Penguin Lost (6 page)

And Viktor found himself relating the situation at his flat.

“Poor chap, but you’ve only yourself to blame,” said Andrey Pavlovich. “ ‘Thou shalt admit to thy home neither stranger, nor semi-stranger, nor semi-intimate’ – Snail’s Law, Article 3.”

Viktor shrugged.

“Either you’re no judge of people, or just can’t be bothered. Who, out of that lot, really matters?”

“Sonya.”

“Right. So tomorrow – no, tomorrow we’ll be busy – the day after tomorrow, you shall have back the keys of your flat.”

“But how about Sonya? She can’t live there alone.”

“We’ll think of something. Meanwhile you stay put.”

Next morning the image makers turned up in a black jeep, travelling light with sports bags and three cardboard boxes containing “a state of the art computer, their mobile brain,” as head imager Zhora, a man in his thirties, put it. With him were Slava, the computer expert, and twin brothers, bright-as-buttons Sasha and Vova, in their young twenties. Desiccated, round-shouldered, pebble-be-spectacled
Slava, though about 40, still had the look of a brilliant schoolboy.

“No computers?” Zhora asked in amazement, touring the house in search of where to establish himself.

“My games I play live,” said Andrey Pavlovich.

“But information, where do you store it?”

Andrey Pavlovich tapped his forehead.

Zhora looked disappointed.

The old nursery on the first floor was declared suitable and the image makers took up their bags and computer. Viktor, introduced as “aide to Andrey Pavlovich”, Zhora treated with interest and respect, shaking hands and introducing him to the others. They lunched together in the lounge, off cheese, sausage, fresh rolls and coffee. Andrey Pavlovich sat in for five minutes, then disappeared.

After lunch, Viktor accompanied Zhora outside, where the latter produced a packet of Gauloises and lit up. “Been here long?” he asked. “Not very.”

“But clued up.”

“I think so.”

“Your boss, what’s he like?”

“All right.”

“Fond of money?”

“I wouldn’t say so.”

“Good. What does he pay you?”

“Enough.”

Zhora betrayed signs of weariness.

“Don’t worry. We’re battling on the same front, you and I. It’s just that to do a good job I need to know … Every client has his little oddities … His submerged rocks … It’s nice to know …”

“As I said, he’s all right.”

“Any serious oppo?”

Viktor shrugged.

“No war in progress?”

“How do you mean?”

Zhora ground his Gauloise into the gravel with the stub toe of his designer shoe and unnecessary vigour.

“ ‘How do I mean’ means, any casualties to date?”

“Only a hunting fatality.”

“Involving?”

“Andrey Pavlovich’s son-in-law.”

“Uh-huh …” Zhora thought for a moment. “That’s the kind of thing to keep me up to speed on – I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Will do.”

This exchange with the notion of their “battling on a front together” left Viktor with a nasty taste in the mouth. But elections, as now practised,
were
war – no longer simply a seizing of territory, but a killing off of opposition, as in big business, on a front of anyone’s choosing.

“Loitering?” demanded Andrey Pavlovich, emerging from the house and encountering Viktor. “Pay our image makers a call. They’ve got your manifesto.”

*

Where the cot had been, there was now a desk with computer. Slava was busy with leads, Zhora recumbent on the couch with Viktor’s manifesto.

“This OK by the boss?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Bloody good! So we bung it on computer, print it off, knock up posters … And make ourselves a nice little bit on the side.”

“How so?”

“On computer I’ve got 50 or more manifestos: party, non-party, populist, what-have-you, you name it. But your ideas are quite new ones on me … A client of ours standing for Mayor of Gomel recently, came up with pledges of the subtlest. But they’re a simple lot in the place, so I told him straight: Promise money – money for jam’s what they understand. Which he did, and now is Mayor of the place. Get the idea?”

“No.”

“Yours is an up-market manifesto – Moscow, Kiev quality. Kiev
is
where he’s standing for?”

“Not sure.”

“Hasn’t he said?”

“No.”

“Not good! How is he today?”

“He’s all right.”

Zhora took himself off, leaving Viktor with Slava, who was working at his computer. The twins were not in evidence.

“Do you really have 50 manifestos on computer?” Viktor asked.

“More.”

“Might I see a couple?”

“Afraid not. Information of commercial value. Manifestos cost money.”

“You don’t sell them, do you?”

“What else?” Removing his spectacles, he polished them with a handkerchief. “There’s hardly one we can’t use three times over. The main things to clear off before the successful candidate starts implementing them.”

“Why?”

“No, not seriously. But a golden rule of the image maker is ‘Never be there for the result’. The client gives you hell if he loses, his
rivals give you hell if he wins.”

“Where are the twins?”

“Zhora’s sent them somewhere.”

“What do you make of our image makers?” Andrey Pavlovich asked later that night as they played billiards. Unusually for so late an hour, he was sporting razor-creased dark trousers, a white shirt and bow tie.

“Not sure.”

“Would you trust them?”

“No!”

“Interesting. And you’re right,” he added, having cued. “You can’t trust those you pay a lot to. Especially when they show such a taste for luxury. Wanted the best sauna in town laid on for them today. ‘To relieve stress.’ Have you seen any sign of stress?”

“No.”

“Nor I, but I’ve laid it on. You keen on saunas?”

“Haven’t had many.”

“Like the experience?”

“Yes.”

“Pasha, switch on the sauna,” he shouted up the stairs.

*

Later, as they sat naked and sweating in the cosy sauna sandwiched between the billiard room and the underground garage, Andrey Pavlovich dashed a mug of liquid onto the heated pebbles, scenting
the dry heat with lavender.

“Every activity, be it sex or a shower or a game of billiards, has a pleasure potential never fully revealed until the very last,” Andrey Pavlovich said languidly. “The sauna’s is inexhaustible. Whatever activity you pursue thereafter is an Aladdin’s cave of delights.”

At 2 a.m., again in razor-creased trousers, white shirt and bow tie, he set off for his rendezvous and Aladdin’s cave.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll be like a squeezed lemon!”

*

Pasha drove him in the 4 × 4, and Viktor was alone in the house, or had the sensation of being alone, but with no inclination to sleep after the invigorating sauna.

Switching on the light in the attic, he lay on his bed, and thought of Antarctica, Bronikovsky and Misha, then of Andrey Pavlovich’s promise to restore his flat to him. Try as he might, he could find no qualm of conscience nor shred of pity concerning Nina, not even as niece of his late lamented militiaman friend Sergey. Sonya was all he cared about. We’ll think of something, Andrey Pavlovich had said, and Viktor was sure that he would. So for a while he would surrender his freedom of choice, and live quietly under Andrey Pavlovich’s roof, until such time as the unwritten contract of his simple, if imprecise, employment reached its natural termination point.

Before settling down to sleep he got out Banker Bronikovsky’s letter which so far he had scrupulously not read, but now felt that he should, to see if there was any urgency about it.

Viktor lay thinking again of the Antarctic, Bronikovsky, and hosts of penguins wanting only their prodigal son Misha to return for their happiness to be complete. The sooner the election was over, the sooner he would be free to search. By both a happy and an unhappy coincidence, he would be delivering the letter to Moscow, where Misha was!

Some time later a car drove in, and through the open window he heard voices. The image makers and their driver were back from the sauna. Zhora sounded well lit up.

*

Next morning Viktor breakfasted alone. At nine, Andrey Pavlovich, still in dark trousers, white shirt and bow tie, popped his head around the door, weary but smiling.

“Make me a nice cup of coffee,” he said, and disappeared.

He was soon back, now in a tracksuit. Gratefully he took the coffee, and spooned in sugar. “How’s it going?” he asked.

Viktor shrugged. “You’ve not given them anything more to get on with.”

Andrey Pavlovich smiled. “Or anything less. Don’t worry. Just asking. Your main task now is to keep an eye on them. You might learn something. Back in good time, were they?”

“At about four …” Then, taking breath, he added, “How long
is
it to the election?”

“Two weeks.”

“Not long, then.”

“Don’t worry – I’ve been meeting my electorate. The problem at the moment is my dilatory opponent – no posters, just leaflets in post boxes. Not a word against me. I don’t like it.”

“Maybe he’s a decent chap.”

Andrey Pavlovich gave him a withering look. “Elections are a competition to see who can outspit the other – it’s for him to prove I’m no good, and for me to prove he’s no good.”

“Which you’re not actually doing.”

“Not my job,” he snapped, “I’ve men doing that, 40 of them! Keep my nose clean, wear a tie, shave, that’s what I do.”

At that moment Pasha came bursting in with a rolled up poster which he handed to Andrey Pavlovich.

“Know where he’s getting this printed?” Andrey Pavlovich demanded, face contorted with rage.

“Belaya Tserkov.”

“Bloody idiots. So now what?”

“May I see?” said Viktor.

The poster showed a crew-cut, visibly brainless, mildly disdainful-looking man banally promising a solution to the housing problem within five years by dint of State investment.

“You don’t get it, do you?” said Andrey Pavlovich. “Photos, Pasha!”

They were enlarged picnic photographs showing a man not unlike Andrey Pavlovich’s opponent. “His brother?”

“No,
him!”

And comparing the scarred right cheek and bruiser’s broken nose of the photo with the classical profile of the poster, Viktor saw the reason for Andrey Pavlovich’s anger.

“You’ve got half an hour to come up with something, Pasha,” Andrey Pavlovich said sharply. “And you, Viktor, rouse our image makers. They’ve got half an hour to decide how to put that bloody scar back!”

With which he left, banging the door behind him.

“A fine mess we’re in!” said Pasha. “How are we supposed to know what they’re printing where? We’re not State Security.”

“I’ll wake up Zhora,” Viktor said, getting to his feet.

“Damn Zhora!” Pasha sa id grimly. “What do you think?”

“We could, at a pinch, stick the scar back on.”

“Look, you’re paid for the brainwork, I’m the muscle. So get on with it.”

Glancing through the other prints, Viktor was struck by one full-face portrait showing scar and broken nose to maximum advantage, with the plus of an animal-at-bay expression much at variance with the smug Hollywood smile of the airbrush portrait.

“You couldn’t bring me a coffee,” he said, and Pasha, seeing the problem as good as solved, betook himself to the stove.

Before and after – that was it! The whiter-than-white technique of the TV soap powder ad could be applied to faces as well as shirts!

“Got anywhere?” asked Pasha, bringing the coffee.

“I think I have, and without our image makers! All we do is enlarge the scar-broken-nose-horrible-expression one, superimpose
some cosmetic house name, and stick it up beside the existing poster.”

*

Andrey Pavlovich was slow to get the idea, but when he did, his eyes flashed with Young Pioneer fervour.

“Cosmetics,” he said, thinking aloud, “there’s money in them. Some could go towards our friend’s election expenses. Pasha, ring Potapych. Get him to find out if he is in fact financed by some cosmetics firm.

“Nice work!” he continued, turning to Viktor. “Image makers still asleep?”

Viktor nodded.

“By the way …” he reached into a pocket. “Key to the new lock. You still have the old one, I take it.”

Viktor stared, at a loss for words.

“You’ll find Sonya, and this Nina, now formally engaged as her nanny, and happy to be so.”

“And Kolya?”

“Enjoying my hospitality. Not here, elsewhere. Undergoing ‘educative treatment’. I’d have a good look round your flat when you go, in case he’s left something. He was on a hard drugs run between here and Odessa, then switched to plastic explosive. Price has gone up fivefold, thanks to the elections.”

“When can I go?”

Andrey Pavlovich consulted his watch.

“In two hours’ time. Pasha will drive you. Not as warder but for protection!” he added with a laugh, seeing Viktor’s expression. “I need your brains.”

Red Army Street, Tolstoy Square, brief traffic jam, then fifteen minutes freeway to the turn-off past the rubbish collection point and pathetic Eiffel Tower dovecotes of the waste area, where, less than a year ago, Viktor, Sonya and militiaman Sergey walked Misha in the snow, friendly stray dogs intervening.