Babylon

BLACK LABEL: THE TIME TO CASTLE

Tatarsky reached for his notebook - an idea for another poster had suddenly occurred to him.

He wrote down: ‘A view from inside a car. The president’s sullen face with the window behind it. Outside in the street - poor old women, street urchins, bandaged soldiers, etc. Inscription in large letters at the top of the poster: "How low can we go?" In tiny print at the very bottom: "As low as 2.9 per cent intro. Visa Next."‘

There was a knock at the door. Tatarsky turned round and froze. So many meetings with old acquaintances in the same day seemed rather unlikely - into the office came Malyuta, the anti-Semite copywriter he’d worked with in Khanin’s agency. He was dressed in a Turkish-made Russian folk shirt with a soldier’s belt supporting an entire array of office equipment: a mobile phone, a pager, a Zippo lighter in a leather case and an awl in a narrow black scabbard.

‘Malyuta! What are you doing here?’

Malyuta, however, gave no sign of being surprised.

‘I write the image menu for the whole cabal,’ he replied. ‘Russian style. Have you ever heard of pelmeni with kapusta? Or kvass with khrenok? Those are my hits. And I work in the oral displacement department on half-pay. Are you in dirt?’

Tatarsky didn’t answer.

‘You know each other?’ Morkovin asked with curiosity. ‘Yes, of course, you worked together at Khanin’s place. So you shouldn’t have any problems working together.’

‘I prefer working alone.’ Malyuta said drily. ‘What d’you want done?’

‘Azadovsky wants you to finish up a project. With Berezovsky and Raduev. Don’t touch Raduev, but you need to boost Berezovsky up a bit. I’ll call you this evening and give you a few instructions. Will you do it?’

‘Berezovsky?’ Malyuta asked. ‘And how. When d’you need it?’

‘Yesterday, as always.’

‘Where’s the draft?’

Morkovin looked at Tatarsky, who shrugged and handed Malyuta the file with the printout of the scenario.

‘Don’t you want to talk with the author?’ Morkovin asked. ‘So he can put you in the picture?’

‘I’ll figure it out for myself from the text. It’ll be ready tomorrow at ten.’

‘OK, you know best.’

When Malyuta left the room, Morkovin said: ‘He doesn’t like you much.’

‘Nor I him,’ said Tatarsky. ‘We had an argument once about geopolitics. Listen, who’s going to change that bit about the television-drilling towers?’

‘Damn, I forgot. A good job you reminded me - I’ll explain it to him this evening. And you’d better make peace with him. You know how bad our frequency problem is right now, but Azadovsky’s still allowed him one 3-D general. To liven up the news. He’s a guy with a future. No one can tell how the market will shift tomorrow. Maybe he’ll be head of department instead of me, and then…’

Morkovin didn’t finish his train of thought. The door swung open and Azadovsky burst into the room. Behind him came two of the guards with Scorpions on their shoulders. Azadovsky’s face was white with fury and he was clenching and unclenching his fists with such force that Tatarsky was reminded of the talons of the eagle from the greetings card. Tatarsky had never seen him like this.

‘Who edited Lebed the last time?’

‘Semyon Velin, as usual,’ Morkovin replied in fright. ‘Why, what’s happened?’

Azadovsky turned towards the young guy with the ponytail.

‘You?’ he asked. ‘Did you do this?’

‘What?’ asked Velin.

‘Did you change Lebed’s cigarettes? From Camel to Gitanes?’

‘Yes I did,’ said Velin. ‘What of it? I just thought it would be better stylistically. After we rendered him together with Alain Delon.’

‘Take him away,’ Azadovsky commanded.

‘Wait, wait,’ said Velin, thrusting his hands out in front of him in fear. ‘I’ll explain everything…’ But the guards were already dragging him out into the corridor.

Azadovsky turned to face Morkovin and stared intensely at him for several seconds.

‘I knew nothing about it.’ said Morkovin, ‘I swear.’

"Then who is supposed to know about it? Me? D’you know where I just got a call from? J. R. Reynolds Tobacco - who paid us for Lebed’s Camels two years in advance. You know what they said? They’re going to get their congressman to drop us fifty megahertz; and they’ll drop us another fifty if Lebed goes on air next time with Gitanes again. I don’t know how much this asshole was raking in from black PR, but we stand to lose a lot, an awful rucking lot. Do we want to ride into the twenty-first fucking century on a hundred megahertz? When’s the next broadcast with Lebed?’

‘Tomorrow. An interview on the Russian Idea. It’s all rendered already.’

‘Have you watched the material?’

Morkovin clutched his head in his hands. ‘I have,’ he replied. ‘Oh, God… That’s right. He’s got Gitanes. I noticed it, but I thought it must have been approved upstairs. You know I don’t decide these things. I couldn’t imagine.’

‘Where are his cigarettes? On the table?’

‘If only! He waves the pack around all through the interview.’

‘Can we undo?’

‘Not the whole thing.’

‘Change the design on the pack then?’

‘Not that either. Gitanes are a different size; and the pack’s in shot all the time.’

‘So what are we going to do?’

Azadovsky’s gaze came to rest on Tatarsky, as though he’d only just noticed him there. Tatarsky cleared his throat.

‘Perhaps,’ he said timidly, we could put in a patch with a pack of Camel on the table? That’s quite simple.’

‘And then what? Have him waving one pack around in the air and the other one lying in front of him? You’re raving.’

‘And we put the arm in plaster,’ Tatarsky went on, giving way to a sudden wave of inspiration. ‘So we get rid of the pack.’

‘In plaster?’ Azadovsky repeated thoughtfully. ‘But what’ll we say?’

‘An assassination attempt,’ said Tatarsky.

‘You mean they shot him in the arm?’

‘No,’ said Tatarsky, ‘they tried to blow him up in his car.’

‘And he’s not going to say anything about the attempt to kill him in the interview?’ Morkovin asked.

Azadovsky thought for a moment. ‘That’s actually OK. Imperturbable -’ he waved his fist in the air - ‘never even said a word. A real soldier. We’ll put the attack out in the news. And we won’t just patch in a pack of Camel on the table, we’ll patch in a whole block. Let the bastards choke on that.’

‘What’ll we say in the news?’

‘As little as possible. Clues pointing to Chechens, the Islamic factor, investigations proceeding and so forth. What car does Lebed’s legend say he drives? An old Mercedes? Get a film crew sent out into the country straightaway, find an old Mercedes, blow it up and film it. It’s got to be on the air by ten. Say the general left immediately to get on with his work and he’s keeping up with his schedule. Yes, and have them find a fez at the site of the crime, like the one Raduev’s going to have. Is the idea clear?’

‘Brilliant,’ said Morkovin. ‘It really is brilliant.’

Azadovsky gave a crooked smile that was more like a nervous twitch.

‘But where’ll we get an old Mercedes?’ asked Morkovin. ‘All ours are new.’

‘There’s someone here who drives one,’ said Azadovsky. ‘I’ve seen it in the parking lot.’

Morkovin looked up at Tatarsky.

‘But… But…’ Tatarsky mumbled, but Morkovin just shook his head.

‘No,’ he said, ‘forget it. Give me the keys.’

Tatarsky took his car keys out of his pocket and submissively placed them in Morkovin’s open hand.

‘The seat-covers are new,’ he said piteously; ‘maybe I could take them off?’

‘Are you rucking crazy?’ Azadovsky exploded. ‘D’you want them to drop us to fifty megahertz so we have to dismiss the government and disband the Duma again? Bloody seat-covers! Use your head!’

The telephone rang in his pocket.

"Allo.’ he said, raising it to his ear. ‘What? I’ll tell you what to do with him. There’s a camera crew going out into the country straightaway - to film a bombed car. Take that arse-hole, put him in the driver’s seat and blow him up. Make sure there’s blood and scraps of flesh, and you film it all. It’ll be a lesson for the rest of them, with their black PR… What? You tell him there isn’t anything in the world more important than what’s about to happen to him. He shouldn’t let himself be distracted by minor details. And he shouldn’t think he can tell me anything I don’t already know.’

Azadovsky folded up his phone and tossed it into his pocket, sighed several times and clutched at his heart.

‘It hurts,’ he complained. ‘Do you bastards really want me to have a heart attack at thirty? Seems to me I’m the only one in this committee who’s not on the take. Everybody back to work on the double. I’m going to phone the States. We might just get away with it.’

When Azadovsky left the room, Morkovin looked meaningfully into Tatarsky’s eyes, tugged a small tin box out of his pocket and tipped out a pile of white powder on the desk.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘be my guest.’

When the procedure was completed, Morkovin moistened his finger, picked up the white grains left on the table and licked them off with his tongue.

‘You were asking’, he said, ‘how things could be this way, what everything’s based on, who it’s all controlled by. I tell you, all you need to think about here is to cover your own ass and get your job done. There’s no time left for any other thoughts. And by the way, there’s something you’d better do: put the money into your pockets and flush the envelopes down the John. Straightaway. Just in case. The toilet’s down the corridor on the left…’

Tatarsky locked himself in the cubicle and distributed the wads of banknotes around his pockets - he’d never seen such a load of money at one time before. He tore the envelopes into small pieces and threw the scraps into the toilet bowl. A folded note fell out of one of the envelopes - Tatarsky caught it in mid-air and read it:

Hi, guys! Thanks a lot for sometimes allowing me to live a parallel life. Without that the real one would be so disgusting! Good luck in business, B. Berezovsky.

The text was printed on a laser printer, and the signature was a facsimile. ‘Morkovin playing the joker again,’ thought Tatarsky. ‘Or maybe it’s not Morkovin…’

He crossed himself, pinched his thigh really hard and flushed the toilet.