Pipeline (11 page)

MOSCOW
AUGUST 2, 1:00 P.M.
THE CDL RESTAURANT

The CDL restaurant, at 50 Povarskaya Street, was less than fifty yards from the Barrikadnaya Metro stop. But as he maneuvered his Saab 9000 Turbo past the parked procession of chauffeured vehicles and toward the mansion’s statuesque entrance, Deputy Minister of the Interior Piotr Rudzhin knew that the restaurant’s proximity to the subway was meaningless. Nobody having lunch at this restaurant would be arriving by public transportation.

Czentraliny Dom Literatov—or CDL—translates roughly into Central House of Writers. A place of legends. The building itself was over a hundred years old. The structure had once functioned as the one-time meeting place of Moscow’s Freemasons, but was later inaugurated as the club of the Russian Writers Guild, frequented by many famous Russian writers such as Alexander Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy. The restaurant played an important role in Mikhail Bulgakov’s anti-Soviet satire
The Master and Margarita
. In the novel, the
devil pops into CDL with his cat for dinner and defines the place as “inexpensive and not bad at all.”

Inexpensive! How times can change a menu price, thought Piotr Rudzhin with irony.

Today, the restaurant no longer fed the literati. Instead, it now catered to the deep pockets of Moscow’s nouveau riche. In the decade and a half after the fall of the Soviet Union, the country had generated millions of unregulated, undeclared, and untaxed rubles for a whole generation of bureaucrats turned oligarchs, young mafia families, and fast-moving politicians. While the nation’s countryside still bore the stigma of imprisoning large swaths of Russians in an unbreakable cycle of rural peasantry, its cities were exploding with wealth and opulence.

Piotr Rudzhin irritably slowed his car behind two other expensive vehicles in line for CDL’s valet service. His Saab 9000 was a wonderful vehicle, but he normally wouldn’t be caught dead behind the wheel in Moscow’s horrendous traffic. Rudzhin instantly regretted having allowed his chauffeur the day off to attend his daughter’s wedding.

As Piotr awaited his turn for the restaurant’s valet, his bad-tempered thoughts were interrupted by the vibrations of his cellular phone. He reached into his suit jacket’s inside pocket. It was Uggin.

“Daniel, I’ve been waiting for your call. Where are you?”

“At the airport in La Paz. I board in fifteen minutes.”

“Right on time, old friend. I’m about to meet the big man for lunch in five minutes. Quickly, what can you tell me?”

“It’s done, Piotr. I’ve got copies of the papers.” Uggin was making an effort to control his obvious elation.

“That is great news. Fabulous. I’ll tell Zhironovsky.” Piotr Rudzhin could not believe how well his decision to recruit his school-yard friend was working out. “How hard was it?”

“It was a mess. These Bolivians have more inferiority complexes than a teenager with acne. You would think that the royalties from Volga’s gas contracts would have them dancing with joy. No. In
stead they were offended because the Chileans were charging them too much money to transmit the Bolivian gas to Chile’s northern-most port. Who the hell do they think they are? They’re a little landlocked country—they should feel lucky that the Chileans agreed to allow the gas to cross the border.”

“You told them that?” Rudzhin was momentarily aghast.

“Of course not, you dope,” laughed Daniel Uggin. “You would have been proud of me. I did two round-trips to Santiago to negotiate a better transfer price for Bolivia’s gas. It was like Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy for Middle East peace. Anyway, I got the Chileans to agree to a thirty percent discount off their original offer. And I told the Bolivians that was as good as it was going to get. Bottom line, Piotr, the Bolivians signed. The gas will go to a lique-faction plant in Antofagasta in northern Chile.”

Uggin’s good news had Piotr Rudzhin in a broad smile.

“I heard that Schutz was very upbeat on the conference call three days ago,” continued Daniel. His voice became serious as he allowed a pause to invade the phone line.

“Piotr, you trust this guy, right? I mean…Schutz isn’t Russian. Do you believe him? I have to go back in a week. Do you want me to go to Lima and make sure?”

Rudzhin marveled at his friend’s brimming-over energy. Rudzhin had suspected that Daniel’s quietly efficient, technical background would be an asset. But Uggin’s involvement was working out a thousand times better than he’d imagined. He could never have guessed that he would have to be curbing Daniel’s enthusiasm just eighteen months after the discussion in his parents’ apartment in Kursk.

“No, Daniel. As much as I would like to have one of us look at the situation in Peru personally, I think we have to stay out of that country. It would be a grave risk to awaken any Peruvian suspicion of Russia’s involvement.”

“Okay. As long as the old man and you are comfortable, I’m fine too. In that case, I’ll see you tomorrow evening. Is our lunch with Zhironovsky still on for Friday?”

“Absolutely. Fly well, Daniel Vladimirovich.”

Rudzhin hung up the phone. His lips curled into a smile as he considered Daniel’s transformation, nothing less than amazing. In a way, it was much like his own makeover, which had begun upon his arrival in Moscow.

Just a few years ago, Piotr Rudzhin was an average up-and-comer from a provincial town. Elections to the Kursk Oblast Duma had made him an important figure in the neighborhood, but the local legislature had been insignificant on a national scale. Now, less than seven years later, he was powerful and wealthy—an increasingly commanding figure in Russian politics—and sought out as an ally by the oligarchy.

Rudzhin leaned forward and took a quick look in the rearview mirror. A blond lock curling over his left eyebrow needed some attention. Swinging the hair backward with a shove of his index finger, he again thanked his lucky stars for Viktor Zhironovsky. Without his powerful mentor, Piotr Rudzhin would not be who he was today.

Viktor Zhironovsky and Piotr Rudzhin’s close relationship was a perfectly Russian friendship. It reflected modern Russia’s peculiar political balancing act. On the one hand were the infinitely rich oligarchs and robber barons, handpicked by Boris Yeltsin’s family, who had profited from the sale of Russia’s state-owned assets. To the untrained visitor’s eye, these men and women had created a new, post-Soviet Russia that was modern, sleek, and sophisticated.

On the other hand was the infinitely brutish Russian State. There was nothing modern—or even post-Soviet—about the Russian government. The bureaucracy—filled with mediocre officialdom—still understood only the language of fear and raw muscle. The top echelons were controlled by the Siloviki, politicians from the “power ministries”—the old security and military apparatus—who under Yeltsin had formed a de facto higher-level inner cabinet.

Moscow cocktail parties were hyperopulent affairs in enormous reconverted homes that served only Johnnie Walker Blue and Cris
tal champagne with hors d’oeuvres made a few hours earlier in one of Alain Ducasse’s Paris restaurants and flown to Moscow on a private plane. No matter how festive, the parties ended up as swollen rivers of gossip about the endless jostle for power between the oligarchs and the Siloviki bureaucracy. The two sides were caught in a perpetual cycle of fear, retribution, blackmail, and corruption.

Those with the money and the power distrusted and despised each other, but the system remained in balance. That’s why it worked. Politicians did not seek executive positions in the private sector. And few self-respecting college-graduating Russians of any intellect or education would remotely consider a career in government.

Crossover between the opposing ends of the Russian fulcrum was rare and unnecessary.

In Russia, professionals and businessmen “partnered” with politicians and government leaders. Sure, this public-private partnership was a lucrative one—the business baron ensured a good life for the politician; the politician guaranteed contracts for the businessman. But, though the burden of corruption was a heavy one, the alliances between those in and out of government successfully protected Russia from the grabbing hand of foreign interests. Oligarchs and government fought incessantly among one another, but they agreed on one thing: Russia always came first.

Moscow was a city of power, important friends, big decisions, beautiful women, and high intrigue. Once you had it in your hands, it was hard to let go, thought Rudzhin. But he knew that political life in Moscow was like dancing on a knife’s blade. For most of his seven years in the city, Rudzhin had never been entirely certain of his position.

Until Viktor Zhironovsky had invited him last winter to Courchevel, the exquisite Alpine ski resort nestled geographically in the three-corner border that united Italy, Switzerland, and France. On that day, all his doubts dissipated. Rudzhin knew he had made it.

Piotr remembered his elation at having been chosen as one of Zhironovsky’s guests at his famed alpine home in the French Savoy
region. The “chalet” was a huge fifteen-thousand-square-foot eclectic structure. Art Deco meets Alpine mountain chic. It had indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a ballroom, a Jacuzzi that accommodated ten relaxed bodies, a cinema that sat twenty-five guests, a bowling alley with three automated lanes, and its own indoor ice rink. A large bronze sphinx guarded the oval-shaped, gravel-strewn driveway to the house.

More than five thousand Russians flocked to Courchevel every January, after Orthodox Christmas, to admire the panoramic view of the snow-capped glaciers. Those Russian visitors had either their own homes or stayed in hotels such as the Cheval Blanc, where the inn’s suites went for more than $20,000 per night. The hotel organized a yearly “Millionaire’s Cup” ski competition on the town’s most difficult slopes. Zhironovsky’s guests were regularly invited to participate. It was always an amusing day, with caviar served at the finish line. This year, the first prize had been a beautifully designed white-gold box with meteorite fragments found in the Central African Republic.

Courchevel had brought home for Piotr Rudzhin the meaning of a recent
Forbes
magazine article about Russia’s moneyed elites. The magazine had counted sixty billionaires in Russia today, forty-seven of them residing in Moscow. Amazing for a country that only fifteen years ago had no millionaires, let alone billionaires.

The thoughts of Courchevel fizzled away as the CDL’s parking attendant rapped on his car’s hood. Irritated by the interruption, Rudzhin stepped out of the car, handing the keys to the valet attendant dressed in a gray morning coat, white bow tie, and top hat. As the keys exchanged physical possession, Rudzhin lifted his right index finger in front of the young man’s face and wagged it very slowly; barely a millimeter separated Rudzhin’s fingertip from the attendant’s nose.

The implication was crystal clear: Hell hath no fury if something amiss were to happen to the Saab 9000.

Piotr Rudzhin entered the magnificent building and checked in
with a matronly woman dressed in a cheap-looking black-and-white polyester outfit. Rudzhin noticed the white footwear often favored by Eastern European working women. The shoes were a type of cheap, open-toed ice-skating boot with a broad wooden heel and a wide open toe through which one half of the woman’s foot, clad in raw-colored, semisheer hose, jutted out.

This was the footwear of choice for legions of Russian hotel maids, waitresses, bartenders, store clerks, and any other woman who worked standing up. These boots were everywhere. Oddly popular and spectacularly ugly.

The poorly dressed woman at the CDL’s door carefully scanned a list of names written in cramped pencil strokes. Though he clearly saw his name, Rudzhin resisted the urge to lean over the counter and point to his luncheon host’s name, next to his. This rude imposition would have caused a bureaucratic faux pas of galactic dimensions.

Finally she grunted. Her eyes revealed disappointment. Unfortunately, here was yet another man she would have to let in.

“Mr. Zhironovsky is waiting for you in the Pushkin Room. This is on the second floor on the far left side.”

Piotr Rudzhin buttoned his blue Armani suit’s middle closure and walked slowly through the bottom floor’s bar area—a lounge with sofas and love seats, antique balustrades and opulently displayed heraldry—toward the marble staircase. It was hard for the customers lining up at the caviar carriage—staffed by a gesticulating white-aproned man in a tall chef’s hat—not to notice the towering, athletic figure with the thick shock of blond hair walking by. Even the caviar chef, constructing perfect centerpieces of beluga, blini, and pelmeni favorites onto oversize plates, noticed that he momentarily lost his customers’ rapt attention.

Rudzhin strode up the stairs and looked around. One floor’s decoration outmatched the next. Piotr could not help but marvel at the high ceiling and wooden balconies that seemed to circumnavigate the second-floor dining room. Tables covered with white damask
linens were set with enormous care. Three wineglasses, one water glass, and one vodka glass horizontally crowned each setting of Christofle tableware.

One of the waiters silently greeted Piotr Rudzhin with a formal bow and stretched out his white-gloved hand in the direction in which they were to walk. Rudzhin followed and stepped back as the waiter opened the second-to-last doorway at the end of the large dining hall.

The transition was amazing. The large dining room gave way to a small space of resplendent elegance. A chandelier made of thousands of individually cut pieces of crystal swooped low over the round lunch table exquisitely set for two. Next to the dining table were two leather couches, each a warm brownish red. The sofas were separated by a low mahogany coffee table on which rested a large picture book of St. Petersburg’s architectural treasures, an ice bucket with a chilled bottle of Beluga Gold Line vodka and a cigar humidor stocked exclusively with Cuban Lonsdales. The walls were of warm wood paneling. Borodin’s
Nocturne
played softly over acoustically balanced speakers.