Vodka

by Boris Starling

  In the moment before Karkadann’s lupine smile split his face, Ozers saw in him the wearied irritation that signals the beginning of the end of love. For Karkadann, Valentina’s appeal was already beginning to fade, and in a few years she’d lose the harmony in her looks: her face would sag, her forehead and eyes would be crinkled with lines, her complexion would coarsen and redden, and her hips would become saddlebags. Her beauty was ephemeral and fleeting, like that of so many women.

  “In a minute,” Karkadann said, teasing. Then, seriously: “I’ll have those.”

  He took the boxes from Ozers and Butuzov, one at a time, never allowing both his hands to be occupied at the same time. He was good, Butuzov thought, all the paranoids were, they acted as though everyone was a threat, even though half the time they didn’t even know they were doing it. “Thank you. That’ll be all.”

  Karkadann put the boxes down on the counter, its surface strewn with weapons: a curved Uzbek dagger, the blade from a Red Army M-16, Chinese metal throwing sticks, bracelets that could break a man’s wrist.

  Ozers and Butuzov glanced at each other; fleeting, imperceptible, enough. Butuzov turned to Valentina to wish her a good evening—he’d seize her now, Ozers was already moving into position behind him—and he was already reaching for her hand when he saw a little face poking between two buckets of white carnations. He started; Valentina followed his gaze.

  “Aslan!” She seemed delighted. “Come on out of there, my treasure!”

  Aslan was five years old, maybe six; he ran around from behind the buckets and clasped his mother’s legs. What was he doing here? Sabirzhan had said that they’d only have to deal with Karkadann and Valentina; he’d made no mention of a child.

  “Who’s been hiding from Mommy, eh?” Valentina was ruffling Aslan’s hair while he batted at her hands and squealed delightedly. “Who’s been hiding in all Daddy’s flowers?”

  The kid’s screwed it all up, Butuzov was thinking. Children were different, even Chechen kids—but there was no more time to think, Ozers was past him in a flash, reaching down and yanking Aslan clean off the floor, spinning around to face Karkadann with the child struggling in his arms and his gun pressed to Aslan’s head, and almost before Butuzov knew it, his own arm was wrapped round Valentina’s neck and his gun was tracing cold circles against the base of her skull.

  Karkadann was holding two guns out in front of him already, damn but this guy was quick, the holster hanging open. This was his family, though, and he held his fire.

  Outside, the bodyguards glared down passersby and didn’t look back inside the shop.

  “Get out of Moscow,” Ozers said. “Give us your business. Take your filthy black ass back to Grozny, and don’t come back.”

  Karkadann took sightings down his lines of fire, his head moving smoothly from side to side.

  “Tonight, and don’t come back.” Ozers tensed his arm against Aslan’s wriggling. “Tonight. Say it, or we’ll kill them both.”

  “Ilmar,” Karkadann said, almost to himself. “Ilmar.” His eyes shone, seeming to reflect starbursts of zinnias and dahlias. “You tricked me. You people … dared to trick me, into killing one of my own. And now”—his words came in surges, he was breathing hard—“and now you dare to trick your way into my shop, take hold of my wife and my child, and threaten me?”

  “We’ll kill them,” said Butuzov. “We will.”

  “What do you need to be in power?” Karkadann asked, not addressing them but himself; no longer angry, it seemed, but philosophical. “You don’t need guns or money or numbers; you just need the will to do what the other side won’t.”

  A gunshot cracked, loud in the confined space; bodyguards piling through the door and Karkadann yelling at them to hold their fire even as he dived for the floor, Ozers and Butuzov caught by surprise and looking to see whether the other had been hit because they themselves were fine, disbelief rolling over their bewilderment when Aslan sagged in Ozers’s arms and Ozers realized after a blip in time that Karkadann had done it, he’d shot his own child.

  Another shot, and then another. Ozers crumpled to the floor with the boy, the life ebbing from them both. Valentina clutched at her throat, where blood snickered and bloomed. Butuzov was waving his gun around but he couldn’t see Karkadann to get a clean shot off and the Chechens were there, multiple barrels all trained on him, they’d kill him the moment he so much as went for the trigger.

  “Drop it!” shouted Karkadann. “Drop it!”

  Butuzov let his weapon fall to the floor and raised his shaking hands. Valentina rolled away from him and slid back against the wall, still just about on her feet.

  Karkadann had rolled behind the far end of the counter. He got up and walked over to Valentina, dragging his bad leg behind him.

  She gave him the strangest look; one of trust, perhaps, saturated with fear and humiliation.

  He fired again, between her eyes, and stepped back to let her fall.

  Karkadann was in Butuzov’s face now. “My family are better dead than violated by you, filthy trash. What hold do you have over me now, eh? You think of us as beasts, but it’s you, Russian infidel, who is the animal. We Chechens never pursue vendettas against women, never—at least, not until an enemy has gone after our women.”

  He brought his hands up either side of Butuzov’s head, a gun at each temple. It would be quick, Butuzov thought; there was that, at least.

  “Tell Lev this: for everything that he’s visited on me, I will have my revenge. Not one for one, but manifold. He makes me kill my wife; I will kill all his women. He makes me kill my son; I will kill all his children. He makes me kill my friend; I will kill all his friends. Have you ever heard of the abreky, you ignorant pig? No? Of course not; it’s not the kind of history they teach in Russian schools. Let me educate you. The abreky were Chechen bandits. They’d throw over family, clan, home, everything, and give their lives to fighting the Russians. These were my ancestors, and this is their oath—remember it, scum, remember it word for word, because when you get back to Lev, you’re going to repeat it to him, and he’s going to see what he’s unleashed here.”

  Karkadann took the guns from Butuzov’s temples and began to declaim. “I, the son of Shamil Khambiyev, himself the son of an honorable and glorious horseman warrior, swear to the saints to show no mercy to my own blood or to the blood of anyone else, exterminating others as if they were beasts of prey. I swear to take from my enemies everything that is dear to their hearts, their conscience and their courage. I will tear their babies from their mothers’ breasts, I will burn their homes, and wherever there is joy I will bring sorrow. If I do not fulfill my vow, if my heart fills with love or pity, let me never see the graves of my ancestors, let my native earth reject me, let water not quench my thirst, bread not feed me and the blood of unclean animals be poured on my ashes, scattered at the crossroads.”

  14

  Sunday, January 5, 1992

  Sabirzhan’s presence in the Kullams’ room was like smog: oppressive, enveloping, noxious and, above all, unwelcome. Alla Kullam regarded him with a degree of suspicion that fell marginally short of outright hostility; her husband German twisted his hands and rolled his eyes, as if squirming alone would banish the intruder.

  It was German whom Sabirzhan had come to see; German whose arms poked from the shortened sleeves of his polyester shirt like elongated potatoes and who had a face like a canker sore. German had worked at Red October for more than twelve years, recently on the rectifier, one of two columns that formed the still where vodka was distilled. For nine of those twelve years he’d also worked for the KGB, keeping Sabirzhan apprised of any dissent among the workforce and any deviation from strict Marxist-Leninist principles. Informing, in other words.

  “I’m sorry for visiting you at home, on a Sunday,” Sabirzhan said in a tone that suggested he was anything but sorry. “You’ll appreciate, however, that this is a sensitive matter, one best discussed away from the distillery. You understand, German? Ex
cellent.”

  Sabirzhan would have asked Alla to leave the room, but there were few places she could go. The Kullams lived in one of the thousands of communal apartments that Lenin’s men had conceived as a way of eradicating class divisions, subdividing large czarist houses for the proletariat and housing a family in each room. In the Kullams’ case, the room was little more than sixteen by sixteen feet—and they were among the luckier ones. A bed less double than one-and-a-bit was wedged into the far corner, and four chairs huddled around a plastic-topped table. In his cardigan and pince-nez, sipping at the cup of tea Alla had made—“Vodka? Thank you, no”—Sabirzhan looked every inch the favorite uncle.

  “Red October is scheduled for privatization, German, and quickly. We’ve been chosen as the test case for reform; I need hardly tell you how important it is that the process be completed as smoothly as possible. But nor do I need tell you how resistant our people can be to change. You’re one of my better assets on the shop floor, German. You’ve served your country with skill and distinction for almost a decade now; the state is grateful to you, and has rewarded you accordingly. Now is not the time to relax and pat yourself on the back, however. Your services are required more than ever.”

  German pecked nervously at the glass of vodka in his hand; not his first of the day, by the look of things. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing you haven’t done a hundred times before: talk, and listen. Spread the word among your colleagues; privatization will be good for them. Whatever fears they have, everything will turn out right for those who trust the management. Far from spelling the end of the workers’ collective, privatization will enhance their status. A suggestion here, a hint there—you’ll have no trouble steering conversations around to the topic, I’m sure. And while you talk, you listen, and then you report to me: who agrees with you, who’s agitating against our chosen course, who’s wavering and can be turned …”

  German finished the rest of his glass and sloshed it full again. His hands were shaking.

  “I don’t think so, Tengiz Lavrentiyich,” German said, spitting his words out in a gabble, speed and vodka courage overriding his instinct to do as he was told.

  Sabirzhan was still, calculatedly and unnervingly so; he held the silence until German’s hands began twisting like a crankshaft. “I didn’t quite catch that, German.”

  “I said—I said that I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think what?”

  “I don’t think that I’m going to do what you asked me to.”

  “What I told you to.”

  “I’m not going to do it.”

  “Would you mind telling me why not?”

  “Because—because it’s not right. You believed in the glory of the socialist ideal, Tengiz Lavrentiyich; you more than anyone. You told me only a few months back how that ideal was being violated by yids and Western rapists, deluded fools and capitalist lackeys. And now you come here telling me how good privatization will be. What am I supposed to think?”

  “You think what I tell you to think, German. We must move with the times.”

  In the corridor outside, two children cycled past at speed. A moment later, the wall shook violently; one of them must have crashed. German looked uncertainly from Alla to Sabirzhan, and down into his vodka glass.

  “I don’t have to be afraid of you anymore, Tengiz Lavrentiyich. Your people are gone.”

  “My people will never be gone.” Under a different name, perhaps, but never gone. “And the money we pay you, the monthly stipend …” Sabirzhan gestured around the room. “You look like you could use it.”

  German mimicked his gesture. “Fat lot of good it’s done me so far.”

  “It’s not my responsibility if you piss it away on the vodka.”

  “We could do with the extra, German,” Alla said. “You know we could.” Prices were still rising fast, as they were scheduled to do for another month or two. Items on the borderline between essentials and luxuries, such as toothpaste and toilet paper, were hard to find, as was fresh food; suppliers were withholding deliveries in order to exploit the rising prices.

  “I’m not taking cash off him anymore,” German said.

  Sabirzhan got to his feet and brushed at the seat of his trousers, as though to forestall the possibility of having picked up some ghastly disease from the chair. “I sincerely hope you’ll reconsider before tomorrow morning, German; then I can ascribe your reprehensible attitude to the vodka and we can carry on as before. If not”—he blew his cheeks out—“if not, then I’m afraid I’ll have little choice but to make you regret your decision.” He turned to Alla; she was small and mousy, not unpretty, but quite what she saw in her husband was entirely beyond Sabirzhan. “A pleasure, Alla, as always.”

  The door opened, rocking flimsily on its hinges, and a boy with delicate features and cheeks red from the cold came in at a bustle: Vladimir Kullam, German and Alla’s only son.

  “Vova!” Sabirzhan opened his arms wide and bared his teeth by way of a smile. “How wonderful to see you! Come to your uncle Tengiz and tell him what you’ve been up to.”

  Alla glanced nervously at Vladimir and inclined her head toward Sabirzhan. Go on, Vova, do as the man says. Vladimir stood his ground by the door; discomfort jagged from him as he ran his hands through thickets of black hair.

  “On the cusp of your teenage years by now, aren’t you?” Sabirzhan said, apparently unaware that he was still foolishly holding his arms up like airplane wings. “I see you’re wearing the coat I gave you two Christmases back. Have you been up to mischief on the streets of Moscow?”

  “You were supposed to be back hours ago,” German said. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “At the kiosk,” Vladimir said, his voice tight with defiance.

  “What kiosk?” Sabirzhan asked.

  “One of those new booths down near Novokuznetskaya metro,” German said. “You know the type; it sells vodka, magazines, perfumes, all that. I’ve banned him from going there.”

  “Only when school is on,” Vladimir said. “Not during the holidays.”

  “He was playing hooky from school,” Alla said.

  “I know,” Sabirzhan replied. “I insure that Svetlana Khruminscha keeps me well apprised of what’s going on in that establishment.”

  “Then why didn’t you stop him? A child needs education.” German’s pleading cocked a cold trigger of satisfaction in Sabirzhan’s dark interior. “You know what he did when I first found out? He offered me some of his takings! Times might be hard, but I have my pride. Taking money from your own son—whoever heard of such a thing?”

  “Like I just told you, German, change is not always for the better.”

  German turned angrily toward Vladimir. “Kiosks are dangerous, Vladimir.” He chose not to use a diminutive, to impress upon his son the depth of his anger. “They’re run by gangsters who’ll off you without a care in the world. You’re not to go there anymore; I forbid it. If I catch you there again, I’ll smack the crap out of you.”

  Vladimir reached into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out a wad of money: dark-green dollars, not the multicolored floss of rubles. “I earn more than the president, did you know that?” He peeled four notes carefully from the top and let them flutter to the floor. “There you go, Dad. That should keep you in vodka for a few days yet.”

  Alla clapped her hand over the perfect circle of her mouth. German took an unsteady step toward his son. “You little shit. Come here and say that.”

  “Fuck you, Dad.”

  “You really shouldn’t talk to your father like that, Vova,” Sabirzhan said.

  “And fuck you too, pervert!” As German lunged forward, Vladimir swayed easily, tauntingly out of reach. “Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck the lot of you!”—making a song of it as he skipped down the corridor and back out into the streets.

  15

  Monday, January 6, 1992

  There was a certain irony in Red October’s name. The Bolshe
viks had all but banned vodka in the first two decades of their rule, and had only reintroduced it during the Great Patriotic War to provide soldiers with energy and courage. Stalin used to sit at his Kremlin desk in the wee hours and look across the river at the distillery; content that the essence of the Russian soul was within view, seething that the hated British were right next door to it.

  A dozen-strong line was waiting for them at the distillery gates. At the head of the line stood Lev.

  Alice had spent the past week studying the files Arkin had provided and reading everything she could get her hands on about Red October. But nothing could have prepared her for her first encounter with its director. “Lev will be easy to type,” she had told Harry and Bob in the car on the way there, but the man in front of her seemed to defy all categorization. She found herself transfixed, not just by the sheer size of him—she had been expecting a great bear of a man—but by the aura of intelligence that seemed to exude from him. It had seemed logical to suppose that the real seat of power would be the KGB man, Sabirzhan, not some dumb-brute gangster figurehead. Alice hoped that Bob and Harry would be perceptive enough to adjust the strategy she’d outlined for today’s meeting; something told her it would be dangerous to underestimate this man.

  Lev’s dark eyes flickered with amusement, as if he could read her thoughts. “Mrs. Liddell.” Both her hands disappeared in one of his. She saw the tattoo on the back of his right hand, laid delicately over the subcutaneous latticework of veins: a line portrait of birds flying over the horizon, and beneath it the inscription: I was born free, and should be free. “How good to see you, and my apologies that this meeting has been so long in coming, but we both know how hard it is for two busy people to find a mutual space in their schedules.” She was impressed and gratified that he’d come to her first, as the delegation’s head, even though she was a woman.

  Alice introduced Harry and Bob, and stifled a laugh when she saw Harry wince at the strength of Lev’s handshake. Lev gestured them inside without introducing the others; they were clearly only for show. Perhaps they were from an agency, Alice thought: weddings, bar mitzvahs, factory visits. There were bodyguards there too, men built like linebackers and with eyes that were never still, though none of them was as big as Lev himself.