Chapter 5: Round and Roll Up

After the morning round of nines holes, four ball, Mabel and Claire having won their match by five holes at the ninth, so had rejoined one another, having rested and refreshed themselves with showers and fresh underwear before enjoying their lunch. Mabel calls up the Songlebridge Golf Club website on her mobile to check on the updates.

“Ellen and Evie’s only one up against the Robertson sisters going into the eighth,” Mabel told Claire.

“Oh, that’s good news,” Claire responds with an evil cackle, maybe they will end in a tie and have to play sudden death, they might even miss lunch altogether!”

Boris had a bank credit card in his Belgian name that had arrived in a plain envelope a week earlier. He had never had one before and wasn’t really sure how to use it. He had always been paid cash before, which always arrived in the form of a monthly magazine subscription package, with some of the inside pages neatly cut out and a bundle of notes in various denominations from £5 up to £50 buried inside. The title of the magazine changed from time to time but the amount was always consistent, with 10% annual increases, starting at £1200 every month in 1990, and continuing for 34 years up to the present day. By 2010, after all those annual increases, he was getting five magazines every month, and the contents in notes totalled £8600 per month, adding up to over £100,000 a year.

Boris’ living expenses were minor, he hadn’t had to pay any rent because the housing he was placed into was fully furnished and owned by the KGB, so by 2010 he had filled three suitcases with paper money and had them locked away in nearby rented secure storage.

After he had suffered the minor stroke which, in the hospital doctor’s opinion meant that he had to go into the care home, he had no way of contacting the KGB, he was after all a “sleeper” over here waiting for instructions, instructions that never came until last week.

However, after he had been in the care home for a week he started getting redirected magazine subscriptions, within one magazine was a bank deposit book showing £769,920 had been deposited there in his name. Boris deduced that this was the total cash in the three suitcases in the security lock up, the key of which had been left in his “rented” flat. He had never counted the cash, in fact the volume of cash received had become an embarrassment to him.

He also received a suitcase containing his clothes and a few personal items from the flat. Boris was at least relieved that he didn’t have to worry about the flat, but the money kept coming in, by then up to £10,410 per month. The magazine subscriptions changed to a book club subscription, in which many more high denomination notes could be secreted. He got a nurse to buy him a new suitcase and on request the care home found him a bigger bookcase. The KGB knew he had moved to the care home and took care of the money he had accumulated, but they were still sending him an amount of money that he couldn’t possibly spend, he couldn’t even give it away without blowing his cover. However, he silently thanked the KGB Intelligence branch operative who wisely chose a Belgian book company, so all the books which had the centres carved out were in Flemish and no-one among patients or nursing staff ever asked to borrow any of his books.

He took up smoking cigars and took to burning some of the notes and flushing the ashes down the en-suite toilet, which worked for a while, even though he actually hated the cigars and the nurses did frown on his decision and were mightily pleased that he was forced to give up smoking by his doctor in 2016.

When the new plastic notes came out he discovered he couldn’t burn them. By 2016 the monthly income was up to £15,250 and he soon had to request a second bookcase and buy a second suitcase. He estimated he had £1.7 million in those two suitcases.

But now, he reflects, as he sits in the M5 motorway Food Hall eating a sandwich he’d bought from the Fresh Food Cafe and drank from his bottle of water, that at long last his “sleeper” days were over and that his money problems would be no more.

He had received his instructions, no, call that orders, not from the KGB as he expected but directly from the man who recruited him in 1989 in Dresden and who had sent him to Britain all those years ago to await the call to serve Mother Russia. Yes, his then commanding officer, now the President of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin himself, had sent him his final orders.

Monty and Sofija saw George and Sally walk away from the counter at the Cornish Bakery each holding a pasty. They were stood three or four people in the queue behind the pair of them, having been delayed getting to the food hall by having to lower Elsie and the rather odd foreigner Boris in the lift at the back of the bus.

“They’ve both opted for pasties too,” Monty observes to Sofija with a knowing smile, “I think it’s nice that something seems to be developing between them.”

“I zink zat Claire, ze care home manager might have had somezing to do viz zis arrangement,” Sofija suggests, “she vorked out ze seating plan. Sally has only been viv us for a couple of veeks und is only likely to be here for maybe a veek or two more, because she is a lot steadier on her legs zan she voz ven she first came here. George haz been here longer zan I haff been vorking here. Although he is alvays pleasant und quiet, and pretty vell knows everyvun zat goes on in ze care home, he keeps himself to himself und isn’t close to anyvun, it is nice to see zat he is getting to know Sally but vot vill happen ven she leaves us?”