Vodka

by Boris Starling

  On Novy Arbat, a man in a hideous synthetic parka asked her where the market was.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not from around here,” said Alice.

  “The market, the market. The one they’ve all been talking about, the one that starts today.”

  Alice laughed. “That market?” She waved her arm in an expansive arc. “It’s all around you.”

  “No. They said a market that starts today.” Parka Man was convinced that there’d be some physical infrastructure, a material manifestation of this great step forward. He looked about fifty; he must have spent all his life, like Godot, in pursuit of an ideal that had never come. Alice could hardly blame him for having lost his faith in intangibles.

  Sharmukhamedov was in a terrible way. His body was a war zone floating with blood and unidentifiable parts, and he’d soiled himself so often and so fully that it was hard to tell where skin stopped and waste began. He lay absolutely still; perhaps he was unconscious, his mind kicking downward from a surface that promised pain untold and delivered even more.

  Sabirzhan came bustling in from out of the cold, rubbing his hands together like a jovial uncle. He had only a few hours left to make Sharmukhamedov talk—the Chechen was due back from Dubai that evening, and Karkadann would be suspicious the moment he didn’t return—but Sabirzhan felt curiously unworried. He could sense that Sharmukhamedov was close to breaking, and his judgment in these cases was rarely awry.

  He took an ice pick and rolled it gently up and down his fingers. “Want your bones tickled, Baltazar?” A twitching of the stubbled head; Sabirzhan was getting through. High in the crowded field of Sabirzhan’s favorite methods of torture, “tickling the bone” involved inserting an ice pick under the skin and scraping it along the bone. Most people wince just at the thought.

  “You’re going to kill me anyway.” Sharmukhamedov’s voice sounded too feeble to have come from such a great frame. Sabirzhan saw that his beard was matted with dried blood, patches of saliva and mucus; it looked like roadkill.

  “Then tell me what I want to know, and I’ll put the ice pick away and make sure it’s quick. You’re a loyal man, Baltazar. You and I, we’re devoted to our bosses, no? That’s our job, that’s what we’re paid for. But how can you owe fidelity to a man who thinks only of himself?”

  “You know nothing.”

  “Who does Karkadann answer to? Himself, that’s who. No one else.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “His wife? He’d fuck every girl in Moscow, given the chance. Ilmar and Zhorzh? Hardly. You? As long as you’re useful to him, Baltazar. But that stopped the moment Slava sapped you at Sheremetyevo. Karkadann would give you up in a flash if he knew where you were.”

  Sharmukhamedov went away for a while. Sabirzhan watched, holding himself as motionless as the Chechen. This was the time, he could feel it, this was the time, and the most important thing was not to push. Pushing would only make Sharmukhamedov dig his heels in.

  The steel restraints were slick with blood; a human reduced to animalism, whimpering its life away in the jaws of a trap.

  Sharmukhamedov cleared his throat. When he opened his mouth, two lines of saliva stretched across the inside of his lips, a vampire’s fangs. Sabirzhan leaned forward. He wondered vaguely if Sharmukhamedov could summon up the energy to spit in his face.

  “Florist’s.”

  “What florist’s?”

  “Zamoskvareche district. Corner of Staromonetny and Ryzevsky.”

  “The one he owns?”

  “Yes.” Sabirzhan knew the place, a stone’s throw southwest of the Tretyakov Gallery, and one of the best florists in all Moscow. He found it hard to reconcile what he knew of Karkadann with the thought of him knee deep in blossoms, arranging a bouquet here and a wreath there, always with tender dexterity. Karkadann’s attachment to this improbable skill was genuine but profitable. Almost every week, it seemed, there was an expensive order for yet another funeral of yet another underworld colleague hastened to the next world. In terms of Karkadann’s other revenues, the place was a mere bauble; but money was money, and a well-arranged display gave Karkadann quite as much pleasure as, say, an opportunity to kill.

  “When?”

  “Saturday.”

  “What time?”

  “Evening.”

  “Why then?”

  “Wedding anniversary.”

  “He takes his wife there?”

  “Flowers.”

  “How romantic.” Sabirzhan thought of the adultery on the transcript. “What about the bodyguards?”

  “Outside. Privacy.”

  “They stay outside to give Karkadann and his wife some privacy?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Valentina.”

  “She’s Russian?”

  “Yes.”

  Russians didn’t marry Chechens, not if they could help it. Whoever said that money couldn’t buy love was clearly in the wrong income bracket.

  “How many ways into the shop?”

  “Bodyguards. All entrances.”

  “So how do we get in?” Sharmukhamedov shook his head. “You don’t know?” Sabirzhan asked. “Or you won’t tell me?”

  Silence. Sabirzhan stared into Sharmukhamedov’s right eye and then his left, as though willpower alone could suck the answer free. He rested the ice pick against the Chechen’s elbow.

  “You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?” he repeated.

  “Jewelers,” Sharmukhamedov said.

  “Jewelers?”

  “Diamonds. Bring diamonds.”

  “The bodyguards let the jewelers in?”

  “Yes.”

  “And they stay outside while the jewelers are in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who are the jewelers? Where do they work?”

  Sharmukhamedov told him so fast that Sabirzhan didn’t even have time to threaten him with the ice pick. Sabirzhan made him repeat the jewelers’ names and addresses twice, just to make sure; then he went ahead and tickled the bone anyway, breaking the skin at Sharmukhamedov’s right elbow and ripping down his forearm until finally, mercifully, coming out at the wrist.

  Prices may have been attaining escape velocity, but in other respects little seemed to have changed. By sundown, many shelves were still empty, many lines still long. “It’s clear that the liberalization has been a failure,” said one television reporter. “Prices continue to rise, but if there’s no food, it matters little; ten times nothing is still nothing.” Behind him, customers fought with staff and each other.

  In their room at the Metropol, Lewis scowled at the television. “Fucking savages. You know what this place is, Alice? A banana republic. Without the bananas.”

  Alice found it hard to take Lewis seriously when he was angry; his good looks were too conventional and placid to survive the contortions of indignation. “It’s all part of the charm, isn’t it?” she said. “Enjoy it while it lasts—things will soon settle down.”

  “I hope so. Because if this is how it’s going to stay, we may as well leave now.”

  A crappy Volga with license plates illegible beneath dirt and mud, driving fast up the north side of Smolensky Square; Butuzov at the wheel, swerving suddenly across traffic as they approached the Belgrade Hotel, where the Tsentralnaya gang maintained their headquarters; cold air rushing in as Ozers wound the passenger window down; Ozers slinging his arm like an outfielder; an object arcing through the air, a bowling ball it seemed, turning end over end in a graceful parabola; tires and transmission whining in protest as Butuzov gunned the Volga’s engine and darted back onto the right side of the road; the shock of the Chechen doorman, the scream of the hooker chatting to him as Sharmukhamedov’s severed head bounced twice and rolled gently to a stop at their feet.

  12

  Friday, January 3, 1992

  Ilmar was staring at Karkadann, prey hypnotized by his unblinking serpent’s gaze. Chechen gutturals gurgled in tense throats as they argued.r />
  “Chop off the head and deliver it to the victim’s crew?” Globs of spit flew from Karkadann’s mouth. He was finding it hard to keep his anger in check. “It’s the Avtomobilnaya signature, Ilmar; it’s how your lot claim responsibility for a murder. Everyone knows that.”

  “If everyone knows that, how can you be sure it was us?” Ilmar dabbed nervously at his cheeks.

  “Twice now, you’ve tried to persuade me to seek accord with the Slavs. I listen to you, but I don’t agree with you, and it’s my word that goes here. But that’s not enough for you. Kidnap my bodyguard, that’s the kind of thing I’ll understand, isn’t it? Then I’ll listen to you.”

  Karkadann thrust his hand out, fast enough to make Ilmar flinch and then curse himself for showing weakness, for Karkadann hadn’t been trying to hit him; he was showing him something, an oblong of black plastic in his palm. “You know what that is?” Karkadann said. “Of course you do. Stuck under my desk—put there, in other words, by someone who’s been in this room. Who was here the day before Baltazar went to Dubai? Who was here, telling me not to fight the Slavs?”

  “You really think I’d have ordered something like this?” Ilmar said.

  Zhorzh was now staring at Ilmar, and his very silence oozed menace.

  “We may disagree, Ilmar,” Karkadann said, “but we’re also Chechens. We trust each other. We trusted.” He flashed an unexpected smile, a jovial grin of sunny brutality. The lines and planes of his craggy face shifted and rearranged, his eyes shone as they narrowed, his nose was pulled upward and outward, and his jaw seemed to push back toward his neck.

  Ilmar knew what the smile meant. He’d seen it before, but had never expected to be on the receiving end.

  “No,” he said. “This isn’t the way to do it, even if I was responsible.”

  Chechens have a tradition of blood vengeance for violent death, but the revenge killing is not frenzied or impetuous. Quite the opposite; the process is slow and scrupulously legalistic. The families of victim and aggressor meet and negotiate. Only if the talks are exhausted and the victim’s family cannot forgive the aggressor is he declared an outlaw and killed.

  “There’s no time for all that. We’re fighting a war, and we need to be unified—our enemy is, you can be sure of that. But you’re not with us, Ilmar. And I can’t afford for you to be spreading dissent and discord. Better for us that you’re dead; better even for you.”

  “Better for me? Why?”

  “With what you’ve done, you’re no longer a true Chechen.”

  Ilmar knew the insult was calculated to force him into retaliation. For Chechens, such a slur is punishable by death. “A wound by the dagger can be cured by the doctor,” the saying goes, “but a wound by words can be cured only by the dagger.”

  “I won’t have this,” Ilmar said. “I didn’t kill Baltazar, and that’s all there is to it. Either take my word for it, or I’m leaving.” He turned and started for the door.

  “Turn around,” Karkadann said, and Ilmar froze despite himself. Honor demanded that a Chechen kill his enemy in face-to-face combat, not while they’re walking away, but since Karkadann had denied him due process, what was to stop him ignoring this custom too? “Stop, and turn around. You’ve got it coming, Ilmar; face it like a man.”

  Even if Ilmar made it to the door, even if he made it out of the house with all his bodyguards, this thing would not go away. There were Chechens all over Moscow, and most of them belonged to Karkadann or Zhorzh. So he could turn around slowly and let Karkadann shoot him, or he could take matters into his own hands, spinning fast while he pulled the pistol from his waistband, sighting for Karkadann first and then Zhorzh. But even as Ilmar brought his weapon up, he knew he was too slow. Karkadann held a gun in each hand and they were both kicking, dull impacts in Ilmar’s chest. Down went Ilmar, priceless Turkmen carpet warm and smooth against his cheek, and Karkadann’s crazy-paving face of contours and angles swimming from view.

  Valentina, her hair wet and slicked from the swimming pool, was holding a magazine in one hand and a cigarette in the other, both looking damper than was good for them.

  “Guess who’s coming to Moscow next month?” Her voice was high and wobbled from word to word; Karkadann found himself thinking of the birds chattering in the poplars. She answered her own question. “The headmaster of Eton. I had us registered today.”

  Every new Russian worth the name wanted to send his children to boarding school in England; it was cheaper than bodyguards, for a start, and the standard of education was thought to be second to none. Headmasters of English schools could fill Moscow conference halls two or three times over; they pulled in more punters than symposia on banking and oil.

  Karkadann took the magazine from her. It was the latest edition of Domovoi, the primer for the nouveau riche of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Domovoi instructed its readers in etiquette, kept them abreast of the latest fashions, told them how to treat their maids and furnish their luxury dachas and ran diary pieces from Milan, Geneva and New York. It had the fastest-growing circulation of any magazine in Russia.

  Good, thought Karkadann. They’d educate their son at Eton, shop at Harrods and live in Knightsbridge, where he had paid cash for a house last year. Cash, as in a briefcase neatly packed with fifty-pound notes that had seen the real estate agent close for the day and send his assistant out for vodka and caviar; as in an excellent way to launder money. The cretin had come back with a bottle of Polish Dubrowka and some revolting ersatz black eggs that had never been within half a hemisphere of the Caspian. Karkadann had killed men for less.

  The stables, the fountain, the pool, the house—such wealth had been literally unimaginable a few years back, when possessing more than ten thousand rubles had been enough to merit the death penalty. But every ruble he’d accumulated came with riders: a gasoline bomb, a falling shell, the package packed with explosives, bursts of machine-gun fire and screaming wounded. Someday, this war might end, but until then he would spend his money as if there were no tomorrow.

  13

  Saturday, January 4, 1992

  Karkadann’s bodyguards wore wing-tip shoes and silk suits whose cut was spoiled by the holsters beneath. It was a look they accentuated by straightening their spines and letting their arms swing backward. They glanced at the jewelers’ polyester suits and saw how badly they fit, too tight around the shoulders on the younger one, the older one’s too long in the legs. The Chechens saw too where the polyester had worn thin at the elbows and knees; trousers shiny from overuse, shoes clumpy and squared off at the toes. Men like these blossomed on every street in Moscow; bewildered, dignified people whose salaries had gone to shit and who didn’t know the rules of the new game. The jewelers each carried a small dark red box, a necklace in one and a bracelet in the other; both diamond, and worth between them north of half a million—dollars, of course, not rubles. It was more money than these two could ever dream of; Karkadann had spent it in a morning.

  But the bodyguards hadn’t seen the journey Butuzov and Ozers had taken to get here—stepping into the jeweler’s shop on Varkava Street as they were shutting up for the day, the blinds already down so no one could see in from outside; Ozers faking a collapse to bring the jewelers around from behind the counter and away from their panic buttons; Lev’s men with their guns out, forcing the jewelers to undress before binding and gagging them, not without regret, no hard feelings but you know how it is, we can’t have you raising the alarm too soon; Butuzov and Ozers pulling on the jewelers’ suits with the crest on the breast pocket, and taking the diamonds as they left.

  The bodyguards hadn’t seen Butuzov and Ozers exchange a kiss for luck; they hadn’t heard Butuzov ask: “All set?” Hadn’t heard Ozers reply: “Ready.”

  A dog padded carefully along the sidewalk, wary of burning its paws on the chemicals that the city authorities use to melt snow. One of the Chechens reached across and opened the door of the florist’s, and in they went, Lev’s men here at last, right in the h
eart of the enemy and beyond, an advance guard behind the lines.

  Valentina was pointing to an array that stood like a circle of flame in the middle of the shop; polyantha roses and geraniums in pink, crimson and scarlet, burnished with orange zinnias and splashed with dahlias of the same yellow as the bleached streaks in her hair. Karkadann was limping among his blooms, and it was a few seconds before he saw the visitors.

  “Right on time. Excellent. Here, tell me what you think.” He gestured toward the plants. “I always use rhododendrons for bases and backgrounds. You can do so much with rich greens and long branches. You see, here”—he beckoned Butuzov and Ozers closer with a wave of his secateurs—“I’m using them to underpin a display of berberis. The berries are fuckers to deal with, all those thorns, and the branches at the base of the stem have to be split or crushed, but it’ll be worth it for the sheer brilliance of the colors when it’s done. Oranges, pinks and yellows; you’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Very nice.” Ozers adopted a tone of suitable awe. Butuzov nodded in agreement.

  Karkadann had his jacket off, but the holster under his left armpit was full and another gun distended his right trouser pocket. It hadn’t just been the language difficulties that had made the Savile Row tailor ask twice for confirmation that yes, his client did want his suits made to accommodate a small arsenal of holstered weapons.

  Valentina was coming their way. “Can I open the boxes, darling, can I?”

  Butuzov turned toward her; he would hand her his box and grab her in the same moment, while Ozers covered Karkadann.