‘Let’s say that’s what happened. But who was behind it, then?’ I sensed suddenly that he wasn’t lying. ‘No one gained from it. There was absolutely nothing to be gained.’
‘I don’t know. I do not know.’
‘But you knew what was in the folder. You did open it, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I opened it—although I actually forgot about it at first. I dumped it on the window ledge at home and forgot about it. Then a few days later your Kurochkin came along and asked me to give it back.’
‘Yurka went to see you?’ I was surprised. ‘He didn’t say. He’s never even mentioned it.’
‘Of course, I can’t remember our exact conversation, but he came for the folder, that’s for certain. I didn’t give it to him. I said Korostishevski should get it himself. And afterwards, as you might expect, I had a look inside the folder.’
‘And what did you think?’
‘I didn’t think anything. What was there to think about? I mean you were adults, second-year students, but you had butterflies fluttering around in your heads. You were just like nursery-school kids, I swear.’
‘So you still had it.’
‘Yes, I still had it. Korostishevski never turned up, and I had worries enough of my own. Really, was I to think of this folder to the exclusion of all else? Right. But they reminded me later on. “Where did you look? It was right under your nose. For ten days it was in your hands, and you couldn’t even take a look …” ’
‘So you don’t know who turned us in?’
Nedremailo shrugged.
‘Can’t you even guess?’
‘Guesses aren’t worth much in this business. No, I don’t know.’
‘All right, then.’ I got up. ‘Hello to the radiophysics students.’
‘I haven’t taught there for nearly fifteen years.’
‘Then what are you doing? You’ve got a long wait for your pension.’
‘I do church work.’ He jerked his shoulders again. ‘That’s just how it is.’
‘I see. Well, enjoy your meal …’
‘Davidov, wait. Like a bad student you lack patience. God only knows what you’re trying to make yourself out to be. A private investigator or something.’
‘I’m not a private investigator. I’m a private individual.’
It was a bad pun, but Nedremailo scarcely noticed.
‘If I were you,’ he was saying, ‘I’d make a list of everyone who showed any interest in the matter. The broadest possible list. Maybe nine out of ten people on your list will only be there by chance. What matters is that the tenth doesn’t go unnoticed. That’s what I’d do. Then gradually narrow it down.’
‘What exactly …?’ But then I understood. ‘You mean it’s not only Kurochkin and the KGB?’
‘No, they’re not the only ones.’
‘So who else wanted the folder?’
‘There was a girl in your group, if you remember …’
I knew whom he was talking about even before he gave her name.
‘Natasha.’
‘Yes, Belokrinitskaya.’
‘Something’s wrong here. Kurochkin and Belokrinitskaya had nothing to do with the KGB or our arrest. Kurochkin was arrested himself, and Natasha … When did she come for the folder?’
Nedremailo sat quietly, arms folded across his chest, biting his lip intently and staring at the ceiling.
‘Listen,’ I said, surprised. ‘Why did you tell me about Belokrinitskaya?’
He wasn’t happy with the conversation. It would have been unpleasant for anyone in his situation. He could have cut it short, but he didn’t.
‘Because we both want the same thing. You want to find out what happened back then, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘So do I.’
‘But what’s it to you?’
‘As a result of that business I had to leave the department.’
‘Excuse me, but I find that rather hard to believe. You worked there for another six years.’
‘I did. And it became harder with every year.’
I feigned sympathy. ‘I see. The orgy of glasnost, the bacchanalia of democracy.’
‘You don’t see anything.’ Wearily he waved his arm. ‘When they take you by the throat and make you choose between your health, inasmuch as you’ve got any, or the life of your daughter and some treaty or other … you’ll agree to whatever they want. Not that … And then, later, I didn’t take any initiative. They asked; I answered. They said “Do this”; I did it. But as for me going to them and making a statement against someone else, that didn’t happen. You can be sure of it.’
Nedremailo’s mobile began ringing.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘I’m free now. Come on over … to the metro.’ He put his phone away. ‘That was my daughter calling. Let’s go.’
We went out on to the street. He gave me his business card.
‘One more thing, Davidov. You can think whatever you want about me, but I want everything to be completely transparent. I need it as much as you do. Trust me. If there’s anything you need, give me a call.’
Nedremailo made for the metro. Near the tram stop a woman in a dark coat and shawl went up to him, and together they descended into the underground passage.
‘Did you see Reingarten yesterday?’
Kurochkin’s call got me out of bed. Dawn was just beginning to break.
‘Do all deputy premiers telephone at this hour, or is it my privilege to be dealing with an exceptional state servant? What time is it?’
‘Did you go to the hospital or not?’
Finally I was awake, and awake I caught the note of barely checked irritation in Kurochkin’s voice.
‘No.’
‘Why not? You told Sinevusov you were going to see Mishka.’
‘I might have done. Or maybe that’s just what he wanted to hear. Kurochkin, I’ve told you once and I’ll tell you again, stop telling me what to do. I don’t work for you. I’ll do what I want to do. And I’m on leave.’
‘Don’t get carried away, Davidov,’ advised Kurochkin after a weighty silence. ‘I’m counting on you anyway.’
‘Yurka, I promised to try to find out what’s going on, not to run around buying cigarettes for Sinevusov. Let’s talk tonight. Better still, tomorrow. I might have something to tell you by then.’
‘Okay, then. Check your e-mail.’ Kurochkin sighed and hung up.
He had woken me up and for no good reason. I had hoped the conversation with Nedremailo would settle overnight and I might grasp the implications that had evaded me the evening before during our conversation at the Home Cooking Café. I was certain they were there. It often happens this way: I push a conversation into a distant box of my consciousness and forget about it until morning, then in the morning I take it out, cleaned and pressed, laced up and numbered. I have no idea what happens in there. I can’t do it consciously. However much I try it doesn’t work. But there had been something in the conversation with Nedremailo, a riddle that flickered past like a fleet shadow and disappeared. I’d been hoping to find it in the morning in an open box. But Kurochkin spoiled it. Damn him!
There had been curious flickers at several points in the professor’s story. I was surprised to learn that Kurochkin had gone to him for Korostishevski’s folder. Kurochkin knew Sashka wouldn’t ask Nedremailo to return it. We all knew it, but Kurochkin was the only one who acted, even though they weren’t close friends.
In fact, they weren’t friends at all, but still Kurochkin tried to help him. Then there was the thing about Nedremailo’s daughter. People in the department had called him a ladies’ man to his face—he had three daughters. His eldest was seriously ill. She must be the one he referred to the night before. I don’t know what made me latch on to this. And then there was Belokrinitskaya. Nedremailo didn’t actually say when she’d asked for the folder, but I wanted to know. I wasn’t indifferent to anything about her. Not that I was a one-woman man. After all, it hadn’t been love but a youth
ful infatuation tinted with rivalry and passion. I think she knew as much. Natasha was a smart girl. And I remembered her rather than the women that followed probably because Natasha was the emblem of those two short years at university. I probably wasn’t the only one who felt that way. We were expelled during our second year, and a few weeks later we were living completely different lives.
I don’t know how else to explain it. Once in the mid-1990s at a bar in a Moscow hotel I met an old black-marketeer (if anyone still remembers what that means). His name was Hussein. In the 1970s he started manufacturing and selling plastic lighters. The bodies were churned out in Baku and the metal components in Riga. The lighters were sold throughout the Soviet Union, in big cities and at train stations, and they sold particularly well in resorts. At the time Hussein had been living in Azerbaijan, where he was arrested and given fourteen years, but he was released after the start of perestroika. Then he moved to Uzbekistan and went into business again, but this time it wasn’t going so well. Hussein had come to Moscow for money; he wanted to get a loan secured on his home and business. All evening he told me how he had done business in his day. He showed me a photocopy of a newspaper article a quarter of a century old. The article was about him. It said ‘the illegal manufacture of material goods’ by Hussein had cost the government several million roubles (the figure in the article was precise right down to the kopeck). Hussein was proud of the article, the figure and even his prison sentence. He was a spry, cheerful old man on the whole, and the only time he turned gloomy that evening was when the conversation turned to Kiev.
‘I don’t like Kiev,’ he said resolutely and poured some vodka. ‘I’ve only been there once. My wife and I spent two weeks in a hotel with a balcony that looked right out over the Dnieper. The hotel was a semi-circle right on the banks of the river—’
‘Probably the Slavutych,’ I mused.
‘I can’t remember. Maybe. It was September, warm and lovely. I would go out on to the balcony, and there before me was this beautiful, verdant city with all these churches. We ate only in restaurants and had ourselves a very relaxing time. That’s how we spent those two weeks.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then I went home. And the next day I was arrested. So for the next fourteen years in prison I remembered that balcony and the river and the churches on the opposite bank … Forgive me, but I don’t like Kiev.’
I felt like that about Belokrinitskaya, but in reverse. She’d left a long time ago. First she’d gone to Norway, but I no longer knew where she was or what she was doing.
Seven cups of coffee later—I didn’t wash the cups; I lined them up on the kitchen table: four coffee cups left over from my parents’ service, two tea cups purchased at random and one big mug—I put the conversation with Nedremailo back where it had come from: back into its box. And turned on the computer.
Another e-mail addressed to Istemi had arrived, cc’d to: the President of the United Islamic Caliphates, Caliph Al-Ali; the Lama of Mongolia, Undur Gegen; and the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Karl XX.
‘My dear esteemed comrade monarchs, dictators and presidents,’ wrote President of the Slovenorussian Federation, Stefan Betancourt, in a cavalier voice,
As you know, history with a capital H has come to an end. It has been deposited in a pawnshop for safekeeping and scattered with mothballs. But our own history came to an end even before that, twenty years ago, so let’s not flog a dead horse. Let it rest in peace. There is no one for us to bear grudges against and no one to petition for compensation for moral damages. And no reason for doing so. I, at any rate, have no intention of doing so. If anyone has any questions, I suggest that we meet. As for everyone else, please leave me in peace. According to the rules it is now my turn. I shall not take it, nor shall I pass it to the next player. I will tell you one more time: the game is over. Forget about it.
I read the letter once, then I read it again. It was written in a panic. If Kurochkin had written it by hand the letters would have jumped on the page, colliding with one another and sticking together in illegible lumps. He was thoroughly spooked. In a normal state of mind he simply couldn’t have written so much nonsense in such a short space. And then there was this morning’s telephone call. Something had happened. There was no doubt about it. Something seriously unpleasant. Far more serious than anything he had told me. If so, I ought to put some distance between us. Get away and watch what happened next from the sidelines. You can see better as an onlooker.
Not exactly a heroic attitude, I have to admit. Twenty years ago I would have behaved differently. I would have rushed to poor Kurochkin to find out what was wrong. I would have sifted through possible solutions, sought the right people, money, ways out. You don’t abandon a friend in need … But it was all different now. Before ending up in my safe bottling factory I’d struggled against the current for six years, trying to surface for air right in the middle of the rapids. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t swim free, but at least I didn’t drown. I had worked for four private firms, in three of which I had been a founding member. We were beaten in different ways, but the end result was always the same. And if the first three times I remained steadfast, investing my strength, money and life in my friends, regardless of whether they were genuine friends or just happened to be on the same side of the line separating us from the bandits, cops and outright bad guys who came to take our business away, then the fourth time I didn’t bother. The first three times, coupled with my observations of those around me, had been enough. So when Steve Malkin’s predecessor offered me money and a job in exchange for information about my client firms I accepted the offer. And for five years now I had lived a peaceful life.
What Kurochkin shared with the Americans—or more importantly, his colleagues here—and what rules they played by, I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know. There was no need for him to shout that the game was over. I could hear him. If it’s over, then it’s over. What was he shouting for?
I managed to convince myself. It wasn’t too hard. I already knew I wasn’t going to jump into the fire, not for chestnuts or bananas or fried baboons. I wouldn’t jump in there for Kurochkin or anyone else. My instinct for self-preservation had not let me down yet. But I was ashamed. Even if you put aside an old friendship, however ephemeral and weakly demonstrable, I still owed a lot to Kurochkin. He’d stepped in for me more than once. Sometimes it was small stuff, but other times it was serious. And he brought me to Steve Malkin’s office before Malkin himself knew he was coming to Ukraine. Even my peaceful, comfortable existence I owed in part to him.
I skimmed the letter once more. Kurochkin had left all the e-mail addresses visible: mine, the Hotmail address the ultimatum was sent from three days before and another, apparently Kanyuka’s. Only three. Reingarten at Frunze 103 was unlikely to have access to e-mail. I e-mailed Kanyuka: ‘Vadik, we must meet. Davidov.’ I didn’t know where he lived or what he had been doing for the past ten years, but we had to meet. Then I found Nedremailo’s business card, drank my eighth cup of coffee and dialed his home telephone number.
At about the same time the next day I was driving through the dreary watercolor landscape of Kirovohrad Province. A dirty March sky swollen with heavy water blended into the muddy snow of the endless fields. Also traveling in my car were a one-legged Chechen, his wife and her sister. I was taking them to Crimea. The Chechen’s name was Vakha. He rode the whole way in the back seat, silent and with eyes half closed. He was obviously from the ranks of people accustomed to giving orders not receiving them, but things had not gone his way, and for the time being he was prepared to play along. Patiently he endured everything that was happening to him and around him, including this trip. His wife Larissa didn’t speak either. Her sister Vera was the only one who didn’t wish to keep silent, and she chattered enough for the three of them. Either she was recalling how the entire family had once travelled to Crimea along this very road or she was telling her sister something about their mutual acquaintanc
es … I’m not too keen on garrulous women, but if it hadn’t been for Vera the journey would have been a lot harder.
Larissa and Vera were twins. I estimated that they were somewhere around twenty-six to twenty-eight years of age, but Larissa looked forty, and Vera—if you felt generous—could pass for twenty. They were very much alike. Like mother and daughter. They’d had an older sister, the one Nedremailo had touched on vaguely in our conversation. After an illness lasting a number of years she died when she was still a child. Her sisters could barely remember her.
This unexpected trip had come about as a direct result of my phone call to Nedremailo. I’d gone to see him in the evening, but we weren’t able to talk. The professor and his family were trying to solve a problem that wasn’t quite clear to me: how to get Larissa’s husband to Crimea, to the village of Vostochni not far from the city of Stary Krym. I had the time, I was ready to get out of Kiev for a while and you could do worse than Crimea for a holiday. It might have been freezing outside, but at least it was March. I decided I’d rather travel in company than alone, so the next morning I collected Nedremailo’s daughters and son-in-law and sped south.
I didn’t realize Larissa’s husband was a Chechen, and only when he came out of the building did I see what was troubling Nedremailo and his daughters. Vakha bore an astonishing resemblance to the Chechen guerrilla Shamil Basayev, whose unforgettable image had dazzled Russian journalists with love and awe during the first half of the 1990s. He was short in stature, lean and fit, his face hidden by a thick, curling, well-groomed beard and his head carefully shaved. Across his shoulder he’d thrown an old much-laundered officer’s pea coat. Vakha leaned on a crutch with one arm, his other resting on Larissa’s shoulder. Later Vera told me their story and much more. But that morning, at the entrance to their nine-storey apartment building on South Borschagovka, the last thing on my mind as I helped shove suitcases and bags into the boot was that she and I might have a mutual ‘later.’
We reached Vostochni without misadventure—no one stopped us and checked our documents. I would have cast those seven hours behind the wheel from my memory altogether had we not made a stop of no more than fifteen minutes just before Melitopol. We stopped to eat. Vakha refused to get out and ate in the car, and Larissa stayed with her husband. Vera and I took a table in a small roadside café. Only now was I getting a proper look at her. I’d never seen Vera before, but something endlessly familiar played around the features of her face and echoed faintly in her voice and her very manner of speaking.
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