Vodka

by Boris Starling

  She looked so peaceful in sleep, he told her, all her worries temporarily smoothed away. There’s something about the serenity of slumber that is intensely personal; he was invading every part of her now, the boundaries between them were dissolving. How could she worry about her privacy being violated, when there was none left? They were two halves of a whole, moving around and always coming back to each other.

  He had to go out for a couple of hours. She tried not to worry or be resentful—she understood that he had things to do, even now—but without him she didn’t have enough to take her mind off things. She was half asleep when he left; when she woke and tried to leave the bedroom, she found that he’d locked the door from the outside. She was a prisoner. Couldn’t he trust her to behave as an adult? No, she thought as she stalked the room looking for even the tiniest smidgeon of vodka he might have forgotten to remove; he couldn’t. Why did she want a drink? To assuage her baser desires and show him the defiance of her resentment, and both reactions were childish.

  The shade of yellow in which the presidential residence is painted appears to change color according to the time. In the faint light of the morning, it’s a thick egg yolk; the sharply angled rays of the setting sun deepen it to mustard. Now, at midday, it had the rich luster of lemon.

  Sabirzhan had come with Galina, and he was succinct: there were four people around the table and Lev had betrayed them all. He’d tried to remove first Arkin and then Borzov from office; he’d more or less accused Sabirzhan of the child murders; and he’d taken the real culprit, Rodion Khruminsch, Galya’s husband, and dispensed Mafia justice without a thought for due process. Lev had given each of them a reason to want him out of the picture, permanently.

  The president had struck a deal with Lev, Borzov said. He wouldn’t renege on it.

  Yes, Sabirzhan understood that, but what he was suggesting had nothing to do with that deal. Since the deal had been struck, Rodion had been killed, almost certainly by Lev himself, though no one present at the kangaroo court would admit it. So Galina would go and see Lev. Lev still trusted her; he was unaware of her part in helping Alice uncover his scams—though of course Sabirzhan didn’t mention this to Arkin and Borzov. In fact, Lev would probably feel that he owed her an explanation at the very least, and perhaps more. Galina would wear a wire, and she’d get Lev to tell her what had happened. Their conversation could then be used in evidence against him.

  Galina nodded in agreement; she wanted to do it.

  “Absolutely not.” Borzov was adamant. “You’re untrained; it’s too dangerous. You’re sprinkling salt under her tail, Tengiz—you’ll get her into trouble. If she’s found out before she’s gotten him to confess, the whole thing will be lost. There’ll be no more element of surprise.”

  “I have to disagree, Anatoly Nikolayevich,” Arkin said. “Galya’s the only one that can do it. Tengiz is trained, but Lev wouldn’t tell him what day it is. If Lev trusts Galya, why should he suspect that she’s wearing a wire?” He turned to Galina. “You will get him to confess, you will record it; there’s no two ways about it.” It was Arkin at his most Marxist: the ends justified the means, and the pursuit of the desired outcome brooked no obstacles.

  The question of whether or not to wear a wire settled, they now debated what type of device it should be. There were two possibilities: the Nagra tape recorder or the T-4 transmitter, both of them the most up-to-date equipment available to the Russian authorities, both long since abandoned as obsolete by the FBI. Whichever one Galina used, she was bound to pick up all kinds of surrounding sounds—clothes rustling, feet and chairs shuffling, radios, televisions. She wouldn’t be able to test on scene for sound levels; she wouldn’t be able to arrange Lev as she liked for optimum recording; she wouldn’t be able to ask him to raise his voice or repeat things more slowly.

  The Nagra was relatively hefty, six by four by one inches. Manually activated, it used a three-hour tape and was able only to record, so the tape had to be transferred to another machine for playback. The Nagra’s microphone was about the size of the eraser on the end of a pencil, and a long wire meant it could be hidden anywhere on Galya’s body. With a Nagra, Galya wouldn’t need to rely on backup. As long as she got Lev to admit killing her husband within the tape’s recording span, and then found a way to get the tape to the authorities, they could arrest Lev at any time afterward.

  The T-4 was half the size of the Nagra—three by two by one—and, though it had no intrinsic recording capacity, it could transmit to monitoring agents nearby who’d listen and record. Its maximum range was perhaps two blocks, though steel structures, adverse weather conditions and passing vehicles could all reduce this. The antenna was small and flexible, with a tiny microphone bulb on the end, and it would last four hours on fresh batteries. The T-4 was less likely to be seen than the Nagra. Transmission meant that a snatch squad could move in the moment they heard Lev admit to Rodion’s murder.

  Galina wanted to wear the Nagra because there was less to go wrong. Sabirzhan wanted her to wear the T-4. “The Nagra’s recording quality is rubbish,” he said. “If you haven’t got it clearly, there’s no way you’ll know until afterward, by which time it’ll be too late. With the T-4, the technicians can fiddle with the sound quality without you needing to worry about it.”

  “There’s more chance of a screwup with the T-4.”

  “And then we can come and get you out. With the Nagra, you’re on your own.”

  She was untrained, she needed all the help she could get; that was what all three men were thinking. Galina sighed as she was voted down. This was Russia, she reminded herself, where you hoped for the best and prepared for the worst.

  Against Arkin’s will—for him, it was confession or nothing—they worked on a code phrase as a signal for the Spetsnaz to swing into action, no questions asked. It would be left to Galina’s discretion as to whether or when to use the phrase: it could be when she considered that Lev had said enough, or if she was in dire trouble and needed to be extracted without delay. The phrase had to be something that wouldn’t crop up in the normal course of conversation, but not too eclectic to be jarring if Galya had to incorporate it into the dialogue. They tossed ideas around—jokes, famous quotes, references to things within Red October—before settling on something short, sharp and to the point: “in vodka veritas.”

  92

  Monday, March 23, 1992

  Above Alice’s head, electric tralloy lines exploded in small blazes. The authorities had laid even more snow-melting chemicals than usual as the thaw set in, the quicker to have the streets cleared, and the fumes were eating away at the lines’ external insulation. The thermometer was hovering at forty-five or forty-six degrees above zero, but Muscovites gloomily warned that it was almost certainly a false dawn. Spring in Russia usually hammered at the door two or three times before winter finally decided to let it through.

  Water droplets drummed on the metal of the drainpipes and the cornices, roof tapping message to roof. As Moscow cars habitually sported tidemarks of grime up to their door handles, so the pedestrians were now splattered from ankle to knee with water and mud. Men in thick black jackets were hacking up blocks of ice with iron bars and spades; planks laid across benches or trestles signified that roof cleaning was taking place above. Still, plenty of people were killed by falling icicles every year, straight through the head, sharp as a knife, usually in places where the warnings had been stolen—planks, benches and trestles were all valuable commodities.

  The need for reparations to Lewis had been playing on Alice’s mind, and the longer she left it, especially without the dampening effect of vodka, the greater importance it seemed to assume. It was something she had to face, not just for Lewis’s sake but also for her own peace of mind.

  She’d made an inventory of the wrongs she’d done him, and it went on for pages. Set down in black and white, she realized perhaps for the first time exactly how much damage she’d done, and that there was no way she could ever go back, eve
n if she’d wanted to and even if he’d take her. The best they could hope for was a wary and regretful accommodation; it was the very least he deserved.

  She went around early in the evening, unannounced and alone, walking fast up to the familiar building in Patriarch’s Ponds and plunging the key like a dagger into the lock, fast and sharp, before she lost her—well, her bottle, for lack of a better word. The thought would have made her laugh if she hadn’t so desperately wanted a drink to settle her nerves.

  The apartment seemed at once familiar and distant, and it was a moment before she realized why. This was where she’d drunk herself stupid, this was where she’d thrown up on the sheets, this was where she’d yelled at Lewis in blind intoxicated fury. This place would forever be associated in her mind with drinking.

  All the gang were there: Bob, Christina, Harry and of course Lewis himself. They turned to look at Alice in horrified silence as she walked in.

  “What are you doing here?” Christina, spiky. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble?”

  “Christina, please.” Lewis was already on his feet. “It’s my apartment, I’ll deal with this. Excuse me a moment, everyone.” He took Alice by the elbow and steered her into the bedroom. She glanced quickly around; looking, she realized, for the traces of another woman, though less from jealousy than curiosity as to whether his life had changed as drastically as hers.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I’m sorry, Lewis, I didn’t mean to spoil your party. I’ll go, I’ll come back another time. Christina was right.”

  “What Christina thinks is no worry of yours. Tell me why you’ve come.”

  “To say sorry.” It sounded so simple, put that way.

  “Sorry?” He pushed some air through his nose. “OK. You’re sorry. Thank you.”

  “That’s it? You don’t want to hear any more?”

  “What’s there to hear, Alice? I love you and you don’t love me. I keep trying to understand the meaning of this judgment on me, to see the reason for it. I look into myself, I go over our whole life together, everything I know about you, and me, and us together, and I can’t find the beginning. I can’t remember what it is I did and how I brought this misfortune on myself. I love you—if only you knew how much. There’s no one better than you in the whole world, even after all you’ve done. But you love another man. What can I do?”

  “You could fight it.”

  “Why?”

  “Lewis, what’s brought this on?”

  Lewis almost smiled. “He did.”

  “He?”

  “Lev. When he brought me to see him the day after you’d stormed out of the Aragvi, to tell me where you were and that you were OK. I didn’t want to listen at the time, but when I’d calmed down and thought about what he’d said, it made sense. He made me realize something I’d been blind to before: you were my addiction just as much as vodka was yours. And by refusing to recognize that, I hadn’t helped you, or me, or us.”

  “Lewis, you can’t blame yourself for this. It was my drinking that fucked everything up.”

  “Yes, but there are ways and means to get around it, and I didn’t choose any of them.”

  “This is…”

  “Addictive behavior’s the same, it doesn’t matter what it focuses on. The only way to get over it is to break it. To start with, I denied you had a problem. When I accepted there was something wrong, first I played it down, then I blamed other things for it, then I rationalized it, then I intellectualized it; then I became hostile to it.”

  Alice could hear Christina’s voice from next door, hectoring. The world would end before Christina ran out of things to moan about. Alice gestured with her head back toward the dining room. “I’m surprised Christina and Bob are still here, after what happened to Josh. How is he?”

  “A touch of concussion, but otherwise fine. He has no idea what happened to him—Bob told him he took a tumble on the ice and bumped his head. It was pretty easy to convince him that the stuff about a goblin dragging him into his cave was all just a bad dream.”

  “What about the others? I guess they think I’m the devil incarnate after all this.”

  “You really want to know?”

  They were his friends, really, not hers. Alice shook her head. “No.”

  “Good. You can probably guess, anyway.”

  “The only one whose reaction matters is you.”

  It sounded trite, but he knew she wouldn’t have come here unless it was true. “Well, as you can see, there’s one more stage after hostility.”

  “Which is?”

  “Acceptance. You’re an alcoholic and I’m not; I love you and you don’t love me. That’s the way it is, and I don’t have the energy to keep hiding from it or to hate you for it. I lost you a long time ago. If you want a divorce, I won’t stand in your way.”

  The sobs gushed from Alice till she feared being drowned in her own tears.

  93

  Tuesday, March 24, 1992

  The T-4 prickled against Galina’s skin. It was taped to the small of her back, hidden under both a shirt and a sweater, but as far as she was concerned, it could hardly have been more obvious if she’d taken it out, painted it pink and waved it around the room. She was sure Lev would notice that something was awry. Was she walking funny, did her voice sound strained? All she had to do was leave, say she was sorry, it didn’t matter; walk out and leave him none the wiser.

  None the wiser, and still free. She thought of Rodya, dead because of the madness that had consumed him. She thought of Sveta, back at the school on Prospekt Mira because life must go on, she must endure, even when her only son was dead and she’d never now be a grandmother. Galina hadn’t told Sveta anything of her plan, because Sveta would have tried to talk her out of it. Galina thought of what Alice had said when she’d convinced her to pass over the Nicosia phone number, about doing things properly; doing things properly meant not letting people get away with killing other people. She collected herself and resolved that she would do this: get Lev to admit, mention, agree, confess, whatever, that he’d killed Rodya. This was the moment she’d been waiting for ever since Irk had come to tell her that Rodya was dead, and now that it was on her it seemed too soon by half.

  The Spetsnaz were there, vanloads and vanloads of them. Some were disguised as maintenance men and window cleaners. Others were dressed all in black and had come up the Kotelniki’s fire escapes and elevator shafts, ready to shoot their way in at a moment’s notice. Lev’s bodyguards were the best in the business, and they’d see off most attacks that rival Mafia bosses could consider, let alone anything run by the police, but a full-scale assault by army special forces was a different matter altogether.

  Galina was desperately thirsty. She wanted a drink—not vodka, of course, she needed to keep a clear head—but there was no mineral water in sight, and Moscow tap water isn’t safe to drink without being boiled first, especially in spring, when the melting snow cover slides a goodly proportion of the city’s pollutants into the river.

  Lev was looking straight at Galina. He knows, Galina thought, he knows. Don’t be so stupid, her reason said, of course he’s going to be looking at you, you’re the only person here.

  “Has that Georgian weasel wrecked my distillery yet?” he asked.

  Galina shrugged. “You know how things are.”

  “You’re working for him now? What’s going on there?”

  Galina didn’t want to discuss Red October with Lev, and she didn’t know how a professional would react—wait him out, or try and steer the conversation around—but she was conscious that the transmitter’s batteries were finite, so she did what came naturally: she blurted out what was on her mind. “What happened to Rodya?”

  Lev was perfectly still for a moment, then he sat back in his chair, nodding to himself. “That’s what you’ve come about. Of course.” He looked at the ceiling, as though pondering what to tell her. Was he embarrassed? That would be a first, Galina thought.
/>   “He was my husband,” she said. “Any woman would want to know.”

  “Rodya was sick,” Lev said. “No, he was more than sick. He was wounded, in torment.”

  “We could have gotten him help. Not here—abroad, where they’ve got the right pills.”

  “He was too sick for pills, Galya. This … it’s hard for you to understand. Don’t take this the wrong way, but to me Rodya seemed like a wounded animal. He was in agony. There’s only one way to deal with a wounded animal, Galya. If you see a dog on the road, hit by a car but still alive, what do you do? Do you drive around it? Not if you have a heart. You line it up under your wheels and put it out of its misery.”

  “No!” The wounded animal was in Galina’s cry.

  “It was the best thing to do, Galya. It was the merciful thing to do.”

  She was crying now, and Lev was on his feet, enveloping her in his vast arms. Her husband’s executioner, she thought, trying to comfort her for what he’d done. She pushed back against him, and when he didn’t yield she surrendered to it, burying her face in a chest so massive that she could suffocate herself there, and he pulled her closer, pressing the wire harder against her skin.

  The sensation jerked Galina through her tears. Would he feel the transmitter under her clothes? Why weren’t the Spetsnaz here? Lev had told her what had happened, more or less … That was it, she thought: more or less. He’d implied much, but what had he actually said? They wouldn’t come in until they had a proper confession, and they wouldn’t get a confession if he found the wire. She wriggled free of him.

  “Let me get you some vodka,” Lev said.

  “Did you kill Rodya?” she said. Too bold?

  He was walking across the room, toward the sideboard, and answered her without turning around. “What I did was for the best, Galya. Please don’t ask any more.”

  “I need to know.”

  He poured two glasses and came back with them. “Why?”