The Senility of Vladimir P (3 page)

‘Well, more metro . . .' Kolyakov shook his head again. ‘We'd need foreign partners. You know what they're like, Vladimir Vladi­mirovich. They have laws in their countries about what they can and can't do – who they can and can't give to, I mean. They don't really understand how things are done. This is much better for us. Nice and simple. Let's build a road! Five years, twenty billion dollars – we're finished.'

‘Well, this doesn't concern the president of the federation,' said Vladimir. ‘It's an issue for the mayor of Moscow.'

‘Lebedev wants it.'

Vladimir smiled slightly. ‘How much are you giving him?'

‘Ten percent.'

‘So? If he's happy, you'll do it.'

‘I also want you to be happy, Vova.'

Vladimir watched the other man. There were two reasons he liked Kolyakov. First, he was only a businessman. All he wanted to do was make money, and when he had made it, to make more. He had zero political interest or aspiration, unlike others who, as they got wealthier, thought their money gave them the right to some kind of say in how the country should be run, and whom Vladimir had had to deal with. And second, he understood the vertical of power, which Vladimir demanded should be respected. Even though this proposal was something that in principle would be decided at the level of the Moscow city administration, Kolyakov knew that in Russia all power started in the Kremlin, with one man, so he made sure to come to Vladimir as well, as he always did.

Kolyakov cleared his throat. ‘Twenty percent for you, Vova. Tell me what company to put it through, and I'll do it.'

‘That's generous.'

Kolyakov shrugged. ‘Who gets rich from making other people poor? Share our fortune with the world, isn't that what the priests say? And the people of Moscow will have a wonderful new road.'

‘Which they desperately need.'

The billionaire laughed. ‘The process will be official, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Lebedev's people will write a public tender. It will be a very fastidious process, all above board.'

Vladimir raised an eyebrow.

Kolyakov laughed again.

But Vladimir didn't crack a smile. After a moment, the expression on Kolyakov's heavy face became confused, as if he was wondering whether his offer to relieve the state of twenty billion dollars to build a road that would condemn Moscow to years of traffic misery, for twice the price it should have cost, had somehow missed the mark. Vladimir enjoyed the spectacle, seeing the panic he could sow with a mere twitch of his eyebrow.

He let his gaze wander to the watch that was on the billionaire's wrist. You didn't see a Vacheron Tour de l'Ile every day, even on the wrists of the people who came to see him.

Kolyakov realised where he was looking. He glanced up at Vladimir questioningly, then began to unfasten the watch.

Vladimir waved a hand dismissively. ‘What are you doing, Dima? I was just admiring it. A Tour de l'Ile, right? I've got two myself.'

The billionaire kept his fingers on the clasp, still unsure if he was serious.

‘Dmitry Viktorovich, please! It's your watch, not mine.'

‘Everything I have is because of you, Vladimir Vladimirovich.'

Vladimir laughed, not in such a way as to deny the remark, but in acknowledgement of it.

‘Build your road,' said Vladimir. ‘Talk to Monarov about the arrangements.'

The billionaire smiled and nodded gratefully. Sometimes, thought Vladimir, the businessman's obsequiousness was sickening, just like a dog. For an instant, he imagined him as a monstrous chimera with the body of a lapdog and a heavy-jowled Kolyakov-face looking up at him, desperately seeking a sign of affection.

Vladimir wondered whether he should have taken the Tour de l'Ile, but in some ways, to show that you could take something but that you deigned not to, was even better. Besides, in the next day or two, Vladimir knew, a packet would arrive for him.

Suddenly Vladimir was aware of a nauseating, fetid odour. He sniffed. ‘Do you smell anything?'

Kolyakov sniffed as well.

‘It's the Chechen,' said Vladimir. ‘The fucking Chechen never leaves me alone.'

‘There's a Chechen here?' asked the billionaire.

‘Can't you smell him?'

Kolyakov's eyes narrowed. ‘I think . . . I'm not sure . . .'

‘Smell! Come on! Try! That's him. It's the Chechen.'

Vladimir had first seen the Chechen on a visit to Grozny early in the war that he had started, while inspecting an area of the city that had recently been taken back from the rebels. The Chechen's head protruded from a reeking shed or outhouse or shack of some kind behind a house that had been almost totally destroyed. Vladimir couldn't see whether it was still attached to a body. From the look of it, the head must have been there for a few days. The lips were retracted from its grinning yellow teeth, and the tongue emerging from the mouth was swollen and black, like a gigantic slug crawling out of his throat.

‘He never says anything,' said Vladimir. ‘Just hangs around. You know, I told the whole world once we killed him in a toilet. Just to see what they would say, the western press. Everyone went crazy. One dead Chechen in a shithouse and they're up in arms. If only they knew what else we did!'

Vladimir noticed Kolyakov shifting uncomfortably. He was as ruthless as anyone in business, but when it came to things of flesh and blood, he was squeamish. Vladimir had no real respect for him, but he was a goose who knew how to lay golden eggs, and knew how many he could keep and how many to give away. Kolyakov was said to be worth eight billion dollars. Good luck to him. Vladimir himself had no idea how much he was worth, but it was many times as much.

‘Usually he comes at night,' said Vladimir, enjoying the spectacle of the billionaire squirming. ‘That's when I see him.'

‘What does he do?'

‘What do you think he does?'

Kolyakov stared at him. ‘I don't know,' he whispered.

‘I'd cut his head off, but I think someone already did that. At least he's dead, huh?' Vladimir laughed. ‘The only good Chechen . . .'

The billionaire, who had a Chechen grandmother, said nothing.

‘Look!' said Vladimir, ‘it's Monarov.'

‘Sheremetev,' said Sheremetev.

‘Monarov, Dima has an arrangement to tell you about. Deal with it in the usual way, huh?'

‘It's Sheremetev, Vladimir Vladimirovich,' said Sheremetev again, unsurprised by the fact that Vladimir was addressing him as someone else. For much of the time, Vladimir would engage in conversations with chairs and benches on which, presumably, he believed that people were sitting, and if Sheremetev came in while the conversation was in full swing he often took him for someone out of his past.

Vladimir looked at him in confusion.

‘It's alright, Vladimir Vladimirovich. It's almost time for lunch. You'll enjoy it. The chef's made chicken in the Georgian style for you.'

A smile came over Vladimir's face. He rubbed his hands enthusiastically. ‘Georgian chicken! Is it ready?'

The chef at the
dacha, Viktor Alexandrovich Stepanin, was a barrel-chested man with a seemingly permanent stubble. Stepanin was a creature made by nature and perfected by nurture for the kitchen – classically trained, as he often reminded people – totally entranced and enraptured by cooking, ugly, crude, loud and fractious, and yet despite all those qualities – or perhaps because of them – surprisingly attractive to women. He was having an affair with one of the maids, and she wasn't the first one who had found her way to his bed.

Stepanin had developed a habit of chewing the fat with Sherem­etev at the end of the day. Normally, Sheremetev gave Vladimir dinner at around eight and settled him in bed at nine-thirty, after which he would come downstairs for his own meal. By then, the rest of the inhabitants of the dacha had usually eaten and Stepanin would make sure there was something set aside for Sheremetev. The staff dining room with its long green formica table would be otherwise deserted, and the cook would march in through the ­connecting door from the kitchen as Sheremetev ate, apron tied at his waist, dishcloth over his shoulder, a bottle of vodka in one hand and a plate of chillied pork scratchings in the other, and pull up a chair. At that time of the evening, he would have only a set of snacks still to prepare for the security shift that would be working overnight. For half an hour he would sit and talk and drink a glass of vodka and chew on the scratchings, occasionally getting up to throw open the door and yell at his assistants and potwashers who were cleaning up inside.

Sheremetev couldn't help but like the big-hearted, voluble cook who wore his heart on his sleeve. Stepanin's great dream, as he had told Sheremetev countless times, was to open his own restaurant in Moscow. Russian Fusion! Minimalist décor! Sheremetev didn't know how cooking here at the dacha was going to help him do that, since the pay, to judge by his own salary, was nothing special. He also didn't know how Stepanin – classically trained, after all – got much satisfaction from cooking for the dacha staff, who probably had never in their lives eaten at the type of establishment he dreamed of opening and were not – Sheremetev included, he would readily admit – the most discerning in the culinary arts. Yet somehow the cook seemed certain that he would one day realise his dream, and in the meantime he strode around his kitchen like a fuming colossus, berating his assistants and inventing startling recipes which, he assured Sheremetev, would feature on the menu of the fantasy restaurant that Sheremetev was equally certain would never come to be.

That night, the cook was eager to know about Vladimir's meeting with Lebedev, and most importantly, what had happened with the delicacies he had sweated so hard to produce.

‘Everyone loved the food,' Sheremetev assured him.

Stepanin beamed with pleasure. Then he sat forward, a glint in his eye. ‘But Constantin Mikhailovich, Kolya, what about him? What did he say?'

Sheremetev shrugged, as if it was beyond question that the new president had enjoyed the food. The truth was, Sheremetev hadn't seen the president touch a thing. As far as he could tell, the snacks had disappeared down the gullets of his security men and aides. The cameramen too, he noticed, had started grabbing them as they packed up to leave.

‘Well?' said Stepanin, eager for details. ‘What did he like? What about the
bulochki
? Huh? The ones with cheese. They're not the usual ones – a new invention! Russian Fusion: traditional, but with a twist. I put a bit of quince in, and just a tiny pinch of sumac – a hint, a sniff, that's all.
Lebedevki
, I'm going to call them, in honour of the new president. What do you think? Did he eat them? Did he like them? Come on, Kolya! For God's sake, tell me!'

‘I think . . . he liked everything.'

‘Everything? He tasted everything? But what did he
say
, Kolya?'

‘I can't, Vitya. It's . . . you know, when it's the president, they make you promise you can't repeat anything you hear.'

Stepanin's eyes widened. ‘Do they?'

Sheremetev nodded.

Stepanin sat back, his imagination overflowing with images of President Lebedev scoffing his miniature cheese
bulochki
with quince and sumac and praising them in compliments so rarefied, so exorbitant, so . . . presidential that they couldn't be repeated, not even between two people sitting in an otherwise deserted dining room. After a moment he looked up. ‘Seeing two presidents in one place! You're lucky, Kolya. That doesn't happen every day.'

‘Thank goodness,' murmured Sheremetev.

‘Why?'

‘They didn't exactly like each other.'

‘Really? What did they — no you can't tell me, can you?'

‘Let's just say a few choice words were exchanged.'

‘You mean words you wouldn't use with your mother?'

Sheremetev nodded.

The cook laughed.

‘Vladimir Vladimirovich gave back as good as he got.'

Stepanin roared. ‘What fuckery! Two presidents swearing?'

Sheremetev was laughing as well now. ‘Like Cossacks!'

Stepanin had tears in his eyes. He wiped at them and took a deep breath, trying to control his laughter. ‘Why not?' he said eventually. ‘They're just men, after all.'

The cook sat musing on it, shaking his head and grinning. Then he got up and opened the door to the kitchen to yell at one of the potwashers. He came back and poured himself another vodka. ‘You want one?' he said to Sheremetev.

Sheremetev shook his head.

‘You should drink more, Kolya.' Stepanin threw back his vodka. He put the glass down with a thud, grimacing, and sat quietly for a moment.

‘I had another chat with the new housekeeper today,' he said eventually, his tone more restrained, even sombre.

‘How was it?'

Stepanin shrugged. He picked up a pork scratching and threw it into his mouth. ‘Have you spoken with her?'

Sheremetev nodded.

‘What do you think of her?'

‘She seems okay.'

‘Some of them, you know, they start like that, and then the claws come out.'

Sheremetev, who had had little to do with housekeepers, couldn't say if Stepanin was right or wrong.

Stepanin rolled his empty vodka glass between his fingers, a troubled frown on his brow. Sheremetev wondered what was worrying him. The cook sighed, then looked up and grinned. ‘They really fought, did they, Lebedev and the boss?' He laughed again. ‘What fuckery!'

The dacha was thirty-five
kilometres southwest of Moscow, in a birch forest near the town of Odintsovo. Set in eight hectares of land, and built as a Soviet government retreat for senior party dignitaries, it had undergone extensive enlargement and modernisation over the previous twenty years. The original building had two storeys, the lower of which consisted of several reception, dining and sitting rooms as well as a kitchen and staff quarters, while upstairs were a number of bedroom suites. To this had been added an enlarged staff accommodation bloc connected to the original staff quarters on the ground floor, and a basement had been excavated which housed a cinema, gym, sauna and swimming pool. Elsewhere in the grounds were a gardener's lodge and a garage that could accommodate a small fleet of cars, with an apartment above it for the drivers. About a third of the grounds was covered by native birch woodland, while the remainder of the estate was occupied by a series of recently constructed greenhouses in the form of long, sausage-shaped tunnels covered by clear plastic.

Originally state property, the dacha had been appropriated by Vladimir as one of his many residences during his long succession of presidencies. Like so much else in Russia – like the country itself, perhaps – no one could say who owned it now, or perhaps it was more accurate to say that the letter of its ownership did not necessarily coincide with the reality.

Vladimir's suite consisted of a bedroom, sitting room, dressing room and bathroom. Other than Sheremetev, who slept in a small bedroom nearby, he was the only resident of the upper floor of the dacha, but to look after him the staff quarters housed a small army. Four maids, three male house attendants, and a general handyman who could manage plumbing and electrical problems took care of domestic duties, while a complement of three gardeners and a dozen labourers managed the grounds and greenhouses. A contingent of twenty security guards provided seven-day, twenty-four-hour cover for the estate in rotating shifts. A driver, his wife, and two grown up sons, one of whom also acted as a second driver when needed, lived in the flats over the garage. This horde was fed in the staff dining room, adjacent to the kitchen on the ground floor, by Stepanin and a brigade of half a dozen assistant chefs and potwashers. And ruling over the entire crowded roost, hiring and firing, paying the bills, was the housekeeper.

Until a month previously, the housekeeper had been Mariya ­Pinskaya, a plump, garrulous woman with a fondness for cheese. Then, without warning, she had walked out. One day she was there, snacking on Stepanin's cheese
bulochki
– not Lebedevki, but traditional ones – and the next morning, she announced that she was leaving with her truckdriver husband for a villa in Cyprus, and her suitcases were already at the gate.

In reality, who the housekeeper was made little difference to Sheremetev. Unlike most of the other staff, he wasn't answerable to her, but to Professor Kalin, Vladimir's neurologist. But the departure of the longserving housekeeper was naturally unsettling, the suddenness of it doubly so. When he first began to look after Vladimir, Sheremetev had kept his own two-room apartment in Moscow, imagining that he would use it on his days off, but a few years later he sublet it. To all intents and purposes, the dacha was his home now, and he expected that he would be here until Vladimir died. He had grown accustomed to the life in the dacha and to the people who inhabited it with him, Pinskaya included.

But change happens, Sheremetev knew. In one form or another, it was inevitable. Three weeks after Pinskaya ran off, a new housekeeper had arrived to take her place, a short, gimlet-eyed woman with dyed brown hair who introduced herself to the staff as Galina Ivan­ovna Barkovskaya. It was obvious immediately that Barkovskaya was no Pinskaya. She was more sparing with her words, more watchful, and ate little cheese, whether wrapped up in
bulochki
or neat. Still, Sheremetev saw no reason for there to be any problems. Things in the dacha had run smoothly before Pinskaya left, and once the new housekeeper had settled in, he imagined, they would continue to do so. The dacha was like a small village. Everyone seemed to have their niche and to get on with everyone else.

The next evening, Stepanin
seemed preoccupied once more. He sat moodily in the staff dining room, gnawing on his pork scratchings and watching Sheremetev eating a plate of chicken fricassee.

‘What do you think?' asked Stepanin, nodding at the dish.

‘It's good,' said Sheremetev.

For a moment, Stepanin forgot whatever it was that was troubling him. ‘I got some beautiful mushrooms,' he said, putting his fingers to his lips with a smacking sound. ‘So fresh, you could still smell the dung on them! Dill, green peppercorns . . .' he smacked again.

Sheremetev nodded as he ate.

‘Barkovskaya said she liked fricassee. I had some lovely plump chickens.'

‘So you made it for her? That's nice.'

Stepanin shrugged. ‘We had a chat again today, Barkovskaya and me.'

Sheremetev didn't think anything of it. The chef seemed to be having a lot of chats with the new housekeeper, but he imagined that it was natural for a housekeeper and cook to have things to speak about, particularly when one was new to the job.

From the kitchen, where the assistants and potwashers were still working, came the sound of pots crashing. Stepanin took a slug of his vodka and refilled his glass. ‘What do you think of her, Kolya?'

‘Barkovskaya?' Sheremetev shrugged. ‘She seems okay.'

Stepanin leaned forward. ‘No, what do you
really
think?'

Sheremetev had no idea what the cook was getting at. ‘I don't know. She seems efficient.'

‘Efficient . . .' Stepanin sat back and blew out a long breath. ‘Well, that's true. That's one word for her. More efficient than Pinskaya.' Stepanin sighed again. ‘What fuckery!'

‘What?' asked Sheremetev.

‘It's a fuckery that Pinskaya should go and this Barkovskaya turn up to take her place. A grand piece of fuckery with a cock on top!'

‘What's so bad about it?'

The cook gazed at Sheremetev, as if trying to decide if he should say anything more. Suddenly there was a noise from Sheremetev's pocket. When he wasn't with Vladimir he carried a baby monitor with him, like the one parents use to listen for cries from their sleeping infants.

‘Is he awake?' asked the cook.

Sheremetev took out the monitor and put it to his ear. There was a low staticky rustle which always came out of it, but nothing more distinct.

‘Maybe you're going to have one of those nights.'

‘I hope not. The doctors are coming to see him tomorrow.'

‘Is there a problem?'

‘No. Just the monthly checkup.' On a good night, the sedatives that Sheremetev gave to Vladimir before the ex-president went to bed helped him sleep until seven – but not every night was a good one. Sheremetev listened to the monitor again. There was nothing now but the background rustle that always came out of the speaker. He put it down and took another mouthful of the fricassee.

The cook toyed with his vodka glass. Whatever was worrying him, for once he had apparently decided not to say anything else. He picked up his glass and downed the rest of the spirit, then got up. ‘Better see what those fuckers I have to work with have been up to,' he said, heading to the kitchen. ‘Enjoy the fricassee, Kolya. There's more if you want it.'