Vodka (41 page)

“Of course. You take the case from me, Denis Denisovich, and it’s as good as unsolved. You know that as well as I do.”

“I can’t help that, Juku. The kid was found at a gang shootout. Give the case to Yerofeyev—you have no choice.”

Irk shook his head. Denisov opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

“What?” Irk said.

“Nothing.” Denisov shook his head twice and left the room without a backward glance.

It had been an apology, Irk saw, the words that had died on Denisov’s lips. It had been an apology, only
Denisov didn’t know the word for “sorry.”

Irk rang Lev to tell him that he would be dealing with Yerofeyev from then on. Lev clicked his tongue. “If you’d listened to me, Investigator, perhaps we wouldn’t be in this state now.”

Hadn’t Lev given Irk his full confidence? How many more people would let Irk down over this? He snapped back an answer before he could stop himself: “In that case, how many more children have to die before you change your mind about talking to Karkadann?”

“I’m not the one killing them, Investigator.”

Irk slammed the phone down. It rang again instantly.

“Prosecutor’s office.”

“Is that Investigator Juku Irk?”

“Who’s this?”

“I’m phoning from
Pravda.
I’d like to talk to you about the child you found this morning.”

Saturday, February 1, 1992

I
t had turned even colder than before, a frigid morning under brumal skies to remind Muscovites that progress toward a brighter future, whether political or meteorological, was never smooth.

If it was chilly outside, the atmosphere in Borzov’s office was positively glacial. Borzov himself stared gloomily at his hands and said nothing, wheezing through a blocked nose. Arkin did most of the speaking, from between teeth clenched so tightly that Alice feared he would grind them down. His message could hardly have been clearer had it been carved in ice. “Does everyone understand me? There is nothing—
nothing
—more important to the reform program than this auction, and I will not have it jeopardized under any circumstances. I need assurances from each of you that you remain fully committed to the auction.”

“I won’t negotiate with that barbarian under any circumstances,” Lev said.

“We’re talking about children’s lives here,” said Alice. “Surely the priority has to be putting an end to these murders.”

“Mrs. Liddell, if the reform program collapses in ruins,
millions
of children’s lives will be at stake, not to mention their futures. Of course the murders are horrific, but for the international community to withdraw its support would be to give in to the killers. More than that, it would send a message that their tactics have
succeeded. Is that what you want? No, the auction must go ahead. Those responsible for the murders deserve punishment, not victory.”

“And you have Petrovka’s word that we’ll leave no stone unturned,” Denisov said. “The case has been passed to organized crime”—he indicated Yerofeyev, who dipped his head with a modesty that hardly became him—“and our best men are working on it.”

“Investigator Irk?” Arkin asked.

“This is no longer simply a homicide case,” Denisov said. “Departmental rules—”

“Departmental rules be fucked. Everyone I’ve spoken to says Irk’s the best man in Petrovka.” Yerofeyev’s incompetence remained implicit. “He’s been on the case from the start, hasn’t he? Then put him back there,
now.”

“With all respect, Prime Minister—”

“That’s a direct order. This could make or break the country’s good future, Denis Denisovich. Your handling of the case will determine whether it makes or breaks your career.”

News of his reinstatement pleased Irk for all of several seconds. His anger was consuming. It wasn’t just that
Pravda
had gotten the story—how, he didn’t know, but he’d move mountains to find out—they had also found the boy’s name, Modestas Butautas, while the police were still trawling missing persons files. Once more, Irk felt the police’s failings as his own.

Pravda
had devoted the front page and the next four to the story, and they’d gotten most of it right: the victims’ names, the fact that the latest was a street kid originally from the Latvian capital, Riga, the circumstances in which they’d been found and the power struggle for
control of Red October. All in all, Irk acknowledged, a pretty good job—perhaps he should phone the reporters and offer them jobs at Petrovka. They seemed a damn sight better at unearthing facts than most of the detectives he worked with.

He thought about going down to the basement to have it out with Kovalenko, once the Petrovka press department’s Cerberus and now its lapdog, but what good would that do? He’d given Kovalenko a bottle of Eesti Viin;
Pravda
had obviously offered a crate. A man’s loyalty nowadays was not to whoever paid his salary, but to whoever paid his bribes. The only surprise was that the story had taken so long to get out.

It was the main feature on all TV news bulletins by mid-morning, replete with grainy video footage—the Chechens had delivered a tape to one of the news agencies of Karkadann ranting at the camera: “For decades, Russians have been guilty of the most barbarous cruelty toward Chechens. Now, perhaps, you will start to understand our suffering.” Channel One, the government station, was circumspect in its reporting, offering commentators with expressions of suitable gravity; Channel Two, with no official information, thrust microphones into the faces of people on sidewalks and found answers to satisfy any demagogue: the Mafia should sort themselves out, privatization should be stopped, the country was going to the dogs.

It was the kind of story—perhaps the
only
kind of story—capable of shocking Muscovites out of their habitual mixture of smug complacency and cynical resignation.

The lights in Irk’s apartment flickered, rallied and went off for good. Irk sighed. It was the third blackout in as many days, all caused by the same thing: residents using heaters so inefficient that they overloaded the antiquated electricity grids and blew fuses throughout entire buildings. He decided to pay the Khruminsches a visit; their apartment would be warm and light, a veritable Hilton compared to this place.

Irk’s car started on the second try. Traffic on a Saturday was lighter than during the week, and he made good time. On Bolshaya Yakimanka, he passed a series of flyover struts, built and willing but as yet without a flyover to support. The stems of steel and concrete stretched forlornly skyward like flowers searching a sun, emblematic of a city on the rise, disposed to take any direction as long as it led upward.

This headlong, lemming-like quest for a better tomorrow had always been the root of Russia’s problems, Irk thought. First the never-never utopia of socialist brotherhood, and now the rush toward capitalism in which business was equated with crime. Greed is a natural human attribute, but whereas Western countries had regulations to check the worst excesses of businessmen intent on accumulating money and connections, Russia did not. The successful Russian businessman’s strategy was therefore twofold: to build his own power base, and to demolish the competition through malicious rumors, brute force or subterfuge. How could you run an economy and a country on these lines without ruining them too? It was impossible. Organized crime all too easily perpetuates the conditions in which it can flourish. Left unchecked, it would soon become an indivisible part of the body politic.

Outside Okhotny Ryad metro station, women clutching goods for sale formed a line along the sidewalk. Each stared straight ahead, like suspects in an identity parade. As Irk drove past, he saw the line suddenly fragment and dissolve. When three police officers appeared a moment later, they found nothing other than a crowded street of people going about their business. The moment the cops had turned the corner, the line re-formed as easily as it had evaporated. The women weren’t breaking the law, just avoiding having to pay bribes.

Everyone was at it, that was the problem. Everyone was at it because that was the only way to survive. Irk wasn’t simplistic. He knew that Russia’s problems ran way deeper than the Mafia. The country could not hope to change its crime without changing its police, its politics, its morals, its values. Like Moses, the Russians needed to spend forty years in the desert so that the old generation could die off and a new, liberated one emerge. In the meantime, a man did what he could.

Rodion answered the apartment door, propelling himself smartly backward when Irk extended a hand in greeting. “It’s bad luck to shake hands over the threshold of a doorway,” he said. “If you do, you’ll have an argument.” He tutted at the skepticism on Irk’s face. “You Estonians, you’re all the same: you think superstition’s for peasants and bumpkins.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Of course not. Just because you can’t explain something doesn’t make it any less true. Come on in.”

“What happened to your chest?” Irk said as he followed Rodion into the sitting room.

“My chest?”

The top button of Rodion’s shirt was undone and the next one was missing. Irk indicated three diagonal scars on the skin left visible in the plunge.

“Afghan medals,” Rodion said. When Irk narrowed his eyes in confusion, Rodion explained: “Gorbachev himself decorated us, in Red Square on Victory Day. I pulled my collar open and pinned the medals into my bare flesh, so that they’d draw blood—because into those little pieces of metal we had poured the blood of our friends, the blood of those who died and those who went as children and returned as old men. Those medals held the pain of our hearts.”

These dinners with the Khruminsches had become the high points—the only points, come to think of it—of Irk’s social life. Tonight, they talked about the case—what else?

“Lev should start negotiating with the Chechens,” Svetlana said.

“That’s what I told him,” Irk said.

“That would be giving in to blackmail and threats,” Rodion said. “You can never go down that path.”

“Rodya, these are
our
children they’re killing,” Svetlana said.

“And so the only way is to wipe the Chechens out.”

“Spoken like a true Russian,” Irk said.

“And
that
was spoken like a true, patronizing Estonian.”

“Stop it, you two,” Svetlana said. “What’s more important? Who runs the factory, or the lives of children?”

“It’s not that simple, Ma.”

“It
is
that simple, Rodya. Galya, you’re closer to Lev than all of us; can’t
you
persuade him?”

Galina shrugged. “If Lev’s made up his mind, he’s made up his mind.”

“Couldn’t you at least talk to him? I can’t believe you approve of this.”

“Of course not. But I can’t see what difference I can make either.”

“You could say you tried.”

“Ma, leave her alone,” Rodion said. “Galya’s right. We’re the little people, all of us—even you, Juku. Every big decision gets made without consulting us or thinking how it’ll affect us. That’s the way it’s always been, and it’s not going to change now.”

Sunday, February 2, 1992