When he arrived back at his house – his father, as usual, had met him at the airport with his girlfriend Shoshana who, despite various fumblings with girls at college, still had the most beautiful breasts he’d ever seen – the assembled guests, casually gathered around the swimming pool, yelled ‘Surprise!’ though it was anything but. They hugged him, congratulated him, shook his hand, kissed him, everything, in short, to give him a fitting welcome while he puffed himself up, laughing nervously, thrusting his chest out and making clucking noises as he chest-bumped his buddies.
Fist gripping a huge chicken drumstick which he regularly dipped into a jar of mayonnaise, he strolled through the assembled crowd, leering, with a sort of dazed smile impossible to interpret.
It was with the same dazed smile that he listened to his father’s speech: ‘Brilliant university career … first in the family … his considerable talents as a jock and a scholar … but the sporting world’s loss is the business world’s gain … the same energy … in the service of others … doing for society what … joining the family business, putting his keen mind at the service of … climbing the company ladder … now, let’s party!’
As he wandered around, grabbing a beer bottle to replace the chicken drumstick, Ruffle listened to an old friend of his father’s, nodding at just the right moments, smiling as the man patted his arm. Now well and truly loaded, he barrelled a couple of guys from his football team like bowling pins and knocked them into the pool and was immediately rewarded with his own dunking, his fat, ruddy face staring wide-eyed underwater. The music was louder now.
An hour later, eyes vacant, he was slumped in a chair, silent, motionless, chugging a bottle of beer.
Lev entered the Moscow restaurant where Councillor Litvinov was celebrating his birthday. The Councillor had rented the whole space, which was decked out in red and lit by thousands of candles. Tall, thickset men in black suits turned away passers-by. This was Litvinov’s krysha. Yeltsin’s most important advisor and Lev’s fiercest rival had become a shrewd businessman – which is to say ruthless, frenzied and dangerous. And to protect his business interests from competitors, Litvinov had set up an umbrella of protection – a krysha – in this case calling on the Slavic Brotherhood, the most powerful gang in Moscow. The brotherhood had five men posted on the door and three more working the room. The party would go off without a hitch.
They had done sterling work, Lev, Litvinov, Gaidar, Chubais and the others. Yeltsin’s team, known as the ‘kamikaze cabinet’, had liberalised prices, privatised the economy, opened the country up to capitalism. And, inevitably, Russia had immediately crumbled. They knew ‘the transition’ as they called it, resorting to the economic euphemisms that quickly replaced Communist slogans, would be difficult but they had not anticipated the ferocity of the maelstrom that would engulf the country. They had fought hard, and there had been unforeseen events: Yeltsin’s car crash, which Gorbachev exploited to regain the upper hand; the August putsch in which hardliners tried to stall progress by arresting Gorbachev and attempting to seize power. Yeltsin’s stroke of genius had been to rise from the dead, climb up on a tank and harangue the crowds in support of Gorbachev. The loudmouth clambered onto the tank and, in the hoarse voice of a drunken boxer, delivered his speech in favour of resistance; and the people had rallied to him, the army had deserted the hardliners. Democracy – which in this case meant delivering the empire into the hands of thieves and criminals – was saved. But Yeltsin had saved Gorbachev the better to crush him completely. On national television he forced Gorbachev to admit that his own ministers had been behind the coup and to replace them with Yeltsin’s men, leaving Gorbachev with only a fig-leaf of power. Yeltsin had proved to be the stronger. Alcoholic, easily influenced, but stronger. Most of the time his advisors manipulated him like a puppet, but every now and then the fighter in him would stir, the broken-nosed brawler who knew how to lead his people.
Yes, there had been unforeseen events, but they had triumphed: Yeltsin was still in power, master of the largest country in the world, a sprawling continent of boundless energy resources.
If Yelstin was master, his advisors were princelings. And now they had to be rewarded. And so came the time of thieves. All those close to him, all his advisors, all those who, by hook or by crook, could find a way to loot the empire set themselves up in business and fought over a plunder unrivalled in history. A few hundred men helped themselves to a treasure out of the Arabian Nights, a treasure no fairy-tale sultan could even have dreamed of. For a song, making the most of subsidised prices thirty or forty times below world market rates, they made off with vast reserves of gas, oil, diamonds and metals. These men came to be called oligarchs and the West marvelled at their wealth and their vulgarity, putting them in the same category as the nouveau riche, oblivious to the criminal source of their vast riches. At such prices, even the idiot on a corner with a begging bowl could have become rich as Croesus: these men were buying oil for one dollar a barrel and selling it for thirty dollars!
But the struggle to be a part of this little circle was vicious. And Litvinov was among the fiercest fighters. He had always wielded considerable influence over Yeltsin and, from the first, had never strayed from his strategy: establish Russian sovereignty, eliminate all opponents including Gorbachev and set Yeltsin up as master. He was consistent. While others were still thinking in terms of the empire, of Yeltsin and Gorbachev ruling together, of liberalising the regime, Litvinov had already put the past behind him: from the ruins of empire, he insisted, a capitalist Russia would rise. And this is what happened. At the time of the August putsch, Litvinov had been on all fronts, fighting the power of the KGB every inch of the way. He resisted everything: pressure, threats, promises. He played the Yeltsin card. No one quite understood why, since it was obvious that he had never been moved by idealistic motives, but he dug his heels in, displaying a mixture of patience and ruthlessness. He was everywhere, at every meeting, however important or trivial. He sat at the table, fist clenched, his massive bulk bent double, spoke rarely but always succinctly, he was resolute, unshakeable. A fighting bull respected by all. One by one his rivals were eliminated or sidelined to minor roles while he had become Yeltsin’s primary advisor. The man of dirty deals and low blows.
And Litvinov had become master of Russian oil. Yeltsin entrusted him with the major Siberian reserves. He was now the head of the largest company in the country and one of the richest men in Russia.
Litvinov dismissed Lev as ‘a pencil-pusher’ but he found it impossible to sideline his chief rival completely. Lev was too useful. True, he did not have Litvinov’s decisiveness, the almost incredible combination of self-assurance and ruthlessness. But he was much more intelligent and Yeltsin, like everyone else, knew this. The redistribution of power he had negotiated with Gorbachev’s people was proof in itself, as was his ability to get Yeltsin elected President before the introduction of universal suffrage. People needed him. Unbeknownst to him they mistrusted him for obscure reasons that had to do, not with his loyalty, but with an almost imperceptible aloofness. The disquieting sense that, unlike the others, he was not wholly engaged in action, in power. ‘A pencil-pusher.’
And yet in the division of the spoils of empire, Lev had fared rather well. Unlike Litvinov, the pencil-pusher did not get the choicest cut. But from the bloody carcass, he managed to steal a meaty haunch with sufficient oil reserves to create ELK, the tenth-largest company in the country. Like the other oligarchs, he stood tall as gold rained around him, and like them he bought a palace in Moscow and a Mercedes 600. Like them, he could buy a restaurant simply because he liked his meal. Like them, through the miracle of money, he could fulfil his every whim by simply clicking his fingers. And, like them, he had been invited to Litvinov’s triumph, to the lavish birthday celebration intended to crush Yeltsin’s ministers and advisors by its sheer opulence.
Women of miraculous beauty glided about the room; the most miraculous of all sat next to Litvinov, attesting to a
power that could even buy beauty. Lev thought of Elena, who had refused to accompany him since she despised Litvinov and all the oligarchs. She had become a teacher, though it meant her yearly salary amounted to what Lev earned in a couple of hours, because her independence was important to her and she was happy to be working, to be thinking. Lev, even as he suggested she give up working, was proud of her, as though through her he preserved some part of his past. Like most Russians, she considered the oligarchs to be thieves but she never thought too hard about her husband’s case. Lev seemed to escape her opprobrium.
Greeting a former councillor whose career had been less meteoric than his own, Lev noticed the plates were made of gold. ‘I flaunt therefore I am,’ thought Lev. On the tables were bowls piled high with caviar, tall granular peaks of translucent purplish black, a nod to Litvinov’s little sideline on the Caspian buying caviar from fishermen for a few dollars and reselling it in the West at a 100,000 per cent profit, all the while depleting stocks of sturgeon. The oligarch was blessed with a boundless imagination, a limitless ability to plunder. Russia was being bled dry.
Litvinov came over to Lev.
‘Good of you to join us, councillor. The party should be magnificent.’
Litvinov had gained a lot of weight and lost a lot of hair.
‘I don’t doubt it,’ said Lev. ‘You always did have a talent for doing things on a large scale.’
‘You can say that again,’ Litvinov gave a booming laugh. ‘A very large scale!’
The woman standing behind him laughed too, just for the sake of it. Lev smiled politely. Litvinov continued to circulate, welcoming newcomers.
The champagne was being served by two waitresses in short skirts, who, though young and very pretty, were less striking than the tall, extravagantly dressed blonde women now gradually moving in on the men in the room. Lev took a glass. He noticed one of the women looked a little like Elena but with blonde hair.
Seeing his look, the woman came over to him.
‘Good evening, Councillor Kravchenko.’
‘You know me?’ Lev asked.
‘Who doesn’t know Lev Kravchenko, one of the most powerful men in Russia?’
This unalloyed flattery pleased him.
‘And your name is?’
‘Oksana.’
‘How do you know Litvinov?’
‘Knowing the most powerful men in the country is part of my job.’
‘And what is it that you do?’
‘I bring pleasure to the most powerful men in the country.’
‘A noble profession.’
‘I think so. Aren’t you tired, Councillor? Tired of the constant struggle? It can’t be easy having to constantly fight to stay at the top, to remain number one. Don’t you ever feel in need of relaxation?’
‘Of course,’ said Lev, ‘but I’m married.’
‘Of course you are, Councillor Kravchenko. To the beautiful and brilliant Elena, the esteemed professor of literature. An exceptional scholar. I would have liked to study with her.’
‘I see you know all there is to know.’
‘As I said, it’s my job. And the fact that you’re married does not pose a problem. All the powerful men in this country are married, but they still need to relax. They are fighters. They have the right to a little pleasure too.’
Her voice was languorous and yet she sounded slightly mocking.
‘So this is an offer?’ said Lev.
‘A formal proposition.’
‘Am I rich enough to keep a beautiful woman like you happy?’
‘Very few men in Russia are,’ said Oksana. ‘But you are. And I’d like to add that for me, spending time with one of the most brilliant and handsome men in the country would undoubtedly be unforgettable.’
This time, she really was teasing him. Lev laughed.
‘I’ll give it some thought, Oksana. I’ve never had a proposition so tempting.’ He added, ‘Or so candid.’
‘Don’t think too long, Councillor,’ said Oksana, gliding away, ‘that weariness might become too great, too overwhelming …’
She gave a little wave.
‘This is what Russia has become,’ thought Lev. ‘A country of thieves and whores where anything can be bought, where even the most beautiful and intelligent women can be had if you’re willing to pay.’
The women circled their prey. One by one, the men were cornered. They drank the champagne, wolfed down the caviar, bared blackened teeth and slipped rough paws round the women’s delicate waists. They had hit the jackpot.
Lev studied the bodyguards. Three hulking men with shaved heads, guns bulging in the left-hand pockets of their suits. Gang rule. Even the police force had been destroyed. Private police forces had to be created. The State and justifiable violence? Which state? What justification? Everything had been destroyed. Force was necessary. They were nothing more than state-of-the-art warlords, plunderers who had appropriated the empire through violence and could survive now only through violence. Overnight, the whole edifice might crumble. It needed only someone more powerful to appear. Someone more cunning, more violent. Hence, they all had the same goal: to steal money and spend it by the million, by the billion. To amass fortunes and squander them. To put their money in offshore tax havens, in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, the Channel Islands, before a change of government changed everything.
The men in the room got to their feet. Hands abandoned caviar spoons, slipped from around the women’s waists, each lifting a full glass. On a stage that towered over the assembled company, Litvinov picked up a microphone.
‘Thank you, my dear friends, for coming to help me celebrate my birthday. Fifty-three. Life begins at fifty-three, it’s the time when a man begins to enjoy the good things in life, the fruits of his labours. A time for family and for dear friends.’
His every word was tinged with his distinctive sarcasm. His guests, all of whom he had wronged at one time or another, took it in the spirit it was intended.
‘To those of us who have given so much to our country, I would like to propose a toast to our Holy Mother Russia! To the country of our ancestors freed from the yoke of Communism!’
They raised their glasses.
‘To Holy Mother Russia!’
‘I’d like to propose another toast,’ Litvinov went on, ‘a toast to someone without whom none of this would have been possible, someone who cannot be here tonight because he has urgent business abroad, but who is with us in spirit. To the man who made our fortunes, Boris Yeltsin!’
They raised their glasses.
‘To Boris Yeltsin, the man who made our fortunes!’
‘And lastly,’ Litvinov said, coming to the front of the stage, ‘let us raise a glass to our God.’
The guests looked at each other, dumbfounded. The oligarch took out a thick wad of bills and waved it.
‘To our God, the Almighty Dollar!’
He took out a lighter and torched the wad of bills, which quickly caught, and soon Litvinov was holding only a flame, which he contemplated with a sort of grave joy. A dozen people in the assembled company also pulled out wads of money and set them alight. Litvinov tossed the burning sheaf of banknotes on the ground and stamped it out.
‘Now let’s party, my friends! The drink is flowing, the women are stunning and we can do anything we please. This is our day!’
Lev had seen enough. He ventured into the night. He considered walking for a while, but no sooner had he stepped outside than his two bodyguards approached as the car silently drew up.
Matthieu became Simon’s flatmate in the terraced apartment. Their timetables were very different. Simon worked during the day at his laboratory while Matthieu, who handled PR for a nightclub called Le Miroir, was only just surfacing when his friend came home at night. People found it somewhat strange to see how easily this elegant bourgeois Parisian, raised in the finest neighbourhoods and educated at the finest schools, melted into the very different world of the nightclub. But though his elegance and ge
ntility gave him a certain air of superiority, deep down Matthieu was a creature of instinct with savage urges. Both men – one in the sterile, cold, colourless setting of the laboratory, the other in the pulsing pandemonium of a nightclub – had found the ideal environment in which to thrive. On the face of it, it seemed nothing short of miraculous that two such different people could share a flat, but it was their differences that brought them together: Simon, the introvert, was fascinated by Matthieu, the womanising extrovert who, through some vestige of innocence, was extremely fond of this maths geek who had the good taste to admire him. He relished this admiration all the more because Simon was a graduate of the prestigious École Polytechnique while he, Matthieu, had never even got his degree – a glaring lapse in the eyes of his bourgeois family. He had enrolled to study law, but he was one of those people who see no need to work unless compelled. He could read and write, was bilingual thanks to his English mother, and his education – in his own opinion – was more than adequate. So he quickly abandoned his studies and moved into PR, a profession for which he proved to have a remarkable flair. All the more so because, as he defined it, Public Relations was a wide brief: he considered clubbing to be PR work, since he invariably found new contacts to add to his address book. When he was taken on by Le Miroir, he invited his friends, a raft of casual acquaintances met while clubbing, organised a number of moderately successful marketing exercises and indulged the journalists and the starlets. And it must be admitted that his talent for having no job – no one would have imagined that the friendly, irrepressible young man clapping them on the back was doing so out of self-interest – verged on perfection.
Matthieu wanted to celebrate moving in to the terraced apartment. Being an expert in such things, he decided to do something quirky, something that had nothing to do with Simon or with himself. He settled on a Moroccan couscous. He talked about it to their cleaner, a young Moroccan woman, who assured him she made the finest couscous in the city. Being both wary and a connoisseur of couscous, he insisted on a sample. Convinced, Matthieu sent out invitations to his friends, as did Simon, though he was more anxious about the results.
Sila's Fortune Page 5
