Arkady had to admit that what often distinguished New Russians was youth and brains. An unusual number of them had been the protégés and darlings of prestigious academies that had gone suddenly bankrupt, and rather than starve among the ruins, they rebuilt the world with themselves as millionaires, each a biography of genius and pluck. They saw themselves as the robber barons of the American Wild West, and didn't someone say that every great fortune started with a crime? Russia already had over thirty billionaires, more than any other country. That was a lot of crime.
Kuzmitch, as a student at the Institute of Rare Metals, had sold titanium from an unguarded warehouse and parlayed that coup into a career in nickel and tin. Maximov, a mathematician, had been asked to keep the numbers at a public auction; the Ministry of Exotic Chemistry was selling off a lab, and the bidding promised to be chaotic. Maximov had conceived a better idea: an auction at an undisclosed location. The surprise winners, Maximov and a cousin at the ministry, turned the lab into a distillery, the start of Maximov's fortune in vodka and foreign cars.
The best example of all had been Pasha Ivanov, a physicist, the pet of the Institute of Extremely High Temperatures, who began with nothing but a bogus fund and one day set his sights on Siberian Resources, a huge enterprise of timber, sawmills and a hundred thousand hectares of Mother Russia's straightest trees. It was a minnow swallowing a whale. Ivanov bought some inconsequential Siberian debts and sued in out-of-the-way courts with corrupt judges. Siberian Resources didn't even know about the suits until ownership was awarded to Ivanov. But the management didn't back down. They had their own judges and courts, and a siege developed until Ivanov made a deal with the local army base. The officers and troops hadn't been paid in months, so Pasha Ivanov hired them to break through the sawmill gates. The tanks carried no live rounds, but a tank is a tank, and Ivanov rode the first one through.
This was the closest Arkady had ever come to the magic circle of the super-rich, and he was fascinated in spite of himself. However, Zhenya was miserable. When Arkady looked at the party through Zhenya's eyes, all color drained. Every other child was wealthier in parents and self-assurance; a shelter boy was, by definition, abandoned. The masquerade Arkady had planned was revealing itself as a cruel and stupid trial. No matter how spiteful or uncommunicative Zhenya was, he didn't deserve this.
"Going already?" Timofeyev asked.
"My friend isn't feeling well." Arkady nodded at Zhenya.
"What a shame, to be so young and not to enjoy good health." Timofeyev made a weak effort at a smile. He sniffed and clutched a handkerchief at the ready. Arkady noticed brown spots on his shirt. "I should have started a charity like this. I should have done more. Did you know that Pasha and I grew up together? We went to the same schools, the same scientific institute. But our tastes were entirely different. I was never the ladies' man. More into sports. For example, Pasha had a dachshund, and I had wolfhounds."
"You don't anymore?"
"Unfortunately, no, I couldn't. I... What I told the investigation was that we did the best we could, given the information we had."
"What investigation?" Not Arkady's.
"Pasha said that it wasn't a matter of guilt or innocence, that sometimes a man's life was simply a chain reaction."
"Guilt for what?" Arkady liked specifics.
"Do I look like a monster to you?"
"No." Arkady thought that Lev Timofeyev may have helped build a financial giant through corruption and theft, but he was not necessarily a monster. What Timofeyev looked like was a once hale sportsman who seemed to be shrinking in his own clothes. Perhaps it was grief over the death of his best friend, but his pallor and sunken cheeks suggested to Arkady the bloom of disease and, maybe, fear. Pasha had always been the swashbuckler of the two, although Arkady remembered that Rina had mentioned some secret crime in the past. "Does this involve Pasha?"
"We were trying to help. Anyone with the same information would have drawn an identical conclusion."
"Which was?"
"Matters were in hand, things were under control. We sincerely thought they were."
"What matters?" Arkady was at a loss. Timofeyev seemed to have switched to an entirely different track.
"The letter said apologize personally, face-to-face. Who would that be?"
"Do you have it?"
Rina called out from the casino. She shone in a silver jumpsuit in the spirit of the day. "Arkady, are you missing someone?"
Zhenya had vanished from Arkady's side only to reappear at the gaming tables. There were tables for poker and blackjack, but Rina's friends had opted for classic roulette, and there Zhenya stood, clutching his book and dourly assessing each bet as it was placed. Arkady excused himself to Timofeyev with a promise to return.
"I want you to meet my friends, Nikolai and Leo," Rina whispered. "They are so much fun, and they're losing so much money. At least they were until your little friend arrived."
Nikolai Kuzmitch, who had cornered the nickel market, was a short, rapid-fire type who placed straight-up and corner bets all over the baize. Leonid Maximov, the vodka king, was heavyset, with a cigar. He was more deliberate – a mathematician, after all – and played the simple progression system that had ruined Dostoyevsky: doubling and redoubling on red, red, red, red, red. If the two men lost ten or twenty thousand dollars on a bounce of the roulette ball, it was for charity and only gained respect. In fact, as the chips were raked in, losing itself became feverishly competitive, a sign of panache – that is, until Zhenya had taken a post between the two millionaires. With every flamboyant bet, Zhenya gave Kuzmitch the sort of pitying glance one would bestow upon an idiot, and every unimaginative double on red by Maximov drew from Zhenya a sigh of disdain. Maximov moved his chips to black, and Zhenya smirked at his inconstancy; Maximov repositioned them on black, and Zhenya, with no change in expression, seemed to roll his eyes.
"Unnerving little boy, isn't he?" Rina said. "He's almost brought the game to a standstill."
"He has that power," Arkady admitted. He noticed that, in the meantime, Timofeyev had slipped into the crowd.
Kuzmitch and Maximov quit the table in disgust, but they put on matching smiles for Rina and a welcome for Arkady that said they had nothing to fear from an investigator; they had been buying and selling investigators for years.
Kuzmitch said, "Rina tells us that you're helping tie up the loose ends about Pasha. That's good. We want people reassured. Russian business is into a whole new phase. The rough stuff is out." Maximov agreed. Arkady was put in mind of carnivores swearing off red meat. Not that they were Mafia. A man was expected to know how to defend himself and own a private army if need be. But it was a phase, and now that they had their fortunes, they firmly advocated law and order.
Arkady asked whether Ivanov had mentioned any anxieties or threats or new names, avoided anyone, referred to his health. No, the two said, except that Ivanov had not been himself lately.
"Did he mention salt?"
"No."
Maximov unplugged his cigar to say, "When I heard about Pasha, I was devastated. We were competitors, but we respected and liked each other."
Kuzmitch said, "Ask Rina. Pasha and I would fight over business all day and then party like best friends all night."
"We even vacationed together," Maximov said.
"Like Saint-Tropez?" Arkady asked. Bomb and all? he wondered.
They winced as if he had added something unpleasant to the punch. Arkady noticed Colonel Ozhogin arrive and whisper into Prosecutor Zurin's ear. Guards started to move in the direction of the roulette table, and Arkady sensed that his time among the elite was limited. Kuzmitch said that he was piloting his plane to Istanbul for a few days of relaxation. Maximov was coming along with six or seven agreeable girls, and Arkady could come, too. Things could be arranged. There was an implicit suggestion that there might be too many girls for two men to handle. Rina, of course, was more than welcome.
"They're like a boys' club," she told Ark
ady. "Greedy little boys."
"And Pasha?"
"President of the club."
"Rina straightened him out," Kuzmitch said.
"If I could meet a woman like Rina, I would settle down, too," said Maximov. "As it is, all this wine, women and song could be fatal."
"Where were you when you heard about Pasha's death?" Arkady asked.
"I was playing squash. My trainer will tell you. I sat down on the floor of the court and cried."
Kuzmitch said, "I was in Hong Kong. I immediately flew back out of concern for Rina."
"All these questions. It was suicide, wasn't it?" Maximov said.
"Tragically, yes." Zurin slipped up to the table. He held Zhenya firmly by the shoulder. "My office looked into matters, but there was no reason for an investigation. Just a tragic event."
"Then why..." Kuzmitch glanced at Arkady.
"Thoroughness. But I think I can assure you, there will no more questions now. Could you excuse us, please? I need a word with my investigator."
"Istanbul," Kuzmitch reminded Arkady.
"Give this man a day off," Maximov told Zurin. "He's working too hard."
The prosecutor steered Arkady away. "Having a good time? How did you get in?"
"I was invited, me and my friend." Arkady took Zhenya…
"To ask questions and spread rumors?"
"You know what rumor I heard?"
"What would that be?" Zurin kept Arkady and Zhenya moving.
"I heard they made you a company director. They found you a chair in the boardroom, and now you're earning your keep."
Zurin steered Arkady a little faster. "Now you've done it. Now you've gone too far."
Ozhogin caught up and gripped Arkady's shoulder with a wrestler's thumb that pressed to the bone. "Renko, you'll have to learn manners if you ever want to work for NoviRus Security." The colonel patted Zhenya on the head, and Zhenya clenched Arkady's hand in a hard little knot.
"How dare you come here?" Zurin demanded.
"You told me to ask questions."
"Not at a charity event."
"You know the disk that Hoffman was holding out on us?" Ozhogin let Arkady peek at a shiny CD.
"Ah, that must be it," Arkady said. "Are you breaking arms today, or legs?"
"Your investigation is over," Zurin said. "To sneak into a party and drag in some homeless boy is inexcusable."
"Does this mean I will be reassigned?"
"This means disciplinary action," Zurin said wearily, as if setting down a heavy stone. "This means you're done."
Arkady felt done. He also felt he might have gone a little too far with Zurin. Even sellouts had their pride.
Back he and Zhenya went, away from the circle of important men, past the cosmonauts, cotton candy and smoky grills, the telegenic faces and blue llamas and aliens on stilts. A rocket shot up from the tennis court, rose high into the blue sky and exploded into a shower of paper flowers. By the time the last of the petals had drifted down, Arkady and Zhenya were out the gate. Meanwhile, Bobby Hoffman was waiting at Arkady's car, stuffing a bloody nose with a handkerchief, head tilted back to protect the jacket bequeathed him by Ivanov.
On the drive, Zhenya regarded Arkady with a narrow gaze. Arkady had gone with dizzying speed from the heights of New Russia to a boot out the door. This descent was swift enough to get even Zhenya's attention.
"What's going to happen?" Hoffman asked.
"Who knows? A new career. I studied law at MoscowUniversity, maybe I can become a lawyer. Do you see me as a lawyer?"
"Ha!" Hoffman thought for a second. "It's funny, but there's one thing about you that reminds me of Pasha. You're not as smart, God knows, but you share a quality. You couldn't tell whether he found things funny or sad. More like he felt, What the hell? Especially toward the end."
Arkady asked Zhenya, "Is that good, to share qualities with a dead man?" Zhenya pursed his lips. "It depends? I agree."
Zhenya hadn't eaten. They pulled in at a pirozhki stand and found, on the far side of the stand, an inflated fun house of a homely cabin standing on chicken legs. An inflated fence of bones and skulls surrounded the hut, and on the roof stood the witch, Baba Yaga, with the mortar and pestle on which she flew. In Zhenya's fairy tales, Baba Yaga ate children who wandered to her cabin. This cabin was full of children jumping on a trampoline floor covered with balls of colored foam. Boys and girls slid out one door and ran in another while the mechanical witch cackled hideously above. Zhenya left his chess set and walked into the witch's cabin, spellbound.
Hoffman said, "Thanks for the ride. I don't drive in Russia. Driving here is like endlessly circling the Arc de Triomphe."
"I wouldn't know. How is the nose?"
"Ozhogin pinched it. Wasn't even a punch. Showed me the disk, reached up and popped a blood vessel, just for the humiliation."
"It's a day for bloody noses. Timofeyev had one, too." Now that Arkady thought about it, on the videotapes, Ivanov had held a handkerchief the same way.
Hoffman hunched forward. "Did I mention he likes you just as much as me?"
"I don't know why." The prospect of running into Ozhogin again made Arkady want to lift weights and work out regularly. He lit a cigarette. "Where did you hide the disk?"
"I knew Ozhogin would look in my apartment, so I put it in my gym locker. I actually taped it upside down. It was invisible. I don't know how he found it."
"How often do you go to the gym, Bobby?"
"Once a..." Hoffman shrugged.
"There you are."
"Oh, and now that they have the disk, the offer is 'Leave the country or go to jail.' I pissed them off. Fuck them, I'll be back."
"And Rina?"
"Let me tell you about Rina." Bobby picked pirozhki crumbs off his jacket. "She is a lovely kid, and Pasha left her well set up, and within a year the most important thing in her life will be fashion shows. And she'll run Pasha's foundation, that'll keep her busy. Everyone wins except you and me. And I'll bounce back."
"Which leaves me."
"At the bottom of the food chain. I'll tell you this much: the company's dead."
"NoviRus?"
"Kaput. All that held it together was Pasha." Bobby gently touched his nose. "Maybe Timofeyev was a good scientist once upon a time, but in business he is a total dud. No nerve, no imagination. I never understood why Pasha kept him on. Not to mention that Timofeyev is falling apart in front of everyone's eyes. Six months, you know who'll run the show at NoviRus? Ozhogin. He's a cop. Only you can't run a complicated business entity like a cop, you have to be a general. Kuzmitch and Maximov can't wait. When they're done with Ozhogin, you won't be able to find his bones. It's the food chain, Renko. Figure out the food chain, and you figure out the world."
Arkady watched Zhenya bounce in and out of sight. He asked Hoffman, "What do you know about Anton Obodovsky?"
"Obodovsky?" Bobby raised his eyebrows. "Tough guy, local Mafia, jacked some of our trucks and drained some oil tanks. He has balls, I'll give him that. Ozhogin pointed him out on the street once. Obodovsky made the colonel nervous. I liked that."
When Zhenya finally emerged from the fun house, they started home. Hoffman and Zhenya played chess without a board, calling out their moves, the boy piping "e4" from the backseat, followed quickly by Hoffman's confident "c5" up front. Arkady could follow through the first ten moves, and then it was like listening to a conversation between robots, so he concentrated more on his own diminishing prospects.
It was virtually impossible to be dismissed for incompetence. Incompetence had become the norm under the old law, when prosecutors faced no courtroom challenges from upstart lawyers, and convenient evidence and confessions were always close at hand. Drinking was indulged: a drunken investigator who curled up in the back of a car was treated as gently as an ailing grandmother. Corruption, however, was tricky. While corruption was the lubrication of Russian life, an investigator accused of corruption always drew public outrage. There was a painting called T
he Sleigh Ride, of a troika driver throwing a horrified girl to a pursuing wolf pack. Zurin was like that driver. He compiled files on his own investigators, and whenever the press got close to him, he tossed them a victim. Arkady had no reason to be horrified or surprised.
He asked Hoffman, "Does Timofeyev have a cold or a bloody nose?"
"He says he has a cold."
"There were spots on his shirt that looked like dried blood."
"Which could have come from blowing his nose."
"Did Pasha have a bloody nose?"
"Sometimes," Hoffman said. He was still engaged in the chess game.
"Did he have a cold?"
"No."
"An allergy?"
"No. Rook takes b3."
Zhenya said, "Queen to d8, check."
"Did he see a doctor?" Arkady asked.
"He wouldn't go."
"He was paranoid?"
"I don't know. I never looked at it that way. It wasn't that obvious, because he was still on top of the business end. King to h7."
"Queen to e7," said Zhenya.
"Queen to d5."
"Checkmate."
Hoffman threw his hands up as if upsetting a board. "Fuck!"
"He's good," Arkady said.
"Who knows, with these distractions?"
Zhenya won two more games before they got to the children's shelter. Arkady walked him to the door, and Zhenya marched through without a backward look, which was both more and less than disdain. Hoffman was closing his mobile phone when Arkady returned to the car.
"He's Jewish," Hoffman said.
"His last name is Lysenko. That's not Jewish."
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