any way you like! Tell me how you like to do it.’
Hargreave seemed to feel his loins turn over. He grinned.
‘Let’s check out of here and go to the Bella Mar Hotel, it’s more secluded. And I’d like you to go home and change into a daytime dress. Bring a bikini, they’ve got a nice pool at the Bella Mar. I’ll meet you there. Know where it is?’
‘Of course I know the Bella Mar.’
Of course she knew it – she was a Macao whore. But that did not trouble Hargreave – he was going to have a nice day for a change. A lovely day! Nor did it worry him that he might be recognized – in an appropriate dress Olga would be just another tourist. Nonetheless he checked the hotel register when he signed in and was relieved that all the guests were foreigners; nor was there anybody he knew in the bar or on the terrace.
The Bella Mar is a grand old Portuguese hotel on the knoll, overlooking the tree-lined esplanade and the Pearl River estuary. The floors are polished wood, the ceilings are high and a sweeping staircase leads up to airy, old-fashioned suites with ceiling fans. The blue swimming pool is on the terrace below the verandah.
Olga Romalova dived and swam the length underwater, her long blonde hair streaming silkily behind her. She broke surface at the shallow end, her hair plastered. ‘How much?’
‘Nine seconds. You’re improving.’
‘Once more.’
She climbed up the ladder, gushing sparkling water, and walked back to the deep end in her tiny bikini. Hargreave, seated at a table under a beach umbrella drinking a Tom Collins, watched her every movement. She was truly beautiful. There were other couples at other tables, all watching her. The Chinese waiters were watching her. They doubtless knew her, but Hargreave did not care: they didn’t know who he was and he was happy – surely every man here must envy him, every woman must surely envy her exuberant beauty. Olga came to the deep end of the pool, held up her finger and demanded, ‘Ready?’
‘Ready.’ Hargreave looked at his wristwatch.
‘Now!’ She dived in like a goddess and streamed frantically underwater, her feet kicking. She gushed up at the shallow end. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes – eight seconds flat.’
A man at a table clapped, then everybody was clapping good-naturedly. Olga climbed out of the pool, beaming, gave them a wave and flopped down in her chair under the umbrella. She picked up her vodka and grinned: ‘I am improving, last week my best time was ten seconds. It is because I have stopped smoking.’
‘You come to the Bella Mar often?’
She shrugged. ‘Sometimes. It depends.’
‘I wanted to be an athlete,’ Olga said, ‘a swimmer. Athletes make good money in Russia. But there was no pool on the collective, so I swam in the river. So cold. For a pool I must go fifty kilometres on the bus. So expensive. So I thought, I will be a gymnast. I could walk on my hands, do backward somersaults. At my school we had parallel bars, a springboard, climbing ropes. I practised like crazy. But my teacher told me I am too big to succeed.’
‘Can you still do backward somersaults?’
‘Yes. Want to see?’
‘Later,’ Hargreave grinned.
She continued: ‘My mother always told me that the farm is not good enough for me, I must leave when I grow up – so little money, so much work. She died when I was ten. So I looked after my father, he was a sick man – he was a foreman, a very good farmer, but he was always sick, with tuberculosis, he died when I was fourteen. My big brother, he left many years before to work in the mines. So I went to an orphanage. I wanted to study to become a vet, but there were many difficulties, so when I was sixteen I went to work in a factory in Yekaterinburg. Do you know where that is?’
‘No.’
‘In the Urals. Very cold in winter. Big city, grey skies, grey buildings. I worked in an aluminium factory. We made plates, cups, pots, knives, forks. Millions and millions. But nobody buys them because people do not like the taste of aluminium. But still we make them, because Gosplan says so, because of the mines and the big hydroelectric stations producing the power. You know Gosplan? It is our big ministry for economics.’
‘Yes.’
‘Nobody buys our aluminium plates. Our wages are very little, and always late. Then we heard that some KGB men are stealing our plates and cups and making them flat with a steam roller and selling it to the West for much money. We were
