by Greg Dinallo
Reflections of refinery lights in the waxed finish catch my eye. Reflections? Moving across sleek forest green lacquer? In Lyublino? Not a chance. Sooty, dull, unpolished wrecks are the rule here; and most residents can’t afford one, not even a broken-down razvalina, let alone a spanking new konfekta like a Volvo.
I quicken my pace, crossing to the other side of the street, when it dawns on me. A Volvo?! Volvos are favored by Moscow’s midlevel gangsters. I break into a run. The sedan accelerates and cuts me off. For an instant, I’m eyeball to eyeball with the driver. It’s him! Ray-Ban. Still wearing his designer shades.
“Katkov?!” he calls out as the car dives to a rubber-burning stop. “Katkov, wait!”
Why? To get my ass kicked?! I sprint toward the intersection. The two thugs from Kafé Skazka pile out of the car and pursue. I turn into a street lined with boarded-up houses and shuttered storefronts. An alley flashes past. I reverse direction and duck into it before the thugs turn the corner. Barely a meter separates the soaring brick. The alley is so narrow and dark I almost missed it. Maybe they will.
I had no intention of threatening them, but I’ve obviously hit a nerve. Why the sudden paranoia? Do they know Barkhin? Is this a rival mob? Did they get into a turf war with Barkhin’s people and muscle them out? Maybe he is dead. My adrenaline surges, forcing painful memories to surface, memories of being hunted. The pit bulls worked for the KGB, not the mafiya, and the threat was a stint in the gulag, not eternity in a shallow grave; but this is no time to quibble over details. The feelings of terror are the same.
Ray-Ban’s thugs dash past the alley. An instant later, one returns, squinting into the darkness. My heart sinks. I freeze against the gritty bricks, holding my breath. “Katkov?” he calls out. “Katkov, we want to talk.”
About what? Carrying me out of here feet first? No thanks.
He takes a few uncertain steps, leaning left and right to get an angle on the shadows; then, to my relief, he backs out of the alley and hurries off.
I’ve just begun searching for a way out when I hear the thump of air-cushioned running shoes and whisk of denim behind me. He’s back. With his colleague. Two lumbering silhouettes are pushing long shadows in my direction now! I run deeper into the alley. It zigzags wildly, but never branches, never intersects with the streets. Several buildings have steel service doors. I put a shoulder into one, but it won’t budge, nor will the next or the next. I scan the darkness frantically. A pale red glow spills across the pavement just beyond the last building. All of a sudden it changes to green. A neon sign? A traffic light? I take the turn on the run, and there, at the far end of the alley, is what looks like an intersection.
A car flashes past.
It is an intersection! If I can make it into the streets, I’ve got a chance of losing them. But then what? They’ll be all over my apartment. Ray-Ban is probably heading there right now. Vera’s place! Her roommates will be pissed off, but I could stay there for a while. I’m sprinting down the narrow chasm when I sense something in the darkness. A pattern. Vertical lines. Black against blackness. There and gone. And there again. I put on the brakes an instant before running into a wrought-iron fence. Topped with spikes and barbed wire, it keeps me from the street not ten meters beyond.
The thugs keep coming. Walking rapidly now, not running, they advance confidently, without any sense of urgency as they close in.
There’s no way I’m going down without a fight. I whirl and lunge between them, throwing a punch at the one nearest me. He blocks it, grasps my wrist, and snaps my arm up behind my back. The other puts a pistol to my head.
“Easy, Katkov. Take it easy,” he advises. “Didn’t you hear what we said? We want to talk.”
The glint of the muzzle flickers in the corner of my eye. I’m terrified. Exhausted. I can barely catch my breath, barely get a word out. I nod eagerly. “Sure. Whatever you say.”
Instead of blowing my brains out or beating me senseless, the thug lowers the pistol, and they march me from the alley in silence. Headlights bend around the opposite corner as we reach the street. The Volvo dives to a stop next to us. The thugs push me into the seat and clamber in on either side. The doors are still open when Ray-Ban floors the accelerator. The Volvo heads west on the Outer Ring, cutting across the outskirts of the city.
The silence continues.
They said they wanted to talk, but they’re not talking. I haven’t the slightest idea what’s going on or where we’re headed, but it isn’t long before my imagination cooks up a few scenarios: They lied, so I wouldn’t struggle, wouldn’t scream, so they wouldn’t have to kill me in the alley and carry my body out to dispose of it. Shrewd bastards. Sporting of me to save them the inconvenience, to sign up for a trip from which I’ll never return.
The Volvo turns off into the Frunze District, where the Moskva loops back on itself, encircling Luzhniki Stadium. Ray-Ban maneuvers through desolate streets awash with litter and stops in front of an abandoned building. Heavy bronze doors, deep-set windows, and a peristyle of bloated columns that support a peaked roof suggest the graffiti-scrawled edifice was once a bank. The greenish stain of metal letters that were once affixed to the granite confirm it.
Ray-Ban and his thugs escort me to the entrance. He presses a buzzer. A security slot opens, revealing wary eyes. Then with a portentous shudder the huge door swings back into a brilliantly illuminated vestibule. It takes me a few moments to become accustomed to the light. Instead of the rat-infested hovel I expected, the well-dressed guard clears us into a tastefully decorated anteroom where my head fills with the smell of alcohol and perfume. Or is it formaldehyde and funeral wreaths? The thugs remain behind as Ray-Ban leads the way through several more doors where the rhythmic thump of music rises.
The last opens into a private club. They’ve been sprouting all over the city lately to service the new class of free-market entrepreneurs and their guests: clubs with names like Olimp, Atlant, Warrior, and Chernobyl offer everything from gourmet food and wine to erotic revues, rock music, and what are billed as “sensual massages.”
But few Muscovites have ever imagined, let alone visited, one like Paradise: Towering palms and lush floral arrangements are set against murals reminiscent of Gauguin’s Tahitian landscapes. Wispy clouds seem to drift lazily across a vaulted ceiling. Colorful parrots stock a circular aviary. Indeed, it’s a tropical paradise. The last time I encountered anything like this was twenty years ago in Havana on my honeymoon. Nothing in terminally gray Moscow can compare with the club’s sunny opulence or sultry floor show.
The dancers, all exotic Latin women, are writhing suggestively to an infectious merengue beat, leaving no doubt their skimpy halters and hip-hugging sarongs are destined for removal. Seated on semicircular tiers are Moscow’s well-heeled elite, members of government, diplomats, entrepreneurs, owners of local cooperatives, and an assortment of foreign business types. All are valiantly trying to guide food and beverages to their mouths without taking their eyes off the stage—all except those in the adjacent casino, who are captivated by the whizz of roulette wheels and clatter of chips.
The Paradise Club is right out of Las Vegas. Not that I’ve been there. My knowledge comes from a friend—a former member of a SALT inspection team stationed in Nevada—who smuggled a risqué travel brochure past Customs inspectors.
Ray-Ban leads the way to a corner booth where an elegantly dressed man with a phone pressed to his ear presides over the action. A magnum of champagne, a crystal flute, a bowl of caviar, and my wallet are arranged on the table in front of him. Young women with the stunning looks of fashion models are perched on either side. Rich, powerful, venerated, it’s immediately obvious he’s a crime boss, but it takes a moment for me to realize that the handsome, deeply tanned fellow, the vor v zakone of the local mob, is Arkady Barkhin.
He finishes the call and glances up. “Nikolai Katkov,” he says thoughtfully.
“Arkady.” It catches in the back of my throat and is barely audible.
I nod apprehensively, my eyes darting about the dazzling interior. “In all the wrong places.”
“Everyone finds their way here, eventually.”
“Some more easily than others, I imagine.”
He smiles indulgently. “I also hear we have some unfinished business.”
“No. No, that was his idea,” I hear myself saying, indifferent to Ray-Ban’s reaction. I’m concerned about Barkhin now, concerned he’ll be offended by my raising something as trivial as black-market medal dealers; but this is no time to choke. “Actually, Arkady, I was hoping you could—”
“Don’t try to back out of it,” he interrupts, glaring at me. “I hate unpaid debts. They fester. They get in the way of business. They destroy friendships. It’s time, Katkov. Time to settle up.” He leans back, taking his measure of me, then his eyes soften I with amusement. “But as I remember it, I don’t hold the marker. You do.”
My heart flutters with relief, then accelerates in disbelief. “Me?” I finally squeak.
“Yes, I’m the one in debt here,” Barkhin replies, embellishing the moment as he gestures to the club. “See this? I worked hard for it. Busted my ass, believe me. Had some luck too. But you don’t get to the top without owing somebody something. In my case, none of it would’ve happened without you, Katkov.” He lets it hang there mysteriously and reaches inside his jacket for his wallet. His manicured nails pluck something from one of the sleeves. It’s a yellowed newspaper clipping, which he unfolds carefully, making certain the fragile creases don’t tear, and places it on the table in front of me. “Remember this?”
It’s been almost ten years, and it takes a moment to recognize my own article. I can’t imagine how an exposé on the treatment of over-the-hill athletes could have anything to do with Barkhin’s success.
“I don’t mean the part about being junked by the State,” he explains, sensing he’s puzzled me. “Oh, we were really getting screwed. It had to be said; and it took guts to say it, a lot of guts, but—”
“Stupidity, according to some.”
“No. No, it helped. Things got a little better. But what you said about athletes and free enterprise . . . If it wasn’t for that, I’d still be working out of the Skazka.”
I light a cigarette, trying to recall what I said. The match fizzles. I’m about to strike another when Barkhin produces a butane lighter with an air of self-importance, just in case I don’t know they’re a status symbol. PARADISE CLUB is printed on the barrel. A stylized parrot serves as the P.
“The part I’m talking about is right here.” He stabs a forefinger at a short paragraph bracketed in faded red marker. “I mean, when I read that retired athletes in the West were making it big in business, that their itch to compete, their work ethic, their let-the-best-man-win mentality were the keys to their success, a light went on. It dawned on me that, unlike the average Russian who was taught to shun individual achievement, athletes have what it takes to make it in a free market. It changed my life.”
“I couldn’t be more pleased,” I reply, amazed how a few sentences in a twenty-five-hundred-word article—sentences I can barely recall writing—can stick in a person’s mind and have such impact. I do vaguely recall they were an afterthought. Something I threw in there to needle the apparatchiks at Goskomsport. And ten years ago, neither I, nor Barkhin, nor the brainwashed bureaucrats had any reason to believe they would ever be anything more.
“No kidding,” he goes on enthusiastically. “It really kicked me in the ass. Made me stop whining. Made me realize I didn’t need pity or a bigger pension. Made me believe in myself. And, as they say—” He pauses dramatically, playing to his fawning models. “The rest is history.”
History indeed.
His gratitude is such that after returning my wallet and apologizing for his thugs’ behavior, he dismisses the ladies and insists I join him. I spend the evening fending off glasses of champagne as he chronicles his rise from a one-man protection racket to an entrepreneur operating a string of what he refers to as “service companies.” It’s almost four in the morning by the time he runs out of gas and his thoughts turn to other matters. “I always end the evening with a nice piece of fruit,” he confides enigmatically.
Fruit?”
“Tropical fruit.” He inclines his head toward the stage and grins lasciviously. “Smooth brown skin, flesh filled with juices and ready to explode. Which one made your mouth water, Nikolai?”
“Which one?"
He chortles and cups his hands out in front of his chest. “You recall the spinner with the coconuts?”
“Oh, I recall lots of coconuts, Arkady.”
“The turned-up ones.” His forefingers point skyward. “The hot little Chiquita who was on the left?”
“Ah, yes.”
“Absolutely insatiable. She’s yours.”
“Thanks,” I reply, momentarily tempted by the fantasy. “But I have a lovely bunch of my own. And they’re more than I can handle.”
“Then what? How can I thank you? Money? A job? Name it.”
“A source.”
“A source?” he echoes with an incredulous cackle. “Who else but a journalist would trade the best fuck in Moscow for information?”
“A dissident journalist.”
He cackles again; but when I reveal my intention to write a story about black-market medal dealers, the levity ceases, and his eyes narrow with concern. “Still taking risks, aren’t you?”
I nod.
“You’ll need an inside source.”
“Preferably.”
“Done,” he says smartly, scooping up the phone. “It’s not one of my operations, but I know someone who can take you in.”
After the night I’ve had, I’m delighted just to be alive, let alone a step closer to finding out whether Vorontsov’s death was the result of scandal or theft. It’s a short-lived high, tempered by the fact that, either way, the person who took those medals is a cold-blooded killer.
9
Moscow always looks like a ghost town in the early morning hours—eerie, silent, unpopulated—as if hit by one of those structure-friendly bombs Kremlin saber-rattlers used to justify decades of massive defense expenditures and painful food shortages.
It looks even gloomier through the tinted windows of Barkhin’s Mercedes as we race west on Komsomolsky Prospekt. A Lada sedan stocked with his fruit tarts and the Volvo of leather-jacketed thugs follow. The fast-moving caravan recalls the days when traffic would be held so the Premier and his entourage of Zils could traverse the entire city without stopping.
But we’re not going to Red Square.
No. After making the arrangements, Barkhin insisted on dropping me off, and we’re on our way to the Lenin Hills and a meeting with his contact in the black market. He pops open an attaché and removes a computerized list of companies. “Look,” he says proudly. “My own little mutual fund. You know, you should write another story—‘Ten Years Later.’ I mean, you were right on target.”
I force a smile, loath to publicize my role in birthing a predator, no matter how innocently. I’m not solely responsible. I may have awakened Barkhin’s ambition, but Communism created his attitude, and democracy the opportunity to unleash them; and unleash them he did—upon his fellow citizens, which is the part that bothers me.
“Blow your own horn a little, Katkov,” he urges, sensing my ambivalence. “You can do one on Arturo too.” He gestures to his chauffeur, an athletic-looking Cuban who doubles as a bodyguard. “He came here ten years ago to coach baseball and stayed.”
“It sure as hell wasn’t for the climate.”
“Try the economy.”
“The what?”
“The economy. It’s booming compared to Cuba’s.”
“If you prefer hunger to starvation.”
“His government offered him a bicycle to go back. I offered him a job. You blame him?”
“They tried to bribe him with
a bike?”
“Uh-huh. Cars are useless there. The country is literally out of gas.”
“So the elite pedal, and the peasants walk.”
He nods glumly. “Thanks to Castro. They could all be driving one of these, if he wasn’t such a thickhead. See, we don’t have a quick fix, but they do. Always have. It’s a long shot, but last year when I was there, I made some contacts who think he’s seriously considering taking the plunge.”
“Into what?”
“Tourism.”
The caravan is on Vorob’yovskoye Shosse now, climbing into the heavily wooded terrain that surrounds Moscow State University. The area has a breathtaking view of the city as well as the distinction of being selected by black-market medal dealers as the site of this week’s get-together. According to Barkhin, they set up shop at dawn just prior to the militia shift-change, when the officers are tired and anxious to get home. The Mercedes turns into a narrow service road and stops opposite a forest of evergreens.
Barkhin lowers the window and winces at the blast of frigid air that rushes into the car.
A moment later, a short man in a pin-striped coat and tweed cap cocked forward on his head, giving him the look of a Bolshevik elf, emerges from the trees.
“That’s him. His name’s Rafik. Good luck.”
“Thanks, Arkady. Thanks a lot.”
“Thank you, Nikasha.” He holds my eyes with his, then squeezes my hand to communicate his sincerity. I slide out of the Mercedes and close the door. “Katkov?” Barkhin leans to the window and tosses me a butane lighter. “Keep in touch.”
The caravan glides off into the dense mist that drifts between the hills. When I turn around, Rank is gone. I hurry toward the evergreens. Halfway there, the silence is broken by an unnerving chirping sound. It’s my beeper. Vera must be wondering if I’m dead or alive. I can’t say I blame her. I’ve spent half the night doing the same.
I’m nearing the evergreens when Rafik reappears amid the craggy trunks. There’s something mysterious and instantly appealing about him—a serene confidence that gains my trust. The scent of damp pine needles fills my head, as he leads the way to a clearing where dozens of vehicles are parked. Bikes, motorcycles, cars, vans, pickup trucks.
