Pig: A Thriller (28 page)

“I think I know how to find him,” Kolya said.
             
“Who?” Snow asked.

“The intruder. The
mudak
. The bastard who conked me on the head. You’re not saying anything,” Kolya complained.

“No, I’m not,” confirmed Snow. “I’m sorry you got hit on the head. But you know what? It’s finished. Give it up. Just let it go.”

“You don’t care,” Kolya accused. “What did you do when Pig came in to our office and tried to cheat those documents out of us. Nothing! That’s what you did.”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“How about getting angry? Yelling at the guy? Threatening to expose him?”

“I wasn’t angry.”

“I know. That’s the problem. You should have been. You’ve got to learn to let yourself feel. Is there anything you care about?” demanded Kolya. “Anything that would get your ass off your cot and the vodka bottle from between your lips?”

“Not Pig’s movie choices, that’s for sure. Seriously?” asked Snow bluntly. “No, there’s nothing I care about. I couldn’t give a shit. Look, my goals are simple: to be left alone, to let me make enough money to retire in the Canadian wilderness far away from everyone; enough to keep me in booze and antidepressants; enough for a good movie or book every now and then.  So just leave it -- and me -- alone. Alright? They pay me to file their paper so I do it. What happens to it afterwards? I don’t give a shit.”

             
That night, Kolya was back in Document Control alone. He’d eaten, made sure everyone in the canteen heard he was headed back to his room, then snuck in the office and hunkered down behind the front counter with his pillow, a mattress, and a ring of
kielbasa
to keep him company.

             
Like all Soviet citizens, Kolya had been brought up to not only believe but viscerally feel  the following: (1) the USSR was a unique nation. Lenin created a utopian society, the first in human history to not only promise but deliver social justice, work, security, and prosperity for all (2) it was only due to the inspired leadership of the Communist Party that the USSR  accomplished this (3) so threatened by this were the other nations that the USSR has had to fight two world  wars to defend itself against capitalistic attacks (4) final victory was certain;  history was on its side due to the internal contradictions of capitalism (5) history was made by material forces at work in the world. Neither God nor providence affected the affairs of man.

             
God. Piffle. Superstitious nonsense, as far as Kolya was concerned. Communism had no room for religion because it was the religion. It had a vision of utopia, a code of behaviour for reaching the promised land, a  supreme authority, even a supposed date for redemption, just like the Jehovah Witnesses. Bad enough that people opiated themselves with religion; worse, in Kolya’s opinion, was that when men stopped believing in God, it wasn't that they then believed in nothing, it was that they started to believe in everything. Sure, Brezhnev and Gorbachev might have led the Soviet people like rabbits down a blind alley. That didn’t mean the country hadn’t been going the right direction, just that nincompoops like Yeltsin didn’t have a fucking compass. Listening to Yeltsin reminded him of guys like Rush Limbaugh, who somehow got away with advocating virginity and motherhood at the same time. Yeltsin's plans made just as much sense.

             
The bastards could steal his country and ridicule the purity of his ideology, but he’d be damned if they made a mockery of what was left of his life. Document control only meant something if the security and integrity of the documents could be guaranteed. He broke a piece off the garlic sausage and settled in for the night. They might be able to take his ideals; they weren’t going to take his precious bits of paper.

“You told me you had things under control.”

Post-Communist Russia had come to be dominated by three dominant groups: the band of oligarchs favoured by Yeltsin who came to control the vast wealth created from privatized state businesses, technocrats who ran certain key branches of the Russian government, and the
siloviki
, former security officers who  now ran Russia. The term literally means “people of force,” a blanket term to describe the network of former and current state-security officers with personal ties to the Soviet-era KGB and its successor agencies. Virtually all key positions in present-day Russia were now controlled by these three, bringing Russia to “managed” democracy and state capitalism.

Gorbachev had come into power thinking he’d be able to cleanse and purify the Communist system from within. Instead, he became like Martin Luther and ended up changing the Soviet Union entirely, creating a completely different entity. The Soviet Union went from superpower to basket case overnight. People lost their life’s savings not once, but several times in the course of just a few years, lurching from the ideology of Lenin to Mussolini in a decade, each group in-between looting and abandoning the country in the process.

Pig had ridden to his current position as Camp Boss on the coat tails of Yeltsin’s now-disgraced oligarchs. The
siloviki
who Putin brought in to replace them running the country came to a tacit agreement with them: they could keep their stolen riches so long as the oligarchs passed on some of the money and stayed out of politics. Any of the oligarchs who resisted  -- Berezhovsky, Khodorovsky,  – were either arrested or forced out of the country, including Pig’s former sponsor in Noyabrsk.

Not all
siloviki
were created equal. There were platinum-grade
siloviki
like
Sergei Bogdanchikov, president of state-owned oil giant Rosneft,
then there were the tin pot-grade level ones like Bykov, whom Pig was meeting now. Bykov made his living off the scraps left behind in the bottom of the trough.

“These are not Nenet deer herders,” Bykov continued. “We can’t buy them off with a few free tools or scare them away by conducting military exercises nearby.” The oil company had actually done that in order to gain access to their traditional native lands.

“They are under control,” insisted Pig. “Anyway, we don’t need much longer. Another few weeks at most. A month, maybe two.”

“Which? Weeks or months?”

“It’s not dependent on time; it’s dependent on quantity.”

“Oh, so now you’re saying time doesn’t exist?”

“No, I’m saying we’re close to getting enough.”

“Even with Musil gone?”

“Even with Musil gone. Four people are already lined up to replace him.”

“Four good people?”

“Good enough.”

“They know that that line ends up at the morgue?”

Pig shrugged. He’d once seen a famous Russian painting called
The Sleigh Ride
of a
troika
driver throwing a terrified girl to a wolf pack chasing the sled. Pig was like that driver. As soon as someone got close to what he was doing, his intention was to throw someone off the sled to distract the wolves. “Not our concern. Nobody lives forever. They were all going to die anyway. From vodka. At least this bought some time in a life worth living. When you chop wood, sparrows fly. Some of them get caught under the axe.”

             
“What were you?”

             
Ask Bykov or Pig that question about their former professions before Communism fell and the answer would have been “thug.”

Kolya spent the entire night curled up under the Documents Control counter with his ring of garlic sausage and a flask of raspberry-jam-spiked tea waiting for something to happen.

             
Other than determining how many wads of old chewing gum had been stuck up under the counter, nothing did.