“They dress like bankers … but underneath all that sophistication is an open grave in the Mexican desert with 50-headless corpses inside.” – Semiyon Kleiman
Any concerns that Alex was planning to double cross Kleiman appear to be scotched as the pair sit in the blandly opulent environs of Geneva airport, Alex telling all as if to a father confessor about his encounter with Mendez. He assures Kleiman the only reason he did not contact him was that, fearing he would be blackmailed, he should abide by Mendez’s conditions. Kleiman conveys to Alex – in terms worthy of Mario Puzo – what he thinks about Mendez and his ilk. According to him, their trick is to make you think you are making all the decisions. Respectfully, Alex points out, isn’t that what you’re doing to me? Ah, replies Kleiman, kindler, gentler as ever: if you let me down, I won’t bury you. He promises to think about Mendez’s proposal.
To the somewhat porous borders of India/Pakistan, where heroin is smuggled through the fence in sausage-like links down a pipe. Easy when there’s absolutely no one around. Chopra receives the message by phone that a consignment of “1000 rupees” (1000 kilos) is on its way. He raises an eyebrow.
Back in London, the atmosphere at chez Dimitri remains brittle and frosty following his infidelity. Oksana refuses to look him in the eye when toasting Alex and Rebecca’s engagement. Katya takes umbrage that Dimitri has served sparking wine rather than champagne and insists on going out to buy the real thing. All this misery feels like a caviar-esque, Russian speciality. “You have spat on my soul,” Oksana later tells Dimitri.
If only Alex had not showered so long, showering perhaps to cleanse his soul as well as his body, he would not have at last aroused Rebecca’s suspicions when she hears a call come through on his secret second phone. Alex blurts something about this being new company policy but Karin, his compliance officer, is also narrowing her eyes at him, wondering why he is being so secretive about his password-protected “global fund”.
Alex lies his way out of that one in a very upper-English way, as if so affronted that it actually rings true to himself that he is anything other than blameless. Rebecca starts to probe, discovering via weather reports on Alex’s computer that he has been spending a lot of time in tax havens unbeknownst to her recently. She and Karin meet to share their concerns. She talks to Dimitri who politely refuses to hear anything ill of his son, a “good Godman”. She discusses his possible Kleiman involvement with her boss, Bloom, who says Alex is best steering well clear of the deeply unsavoury Mr K.
As for Alex, he decides to meet Tobe Miller, a former IT specialist turned hacker with a Klaus Kinski-esque air, sallow from spending 20 hours a day in front of a screen. He wants to re-hire him to cover his IT tracks. Miller agrees and also puts him in contact with a hacker friend in Bangalore.
Kleiman has passed on Alex’s information to Dilly and his posse and they get to work, the antithesis of well-dressed banker/criminals operating discreetly from afar. They are street people, hands dirty and clueless about the computer world. Their surveillance of Chopra, involving a small telescope from a rooftop across the road depends, in time-honoured TV surveillance tradition, of the subject of their attention never looking up. This he doesn’t, despite the sarees flapping on the line behind his observers.
However, on breaking into Chopra’s compound, they muscle and fumble their way towards a devastating breakthrough. First, they persuade at gunpoint a late-working accountant to hack Chopra’s computer for information to stage a heist, then shoot him dead for his troubles (“You’re a good man. I’ll look after your family.”) Next, they hook up forcibly with the Bangalore hacker Miller put Alex’s way. Waving aside his protests, they have him hack further into Chopra’s phone and email accounts, and then into his operation via hacking into, of all things, a chocolate vending machine, to piggyback on the internet to determine precisely which container holds Vadim’s heroin. Once established, they manage to cancel the shipment then seize the container which, according to the computer, never left the country. A text to Alex: It’s done. You feel the kick inside Alex is starting to get from this crime stuff.
Rebecca, however, is not bedazzled. She confronts Alex. Why has he been spending so much time in sordid tax havens? Did he do proper diligence tests on Kleiman? Alex has no choice but to confess, partially. But now he promises he will cut Kleiman loose. “I’ll come clean,” he says, though he’s doing the opposite - he’s going dirty. Rebecca reminds him reproachfully of their conversations about “moral integrity” in capitalism, an illusion that still shines true for her. Alex goes Bryan Adams; “everything I’ve done I’ve done for you.” - and his family.
Meanwhile, with some hack-work of his own, Vadim has tracked down Benes, having arranged for his daughter to be arrested at a nightclub. The ensuing call she makes to her father allows them to access his information, among which is the contact he made with Kleiman in Prague. So now Vadim knows. There is also an awkward conversation with Chopra concerning the heroin heist, the upshot of which is that Chopra’s corpse is found among a pile of garbage bags somewhere in Mumbai. Mate, if you’d just looked up when they were pointing that telescope at you …
Additional notes
- No updates on Boris’s killer in the basement of Mendez’s villa. Presumably he’s still dangling there, feeling rather sorry for himself.
- You have to pity poor Katya’s boyfriend, Femi. His whole life seems to be spend perched awkwardly on the edge of a tense family situation. Will he get out, while he’s still young?
- Shrewd on Kleiman’s part to insist that Alex decide whether the heist should go ahead, implicating him, not allowing him to feel at arm’s length from the criminality.
- Another Godfather reminder: Vadim’s justification for killing a cop (“a thief!”) despite Ilya’s qualms reminds of Michael Corleone’s line: “Where does it say that you can’t kill a cop?”
- So, is the cat now truly out of the bag for Alex with Rebecca and Karin? Are Vadim and Kleiman heading for a showdown? There’s all to play for in the second half of this series.
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