Zeitgeist (4 page)

Starlitz rose from his seat and nodded at Miss Utz. Miss Utz aimed, assembled, and fired a dazzling smile.

STARLITZ LEFT THE GROUNDS OF THE CASINO. HE strolled past a harborside café, with its scarred tables and cigarette-ad umbrellas. He carefully unchained his hired bicycle. Before reaching Turkish Cyprus, Starlitz hadn’t been spending much time on bicycles. It was alarming how his spreading ass fell over both sides of the narrow seat.

Obvious as neon in his big green suit, Starlitz slowly pedaled the narrow streets of Girne. After five minutes he descended from the bike, left the street, and walked the bike down a flight of stairs. This allowed him to lose his Turkish tail without being impolite about it.

Ozbey had a lot of guys on his payroll. Ozbey had a lot of mouths to feed; Ozbey had to keep all his people occupied. It was natural for him to have Starlitz tailed. Starlitz was prepared to be understanding about this.

Starlitz had come to be enormously fond of Turkish Cyprus. The TRNC was truly his kind of place. The little pariah state was often described as “unspoiled,” but this couldn’t capture the full glory and wonder of its anomolous position in the world. Turkish Cyprus was not “unspoiled.” It was
counter
spoiled; driven into limbo by twenty-five years of political impasse and frantic ethnic hatred. Its pygmy regime was formally unrecognized by any state but Turkey. The invisible hand of the global market couldn’t get a proper grip in this thorny little locale.

The truth was visibly written all over the Cypriot landscape. For instance, the local ruins. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was one of the last spots in Europe where the Ancient Ruins © ® ™ were actual, fully authentic ancient ruins. These ancient ruins had never been lacquered over or tidied up. They had never become monuments or public attractions. Instead, they were horribly old and neglected things that had fallen apart. The tumbled walls and columns simply lay there in their wreckage: Greek, Roman, Arab, Crusader, Ottoman; whatever, whoever, whenever. Broken history, quietly soaking up dew and baking in the sun.

During rare moments alone Starlitz liked to sit inside the various ruins of Cyprus. It did him good to abandon the buzzing, frantic G-7 entourage and ease his increasing bulk on these old Cypriot stones. He took a strange tenuous pleasure in this, like pressing on an aching tooth. When he faded among those forgotten, weed-grown rocks, time simply ceased. There was no speed anymore,
nothing going on, no vector of development. Inside these moments of freedom Starlitz could literally feel himself vanishing.

Cyprus had suffered an evil summer. The summer heat of 1999 had set new records worldwide, and there was still a bad drought on. The island’s ancient aquifers, badly overtaxed, were failing day by day. The local vineyards were dusty and limp, the sheep pastures were brown and crisp. It didn’t help that the local Greeks and Turks struggled valiantly to steal one another’s share of the island’s water table.

The strangest part of Cyprus was the island’s twenty-five-year-old cease-fire wilderness. The frozen battlefront of the Green Line slashed completely across the island, over hill over dale, straight through the divided capital, from one end of Cyprus to the other. The no-man’s-land—up to five miles across in spots—was lavishly lined with rusting land mines, corroding barbed wire, amateur trenches, and militia bunkers. The overgrown limbo was patrolled by UN blue-helmet troops, while rifle-toting Greek and Turkish draftees manned their rickety watchtowers.

Thanks to many illegal sewage dumps, the Green Line was very well watered. It thrived because it was freed of the cruel burden of humanity. It was an involuntary wilderness, a kind of postmodern Neolithic. But even the Green Line had suffered in the pitiless weather: the impromptu forest had caught fire on several occasions, blowing land mines like popcorn and shrouding the whole island in smoke.

The island’s overlords, Greece and Turkey, engaged in constant proxy culture war over their dual minorities. The Greeks possessed the louder propaganda machine, but the embattled Turks were closer to the homeland, and seemed to feel the outrage more keenly. The Turks were more tormented, more extravagant.

During the evil summer some unsung genius in the Turkish environmental ministry had come up with a drought-rescue scheme. The Turks had created a model
fleet of giant polyvinyl water balloons. These blimplike contraptions were towed to Turkish Cyprus by big Turkish tugs, out of the Turkish ports of Antalya and Hatay. Pumped tight with fresh water, the monster plastic bags rolled and steamed to Cyprus like sea-shouldering whales.

Local fire departments brought up their pump trucks, to add the water to the TRNC’s municipal tanks. So the imperiled minority in Turkish Cyprus possessed the living gift of Turkish water. Majority Greek Cyprus had to make do with water rationing, angry radio broadcasts, and Russian-surplus air-defense missiles.

Naturally, there was a further wrinkle to the scheme. As it happened, the poppy-strewn area around Hatay could give the Golden Triangle a run for armed dope corruption. It hadn’t taken ten minutes for the locals to grasp the profound opportunities involved in bulk submarine transport.

Starlitz, pedaling along peacefully past the outskirts of Girne, found the lucid Mediterranean twilight fading into luscious starry dark. At length Starlitz spotted a security blockade on a narrow beach road: bored Turkish paramilitary kids were checking ID. Starlitz dismounted and silently walked his bike past the roadblock. He then coasted down a sandy hillside to the beach. He carefully chained his bicycle to a concrete telephone pole, taking care to wrap the thick steel links through the frame and both the wheels.

Starlitz meandered downhill to the tire-torn sand of the beach. The nighted sand was crowded with old cars, rust spotted and duct taped. Their trunks yawned open, and their occupants were doing a brisk business, by the mellow glow of their trunk lights and dangling kerosene lamps. Charcoal glows rose here and there, where entrepreneurs were selling lamb kebabs. These smugglers were all men, middle-aged hustlers mostly, in the local uniform of baggy gray pants, checkered shirts, belly-hugging woollen vests, and little cloth caps. Many were carrying shoulder-slung shotguns, but there was very little menace to the scene. It was just business.

No one seemed surprised to see him. No one would arrive at a rendezvous of this sort without a good reason to do it.

Starlitz was searching for his contact, a Russian emigré named Pulat R. Khoklov.

He located Khoklov, not far from a loudly laboring tow truck. The big wrecker had its rear wheels jammed deep in the sand, fixed with big chocks of brick and driftwood. A taut steel cable strung far out to sea, humming with tension.

Pulat Khoklov was an Afghan war veteran, a former Soviet fighter pilot, now in his early forties. The Russian had made a halting effort to adapt to Cypriot conditions: he wore a black fisherman’s cap, an open-weaved tourist shirt, shorts, and sandals. Khoklov was badly sunburned, and gaunt with illness. The braided rim of his hat showed pale wisps of hair, with the fluffy, damaged look of chemotherapy.

“How’s life, ace?” said Starlitz in Russian. “Long time no see.”

“Why are you dressed like this, Lekhi?” Khoklov said. He examined Starlitz’s bright green suit. “You look like a Popsicle.”

“It’s good to see you, too, Pulat Romanevich.” Starlitz gave the man a bear hug. There wasn’t a lot left to him. The bones of the Russian’s wasted rib cage were flexing like Teflon.

Khoklov smiled sourly and held Starlitz at arm’s length. “You seem so fat and happy.”

“I’m in the muzik biznis,” Starlitz told him. “Not like the old days. I’m peaceful and civilized now.”

Khoklov dropped his arms and lowered his voice. “Give me a cigarette?”

Starlitz patted his pockets and shrugged. “I quit, ace. I quit. I finally kicked the habit.”

“Me, too, damn it.” Khoklov sighed, and coughed a bit, painfully. “Well, you need to meet my sister’s boy. He does a lot of my legwork these days.”

They found Khoklov’s nephew gnawing a spear of kebab,
sipping a Fanta orange pop, and staring out to sea. The young Russian was wearing a Toronto Maple Leaf hockey jersey, and rave-kid jeans, with pant legs so enormous that they could have fit a Kenyan bull elephant. Khoklov’s nephew sported a patchy goatee and short blond dreadlocks. His drug-addled eyes were like two dinner plates.

“Viktor, this is Mr. Starlits,” Khoklov said patiently. “Lekhi Starlits is an international financier and musical impresario.”

The kid staggered to his sneakered feet and knocked sand from his ass.
“Da,”
he remarked. Viktor looked all of seventeen. He offered Starlitz the fixed, ingratiating grin of a heavy dosage of Ecstasy.

“This is my nephew, Viktor Mikhailovich Bilibin,” said Khoklov. “He’s from Leningrad.”

“Petersburg,” Viktor corrected pleasantly.

“We’ve been on the Baltic circuit together,” Khoklov said. “Finland, Germany, the Kaliningrad enclave … I had a little banking start-up in Kaliningrad, much like the one we tried together in the Alands. Vinogradov was backing my scheme. You know of him, Vinogradov? One of the legendary Seven Bankers.”

Starlitz nodded. “The Seven Gnomes of Moscow, huh? You sure can pick ’em, ace.”

“But I wasn’t feeling well. And then came the big Russian market crash. Vinogradov washed out, the Gnome went down with all hands.” Khoklov shrugged his emaciated shoulders. “The south, the warm and kindly Mediterranean … Cyprus is a better place for my health.”

“I heard you’d been killing some time up in the former Yugoslavia,” said Starlitz.

Khoklov scowled. “Yes, I was there.”

Starlitz nodded. “I kept meaning to go up to Yugoland. Wanted to make that scene all through the nineties. Never could quite make the proper opportunity.”

“You don’t want to go there,” said Khoklov, his face grim. “Trust me on that assessment.”

“It’s fun there,” offered Viktor suddenly in English.
“The son of Milosevic owns the biggest disco in the Balkans! Marko Milosevic is a very hip fellow. He’s like you, Mr. Starlits, the noted musical impresario.”

“You’ve got pretty good English, kid,” said Starlitz indulgently. “That’s good to hear, because that’s good for biznis.”

“Viktor’s my English translator,” said Khoklov. “He grew up with Radio Free Europe. And many pirated punk and rave cassettes.” Khoklov grunted. “But in Petersburg the Tambovskaya gang set fire to Viktor’s kiosk. So it’s not healthy for Viktor in Russia now either. So now my nephew and I are a team. We are international biznis consultants. Engaged in much romantic travel in exotic vacation spots.”

They scuffed casually back toward the laboring tow truck, with Viktor trailing cheerfully and gnawing his greasy kebab.

“I got a biznis pitch for you, ace,” said Starlitz. “It’s pretty heavy duty. You want to hear about this?”

Khoklov scowled. “I’ve known you for a long time, Starlits! Ever since Azerbaijan. Also, that banking debacle in the Aland Islands … I don’t think I’ve ever profited by knowing you.” Khoklov sighed, his bony shoulders rising and falling in his cheap tourist shirt. “When I first met you, I was flying MiGs out of Kabul air base. Then I was a happy man. I was young then, I was a warrior for socialism. Those were the happiest days of my life! It’s all been downhill since those days.”

Starlitz frowned. “Do you want to bitch about your lousy fate, or do you want to hear my proposal?”

“Now I’m a lonely exile,” Khoklov continued, ignoring him. “The maphiya sons of bitches are eating the corpse of Russia. They shoot the mayors in the street. They poison the biznizmen. They ruined every one of the banks. Yeltsin is drunk and he’s dying. The Russian army eats dog food! Russian soldiers are starving to death in their barracks!”

Starlitz reached into his jacket, produced a fat cash clip, and crisply removed five American hundred-dollar bills. “Here,” he suggested. “Shut up.”

Khoklov peered at the bills. “So, these are the new American hundreds? The ones they can’t forge yet?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.” Khoklov pocketed the cash.

“Give me some,” Viktor said, skipping alertly forward.

“Later, kid.” The sound of the tow truck changed suddenly, from a grumble to a high-pitched whine. The truck’s crew broke out in excited Turkish. They gunned their engine, with big blue gusts of combustion.

A lively crowd gathered at the waterline, carrying lanterns and longshoreman’s hooks.

“This must be our bag,” Starlitz remarked.

“Viktor,” Khoklov snapped, “wait. Watch out for these Turks, boy; Turks carry big sharp knives.”

“It’s beautiful out here,” Viktor protested, eager to rush forward with the jostling crowd. “What a beautiful night! Look at all the stars.”

“We’re among Moslems here, boy. Pay attention.”

Viktor glanced at Starlitz, with an apologetic chemical grin. “My uncle is old-fashioned,” he explained. “He’s a patriot.”

“I’m new at this myself,” Starlitz said. “How do we collect our merchandise in a setup like this?”

“You’d be surprised how neatly they run these things,” shrugged Khoklov. “This is the submarine arm of the heroin network. These heroin people have bought their own bus lines now, they own their own truck lines.… There are huge new drug maphiyas in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkestan.… There’s nothing left to the old borders now. The heroin people are very efficient, very free market. They even have postal codes.”

Men with long iron hawsers splashed into the surf. It had grown quite dark. Yo-ho-ho-ing in a concerted muscular effort, the Cypriot smugglers slowly rolled and tugged their giant water balloon onto the beach. In the patchy lantern lights the gleaming, deflated bladder resembled nothing so much as a giant used condom.

Starlitz and his two companions crept up for a closer look as the smugglers broke into their shipment. The
giant bladder had a waterproof interior sac of some kind, a big plastic cyst sewn into it. Armed men with automatic rifles appeared, to oversee the divvying up of the smuggled goods. The riflemen were escorting a video cameraman.