“Alexey Zaitsev! Classmate and practically brother to this,” he said, pointing at Biryuza, “great man.”
“Stanley,” replied McKnight, half rising to shake the newcomer’s hand. “Stanley McKnight, from Laville & Cie. His partner,” he added, nodding at Biryuza.
“We know. We know,” Zaitsev said, plopping down into an empty chair. “Thank you, Katerina Matfeevna, that will be all! Igor will finish everything and will also be free to go. You can meet in some corner and spend a lovely ten minutes together. To be sure, Igor only needs half a minute, am I right? Kidding, kidding, no offense, Igor!”
The woman left the room without a single word. Novichok, who had somehow grown even thinner and smaller with the arrival of Zaitsev, arranged the glasses and dishes around the table. He then bowed to each of the others in turn, and said to Stanley, “Very nice to meet you!” and left as well.
“Have some tea and chocolate!” Zaitsev invited, pushing an empty glass over to Stanley. “We do things the traditional way around here. Indian tea, with the elephant on the cover…”
“This tea was sold in the Soviet Union as well,” explained Biryuza.
“Lemons from Abkhazia…”
“That’s an autonomous region in Georgia,” Biryuza continued his explanations. “Georgia’s independent now, but Abkhazia…”
“I’m aware,” said Stanley, looking down at his empty glass.
“Your banker knows everything, Biryuza!”
“Well, maybe not everything,” said Biryuza, unwrapping a chocolate and popping it into his mouth. “You’ve got real Mishka in the North here, my favorite candy. Even Gagarin couldn’t get the kind of Mishka they sold thirty years ago. They swore to him it was authentic! Completely authentic! But it wasn’t. But as for Stanley, he mistook Molotov for Beria.”
“Well, we can forgive him for that. Both of them, let’s be honest, were real pieces of shit, although it is, once again, no longer quite safe to say that. Especially about Molotov. His grandson is a combative, rich political player, a political prostitute, if you will. But forget that,” Zaitsev said with a frown. “By the way, it turns out they’re not going to move the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations into the city center. Turns out the rumors weren’t true. One simple reason—parking. Now each idiot whose father sends him to study at our alma mater has his own car, usually a Jeep, for that matter. They drive, suck dicks, smoke, talk on the phone, and play games all at the same time. That’s the new generation for you!”
“Is that even possible?” asked Stanley.
“What—suck dick, eat, and smoke?” Alexey gave Stanley an ironic once-over. “You just haven’t met enough Russian girls yet. I had one student—eat some candy, have a cookie. If they’re too hard, dunk them in the tea to soften them up. So this student was on her knees on a chair, typing while I dictated a crappy course paper to her, fucking her from behind at the same time, and she managed to have conversations with her mother, her friend, and her man.”
“Her man?” Stanley coughed. “You mean her boyfriend?”
“Yes, her boyfriend. She apologized, told him she was running late for their date. That’s the new generation for you. No longer the Pepsi generation, or even the iPhone generation.”
“Who knows what the hell kind of generation it is!” said Biryuza. “Anyway, friends, let’s talk business.”
“Okay, then,” Zaitsev said. He fished a lemon out of his glass and ate it, wincing.
“So, here it is.” Zaitsev leaned over and spat lemon seeds on the floor. An unexpected move for a diplomat, thought Stanley. “I have a 100 percent guarantee that you can send your boss’s cash through the Russian post. Diplomatic mail. That means no inspections, no delay.”
Stanley was so astonished at the ease with which Zaitsev described transferring Gagarin’s enormous cash reserves that he even dropped his teaspoon.
“The amounts are just a bit much. So we’ll break them down into batches. About one ton per batch.” Zaitsev bent down and retrieved Stanley’s spoon from the floor.
Stanley did some mental calculations; one batch would comprise about $100 million in hundred-dollar bills.
“It would be better if you could transfer some of that cash, as much as you can, into diamonds and gold. Otherwise the delivery will take too long.”
“It’s already in the works. We’re going to buy diamonds from Alrosa.”
“That’s a Yakutia-based company,” Zaitsev told Stanley. “They mine diamonds, send them to De Beers to be cut, get back perfect diamonds, and De Beers makes a real profit on that…”
“That’s all illegal,” Stanley said, shaking his head, “I mean…”
“Stanley is an honest man,” Biryuza interrupted, winking at Zaitsev.
“Ah, I could see that right away!” Zaitsev nodded approvingly. “I can always tell when I meet someone. The minister taught me how. As soon as I came in, I got the feeling that there was an honest man here. Not you, Biryuza, naturally. There’s no hope left for you!”
“And proud of it!” Biryuza exclaimed, straightening his shoulders.
“The diplomatic mail will be sent to different countries within continental Europe. We can’t send it all to Switzerland alone. We’ll need armored trucks.”
“From your bank,” Biryuza said to Stanley.
“We’ll do it,” nodded Stanley.
“But it’s illegal,” Biryuza teased, mimicking Stanley.
“Forget about it, my friend. Just forget about it. When I talk about illegality, I’m just telling you what the framework is, and frames are made to be broken.” Stanley took out a cigarette, and Zaitsev lit it with a gold lighter.
“There you go. At last, his level of honesty is diminishing a bit,” the diplomat said.
“You’ll need to personally ensure that everything is delivered to the bank,” Biryuza told Stanley. “Personally!”
“I understand. Everything will be taken care of.”
“Okay!” Biryuza slapped his hands down on his knees. “We’ve eaten all the candy. What’s next?”
Zaitsev rose and dialed one number on the black telephone.
He was a bit more democratic than his aide. “Katerina Matfeevna, please bring…yes, yes, you know already! We’ll be here, my lovely!”
Zaitsev returned to the table and took a bag of white powder out of his pocket. Are they really going to snort cocaine right in the ministry? Stanley wondered.
“I’ve got this while we wait for her to drag her fat ass and our candy over here.”
“Coke, excellent!” Biryuza clapped his hands.
“Better than cocaine,” Zaitsev replied. “This is Mielofon.”
“Mielofon?” asked Biryuza and Stanley simultaneously.
“It’s made from the same base as cocaine, plus a magical chemical cocktail that will relax your overexcited brains and help you read other people’s minds. New nanotechnology from the decadent West. A bourgeois chemist by the name of Charles Dodgson came up with it.”
“Alisa, I’ve got the Mielofon!” Biryuza giggled, making the connection between the name of the product and a children’s movie.
“Just not right under Molotov’s portrait. That’s a bit much. Here’s a secluded nook,” said Zaitsev, opening the curtains.
Daylight burst into the room. Zaitsev opened the balcony door, and they all went out onto an enormous balcony, invisible from the street below.
Smolenskaya Square bustled noisily beneath them. A police siren sounded somewhere nearby. There was a small table on the balcony and a mirror on the table.
“Everything we need,” Zaitsev said and poured the contents of the packet onto the mirror, dividing the pile into three lines with a credit card. He rolled a bill up into a tube and handed it to Stanley first.
“Do it all in one go!” said Zaitsev. “That’s how we do it, comrad
e!”
Stanley inhaled deeply, exhaled, and sucked up an entire line of the Mielofon—he’d chosen the one in the middle. Biryuza and Zaitsev followed his example.
“Good lord!” moaned Zaitsev. “That’s amazing!”
“Alisa, I’ve got the Mielofon!” Biryuza rubbed his nose roughly. “I’ve got the Mielofon,” he said, repeating the nonsensical words as if in a trance.
“He’s fine, just caught up in some childhood memories,” Zaitsan said and laughed, seeing how Stanley was watching Biryuza with some concern. “Ah, and here are our candies.”
They returned to the office. The woman in the apron had already placed a full dish of Mishka in the North candies and was preparing to leave, but she didn’t manage to get out before getting another smack from Zaitsev.
“You can’t hide from me, honey!” he said, sat down, and began unwrapping one of the candies.
Biryuza and Stanley sat as well. Biryuza’s eyes darkened, his pupils narrowed, his bright lips were moist, and he sniffled constantly.
“Take some more tea,” Zaitsev offered, leaning over to Stanley.
“More?” Stanley said, his suddenly capricious voice sounding odd to him. “I’ve had nothing yet.”
“He doesn’t want any more tea,” pronounced Zaitsev, looking off into the distance, and crossed one leg over the other.
“I miss our university time a lot, you know?” interrupted Biryuza.
“Yes! Me too.” Zaitsev lit a thin cigar and exhaled a line of gray smoke up to the ceiling. “Do you remember that night club, Ptuch?”
“How could I forget?” Biryuza smiled. “Where I spent all my scholarship money on a pitiful gram of heavily adulterated cocaine. Well, with enough left over for a nonalcoholic cocktail.”
“Are you trying to say we’re doing better for ourselves now?”
“Well, now we can afford five grams, ten grams, and much more! And even if the stinking Moscow wind blew it away, someone would bring us more, and we wouldn’t even notice the loss.”
“What does ‘adulterated’ mean?” asked Stanley, sounding out the unfamiliar Russian word and trying to come to his senses.
“Diluted. With other drugs added in. If you were lucky. If not, it was detergent,” explained Zaitsev. “You Americans wouldn’t know anything about it.”
“We sure would,” objected Stanley. “They sold all kinds of drugs on campus at Berkeley, pure and adulterated. One dealer even got killed for cutting his wares.”
“So you’re trying to say that we’re not so different after all?” snorted Zaitsev. “Maybe there are some similarities. But the main difference between us is that America has always been an enemy of Russia, and Russia has always wanted to be your friend. We want friendship, and you want war. You’re always sticking your nose into our business.”
Stanley struggled to adjust to this quick change in topic. He was also amazed by the fervor with which Zaitsev spoke. He looked at him, then at Biryuza, who was in clear agreement with everything his friend said. How could these two crooks, who would do absolutely anything for money, including busily robbing their own country, pose as superpatriots?
“Okay,” nodded Stanley, “I also dislike the way my country tries to impose its own model of government everywhere. But America has done so much for Russia! We helped you in the war…”
“Are you talking about lend-lease?” Biryuza brought out a baggie of marijuana and tossed it onto the table. “You sent us junk, and our soldiers died!”
“Junk?” Stanley almost choked on his own indignation. “What about the planes? The trucks? The steel? Bearings? Junk! We gave you billions of dollars’ worth of goods, and forgave a lot. And your soldiers died because of military leaders like that marshal out there on the square, on the horse…”
“Zhukov?”
“Yeah, Zhukov. And because you don’t value human life. You never have. You sent people up against machine guns.”
Biryuza and Zaitsev exchanged glances. Biryuza got out cigarette papers and rolled a fat joint, lit it, and passed it to Zaitsev.
“Stanley, my friend!” Biryuza tried to put on a friendly smile, but his eyes were cold. “Don’t get so worked up! People against machine guns, where did you hear that?”
Stanley took the joint from Zaitsev’s extended hand, took a deep drag, and then another. His head buzzed. A million little needles poked at his muscles. All his senses were heightened.
“I read a lot. No time for it now. But I used to read a lot. And I took a special modern history course. I had some decent professors.”
“Enough!” Biryuza raised his hands. “We surrender! You win! America is our friend. She’ll wipe our snot, wipe our ass. Hit this!”
Stanley hadn’t noticed the joint go around the circle again. Another drag—Biryuza must have cut the marijuana with something—and he leaped up and started pacing around the room.
He got thirsty after a while. Stanley walked over to the table, poured himself a glass of cold tea, and drank it down in one gulp. He was hungry.
He’d had a similar experience once before, a long time ago, after graduation.
He’d tried to avoid a repeat, but he was enjoying his current state. The weed was saturated with something, either coke or some kind of synthetic chemical.
“Should we get something to eat?” Zaitsev suggested, also jumping up. “But a word of warning—the dining hall where I’m taking you is only for the minister, his deputies, and scumbags like me. You need to behave there. Otherwise, they might kick me out, ha ha! Give me the boot!”
Biryuza also rose.
“Right, Stanley, if you pass by the minister of foreign affairs of our great nation, try not to spit in his soup. No matter how much you want to. Promise?”
“Nope, I’m going to have to spit!” said Stanley.
“Well, Anton, I can see that Stanley is our kind of guy!” Zaitsev laughed, leading them out of his office.
Chapter 26
The dining hall for the ministry’s senior staff was a fairly small room, with the wooden paneling on the wall that Stanley had come to expect. The walls above the wood were painted a dark green.
“Dark green is the color of death.” Stanley remembered the line from some novel, and it seemed suddenly hilarious to him.
He tried to suppress his fit of laughter as he followed Biryuza to a free table, but couldn’t restrain it once they were sitting.
Covering his mouth with his hand, Stanley started to laugh, and he infected Zaitsev and Biryuza with it, then the people sitting at the tables nearby, and finally even their waitress, who came over to take their order.
The waitress, who looked a lot like the fat woman who had brought them tea and chocolates, tried not to laugh, which made her flushed face even redder.
“We have two set menus for lunch—beet salad, borscht, beef stroganoff, and juice, or potato salad, fish soup, chicken Kiev, and juice. You’ll have to wait a bit, hee! for any à la carte dishes.”
“What will you have?”
Zaitsev pointed at Biryuza, Stanley, and himself, and repeated the nursery rhyme that Stanley had already heard from Gagarin: “The moon comes out across the land, with a sharp knife in his hand,” then added, “I’ll have the lunch with borscht!” and laughed heartily. Biryuza wiped his tears away and chose the lunch with fish soup.
“What à la carte dishes do you have?” asked Stanley.
A chorus of laughter burst out from the neighboring tables.
“Oh, ha ha ha,” Zaitsev pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose with gusto. “Mr. McKnight! Take what you’re offered!”
“But I wanted…”
“Stanley! Have the juice!” said Biryuza through his laughter. “We’ve got juice for every kind of condition here in Russia.”
“Excellent!” agreed Stanley. “I’ll take the one with juice.�
��
“They both, hee hee, both have juice.”
“I’ll take both!”
“Stanley!” they cried in unison, and Stanley chose the lunch with borscht.
They were already on their second course when a tall, balding man came in. He had close-set eyes, glasses, and full lips.
He looked familiar to Stanley. So much so, that he was ready to go over and shake his hand. Zaitsev, sensing his intent, kicked Stanley’s leg under the table, bringing on another fit of laughter.
The tall man looked their way in surprise and sat at a nearby table. Biryuza, wolfing down his beef stroganoff, gave him a casual nod.
“That,” whispered Zaitsev, “is the minister of foreign affairs. I’ll introduce you!”
“Why?” Stanley whispered back, scared. “Me…I…”
“I see a new face.” The deep, smoky baritone made all three sit up straight and pull themselves together. “Who is our guest, Zaitsev?”
“This…this…” Zaitsev swallowed his laughter. “This is Mr. McKnight, an economic adviser at the US State Department. He’s here to discuss support for…”
“No business in the dining hall!” the minister interrupted and rose, extending his hand to Stanley. “Happy to see you in our lair!”
“Your lair?” Stanley shook his hand. “Yes, I do see some big animals here. Pleased to meet you as well.”
“I hope our menagerie doesn’t make you stew?”
“My Russian isn’t what it could be. How do you mean ‘stew’?”
“The great Dostoyevsky introduced the word to us. To stew, as in, to feel uncomfortable, try to go unnoticed.” The minister sniffed loudly, and Stanley wondered if the minister had also been sampling a line of Mielofon before coming down to lunch.
“It’s an honor for me. And this might be the best beef stroganoff I’ve ever had.”
“Indeed! We have the best beef stroganoff. And the rest as well, for that matter…”
Further conversation was interrupted by the appearance of a young man very similar in appearance to Novichok. He rushed over to the minister and whispered something in his ear.
The Banker Who Died Page 24
