The Senility of Vladimir P (18 page)

‘Help you what? Find some people?'

‘Exactly. The sort of people to keep things quiet.'

‘And that's what Vasya would do?'

‘I'm guessing, Kolya. From what Artyusha said, it sounded like it. They're everywhere, these guys. You want one – you'll find a dozen of them buzzing around, all stabbing each other in the back to get your business, all telling you they can find better people than the others.' The cook grinned. ‘Your boy wasn't involved in any of this business with Barkovskaya's cousin, anyway, so don't worry. He's not in that league. That was strictly Artyusha and his boys. Of course, I had to pay, but I got a big discount, on account of the fact that I cook for him. Anything he wants, I'll make him. He told me he had his guys smash up Barkovskaya's cousin's delivery van as well. An extra. I didn't ask him to do it. He said it was on the house. That's very decent, don't you think?'

‘Does Barkovskaya know?'

‘Do I care? What's she going to do about it? Fight the Lukash­villis?'

‘Well, someone firebombed your supplier.'

‘Yeah, well, I think . . . he owed Artur a bit of money.'

‘So
Artur
firebombed him?'

‘No, the situation wasn't that bad. I just don't think Artur was protecting him. If he was protecting him, no one would have touched him. Still, Artyusha won't be happy. If anyone gets punished in Odintsovo, it's the Lukashvillis who do it. It's their patch.'

Sheremetev put his head in his hands. ‘Vitya, this is out of control! You have to talk to Barkovskaya.'

‘And say what? Thank you for taking away my chickens – please tell me what else you would like? In Russia, Kolya, if you show weakness in one thing, you show weakness in all.'

‘What's your supplier going to do? Has he gone to the police?'

‘Over a firebombing? Are you crazy? Do you know how much he'd have to give them to get them on his side? Once they know there's a feud on, for the cops, it's like Easter and Christmas have come at once. A Dutch auction. Whoever has more money wins. They're experts at driving up the price.'

‘I think you drive the price down in a Dutch auction.'

‘Well, then, it's the opposite. What is that? A French auction? Hey, you fucker!' he yelled, suddenly noticing one of the potwashers taking apart the gas burners on the stove. ‘Only I do that! I've told you before!'

‘So what are you going to do, Vitya?'

‘Last time, they fucked the burner up so bad I couldn't cook on it for a week.'

‘Viktor! What are you going to do?'

Stepanin was silent, then he shrugged. ‘I don't know. I can't let this go. In two years, if I can keep going, I'll have enough to open a restaurant in Moscow. Do you know how much that costs? I mean a restaurant like the one I'm thinking of. We're talking half a million dollars, Kolya. I get that, and I'm out of here. I'm over halfway. Tell me, honestly, do you think Vladimir Vladimirovich is going to live another two years? Can you make sure of that for me?'

Sheremetev wondered if he had heard right. Stepanin needed half a million dollars – and he was over halfway! That was enough to get Pasha out. ‘You know, my nephew is still in jail.'

‘Well, if you do something so stupid, what do you think is going to happen?' remarked Stepanin, apparently too drunk now to get the hint or to feel any embarrassment if he did.

Sheremetev watched the cook, who sat fingering his empty vodka glass in frustration. Suddenly, Stepanin reached for the bottle that Sheremetev had taken from him. Sheremetev let him have it. Drink, he said to himself. Drink yourself to death, you pig.

Everyone in Russia was selfish, thought Sheremetev. Selfish for themselves and, at best, for their family.

He felt weary and demoralised. He had always liked Stepanin, but suddenly he couldn't care less about them. Let the cook and the housekeeper fight themselves to the death in their envy and greed. It would serve them both right.

Sheremetev stood up.

‘Tell Vladimir Vladimirovich there might not be any chicken for a while,' muttered Stepanin. ‘I'll try to make it up to him.'

Sheremetev had no interest in maintaining the pretence any longer for the cook's sake. ‘Who cares? He doesn't know what you cook him. Between mouthfuls, he forgets.'

Stepanin gazed at Sheremetev with real in pain in his expression. Good, thought Sheremetev.

That afternoon, Stepanin received a note from Barkovskaya telling him that from tomorrow he would be receiving meat from a new supplier, and if his old supplier made a delivery, he would not be paid for it. Stepanin, mincing pork and liver at the moment one of the house attendants delivered the note, tore it up in a rage and threw it in, feeding it back to Barkovskaya that evening in a terrine he made just for her.

For the rest of the household, he prepared a beef stroganoff with rice, letting everyone know it might be the last time they had meat for a while. The attendant carried a tray upstairs for Vladimir and set it out on the table in his sitting room.

Sheremetev was there when the tray arrived. He asked Vladimir if he was ready for dinner. Vladimir shrugged him off. He was too busy to be disturbed. He had just been listening to Dima Kolyakov, the billionaire, who had a plan to build a ring road for Moscow, which, frankly, the city needed like a hole in the head, as everyone knew, but which had certain benefits to recommend it, to himself at least. At a commission of twenty percent out of a cost of billions, it would be hard to say no. And then Kolyakov had to go, because Vladimir's secretly married wife wanted to talk with the businessman about some kind of charity gala for which he and she were joint patrons, and suddenly, Grigory Rastchev was there, the KGB colonel who had commanded Vladimir when he was stationed as an agent in East Germany. After the end of the Soviet Union, Rastchev had become a member of the Russian duma for the born-again communist party and had turned into that rarest of creatures, an ex-KGB officer who wouldn't keep his mouth shut but seemed to want no place at the Kremlin trough. One or the other, alright, but not both. In particular, he had a habit of making unwelcome remarks – many of them in print – about Vladimir's time in the agency, some of which could be indisputably verified. Consequently – and not with any sense of pleasure – Vladimir had had to have him jailed a number of times on various charges, some of which were arguably justified. In the last instance he had been behind bars for three years.

Now Rastchev had asked to see him. Vladimir agreed. He didn't regard himself as a sentimental man, but he thought that after all Rastchev had been through at his hands, as a fellow KGB officer he deserved at least the chance to talk to him.

And why not? Rastchev was broken. Tall, always on the lean side, he was now bald, thin and pale, like a stick of white asparagus. His nose took a leftward angle about halfway down the bridge, which hadn't been a feature of his proboscis the last time Vladimir had seen him, and he doubted it had been put there by a plastic surgeon. Rastchev had obviously served real jail time.

‘So?' said Vladimir. ‘What can I do for you, Grigory Markovich?'

‘I'm finished, Vladimir Vladimirovich,' replied Rastchev. ‘I can't take any more. From now on, you don't have to worry about Rastchev.'

Tactfully, Vladimir didn't point out that he had never really worried about Rastchev, only found him an irritant, the more so because Rastchev had never seemed to take a hint and had forced Vladimir to have him incarcerated, which was the last thing he wanted to do to a man who had mentored him through his early days as a foreign agent.

‘Why do you say you're finished?'

‘I'm weak . . . this last spell inside . . . I couldn't take that again.'

‘Did they treat you badly?'

‘Don't you know, Vladimir Vladimirovich?' asked Rastchev insinuatingly.

‘I only know what I'm told. If anyone mistreated you, give me their names and I'll personally see to it that they answer for any irregularities according to the strictest dictates of the law. You have my word as the president of Russia.'

Rastchev gazed at him, one old Chekist to another, knowing exactly what that pledge was worth.

Vladimir smiled. ‘Grisha, what can I tell you? You're on the wrong side of history. You chose to look backwards – I choose to look forward.'

‘Is it wrong to want the best for the people?' demanded Rastchev, with a little of the old fire showing in his eyes. ‘Is that what you call looking backwards? Is it wrong to renounce corruption, graft, embezzlement, propaganda, lies, deception and outright intimidation?'

‘Renounce? Of course – privately renounce what you want. But denounce? No. Besides, what kind of a communist do you call yourself if you renounce those things?'

‘A communist like Lenin! Everything that came after him was gimmickry and distortion.'

‘That's a lot of distortion,' mused Vladimir. ‘Seventy years. And I'm not sure if I'd call the gulags gimmickry.'

Rastchev shrugged dismissively.

‘You're an idealist, Grisha. Very unusual in a KGB man. How did that happen?'

‘Vova, the breakup of the union was the greatest disaster of the twentieth century.'

‘I agree. I've said so many times, and in public, as well. That's why I did what I did in Chechnya. No more separatism! It was the very first thing I did when becoming president. People didn't want another war. A bomb or two in an apartment building – then they did. Magic! After that, I could do what I wanted. They smell, by the way. The Chechens, I mean. Let me warn you. If the head's been lying on the ground for more than a day or two, they stink. Can you smell it now? Try . . . See? He's always here, the Chechen. Thinks he'll kill me if he can get me with the tongue, but I'm too quick for him. I'm writing a book on judo for heads. What do you think? Good idea?' Vladimir nodded smugly. ‘Huh?'

‘That was the only good thing you did, Chechnya.'

‘The only good thing? What about Georgia?'

‘You didn't go far enough. Should have taken them out when you had the chance.'

‘What about Crimea? I got that back, didn't I? And eastern Ukraine. And Belarus.'

‘Alright, Crimea. Yes. I'll give you that. How that cretin Khrushchev gave it to the Ukrainians I'll never understand. What a pygmy of a man. Lenin would never have done that. And Belarus. Okay. I'll give you that as well. But what about the rest of Ukraine, Vova? All you have to do is turn off the gas and they'll freeze to death.'

‘It's complicated.'

‘Complicated – bullshit! Is that what Lenin said when he got off the train at the Finland Station? Comrades, we'll try to storm the Winter Palace – but it will be complicated!'

‘Fuck Lenin!' said Vladimir irritably. ‘Stop talking about him.'

‘Fuck Lenin? You don't stand comparison, Vova. He was a giant and you're a cockroach sitting on his throne.'

‘Right. Thank you. I'll remember that one. If you repeat it in public, Grisha, you'll be back in the same cell and this time they'll break your nose in the other direction. Now, what do you want from me?'

Rastchev sat forward.

‘Vladimir, you and I both saw what happens when the mob is allowed to rule. You remember those days in Germany? We went from everything to nothing . . .' he clicked his fingers, ‘like that. There was no need for it. A few tanks, a few shots, and that would have put an end to it.'

‘The will wasn't there.'

‘Exactly,' said Rastchev. ‘A few tanks —'

‘Not tanks. You don't need tanks. There are better ways. Look, the will wasn't there, Grisha, but now it is. You're looking at it. The vertical of power starts with one man. In Russia, it always has. Strength. Stability. Unity. One man, one party, one country.'

‘I thought you said I was on the wrong side of history.'

‘You are. Strength, stability, unity – but not communism. That was a blind alley. There are better ways. Managed democracy, that's the way you do it. A handpicked opposition, elections, the results are never in doubt. It works beautifully.'

‘The rule of thieves.'

Vladimir smiled and wagged a finger. ‘You know, if you hadn't kept saying things like that, Grisha, you wouldn't have ended up in prison so much.'

‘Did you give the orders? Did you tell them to arrest me?'

Vladimir noticed a piece of fluff on his jacket. He picked it off and dropped it on the floor. ‘At a certain point, one doesn't have to give the order, Grisha. People know what you want and they just do it. You see, people think power is when you can tell someone that you want something, and they'll do it for you. No, that's only the first level.
Real
power, Grisha, the top level, is when you don't even have to tell them. They just do it. When that happens, you know that you not only can control what they do, you control their minds.'

Rastchev snorted. ‘It's still the rule of thieves.'

‘Government of thieves, country of thieves . . .' Vladimir shrugged. ‘Call it what you will. I've never worried about words. The country's stable. People know what to expect. There's order, there's bread. If you don't like it, you can leave – the borders are open. Compare that with the last years of Boris Nikolayevich and don't tell me the people wouldn't prefer it.'

‘Like saying you prefer the slower poison to the quicker. Vova, no one had a chance like you. You could have made us pure.'

Vladimir laughed. ‘Pure? Is that what you call purity? Listen, your communists, in their seventy years of gimmickry and distortion, as you call it, wasn't it the rule of thieves? The nomenklatura, the apparatchiks, all getting their better clothes and their better food. Wasn't that theft from the people, who got the worst of everything – when they were lucky enough to get anything? But these thieves, not only were they thieves, they were stupid thieves. Idiots! They had this system and it gave them nothing. What was there to steal in this godforsaken economy they created? Tell me. A better coat? A better sausage? Even the best thing we had was worth nothing compared to what an ordinary citizen in West Germany could buy in a supermarket every day of the week. And for that you needed to fill a gulag with ten million slaves? For God's sake, such morons! Sure, rule the country, steal from the people – nothing wrong with that. In every country, those who rule, steal, one way or another. Fine. But first make sure there's something to take!' Vladimir paused for a moment. ‘That's what the boys from the agencies, the ones who came with me, understood. They saw what the real thieves, the oligarchs, had got, and they wanted their share. But not by destroying the golden goose, like those idiots Lenin and Stalin and the fools who came after them, but by looking after it. Making it bigger. Using those oligarchs to produce even more golden eggs, and then taking them away. Not all of them, not every one. The trick is to leave the goose with just enough to keep it wanting to make more. That's what we've done, Grisha. That's what you've never understood.'