Vodka (83 page)

… except they hadn’t, not since she’d come back to him. It wasn’t just her physical cravings for vodka that had gone; those for sex had vanished too. Alice began to count back through all the times she and Lev had screwed, but even before she was halfway through, she knew that there’d be no exceptions to the rule. They’d never made love when she hadn’t had at least one drink beforehand. Entirely sober, the prospect of physical intimacy terrified her.

When, hours into Oligarchy and with the game more or less level, they’d argued playfully about which
square Lev had landed on, and she’d plucked the Mercedes from the board and refused to give it back until he agreed with her, and he’d gone to wrestle her for it, she’d suddenly frozen, squealing laughter dying in her throat. It was the way his arms were moving over her, too sexual for her sober comfort, even though all he was doing was trying to get his token back, and she’d rolled away from him and burst into tears, apologizing over and over, he’d been so good with her and she couldn’t explain why she was reacting this way, but she
was
, and she needed time and she hoped to God he’d give it to her because she couldn’t imagine being without him…

“Alice, stop beating yourself up. You expect more of yourself than I do. Let things come naturally, there’s no hurry, not for anything. We have all the time in the world.”

Sunday, March 22, 1992

A
lice woke to find Lev staring at her so adoringly that it unsettled her.

“How long have you been looking at me?” she asked.

“Hours.”

She looked so peaceful in sleep, he told her, all her worries temporarily smoothed away. There’s something about the serenity of slumber that is intensely personal;
he was invading every part of her now, the boundaries between them were dissolving. How could she worry about her privacy being violated, when there was none left? They were two halves of a whole, moving around and always coming back to each other.

He had to go out for a couple of hours. She tried not to worry or be resentful—she understood that he had things to do, even now—but without him she didn’t have enough to take her mind off things. She was half asleep when he left; when she woke and tried to leave the bedroom, she found that he’d locked the door from the outside. She was a prisoner. Couldn’t he trust her to behave as an adult? No, she thought as she stalked the room looking for even the tiniest smidgeon of vodka he might have forgotten to remove; he couldn’t. Why did she want a drink? To assuage her baser desires and show him the defiance of her resentment, and both reactions were childish.

The shade of yellow in which the presidential residence is painted appears to change color according to the time. In the faint light of the morning, it’s a thick egg yolk; the sharply angled rays of the setting sun deepen it to mustard. Now, at midday, it had the rich luster of lemon.

Sabirzhan had come with Galina, and he was succinct: there were four people around the table and Lev had betrayed them all. He’d tried to remove first Arkin and then Borzov from office; he’d more or less accused Sabirzhan of the child murders; and he’d taken the real culprit, Rodion Khruminsch, Galya’s husband, and dispensed Mafia justice without a thought for due process. Lev had given each of them a reason to want him out of the picture, permanently.

The president had struck a deal with Lev, Borzov said. He wouldn’t renege on it.

Yes, Sabirzhan understood that, but what he was suggesting had nothing to do with that deal. Since the deal had been struck, Rodion had been killed, almost certainly by Lev himself, though no one present at the kangaroo court would admit it. So Galina would go and see Lev. Lev still trusted her; he was unaware of her part in helping Alice uncover his scams—though of course Sabirzhan didn’t mention this to Arkin and Borzov. In fact, Lev would probably feel that he owed her an explanation at the very least, and perhaps more. Galina would wear a wire, and she’d get Lev to tell her what had happened. Their conversation could then be used in evidence against him.

Galina nodded in agreement; she wanted to do it.

“Absolutely not.” Borzov was adamant. “You’re untrained; it’s too dangerous. You’re sprinkling salt under her tail, Tengiz—you’ll get her into trouble. If she’s found out before she’s gotten him to confess, the whole thing will be lost. There’ll be no more element of surprise.”

“I have to disagree, Anatoly Nikolayevich,” Arkin said. “Galya’s the only one that can do it. Tengiz is trained, but Lev wouldn’t tell him what day it is. If Lev trusts Galya, why should he suspect that she’s wearing a wire?” He turned to Galina. “You
will
get him to confess, you
will
record it; there’s no two ways about it.” It was Arkin at his most Marxist: the ends justified the means, and the pursuit of the desired outcome brooked no obstacles.

The question of whether or not to wear a wire settled, they now debated what type of device it should be.
There were two possibilities: the Nagra tape recorder or the T-4 transmitter, both of them the most up-to-date equipment available to the Russian authorities, both long since abandoned as obsolete by the FBI. Whichever one Galina used, she was bound to pick up all kinds of surrounding sounds—clothes rustling, feet and chairs shuffling, radios, televisions. She wouldn’t be able to test on scene for sound levels; she wouldn’t be able to arrange Lev as she liked for optimum recording; she wouldn’t be able to ask him to raise his voice or repeat things more slowly.

The Nagra was relatively hefty, six by four by one inches. Manually activated, it used a three-hour tape and was able only to record, so the tape had to be transferred to another machine for playback. The Nagra’s microphone was about the size of the eraser on the end of a pencil, and a long wire meant it could be hidden anywhere on Galya’s body. With a Nagra, Galya wouldn’t need to rely on backup. As long as she got Lev to admit killing her husband within the tape’s recording span, and then found a way to get the tape to the authorities, they could arrest Lev at any time afterward.

The T-4 was half the size of the Nagra—three by two by one—and, though it had no intrinsic recording capacity, it could transmit to monitoring agents nearby who’d listen and record. Its maximum range was perhaps two blocks, though steel structures, adverse weather conditions and passing vehicles could all reduce this. The antenna was small and flexible, with a tiny microphone bulb on the end, and it would last four hours on fresh batteries. The T-4 was less likely to be seen than the Nagra. Transmission meant that a snatch squad could move in the moment they heard Lev admit to Rodion’s murder.

Galina wanted to wear the Nagra because there was less to go wrong. Sabirzhan wanted her to wear the T-4. “The Nagra’s recording quality is rubbish,” he said. “If you haven’t got it clearly, there’s no way you’ll know until afterward, by which time it’ll be too late. With the T-4, the technicians can fiddle with the sound quality without you needing to worry about it.”

“There’s more chance of a screwup with the T-4.”

“And then we can come and get you out. With the Nagra, you’re on your own.”

She was untrained, she needed all the help she could get; that was what all three men were thinking. Galina sighed as she was voted down. This was Russia, she reminded herself, where you hoped for the best and prepared for the worst.

Against Arkin’s will—for him, it was confession or nothing—they worked on a code phrase as a signal for the Spetsnaz to swing into action, no questions asked. It would be left to Galina’s discretion as to whether or when to use the phrase: it could be when she considered that Lev had said enough, or if she was in dire trouble and needed to be extracted without delay. The phrase had to be something that wouldn’t crop up in the normal course of conversation, but not too eclectic to be jarring if Galya had to incorporate it into the dialogue. They tossed ideas around—jokes, famous quotes, references to things within Red October—before settling on something short, sharp and to the point:
“in vodka veritas.”

Monday, March 23, 1992

A
bove Alice’s head, electric tralloy lines exploded in small blazes. The authorities had laid even more snow-melting chemicals than usual as the thaw set in, the quicker to have the streets cleared, and the fumes were eating away at the lines’ external insulation. The thermometer was hovering at forty-five or forty-six degrees above zero, but Muscovites gloomily warned that it was almost certainly a false dawn. Spring in Russia usually hammered at the door two or three times before winter finally decided to let it through.

Water droplets drummed on the metal of the drainpipes and the cornices, roof tapping message to roof. As Moscow cars habitually sported tidemarks of grime up to their door handles, so the pedestrians were now splattered from ankle to knee with water and mud. Men in thick black jackets were hacking up blocks of ice with iron bars and spades; planks laid across benches or trestles signified that roof cleaning was taking place above. Still, plenty of people were killed by falling icicles every year, straight through the head, sharp as a knife, usually in places where the warnings had been stolen—planks, benches and trestles were all valuable commodities.

The need for reparations to Lewis had been playing on Alice’s mind, and the longer she left it, especially without the dampening effect of vodka, the greater importance it seemed to assume. It was something she had to face, not just for Lewis’s sake but also for her own peace of mind.

She’d made an inventory of the wrongs she’d done him, and it went on for pages. Set down in black and white, she realized perhaps for the first time exactly how much damage she’d done, and that there was no way she could ever go back, even if she’d wanted to and even if he’d take her. The best they could hope for was a wary and regretful accommodation; it was the very least he deserved.

She went around early in the evening, unannounced and alone, walking fast up to the familiar building in Patriarch’s Ponds and plunging the key like a dagger into the lock, fast and sharp, before she lost her—well, her bottle, for lack of a better word. The thought would have made her laugh if she hadn’t so desperately wanted a drink to settle her nerves.

The apartment seemed at once familiar and distant, and it was a moment before she realized why. This was where she’d drunk herself stupid, this was where she’d thrown up on the sheets, this was where she’d yelled at Lewis in blind intoxicated fury. This place would forever be associated in her mind with drinking.

All the gang were there: Bob, Christina, Harry and of course Lewis himself. They turned to look at Alice in horrified silence as she walked in.

“What are
you
doing here?” Christina, spiky. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble?”

“Christina, please.” Lewis was already on his feet. “It’s my apartment, I’ll deal with this. Excuse me a moment, everyone.” He took Alice by the elbow and steered her into the bedroom. She glanced quickly around; looking, she realized, for the traces of another woman, though less from jealousy than curiosity as to whether his life had changed as drastically as hers.

“What
are
you doing here?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, Lewis, I didn’t mean to spoil your party. I’ll go, I’ll come back another time. Christina was right.”

“What Christina thinks is no worry of yours. Tell me why you’ve come.”

“To say sorry.” It sounded so simple, put that way.

“Sorry?” He pushed some air through his nose. “OK. You’re sorry. Thank you.”

“That’s it? You don’t want to hear any more?”

“What’s there to hear, Alice? I love you and you don’t love me. I keep trying to understand the meaning of this judgment on me, to see the reason for it. I look into myself, I go over our whole life together, everything I know about you, and me, and us together, and I can’t find the beginning. I can’t remember what it is I did and how I brought this misfortune on myself. I love you—if only you knew how much. There’s no one better than you in the whole world, even after all you’ve done. But you love another man. What can I do?”