Vodka (56 page)

“Poor guy, I bet he’s catching hell from everyone today,” she said when Lev hung up.

“And so he should be. We’d have done the job for him, and he knows it. Now Karkadann’s gone again”—he clicked his fingers—“just like that. Who knows when he’ll surface again?”

“Are you calm enough to listen to me?” His massive shoulders dropped as he exhaled. “Yes.” She gave him an abbreviated version of what had happened last night; abbreviated in that it omitted the nightclub and Galina, leaving just her and Sabirzhan as protagonists. The whole truth would surely have cost Galina her job, perhaps Rodion and Svetlana theirs too, and Alice didn’t want that on her conscience.

“That fucking
prick,”
growled Lev. “His face is just asking for a brick. How could I have been so stupid, not to have kept him on the tightest of leashes? Short men have always caused trouble in Russia. Look at Napoleon, look at Hitler. The only people who cause more trouble than short men are Georgians. Sabirzhan’s both, so was Stalin. That tells you all you need to know, my darling.”

“What are we going to do?”

Lev steepled his fingers. “Ride it.”

“How?”

“When you get home tonight, you tell Lewis about us.”

“Are you mad?”

“Not at all. What’s Sabirzhan banking on? That you’ll do anything to prevent your husband from knowing. Take that away from him, and you leave him nothing.”

“And then he publicizes it anyway.”

“So?”

“So the whole process looks compromised. You know how much opposition there is to this program. It comes out about you and me—collusion at the highest level—the whole thing looks like a farce. It might be the last straw. You get enough pressure on this government, who knows what’ll happen? What if Borzov resigns? Arkin says he’s unpredictable.”

“The auction will go through.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I am.”

“I need more than that.”

“The West won’t back out. Public opinion in Russia’s not strong enough to change a flat tire. Parliament won’t be able to do anything until it’s too late. The auction will go through.”

“No. Tell me why you’re
sure.”

“Alice…”

“Tell me.”

He spoke through his sigh. “Because it’s a done deal.”

A done deal? She didn’t understand.

“You know about presidential decrees, right?”

“Right.” In the absence of a proper legislature, many laws were made by the president. Borzov would decide on something, commit it to paper, and
voilà
!—it was law. That he could, and sometimes did, countermand or contradict it the next day was neither here nor there.

“Well, decree number 182 exempts the Sports Academy from all taxes and duties.”

“The Sports Academy?”

“Runs training programs, camps and so on. Sport’s the only way of saving the nation. We’re for the public good, it’s a worthwhile cause. Hence, we’re exempt.”

“So? No one pays taxes anyway.”

“No, but this way we don’t have to bribe tax and customs inspectors.”

“I still don’t understand what that’s got to do with anything.”

“The Sports Academy is the largest importer and exporter of vodka in the country.”

“Vodka? Very sporty.” Her sarcasm sloshed over him. “And the reason it’s so big is that … you don’t pay tariffs at either end.”

“Correct.”

“How much are we talking?”

“Ten million dollars, give or take.”

“That’s not so much.”

“A month.”

“Ah.” Alice was beginning to see where this was going. “That’s a hell of a concession.” He waited her out, letting her reach the truth in her own time. “And for Borzov to have given you that,” she mused, “you must have given something just as big in return.”

“And what could Borzov want that’s so big?”

She saw it now, and slapped her forehead in parody of sudden comprehension. “Light dawns over Marble-head! That’s the price, isn’t it? Borzov waives the taxes for the academy, and you agree to privatize Red October. That’s the price of your cooperation.”

It was as cynical as used notes in brown envelopes. Lev smiled but said nothing. There was no shame, nor a facetious answer that would have patronized her. He was still waiting, she realized, waiting for her to find the last piece of the puzzle.

“So what the fuck have I been doing all along, if this was sewn up from the start?”

“Legitimizing it.” He spread his hands. “You make it aboveboard, Alice. So long as you’re involved, the West will be convinced everything’s being done properly. Without you, every government from Dublin to Rome would think that a bunch of shady crooks had struck some tricky backroom deal.”

By Moscow standards, Machiavelli would have been—a cynic? Definitely not. A realist? Definitely. A liberal? Perhaps.

“And all this time … all this time we’ve been screwing, you never thought to tell me?”

“How could I?”

“You profess to have feelings for me. I’m nothing but a veneer of respectability.”

“Listen, darling…”

“Don’t you
dare
call me darling. I was chosen for this job because I’m damn good. I fell into bed with you because you mean something to me. I feel this high—” She held her thumb and forefinger up, about an inch apart. “You can fuck off.”

“You think I intended for this to happen between
us? You’re the last person I wanted to … And yet I did. It doesn’t impinge on what I feel for you.”

“Don’t be absurd. It’s all tied up together.”

“And your behavior’s been above reproach, Alice? Sneaking around my office at night? Trying to have me sacked?” His eyes bored into her, spearing her with the memories of her own betrayals: Sabirzhan and the Suyumbika file, Galina and the bank details. “No, I haven’t behaved well. Nor have you. So let’s write it off and work out what to do.”

“I can’t … I can’t just let it go that easily.”

“You have to. Sabirzhan will phone you this evening. You have to know what to say to him.”

“Does Sabirzhan know about this?” she asked. “About decree 182?”

“Sabirzhan knows everything.”

Lev’s alliance with Borzov went back seven years, to the start of Gorbachev’s tenure. They’d seen in each other an ally in the task of dismantling the Soviet Union. Both men had defined themselves with regard to the communist system, one by his participation and the other by his opposition. Both had also appreciated the central irony of the situation; despite their implacable opposition, the Party and the
vory
had been more similar than different. Both had been arranged around a paramilitary hierarchy, both had been hostile toward outsiders, both had rewarded their own and both had regarded the law as an inconvenience.

Even as Lev had been doing his bit to destroy Gorbachev, he and the other
vory
had also been helping keep the system afloat. In the Soviet Union’s final twelve months, the
vory
had controlled a black
economy worth sixty billion dollars in spare parts, automobiles, timber, caviar, precious metals, gems and, of course, vodka. The kind of deal struck between the KGB and the 21st Century in 1987 for control of Red October was repeated across the union, sometimes for tiny cooperatives, sometimes for massive industrial plants without which entire towns would have closed. By circulating goods and services around the union, the
vory’s
smuggling had saved the state’s industrial machine from choking on its own red tape—they’d been the closest thing the Soviet Union had to a service industry. The
vory
had been doing it for themselves, of course; any benefit to the regime had been entirely unintentional.

And now Lev and Borzov, having helped destroy the union, were helping to ensure its replacement. Not for free, of course; nothing ever comes free in Russia. Criminals and politicians, politicians and businessmen, businessmen and criminals—the troika reinvented.

Alice cooked dinner and ate it without tasting a mouthful. Lewis was talkative, which suited her on two counts: it meant he didn’t notice her distraction, and absolved her from the need to keep the conversation going by, say, confessing her infidelity. When the phone rang, she forced herself to stroll rather than sprint across the room.

“Hello?”

“Have you decided?”

Sabirzhan’s voice was soft, and no less menacing for it. He was a creature of the twilight, Alice thought. Would he really fight his battles in public, as he was threatening? She couldn’t stop privatization, and she
wouldn’t tell her husband about Lev—why should she, until she absolutely had to? She should call his bluff; a bully couldn’t coerce someone who wouldn’t be intimidated. “I think you must have the wrong number,” she said, and hung up.

Thursday, February 20, 1992

T
he revelation came to Alice with sudden and unexpected simplicity. She was watching Lewis gather his things for another night shift at the Sklifosovsky—he’d been working many of those lately—when she realized something at once intensely sad and deeply relieving: she was no longer in love with him. She’d always thought that whatever Lev gave her, whatever problems she and Lewis were having, Lewis was her husband and she loved him. But now, just as Lewis was buttoning his shirt, an unremarkable and pifflingly domestic moment, Alice saw in a flash that she didn’t. It was like deteriorating vision; you get it so gradually that it’s hardly noticeable, then one day you put on glasses and the world becomes once more as sharp and clear as it was always meant to be.

Alice had been lying to Lewis and concealing things from him ever since she’d met Lev, and maybe even before that. She recognized now that she’d also been hiding the truth from herself. It’s an awful thing, not to
love someone who loves you. The prospect of inflicting such a humiliating, annihilating blow on someone she cared about so deeply—and she could and did love Lewis without being in love with him—was enough to infuse Alice with terror. She
should
love him, of course, but wasn’t there an absolute delight in loving the wrong man? Love is like a lump of coal, she thought: hot, it burns you; cold, it makes you dirty.

She knew every little thing about Lewis: that he liked to read biographies in bed; that he took ketchup but never mayonnaise with hamburgers, and mustard but never ketchup with hot dogs; that he often gave a quick three-pronged snuffle as he dropped off to sleep; that he walked with his weight slightly to one side, so that the heel of his right shoe wore away twice as fast as the heel of his left. She knew all these things, and many more, but it was no longer enough. There was no hope for her and Lewis anymore. Lewis was wrong for Moscow, and Moscow was where she wanted to be. Ergo, Lewis was wrong for her.

With Lewis she could simply
be
, in a way she never could with Lev. Seeing Lev was always an event: she was always buzzing, always in top form, always superwoman. She and Lev had never spent an evening slumped in front of the television or reading in companionable silence. It was as though she was scared that the moment she stopped or even slowed, Lev would see her for a mistress of illusion. If he knew how unworthy she was, he’d surely stop loving her, and there was nothing she now feared more than the loss of his love.

The Hungry Duck was a Western bar on Pushechnaya that was working hard to maintain its reputation as one of Moscow’s most degenerate nightspots. Tonight was
ladies’ night—women only and free drinks until nine o’clock. For Alice, it was the perfect place to blow off steam. There was no word from Sabirzhan, and she was going nuts sitting around waiting for the hammer to fall.

She found a quiet corner—well, quiet by Hungry Duck standards—and splashed vodka into her glass. The wall above her head was plastered with advertisements for other themed nights: Czar in the Bar, when a costumed actor roved the room ensuring that no glass remained empty for long, or Countdown, with a sliding scale of cut-rate drinks, five for the price of one between eight and nine, four for one between nine and ten, and so on until normal service was resumed at midnight.

No one asked her to join them, which suited Alice just fine. She wanted to be alone; she wanted to be in a crowd.

At nine o’clock sharp, the doors opened onto—and, by the look of it, under the sheer weight of—a male tsunami. Scores of men brimming with vodka and testosterone came barreling into the bar with the speed and relentlessness of a swollen mountain torrent, sniffing and yelping and licking at any women who were unfortunate enough not to get out of their way in time.

People didn’t go to the Hungry Duck to talk, they went to unwind. It was the new, licentious Russia writ large. Every night, the place was packed to the rafters with thrill-seeking expats and Russians intent on drinking themselves blind, finding someone to fuck, and maybe getting into a fistfight or two—in short, everything they hadn’t been allowed to do under communism.