Vodka (12 page)

Every new Russian worth the name wanted to send his children to boarding school in England; it was cheaper than bodyguards, for a start, and the standard of education was thought to be second to none. Headmasters of English schools could fill Moscow conference halls two or three times over; they pulled in more punters than symposia on banking and oil.

Karkadann took the magazine from her. It was the latest edition of
Domovoi
, the primer for the nouveau riche of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Domovoi
instructed its readers in etiquette, kept them abreast of the latest fashions, told them how to treat their maids and furnish their luxury dachas and ran diary pieces from Milan, Geneva and New York. It had the fastest-growing circulation of any magazine in Russia.

Good, thought Karkadann. They’d educate their son at Eton, shop at Harrods and live in Knightsbridge, where he had paid cash for a house last year.
Cash
, as in a briefcase neatly packed with fifty-pound notes that had seen the real estate agent close for the day and send his assistant out for vodka and caviar; as in an excellent way to launder money. The cretin had come back with a bottle of Polish Dubrowka and some revolting ersatz black eggs that had never been within half a hemisphere of the Caspian. Karkadann had killed men for less.

The stables, the fountain, the pool, the house—such wealth had been literally unimaginable a few years back, when possessing more than ten thousand rubles had been enough to merit the death penalty. But every ruble he’d accumulated came with riders: a gasoline bomb, a falling shell, the package packed with explosives, bursts of machine-gun fire and screaming wounded. Someday, this war might end, but until then he would spend his money as if there were no tomorrow.

Saturday, January 4, 1992

K
arkadann’s bodyguards wore wing-tip shoes and silk suits whose cut was spoiled by the holsters beneath. It was a look they accentuated by straightening their spines and letting their arms swing backward. They glanced at the jewelers’ polyester suits and saw
how badly they fit, too tight around the shoulders on the younger one, the older one’s too long in the legs. The Chechens saw too where the polyester had worn thin at the elbows and knees; trousers shiny from overuse, shoes clumpy and squared off at the toes. Men like these blossomed on every street in Moscow; bewildered, dignified people whose salaries had gone to shit and who didn’t know the rules of the new game. The jewelers each carried a small dark red box, a necklace in one and a bracelet in the other; both diamond, and worth between them north of half a million—dollars, of course, not rubles. It was more money than these two could ever dream of; Karkadann had spent it in a morning.

But the bodyguards hadn’t seen the journey Butuzov and Ozers had taken to get here—stepping into the jeweler’s shop on Varkava Street as they were shutting up for the day, the blinds already down so no one could see in from outside; Ozers faking a collapse to bring the jewelers around from behind the counter and away from their panic buttons; Lev’s men with their guns out, forcing the jewelers to undress before binding and gagging them, not without regret, no hard feelings but you know how it is, we can’t have you raising the alarm too soon; Butuzov and Ozers pulling on the jewelers’ suits with the crest on the breast pocket, and taking the diamonds as they left.

The bodyguards hadn’t seen Butuzov and Ozers exchange a kiss for luck; they hadn’t heard Butuzov ask: “All set?” Hadn’t heard Ozers reply: “Ready.”

A dog padded carefully along the sidewalk, wary of burning its paws on the chemicals that the city authorities use to melt snow. One of the Chechens reached across and opened the door of the florist’s, and in they
went, Lev’s men here at last, right in the heart of the enemy and beyond, an advance guard behind the lines.

Valentina was pointing to an array that stood like a circle of flame in the middle of the shop; polyantha roses and geraniums in pink, crimson and scarlet, burnished with orange zinnias and splashed with dahlias of the same yellow as the bleached streaks in her hair. Karkadann was limping among his blooms, and it was a few seconds before he saw the visitors.

“Right on time. Excellent. Here, tell me what you think.” He gestured toward the plants. “I always use rhododendrons for bases and backgrounds. You can do so much with rich greens and long branches. You see, here”—he beckoned Butuzov and Ozers closer with a wave of his secateurs—“I’m using them to underpin a display of berberis. The berries are fuckers to deal with, all those thorns, and the branches at the base of the stem have to be split or crushed, but it’ll be worth it for the sheer brilliance of the colors when it’s done. Oranges, pinks and yellows; you’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Very nice.” Ozers adopted a tone of suitable awe. Butuzov nodded in agreement.

Karkadann had his jacket off, but the holster under his left armpit was full and another gun distended his right trouser pocket. It hadn’t just been the language difficulties that had made the Savile Row tailor ask twice for confirmation that yes, his client
did
want his suits made to accommodate a small arsenal of holstered weapons.

Valentina was coming their way. “Can I open the boxes, darling, can I?”

Butuzov turned toward her; he would hand her his box and grab her in the same moment, while Ozers covered Karkadann.

In the moment before Karkadann’s lupine smile split his face, Ozers saw in him the wearied irritation that signals the beginning of the end of love. For Karkadann, Valentina’s appeal was already beginning to fade, and in a few years she’d lose the harmony in her looks: her face would sag, her forehead and eyes would be crinkled with lines, her complexion would coarsen and redden, and her hips would become saddlebags. Her beauty was ephemeral and fleeting, like that of so many women.

“In a minute,” Karkadann said, teasing. Then, seriously: “I’ll have those.”

He took the boxes from Ozers and Butuzov, one at a time, never allowing both his hands to be occupied at the same time. He was good, Butuzov thought, all the paranoids were, they acted as though everyone was a threat, even though half the time they didn’t even know they were doing it. “Thank you. That’ll be all.”

Karkadann put the boxes down on the counter, its surface strewn with weapons: a curved Uzbek dagger, the blade from a Red Army M-16, Chinese metal throwing sticks, bracelets that could break a man’s wrist.

Ozers and Butuzov glanced at each other; fleeting, imperceptible, enough. Butuzov turned to Valentina to wish her a good evening—he’d seize her now, Ozers was already moving into position behind him—and he was already reaching for her hand when he saw a little face poking between two buckets of white carnations. He started; Valentina followed his gaze.

“Aslan!” She seemed delighted. “Come on out of there, my treasure!”

Aslan was five years old, maybe six; he ran around
from behind the buckets and clasped his mother’s legs. What was
he
doing here? Sabirzhan had said that they’d only have to deal with Karkadann and Valentina; he’d made no mention of a child.

“Who’s been hiding from Mommy, eh?” Valentina was ruffling Aslan’s hair while he batted at her hands and squealed delightedly. “Who’s been hiding in all Daddy’s flowers?”

The kid’s screwed it all up, Butuzov was thinking. Children were different, even Chechen kids—but there was no more time to think, Ozers was past him in a flash, reaching down and yanking Aslan clean off the floor, spinning around to face Karkadann with the child struggling in his arms and his gun pressed to Aslan’s head, and almost before Butuzov knew it, his own arm was wrapped round Valentina’s neck and his gun was tracing cold circles against the base of her skull.

Karkadann was holding two guns out in front of him already, damn but this guy was quick, the holster hanging open. This was his family, though, and he held his fire.

Outside, the bodyguards glared down passersby and didn’t look back inside the shop.

“Get out of Moscow,” Ozers said. “Give us your business. Take your filthy black ass back to Grozny, and don’t come back.”

Karkadann took sightings down his lines of fire, his head moving smoothly from side to side.

“Tonight, and don’t come back.” Ozers tensed his arm against Aslan’s wriggling.
“Tonight.
Say it, or we’ll kill them both.”

“Ilmar,” Karkadann said, almost to himself.
“Ilmar.”
His eyes shone, seeming to reflect starbursts of zinnias
and dahlias. “You tricked me. You people …
dared
to trick me, into killing one of my own. And now”—his words came in surges, he was breathing hard—“and now you
dare
to trick your way into my shop, take hold
of my
wife and
my
child, and threaten me?”

“We’ll kill them,” said Butuzov. “We
will.”

“What do you need to be in power?” Karkadann asked, not addressing them but himself; no longer angry, it seemed, but philosophical. “You don’t need guns or money or numbers; you just need the will to do what the other side won’t.”

A gunshot cracked, loud in the confined space; bodyguards piling through the door and Karkadann yelling at them to hold their fire even as he dived for the floor, Ozers and Butuzov caught by surprise and looking to see whether the other had been hit because they themselves were fine, disbelief rolling over their bewilderment when Aslan sagged in Ozers’s arms and Ozers realized after a blip in time that Karkadann had done it, he’d shot his own child.

Another shot, and then another. Ozers crumpled to the floor with the boy, the life ebbing from them both. Valentina clutched at her throat, where blood snickered and bloomed. Butuzov was waving his gun around but he couldn’t see Karkadann to get a clean shot off and the Chechens were there, multiple barrels all trained on him, they’d kill him the moment he so much as went for the trigger.

“Drop it!” shouted Karkadann. “Drop it!”

Butuzov let his weapon fall to the floor and raised his shaking hands. Valentina rolled away from him and slid back against the wall, still just about on her feet.

Karkadann had rolled behind the far end of the
counter. He got up and walked over to Valentina, dragging his bad leg behind him.

She gave him the strangest look; one of trust, perhaps, saturated with fear and humiliation.

He fired again, between her eyes, and stepped back to let her fall.

Karkadann was in Butuzov’s face now. “My family are better dead than violated by you, filthy trash. What hold do you have over me now, eh? You think of us as beasts, but it’s you, Russian infidel, who is the animal. We Chechens never pursue vendettas against women,
never
—at least, not until an enemy has gone after our women.”

He brought his hands up either side of Butuzov’s head, a gun at each temple. It would be quick, Butuzov thought; there was that, at least.

“Tell Lev this: for everything that he’s visited on me, I will have my revenge. Not one for one, but manifold. He makes me kill my wife; I will kill all his women. He makes me kill my son; I will kill all his children. He makes me kill my friend; I will kill all his friends. Have you ever heard of the
abreky
, you ignorant pig? No? Of course not; it’s not the kind of history they teach in
Russian
schools. Let me educate you. The
abreky
were Chechen bandits. They’d throw over family, clan, home, everything, and give their lives to fighting the Russians. These were my ancestors, and this is their oath—remember it, scum, remember it word for word, because when you get back to Lev, you’re going to repeat it to him, and he’s going to see what he’s unleashed here.”

Karkadann took the guns from Butuzov’s temples and began to declaim. “I, the son of Shamil Khambiyev, himself the son of an honorable and glorious horseman
warrior, swear to the saints to show no mercy to my own blood or to the blood of anyone else, exterminating others as if they were beasts of prey. I swear to take from my enemies everything that is dear to their hearts, their conscience and their courage. I will tear their babies from their mothers’ breasts, I will burn their homes, and wherever there is joy I will bring sorrow. If I do not fulfill my vow, if my heart fills with love or pity, let me never see the graves of my ancestors, let my native earth reject me, let water not quench my thirst, bread not feed me and the blood of unclean animals be poured on my ashes, scattered at the crossroads.”

Sunday, January 5, 1992