Y.T.

2004

Kurochkin’s secretary caused a commotion in the office and just about disrupted an Important Meeting. When he couldn’t get hold of me on my mobile (we’re under orders to keep our mobiles switched off when we discuss that holiest of holies—‘milk yields,’ better known as ‘revenue’), he started dialing the bosses. ‘Davidov is in a meeting,’ said our patient office managers to Kurochkin’s persistent secretary. ‘You can leave a message if you want to.’

‘I’m calling from Parliament—the Finance and Banking Committee. Davidov is being summoned as a matter of urgency to a meeting of the committee.’ ‘Summoned as a matter of urgency’ did the trick. Maybe our office is American, but the managers are local. They know better than to deal with the authorities if at all possible and immediately passed responsibility to the brass. They told Malkin.

Stephen Malkin was top dog at our branch. He had returned the night before from Memphis, Tennessee, where there had been a great pow-wow of regional managers at our fizzy giant’s head office. The head honchos were explaining the party line on per capita ‘milk yields.’ As far as I could see, nothing had changed—it was still all about profit. But it was necessary to expound on the topic at least once a quarter in case we forgot. Malkin had brought back a box of DVDs of the Memphis meeting and gave one to each of us. Now he was doing his best to convey the chief’s exhortations to consider night and day whether we were doing everything we could for the good of the company. Malkin talked, and we took notes—or, in truth, pretended to, and it was inhumanly boring at that.

Every time I attended one of these meetings I recalled with a shudder of nostalgia my army political indoctrination of eighteen years before. Twice a week we were assembled by battery commander Major Razin, who dictated at length from a Partyapproved training manual. The battery commander was short in stature, with two dozen iron teeth gleaming darkly from his mouth. He himself was a die-hard Stalinist. Whenever he came across the leader’s name within the approved text he grew inordinately excited and forgot all about the training manual and the political classes. ‘We couldn’t have done it without Joseph,’ he cried exultantly. ‘Wherever you look—there he is. We’d have got nowhere without him. That’s because he was the head—he and he alone thought for everyone else, for the entire country. Not long ago our pay went up. That’s good, isn’t it? Don’t you think they did the right thing? Well, what do you suppose Joseph did? He lowered the prices. One’s as long as the other is broad, eh? But if you look closely… when they raise wages, we pay more taxes. But what about prices? Eh? Eh? That’s right. Because he was looking after the people.’ We loved these monologues—they revealed the weakness of a strong man, and we thought of the battery commander as a strong man. Then we just took it easy. There was no need to take notes on these monologues. And Stalin was the last thing on our minds.

Malkin was nothing like Razin. He looked like a hamburger: plump buns, spirit of democracy, big smile on display. In his callow American youth Malkin had studied at the same college as William F. Hume, president of the board of directors of our little shop, so whenever when he came across the name Hume in those management documents that showered on us like incessant rain from Memphis, Tennessee, Malkin would get as excited as Major Razin. He would completely forget about the documents and volubly hold forth about that down-to-earth American guy, Bill As He Remembered Him. We didn’t hold it against Malkin. Without this chatter Important Meetings would have been a lot harder to bear. I don’t know what the others were thinking while they listened to Malkin, but I had long since stopped listening altogether. I would look at Malkin and wait—for the moment his synthetic smile gave way to a Razinesque iron grin and those immortal words would resound: ‘That’s because he was the head—he and he alone thought for everyone else.’

On this occasion Malkin was shot down before he gained altitude. His eyes had not yet misted over, his voice had yet to quiver in pride and excitation. He had only managed a solemn recitation of the signature on a management directive when one of the office managers slunk into the room like a silent shade trying not to detach itself from the wall. Malkin twitched, smiled broadly and—burying his irritation deep inside—eyed the manager, who redoubled his pace to cross the room and bend over the chief’s ear. Malkin heard the fellow out. For a moment his brows vaulted indignantly then smoothed out again, and Malkin assumed a stock smile. He gave a curt nod and a rapid reply. I was allowed to go.

A minute later I was talking to Kurochkin on the telephone, and within fifteen minutes I was turning off Three Saints Boulevard on to Kostel Street where he lived. Rush hour was starting, and the city centre was packed with cars, but I was able to avoid the worst of it by taking quiet back streets. If I’d gone by Volodymyr Street or Kreschatik Boulevard it would have taken me until evening.

Kurochkin was standing in the doorway to his living room. ‘Comprador,’ I said, ‘what have you brought this country to? There are so many cars in the city you can hardly shove your way through them. If people keep growing poor at this rate, we’ll need double-decker roads.’

‘And a car park instead of the Monastery of the Caves.’

‘There’s not much room there.’

‘We’ll expand it, make it deeper. Install air conditioning, plumbing and electricity.’

‘Nothing is sacred to you, is it, Kurochkin?’ I sighed with disappointment.

‘Nothing,’ said Kurochkin. ‘It’s my habit to drink the blood of Christian babies in the morning instead of juice, and I like to nibble on the relics of the monastery’s saints.’

I imagined Kurochkin in the kitchen with a glass of blood and a brown leg of Saint Nestor the Chronicler on his plate. At the very thought my stomach rebelled, and I began to gag.

‘Ah, I see that’s making you queasy,’ Kurochkin observed, ‘but I kid you not. Some guy actually has suggested modernizing the caves. I’m going to turn the scheme down tomorrow, but in a couple of days all the papers—all the papers he owns—will start smearing me with shit. Just wait and see.’

‘All right,’ I said vaguely, ‘although you don’t exactly look intimidated. Just a few days ago I read that you’ve been declared the Ukrainian government’s sex symbol.’

‘Ah. Don’t read the gutter press before lunch, doctor.’

Of course you didn’t have to read it—Kurochkin wouldn’t look any less attractive. Around twenty years before, someone, probably Kanyuka, had called Kurochkin the ‘human numeral 1.’ Long and skinny, with a prominent nose, chin and Adam’s apple and a stomach you could feel his spine through, he aroused the pity and compassion of every woman the wrong side of thirty. He was fed by the ladies from the lunchroom, the cleaning ladies, the mothers and grandmothers of his friends and acquaintances—and my mother especially. I seem to recall Kurochkin being remarkably omnivorous. As the years went by he grew heavier. Beneath his light artificial tan one could now detect a tender layer of flab. The former ‘numeral 1’ was nowhere in sight. Kurochkin was smooth and sleek, and if not for his regular bouts with iron weights he would have looked more like a 0. A lean, fit 0.

‘Any more mail today?’ he asked.

‘Not this morning, no. Nothing important, anyway.’

‘Good. You’ll remember this, of course…’

He put a print-out of the ultimatum in front of me. ‘Recent history has shown that there exists within Slovenorussia…’

‘I remember.’

‘It looks like he’s done what he said he would do and started a war.’

‘What do you mean he?’

‘Who else? Sasha Korostishevski, the Holy Roman Emperor.’

That was impossible. Kurochkin knew just as well as I did that Korostishevski could not start a war. In early October 1986, when all the active-duty troops in our conscription were being demobilized by order of the Ministry of Defence of the USSR and we old-timers were hurriedly pasting the last photographs into our demob albums, Sashka’s APC was ambushed outside the Afghan town of Herat and subjected to heavy fire. The tank burned up. So did Sashka and the rest of his crew. That is a fact, an absolute fact. No one was saved.

‘I see. You’re shadowboxing.’

‘Davidov! Yesterday his shadow stripped me of 90 million. And this is just the start.’

‘An impressive start,’ I agreed. ‘But try as you may, you won’t strip me of ninety million. Why don’t you tell me everything from the beginning.’

‘Okay.’ Kurochkin nodded. ‘But not now. I’ve got something to show you. Let’s go.’

‘I can just imagine. If I had any children I’d tell them never to drink my company’s cola and to steer clear of your surprises.’

We stepped outside. From the soggy plywood entrance to the Roman Catholic church a priest opened his damp arms to us.

‘Let’s take your car,’ said Kurochkin. He winced and turned up the collar of his coat. ‘Mine’s got about a dozen bugs in it. What dreadful weather. Three weeks into spring, and it’s as cold as New Year’s Day. What a country. Let’s get going.’

‘Where to?’

‘We’re going to lunch. I usually eat about now. The place isn’t far from here.’

Kurochkin apparently had lunch by the Golden Gates. We could have walked there in fifteen minutes. Instead it took us nearly an hour in the car. The whole of the city center was clogged like a blocked drain.

When I saw we were stuck and were going be stuck for some time, I said, ‘You should have brought your flashing lights. You do have flashing lights, don’t you?’

‘What do I want flashing lights for?’ he growled. ‘They just annoy people pointlessly. I’m sure you’ve blown a gasket or two when idiots with flashing lights get in your way. Why don’t you have a look at this while we’re waiting?’ He passed me the letter.

A polite gentleman who referred to Kurochkin as ‘my dearest Yuri’ wrote that this year unforeseen circumstances in world markets had prevented him from entirely fulfilling agreements concluded at his ranch three years before. The gentleman hoped Yuri would show the understanding befitting a wise statesman and gave assurances of his unswerving feelings of friendship. The writer of the letter gave his name simply as Michael. No surname, no position. Just Michael.

‘Is that your ninety million?’ I asked Kurochkin after reading the letter twice.

He tilted his head and didn’t say anything.

‘What does Sashka Korostishevski have to do with it?’

‘Can’t you see?’

‘No,’ I replied honestly.

‘You didn’t read it carefully. What’s this?’ he said and pointed to a couple of letters at the bottom of the page.

‘Y.T.,’ I read, and shrugged. ‘That could mean all sorts of things. It could be a printing glitch and not mean anything at all.’

‘A printing glitch!’ Kurochkin flared up. ‘A printing glitch worth ninety million dollars, eh? It’s not just Y.T., Davidov. No way is it just Y.T. Do you remember now?’

I did remember: Whenever we moved our troops, advanced or retreated, we had written ‘your turn,’ usually just ‘Y.T.,’ to confirm that we’d made our final decision. How eerie those letters looked in the letter from this unknown Michael—unknown to me but evidently well known to Kurochkin. Looking at the letters now, I felt something in the world change forever—some axis shifted, the stream of time changed course, even the sky abruptly changed color. Somewhere close at hand horns began to sound impatiently.

‘Hey, keep your eyes on the road.’ Kurochkin brought me down to earth. ‘It’s almost evening on a Friday, and people are irritable. Come on, let’s get going.’

To the blowing of horns and invective of other drivers grid-locked alongside us, we slowly moved forward.

‘Kurochkin,’ I said, ‘you may be right.’

‘I wish I wasn’t, Alex,’ Kurochkin sighed. ‘You know this money doesn’t belong to me. Not to me personally. These ninety lemons are gone, but another ninety must not disappear. There’s no point in my telling you all the details, but you can be damn sure it’s being watched. Speaking of which, can you please keep the letter confidential? It’s not dangerous that you’ve read it, but please don’t broadcast it either. Maybe the bloke who’s been waiting for us the past hour at Rabelais will know what’s going on.’

‘What bloke?’

‘I said it’s a surprise.’

‘Another one? I thought the letter was your surprise. And who’s Michael?’

Kurochkin jerked his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Why not?’ I asked uncomprehendingly. ‘He’s playing against you, and you—’

‘He’s not the one playing, Davidov. Can’t you see that? He’s just a respectable man who’s been to Ukraine two or three times for all of ten hours, no more. He’s never even heard of our game and doesn’t know a thing about it. But somehow they’ve managed to make a move. Do you know what that means? Just think who it might be…’

I shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ I said indifferently. The words ‘respectable man’ had lost meaning for me ages ago. It was just an abstract idea. Maybe Kurochkin thought he was a respectable man, but he was a nobody. It was a long time since I had trusted anyone’s judgment but my own. ‘Who do you think it might be?’

Kurochkin curled his lip. ‘At least we know it’s not their president.’

Our people are unswerving and steadfast in their contempt from afar for figures imbued with power, and, despite his previous incarnation as Deputy Premier, Kurochkin was no different. A friend of mine came to visit a few years ago—by that time he’d been living in America for around twenty years—the television was switched on and Clinton was being broadcast live, his cheeks and neck varying in hue from deep beet-red to floury-white and back to ripe beet again. He was giving testimony on his private life, and the whole world, billions of viewers, were appreciating his chameleonesque abilities.

‘Our wonderful president…’ my friend said knowingly and nodded at the television with the grimace of a man who’s bitten into a lemon. At that moment I recalled that in the happy days of pre-Rasputin St. Petersburg the public had referred to the tsar as Our Colonel of Tsarskoe Tselo and probably pulled similar faces and winked. But as soon as such a citizen comes face to face with an important official, then for months afterwards he spouts butter and honey and contorts his spine into a studied faint bow. Even the words he uses change.

‘By the way,’ I said, checking myself abruptly, ‘Did you notice that the letters YT are in the wrong place? They’re not supposed to be in the letter itself.’

‘What do you mean “not supposed to”?’

‘Well, they’re not in the ultimatum, for example. Remember? You could transfer several documents in one move, but YT was used…’

‘That’s right. We put YT only on memoranda that listed all the actions taken in a turn… No,’ he interrupted himself and started laughing, ‘they have done everything correctly. If the entire move consists of this one letter, then there’s no need for a memorandum.’

‘But how do you know this was the last action in the move?’

‘They put YT where they did so that I wouldn’t expect a memorandum or any other documents.’

Once I parked the car on Golden Gate Street we plunged into the March mud and made our way to Rabelais. I was overcome by a sense of unreality, of the impossibility of what was happening.

The person waiting for us in the restaurant was Sinevusov. Almost as soon as Kurochkin had mentioned a surprise, I knew there was something I didn’t like. Now I knew why.

If I hadn’t seen the major again twelve or thirteen years before I wouldn’t have recognized him now. It had been a time of demonstrations and queues. Then we thought it appropriate to divide population into two groups: progressive and forward-thinking people like us who were demonstrating and fighting for our rights and freedoms, and people like them, the backward silent majority, fed at the hand of an inhumane regime, who stood in queues for vodka and liver sausage. Although the demonstrators needed vodka and liver sausage no less than those who learned about the demonstrations from the television news.

It was late autumn and already cold. I had stopped by a tea shop on Kreschatik. These days it bakes and sells incredibly delicious apricot and prune buns straight from the oven, but back then there was nowhere on all of Kreschatik where you could have a hot tea and bun. At the time the shop was offering swill of some sort and petrified-cheese sandwiches. I stood in the queue warming myself and looking around, expecting to see familiar faces. You see familiar faces all over Kiev; the more you look, the more you see. I didn’t notice Sinevusov immediately. The queue was snaking its way between the little tables, and for a while the major was hidden in a bend. I didn’t see him until I was nearly upon him, although I still didn’t recognize him. He had aged noticeably. His cheeks sagged, his face was grey and he had grown out what little hair he had left and gathered it into a ponytail—a dirty-grey ponytail. Before, he had looked youngish and blond—albeit blond with bald patches—and he had considered himself a blond beast.

The major was at the counter chatting with a tall, stout man in an old brown windcheater.

I overheard Sinevusov’s tenor saying, ‘You keep going on and on about Faulkner, Faulkner…’ His voice hadn’t changed. Which is when I realized—no, realized isn’t the word; I felt who he was, and I was badly shaken. ‘Faulkner was a student of Dostoevsky who didn’t finish the course. He was running around Yoknapatawpha in short trousers with a Nobel Prize medal dangling around his neck, but he was still peering out from behind his fingers at Dostoevsky… What? What’s the matter?’

The stout man in the windcheater was muttering something quietly. Obviously he disagreed with Sinevusov.

‘What sources? Forget it. The sources are all the same, trust me. And people don’t have such Karamazovian depths either. The Karamazovs are a fiction—the creation of a brilliant writer, all three of them. What? Well, yes, of course, all four. I was, that is I… Look, they’re demonstrating on the square. Don’t you want to go see? Two hundred meters from here. I’ve had enough of it. Democrats. No one knows them better than me.’ He took a sip of tea. Beads of oil mixed with venom oozed on his brow and upper lip. ‘But, if you will, I’m the number-two democrat in this city. Everyone else was still standing at attention and reporting to the Party Congress as usual, but I—’

At this point the stout man apparently asked about the number-one democrat. Sinevusov named someone I’d never heard of before—the name meant nothing to me.

I didn’t approach Sinevusov then. I had no desire to chew the fat with him about the past. We had no common past.

‘Recognize him?’ asked Kurochkin as we crossed the room to the table. Sinevusov had been waiting a while—we were more than an hour late.

‘Thanks a lot. I’ve been dreaming of this meeting all my life.’

‘Ho-ho!’ He raised his hand and stopped. ‘Don’t get carried away now.’

‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘We don’t fight old men.’

Writing Sinevusov off as an old man was stretching it a little. If he had been around forty back then, he was sixty now. That didn’t exactly make him old. And my major was looking great. He hadn’t cut off the ponytail; on the contrary, he’d let it grow even longer. The ponytail had briskly silvered to a cold bright grey, and the folds and wrinkles on his face created a unified picture. Sinevusov had at last grown into his own face. It wasn’t much, but it was his.

Lunch, or dinner as far as I was concerned, was all business. No one showed any surprise or any particular emotion. No one said, ‘It’s been ages!’ or ‘Hasn’t time flown?’ or any other formulaic nonsense. We shook hands briefly, as if we’d just met the night before. That was all. Only once did I catch Sinevusov appraising me with a brief sideways glance. All evening Sinevusov said nothing. He said nothing and ate. Kurochkin spoke.

It seemed that I no longer knew Kurochkin—or, rather, I’d never got to know the Kurochkin of today. Sometimes you can just tell what kind of an adult a child will become. But back when I knew him well, when we were close, Kurochkin had been different. If you accept that a person is the sum of his experience, back then the Kurochkin of today hadn’t begun to develop. He was the only one of us who managed a fresh start at university after the army. Although ‘all of us’ is misleading. By then we were only three of the original five: Kurochkin, Kanyuka and me. Sashka Korostishevski didn’t come back from Afghanistan, and Mishka Reingarten was spending his third year in room 103 of the Frunze Street Hospital. Mishka had tried to evade the army on the grounds that he was nuts, but the doctors evaluating his case determined he wasn’t just a draft dodger and his ailment really did require urgent treatment. If Mishka was still alive, then they were treating him to this day. I hadn’t seen him for a long time, around ten years.

After the army Kurochkin enrolled in law school and graduated. I, like an idiot, tried to re-enter the waters of our old university’s radiophysics department. The waters rejected me. As for Kanyuka, he didn’t even try. He earned a little money, bought a video recorder, opened a video shop in his apartment and used his brains to go into business.

In the late 1980s, Kurochkin and I were still getting together regularly, but after he finished his studies he suddenly began appearing on television in the company of some rather well-known figures, and soon he himself became someone of interest to journalists. In other words, he had begun a political career. And he made it.

This was the first time I had seen Kurochkin at work—that our lunch was work was immediately apparent. Although, of course, on a ministry committee he would behave differently—that’s because the FORMAT was different.

Once we’d settled around the table Kurochkin gave a succinct and matter-of-fact account of the situation. He said, ‘We’ve been struck,’ followed by ‘We’re being set up,’ and ‘I’m already being asked awkward questions,’ then ‘Solve the problem and get rid of the question.’

He concluded with ‘We have to find him first. Is that clear?’

Sinevusov was chewing zestfully. He didn’t raise his head or look away from his plate. Everything was clear.

‘I can’t make head nor tail of it.’ I shrugged and looked at Kurochkin. ‘What kind of salad is this? It has such a surprising taste, but it’s delicate, too. It’s like there’s citrus and fish and some Ukrainian fruit—apples, maybe. I can’t figure it out. Do you know?’

Sinevusov grunted softly.

‘Davidov!’ Kurochkin frowned. ‘Stick to business, please.’

‘Of course.’ I pushed my plate away. ‘I’ll stick to business. Number one. Yurka, what makes you think you can tell me what to do? I’m not one of your wretched ministers, and I’m not about to bow down and salute you—not for any reason.’

‘Okay, okay,’ said Kurochkin with a sweep of his arm. ‘If that’s all—’

I cut him short. ‘Don’t interrupt me.’ The hatred in my lightning outburst scorched my consciousness and whipped up the shade of Istemi from the depths. I was a little bewildered. I hadn’t expected anything of the kind from myself. After all, I counted Kurochkin among my friends, and he had come to my assistance a few times in a big way. But that didn’t give him the right to decide what I should or shouldn’t do. ‘I’m not done yet. Number two. I don’t intend to go on a manhunt, and I shall not do so. There’s nothing for me to do here. No money has been taken from me. Kickbacks, embezzlement, fraud—that’s your affair. Your affair and your millions. You began without me, and you can carry on without me. If you want to fish your chestnuts out of the fire, find somebody else. I pass. And as far as the game is concerned, we finished in 1984. That’s enough for me. I’m not going to start playing again. Thank you for dinner. We’ve finished.’

‘You’re missing the point, Davidov,’ said Kurochkin. In his voice there was nothing but endless patience. ‘Our people think—for the moment anyway—that it’s the Americans. And the Americans are like the elements.’ He recited a line of Pushkin. ‘ “The storm covers the sky with gloom”—remember that? It’s about them, the breadwinners. Either they’re howling like animals or whining like children, but it’s impossible to understand why or, more importantly, to predict what will happen tomorrow. But as soon as they do find out, and we have to be ready for this, then it won’t be because of the Americans anymore but because of us. I don’t want to scare you, but anyone who’s had anything to do with the game can expect big trouble.’

‘They’ll tear you to shreds,’ said Sinevusov, momentarily looking away from his plate before going straight back to his food.

‘Did you hear that?’ Kurochkin pointed at Sinevusov. ‘They’ll tear us to shreds—me first, then you—if we don’t track him down.’

‘If we don’t track who down, Kurochkin?’

‘Sashka Korostishevski. It’s coming from him. Even if it has nothing to do with him, we have to track down whoever is responsible for this letter. It’s our turn now, can’t you see?’

‘It’s your turn now, Kurochkin. Yours. Not ours. Don’t drag me into your affairs.’

‘You’re wrong, Davidov.’

‘Maybe. I make lots of mistakes. Which is precisely why I don’t want to add your mistakes or anyone else’s to my own. I make enough all by myself. Whether or not I can help you is something else…’

‘That’s what we’re talking about.’

‘Helping someone isn’t the same as carrying out your or someone else’s orders. I’ll do only what I myself consider necessary.’

‘But coordinate with me.’

‘Agreed. But if I don’t want to do something I won’t do it.’

‘Agreed.’

Kurochkin gave me Sinevusov as my assistant. Or perhaps he just wanted him to keep an eye on me …

What kind of bloody life is that when you can’t even trust your own friends?

I’d been glued to my computer screen since morning. It was displaying a complicated table with the results of cola sales in the four northern provinces of Ukraine. By now I’d memorized the contents of the table and no longer even noticed it.

I was trying to piece together a picture of some sort using the sorry fragments Kurochkin had scattered before me, and I could see nothing would come of it. The fragments were too few—I had no idea where they belonged. And it wasn’t just that we—or I (I wasn’t sure Kurochkin had told me everything he knew)—didn’t have enough information, but the story was also short on characters. The light in the auditorium was switched off, the show had begun and was well under way, but they had forgotten to turn on the spotlights. Or didn’t want to. Perhaps that was part of the concept. The director, a bloody avant-gardist, had staged a show without lights. The action develops, it twists and turns, and from the set you hear, ‘She loves him but not like a husband. It’s a childhood friendship.’ A meaningful-poisonous-skeptical response follows. ‘We know this friendship. If only there wasn’t… an obstacle.’ Pause. The creak of a door, a bang, and the voice again, ‘What are you doing?’ We’re meant to guess that the chambermaid has entered the room. We’re meant to guess what the chambermaid looks like and who Anna Pavlovna is and who’s playing Sasha. You can’t figure out a bloody thing from the voice. When will that twat of a director order the lights to be switched on? We can’t see anything. Or maybe it’s nothing to do with the director at all. Maybe the country is trying to conserve electricity—it’s a periodic power outage, and they’re burning candles in two hospitals, scores of kindergartens, three factories and a strategic missile unit …

By lunchtime my head hurt. I was still sitting in front of the monitor, and for a moment I fancied I saw Sashka Korostishevski coming up behind me. He was standing behind me and slyly, silently grinning. I whipped around. Malkin was standing there selecting the right smile.

‘Hi, Alex!’ A series of deformed smiles flashed underneath his nose. He settled for the Broad Smile. The Broad Smile of the Friendly Boss.

‘Hi, Steve,’ I answered with a Ready Smile.

‘You sure are working a lot.’ He thrust out his lower lip and nodded his head.

I wasn’t certain what he meant. That I’d been staring at the same screen all day long? Or that I was looking like crap? I didn’t know. I decided not to say anything.

‘It’s nearly lunchtime. Why don’t we get a bite to eat?’

Right. Now he had me. This was a first.

‘Sure, Steve,’ I agreed.

He who takes a girl to dine also takes her to dance. Yesterday Kurochkin took me to dine, today Malkin. At this rate they’d soon be passing me from hand to hand.

But Malkin wasn’t interested only in me. He was also interested in Kurochkin. That recent phone call was preying on his mind.

‘Alex, have you known Mr. Kurochkin for long?’ We’d just sat at a table in the small room behind his office.

‘We were on the same course at university.’

‘No kidding!’ Malkin brightened. ‘I bet you’ve heard me say before that I went to school with Bill Hume.’

Cautiously I said, ‘Yes, I’ve heard something about that.’

‘What a great guy—a real American. I’ll tell you about him some time. I’ll be sure and do that. Anyway, I guess that means you and Mr. Kurochkin are…’ Malkin surprised me once again. I didn’t think he was capable of abandoning his Hume as easily as that. ‘I guess that means he knows you’re working for our company?’

‘Of course he does,’ I said.

‘Well?’ Malkin took my elbow as if in confidence. ‘Do you ever talk to him about it?’

I shrugged. ‘Kurochkin has his own sources. Why would he start talking to me?’

‘Oh no, that’s not what I meant.’ Malkin lifted his hands. ‘Not at all. Although… well, that, too. And you’re an interesting person to talk to, Alex. I’ve noticed that before, oh yes.’ He waved his hand in front of my face and started laughing.

I don’t like it when people talk with their hands, and I really can’t stand it when they take me by the arm, pull at my jacket or try to give me a slap on the back. It’s one thing if they just don’t know what to do with their hands, but these days everyone’s got a superficial grasp of NLP—neuro-linguistic programming. People don’t convince you these days, they P-R-O-G-R-A-M you. They drop anchor. It’s become easy to deal with them. Their behavior is predictable and their reactions stereotypical. It’s all incredibly boring and unpleasant.

‘Kurochkin often meets with your compatriots.’

‘Oh yes, he’s got a really good reputation. In Washington they consider him a big friend of America…’ Now Malkin obviously thought he’d blabbed more than he should. He laughed loudly and gave me an entirely inappropriate thump on the shoulder. And how would he know what they thought of Kurochkin in Washington anyway? He was just puffing himself up.

‘Really?’ I enquired with polite surprise.

‘Yes. But let’s talk business, Alex. There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. Whatever your relationship with your friend, you might find a conversation about your career even more interesting, right? After all, you’ve been working for us for almost five years now.’

‘Has it really been that long?’ I asked in surprise.

‘It sure has. You do a good job—I’ve always had my eye on you—but I can’t shake the feeling we’re not making full use of your potential. You’ve got more to give the company. Isn’t that right?’

I noticed long ago that Malkin loved to ask slippery little questions you couldn’t give a good answer to. If I had more to give, then why wasn’t I giving it? If I didn’t, then what good was I? NLP is odious—I was supposed to feel guilty before him and the company. In a case like this there’s no need to reply. You’re better off blurting out something meaningless and inoffensive. Let him think I was an idiot if that’s what he wanted.

‘I really rate the company’s interests, Steve. That’s something that really matters to me.’

I thrust out my lower lip and nodded like Malkin himself. Among our own people I couldn’t have got away with it—they would see right through me. The Americans had fattened us on a diet of political correctness that our innermost beings rejected. But they themselves wolfed it down, no problem—the words crackled and crunched pleasantly behind their ears.

‘You’ll have an opportunity to give it some more thought. We’re about to carry out a little perestroika of our own. You’ll see some new departments appearing. We’d like you to take charge of one of them—the Department of Microstrategic Planning.’

‘How interesting. What are we going to do?’

‘Well, yes, of course, that’s what I’m about to tell you,’ said Steve.

And he told me how you can see a lot from Memphis, Tennessee, but not everything. Which is why the leadership, first and foremost the wise Bill Hume (a real American—I’ll tell you about him some time), had decided to delegate some functions to subsidiary companies. Malkin spent a good ten minutes describing the structural changes that needed to be carried out and then repeated that they were offering me a department. I could see he didn’t know much yet himself.

Suddenly I had a mad idea. ‘That’s great, Steve,’ I said. ‘Of course, I’ll accept. It’s a great honor for me.’ It was the right thing to say. Poor Malkin didn’t know what was coming. He stuck out his lower lip contentedly and gave me a thumbs up. ‘But before I take on such a responsible position I’d like to take some leave.’

‘Leave?’

‘Yes, Steve. Two weeks, beginning tomorrow. I really need some time off right now.’

In the end, Malkin gave me the two weeks, although he had to think about it long and hard. He was probably pondering the enigmatic and incomprehensible Slav soul. When you offer someone a promotion, he should root around with his nose to the ground, straining his blood vessels, groaning and sweating and showing his bosses that they’d been right to choose him and not someone else. But what did he have here? A request for leave? A mad people.

It was a long time since Sinevusov and I had enjoyed a tête-à-tête at the same table. That this wasn’t the table covered with papers and bureaucratic penholders in his one-time office on Volodymyr Street but an ordinary and hastily cleared little table in a watering hole in the Podolsk neighborhood, set with two beers and pistachios in a chipped dull-blue saucer, but nothing seemed to have changed. Nor had the two problems before us that we were going to have to solve together. He was Sinevusov, I was Davidov, and once again we were divided by a table and the questions left unanswered twenty years before.

In Rabelais Sinevusov hadn’t spoken. He had listened to Kurochkin, kept his silence and eaten.

‘Why did you have to drag him into this?’ I asked Yurka once we’d returned to the car. ‘If you’ve contacted him, you may as well contact the others. The general, your Ryskalov, and the rest.’

‘You’re right,’ Kurochkin agreed unexpectedly. ‘But where can I find them?’

‘Wherever you found Sinevusov.’

Kurochkin shook his head.

‘Ryskalov was killed in a car crash in 1993; that’s a fact. Their chief retired in the late 1980s and kicked the bucket soon after. Of the remaining three agents, two were transferred before the collapse, one to Murmansk, the other to Kyrgyzstan. They’re both pensioners now. I checked. The fifth got the sack. He tried running a gang and for a while he handled two markets in the city and controlled a chain of filling stations, but it didn’t last long. He was screwed by his own men. A tough business.’

‘No joke,’ I said. ‘You were quick pulling your information together.’

‘With these guys it’s easy. They come from the system. It’s harder with other people.’

‘What about Sinevusov?’

‘What do you mean? You’ve just seen him.’

‘What’s he doing?’

‘I don’t know.’ Kurochkin shrugged. ‘Why don’t you ask him.’

‘You mean you don’t know?’ I didn’t believe him.

‘He’s not doing anything in particular. He’s retired, too, you know. What else do you want? Twenty years have gone by.’

‘But he left the KGB a long time ago. It’s been at least ten years, hasn’t it?’

‘Yes. It seems something happened. But how did you know?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, paying Kurochkin back for his ‘I don’t know.’ Kurochkin waggled his brows and feigned nonchalance, but he was obviously displeased. Nor did he like the fact that I knew something about Sinevusov and wouldn’t tell him how. But what could I actually tell him? That one day I’d decided to have myself a bun and a cup of tea? It was ridiculous.

After I’d finalized matters with Malkin the day following our meeting and won my two weeks of freedom, I agreed to meet up with Sinevusov. Two weeks is a long time. Long enough to meet Mishka Reingarten and Kanyuka, find out whatever we didn’t know about Korostishevski and convince myself one more time that none of us had anything to do with the ultimatum or the disappearance of the money.

‘Very Dostoevskian,’ I said with a nod at the room. The room wasn’t remotely Dostoevskian. It was just your average watering hole, moderately filthy and immoderately full of smoke, refuge of the local drunks and of the traders from Zhitni Market.

Sinevusov looked around the room, a group of young people—clearly students—briefly holding his eye, then shrugged. ‘I don’t like Dostoevsky.’

I didn’t say anything, gave him time to graze on the nuts, one after the other, and drink some beer.

Finally, he continued. ‘Dostoevsky was a wimp—a wimp and a coward. A brilliant coward. He broached such themes… plumbed such depths… it took your breath away. And then what? Nothing. He carefully tiptoed around it. Along the very edge, softly, softly, so that, God save him, he wouldn’t plant a foot wrong.’

‘Such as?’

‘What about Smerdyakov? Tell me, where’s it, say, that Smerdyakovs get hanged? Karamazovs get hanged, but Smerdyakovs live happily ever after. Because the rules of our world are written and approved by Smerdyakovs. It’s suffocating here for Karamazovs, but Smerdyakovs find it comfortable. Do you remember what he did to Ivan and how he framed Dmitri? Just masterful. Do you think a man like that would stick his head through a noose over such a trifle?’

‘It wasn’t exactly a trifle.’

‘Not to anyone else, but to him it was a trifle. To him everything was permissible. That’s the point.’ Sinevusov looked me straight in the eye and asked sternly, ‘Can’t you see?’

‘Who gave him permission?’ I shuddered under his gaze.

‘No, you can’t see…’ His gaze softened, the lines on his face smoothed out and formed a smile. A calm, clear smile. ‘He allowed himself everything. He was his own supreme authority. There was no other. Now do you see? And Dostoevsky went and hanged him. And for what?’ Suddenly Sinevusov broke into ear-splitting laughter. ‘Because some Ivan Karamazov denied his words? What are words? They’re like the wind; they blow and they disappear. And, for this, Smerdyakov hanged himself. He gave his life. He wouldn’t have given a torn rouble that easily, but here… What sort of psychologist does that make of your Dostoevsky, eh?’ Sinevusov didn’t finish. He waved his arm contemptuously and reached for his beer. ‘He was a wimp…’

He spoke firmly and confidently, and I could see he had carefully thought through everything he’d said. There was truth in his words, but it was the truth of our times, times that believed in nobody and nothing. Although who could say Dostoevsky’s times were any different?

‘Look,’ whispered Sinevusov, leaving aside his beer and looking across the room at the large group of students sitting at two tables that had been pushed together. They were drinking beer and having a quiet discussion. As often happens, the general conversation fragmented after a while, and the group split into smaller groups according to interests. It wouldn’t have been worth the attention but for a short, energetic bloke with the look of an ageing Mephistopheles who was flitting among them. Half a glance was enough to see that he was a foreigner. Mephistopheles half sat with one group of students then another, constantly striking up conversations, asking questions and immediately jotting notes into a notebook.

‘You see?’ said Sinevusov, still whispering. ‘There are hundreds of them here. I used to work at the Soros Foundation. I’ve seen my share.’

‘Huh?’ I said, mystified. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘He’s a spy. It’s a long time since I’ve come across such a colorful example. Watch—he could have stepped right out of a poster.’

Sitting across from me only moments before had been a home-grown Nietzschean, reader and commentator on the Russian classics, retiree and nonentity; but just as soon as quarry flickered across his field of vision, his hunter’s instinct had surfaced. Tiny caplets of venom appeared on Sinevusov’s cheeks.

Unaware that a beast of prey was lurking near by, Mephistopheles was chatting away lightheartedly with the students. He looked absurd and out-of-place.

‘What does he want with the students?’

Sinevusov tore his gaze away from Mephistopheles and looked at me. All I had asked was one completely neutral question. But a sequence of other questions, although unspoken, was effortlessly discernible. Suddenly I saw an old paranoiac, unhinged by the world of spies, ready to dig away at any foreigner until under the dusky artificial tan he found the rapacious grin of a worldwide cabal. And he knew as much.

‘Students?’ repeated Sinevusov.

‘Yes, what can they tell him?’

‘They’re not students. They’re journalists. I know at least three of them. Not stars but not exactly bottom of the heap either. I can’t imagine what the hell they’re doing in this dump.’

‘They’re spying on the old goat.’

‘And I’m trying to figure out who the old goat is,’ snorted Sinevusov. He scowled. ‘Davidov, I may strike you as an incurable maniac, but I’ve learned a thing or two, that’s one; and two, it’s a long time since I’ve been in the service, so espionage is no longer my concern. But if I see what I’m seeing then what am I to do? Deny what’s before my very eyes? Kiev has become a hotbed of espionage. Everyone is here working against Russia: the French, the British, the Germans, the Poles. Not to mention the CIA. The Chinese are the only ones who are stealing local technology on the sly and don’t give a damn about anything else. For now.’

‘This one doesn’t exactly look Chinese.’

‘Well, the small fry are international. They gather rumors, gossip, search for compromising evidence. Anything that anyone else might want. Just like you and me, incidentally,’ he said, taking an unexpected dig. ‘Get a pen and write this down.’

From his jacket pocket Sinevusov took out a notebook and read, ‘Reingarten, Mikhail Aleksandrovich. Born 1966. Diagnostic-Treatment and Scientific-Pedagogical Psychiatric Centre…’

‘What?’ I was confused.

‘Frunze Street, 103.’

‘Whatever… Scientific-Pedagogical…’

‘Department four. Will you go?’

‘I’ll go tomorrow.’

‘They don’t have visiting hours tomorrow.’

‘When do they have visiting hours?’

‘Today.’

‘You’re saying I should go right now? Are you going, too?’

Sinevusov screwed up his left eye, tutted and shook his head.

‘He’s your friend, not mine. You haven’t seen each other for ages, so go and visit him. You think I’ve any reason to go to the hospital, that I’ve forgotten something there?’

‘I’ll remind you what you’ve forgotten.’ I nodded and got up from the table. ‘Clearly your memory is failing you. You drove someone into a nuthouse for fifteen years—as good as killing him. And no one wants to remember. Retirees…’

Outside it was beginning to get dark. Ice was floating in the dark mud in the flooded hollows of the pavement. Along the Upper Bank a solid line of cars was crawling slowly and gloomily by. I glanced through the window of the café. Sinevusov was standing with his arm across Mephistopheles’ shoulder, saying something into his ear.

The day had disappeared. I walked around evening Podol, lazily ruminating about Mishka, Sinevusov, why the agent had wanted to meet in that particular filthy dive. A minute’s telephone conversation would have sufficed to give me the number of the department where Mishka was being held. But Sinevusov made me waste an entire day. Or maybe he just wanted to talk. The whim of an old soldier, languishing from the boredom of forced idleness.

I told Sinevusov I would go see Reingarten, but visiting hours at the hospital were surely over by now, and it would be pointless going to Frunze Street. Instead, I turned on to the first side street, banished Sinevusov from my mind and breathed deeply the raw Podol air.

It had been a long time since I’d last been here. And it just happened to be during the lilac Podol sunsets I’d once loved more than anything. They come towards late February/early March when the snow is pressed up to the curbs and hardened into black snowdrifts, and the smell of the day’s thawed earth, smoke and old rotting fences rises above the asphalt. It’s a time of cosmic solitude and metaphysical breakthroughs.

I slowly made my way along the Upper Bank to Frolov Street, occasionally casting a backwards glance at the black silhouette of Castle Hill perched carefully on the brink of the dense-mauve Kiev sky as it filled swiftly with darkness. In the intervening years nothing had changed here. Everything was the same, the street, Castle Hill, the heaviness of the raw evening sky. A savage canine howl could be heard from the direction of Schekavitsa Hill, and very close by, along Konstantine Street, the sound of automobiles at long last breaking free of the gridlock. When I reached Contract Square I stopped. The Dutch embassy was here. And the Church of the Assumption. ‘The Lay of Prince Igor’ came to mind: ‘Igor rides along the Borichev to the Church of the Mother of God of Pirogoscha. The lands are victorious, the cities rejoice.’ The lands are victorious… Show me these lands. Here was Borichev, the Church of the Mother of God that they’d finished rebuilding ten years earlier. It was a dead place. Here it seemed that everything was the same as it had ever been: the howling dogs, the old snow at the beginning of spring, the incredible colors of the evening sky. Even the smells were the same. Even Castle Hill. But the bridge to the cosmos had been destroyed. It was gone. There was no cosmos. No metaphysics.

I moved on. People were filing out of the church. At the entrance they turned back and crossed themselves, then went on their way quickly and silently. Here a woman came out, then another two women, then another. The next person to emerge was Associate Professor Nedremailo. I recognized him instantly, as if I’d been preparing for this meeting for the last twenty years. But he hadn’t been, so without even noticing me he quickly stepped past, shielding his face with the collar of his coat.

He walked quickly, limping slightly and shivering as if it wasn’t the usual freezing temperatures but a full-blown minus twenty-five. Evidently the professor had got thoroughly chilled inside the damp church. After the metro had been built in Podol the cellars of the surrounding houses began to flood in the spring. Greetings from the rivers Kiyanka and Glybochytsa, buried underground and in history.

Nedremailo headed for the metro. I followed him.

Even in 1984 we had no doubt that the whole thing—the searches, the arrests and what followed—had been cooked up by Nedremailo. First of all, the entire department knew the professor was an informer. How we knew this I’ve never found out, but everyone did. Second, it was Nedremailo who took the folder of papers from Sashka Korostishevski at an electrodes seminar. Korostishevski was keeping drafts in the folder: the draft ultimatum, estimates of the strength of the armed forces, sketches of campaign maps and lots of other working papers necessary for the administration of a great power such as the Holy Roman Empire. Having quickly solved an electrodynamics problem Emperor Karl XX was preparing for battle. At the time we were doing all we could to ready ourselves for war: calling men to arms, conducting maneuvers, riveting together tanks and howitzers in our factories. But not in Nedremailo’s seminar. Who wanted to tangle with Nedremailo? Not Korostishevski. But it came to that. His folder was taken away, words were exchanged and the Holy Roman Empire was deprived of important documents. Who could have known this wasn’t merely the beginning of our story but a preface? A prologue.

Then the bell rang and the seminar was over. Nedremailo left the classroom and headed down the corridor towards the stairwell, Korostishevski’s folder tucked under his arm. We followed. We watched him carrying the folder; in his other hand the professor gripped a heavy briefcase. And as we watched we panicked and talked rubbish, constructing impossible plans, calculating how we could get the folder back. But Nedremailo quickly drew away from us, limping and slightly stooped.

He was walking just as quickly now. Past the tram stop, the grandmothers hawking sunflower seeds, the underground passage leading to the metro. Nedremailo mounted the steps to the Home Cooking Café. I entered the café right behind him.

What do associate professors eat for dinner? Borscht, dumplings with potato and mushrooms, sour-cucumber-and-sauerkraut salad. Bread. Beer. I confined myself to beer.

‘Is this place free?’

Nedremailo raised his tired eyes to me. Then he looked pointedly around the half-empty dining room. I acted like I didn’t understand. I said, ‘Thank you,’ and sat down across from him. Just over an hour ago Sinevusov and I had been sitting in exactly the same way. Nedremailo shrugged and began eating his borscht.

When the professor turned to his dumplings I asked, ‘Do you still lecture on electrodynamics in the radiophysics department?’

‘When did you graduate?’ He studied me but couldn’t remember who I was.

‘I didn’t graduate. We were expelled in 1984 for truancy. Perhaps you recall…’

‘No,’ Nedremailo said, and jerked his shoulder in irritation.

‘…Korostishevski, Reingarten, Kurochkin…’

He certainly remembered Kurochkin.

‘Ah yes, now I remember. That was an unpleasant business.’ He rotated his fork, dumpling impaled at one end. ‘But why truancy? As I recall, you were expelled on completely different grounds.’

‘If you remember that much I’d like to ask you a favor. Could you give me the folder you took away from Korostishevski?’

‘It’s been many, many years since I’ve had that folder.’ Nedremailo waved the fork and dumpling.

‘Eat the dumpling,’ I said. ‘It will get cold. Or fly off your fork. And I’d hate it to end up in my beer. So where’s the folder?’

‘They took it away at the very first interrogation.’

‘Interrogation? I always thought your dealings with the authorities went by another name.’

‘Look here, what’s your…?’

‘Davidov.’

‘Right, Davidov. Look here, I’m not about to justify myself to you. You are not my judge. Is that clear?’

‘It certainly is.’

‘Then stop interrupting,’ Nedremailo said quietly. ‘I don’t have to talk to you at all. Besides, it all happened a long time ago. Although I can understand why you’re interested…’

‘I certainly am,’ I couldn’t help saying.

‘And I want you to know that I had nothing to do with that business. And I have nothing to do with it now.’

‘Well, that just figures.’ I crossed my arms and laughed. ‘It just figures.’

‘A lot of people in the department thought otherwise. A few people had words with me. They criticized me, and I couldn’t even deny it. I was in a ridiculous position, you’ll agree. But my hands were tied. I’d sworn an oath.’

‘I see.’

‘In short, yes, the KGB did come after you but not through me. You may think it ironic, but I really was summoned for interrogation a few days after your arrest, and that’s when they took the folder. It was an unpleasant discussion.’

‘Let’s say that’s what happened. But who was behind it, then?’ I sensed suddenly that he wasn’t lying. ‘No one gained from it. There was absolutely nothing to be gained.’

‘I don’t know. I do not know.’

‘But you knew what was in the folder. You did open it, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, I opened it—although I actually forgot about it at first. I dumped it on the window ledge at home and forgot about it. Then a few days later your Kurochkin came along and asked me to give it back.’

‘Yurka went to see you?’ I was surprised. ‘He didn’t say. He’s never even mentioned it.’

‘Of course, I can’t remember our exact conversation, but he came for the folder, that’s for certain. I didn’t give it to him. I said Korostishevski should get it himself. And afterwards, as you might expect, I had a look inside the folder.’

‘And what did you think?’

‘I didn’t think anything. What was there to think about? I mean you were adults, second-year students, but you had butterflies fluttering around in your heads. You were just like nursery-school kids, I swear.’

‘So you still had it.’

‘Yes, I still had it. Korostishevski never turned up, and I had worries enough of my own. Really, was I to think of this folder to the exclusion of all else? Right. But they reminded me later on. “Where did you look? It was right under your nose. For ten days it was in your hands, and you couldn’t even take a look …” ’

‘So you don’t know who turned us in?’

Nedremailo shrugged.

‘Can’t you even guess?’

‘Guesses aren’t worth much in this business. No, I don’t know.’

‘All right, then.’ I got up. ‘Hello to the radiophysics students.’

‘I haven’t taught there for nearly fifteen years.’

‘Then what are you doing? You’ve got a long wait for your pension.’

‘I do church work.’ He jerked his shoulders again. ‘That’s just how it is.’

‘I see. Well, enjoy your meal…’

‘Davidov, wait. Like a bad student you lack patience. God only knows what you’re trying to make yourself out to be. A private investigator or something.’

‘I’m not a private investigator. I’m a private individual.’

It was a bad pun, but Nedremailo scarcely noticed.

‘If I were you,’ he was saying, ‘I’d make a list of everyone who showed any interest in the matter. The broadest possible list. Maybe nine out of ten people on your list will only be there by chance. What matters is that the tenth doesn’t go unnoticed. That’s what I’d do. Then gradually narrow it down.’

‘What exactly…?’ But then I understood. ‘You mean it’s not only Kurochkin and the KGB?’

‘No, they’re not the only ones.’

‘So who else wanted the folder?’

‘There was a girl in your group, if you remember…’

I knew whom he was talking about even before he gave her name.

‘Natasha.’

‘Yes, Belokrinitskaya.’

‘Something’s wrong here. Kurochkin and Belokrinitskaya had nothing to do with the KGB or our arrest. Kurochkin was arrested himself, and Natasha… When did she come for the folder?’

Nedremailo sat quietly, arms folded across his chest, biting his lip intently and staring at the ceiling.

‘Listen,’ I said, surprised. ‘Why did you tell me about Belokrinitskaya?’

He wasn’t happy with the conversation. It would have been unpleasant for anyone in his situation. He could have cut it short, but he didn’t.

‘Because we both want the same thing. You want to find out what happened back then, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘So do I.’

‘But what’s it to you?’

‘As a result of that business I had to leave the department.’

‘Excuse me, but I find that rather hard to believe. You worked there for another six years.’

‘I did. And it became harder with every year.’

I feigned sympathy. ‘I see. The orgy of glasnost, the bacchanalia of democracy.’

‘You don’t see anything.’ Wearily he waved his arm. ‘When they take you by the throat and make you choose between your health, inasmuch as you’ve got any, or the life of your daughter and some treaty or other… you’ll agree to whatever they want. Not that… And then, later, I didn’t take any initiative. They asked; I answered. They said “Do this”; I did it. But as for me going to them and making a statement against someone else, that didn’t happen. You can be sure of it.’

Nedremailo’s mobile began ringing.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, ‘I’m free now. Come on over… to the metro.’ He put his phone away. ‘That was my daughter calling. Let’s go.’

We went out on to the street. He gave me his business card.

‘One more thing, Davidov. You can think whatever you want about me, but I want everything to be completely transparent. I need it as much as you do. Trust me. If there’s anything you need, give me a call.’

Nedremailo made for the metro. Near the tram stop a woman in a dark coat and shawl went up to him, and together they descended into the underground passage.

‘Did you see Reingarten yesterday?’

Kurochkin’s call got me out of bed. Dawn was just beginning to break.

‘Do all deputy premiers telephone at this hour, or is it my privilege to be dealing with an exceptional state servant? What time is it?’

‘Did you go to the hospital or not?’

Finally I was awake, and awake I caught the note of barely checked irritation in Kurochkin’s voice.

‘No.’

‘Why not? You told Sinevusov you were going to see Mishka.’

‘I might have done. Or maybe that’s just what he wanted to hear. Kurochkin, I’ve told you once and I’ll tell you again, stop telling me what to do. I don’t work for you. I’ll do what I want to do. And I’m on leave.’

‘Don’t get carried away, Davidov,’ advised Kurochkin after a weighty silence. ‘I’m counting on you anyway.’

‘Yurka, I promised to try to find out what’s going on, not to run around buying cigarettes for Sinevusov. Let’s talk tonight. Better still, tomorrow. I might have something to tell you by then.’

‘Okay, then. Check your e-mail.’ Kurochkin sighed and hung up.

He had woken me up and for no good reason. I had hoped the conversation with Nedremailo would settle overnight and I might grasp the implications that had evaded me the evening before during our conversation at the Home Cooking Café. I was certain they were there. It often happens this way: I push a conversation into a distant box of my consciousness and forget about it until morning, then in the morning I take it out, cleaned and pressed, laced up and numbered. I have no idea what happens in there. I can’t do it consciously. However much I try it doesn’t work. But there had been something in the conversation with Nedremailo, a riddle that flickered past like a fleet shadow and disappeared. I’d been hoping to find it in the morning in an open box. But Kurochkin spoiled it. Damn him!

There had been curious flickers at several points in the professor’s story. I was surprised to learn that Kurochkin had gone to him for Korostishevski’s folder. Kurochkin knew Sashka wouldn’t ask Nedremailo to return it. We all knew it, but Kurochkin was the only one who acted, even though they weren’t close friends.

In fact, they weren’t friends at all, but still Kurochkin tried to help him. Then there was the thing about Nedremailo’s daughter. People in the department had called him a ladies’ man to his face—he had three daughters. His eldest was seriously ill. She must be the one he referred to the night before. I don’t know what made me latch on to this. And then there was Belokrinitskaya. Nedremailo didn’t actually say when she’d asked for the folder, but I wanted to know. I wasn’t indifferent to anything about her. Not that I was a one-woman man. After all, it hadn’t been love but a youthful infatuation tinted with rivalry and passion. I think she knew as much. Natasha was a smart girl. And I remembered her rather than the women that followed probably because Natasha was the emblem of those two short years at university. I probably wasn’t the only one who felt that way. We were expelled during our second year, and a few weeks later we were living completely different lives.

I don’t know how else to explain it. Once in the mid-1990s at a bar in a Moscow hotel I met an old black-marketeer (if anyone still remembers what that means). His name was Hussein. In the 1970s he started manufacturing and selling plastic lighters. The bodies were churned out in Baku and the metal components in Riga. The lighters were sold throughout the Soviet Union, in big cities and at train stations, and they sold particularly well in resorts. At the time Hussein had been living in Azerbaijan, where he was arrested and given fourteen years, but he was released after the start of perestroika. Then he moved to Uzbekistan and went into business again, but this time it wasn’t going so well. Hussein had come to Moscow for money; he wanted to get a loan secured on his home and business. All evening he told me how he had done business in his day. He showed me a photocopy of a newspaper article a quarter of a century old. The article was about him. It said ‘the illegal manufacture of material goods’ by Hussein had cost the government several million roubles (the figure in the article was precise right down to the kopeck). Hussein was proud of the article, the figure and even his prison sentence. He was a spry, cheerful old man on the whole, and the only time he turned gloomy that evening was when the conversation turned to Kiev.

‘I don’t like Kiev,’ he said resolutely and poured some vodka. ‘I’ve only been there once. My wife and I spent two weeks in a hotel with a balcony that looked right out over the Dnieper. The hotel was a semi-circle right on the banks of the river—’

‘Probably the Slavutych,’ I mused.

‘I can’t remember. Maybe. It was September, warm and lovely. I would go out on to the balcony, and there before me was this beautiful, verdant city with all these churches. We ate only in restaurants and had ourselves a very relaxing time. That’s how we spent those two weeks.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then I went home. And the next day I was arrested. So for the next fourteen years in prison I remembered that balcony and the river and the churches on the opposite bank… Forgive me, but I don’t like Kiev.’

I felt like that about Belokrinitskaya, but in reverse. She’d left a long time ago. First she’d gone to Norway, but I no longer knew where she was or what she was doing.

Seven cups of coffee later—I didn’t wash the cups; I lined them up on the kitchen table: four coffee cups left over from my parents’ service, two tea cups purchased at random and one big mug—I put the conversation with Nedremailo back where it had come from: back into its box. And turned on the computer.

Another e-mail addressed to Istemi had arrived, cc’d to: the President of the United Islamic Caliphates, Caliph Al-Ali; the Lama of Mongolia, Undur Gegen; and the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Karl XX.

‘My dear esteemed comrade monarchs, dictators and presidents,’ wrote President of the Slovenorussian Federation, Stefan Betancourt, in a cavalier voice,

I read the letter once, then I read it again. It was written in a panic. If Kurochkin had written it by hand the letters would have jumped on the page, colliding with one another and sticking together in illegible lumps. He was thoroughly spooked. In a normal state of mind he simply couldn’t have written so much nonsense in such a short space. And then there was this morning’s telephone call. Something had happened. There was no doubt about it. Something seriously unpleasant. Far more serious than anything he had told me. If so, I ought to put some distance between us. Get away and watch what happened next from the sidelines. You can see better as an onlooker.

Not exactly a heroic attitude, I have to admit. Twenty years ago I would have behaved differently. I would have rushed to poor Kurochkin to find out what was wrong. I would have sifted through possible solutions, sought the right people, money, ways out. You don’t abandon a friend in need… But it was all different now. Before ending up in my safe bottling factory I’d struggled against the current for six years, trying to surface for air right in the middle of the rapids. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t swim free, but at least I didn’t drown. I had worked for four private firms, in three of which I had been a founding member. We were beaten in different ways, but the end result was always the same. And if the first three times I remained steadfast, investing my strength, money and life in my friends, regardless of whether they were genuine friends or just happened to be on the same side of the line separating us from the bandits, cops and outright bad guys who came to take our business away, then the fourth time I didn’t bother. The first three times, coupled with my observations of those around me, had been enough. So when Steve Malkin’s predecessor offered me money and a job in exchange for information about my client firms I accepted the offer. And for five years now I had lived a peaceful life.

What Kurochkin shared with the Americans—or more importantly, his colleagues here—and what rules they played by, I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to know. There was no need for him to shout that the game was over. I could hear him. If it’s over, then it’s over. What was he shouting for?

I managed to convince myself. It wasn’t too hard. I already knew I wasn’t going to jump into the fire, not for chestnuts or bananas or fried baboons. I wouldn’t jump in there for Kurochkin or anyone else. My instinct for self-preservation had not let me down yet. But I was ashamed. Even if you put aside an old friendship, however ephemeral and weakly demonstrable, I still owed a lot to Kurochkin. He’d stepped in for me more than once. Sometimes it was small stuff, but other times it was serious. And he brought me to Steve Malkin’s office before Malkin himself knew he was coming to Ukraine. Even my peaceful, comfortable existence I owed in part to him.

I skimmed the letter once more. Kurochkin had left all the e-mail addresses visible: mine, the Hotmail address the ultimatum was sent from three days before and another, apparently Kanyuka’s. Only three. Reingarten at Frunze 103 was unlikely to have access to e-mail. I e-mailed Kanyuka: ‘Vadik, we must meet. Davidov.’ I didn’t know where he lived or what he had been doing for the past ten years, but we had to meet. Then I found Nedremailo’s business card, drank my eighth cup of coffee and dialed his home telephone number.

At about the same time the next day I was driving through the dreary watercolor landscape of Kirovohrad Province. A dirty March sky swollen with heavy water blended into the muddy snow of the endless fields. Also traveling in my car were a one-legged Chechen, his wife and her sister. I was taking them to Crimea. The Chechen’s name was Vakha. He rode the whole way in the back seat, silent and with eyes half closed. He was obviously from the ranks of people accustomed to giving orders not receiving them, but things had not gone his way, and for the time being he was prepared to play along. Patiently he endured everything that was happening to him and around him, including this trip. His wife Larissa didn’t speak either. Her sister Vera was the only one who didn’t wish to keep silent, and she chattered enough for the three of them. Either she was recalling how the entire family had once travelled to Crimea along this very road or she was telling her sister something about their mutual acquaintances… I’m not too keen on garrulous women, but if it hadn’t been for Vera the journey would have been a lot harder.

Larissa and Vera were twins. I estimated that they were somewhere around twenty-six to twenty-eight years of age, but Larissa looked forty, and Vera—if you felt generous—could pass for twenty. They were very much alike. Like mother and daughter. They’d had an older sister, the one Nedremailo had touched on vaguely in our conversation. After an illness lasting a number of years she died when she was still a child. Her sisters could barely remember her.

This unexpected trip had come about as a direct result of my phone call to Nedremailo. I’d gone to see him in the evening, but we weren’t able to talk. The professor and his family were trying to solve a problem that wasn’t quite clear to me: how to get Larissa’s husband to Crimea, to the village of Vostochni not far from the city of Stary Krym. I had the time, I was ready to get out of Kiev for a while and you could do worse than Crimea for a holiday. It might have been freezing outside, but at least it was March. I decided I’d rather travel in company than alone, so the next morning I collected Nedremailo’s daughters and son-in-law and sped south.

I didn’t realize Larissa’s husband was a Chechen, and only when he came out of the building did I see what was troubling Nedremailo and his daughters. Vakha bore an astonishing resemblance to the Chechen guerrilla Shamil Basayev, whose unforgettable image had dazzled Russian journalists with love and awe during the first half of the 1990s. He was short in stature, lean and fit, his face hidden by a thick, curling, well-groomed beard and his head carefully shaved. Across his shoulder he’d thrown an old much-laundered officer’s pea coat. Vakha leaned on a crutch with one arm, his other resting on Larissa’s shoulder. Later Vera told me their story and much more. But that morning, at the entrance to their nine-storey apartment building on South Borschagovka, the last thing on my mind as I helped shove suitcases and bags into the boot was that she and I might have a mutual ‘later.’

We reached Vostochni without misadventure—no one stopped us and checked our documents. I would have cast those seven hours behind the wheel from my memory altogether had we not made a stop of no more than fifteen minutes just before Melitopol. We stopped to eat. Vakha refused to get out and ate in the car, and Larissa stayed with her husband. Vera and I took a table in a small roadside café. Only now was I getting a proper look at her. I’d never seen Vera before, but something endlessly familiar played around the features of her face and echoed faintly in her voice and her very manner of speaking.

‘You must be tired of my chatter,’ Vera said. ‘I usually don’t talk so much, but I’m making an effort today for Larissa. Perhaps it’s not making any difference, but I thought the journey would be easier for her if I reminisced about our childhood. We really did travel a lot to Crimea. But it doesn’t seem to have done any good. She came home a changed person.’

‘Came home from where?’ I asked politely. I wasn’t that interested in Larissa’s life story. I was interested in Vera.

‘From Chechnya. You mean you didn’t know?’

‘Ah…’ I started in embarrassment. ‘No, I didn’t. What was she doing there?’

‘It’s a long story. We don’t have much time now, but I’ll tell you later some time.’

She was right. We didn’t have much time. Hurriedly we gulped down our chicken soup and tucked into the overdone chicken legs and rice—for some reason the café only served chicken.

Then it was time to go back to the car.

Suddenly it dawned on me. ‘Vera,’ I said. ‘You look astonishingly like an old classmate of mine.’

‘Who?’

‘You wouldn’t know her. Natasha Belokrinitskaya.’

‘I know Nastashka very well. All our relatives used to tell our parents we looked like her. “Your girls were poured from the same mold as Natasha.” She’s seven years older so it was a natural comparison.’

‘You know her?’ I was amazed.

‘Our mothers are first cousins, so we’re second cousins.’

‘Has she ever been to your home?’

‘Not that often, but she’s been there.’ Vera got up. ‘Shall we? It’s time we were off.

We went outside. The sea could already be felt close by. A gentle mild spring breeze ruffled the air. It smelled of the sea and melting snow and grasses. Where do grasses come from in March? I don’t know. I was standing at the door to the café watching Vera get into the car. Something had changed, decisively and irretrievably. Within and without. Only the sky remained the same—heavy, wet, grey and endlessly familiar. I had spent years beneath this sky. No, more than that. I had spent a lifetime beneath it. Once upon a time, before I’d begun trading in American fizzy drinks, Istemi’s horsemen had swept beneath this sky, horsemen who were as light as death and as fast as time.

We reached Vostochni at dusk. Vakha was expected. I don’t know who they were, friends or relatives, but they met him noisily and joyfully. I was allowed to stay the night, which was all that I wanted. I was very tired. Larissa didn’t talk that evening, the same as during the day, the same as always. Vera, finding herself surrounded by people she didn’t know and not knowing their language, suddenly lost her bearings. In the morning I asked her what her plans were.

‘I was going to stay on for a week and help Larissa settle in, but now I’m not sure what to do with myself. It’s not at all what I’d expected.’

‘Would you like to go to the sea?’

‘I’d love to,’ she said happily. ‘When are you going?’

‘Right now.’

No one tried to stop us. I had a good look at Vostochni as we drove away; it was a typical Tatar village. Many settlements like this had sprung up in Crimea in recent years. The sense of poverty and despair that stifled them in the early 1990s was gone. People obviously had some money now and confidence in themselves. Even the Chechens were catching up. How would it all end?

‘What does Larissa think about this move?’ I asked as the road followed a bend and Vostochni disappeared behind a rare line of trees.

‘Nothing. I think it’s all the same to her. I said I’d tell you how Larissa married Vakha. We need something to do on the road, and there isn’t a radio.’

‘Indeed,’ I agreed.

Vera began telling me her sister’s story when we were getting on to the motorway between Stary Krym and Theodosia, and by the time she finished we had passed Alushta. We didn’t get out at Theodosia, but we did go for a walk along the bar-infested seaside at Koktebel, and we had lunch in Sudak. Then Vera called home and told her father she had left Vostochni but was going to spend a couple of days in Crimea, and I checked my e-mail. I was waiting to hear from Kanyuka, but he was maintaining his silence. Instead of a letter from Kanyuka I found a demand from Kurochkin either to meet him immediately or to contact him straight away. I wasn’t going to do either. What did I care about Kurochkin now that I was travelling through springtime Crimea with Vera alongside me—and her resemblance to Natasha Belokrinitskaya had already become almost inconsequential. Vera had been telling me about Larissa for several hours, but, strangely, this grave account didn’t spoil our journey to Yalta or the following days in Crimea. As they say, it happened a long time ago and to somebody else, so what can you do about it now? There was Kurochkin, tearing about the cold, sleety streets of Kiev hunting for me, while I was… Well, never mind, he could wait a few more days. I decided to give him a ring when I got back home. Even though my conscience was still bothering me about letting a friend down, the situation would be clearer then.

The way Vera talked wasn’t exactly confusing, but neither was her account neat and tidy. As she related a particular episode she might leap forward a couple of years or go back in time just to pick up an important detail. At times I didn’t confine myself to the role of listener, and then our conversation would stray far from Larissa’s fate. I’ve already forgotten many details of her story, and some I don’t want to remember.

‘It began when Larissa was abducted. Ten years ago.’

‘In Kiev?’ I asked in surprise.

‘No, Moscow. She was kidnapped from a competition.’

At which point I understood it hadn’t begun ten years ago but much earlier.

Vera and Larissa had looked alike from earliest childhood. But they were alike only on the outside. Larissa seemed older. She was reserved and only reluctantly did she let her parents and relatives close, whereas the role of beloved child was performed consummately by Vera. When they were around five years of age the girls began to study music. With Vera it was immediately obvious that while she would have loved to have pleased her parents she was little inclined towards the fine arts, so much so that to expect anything from her in this area was simply inhumane. And they left her in peace. With Larissa it was more complicated. It was discovered that the little girl had perfect pitch. At a music-school audition the commission members played various musical phrases, some quite complicated, and the child was able to reproduce them quickly and without mistakes. Even then she had a powerful hand that seemed designed for playing the violin. She was assigned to a violin class. But the problem wasn’t merely that Larissa couldn’t bear the instrument, it was that she quietly but passionately detested this whole business of music, and she resisted it in every way she could.

The war between parents and child lasted nearly four years and ended in total victory for Larissa. Her parents surrendered. Over time Larissa had grown into a hardened warrior. She now had a plan of which her victory over music was the first point. To fulfill the second point she enrolled in judo classes. By the time she finished school Larissa had battled her way to black belt. Vera tagged along with her sister to the sports hall a few times, but the sight of Larissa in a judogi didn’t inspire her. And the throws, grapples, strikes, defenses, they didn’t scare Vera off, but they didn’t draw her in either. Hers was a clear, analytical intellect, and she had a tangibly abstract mind. When they finished school, Vera enrolled in the university physics department; Larissa in the Institute of Physical Education.

In early September 1993, before Vera had even learned to navigate the tangled corridors of the laboratory building at Kiev’s physics department, her sister went to Moscow for an international judo competition. She didn’t come back. The trainers and the girls on her team neither knew nor understood what had happened. Larissa had been with everyone else in the gymnasium, she was seen in the changing room, and someone even noticed her walking towards the exit of the sports complex. Alone. But Larissa wasn’t seen back at the hotel. Naturally they informed the police of her disappearance. And the Moscow police—despite their reassurances along the lines of ‘Don’t worry, your girl will turn up. The little wrestler’s probably gone on a spree with the men. Give her a week, and she’ll be back without any help from us. What’s the hurry?’—reluctantly took the statement. Apparently they even took it upon themselves to search for Larissa. But their searches didn’t turn anything up.

In the end, the Russian guardians of law and order were at least partly right. Larissa did turn up by herself. Exactly three years later, in September 1996, she telephoned home. Nedremailo picked up the receiver.

‘Papa, this is Larissa. I’m in Grozny. Don’t worry, everything’s okay.’

It’s possible that Larissa said more, but the professor didn’t last that long. He collapsed in a dead faint after her first few words.

All that time the family had been searching for Larissa. It hadn’t taken long to find out that she was in Chechnya. There had been a phone call. A man had rung. He spoke Russian but with a very heavy Ukrainian accent. During the course of the conversation, Nedremailo switched to Ukrainian, but the caller stated right away that he didn’t understand that language. His speech was vague and muddled somehow. He didn’t ask for money in so many words, but he implied that Nedremailo’s daughter would require assistance to get away. He firmly advised against contacting the authorities, but Nedremailo ignored this advice. He was accustomed to relying on the state, so to the Russian special services he added the Ukrainian Security Service, the Church and the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He gave no peace to the Russian and Ukrainian ambassadors, the Red Cross people or any international organization he could get hold of. But to no avail. Nedremailo was forever traveling to Moscow, and twice he tried to go to Chechnya, but he wasn’t allowed beyond Mosdok a few kilometers from the border. Nedremailo told everyone around him that he was hopeful, but he hesitated to ask himself just what he was hoping for.

After the first phone call from Larissa several others followed. The war was over, and she and her husband were getting ready to leave Chechnya. She needed assistance and not just money. Paying all the fees and preparing to move took around a year. Then Larissa and Vakha bought half a house outside Moscow and settled in Russia.

Nedremailo went to see his daughter several times and came back looking glum. His child’s life in Russia was not working out. The authorities didn’t want to register them as residents, there weren’t any jobs, the neighbors watched them like wolves and once a week—as regular as clockwork—the cops would come to check their documents. And if the cops urgently needed money they might even drop by after hours. Vakha had friends in the next village. When these friends were banged up they knew they had to move on. They sold their half of the house and moved to Odessa.

In Odessa they lasted longer, but they encountered the same problems—the police, neighbors, work. Vakha needed to recuperate. The health and nerves of the former Chechen fighter were absolutely shot. Once, when Vera and her father went to visit Larissa, she saw how the militant mujahid went about decapitating a chicken destined for the lunch broth. They were living in a typical city apartment, so Vakha decided it would be easier to deal with the bird in the bathroom. As there wasn’t a suitable axe to be found the deed had to be done with a knife. But the Ukrainian cock was extremely tenacious, and Vakha the Mussulman made a terrible butcher. Not yet done for, the cock escaped from under the knife and flew with a screech into the room. Spraying blood all over the walls and ceiling, it fled on to the balcony where it leaped across to the neighbors, frightening their children and grandmother half to death. The bird carried on squawking until, in a swift and practiced movement, the neighbor wrung its neck.

For a long time Vakha sat mutely on the sofa, his face so pale it was blue-grey. He rocked to and fro, at times lowering his head below his knees. Then he looked at Vera and shrugged. ‘I told her I couldn’t do it. I can’t bear the sight of blood.’ At that moment Vera caught sight of her sister’s face. An expression of dark satisfaction flashed across it and immediately disappeared.

The affair with the cock ended in the usual way—the quarrel with the neighbors, the police, the document check. The policeman from the precinct shuffled slowly between bathroom and balcony, scrutinizing the bloodstains and waggling his brows in consternation. ‘Whose throat have you slashed here? You’d do well to come clean voluntarily—we’ll find out anyway.’ Instead of the usual fifty grivnas they had to pay seventy, all that they had.

After Vera finished her dissertation she found a post-doctoral post in Germany and spent a year in Western Europe. Larissa and Vakha moved in with her father in Kiev. It got a little easier then, but it was still impossible to find a job for Vakha. What could they do? He couldn’t spend the rest of his life sitting at home—he was a healthy man, even if he only had one leg. Then a friend of Vakha’s turned up from somewhere. He was hauling nuts in GAZelle minibuses and selling them in Kiev, Minsk and Latvia. It was a proper business, nothing criminal about it, and the people involved were all his own men—Chechens. And they all lived together. Just like they used to do.

‘So now what?’ I asked Vera, as if I hadn’t bid farewell to Larissa and Vakha that very morning in front of their new home in Vostochni.

‘Wait and see,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Maybe they’ll put down roots, maybe they won’t… Who knows. It’s hard being away from home,’ Vera concluded unexpectedly. Over the past two years she had acquired experience of her own. It wasn’t the same kind of experience as Larissa and Vakha’s, not at all. But that’s how experience is; everyone has their own.

After a long pause I nodded at a road sign. ‘We’ll be in Yalta soon. Shall we spend the night there?’

‘Let’s. But can you choose the hotel? I never get it right. I remember this one hotel, it was called the Oreanda…’

Suddenly I had an idea. ‘I know. Last autumn our chiefs held a managerial conference for the Eastern European branches at the Levantine.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘On the waterfront just after the Oreanda. It’s excellent. The money’s Russian, the service Ukrainian.’

‘I can see it now…’

‘No need to be sarcastic. It’s seriously business class. From autumn to spring it’s just wonderful.’

‘And in the summer?’

‘I wouldn’t stay there during the summer. The windows look out over the sea, to the south-east, and I don’t like it when the sun blazes through the windows, especially in the morning. There you are, sleeping, and suddenly it’s like someone’s turned a light on inside your head. Even if you hide the sun behind heavy drapes and the room has air conditioning, I still don’t like it. In the south, windows should look on to tennis courts…’

‘…with palms and fountains and peacocks.’

‘Yes. With palms and fountains. And peacocks—except at night the peacocks should be blindfolded or wear little hoods over their heads so they won’t noisily greet the dawn.’

We cruised through the city on the south coastal highway, and then, weaving through the colonnades of sanatoriums and guesthouses, we made our way down almost to the sea itself. Just before the waterfront we turned into the Levant. We had arrived.

It was growing dark in the east and the sky was turning a deep blue. Across the sea and shoreline lay the first shadows of March twilight. The sound of waves breaking gently on the shingle was just audible. We took two small rooms on the first floor, left our things and went into the town.

By the end of that first joyful year after I got out of the army I suddenly realized there were areas of Kiev I knew my way around perfectly at night but never went to during the day and would scarcely even recognize. Yalta was like that. For me it has always been a nocturnal city, its streets and buildings presenting themselves not as crumbling façades, a pastiche of architectural styles and the sight of underwear drying on balconies but as a symphony of lights—street lamps, windows, fiery lines of night-time advertisements, ships at anchor languishing in port and, finally, the moon. At night my judgment becomes clearer, and I find my way more surely, through everything—the flashing lights of cities, the cities themselves and the people who inhabit them. Night pares away the unnecessary and leaves behind what matters.

An hour and a half before dawn we returned to the hotel. Even though I’d spent two days behind the wheel and hadn’t slept a wink all night, I was ready to jump right back up again and drive off somewhere, go swimming or walking, anywhere I felt like going. The sense of freedom I’d thought long forgotten was back. Routine no longer existed, no regular responsibilities or commitments enslaved my liberty. I felt a sense of power; I’d gained power over my circumstances. It was no longer I who depended on circumstances, but circumstances that depended on me. And this was all down to a petite woman with chestnut hair and dark-brown eyes that reflected the cool shadows of a spring time night in Crimea.

In the morning we drove to the peak of Ai Petri. In the Crimean Mountains it was still winter. The snow lay wetly on the mountain plateau and above heavy flocks of fog swept swiftly and silently. At the meteorological station children and adults were bustling around and dogs were barking. Slowly we passed by a small ugly bazaar, continued north a few more kilometers, and then I stopped the car.

A sharp, penetrating wind sliced my face. The mountain slopes bristled with the dark green of pine. On the slanting dome of one of the summits a few gloomy structures jutted out—scattered caravans and radar sets.

‘People certainly know how to spoil… everything,’ said Vera suddenly. ‘They make it ugly with their very presence. The hills, the sea… how beautiful it was here without us. We’re probably a disease, a virus. We’ve contaminated the Earth and won’t rest until we’ve destroyed it all.’

I didn’t tell her, but I recalled having similar ideas on Kamchatka some fifteen years before. I’d clambered up an unnamed volcano and looked out with a sense of anguish upon the unsullied Breughelian greenery of the coast near the smooth-sloped Avachinsky volcano and its neighbors and then upon the filthy city, a disgusting fungus that had sprouted along the coast with jerry-built five-storey buildings, their panels cracking and the black and greasy smoke from the boilers …

‘But how beautiful the horsemen looked here.’

‘The horsemen?’ said Vera without comprehension.

‘The horsemen of Istemi,’ I said, opening the car door. ‘Let’s go. I’ll tell you about it on the road. Today it’s my turn to tell stories.’

We headed farther north then around in a big loop and returned to Yalta after lunch. I told Vera the entire story, from the very beginning up to the events of three days ago and my conversation with her father at the Home Cooking Café in Podol. I didn’t mention that until very recently I had considered the professor to be the instigator of all our troubles, nor did I mention his connection to the KGB. The first point was my error, and the second no longer mattered.

‘Strange.’ Vera shook her head. ‘I knew bits of this. I must have been eight when my father came home and said some students had been expelled for “a game with political implications.” I never understood what it meant, but I remembered the words exactly: a game with political implications. How stupid… Incidentally, I’ve read the ultimatum, but that was later, much later.’

‘Korostishevski’s ultimatum?’

‘Alex, I didn’t know everyone’s last names. It was the ultimatum of some Emperor Karl—’

‘Karl XX: Korostishevski. How did you end up seeing it?’

‘Natasha showed me. Natasha Belokrinitskaya. You know her.’

‘Yes, yes, I know. But how did she get hold of it?’

‘Ask her. I’ve got her telephone number. My address book is in Kiev, but when we get back I’ll give it to you. I have her address, too. She left Europe for the States five years ago now. She works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And it’s ages since she’s been Belokrinitskaya.’

‘I’ll be sure to ask her,’ I said, shaking my head just like Vera had. ‘Strange.’

When we got back to Yalta I checked my e-mail. This time there was nothing from Kurochkin, but Kanyuka had responded. ‘I’m in Zaporozhye,’ he wrote. ‘I’d love to talk to you, see you, etc., but not if you’re on Kurochkin’s business. He’s been burying me with his dispatches, but I have no intention of reading them, and I don’t want even want to hear about that animal.’ Kanyuka left his mobile number, and I called him straight away. We agreed to meet the day after next at his place. It needed to be soon because he was going away on a business trip, and I didn’t want to postpone the meeting for a long time.

Vera and I stayed on in Yalta for a day and a half in all. That evening we went back into town—but this time we returned before it got late.

In the morning a pale-grey veil was stretched across the east, and the small matte globe of the sun was scarcely discernible. I lay motionless, gazing at the morning sun; the broad window, broad as the wall, and its drawn curtains; the armchair with Vera’s jeans, jumper and blouse; and the pillow with the small depression where she had slept. She had slept there, and the pillow faithfully preserved the imprint of her head. On my fingers I could still feel the tender warmth of her skin, and on my lips there was still the faintest taste of blackcurrant, the taste of her lips. The sound of water could just be heard beyond the door to the shower room. I lay there peacefully; peacefully ran the water; the peaceful sun was rising beyond the low clouds. I suppose it was happiness. I don’t know. I didn’t get the chance to digest it fully. There was a remote on the bedside table, and I idly switched on the television. I turned the sound off and surfed channels until I came to the Ukrainian news. I rarely watch the news—and not just the Ukrainian news but any news—so the jowly faces of our politicians speechifying within mottled gold interiors were for the most part unfamiliar to me. On the screen one head replaced another and the cheerless landscapes outside of Kiev flashed by along with signage showing the town names. Occasionally the anchorman would surface to say a few words. Near the end of the broadcast he lingered a little longer than usual, and I decided he was bidding the audience goodbye and asking them not to change the channel because the advertisement would be followed immediately by the weather forecast and an entertaining family talk show. But I was wrong. Instead of an advertisement I saw Kurochkin. It was an old clip from his days as Deputy Premier—they probably couldn’t find anything more recent. Kurochkin was vigorously holding forth on the steps to the Cabinet of Ministers. Then the screen flashed to a bank sign—and I realized it was Kurochkin’s bank—and someone was waving his arm in protest before the camera, making it clear there would be no comment. The footage immediately cut to the sign of the General Prosecutor’s Office. I reached for the remote but accidentally dropped it, and when I finally picked it up and turned on the sound all I could see were the final shots of the report: yellow earth, white houses with flat roofs and the flag of Israel in the foreground.

When Vera emerged from the shower I was attentively watching a commercial for German lemonade. She stopped and gave me a bemused look.

‘Are your rivals on the offensive?’

‘I’ve just seen Kurochkin on TV,’ I said, turning off the television. I wished I’d never even turned it on—it had spoiled my mood for the rest of the day.

‘Your Kurochkin?’

‘Mine. If I’ve decoded this pantomime correctly, he’s got into trouble and fled to Israel.’

‘Did they say what kind of trouble?’

‘They might have done, but I didn’t hear. “There was an old monkey who had a clogged ear”—especially when he tried to watch TV without any sound.’

‘Wait until the next news broadcast—if it’s important.’

‘It’s important all right. But not important enough to spend the day glued to the box. I’ll ask Kanyuka about it tomorrow. He’ll probably know more than the journalists do.’

Having uttered these prophetic words, I spent almost two hours in front of the screen, flipping from one news broadcast to another. Different things were being said about Kurochkin: they muddled his position, age, even his name, calling him first Yuri then Igor. Varying accounts were given of his urgent departure for Israel—I hadn’t been wrong about that. The one statement that remained consistent throughout the reports went something like, ‘The prosecutor’s office is conducting an inquiry into the legitimacy of agreements signed by Kurochkin during his tenure in the Cabinet of Ministers.’ The feeling of guilt that had flowed over me (after all, he’d asked me to get in touch; maybe I could have helped him) receded somewhat when I heard this. I couldn’t have helped him after all.

Kanyuka had grown fat. A bald little man with drooping cheeks, double chin and eyes where the life had been snuffed out forever, he pressed me against his immense paunch at the door to a Zaporozhian diner. He uttered a few well-worn stock phrases, but he seemed genuinely touched, and his words were sincere. It was more than a decade since we’d last met when we’d been around twenty-five. If I hadn’t known how old he was I’d have put him at fifty, he’d aged that much. In our country business is bad for your health.

‘I don’t think you’ve met. This is Vera, Nedremailo’s daughter.’

‘What a last name!’ roared Kanyuka. ‘Just the sound of it makes me break out in a cold sweat.’

‘Don’t overdo it now.’ I thumped his back. ‘This your place?’

‘You guessed it. You were always good at that. Let’s go in and you can have yourselves something to eat after your journey. It’s not exactly Maxim’s, but I can feed my own.’

Kanyuka had a small chain of cafés within Zaporozhye and the surrounding area. He would be an ideal client for my firm. I should have got him to sign a contract and serve our cola; we could beat any competitor’s price. Taste and quality, no; price, yes. But I didn’t say anything about cola. Instead I asked Vadik about Kurochkin.

‘Our Kurochkin has really landed himself in it now. The worthless bastard has finally jumped in the shit. The silly grasshopper. Bloody hope of our young democracy,’ Kanyuka said with satisfaction and poured the vodka.

‘I’m driving, Vadik.’ I had to push my glass aside.

‘And the lady? Is she driving, too?’

‘The lady can have a drink,’ replied Vera. ‘But just a little, thanks.’

‘Here’s to us, then.’ Kanyuka raised his glass. ‘To us, knocked around by this bloody life in this bloody country… three times I’ve been ruined. I’ve lost everything, everything but my debts. My debts were rescued like children from a burning house—last time thanks to that Doberman Pinscher Kurochkin. But, what the hell, I’m living the way they taught us to do in the army. I’ve fallen down and pulled myself back up again. So what’s the lady do?’

‘She’s a physicist,’ I said and raised my glass of tomato juice. ‘Vadik, that toast…’

‘Huh? It was to us. What didn’t you understand? To big businessmen who used to be physicists and to physicists with a future. With a big future, that is.’

‘Just how did Kurochkin screw you over?’ I asked when I’d finished eating the salad, pork chop and fried potatoes with mushrooms, and when the vodka, thanks to Kanyuka’s efforts, was almost gone. ‘What’s going on with him?’

‘It’s simple. The mine he planted beneath his feet fifteen years ago, the one he’s thrived on like a fungus on a rotted tree stump, it’s finally exploded, and the shit is flying. And he’s about to crash down on top of us and spin us a sob story. It should be fascinating. Kurochkin’s always made such a big deal about being his own man. “I’m not right or left. I have no ties to corporate interests. I don’t depend on anybody—I’m an honest man.” ’

‘But the truth is?’

‘The truth is this honest man was reared by the KGB. First the KGB, then the Ukrainians. Then he got big enough to stand on his own two feet, but the ties are still there.’

‘But they think he’s pro-American in the States,’ I said, remembering Malkin’s fervent monologue of the previous week.

‘Sure they do. But you don’t remember Kurochkin. He’s everyone’s friend. He thinks everyone else is an idiot, and he’s the smartest one of all. But they’re not idiots. And I can’t be the only one he’s got his teeth into. But never again. They’ve got all they want now from Kurochkin—and not just the Cheka secret police. There are others, too, but the game’s up, and he’s really going to get it. There’s no one backing him up any more but a handful of Chekists. And after fifteen-odd years they must be sick to death of him. Chances are that’s what they’ll do.’

‘As far as the secret police are concerned, let’s just say that’s speculation on your part. So what was the problem? Can you tell me?’

‘There shouldn’t have been any problem at all, Davidov. There was a small factory outside Kiev that I wanted to buy from the state—or, rather, privatize. That’s all. Kurochkin was Deputy Premier at the time. I don’t know what the hell made me get in touch with him—I could have handled it by myself, but I thought I’d get myself some protection. He said, “Bring your money out into the open. We’re creating a transparent economy. But I’ll help you and press the right buttons.” Like an idiot I did everything he said. After all, he was an old friend, and he was running the show around here. I was losing almost 10 per cent as it was, but right there and then everyone swooped down on me: the tax police, the Economic Crime Office, state security, funds, schmunds and a few moronic bandits… You know what he did? He used me to settle his debts.’

‘No way. That doesn’t hang together somehow…’

‘As ever, Kurochkin is as white as snow. He said, “You attracted attention to yourself. You should have been more careful.” And he washed his hands of me.’

‘Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with him?’

‘In that case he could at least have given me a hand. But no… And later on, when the dust settled, I made enquiries. Everything pointed to him. I can tell you don’t believe me.’

‘Not exactly.’

‘I can’t prove anything—there’s nothing in writing—but my advice is to steer clear of him. Don’t even get close. Not just because he’s got problems right now, they’re nothing to do with you anyway. It’s when he’s strong and things are going his way that Kurochkin is dangerous. The bait is on the hook, the nets are in place. He’s like a spider—he devours everything within reach.’

‘What a picture.’ I laughed. ‘But what’s the point of the ultimatum, then? You got a copy, right?’

‘Yes. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read it—straight from our snot-nosed childhood and all. But that’s something else. Entirely.’

‘That’s what I’m saying. There are things you don’t know—’

‘Certainly,’ interrupted Kanyuka. ‘And lots of them. But I know what matters—that Kurochkin’s a piece of shit, and the security services are shaking him down for good reason. The rest is just details. Now, come clean. Did you send it?’

‘The ultimatum? You’re kidding. Kurochkin asked me to find the author… that is, not the author—we all know who wrote it—he asked me to find out who sent it. You know, he thought it might be Korostishevski, and he wasn’t fooling around.’

‘Alex, I’ve got one more thing to say about Kurochkin, and then we won’t talk about him anymore, okay? He’s not worth it. But the fact that he’s even afraid of Sashka Korostishevski—God rest his soul, may he rest in peace and all that, he was a lovely bloke—the fact that he’s afraid of Sashka’s ghost tells you a lot. Just think about it. He’s charming, certainly, and he wears a velvet glove, yes, but heaven forbid you should—’

‘Vadik, I’ve known him for more than twenty years and he’s never—’

‘That only means you don’t know everything. Or your time hasn’t come yet. But enough of that. Let’s talk about something more pleasant. Tell me,’ he said, turning to Vera, ‘how’s your father getting on? I think about him now and again.’

It was late at night when I dropped Vera off on South Borschagovka. We agreed to talk the next day and quickly said goodbye. I still had another week of leave, and she had ten days before she left for Germany.

The whole week we were away it had been raining in the city. The rains had finally melted away the snow. Although the weather forecasts still reported that tiresome old refrain ‘Around zero in the capital, wind northerly changing to north-easterly, possible precipitation,’ it was clear that spring had arrived. Only the wind had yet to surrender.

The next day I left the house in the morning and spent the day wandering aimlessly. When I had felt like this in the past I would jump into the car late at night, get on to the ring road and let myself race along, cleaving through the changeable, swampy night. Then, dropping my speed a little, I would return to the city and zigzag at length inside the triangle between Lukyanovka, St. Sofia and the Botanical Gardens. Occasionally I went to Podol, less often to Pechersk. At this hour the roads were peaceful, travelled only by taxi drivers and other drivers like myself, petrol heads crazed with loneliness and the senselessness of existence. While waiting for the light to change I would study their greyish faces, their brows drawn in torment. Some moved their lips, talking to themselves, filling the emptiness with the sound of their own voices—they had nothing else to fill it with. Frequently I saw women at the wheel. Office managers. Plasticine businesswomen absorbed in business—usually not their own but somebody else’s—and absorbed far more deeply than it warranted. Some had spent the day in negotiations and meetings. The bird language of negotiations was long the only language they could use or understand without an interpreter. This nocturnal journey was a crack in the unified, unshakeable picture of their world. In the morning they would hurriedly paint it out, but in another week or two it would once again mar the façade of the tidy little house they had built exactly according the instructions in glossy magazines. Even at night they concentrated on the road as if it would lead them to a target; they were always aiming for targets. They gripped the steering wheel tight. Nothing distracted them, and they didn’t look around.

On my way out I might have thrown the car keys into my jacket pocket this time, too, but a week on the road had been enough. I didn’t want to see the car—I couldn’t bear to see the car—so I walked.

It’s not for no reason that human beings have lived for thousands of years on these high clay banks, not wishing to leave them. Whatever the circumstances—and at times the circumstances were gut-wrenching and life grew utterly unbearable—life has never been snuffed out. Something keeps us here, replenishing us with the force of life. Come what may, the force of life has always been abundant in the Kiev hills. But wisdom has been in short supply, that’s for certain. The only ruler capable of introducing a more or less intelligible code of law was immediately christened ‘the Wise,’ although his decision has always struck me not so much a demonstration of wisdom as ordinary common sense. Even now our common sense is in good order—that’s pretty much always been the case, whoever the bosses may be, whoever is in charge. We’re not strategic thinkers, so there are always people who want to think strategically for us, but when it comes to making perfect tactical decisions, our Ukrainian Yarik, salt-of-the-earth and worthy heir to Prince Yaroslav the Wise, is without rival. What this means, in effect, is that Yarik has corn and wheat in the threshing barn and potatoes and apples in the larder as well as sauerkraut and salted cucumbers, tomatoes and garlic and salted lard, of course; he’s got a real beast in the stables and a young boar and a bull calf and a heifer; and in the little cellar he has moonshine for domestic needs and for settling up with workers for little jobs. He’s got a good mate on the district council, and his brother works for the road patrol. On Sundays he goes to the bathhouse for a steam with the priest, and the son of the nouveau-very-riche ‘New Ukrainian’ from the next village has sent matchmakers to Galya, his eldest daughter. His own son is growing up and going to school, and when he finishes his studies he’ll be just like his dad. What happened next was no longer his concern. That Vakha and his friends were already in Crimea in the brotherly company of their fellow Muslims, few but fervent, was not visible to him from behind his fence. And just what should he see? That Vakha was hauling nuts? Let him haul all the nuts he wants. Our fellow Yarik has a mate on the district council and a brother in the road patrol. If there’s a problem, his brother will give Vakha a fine for a traffic offence.

Kurochkin, too, had been sure he was holding all the reins when—bam!—the ultimatum from his youth arrived by e-mail and everything was turned upside down. Within two weeks he was a fugitive hiding in Israel and an exile… But what about our fellow Yarik? The time was coming when Vakha would say, ‘Move over, Yarik, you’re taking up too much room. I’m feeling hemmed in with you on my land,’ and he’ll start shoving Yarik. First he’ll push him out of Crimea, and next… we’ll see what’s next. And then what? His politically correct mate on the district council will suggest observing the right of nations to self-determination up to and including secession, and his brother the traffic cop would love to help, but he’s getting old, and it seems he’s got nothing left but his truncheon …

I roamed the city not thinking about anything. The thoughts came and went of their own accord, melting away into the fresh air of approaching spring. Empty thoughts.

Suddenly I found myself in front of the building where our firm had its tenth-floor offices. Although I hadn’t meant to, somehow I’d ended up here, and the sooner I got away the better. But, as fate would have it, at the very moment I was trying to slip past the front door, a familiar automobile came to a halt right beside me. Steven Malkin in person climbed out of the car and took several brisk steps along the Kiev pavement. Half a second later we were standing eyeball to eyeball. I was not prepared to have a conversation with him and not at all happy about running into him. But Malkin, who wasn’t expecting to bump into me either, seemed even less pleased.

‘Well, well, Mr. Davidov,’ he bleated, swiftly leaping back a bit. ‘Have you decided to honor your place of employment with a visit?’

Malkin shouldn’t have done that. He should have walked right on past without even noticing me or with only the slightest of nods, so that I would spend the rest of the day wondering whether he had actually nodded or whether it had just seemed that way.

I didn’t know what to say to my infuriated boss. That I was out for a walk in the middle of the workday while the rest of the office was laboring as one to increase profits? I had nothing to say to him. An unpleasant pause hung between us. People were staring. Malkin was on edge. An abnormal situation had developed, a situation not addressed in the NLP textbooks. The textbooks left no room for chance, but chance had turned up right before their eyes, right on the steps to the main entrance.

‘During your absence,’ said Malkin suddenly, grinding his teeth, ‘during your prolonged absence, our situation, and yours, has undergone certain changes.’ He tried to take himself in hand and worked his mouth into a smile. ‘I’m taking advantage of this meeting to inform you that you can stop coming to work. As for details, you’ll be informed in writing.’

Finally he feigned the slight nod he should have begun with and hastily disappeared behind the door.

Poor Malkin. He’d gone and broken yet another rule: never give bad news in person. The boss can congratulate you on your success or inform you of a promotion or pay rise, but the boss never tells you you’re getting the sack or any other nasty news. That’s the responsibility of the secretary who will write in evasive terms on headed paper: ‘In the circumstances the company regrets to inform you that it will no longer require your…’ But perhaps he wasn’t poor Malkin, after all. Perhaps he had been dreaming about this moment, what he would say about the circumstances and the company no longer requiring… If so, one might feel a little sympathy for Malkin. Let’s say he’d imagined all the details and fine points of what he would say to me, how my face would fall, how right before his eyes I would be transformed from a colleague in a major international firm, for less than five minutes the head of the Department of Microstrategic Planning, into your typical jobless Ukrainian. But being aware of his power wasn’t enough for him; he wanted everyone around him to feel how powerful he was. And what had happened? There in the damp wind at the door to the office building, beneath the surprised glances of the guards and chance passers-by, he hadn’t managed more than a couple of pitiful sentences. He had missed a splendid opportunity. What a shame.

I wandered slowly onwards, contemplating Malkin’s plight. I didn’t know what had happened at the office over the past week. Perhaps I’d been sacked because of Kurochkin, or perhaps Kurochkin had nothing to do with it. In any case, Malkin had been a great help. I couldn’t imagine returning to my desk, sitting down at the computer and commencing to draw up a strategy for selling cola. I simply couldn’t imagine it. I’d already wasted five years on cola. Enough. And another thing. For some reason Malkin hadn’t mentioned William F. Hume. There had been no reason to do so. But when had he ever needed a reason? That meant he was well and truly shaken.

At last I judged the protracted farewell with Malkin to be closed, and found myself walking along Bolshoi Zhytomyr Street. It was drizzling lightly, and dusk was approaching. I ran across the road, turned on to a back street and came out in the direction of Old Kiev Hill. Before me was Gonchari-Kozhumyaki. After a twenty-year hiatus development here had resumed in this old quarter. Beyond loomed Castle Hill. I breathed the damp spring air in deeply. It felt like it was starting to get warmer.

‘It’s warming up. Have you noticed?’ said a voice behind me that I couldn’t fail to recognize.

‘The wind is changing. Are you still following me?’

‘I haven’t been following you, Alex, and I’m not going to start now.’ Sinevusov came up and stood beside me.

‘Then I suppose it’s just your habit to walk here in the rain.’ I nodded knowingly.

‘So what if it’s raining. I live here.’ He waved towards Volodymyr Street. ‘I’m walking my dog.’

I saw that Sinevusov had a lead in his hand.

‘Which one’s yours?’ Near by a band of dogs was gamboling joyfully.

‘No, mine’s over there.’ He pointed at a sad, solitary terrier negotiating the incline with difficulty. Sinevusov whistled and slapped his hand against his thigh. The terrier made as if it to race over to his owner, but it didn’t gain any speed.

‘A venerable old dog,’ I concluded.

‘No. Just cunning and lazy,’ sniffed Sinevusov.

Slowly we made our way towards the History Museum.

‘Well, seeing as how we’ve accidentally bumped into one another, it would be a shame not to ask you—did you let Kurochkin down, too?’

‘What gives you that idea?’ asked Sinevusov with genuine astonishment. ‘That’s not my style. Absolutely not. On the contrary, I’d have helped him for old times’ sake. Although, like you, I could see early on that it was better to keep my distance. He let himself down, Alex, and that’s the literal truth. It’s all his own fault. Why do you think he called on a couple of old lags like you and me to help him? Do you think we two are uniquely qualified? You can be sure he’s met far more qualified specialists in his time. Don’t you reckon?’

‘I don’t doubt it.’

‘And you shouldn’t. There’s just no one left he can trust. Kurochkin has managed to play the swine for everyone. For some he’s just been a little piglet, for others a whopping great hog. Everyone except you and me, although… You, too, but you still don’t seem to realize.’

‘Leave it. If he were that much of a swine his true colors would have shown by now. I’d know if he’d done anything.’

‘Brace yourself, then.’ Sinevusov laughed softly. ‘You’re about to witness a showing of the colors, as they say. Anyway, it’s an old story that has nothing to do with what’s happening now—or maybe just a bit…’ He laughed again.

‘Go ahead, then.’ I shrugged. ‘Let your skeleton out of the closet and into the light of day.’

‘You can call it a skeleton if you like, although I prefer something more neutral such as the history of an acquaintance, yours and mine.’

Sinevusov paused and stole a glance at me. I’d caught the hint. I’d understood him, and for a moment it took my breath away. It was impossible.

‘Don’t talk crap, Sinevusov. Kurochkin was detained for two months just like me. Just like all of us. We were both expelled from university, and we were both sent into the army—him, too. Can’t you come up with a better story than that? Do you really think I’m that stupid? I’m genuinely insulted.’

‘He turned out to be a hulking fat boar of a swine.’ He nodded contentedly. ‘In fact it’s incredible that he didn’t manage to ruin things for you, Davidov. How have you ever managed to preserve your almost virgin purity and your trust in an old student friendship? You might have learned by now…’

‘That’s what I thought. You don’t have any facts.’

‘Facts, facts… Do you really need to see papers, eh? I don’t carry them around with me, and I wasn’t expecting to have this conversation, as I’m sure you can appreciate. But put your brain in gear, Davidov, and perhaps you can figure it out without documents. Let’s begin with the fall-out. Kurochkin was the only one of you who managed to get back into university. And not just into a radiophysics department but a law department, after all that had happened… Moving on to your two years in the army. Those were two lost years for you but not for Kurochkin. He was working on his career. Can’t you see? Even then. Step one: inform on a group of apolitical students who were quantitatively simulating the partition of the Soviet Union; step two: the army; step three: a law degree. He maintained contact with the KGB at all times. So, moving on… Although it’s true that it had nothing to do with you personally. Incidentally, Davidov, have you ever played Civilization?’

‘No, I’m not interested.’

‘I suppose you had your fill when you were younger. I ask because your game was more fun to play. On the computer I’m building civilizations at 300-percent settings. Can you believe it? It draws you in, but it’s not the same. You had real people playing. Psychology. A battle of minds…’

‘Why did you let us go then if we were quantitatively simulating?’

‘The winds were changing.’

‘I thought we’d already talked about the weather.’

‘I’m not talking about the weather. The first two or three weeks we were working you in the usual way when we got a command to slow down. So we slowed down. A week passed, then two, then three, then a month—how long could we keep it up? Then we got another command—let the pups go. And we let you go.’

‘It would seem Kurochkin’s efforts were in vain.’

‘What’s he got to do with it? He did his bit, there’s no question about that. But the situation changed. You just got lucky.’

We had got as far as the History Museum. The rain intensified. Sinevusov’s terrier marked a pagan temple unearthed by the archaeologist Vikenty Khvoika more than a hundred years before and sat down for a good scratch. Spray flew from his withers in a wide arc.

‘Step back,’ said Sinevusov, taking me by the elbow. ‘He’s about to shake himself.’

‘Okay,’ I said without comprehension. ‘Let’s say Kurochkin was responsible for what happened. But the four of us were the only ones affected. We were the only ones who even knew about it. So who’s responsible for the letter? And the nienty million he can’t account for?’

‘Ah,’ laughed Sinevusov, ‘yes, the letter about the ninety million. It had to be edited somewhat. No, not me, I didn’t tamper with it.’ He waved and caught my eye. ‘I only gave advice, although you can hardly call it advice. I contributed one short sentence to make it sound more plausible.’

‘Yes,’ I guessed. ‘The YT at the bottom of the page. Your turn.’

‘He was on edge because of the ultimatum, so I played along a little. I “stole the letter from his care and left a different letter there” as Pushkin once wrote.’

‘Then the ultimatum was your work.’

‘No.’

‘Go ahead and lie if you want to. But why deny it when you’ve already told me everything? You’re the only one who could have done it.’

‘Why lie when all I have to do is keep quiet?’

‘Then what are you telling me for?’

‘I think you have a right to know what really happened. And I always thought you were a decent person.’

His compliments were lost on me. I didn’t trust him.

‘But,’ he went on, ‘am I right to think that you still don’t know who sent the ultimatum?’

‘There’s no one but you,’ I repeated stubbornly.

‘I see. You don’t know. I’m asking not because it’s important or might change anything but because there’s still one final link missing.’

‘You want closure?’

‘Of course I do.’

Night was rolling in upon the city, and the rain had begun to pour down more heavily. I watched Castle Hill receding into darkness—and I was back there, one bright day in May. I saw Kurochkin and myself. Only the night before we’d been released from Volodymyr Street, he had left Ryskalov; I, Sinevusov. We’d been victors then, that was obvious, and now Sinevusov was telling me there had been no victory. I gave him a quick glance. He, too, was looking at Castle Hill, but I couldn’t begin to imagine what he was thinking. A large drop of rain quivered on his temple and trickled down his cheek. He used to sweat oil. Oil and venom. His deepest, innermost thoughts surfaced as oil and venom. But now it was water. Nothing but rainwater.

The rain poured down, washing away the remnants of colors we’d once used to paint over this dismal landscape. The water was ruthless and stubborn in its insistence on absolute truth.

Suddenly I recalled my previous meeting with Sinevusov.

‘Do you remember the café last week in Podol? There was this bloke you were trying to recruit.’

‘I wasn’t trying to recruit him. I’ll bet he was English.’

‘So you remember. I wanted to ask what you said to him after I left.’

‘So you noticed, eh? That’s okay. It wasn’t anything major. I said we’d blown his cover a long time ago—and I said you were the Russian FSB colonel charged with liquidating him.’

‘Fantastic. What did you do that for?’

‘So he’d step more lively. He was acting so lethargic it irritated me just looking at him.

‘Well, of course, in that case…’

‘We should be getting home,’ said Sinevusov and whistled to his dog. ‘How can I get in touch with you? Have you got an e-mail address?’

‘Why don’t you write it down. Have you got a pen?’

‘Just tell me—I’ll remember.’

‘It’s Istemi at—’

‘Is what?’

‘You’d better write it down. I’ll spell it. I-S-T-E—’

‘Ah, I get it.’ Sinevusov laughed. ‘Istemi, of course… What was it you called yourself? The Khan of the Zaporozhian Encampment?

I remember now. That’s just what I needed to learn it by. But let me know if you find out who sent the ultimatum.’

‘I will.’

‘I’m easy to find. I go for a walk every evening.’ He gave me a slight wave goodbye.

Sinevusov and his mournful terrier went off towards Volodymyr Street, and I continued to stand there, getting soaked and studying the views of nightime Kiev. It was time for me to go, too.

When I’d left home that morning to spend a couple of hours wandering undisturbed around the city, I could not have imagined where, when and with whom I would finish my walk. It wouldn’t be hard to ascribe some sort of mystical or symbolic meaning to what happened—if you wanted to. But I didn’t want to. Once upon a time we had brought forth shadows, and those shadows ended up changing our lives—it was our own fault, no one else’s. To this day those shadows had not dissipated. They were still Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Karl XX, President of the Slovenorussian Federation Stefan Betancourt, President of the United Islamic Caliphates Caliph Al-Ali, Lama of Mongolia Undur Gegen, Istemi Khan of the Khanate of Zaporozhye and Major Sinevusov of the Committee for State Security. And although their hold on us was not what it used to be—it had grown weaker over the years and would grow weaker still—it would never completely leave us. The way the memory of one hot day in May 1984 spent by Kurochkin and me on Castle Hill would never leave me. It was the day we had won. If anyone should ask me about the happiest day of my life, I know what my answer will always be.

I was standing opposite Castle Hill, but the hill was already disappearing into night—I could make out only its silhouette—and beyond the hill, beyond Podol, in the Kurenyovka district, was the hospital where Reingarten was kept, where I hadn’t gone to see him. On that May day, he also believed we had won.

My mobile was vibrating in my jacket pocket.

‘Have you really been sleeping all day?’ Vera asked.

‘No, I didn’t sleep in.’

‘Then why didn’t you call?’

‘I thought you were sleeping. I didn’t want to wake you.’

‘Yes, I was sleeping,’ she said contentedly. ‘Until lunch. But now I’ve caught up. And do you know what I did when I woke up?’

‘What did you do?’

‘I called Natasha née Belokrinitskaya.’

‘What for?’ I was surprised.

‘Just because. To make sure her number hadn’t changed. After all, I said I’d give it to you.’

‘Thanks. Although I don’t think I’ll have any use for it now. How is she?’

‘She has no complaints. She remembers you, and the others, too. And you know what else she said? That she was the one who sent that letter to Kurochkin and the rest of you. With the ultimatum.’

‘Natasha? But why?’ I looked, but Sinevusov had already vanished into the darkness. I had no intention of telling him anyway.

‘No special reason. She was just having a bit of fun. She wanted to play a joke on you all.’

‘Really?’ I asked stupidly. ‘A joke? It was one hell of a prank.’

‘She was going through some old papers a few months ago and came across the draft ultimatum. It made her think about old times, lost youth and all that, so she typed up the text. And when she came to the date, well, exactly twenty years had passed, so she wrote an e-mail, sent it to Kurochkin and copied it to the rest of you.’

‘Astonishing.’ I shook my head, great big drops of water flying off of me just like Sinevusov’s dog. ‘It’s the most brilliant practical joke I’ve ever heard of.’

‘I told her that. I said that over here people had taken her joke very seriously and that Kurochkin had jumped ship altogether and hightailed it to the Holy Land. To atone for his sins. Isn’t that right?’

‘That’s it exactly. You’ve captured the nuances very well.’

‘Don’t tease. So where are you?’

I looked at the empty rain-filled streets of the neighborhood.

‘The center, Vera. I’m in the center without a car. Are you at home?’

‘Yes, at home.’

‘Never mind, I’ll think of something.’

‘Have a think,’ said Vera easily. ‘I’m sure you’ll think of something.’

Our talk was long overdue. We should have spoken before all the madness in the hours before his departure when he’d started sending me terse e-mails asking me to get in touch urgently. Or later, after I’d talked to Sinevusov, and Kurochkin had already gone and stopped making demands. There had been plenty of time to dial his number, but still I put it off.

Ten days after our return from Crimea Vera left as planned to spend a year in Germany. I’d already received her first letters. After the buzz of life in Kiev, so bright and busy, she was finding it hard to get used to the quiet, deliberate, unhurried way of life in Lindau—twenty minutes from Hettingen, an hour from Hanover and two hours from Frankfurt.

Even before Vera left an e-mail had arrived from Natasha. I opened it with a superstitious shudder that surprised me. This Hotmail address was all too familiar. It was from this address that the letter signed by Emperor Karl had come on 9 March. It was difficult for me to read it; I’m sure it was no easier to write it.

‘I could hardly believe that what I’d thought was such a harmless little joke could set such events into motion,’ she wrote.

‘You know, Alex,’ Natasha went on, and I really felt that I could hear her voice,

Kurochkin rang. In the morning the phone began tinkling delicately. I picked up the receiver and he said, ‘Hi, Alex, how goes it? Kurochkin here.’

‘Hi, Kurochkin. Every day I’ve been meaning to call you…’

‘How could you? I’ve changed my numbers. I’ve changed everything—from my wife to my country. Just joking. A new and wonderful life is just waiting.’

‘Why change everything? What with your parliamentary immunity—’

‘Davidov, don’t start. I’ve already thought, changed my mind and changed my mind again. Of course, I could have stood my ground and fought back, I could have pulled rank, but what for? They would have crushed me all the same. And it would have been more painful. For me and everyone around me, including you. In short, I’m okay now. What about you? I looked for you before I left. I wanted to tell you it was all off—the searches, investigations, all those letters, ultimatums—it’s a false trail, a deception. I wanted to tell you to lie low for a while until everything got back to normal, to go away somewhere. So, then, how are you doing? What have you been up to?’

‘Well, I’m not selling water any more if that’s what you want to know.’

Kurochkin understood. ‘So Malkin gave you the sack, did he? You should have expected as much. It’s not such a bad thing—it’s even good. You’re a free man now. We have something in common to commiserate over… Have you had any other problems?’

‘Nothing new.’

‘So everything’s all right, then? Hey, what do you mean by “new”?’

‘I saw Sinevusov a few days ago. He said that back in ’84 you were the one who reported us to Volodymyr Street.’

‘Ah, yes. It was me,’ he confirmed tersely.

‘So just what can the two of us have in common, Kurochkin?’ I asked after a short pause.

‘Alex, hang on. I’ve been wanting to tell you everything for a long time. It was me, yes, but what can I do about it now? Forgive me. I was an idiot, a boy. I didn’t understand the gravity of what I was doing. I didn’t understand what it was going to cost. And then… well, it all went wrong. One thing on top of another. It’s weighed on me all my life, and I didn’t know how to tell you. And now you can see for yourself how it’s ended.’

‘Kanyuka is complaining about you,’ I went on. ‘He says you ruined him.’

‘You don’t hit a man when he’s already down, do you? It was Kanyuka’s own fault. He shouldn’t have been so greedy. I felt no obligation towards him, but you… I swear to you, I always meant to… Back then I planned to give everyone a hand and make up for what I’d done. You don’t know it, but I even went to Nedremailo to get the file he’d taken from Sashka Korostishevski.’

‘I do know.’

‘Then you know I’m not lying. But he wouldn’t give it to me. That’s when I realized Nedremailo was going to turn us in.’

‘And you wanted to get a jump on him.’ I laughed.

‘At the very least so I could pave the way and make it a little easier on everyone.’

‘Yes, of course. By the way, I found out who sent you the ultimatum.’

‘What does it matter now? What? Really? It wasn’t one of Sinevusov’s cronies? Then who was it?’

‘Guess.’ I suddenly felt unbearably hot. I could hardly breathe. One bead of sweat trickled swiftly from temple to chin, followed by another. ‘You ought to remember this person well.’

‘What? Who?’ Kurochkin stammered helplessly. ‘Who was it?’

I almost said, ‘Sashka Korostishevski has come back, and he wants to see you. He wants to finish the game. And the rest of the guys wouldn’t mind seeing you either.’

I should have said it. I really should. Instead I drew a deep breath and told him about the e-mail from Belokrinitskaya.

‘That is absolutely mad,’ he was saying a minute later, gasping from laugher. ‘I mean, really? Belokrinitskaya? That has got to be the funniest thing I’ve heard in my life. Just think. Classy, huh? Who’d have thought?’

I was no longer listening. I put the receiver down and rubbed my face, trying to wipe away the sweat. But my palms just slid across my cheeks, spreading oil and venom.