Rastchev shrugged dismissively.
‘You’re an idealist, Grisha. Very unusual in a KGB man. How did that happen?’
‘Vova, the breakup of the union was the greatest disaster of the twentieth century.’
‘I agree. I’ve said so many times, and in public, as well. That’s why I did what I did in Chechnya. No more separatism! It was the very first thing I did when becoming president. People didn’t want another war. A bomb or two in an apartment building – then they did. Magic! After that, I could do what I wanted. They smell, by the way. The Chechens, I mean. Let me warn you. If the head’s been lying on the ground for more than a day or two, they stink. Can you smell it now? Try . . . See? He’s always here, the Chechen. Thinks he’ll kill me if he can get me with the tongue, but I’m too quick for him. I’m writing a book on judo for heads. What do you think? Good idea?’ Vladimir nodded smugly. ‘Huh?’
‘That was the only good thing you did, Chechnya.’
‘The only good thing? What about Georgia?’
‘You didn’t go far enough. Should have taken them out when you had the chance.’
‘What about Crimea? I got that back, didn’t I? And eastern Ukraine. And Belarus.’
‘Alright, Crimea. Yes. I’ll give you that. How that cretin Khrushchev gave it to the Ukrainians I’ll never understand. What a pygmy of a man. Lenin would never have done that. And Belarus. Okay. I’ll give you that as well. But what about the rest of Ukraine, Vova? All you have to do is turn off the gas and they’ll freeze to death.’
‘It’s complicated.’
‘Complicated – bullshit! Is that what Lenin said when he got off the train at the Finland Station? Comrades, we’ll try to storm the Winter Palace – but it will be complicated!’
‘Fuck Lenin!’ said Vladimir irritably. ‘Stop talking about him.’
‘Fuck Lenin? You don’t stand comparison, Vova. He was a giant and you’re a cockroach sitting on his throne.’
‘Right. Thank you. I’ll remember that one. If you repeat it in public, Grisha, you’ll be back in the same cell and this time they’ll break your nose in the other direction. Now, what do you want from me?’
Rastchev sat forward.
‘Vladimir, you and I both saw what happens when the mob is allowed to rule. You remember those days in Germany? We went from everything to nothing . . .’ he clicked his fingers, ‘like that. There was no need for it. A few tanks, a few shots, and that would have put an end to it.’
‘The will wasn’t there.’
‘Exactly,’ said Rastchev. ‘A few tanks —’
‘Not tanks. You don’t need tanks. There are better ways. Look, the will wasn’t there, Grisha, but now it is. You’re looking at it. The vertical of power starts with one man. In Russia, it always has. Strength. Stability. Unity. One man, one party, one country.’
‘I thought you said I was on the wrong side of history.’
‘You are. Strength, stability, unity – but not communism. That was a blind alley. There are better ways. Managed democracy, that’s the way you do it. A handpicked opposition, elections, the results are never in doubt. It works beautifully.’
‘The rule of thieves.’
Vladimir smiled and wagged a finger. ‘You know, if you hadn’t kept saying things like that, Grisha, you wouldn’t have ended up in prison so much.’
‘Did you give the orders? Did you tell them to arrest me?’
Vladimir noticed a piece of fluff on his jacket. He picked it off and dropped it on the floor. ‘At a certain point, one doesn’t have to give the order, Grisha. People know what you want and they just do it. You see, people think power is when you can tell someone that you want something, and they’ll do it for you. No, that’s only the first level. Real power, Grisha, the top level, is when you don’t even have to tell them. They just do it. When that happens, you know that you not only can control what they do, you control their minds.’
Rastchev snorted. ‘It’s still the rule of thieves.’
‘Government of thieves, country of thieves . . .’ Vladimir shrugged. ‘Call it what you will. I’ve never worried about words. The country’s stable. People know what to expect. There’s order, there’s bread. If you don’t like it, you can leave – the borders are open. Compare that with the last years of Boris Nikolayevich and don’t tell me the people wouldn’t prefer it.’
‘Like saying you prefer the slower poison to the quicker. Vova, no one had a chance like you. You could have made us pure.’
Vladimir laughed. ‘Pure? Is that what you call purity? Listen, your communists, in their seventy years of gimmickry and distortion, as you call it, wasn’t it the rule of thieves? The nomenklatura, the apparatchiks, all getting their better clothes and their better food. Wasn’t that theft from the people, who got the worst of everything – when they were lucky enough to get anything? But these thieves, not only were they thieves, they were stupid thieves. Idiots! They had this system and it gave them nothing. What was there to steal in this godforsaken economy they created? Tell me. A better coat? A better sausage? Even the best thing we had was worth nothing compared to what an ordinary citizen in West Germany could buy in a supermarket every day of the week. And for that you needed to fill a gulag with ten million slaves? For God’s sake, such morons! Sure, rule the country, steal from the people – nothing wrong with that. In every country, those who rule, steal, one way or another. Fine. But first make sure there’s something to take!’ Vladimir paused for a moment. ‘That’s what the boys from the agencies, the ones who came with me, understood. They saw what the real thieves, the oligarchs, had got, and they wanted their share. But not by destroying the golden goose, like those idiots Lenin and Stalin and the fools who came after them, but by looking after it. Making it bigger. Using those oligarchs to produce even more golden eggs, and then taking them away. Not all of them, not every one. The trick is to leave the goose with just enough to keep it wanting to make more. That’s what we’ve done, Grisha. That’s what you’ve never understood.’
‘You not only let the others take, you took yourself.’
Vladimir shrugged, as if the point was barely worthy of mention.
‘You had the chance to be a great leader, to take us back to what could have been when Lenin died, before Stalin came.’
‘Grisha, you’re giving me a headache. History says: fuck the martyrs! They sacrifice themselves and the world goes on. Those who take, take, and those who don’t, don’t.’
‘And what did you do, Vladimir Vladimirovich?’ asked Sheremetev, who had been standing beside him, listening, as he had never listened before.
‘I took. Why not? With one hand, I gave Russia order, and with the other I took for myself. It’s a fair trade.’
‘What did you take?’
Vladimir smiled to himself. ‘Everything.’
‘And others? Should they take as well?’
‘Let them. Let he who can, take.’ Vladimir laughed. ‘We have all of Russia, Grisha. There’s plenty to go round. Support me – and you can have what you want. Why? Because I’ve given order. When my time as president comes to an end, that will be my legacy. Order, strength, stability, unity. Not the Russia of Boris Nikolayevich, falling apart like a senile old man, but a strong Russia, a Russia that can be proud, a Russia that the United States and the rest of them will fear, not laugh at.’
‘This is it, is it?’ said Sheremetev.
‘This is it. Look around, Grigory Markovich. This is Russia.’
‘Your Russia? Your creation?’
‘Yes,’ said Vladimir smugly. ‘My Russia. The Russia I made. No one else could have done it.’
‘And you wouldn’t change anything?’
‘Nothing.’
Sheremetev picked up the knife and fork from Vladimir’s dinner tray and slammed them down on the table.
Vladimir jumped.
‘Eat!’ Sheremetev stepped back. ‘There’s your food, Vladimir Vladimirovich! Go on! Eat!’
Vladimi
r looked up at him. His eyes filled with confusion.
Sheremetev turned away and took a deep breath. When he turned back, Vladimir was still gazing at him with the same heartrending look.
‘Okay,’ whispered Sheremetev, more to himself than to Vladimir. He sat down and began to fasten a napkin around Vladimir’s neck. ‘Let’s eat.’
‘Who are you?’ asked Vladimir.
‘Sheremetev. I look after you. Pick up your fork, Vladimir Vladimirovich.’
Vladimir made no move, perhaps sensing the uncharacteristic lack of warmth in Sheremetev’s voice. Sheremetev took another deep breath, trying to find the strength in himself to want to care for this man.
‘Are you hungry, Vladimir Vladimirovich?’ he asked.
Vladimir nodded.
‘Let’s eat, then, shall we? We’ve got beef stroganoff. You like beef stroganoff, don’t you?’
Vladimir nodded again.
Sheremetev closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again and forced himself to smile. Vladimir smiled back.
‘I’m having beef stroganoff!’ he said.
‘I know,’ replied Sheremetev. ‘Your fork, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Would you like to pick it up?’
Sheremetev waited a moment, but Vladimir made no move, so he picked it up for him.
Later that night, Sheremetev got a call from Oleg. His brother had the name of someone who bought watches.
13
THE ADDRESS THAT OLEG gave him turned out to be a shop in the centre of Moscow, in an alley near the Arbat. In the window was a dusty display of watches and pieces of jewellery that looked as if they had been there for centuries. Across the glass, in ornate gold letters, was written the name Rostkhenkovsky, and beside the door, which was locked, was a bell.
Sheremetev rang it. He heard a click. Tentatively, he pushed on the door and it swung open. The shop was long and narrow, with jewellery cabinets along either side. As he stepped inside, an inner door opened at the other end of the shop.
He was momentarily taken aback. In such a place, he had expected to find some wrinkled old shopkeeper with bushy nasal hair and sagging trousers. Instead, he found himself confronted by a smart, petite young woman in a cream and grey pinafore dress, with short brown hair cut stylishly to fall across one side of her pixieish face, almost covering an eye.
‘Yes?’ she said.
Sheremetev coughed nervously. ‘I’ve been told that you buy watches.’
The woman nodded.
Sheremetev waited, expecting her to say that she was going to go and find the resident horologist, but instead she continued to stand facing him on the other side of the counter.
‘You buy them?’
The woman nodded again.
‘So should I . . . ?’
The woman cocked her head. ‘If you have a watch you’d like to sell, if I can’t see it, I can’t tell you if I want to buy it, can I?’
‘It’s just – you’ll excuse me – you look very young.’
‘Twenty-eight,’ said the woman combatively.
‘You look younger.’
‘That’s meant to be a compliment?’
‘No,’ said Sheremetev. ‘It’s just . . . the truth.’
‘Listen, my father died four weeks ago. Now the shop’s mine. I worked with him from the day I left school. That’s ten years. Even before that, I practically lived in this shop. If you think you know something about watches that I don’t, I’d like to know what it is.’
‘I’m sorry about your father,’ said Sheremetev.
‘Thank you. He built this business. Did someone send you here?’
‘In a way.’
‘In a way? What does that mean? Who sent you?’
‘I heard about you.’
‘You’ve got quite a nasty cut there.’
‘Where?’
‘There, on your face.’
‘Oh.’ Sheremetev’s hand went to his cheek. The bruising had started to come down, but the sutures were still embedded along the line of the laceration.
‘If you’ll excuse me, you don’t look like the kind to get into fights.’
‘It was an accident.’
The woman scrutinised him for a moment, as if wondering whether to throw him out. If she was, she decided against it. ‘Okay. Let me explain how it is. Everything we do is legal, in case you’re wondering.’
‘I didn’t mean —’
‘Well, it is. So, we buy watches. If it’s just an ordinary watch – two, three thousand dollars – we sell it here ourselves. If it’s something special, there are other places we take it to. Some are shops, some are dealers who work privately with certain clients. Not every watch should be displayed in a shop window, if you understand what I mean. So anything you’ve got, believe me, one way or another, we can handle it for you.’
Sheremetev frowned. A watch that cost two or three thousand dollars was just an ordinary watch?
‘What’s your name?’
Sheremetev hesitated. ‘Nikolai Ilyich.’
‘Nikolai Ilyich . . . ?’ She waited.
‘Just Nikolai Ilyich.’
‘Okay. Suit yourself. I’m Anna Mikhailovna Rostkhenkovskaya. So, are you going to show me something, Nikolai Ilyich, or have you just come for a chat?’
Sheremetev reached into the inside pocket of his coat and fished out a small bundle wrapped in a handkerchief, trying to keep his hands from trembling. Under the young woman’s eyes, he put it down on the down on the counter and drew back the wrapping.
Anna Rostkhenkovskaya had a healthy scepticism when people came in off the street and announced that they wanted to sell her a watch. Half the time, they pulled out a treasured Swatch. But as soon as she saw this one emerging from its wadding, she knew she was dealing with something serious.
‘May I?’ she asked.
‘Please,’ said Sheremetev.
She pushed back her hair with a quick flick of her fingers and picked up the watch. Nothing in her expression gave any indication of what she was thinking as she examined the timepiece.
What had come out of the handkerchief, to Rostkhenkovskaya’s surprise, was a Rolex Oyster Perpetual Daytona in gold and platinum with a gold strap. What was even more surprising, as she studied it, was what appeared to be a series of sparkling, baguette-cut diamonds in place of the hour markers around the watch face and embedded in each of the watch hands.
Rostkhenkovskaya had seen plenty of Rolex Daytonas, but never one bejewelled like this. She wasn’t aware of Rolex ever having produced such a series, which meant that this was a bespoke piece, either produced to order by Rolex itself – presumably at significant expense – or tailored after purchase by an expert watchmaker.
‘Just a moment,’ she said.
Rostkhenkovskaya opened a drawer and took out a jeweller’s loupe. She examined each of the diamonds through the lens. They appeared to be flawless and of exceptional clarity and colour. She took another careful look at the watch itself, which seemed to be in mint condition. She doubted that it had ever been worn.
As she studied the piece, Rostkhenkovskaya ran through the numbers in her head. A standard gold and platinum Daytona that looked as if it had just come out of its box – thirty thousand dollars. With the diamonds: double that for the value of the jewels alone, and possibly double it again for the uniqueness of the piece. With an interesting provenance, you could double it once more.
‘This is yours?’ she asked, putting the watch down at last.
Sheremetev nodded.
‘You bought it?’
‘It was a gift.’
‘Who from?’
‘An uncle.’
‘Does he have a receipt, your uncle?’
‘He’s no longer– he’s senile.’
‘I’m sorry. And this is a gift, you say?’
Sheremetev nodded.
‘A very generous man, your uncle.’
Sheremetev didn’t reply.
The young woman was silent for a moment. ‘The diamond
s are interesting. There wouldn’t be many Daytonas like this.’ She paused. ‘Rolex probably knows exactly who bought each one.’
‘Are they diamonds?’ asked Sheremetev, missing the young woman’s insinuation.
‘What did you think they were?’
Sheremetev shrugged.
Rostkhenkovskaya folded her arms. ‘Okay, so what are we saying, Nikolai Ilyich? You want to sell this watch, yes?’
‘That’s why I’m here.’
‘Despite the fact that your doting uncle gave it to you?’
‘I need the money. If my uncle still had his senses, he’d be the first to tell me to sell it.’
‘So not a very sentimental man?’
‘Not really.’
‘Would I know him?’
‘No.’
‘You know, it doesn’t look like the watch was ever used.’
‘He has a lot of watches. People used to give them to him.’
‘Give them to him? Watches like this one?’
Instinctively, Sheremetev’s hand went to his mouth. He had said too much. He had worked out the uncle story on the train in to the city, but who had an uncle who was given watches like this?
Rostkhenkovskaya noticed the reaction. She wondered how much of the story she could believe. Maybe the watch was stolen, but the man in front of her was an unlikely thief. Could be a fence, though. But what kind of a fence would turn up like this, with a face that looked as if he had just danced a tango with a chainsaw? Who would ever forget it?
‘Okay,’ she said eventually. ‘The problem, Nikolai Ilyich, is that with a watch like this – such a unique watch – someone might recognise it. To be honest, I’ve seen plenty of Daytonas, but never one with diamond insets. It’s one of a kind.’
‘Would that make a difference to what it’s worth?’ asked Sheremetev.
‘At this level, the watch world is quite a small world. Such a unique watch . . . If someone recognises it, and the way you got it isn’t one hundred percent above board . . .’ She shrugged. ‘Do you understand?’
Sheremetev frowned.
‘So let me ask you again – forgive me – but you have no documentation for this piece, is that correct?’
The Senility of Vladimir P Page 20