Vodka (34 page)

“Tastes bad?” he asked.

“No, not bad. Not anything. Bland. Boring.”

“Exactly!” He slapped his hands together. “It emphasizes purity at the expense of character, that’s
just
what I feared. Peter the Great loved triple-distilled vodka, you know. Maybe we need to dilute it with some anise, perhaps some other congeners too, because as it is, it tastes like Absolut. Typical Swedes—take the danger out of driving and the character out of vodka.”

“Enough! I need you to give me the company books,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

“So Harry—my colleague, Mr. Exley—can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Red October’s commercial position.”

“Why does he want to do that?” Lev looked genuinely puzzled.

“So we can show the public what kind of company they’ll be buying into.”

“
I
can tell them that.”

“With all respect, you’re hardly unbiased in this matter.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Don’t make this personal. It’s not a question of trust.”

“That’s how it seems to me.”

“What I’m asking is standard procedure. No one in the West would think twice about it,” and then, catching herself, she forestalled his reply. “I know, I know—we’re not in the West now.”

The sewage system is divided into sectors, and individual workers tend to operate only in one, two at most; the legacy of Soviet bureaucracy and its mania for compartmentalization was everywhere. Irk hadn’t managed to find anyone with a working knowledge of the entire labyrinth, nor had he located a map of the sewers, or at any rate not a complete one covering the Moscow metropolitan area. The public works department had told him to try the mayoralty, the mayoralty had told him to try the water agency, the water agency had told him to try the public works department. Everyone he’d spoken to had been sure that there was a map somewhere, or at least there
had
been once upon a time,
But you know how it is, Investigator …
Thousands upon thousands of documents had been lost in a transition so chaotic that people would have mislaid their heads if they hadn’t been screwed on. Even the offer of a half-liter of Eesti Viin had no effect. The map really was nowhere to be found.

Not that it mattered. Irk thought he knew the sewers as well as anybody. He’d spent countless hours down there, hooked from the moment he’d first seen the metro tunnels from the train cabin. That was how it had started: by memorizing the configurations and conjunctions of all the different lines, he’d come to know every dip and dogleg in the track, learning the lie of the city from the bowels up. He’d gone beneath the metro
platforms and gotten into the machinery that drives those massive escalators. Then he’d followed the municipal service tunnels and the ventilator shafts, just to see where they led. Stuck in a sprawling gray city without friends, where else was there to go but down? It was his version of rebellion, a private obsession that didn’t count because it took place in the reverse world. He’d never mentioned it to any of his colleagues.

Irk splashed through the subterranean labyrinth. He walked down a trunk sewer where two or more channels came together, the pipes stretching high and wide around him, freeways of waste, before veering off down a side duct so low and narrow that he had to lie on his stomach and crawl through, his nose and mouth inches from illegally dumped chemical refuse, petroleum spirit and calcium carbide. He flicked a butane lighter and checked the flame, looking for a slight orange tinge that might indicate trace levels of natural gas. The pipelines climbed and dipped, twisted and went straight, now following the contours of the ground above, now swerving around cellars and electrical lines, now kinking to make room for a drain outlet.

And always there was water, dripping through cracks in the brickwork, racing itself through the conduits, making sodden sounds and soggy noises. Beyond the constant chords of water, Irk could hear a low chattering: human voices. People made homes for themselves here, complete with chairs and sofas, bare bulbs, stoves, vodka bottles. They set up camp by hot water pipes, for the warmth; and sometimes those pipes burst and boiled alive anyone who happened to be nearby.

Irk was ostensibly looking for clues, but he’d have been down there even if not for Emma Kurvyakova. He
wasn’t sure what he was looking for, only that he was looking. Through the alkalic twilight came more sounds: the movements of sex. There were plenty of places down there where people could screw without fear of disturbance, certainly more than there were up above. Young Muscovites had few ways of testing their feelings. There was nowhere to meet for romance, to flirt and learn about making out; apartments were small and offered little privacy, restaurants and hotels were too expensive, few people could afford to own cars, and bars and discos were only for the rich. No wonder people came down here to fuck.

The tunnels were shaped like eggs. Irk had to walk with one foot on each slope, as though he was hoofing along a ditch, and his ankles ached. A white fungus slicked across the walls, and shafts of watery light trickled down from the streets high above. There were manholes every two hundred yards or so, as well as at each change of gradient and all points where two sewers intersected. The underbelly of Moscow is six levels deep on average, and in some places as many as twelve or fifteen, going down almost a half a mile. You start with gas and electric and telephone lines, then the sewer systems and the subways, both mapped and clandestine—Stalin was rumored to have built a second ring of metro lines on the city outskirts, probably to shuttle bombs around the capital. Then you find where the Soviets burrowed deeper: secret tunnels, KGB listening posts, fallout shelters for the elite.

The city’s jumbled secrets, Irk thought, pressing on each other like tectonic plates.

He ended up by the screen where Emma Kurvyakova’s body had been found, and surfaced at the nearest manhole.
Orienting himself, he felt his memory jolted by the red, green and white blocks of the flag that drooped above the Madagascan embassy. He’d seen the flag recently, but where? From the window of Sabirzhan’s apartment,
that
was where. And sure enough, there it was—right next door to the embassy. Why hadn’t he made the connection when they’d first found Emma, then? Because they’d come from a different direction, he remembered, via Ostozhenka rather than the embankment.

He remembered something else too: he had never been convinced of Sabirzhan’s innocence.

Friday, January 24, 1992

T
he first thing Alice saw when she arrived at Red October was her Mercedes, sitting inside the main gates and looking as good as new. It had even been cleaned, a genuine rarity in Moscow. She went to Lev’s office and thanked him profusely and genuinely, momentarily tempted to kiss him in gratitude. “How did you find it?”

“With my eyes shut, it was so easy. The dealership you bought the car from is run by the Solntsevskaya group. I had a word with Testarossa, my fellow
vor
, and presto! Your car.”

“The
dealership?”
Alice looked puzzled. “What’s the dealer got to do with my car being stolen?”

“Who else do you think took it, Mrs. Liddell? Koskei the Undying? You’re not that naive, surely? They kept a spare set of keys, noted your address, and took it back as soon as they could without arousing suspicion.”

“Then what? They’d resell it?”

“Of course. Change the license plates, forge the papers and repeat the process. If you do that twenty or thirty times…”

“You make a million dollars.”

“On each car, yes. If there’s an easier way of making money, do let me know.”

“This place.” Alice shook her head. “This place. Just when I thought I was comng to grips with it. Anyway”—she shrugged—“I’ve got the car back, and that’s what matters, so thank you.”

“My pleasure, Mrs. Liddell. And the Solntsevskaya knows not to do it to you again.”

It was no idle boast. Alice saw the return of the car for what it was: a kind gesture, yes, but also a glimpse of the awesome power Lev could wield. “I bet they do.”

He looked at his watch. “Will you excuse me? I have to be on the factory floor.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No. I won’t be long, and I’m sure you’ve got plenty to do here.” Alice felt like an errant child, duly chastised. “Sabirzhan will give Harry the books either today or Monday,” Lev added. “You have my word.”

He touched her hand and was gone.

Privatization was agreed, Harry would have the books; they were really starting to make progress, Alice thought, and not before time. It was almost a month since she’d first met Borzov and Arkin—where had all the days gone?

Alice wandered through to the antechamber, where Galina was bashing away at an old typewriter. “You might be able to help me, Galya,” she said, and Galina looked up, flushed with excited enthusiasm. “I need a hundred and fifty people—keen, intelligent, honest people—to help out on the day of the auction, but I haven’t got the time or resources to advertise and interview thousands of applicants.”

“I’ll handle it,” Galina said instantly. “Let me handle it.” The doubt on Alice’s face made her hurry on. “I’ve got friends, friends of friends, people I was at college with—they’d chop off their right arms to be involved with something like this, they really would.”

Perhaps it was a conflict of interest, perhaps not. Alice had neither the time nor the inclination to care, as long as Galina delivered. “That would be great. Thanks, Galya; I owe you.”

“My pleasure.”

Alice walked back into Lev’s office, crossed over to the internal window and looked down at the factory floor. Today was payday, the penultimate Friday of the month, and a long line—a typically Soviet line, Alice thought—of employees stretched away from the cashier’s window through copses of columns and stills.

She watched as the cashier checked a worker’s name off on a list—hard copy, of course, Red October had yet to dip more than a toenail into the scary waters of information technology—counted out his pay from shrink-wrapped piles of rubles, and pushed the money through in a metal tray beneath the glass partition. The employee—this was where Alice’s attention was pricked—then walked over to Sabirzhan, who was
standing a few paces away, counted out some notes from his pay packet, and handed that portion to Sabirzhan before walking off.

That was strange, Alice thought, though there was probably a perfectly innocent explanation. Perhaps Sabirzhan had lent the man some money and was claiming it back; perhaps it was payment for some rare item that Sabirzhan, with his contacts, had managed to procure.

She saw the next man in line do exactly the same thing, then the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that.

Lev came into view and walked across the distillery floor toward Sabirzhan who, collecting money with the impassiveness of a Roman tribune, barely seemed to acknowledge him. Lev said something to Sabirzhan; Sabirzhan said something back, his attention still on the supplicants.

Alice was about to go down to the distillery floor herself, when she saw a third man join the huddle. He looked gentle enough, but his arrival had clearly prompted tension. Lev shook hands willingly enough, but for Sabirzhan the gesture seemed to require a monumental effort.

Lev took the man a few paces away, toward the edge of the floor. Sabirzhan turned his back on them and continued to collect the money. A small line had formed in the hiatus.

Alice went downstairs at a brisk trot.

The door that led from the staircase onto the distillery floor had a small porthole inset at eye level. Alice noted vaguely that this window seemed to have been blacked out, and she was reaching for the handle, when
she heard voices from the other side. She realized that the blackout was Lev’s back, obscuring the entire aperture as he leaned against the door.

It was the tone of the men’s voices that first held Alice frozen as she stood. They were arguing. She warmed to the daringly clandestine thrill of eavesdropping even as she battered away another image, that of the banisters on the landing of her childhood home in Boston, where she’d watched and listened as her parents—her father sober, her mother steaming drunk—had squabbled.

“Let’s not lose sight of the most important thing.” It was the other man speaking; Lev’s voice was too distinctive to be mistaken. “The quicker these murders stop, the better, for both of us.”