“In that case, I’ll wait for your call,” Alexey replied without turning around. “We just wait in the cars.”
“You won’t get cold?” Vika asked. “It’s winter…”
“It’s an underground parking lot, so we’ll be fine.”
Making our way through the New Year’s traffic, we got to Raidion fashionably late. Vika was furious, and the finishing touch occurred when two Red Army soldiers armed with rifles tipped with some kind of paper met us at the door. The papers were, apparently, passes. They blocked the entrance, one of them barking a question.
“Your credentials, comrades?”
Vika blushed, the word “credentials” apparently bringing up some strange associations. The same wasn’t true for me, however, and I pushed the bayonet thrust at me aside.
“Good work staying alert, comrade—the world’s bourgeoisie never sleeps. We’re on our way to see Azov in the operations room, however.”
“Ah, you’re Nikiforov?” the soldier asked, slamming the butt of his rifle down onto the marble floor. “Take a paper to show that you are who you say you are and go ahead. He told us about you.”
The hall was decorated with slogans and posters made especially for the event. There was even a three-meter-tall portrait of Zimin above the main entrance. He was wearing a budenovka[4] and a gimnasterka[5], one finger jabbing out at the viewer. What have you done for Raidion?
“Why are we late?” a girl in a red kerchief asked sternly. Her blond locks peaked out from under it, and there was a Komsomol badge (I’d seen them in a museum) on her gimnasterka. Damn, those shirts look good on women, pulled tight in all the right places. Perhaps not on all of them, of course, but the girl in front of me looked great. “We’re forgetting our revolutionary discipline, comrades. Everyone is already up there! Do you care that little about the work the Cultural and Education Department does?”
“What’s your name, comrade?” I asked the girl amiably.
She swept back her hair. “Inna. Ionidina.”
“Ah, so you’re the one in charge!”
“Yes, I am,” Inna said, that time in her normal voice. “But come on, everything’s already started, and you aren’t even in your costumes, yet. Actually, who are you?”
“Harriton Nikiforov, head editor of the Fayroll Times, with my lieutenant, Vika Travnikova.”
Inna’s facial expression changed just slightly, almost imperceptibly.
“Ah-ha, that’s fine, then,” she replied hurriedly. “Ilya already explained everything. Sorry, I have to head up. They’re… I mean, you understand.”
“How could we not, comrade komsomolka[6]?” I placed my hand on her shoulder. “You’re the future of the party, and we believe in you.”
Inna ran off without saying anything, hurrying the other people in the hall along as she did. I’d been right about the women: every single one of them was wearing a silk dress, a tiny hat tilted jauntily over one eye, and furs. The New Economic Policy, and not a bit of creativity among them.
“What did I tell you?” I asked, nudging Vika. “Let’s take a Mauser to the bourgeoisie.”
“We’re going to miss everything,” she replied discontentedly. “What a disaster!”
“Could you calm down? We’re not going to miss anything.”
The girls at the reception desk, to my surprise, were in their usual uniforms.
“What’s this about?” I asked them. “Isn’t it supposed to be a masquerade?”
“For you all, yes,” a vaguely familiar blonde girl replied, notes of envy lacing her voice. “We’re working.”
“They wouldn’t have invited us, anyway,” another added. “We haven’t made it to your social class, yet.”
“Is Yadviga up there?” I asked. It wasn’t that I was worried, I just…
“Yadviga headed up half an hour ago. She was mad because of the circles under her eyes, so she took it out on us.”
“Does she always take her problems out on you?” I asked.
“It’s tradition,” the girl replied with a nod.
“Kif, are we going to make stops like this the whole way?” Vika asked fiercely, tugging on my sleeve. “Why don’t we just hang around here and then go home?”
“I wouldn’t mind,” the blonde smiled. “Dasha probably would, though.”
“If we go right now, I won’t ask who Dasha is,” Vika said as she pulled me toward the elevator. “Although, no, I’m going to ask you, but I can wait.”
It was a mess in Azov’s office. Although to be fair, the entire floor Azov was in charge of was a mess. That was the first time I’d been there, and I hoped it would be the last—those places aren’t the kind you want to visit too often.
Hulking characters paced the hallways in jackets and papakhas[7], while a short guy in front of Azov’s office showed off his skill with a saber. He was wearing an atilla[8], under which a striped shirt flashed, and the blade in his hands blurred the air.
“Kif, where the hell have you been?” Azov asked when I bumped right into him. He was dressed as a sailor: a pea coat, a telnyashka[9], and a peakless hat labeled Empress Maria. A wooden Mauser holster was slung over his shoulder, and two bottle grenades were tucked into his belt.
“Are you sure that’s the ship Lev was from?” I asked him, pointing at his hat. “I’m not even sure he was a sailor.”
“Oh, nobody remembers who Lev Zadov actually was. You’re right, he was never a sailor,” he replied with a shrug of his powerful shoulders. “On the other hand, I look great in this. I’ve always loved the sea, swimming and sailing, both. Once a sailor, always a sailor. But enough about me—why are you so late? Everyone’s already having fun.”
“Exactly,” Vika chimed in accusatorily. “He didn’t believe me.”
“Hello there, my girl,” Azov said, suddenly surprising me by kissing the cheek Vika was only too happy to offer. “Sorry, but Vika’s going first. Us anarchists appreciate beauty and always make way for it, I swear by my mother. Vika, head over there to my office.”
Nose held high, she headed off in that direction.
“Wouldn’t leave you alone in the car on the way here?” Azov asked sympathetically as he watched her go.
“You don’t know the half of it,” I sighed. “On and on…”
“Be careful at the ball. Vezhleva is already there, and she has an eye out for you. Vika’s nerves don’t need that.”
“What eye?” I waved. “She and I are in different worlds…”
“You haven’t groveled at her feet, yet, and that’s no good. The only reason you’re walking around a free man is that she doesn’t have time for you right now.”
“Yadviga’s there, too,” I shook my head. “I just hope she doesn’t poison me.”
Azov shook his head. “She wouldn’t dare. She’s quite the woman, but she wouldn’t create a scandal here at the New Year’s ball with the Old Man watching.”
“From your ears…” I couldn’t help but remain a little nervous.
“Come on, it’ll be fine. You’ll have twenty-five fighters around you—do you really think we can’t fight off one lone Polish girl?”
Azov whistled, and seven big guys ran up.
“Hey, there,” one of them said with a nod to me.
“All right, get everyone together. He’s going to get his makeup on and get dressed now, and then we’ll head up,” Azov said. “Petro, Mikhas, load the weapons. Check every bullet personally, because we’re in trouble if anything happens.”
There was no point listening to the rest of his instructions, so I followed Vika’s footsteps to his office. My job wasn’t checking bullets. Checking shovels, well, that was more my line of work.
Vika was already seated in front of a mirror at a large desk. It was, presumably, Azov’s, though Natasha was using it right then to cleverly attach a long, blonde braid to Vika’s hair.
The office was large and austere. It didn’t look like Ilya was much of a fan of pomp and circumstance. There was the desk,
a couple regular cabinets, a pair of metal cabinets, an enormous, heavy safe, two chairs, and a coffee table. That was it.
“Okay, Kif, you can start by changing,” Natasha said as soon as she saw me. “Your costume is on the chair—we’re just waiting for you.”
Vika was already in hers. When did she have time? She was wearing a white chemise, a leather skirt, calf boots, and a leather jacket. A belt with a holster slung in it was hanging over the chair she was sitting in.
“What, you’re embarrassed?” Natasha was all business. “Come on, we’ve seen it all already.”
Vika sniffed threateningly, her forehead creased, and she was about to say something, but Natasha headed her off at the pass.
“Stop moving!” That did the trick.
There really wasn’t any reason to be embarrassed, since I already knew Lena, Natasha’s friend, pretty well. So well, in fact, that there wasn’t a part of me she hadn’t seen.
I quickly pulled off my clothes, slid into the pants, put on the gray jacket with striped facings sewn into it, and threw the belt with the Mauser holster over my shoulder.
“Sit,” Lena said as she shook out a long-haired wig.
“I’ve never worn one of those,” I said. “I’ll probably be sweating under it, right?”
“Why would you say that?” she asked, getting to work on my head. “Be happy it’s just a wig. You could be wearing a mustache, too, or even a beard…”
“Oh, I’m happy. Will it slide off my head?”
“It’ll be fine, don’t worry,” Natasha said. “Just let her do her job. Lena, don’t do too much with his face. He’s no kid, as it is, all wrinkled and worn like that. Just give him a little color and be done.”
“Seriously?” Vika burst out. “You watch your mouth!”
She got up from her chair, pulled her jacket on, grabbed the belt with the holster, and threw her braid over her shoulder.
“He isn’t wrinkled in the least,” she said angrily to a surprised Natasha. “You don’t have anyone like him—I can tell that just from the looks of you.”
Then, she tossed a thousand-ruble bill on the desk.
“No change.” And with that, she left the office.
“What was that?” Natasha asked in confusion, taking the bill from the desk.
I wouldn’t say it was a good move on Vika’s part, though still… It was flattering. “That wife of mine, she can do that every once in a while.”
“You could have warned me,” Natasha said as she put the bill in her pocket. “What if she’d stuck a pen in my eye instead of giving me money?”
Five minutes later, I stepped out of the office and stopped stock still when I saw the crowd of Raidion security officers. They looked exactly like steppe bandits.
“There’s Nestor Makhno,” Azov said approvingly.
“What about the maxim?” I asked, looking around.
“I changed my mind about it.” Azov slipped the papakha a little farther back on my head. “That’s how you wear them. As far as the maxim goes…it didn’t look good. We’re going to head in, and we need to fire a burst at the ceiling right off the bat. How do you think that will work? So, yeah, we’re going to have a Lewis.”
The group parted, and I saw a fat-barreled machine gun with a disc right in the middle leaning up against a wall.
“Look at that!” Azov said. “It doesn’t really shoot well, though it looks good… We already gave it a try. You should hear it!”
“Well, what are we waiting for?” I looked around for Vika and found her standing right behind me. She was slender, belts strapped around her, and her lifted chest was highlighted by the leather jacket. Really, she was a picture of the formidable era, smelling of feather grass, gunpowder, and blood. “Let’s head to the elevator.”
“Don’t forget to soften the ends of your words,” Azov said. “Speak kindly and softly. Don’t mumble, but don’t shout, either, and you’ll be talking the way he did. It was only later that everyone started saying he was hysterical, practically foaming at the mouth. He wasn’t actually like that at all.”
“Got it,” I replied, listening carefully. “Anything else?”
“Hold yourself proudly,” Azov said as he adjusted his grenades. “They’re all either Communists or the bourgeoisie; we’re anarchists. Nobody has anything on us.”
I unbuttoned my holster. “I know. That’s what anarchy’s all about. But we don’t have to be completely authentic—we aren’t at the theater.”
“The Old Man likes it when everything’s realistic.” Azov pulled his Mauser out of its holster.
“You sure have your traditions here,” I replied, pulling mine out as well. “Everything’s simpler at other companies—caviar, good fish, shashlik, a couple old pop stars from the west, another bunch of Russian stars, and everyone having some drinks.”
“Well, we aren’t your typical company.” The elevator doors opened, and we heard the sound of some dashing dance from the 20s. Someone was singing, and the voices combined into a general hubbub. “Did you forget that, my friend? Oh, I turned your makeup friend down. She wanted to join us, but I said she couldn’t. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Sounds great to me. It’s dangerous to have her around events like this.”
The doors opened for another elevator, and the second half of our army poured out.
“Petro, as soon as we walk in, I want a burst at the ceiling,” Azov ordered. “You’re up after that, buddy boy.”
What am I supposed to say? He wasn’t a thief… “This is a raid”? “This is a coup”? “This is a pogrom”?
“Hey, who are you guys?” a girl in a beautiful dress asked. She was standing up against a wall, one shoulder bared, and I saw a flash of envy in her escort’s eyes.
“Don’t be afraid, my dear,” I said softly. “If you don’t make a sound, we won’t hurt you. We aren’t bandits; we’re anarchists.”
The hall was huge. The ceiling soared high above us, gorgeous and enormous chandeliers hung from it to bathe the room in light, windows stretched from floor to ceiling, and a buzzing crowd of men and women whirled in dance, chatted with each other, or just ate and drank. There was a small dais at the other end, and the Old Man was sitting at a table there. It felt for a second like our eyes met, though, I think, it just felt like it.
The Lewis behind me rat-tat-tatted, and I looked back to see Petro pulling the trigger with a fiercely satisfied snarl on his face.
“Enough!” I waved my Mauser in my hand. “That’s good.”
The music died down, someone screamed uncertainly, and a few people clapped.
“Silence, citizens,” I said, my consonants soft, and I shot at the ceiling. “No ovations, please. We’re here unofficially.”
“Is this a robbery?” a man I didn’t recognize asked with an odd smile.
“What are you talking about? It isn’t even a pogrom,” I replied, walking over and playing with my pistol. “It’s just a few anarchists from the lovely city of Huliaipole dropping by your party. What, are we not people? We need some culture, too.”
The group behind me happily chimed in, affirming their need for some culture and claiming their right to some good old fun, even in the company of the bourgeoisie.
“But you, I see, my good man, don’t seem to favor our equitable ideas for a free, anarchical world.” I jutted my chin out. “Or is it that you prefer a society where mankind stands to oppress each other?”
“I’m for liberté, égalité, fraternité,” the man replied with a friendly smile. “And free love.”
“Hear that, lads?” I smiled again, stepped closer. “He’s for love.”
“What love?” jeered my boys. “When the old world dies, and the new one is born, who will need love? Just kill him and be done with it!”
“The people don’t like your ideas—they don’t make sense,” I said with a wave of my Mauser toward the group behind me. “Those aren’t our words, not one little bit. Hey, Leva, it looks like we found one of
the bourgeoisie. He’s yours now.”
“Sounds good to me,” Azov said, stepping out from behind the group. Valyaev burst into laughter somewhere in the cloud, though everyone else preferred to hide their smiles or laugh into their sleeves. That was smart, too—the New Year’s party would end, but Ilya’s work wouldn’t. “Where’d you get a tan like that in the winter, my good man?”
Azov, looking fantastic in his sailor garb, circled the pale character. It was one thing to laugh at an unfamiliar beanpole in a papakha; it was quite another to laugh at the familiar and very dangerous Azov.
“Leva is going to take care of this hidden agent of the Entente,” I assured the crowd. “In the meantime, the rest of you should dance and have a good time—we aren’t animals! Hey, musicians, you, with the violin. Let’s hear something!”
We could have had a little more fun, but I didn’t see the point in that. We’d showed up, the crowd had noticed us, I’d seen a smile on the Old Man’s face, and that was good enough. Just then, Azov walked over.
“We’re going to have to figure out why that scaredy-cat flew to Malta just before New Year’s,” he said, all business.
“Really?” I asked. “It couldn’t have just been a vacation?”
“Before the ten days we get for New Year’s?” Azov grunted. “No, nobody does that. Hey, by the way, good timing telling the musicians to get going. We aren’t actors, so we did our little part. Our heroic duty is complete!”
It looked like he’d been stuck with the same thoughts I had. Good job by me.
“Hey, it’s really…” I was trying to find the right word, but Vika jumped in and finished my thought.
“It’s so rich here!” The provincial girl in her was out in full force. “I can’t believe it!”
It really did look good. The bright lights reflected off the genuine jewels in the women’s jewelry and the men’s accessories, while the tables by the wall were loaded with culinary masterpieces. The colorful feathers and vivid dresses mingled with the black dinner jackets in a blur of dancing, glistening smiles, sham laughter, and genuine love. I was impressed, and I, unlike my little Vika, had been to corporate parties.
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