Stanley looked around the bay and imagined being on a small sailing yacht, in the company of good friends, then laughed at himself. He didn’t have friends, and he hadn’t been in good company since leaving college.
The helicopter hovered over Gagarin’s yacht and began its descent to the helipad. Stanley saw the name of the yacht written in gold letters on the bow of the boat, and repeated along the length of the captain’s bridge—Alassio.
The helicopter touched down gently, and its propeller made a few more rotations before coming to a halt.
Stanley thanked the pilot.
“At your service, sir!” he answered.
Michel Gauthier opened the door of the helicopter, a wide smile on his face, his eyes struggling and failing to focus on Stanley as he hopped down from the helicopter.
“Mr. McKnight! I have orders to meet you and I…I assure…Mr…”
“You’re high as a kite, aren’t you, Gauthier?”
Gauthier at last managed to focus, and shouted loud enough that Stanley stepped back in surprise: “Welcome aboard! Let me take your things!”
While Gauthier accompanied Stanley to his cabin in the lower deck, he managed to discourse on the glories of the yacht, including its two swimming pools and movie theater.
“I’d rather have two theaters and one pool,” replied Stanley gloomily.
“Yeah? Why?” asked Gauthier in surprise, rubbing his nose.
“You can swim everywhere, but what if somebody wants to watch a comedy and somebody else wants a drama?”
“Well, here we all watch whatever the boss wants to watch,” said Gauthier, and went on describing the details of this technological wonder; 510 feet in length, the yacht had a wine cellar (although not quite completed), a spa, a fully equipped medical station staffed with a doctor and two nurses, and even a library.
“And she has a cruising speed of twenty-one knots,” finished Gauthier, nearly breathless with delight, and for some reason Stanley remembered an adult film with a busty dominatrix in a nurse’s uniform that consisted of a very short skirt with a slit up the front and a red cross on each nipple.
“And where do you want to go at that speed?” asked Stanley.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Gauthier, pushing the door of the cabin open with his shoulder. “Mila and I sailed here from Venice. We hung out there a couple of days. It was magical! Just magical. Lunch in half an hour.” Gauthier put Stanley’s things on the bunk. “They’ll be expecting you on the upper deck.”
Gauthier was walking out when Stanley called him back. The younger man turned with the look of someone expecting a tip.
“Michel, a word to the wise. On a yacht, or any other ship, there’s only one person who can say, ‘We sailed from,’ or, ‘I sailed.’ That’s the captain. Not the owner or the wife of the owner. Only the captain. Everyone else is just on board. I’m not sure if there is a captain on this yacht, though.”
“Of course, there is! A real sea wolf, smokes a pipe!”
“Sounds like the real deal,” agreed Stanley.
“So what am I supposed to say? We came from Venice?”
“Exactly! We came! We all come, and the captain sails, especially captains who smoke pipes…”
“Thanks, good to know,” Gauthier said with a smile.
“No problem, Michel. If you want to know anything else, just let me know!”
McKnight wasn’t hungry at all and wasn’t looking forward to having to go up to the upper deck in half an hour. He looked at his watch—it wasn’t close to lunchtime. But he would have to do as he was told. He opened his bag, got out a clean shirt, and was getting undressed to take a shower. Halfway through, he was hopping on one leg trying to get his sock off, when Mila walked into his cabin without knocking. Her eyes were slightly crossed from cocaine, her lips were moist, and her loose sarong was nearly transparent. He could see her dark-red nipples rising with her quick breaths through the sheer fabric.
“Ha, you’ve got the idea!” said Mila, closing the door behind her and turning the key. “You’re already getting ready for me, excellent!”
She walked over to Stanley and kissed him on the lips. She smelled strongly of wine. Stanley tossed the sock in the corner.
“But why did they stick you in this hole? This is a cabin for the girls who work in the kitchen. I’ll say something to Viktor. You should be on the upper deck. Hi, Stanley!”
“Hello, Mila.”
“Aren’t you happy to see me? Oh, Stanley, I was just miserable in fucking Venice. The canals stink, packs of tourists everywhere. Twelve euros for a cup of coffee. Twelve euros! Can you imagine? For a sip of coffee?”
“It’s pretty unbelievable, but you can afford it.”
“But then I found out you’d be coming, and even their nasty coffee started tasting nice. But why are you looking at me? The see-through fabric? No one cares about my tits here. Everyone’s dressed like this.”
Mila pressed herself against him.
“Do you care about them? My tits?”
“I was going to take a shower,” said Stanley, trying to pull away.
“I’ll come with you.” Mila undid the knot of her sarong, stepping free of the thin cloth as it pooled around her feet. “If you don’t take me now, I’ll burst. Like a balloon.”
She pushed Stanley toward the bathroom door.
“I’m all sweaty,” muttered Stanley, sensing that he wouldn’t be able to withstand Mila’s pressure. “Hang on!”
Mila lowered her hands to his underwear.
“What is there to wait for?” She caressed him skillfully, making Stanley grind his teeth from the sudden rush of excitement. “Sweaty is good. I hate when men smell like deodorant, or even worse, male cosmetics. The smell of sweat and a big sweaty cock, like this one, that’s what I want. Go on: turn on the water!”
They squeezed into the shower stall, and Stanley slid the door closed, turning on the water.
“Make it colder,” said Mila, dropping to her knees. “I’ll lick up your tasty sweat, honey. Oh, it’s delicious.”
After getting what she wanted from Stanley, Mila disappeared. Stanley glanced down at his watch to see that he was running late. And he realized that, over the course of only thirty minutes, this woman had made him come twice. The second time, she turned her back to him and demanded that Stanley be rougher, harder.
“Hit me! Harder! Hit me deep inside!” she cried out, with no concern that someone could hear her voice or her moans through the bulkhead between the cabins.
McKnight couldn’t admit to Lagrange that he was, in fact, sleeping with Mila, but he acknowledged that Lagrange was right. His prediction about Gagarin and the dull knife was moving closer every day.
He arrived late to lunch; the host and all his guests were already seated.
Stanley found Gagarin’s usual retinue on the upper deck, all familiar faces: Polina, her husband, Yulia, Biryuza, and Shamil, morose, all in black, and sitting off to the side, as he did. The core of the group gathered that day on the Alassio were new to him.
These were the Magnificent Five that Lagrange had mentioned, the high-ranking Moscow officials who had arrived a day before Stanley.
Biryuza was the first to greet Stanley. His handshake was as limp as always, but his whole attitude expressed goodwill toward the newcomer.
Apparently Anton thought of himself as something like a servant in this crowd, and saw McKnight as the same.
Gagarin was not at the head of the table as expected, but to the side of the table against the railing. He raised his glass of vodka, ice cubes rattling in greeting. Mila pretended happy surprise at Stanley’s appearance.
“Mr. McKnight! Where did you come from?” she said. “What a surprise! How nice to see you.”
“From there,” McKnight said, pointing up to the sky. “I’m happy to see you as
well, Mrs. Gagarin!”
Mila nodded and lit a cigarette, completely at ease. She was wearing a sleeveless white shirt with the message “I’d fuck me too” written on the front.
Gagarin gestured for Stanley to sit down across from him. McKnight found himself between Yulia and a girl with artificially swollen lips, her head resting on the thin and bony shoulder of a man Stanley didn’t know.
“We’ve already had the aperitif, Stan, and we’re about to begin with turtle soup. Do you like turtle soup, Valery Valeryevich?” Gagarin asked a broad-shouldered, thick-necked man in a colorful shirt sat at the head of the table. Valery Valeryevich had almost no chin and no expression in his large, dark eyes beneath thick brows and a high, balding forehead.
“I like pea soup,” Valery Valeryevich replied in an unexpectedly high, squeaky voice.
“As you should, General!” put in another guest, dressed in a silk robe and sporting a bushy beard and greasy hair pulled back in a ponytail. Judging from his robe and the large cross hanging from his neck, he had to be a Russian Orthodox priest. He was also the only drunk member of the party, his cheeks flushed. Stanley was surprised to see that the muscular, handsome young man next to him was dressed only in pink swimming trunks.
“We should stick to our good old traditional food. Cabbage soup, pea soup, borscht—” the priest began, but General Valery Valeryevich cut him off sharply: “Next, you’ll start talking about pampushky, Holy Father!” Stanley noticed the contemptuous emphasis with which the general pronounced ‘Holy Father.’ “We don’t need your Ukrainian peasant slop!”
“What part of the Russian army does he command?” McKnight asked Yulia quietly.
“Army?” she snorted, and replied, barely moving her lips: “He’s a general in the FSB. Zlatoust. Spent his whole career at a desk. Economic security; the head of the division. He has a gun made out of dollars.”
“What about the bullets?” asked McKnight, stunned to be getting good intel from Yulia, of all people.
“Made of shit!” she said and turned away.
McKnight took a couple sips from the glass a silent waiter had filled with champagne. Another filled his bowl with turtle soup.
McKnight tasted it and then set his spoon back down.
“No good?” asked Yulia.
“It’s good. I’m just not hungry.”
“What’s wrong—you’re not feeling well?”
“I’m tired.”
“I think I can diagnose your condition,” Yulia said, waving a waiter over. “You have acute alcohol insufficiency. A double whiskey for the American.”
“I’m just tired.”
“And no wonder,” she replied quietly. “Take care of yourself, Stanley. You’ll come in handy yet.”
Chapter 32
On the surface, the atmosphere over lunch seemed relaxed, but Stanley sensed a strange tension throughout the group. Everyone’s jokes and remarks came out a little anxious, as if each speaker was trying to guess how they would be received by the Magnificent Five, and, most importantly of all, how the general at the head of the table would react. The general could barely turn his head, and it seemed as though he never blinked. The only member of the party who seemed to speak his mind without concern was the red-cheeked priest. He made the sign of the cross over the dishes on the table, dropped old-fashioned Ukrainian words into his conversation and, shunning the “foreign” drinks on offer, crossed his lips before each shot of vodka. He would also make a nasty face whenever he looked over at Stanley, always trying to turn the conversation to American wickedness and how to fight against it. He pointed his fat, crooked finger at Stanley and expounded on “foreigners” at length, and about how Russia was a kingdom of light, while the United States was a kingdom of darkness, debauchery, and godlessness. McKnight just nodded along, agreeing with everything the priest had to say, which came as quite a surprise to the good father.
He was eating for three, and the muscular young man at his side filled his plate again when it grew bare. The other glutton at the table was the bony man sitting next to the girl with the inflated lips.
When Gagarin finally got around to introducing Stanley to the Magnificent Five, he started with the bony man. Probably because he was the second most important member of that group. Mikhail Potyagaylo, according to Gagarin, was a federal minister, an indomitable fighter for the best and most advanced solutions, and a superior leader in whatever position the state appointed him. Potyagaylo had been a governor for a while and put up numerous monuments in his region, mostly to scientific and cultural figures as well as military leaders, who had had no connection to the region other than the fact that its governor, Potyagaylo, liked them.
Potyagaylo, like all of the Five, barely spoke, and when he did, it was lazily and disdainfully. Stanley noticed them displaying the same attitude to Gagarin. But it was obvious that there was nothing special about this Potyagaylo, or any of them. They were just people who had grown rich suddenly, and not through their talents or efforts, but due to luck of circumstance. Stanley was struck by their imperious tone.
After Gagarin praised him to the skies, for example, Potyagaylo began to argue that everyone attempted to distort Russian history and belittle Russian achievements. Great Russian rulers like Ivan the Terrible or Stalin, meanwhile, were wrongly portrayed as evil tyrants. Stanley was more than a little astonished to hear Potyagaylo allege that Ivan the Terrible hadn’t killed his son. No, the son had died on the journey from Saratov to St. Petersburg, where the tsar had directed him to join the army.
Stanley wanted to object that neither St. Petersburg nor the city of Saratov existed when Ivan the Terrible was tsar, but when he opened his mouth to speak, Yulia and the girl with inflated lips hit his knees simultaneously under the table. So Stanley didn’t say a word.
The other minister and member of the Five was Andron Alekseyevich Komarikhin, an enormous man with a triple chin. His eyes were set back in puffy lids, but his gaze was smart, vicious, and perceptive. Komarikhin looked over at Stanley with a sly smile, and gave him a wink, as if inviting him to step to the side if he wanted to hear some interesting information. His girlfriend or wife matched him well—she was stout and busty, with rosy cheeks and a braid that she twined around her fingers.
The other two members of the group, the deputy head of the Russian president’s administration, Arseny Petrovich Zaikin, and a high-ranking member of the foreign intelligence service, Petr Sergeyevich Mamonov, bore a close resemblance to one another. They were short and stocky, with unmemorable faces and permanent fake smiles. They didn’t contribute to the general conversation. Zaikin said something to his companion, whose long nose looked red, and her lips had the compressed and twisted look of someone who was on the verge of bursting into tears. Mamonov was alone, and looked around at the other guests as if wanting them to know that he knew more about them than they did. He directed several meaningless questions to Stanley, but when Stanley began to answer, he would lose interest, turning away or back to his plate.
Stanley noticed that when the Five spoke to each other, they used the respectful form of address in Russian, the first name and patronymic, and the formal form of the pronoun you. But they were all more casual with Gagarin, calling him simply ‘Viktor’ and using the informal you, and their tone was haughty, as if Gagarin was just a bit higher-ranking in their estimation than the waiters serving them dessert.
Stanley also realized that these people were well aware of who he was and what exactly he was doing for Gagarin.
“Ah yes, we’ve heard about you,” said Komarikhin, unbuttoning one more button of his shirt and stroking his greasy, hairless chest with his short-fingered hand. “You’re a man who knows how to do his job. Good work! Keep it up! Although I personally don’t trust Americans.”
“Oh, how right you are!” put in the priest. “You can’t trust those American Judases. They’ll turn on you! S
ell you out!”
“Shut up, Father Vsevolod,” Zaikin said. Gagarin had introduced him as a gifted political scientist, and an expert in psychology and the art of management. “You can trust everyone, but all the same, better not to trust the Americans. They’re too set on laws, honesty, all that nonsense. Who needs honesty, eh? It’s an anachronism!”
“I can vouch for Stanley,” said Gagarin, looking Stanley in the eye. “Plus, Stanley’s almost Russian.”
Zlatoust interrupted Gagarin in a melancholy tone: “Be careful giving out your word, Viktor. You’ve only got one reputation. I’d watch out staking it on anyone else if I were you. I’d rather hear about how things are going with the diplomatic post. Everything good?”
Stanley was stunned. Even in these circles, talk of sending cash and valuables by diplomatic post would be decidedly inadvisable. But now it seemed as all of the Five not only knew about the operation, but were helping to provide cover for it. In fact, it seemed as if they were in charge of the transfer and Gagarin was just the front man, a figurehead acting on their behalf. If anything went wrong, these people could easily get rid of Gagarin and of Stanley. He could feel a chill creeping up his back between his shoulder blades. He devoured a huge piece of cake with ice cream; maybe it was the fear driving his appetite, and the realization that he was just a humble pawn, each move controlled by these unpleasant, arrogant people. The cake was greasy, and the ice cream was too.
When lunch was over, Stanley rose with relief, but then heard Mila, who had, as usual, overindulged on wine, demanding that Gagarin transfer Stanley to a more comfortable cabin, her voice quite shrill. Now he’s going to ask—how do you know what cabin he is in? thought Stanley anxiously.
“How do you know what cabin he’s in?” asked Gagarin.
“How?” Mila faltered. “I saw him arrive by helicopter, and Gauthier carrying his bags down. I visited him! What did you think?”
“I’m sorry, my love, sorry,” said Gagarin in an unexpectedly affectionate tone. “I’ll try to think of something. There is a cabin on the quarterdeck.”
The Banker Who Died Page 30