On the stage at the end of the giant hall, two sex-bomb auctioneers in little pink dresses, making salacious jokes in reedy voices, present the first item to the respectable crowd: a fifty-dollar gold certificate from the Roosevelt era in a golden frame, depicting a golden calf.
Tatiana’s idea to have an exclusive VIP area, only for ultra-high net worth individuals with an unspoken obligation to bid, is obviously working very well. Akbar must be somewhere over there too.
I decide to wait at the circular bar in the middle of the club until this horseplay is over, next to a much smaller stage with a pole, where a typical naked, busty blonde is hanging with her head down to the floor, amassing banknotes from her grateful spectators right in her mouth.
‘A lady should always put her best leg forward,’ says a calm, familiar voice accompanied by a sharp, lavish scent, somewhere to my left.
‘Schneider?’ I ask, bewildered, turning to face the gray-haired man with a massive club-shaped nose, today wearing a colorful printed shirt. ‘I remember allocating you a seat in the bidding area.’
‘I’ve actually come to talk to you, young lady,’ he says decorously.
‘To me?’ I ask, puzzled.
‘Yes, young lady, to you,’ he says, carefully lighting up a fat cigar. ‘I believe your Libyan client hasn’t received his lithium and the way things are unfolding … he won’t.’
‘How do you mean?’ I ask seriously, realizing he is not the type to make jokes about that much money.
‘Let me put it this way,’ he says, puffing out a cloud of acrid smoke. ‘Our dear friend Akbar - for various reasons’ - he pauses to gaze at my necklace - ‘is no longer on good terms with the Kremlin. He lost his kyrsha. Even showing up here with his spouse is not going to help,’ he says with a courteous smile.
‘He’s here with his wife?’ I ask, dumbfounded, swallowing a bitter lump in my throat … is he going to introduce us … the two wives?
‘It won’t be the last time,’ he says insidiously. ‘In any case, no high street bank salesperson should risk her career,’ he slowly continues, eyeing me, ‘to lend to KazyMak, or restructure its debt. There will be the most dreadful consequences,’ he warns. As a waiter passes by, he orders a big plate of fresh fruit. ‘Fruit is very good for you, especially strawberries,’ he digresses. ‘If you eat a lot of them you won’t get wrinkles, and you’ll feel fresh and revived.’ He winks with his puckered face.
‘How is this related to lithium?’ I ask nervously.
‘It’s not,’ Schneider concurs.
‘Why do you say the client in Libya won’t receive it, then?’ I ask.
‘Because my clients have it,’ he says delicately.
‘Your clients?’ I ask, making an effort to keep the professional poker face.
‘The Zilberman brothers.’
Jenni Ferchenko
‘But you were advising Akbar against them?’
‘Well,’ he says, stubbing out his cigar. ‘When there’s a material interest there’s no such thing as friendship. Akbar knows it very well. He’s not an innocent chrisom babe after all … If one day he gets back on track, I’d be happy to work with him again.’ He flashes me a not-so-trustworthy smile.
‘Why did you want Akbar to take over their plant in Seversk in the first place?’ I ask calmly.
‘It’s very simple, young lady.’ He studies my face for a second. ‘To show the London judges he’s still nothing more than a thug,’ he says sweetly, making room for the multi-tiered fruit platter.
‘I don’t understand,’ I say, anxious about asking my next question: ‘Who exploded the reactor then?’
‘Akbar’s head of security,’ Schneider says, eagerly cutting a strawberry with a knife and fork.
‘Ibrahim? Why?’ I ask, confused.
‘Well, we all have our pressure points,’ he says cryptically. ‘Ibrahim is no exception. He was led to believe that the old friend he blew up in Chechnya was alive … and that he could save his life this time.’ Schneider soaks a strawberry in cream. ‘He fought heavily …’
‘But there’s a nuclear meltdown!’ I exclaim in disgust, realizing I have been played too.
‘Our prayers are with all the victims. The ways of the Lord are mysterious,’ he says, steadily chewing his strawberries and cream. ‘My clients will deal with it as soon as the new court resolution decrees Zilbermans Metals as the ultimate owners. That should be done this weekend. The judge is very pliable.’
‘What do you want from me?’ I ask, embittered by the entire system that has just been revealed to me.
‘I want your clients in Libya to receive their cargo,’ Schneider says, setting down his cutlery. ‘And since the Zilbermans technically own it, it’s necessary to re-sign the contract and the waybill, and obviously to pay the rest of the money to the Zilbermans Metals corporation,’ he informs me, sopping his mouth with a big white napkin.
‘I won’t call anyone until the reactor stops releasing isotopes into the air,’ I say firmly, raising my voice as the VIP area goes ballistic over the G-string supposedly worn by Madonna.
‘Very well,’ he says, getting up and leaving me hanging between life and death. Maybe that’s the end of it? There will be no aid for my dad, and I will now die in a car crash or something. ‘I believe your requirements are fair and can be addressed,’ he says, putting his hand on my brace. ‘You’ll receive by email the new paperwork for your client to sign, and I strongly urge you to have it done by Monday.’ He leans closer to me. ‘Obviously, this conversation never happened,’ he whispers into my ear, before disappearing into the blackness of the club.
As soon as he is out of sight, I get up and carefully hobble away, maneuvering through the mass of raucous, sweaty and intoxicated bodies, interspersed with strippers twerking and twisting on the floor - which is silted with money.
Halfway to the exit I see a six-foot-five blond man who could only be Akbar, walking towards me, followed by a petite, skinny blonde woman, well-coiffed, in a pale dress. She is unmistakably pregnant. He briefly gazes at me with his stale, light blue irises, as the veins in his neck pulsate quicker than the high-tempo music. The next second, he turns away.
He was never going to fix the meltdown.
With every particle of my body in agony I hop, jump, drag myself out to the exit …
‘Dad! I wasted so much time,’ I cry into my phone, hobbling away from the bustling red carpet. ‘Dad, are you OK? How did your heart injection go?’
‘It took four hours,’ he answers in an unusually weak voice, making my hands shake and the stone in my solar plexus grow, anticipating something bad. ‘It was the first time since the accident that I slept for more than three hours, but I feel even more tired.’
‘How’s your blood pressure?’ I ask, wiping away my tears.
‘My blood pressure is very high, so is the fever. It’s usual these days, with all those pills I have to take … over fifty a day. You know I never liked pills … I’m constantly in a haze of nothingness,’ he says aloofly. ‘I can’t do it any more, Katyusha.’
‘Dad, please, don’t say this,’ I yelp, feeling my heart race.
‘I went for a walk this morning,’ he says, sounding almost blissful. ‘They tried to stop me but I still went. It gave me such happiness just to be able to walk, breathe fresh air, see the daylight, hear birds singing … The simple things I used to do are just not there anymore,’ he sighs.
‘Dad, you’ll have plenty of nice walks … we’ll have them together. I found a way to cool down the reactor,’ I sob.
‘My colleague died today,’ he says without warning. ‘He worked on the reactor. He was such a good young man, very diligent …’
‘I’m so sorry,’ I whisper, feeling powerless.
‘A wife and two kids left. We gathered money to give him a proper burial and a memorial,’ he says distantly. ‘I spoke to him just a couple of days ago. He was tasked with filling rods with Caesium-137 … and now he’s gone. They’re not going to f
ix it.’ He sounds calm and resigned.
‘Fix what?’
‘The reactor … they need it for the by-products of the explosion,’ he says, breathing heavily. ‘If you can … try to help Elena to get out of this place … but regardless … I always loved you.’
‘Dad, please, don’t say that,’ I beg, suffocated by tears. ‘I’m going to come over. Tonight. I’m going to get on the plane right now. Just hold on. Please …’ The line goes dead; all I hear is a fading swish.
Unable to think straight, I get into a lane full of fancy cars, where I’m almost run over by a Lexus with a bulky driver, who has just dropped off his official employer at the club.
‘To the airport. Two hundred bucks,’ I shout, climbing into the car, while booking a plane ticket on my cell phone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SEVERSK
The four hours on the plane feel like eternity. I keep looking at my watch throughout the flight, rejoicing at every minute we gain on the schedule … as if it could make up for all the time I have lost … all these years.
The beautiful sunrise from behind the clouds gives me hope that it might not be too late, that everything is going to be OK.
We land at 7 a.m. sharp.
‘Who do you think you are? Lady in Red? Let me through,’ a grumpy woman with overly-peroxided hair yells at me from the window seat, whilst I am waiting for the passengers to clear off before getting on my crutches.
Resisting the pain in my knee, I get up to let her through and wait to limp out of the terminal in my ridiculous dress, flapping in the frosty Siberian wind on a deserted airport square.
I keep calling my dad’s number; the longer there is no response, the more my worry increases. Please, let him be sleeping, or busy … I am going to do everything right from now on - please, just let him answer.
‘Where to?’ shouts a boorish driver with gold teeth, from an old gray exhaust-belching Lada.
‘Seversk. Hospital,’ I answer, trying not to tremble too much in the freezing cold.
‘Two thousand roubles,’ he lours, glancing at the brace poking out of the split in my dress.
‘One thousand.’
‘Two or I drive away,’ he says, confident in the knowledge he’s the only car around.
I agree, clumsily lower myself into the cramped, chilly passenger seat and reach out for a seatbelt.
‘You don’t have to put it on,’ he says, going through a red light. ‘I’m a very careful driver.’
‘Sharp movements are just too painful for me,’ I demur with a smile, putting the seatbelt on, ignoring his pissed-off face.
The car keeps jiggling and rumbling through holes and rubble the entire forty-minute journey, until we reach tall, daunting walls reinforced with wire fences, separating us from the steppe.
A few yards away there is a military Jeep with ‘Federal Security Service’ written all over it in Cyrillic, and men in uniform in front, signalling for us to stop.
‘Sergeant Petrenko, your documents,’ says a diminutive Asian man in khaki uniform, with a double-headed eagle emblem on his oversized hat.
‘Of course.’ I duly take my Ukrainian passport from my clutch bag.
‘Do you have a permit for Seversk?’ he asks sternly.
‘My dad is …’ I start trying to explain.
‘Did you apply for the permit as a foreign national?’ he interrogates.
‘Ehm, no,’ I say cautiously.
‘You’ll need to come with us. Please step out of the vehicle,’ he says firmly.
‘But let me explain, please …’ I want to argue with him.
‘Miss Kuznetsova, you have illegally entered the closed atomic city of Seversk. This is an administrative offense. You need to come with us to complete the paperwork and pay a penalty, or I will have to arrest you,’ he orders, frightening the hell out of me.
‘OK,’ I obey, slowly opening the rickety door, picking up my crutches and stepping out.
‘Please,’ the sergeant says, nonplussed at my extravagant appearance, letting me into the backseat of the Jeep.
Persuading myself it is just going to be just a quick fine, I nervously look out of the tinted window as we silently drive across off-road terrain to reach a run-down city full of slummy buildings. About twenty minutes later, we stop at a big, long fence in the middle of nowhere.
‘You cannot take your cell phone into the building. You need to leave it here at the entrance,’ Petrenko says, pointing at the little checkpoint box.
‘OK.’ I unwillingly give him my iPhone, realizing I am completely at his mercy now … like a small dot in front of this monumental Stalinist Empire-style administrative mansion.
The building is terrifying in its darkness - a network of big corridors, thick walls, small offices and grim emotionless faces in uniforms. Thousands, millions of people disappeared in places like this during Soviet times … maybe they still do. I could also disappear here. No one would ever find me … would anyone even look? And what did I spend my whole life on? An overwhelming resentment towards my mom - that was the feeling I chose to cultivate inside me …
In order to occupy and distract yourself without love you give way to lasciviousness and coarse pleasures and sink to bestiality in your vices, all from continual lying to others and to yourself.
We enter a small room with cheap, primitive furniture and a prehistoric computer, on which my captor is typing a record of my detention. A few moments later, an even more diminutive Asian officer walks in, strained like a taut wire, saluting the sergeant.
‘The head orders a court hearing with respect to citizen Kuznetsova’s case,’ he recites, staring straight ahead at a wall, before walking out.
‘Miss Kuznetsova,’ Petrenko says, pulling down his big hat so that his head looks way too small. ‘We must put you into a detention unit.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask, trying not to let my panic get out of control.
‘According to Article 18.1 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, a person who has unlawfully entered a special purpose zone - and Seversk is one such zone - can be detained for up to seventy-two hours.’
‘But he said something about a court hearing?’
‘We will provide you with a lawyer if that goes ahead,’ he says automatically.
‘Maybe the situation can be resolved in a different way?’ I appeal, taking off my diamond necklace with shaking hands.
‘Are you trying to bribe the official on duty?’ he exclaims, pulling away from the table.
‘Just trying to ease the strain in my neck, Sergeant Petrenko,’ I say, trying not to pee my pants from fear. ‘I had terrible whiplash a few days ago. You can contact my doctor.’
He cautiously moves closer to the table, trying to figure me out, and swiftly covers the necklace with his hat, as if catching a butterfly.
‘I’ll try to have a penalty arranged instead of the court,’ he says, vigilantly laying both his tiny hands on the hat so they are resting just above the double-headed eagle.
‘I need to stay in Seversk for a few days,’ I say with determination.
‘I’ll see what I can do. Still, I’m going to have to put you in the detention unit. Just for a couple of hours. That’s the procedure,’ he cringes. ‘I’m not going to put handcuffs on you, though,’ he adds, glancing at my leg brace.
‘I need to change the bandages,’ I say intently.
‘That can be arranged,’ he stutters, letting me out.
We slowly walk to the other side of the building, the sergeant carrying his hat as if it is a crystal vase, pacing his strides so I can follow him on crutches.
The unseeing and unthinking soldiers open door after door until we get to the cells. ‘You’ll have to stay here … until we make a decision on your situation. I’ll send a nurse,’ he says, clanging the barred gate loudly behind him as he walks away … leaving me alone in a murky cell, with orange-coloured water sluggishly dripping into a rusty sink.
In one w
ord - a dump.
Putting the crutches on the falling-apart chair, I get onto a soiled bed, leaning on a filthy pillow in my Valentino dress. At least I can stretch my legs.
I am possessed by dullness and tiredness … or maybe it is just emptiness.
I think of my dad … how I used to run towards him when he was young and handsome. I was five years old … with my arms open to embrace him, my eyes full of pride, love and admiration. Suddenly, a mirror appears between us and the sparkling energy of all that pride, love and admiration is fired back at me … now, wounded and broken in this grim cell in the middle of Siberia … I let myself accept it - let the soothing energy enter my heart like a shower of hot kisses, stolen in the cool shade of the birch tree in my mom’s yard.
‘Kuznetsova?’ A tetchy voice calling my name brings me back to the grim reality of my cell.
‘Yes,’ I calmly answer.
‘I’m going to change your bandages,’ announces the voice, which turns out to be that of a chubby and somewhat unkempt nurse.
‘I really appreciate that,’ I say gratefully.
‘First time here?’ she asks, opening her first aid kit.
‘You can probably guess …’
‘We often have prostitutes here,’ she says, taking out a huge pair of scissors.
‘I’m not a prostitute,’ I say, pulling away.
‘I wouldn’t have guessed that either,’ she says, cutting through the swathe.
‘I’m wearing this dress because I was at a charity event in Moscow to raise funds for Seversk in the aftermath of the meltdown,’ I explain with composure.
‘Oh, those funds will never reach us ordinary people,’ she sighs.
‘I came here to make sure they would,’ I say, looking at her earnestly. ‘I had no idea about the permit, so …’
‘I don’t know why they have those controls here,’ she says, carefully starting to clean my scabs. ‘Even residents need special permission to leave the city. It’s not always easy to get … not that anyone has any money to travel anyway.’ She starts putting my new bandages on. ‘Those who are exposed to high doses of radiation at work cannot get it at all.’
Snow Job Page 24