Zeitgeist (33 page)

“The Bulgarian lev?”

“That’s it. Nice new bills. Crisp. Hardly used, because Bulgaria is barely capitalist. Take that valise, go to Cyprus, launder it. Go vanish. Wink out. You cannot save me. You can’t even save yourself.”

“You expect me to write off my obligation to those girls for a single leather satchel full of cheap Bulgarian cash? After all I did for them? After all my plans?”

“Yes. That’s my expectation. Take it or leave it.”

Starlitz scratched his head. “How about two satchels? I have a traveling companion.”

STARLITZ WAS FED UP WITH AIRCRAFT TRAVEL. IT WAS too clean, inhuman, and anesthetizing. He rented a cheap car in Istanbul and cheerfully drove across Turkey, through crazed, high-speed, packed traffic, on many very bad roads.

Zeta had passed out from hunger, jet lag, and star worship inside the German One’s room. A calming childish nap had done her a lot of good. She happily drummed the flats of her hands on her personal calfskin valise. “Dad, it’s cool to have lots of cash, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“When does the German One get her million dollars?”

Starlitz cleared his throat. “The German One is talent, honey. She gets limos, and big, screaming crowds. But as for the talent keeping any of the money, well, pop’s rich tapestry is never much with that.”

“Dad, she told me being a star isn’t that great, Dad. She says that people think stars wear nice clothes and go to parties all the time. But she works super hard, Dad. She’s always in the gym, and she never gets enough to eat. She says she’s gonna make it to Y2K, and get her stupid million dollars, and go home to Bremen, and sleep for five years. I mean, that was the deal.”

“Maybe that could still happen somehow, but it’s not our problem anymore. The G-7 scene is past repair. The scene got stuck inside Turkey, and it is violently mutating,
and it is gonna blow. So if somebody’s gonna tie off the narrative and scram with the loot, reasonably speaking, it’s got to be us.”

Zeta fell into thoughtful silence, which wavered, over the passing kilometers, into a carsick sulk.

They slept in a seaside hotel in Antalya. They drove the rental car onto the morning car ferry to Turkish Cyprus. After disembarking, green with pitching seas and the ferry’s diesel fumes, they drove across the island into the cramped medieval streets of Lefkosa.

They found Viktor in a working-class section of the Turkish Cypriot capital. Viktor had come to favor a grimy restaurant, in the ground floor of a bullet-pocked 1960s housing project. Viktor’s favorite dive had a cozy, bunkerlike feeling, for the walls were thick cement, the northern windows were small and curtained, and the restaurant had only one door left. The building had once had an exit and a view to the south, but the southern wall was smack against the Green Line, facing Greek Cyprus. So the whole southern face of the building had been entirely bricked up.

Viktor wore a floral shirt, tinted shades, tailored khaki trousers, and Turkish-pirated pseudo-Italian shoes. It was lunchtime, and Viktor was wolfing down a red, murky lamb soup, next to a table with a quartet of UN troops. These soldiers were mustached, booted Argentines, wearing camo and baby-blue berets. They were devouring spiced kebabs and chatting in Spanish about the local hookers. The Argentines had the wary eyes of guys who worried a lot about where the crosshairs might be centered, but they didn’t look too unhappy about their UN military assignment. There weren’t many circumstances in the world where Falklands campaign veterans were treated like humanitarians.

The diner’s owner sidled over in his stained apron. He had a cast in one eye, and looked about as crooked as it was possible for a humble cook to look. Starlitz examined the diner’s semiliterate, polyglot menu. He had badly missed the excellent Cypriot cuisine during his travels. He
joyfully ordered sautéed brains, diced fried liver, and grilled kidneys. Zeta had a white rice soup.

“I love the UN, don’t you?” said Viktor in Russian, with a lingering sidelong glance. “They seem so much kinder than NATO.”

Starlitz ripped up a pita bread and dipped it in chickpea sauce.

Viktor sighed theatrically. “I love the UN because they’re not democratic. They’re not advanced, and market driven, and high tech. They’re crooked. One never imagined a badly organized, clumsy, crooked, squalid World Government. Yet here they are at the end of the century, see them there?—chain-smoking, and eating goats.”

Viktor set down his tarnished spoon and steepled his fingers. “By its rhetorical nature ‘World Government’ seems pure, abstract, utopian. But this is not a merely conceptual World Government. This is an
actual
World Government we are eating lunch with here. A government with bored soldiers from Ukraine and Sri Lanka, who pass their careers in rotting zones of warlords and piracy. The UN is a global empire, but it’s a weak empire of corruption, pretense, smoldering rebellion. It’s very like the empire of the Ottoman sultans. Or the Russian czars.”

Zeta stared raptly at Viktor, eyes shining. She understood not a word of Russian, but Viktor’s basic message seemed to be coming across to her with thrilling immediacy.

“As Pelevin points out in his novel
Lives of the Insects,
” said Viktor analytically, “we live like vermin. Why is that? Because we prefer it that way. Law, order, justice, those vast abstractions are too smooth and modernist for human beings who still possess souls. Most people in this world live like rats in the cracks in the walls. Crooked empires contain more cracks. There may be more killing, but there are also more places to hide.”

“I’m with that,” grunted Starlitz. “Russian theory is a beautiful thing. But since they busted Nick the G-7 Accountant, all my favorite banks around here are full of
mousetraps. Therefore, I got a hands-on, practical problem, Viktor. Disposing of my two valises here.”

Viktor grinned around his spoon. “Another trip with your luggage through the Green Line, Mr. Starlitz?”

“Viktor, I need a money laundry in
Greek
Cyprus. Turkish Cyprus is over, it’s yesterday. I want you to mule my cash to a laundry over the border. If the banks in Greek Cyprus are good enough for the Milosevic family, they’re bound to be good enough for me.”

Starlitz and Viktor entered into direct negotiations. Young Viktor had enjoyed an eventful year. He had certainly not been wasting his time in the absence of Starlitz and Khoklov. On the contrary: the lack of adult oversight had fully unleashed Viktor’s entrepreneurial instincts. Viktor had built a thriving career for himself, silently sneaking back and forth through the Cyprus Green Line.

The ethnic apartheid had created a tremendous osmotic pressure between the little island’s two economies. Conventional goods couldn’t make it to market through the ethnic-hate taboo, so Viktor had come to specialize in transporting women. In the prosperous Greek half of Cyprus, an Orthodox Slavic hooker was worth five or six times what she could pull in Turkish territories. Entering Turkish Cyprus required few formalities, but formally entering Greek Cyprus by ship or aircraft required annoying documentation. So Viktor was a growing expert in moving illegal female flesh directly through the mud, the searchlights, and the barbed wire. There was always good money in this practice, but rarely so much money as in the year 1999. Severe political disruption always produced a much better class of hooker.

Viktor excused himself for a cigarette and a cell-phone call.

“What was Viktor saying, Dad?”

“We’re discussing Viktor’s percentage. And the safety and liquidity of the funds.”

“Dad, is Viktor a nice guy?”

“No.”

“I
knew
that,” said Zeta triumphantly. “I just knew it. I mean, I
get it
about Viktor now. Viktor is the guy that Mom One and Mom Two never wanted me to meet. Right?”

“Right.”

“I mean, besides you, Dad. Mom and Mom sure didn’t want me to meet you, but they
totally
didn’t want me to meet Viktor.”

“I’m glad you get it about Viktor. You should have a good look at Viktor. He’s every mother’s nightmare.”

Zeta put her elbows on the table, clasped her hands, and rolled her wrists around loosely. “Dad, can I tell you something? Viktor is just
the coolest guy
, Dad. I used to think guys in rock bands were cool, but Viktor Bilibin is just the coolest, dreamiest, gangster guy. He has just such amazing eyes. They look just like my pet snake’s.”

Starlitz considered this artless confession. At first glance this was a very alarming development, but she wasn’t his own child for nothing. “You don’t need Viktor,” Starlitz informed her carefully. “I got you a fully legal American passport, in your own name. The whole world is yours, babe, except for Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Iraq, Serbia, and Montenegro.”

Viktor returned, sat down, and ordered Turkish coffee. “I think we can do biznis,” he said in Russian. “As long as the bills are not bogus.”

“The bills are fine. I don’t think Ozbey Effendi would be passing me any bogus Bulgarian.”

“Mehmet Ozbey?” said Viktor, sitting up in alarm.

“Yeah, him. Who else do you know with white calfskin valises full of cash?”

“But Mehmet Ozbey is dead.”

Starlitz laughed. “You’re fuckin’ delusionary, pal. I saw Ozbey last night. He was throwing a video party with flaming Kurds and lingerie models.”

Viktor went pale. “I know he’s dead. I had Ozbey hit,” he insisted. “
Nobody
could have survived that.”

Starlitz looked around the little grill. The temperature in the establishment had dropped by ten degrees, but no
one else seemed to notice. Conversations including an eleven-year-old child rarely attracted sinister eavesdroppers.

“Dad,” Zeta said thoughtfully, “did Viktor kill somebody?”

“No.”

“He thinks he killed somebody.”

“There’s a big difference.”

Viktor lifted his right hand with two fingers outstretched and his thumb as a revolver hammer. “I killed somebody,” he told her in English, his voice gone resonant and spooky. “He wanted to kill me, because I know too much. He put me on his hit list. So, I took revenge on him. I had him liquidated. Boom-boom-bang.”

“Wow,” Zeta marveled, eyes like saucers and goose bumps all over her arms. “That’s so corrupt!”

“It was the naked justice of the streets,” Viktor intoned.

“He’s full of it,” Starlitz said, and switched to Russian. “Viktor, I thought you were keeping a low profile here. You can’t have that guy hit. You’re a teenage punk, and he’s in Istanbul in a fucking palace walking around like a minister. If you’re strutting around in some doped stupor claiming that you took out Mehmet Ozbey, you are fucking radioactive. I don’t want to be anywhere near you.”

Viktor was wounded. “I didn’t shoot him myself! I never claimed that! But I know when Ozbey comes to Cyprus—because
everybody
knows when Ozbey comes to Cyprus. So I followed Ozbey. I watched his movements. I squealed on him. I ratted him out. I fingered him to a multinational apparatus of elite killer agents. And they blew him to pieces.” Viktor smiled triumphantly.

“What? Who? How? Like, you’ve got contacts with hit-squad superninjas of some kind?”

“Exactly.”

Starlitz leaned back. “You’re mental.”

“I’m not! Why would I make this up? They were secret agents from Guh-ooh-am.”

“From
what
?”

“From Guh-ooh-am. I’ll write it down for you.” Viktor produced a cheap pen from a Greek Nicosia hotel and scribbled on a badly stained napkin.

“This is Cyrillic and it’s not a Russian word,” Starlitz complained.

“I’ll write it in Roman capitals.” Viktor carefully printed GUUAM.

“Guam?” Starlitz hazarded. “I’ve been to Guam.”

“No,” Viktor said stubbornly, “it’s a multinational league of formerly Soviet countries. Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova. GUUAM.”

“What the hell are you on?” Starlitz scoffed. “They’re a bunch of basket cases!”

“They hate Ozbey in GUUAM. Ozbey is on the rampage across their territories. Ozbey blackmailed the son of the president of Azerbaijan. Ozbey car-bombed the junior defense minister of Uzbekistan. They know that Ozbey is dangerous, and who is supposed to help them? NATO? Ozbey is NATO! Russia? The people in GUUAM are nationalists, they all hate Russia.”

Viktor’s soup bowl jumped as he banged the table. “I can’t help it if you’ve never heard of GUUAM! GUUAM exists! GUUAM is huge. GUUAM is as big as Europe, almost! Are they supposed to act like a bunch of faggots when some Turk is fucking with them?”

“You’re telling me that Moldova runs offshore hit squads? They don’t even have a functional stock market!”

“They’re in GUUAM! They can split the expenses five ways.”

Starlitz narrowed his eyes. “Mmmph.”

“GUUAM can fight! Those countries have armies and navies. They have thousands of Red Army veterans, who never had a chance to fight under their own flag.”

Starlitz thought about the proposition. Though totally unprecedented, it didn’t seem, on the face of it, out of the question. After all, this was 1999. The planet was busting its strangeness budget.