The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  “That pederast Otarik will pay for this,” Dyakonov hissed.

  Then he stood up and wrapped the sheet around his waist.

  “Okay, policemen, let’s go,” he said with scornful defiance.

  He tugged at the end of Polad-zade’s sheet, as the man had been struck dumb and was unable to come to terms with what was happening.

  “But – what about the warrant?” the deputy minister finally spluttered.

  “We have it outside, Polad Alyevich; it would have got wet in here,” Nazar explained gently. And without drawing further attention and while the four wrestlers went discreetly each in his own direction, the judge and the policeman accompanied the arrested men down the steps, back through the wash area and into the changing room. There of course, they had to stop, but only for the time strictly necessary for all of them to get dressed, and then they were outside in Plotnikov Lane, where the police van was waiting…

  A few days later, Nazar was sitting in his office and pretending to study some of his papers while actually observing the Accountant out of the corner of his eye. The man had been brought for his first interrogation. He was curious to see whether Dyakonov had lost a little of his arrogance after two nights in a cell: there was no champagne there, and even watery beer was beyond his reach! Reluctantly he had to acknowledge that the young man was showing no signs of softening his stance; his half-shut eyes expressed indifference or at the very most boredom, and there the bastard sat at his ease one leg resting on the other. Although his clothes were now somewhat the worse for wear after two nights sleeping on a hard bench, you could see that they were well-tailored and costly: a raspberry-coloured blazer over a black silk shirt, a pair of designer jeans – undoubtedly American – and leather boots, also American… Hey, hey, the Accountant put some store by his elegance, and you couldn’t have imagined a more glaring contrast with the prosecutor seated opposite, but then that was exactly what Dyakonov was thinking as he waited patiently for the interrogation to start. How much does he earn? he wondered as he weighed Nazar up. One hundred and fifty, perhaps two hundred roubles? Clearly no more than that. You just have to look at the way he dresses: a common grey woollen suit of the kind you can get in any department store, already worn at the seams, and as for his shirt collar, that’s actually fraying… He’s a tramp! And we’re supposed to bow and scrape before these beggars. They and their henchmen take us away in handcuffs, but the day will come when we will make them eat all this shit themselves, and you can bet on it. Dyakonov narrowed his eyes even further to mask his irritation. These good-for-nothings hadn’t even allowed him to pass by the hotel and pick up a clean shirt! As for his black glasses, they had confiscated them at the prison entrance, and what about his hair! It had become spiky after sleeping in the cell and he had not brought any gel with him to rub over it. It was not the kind of thing you could get hold of in prison at whatever cost. He had tried asking a few of the guards, but the oafs didn’t even know what it was!

  The judge raised his eyes from the papers and stared at the accused. “There are so many things we two have got to talk about, Artur Yakovlevich,” he said. “I really don’t know where to start… But let’s start at the end, and work our way backwards, what do you think? Now as far as we can see, you came to Moscow to discuss, well let’s call it business, with Deputy Minister Polad-zade on behalf of a certain cooperative – what was your name for it… ah, here it is, ‘Azerorosh’, which has its registered office in Baku. As it happens, a week earlier this cooperative rented an office in Moscow on the twentieth floor of the Inturist skyscraper in Gorky Street, am I right?”

  Dyakonov nodded in agreement and for the first time looked the prosecutor in the eye – with arrogance: What do you want? he seemed to be saying, I am completely above board – a peace-loving businessman – and sooner or later you Muscovite blockheads will have to admit it…

  “This cooperative,” Nazar continued, “was founded last month ‘to provide technical and scientific know-how,’ I am reading from the articles of association, “in relation to irrigation works soon to be undertaken in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan, under the direction of the Pan-Soviet Minister for Water Resources.’ Am I right?”

  The Accountant shrugged to suggest that Nazar could say whatever he wanted. “If you say so,” he then muttered.

  There was no need for him to indulge in this charade, as Nazar now knew everything about this matter, thanks to the documents confiscated by the police from the offices in Gorky Street. There in black and white was proof that three weeks earlier Polad-zade had had his minister approve the funding for new irrigation works in his republic, which risked descending into civil war over that wretched Karabakh and needed investments to bolster the people’s faith in Moscow. Obviously when it was decided at the highest level to divert that river of money towards the dusty plains of Azerbaijan, the question of how it was going to be divided out immediately came up, and Dyakonov stepped forward: the establishment of the cooperative “Azerorosh” came three days after the final approval of the funding…

  “What do you mean by ‘If you say so’? I would have thought that you would have been informed, given that you appear to be the chairman of this cooperative!” the judge was getting annoyed.

  Dyakonov sniggered and shrugged his shoulders once again.

  “If that’s what’s written there…”

  Nazar could have happily slapped the man. How could someone who was officially on the run be registered as the chairman of a cooperative? No, this was another of those Baku mysteries that can only give you a headache: the wanted man simply turned up at the appropriate office and no one thought of ringing the police; in fact, they just went ahead and registered him. Actually there was a little wheeze: the cooperative was not registered directly at the competent ministry, as would normally happen, but at a district committee, as though it were a charity. Even there, someone should have suspended the registration until the background checks had been carried out. That someone clearly wasn’t there. But nowadays, you have to think twice before obstructing the establishment of a cooperative in any way, as the democratic press is likely to be snapping at your heels in no time! In any event, if someone had decided to alert the police, Salayev would have personally made sure that everything was covered up. Hadn’t Dyakonov boasted in Ogodayev’s intercept that he had the chief of police eating out of his hand? And Salayev was indeed only too happy to put his snout in the trough, and with such appetite! That much was clearly documented in the Accountant’s books.

  You could only guess at the deals Dyakonov was hoping to seal through that cooperative with the complicity of Polad-zade. In Nazar’s opinion, there was already enough there to put the pair of them in prison: the deputy minister had brought to the sauna the conditions for the tender for irrigation works, conditions that were still being put together by the ministry and no one was supposed to see. They were confiscated from the changing room together with a brief case full of papers yet to be assessed. But this was not the only reason for the Accountant’s visit to Moscow. Our eaglet was hoping fly up even higher. The office in Gorky Street had been rented by Azerorosh in partnership with another and already familiar cooperative, that of the Baku Veterans, of whom Dyakonov was still the auditor; no one had bothered to inform the veterans that he was a trafficker on the run. This cooperative needed an office in Moscow in order to establish a joint-venture company together with an Italian enterprise for the purposes of manufacturing artificial limbs for disabled servicemen, as revealed by Ogodayev’s intercept. The joint-venture SovItKom would naturally benefit from all the tax concessions provided for under the law on cooperatives, which are not insignificant, plus special concessions granted by the government at the request of Comrade Vezirov, the First Secretary of the Party down there in Azerbaijan. Read the list, it would have you licking your lips: complete exemption for three years from all corporation tax and export quotas on cement, diesel, aluminium…

  Dyakonov’s diary co
ntained appointments with some quite unexpected names and not just ministers and deputies, but also the Metropolitan of Moscow Pitirim who was a member of the coordinating committee of the Union of Afghanistan Veterans. Nazar was wondering whether he should be ringing all those people to tell them that the appointments were cancelled or whether he should be waiting for them in Gorky Street. They must have a few interesting tales to tell!

  “Artur Jakovlevich,” Nazar exclaimed. “Would you like to tell me what you were going to be talking about with the Metropolitan?”

  This time, Dyakonov decided to break his silence. “Our cooperative is a humanitarian organisation,” he enunciated carefully, “acknowledged as such internationally. It is therefore qualified to participate in humanitarian programmes for the international community; in this specific instance (that is exactly what the scoundrel said; he spoke like the executive of a Western corporation!) of the establishment of the joint venture SovItKom, we have applied for a subsidised loan from a consortium of Italian banks, but they want the Metropolitan to act as guarantor, so we have appointed him honorary president.”

  “And does the Metropolitan know what kind of gangsters he has got mixed up with?” Nazar could not stop himself from asking.

  “Careful about what you say!” Dyakonov warned him coolly. “I am a businessman. I am not involved in any shade deals. Just business.”

  “But where does the money come from? The race track perhaps?” Nazar protested.

  The Accountant chortled. “I have bet on the horses in the past… I have a certain expertise. Not a crime, I think. And it’s water under the bridge, Nazar Kallistratovich! Now I’m a businessman and the fatherland should be grateful to me, but what happens? You come and take me away from the sauna like a criminal, and you keep me in prison! No, this will not do, judge.”

  “Is that right?” Nazar retorted sarcastically. “A fine businessman you are, Artur Jakovlevich! But don’t you worry, you’ll have time to tell me about all your business deals. For example, there are those AK 74s!”

  He had hoped to shake Dyakonov by firing off this particular ammunition, but the man was completely unmoved. This line of attack was not working; you need a different approach with a guy like this…

  “Those AK 74s that you were importing from Iran, together with your drugs?”

  “I know nothing about it. You’re the one who has invented it,” Dyakonov replied frostily. “Really? Listen here, I want to tell you a nice little story.

  Once upon a time there was a businessman who had a lot of wonderful projects, and he was preparing to make shedloads of money with his joint-ventures. He was very relaxed about everything, because he had friends in all the right places, and even though he had committed the odd little crime, he knew that they would always help him to hide the shit under the straw.”

  Nazar paused for a moment to assess the effect on Dyakonov, who continued to listen impassively.

  “Only our businessman made a stupid mistake. He trusted one of these friends, who had persuaded him to supply a few crates of arms brought into the country through clandestine channels in exchange for free passage for his consignments of drugs. Of course, it looked like a bargain; instead of having to hand out wads of dollars all over the place, all he had to do was load his lorries with a few extra crates, full of old iron, and offload them in a few isolated spots in the countryside… Yes, our friend thought he was being cunning, but actually he was bringing about his own destruction.”

  A moment of silence followed and then the Accountant spoke.

  “Nazar Kallistratovich, you are not aware of it, but I know who you are,” he said slowly. “You have a wife and a son, so try and remember that, every now and then.”

  Nazar suddenly panicked. The son of a bitch had hit the target. It was true: he hadn’t thought about Asya and Misha until that moment. What if something happened to them? I couldn’t live; I would throw myself under a train… But we can all threaten, he thought feeling for his courage, and besides, you’re finally losing your cool – a good sign; it means I’ve put your back to the wall. So let’s continue to jab at those particular ribs!

  “You know, Artur Yakovlevich, it really is a pity that you let yourself be drawn into this mess. I spoke to my superiors and told them all about these shady deals in the past and the ones you’re organising for the future, and they just laughed. Here in Russia we’re so indulgent about these things now, after all we need to encourage free enterprise!

  But when I told them about the AK 74s, their mood really changed for some reason. Listening to General Yusuf-zade, that was a very bad move, Artur Yakovlevich. Some friends are best avoided. And when they killed that poor ayatollah – do you remember his name? Pashayev, I think – that was an even worse move for the lot of you. You thought that no one would find out…”

  “You’re making this all up,” the Accountant hissed. “My lawyers will make you regret this, you have got to believe me. You don’t have a shred of evidence to back up these fairy stories.”

  “No? Oh well then, could you tell me which one is the better shag, Albina or Zoya?” Nazar said brutally. Actually that was yet another cartridge that he wasn’t intending to fire off in the first interrogation, but what could he do? His nerves could no longer stand the scoundrel’s impassiveness and the way he sat there with his legs crossed and the American boots on full display! He was not yet going to reveal to Dyakonov that his papers had been discovered.

  There was time enough for that, but it was good to put a flea in his ear. It was certainly the right time to do that, so he would have something to think about while he sat alone in his cell… Nazar had come across those two girls as he was thumbing through one of the confiscated diaries: there, on one of the last pages, the Accountant’s extravagant hand had recorded the names and addresses of Albina and Zoya, and next to them had also recorded for comparative purposes both their measurements: weight, height, breast, thigh and bottom. But that was not all: a series of dates formed a column under each name, and they were clearly entered on different occasions using different pens and pencils. So 11 May Zoya, then 15 May Albina, 16 May he’s back to Zoya, and this time with a double asterisk, and God knows what that means. And on 24 May, after more than a week of abstinence the pair of them together! Yes, Dyakonov liked his girls, and clearly this need of his to write everything down was a real mania, a fixation…

  The Accountant gave no visible expression of being affected by that provocation, but Nazar immediately felt that it had struck home in spite of the man’s self-control. He shook his head slowly, and then in a deep voice full of tension he gave his warning, “You’ll pay for this, you bastards. You and your superiors are going to get my cock right in your mouth and you’ll suck it off down on your knees, you pederasts!”

  XXIX

  Tennis

  Moscow, October 1988

  “What then?”

  “I sent him back to his cell. I thought that was enough for a first interrogation. Anyway it’s a good idea to leave him to stew in his own juice for a while. He must have understood by now that the shit he’s in is deep and very liquid, don’t you think?”

  Nazar had just reported to Stepankov on the outcome of his first meeting with the Accountant. The Deputy Chief Prosecutor pinched his chin with his fat fingers and stared into space. At least six telephones of different colours were arranged on his desk, made of some expensive hardwood and covered with papers and books: three white phones, two black ones and even one red one, which was slightly separated off from the others, as though it didn’t want to mix with the riff-raff. Of course, now Sony and Philips are just about everywhere, you people have probably forgotten that in those times, there was no equipment for handling several lines at a time and transferring them with the press of a button from one to the other, as the most junior clerk would have been able to do in the West. That’s right, here in Russia, if you wanted more than one line, you had to have an equal number of telephones, which consequently became one of the
symbols of power. Nazar, for example, had three on his desk, which wasn’t very many, but the Deputy Chief Prosecutor had six of them! You have to ask how many did Rekunkov, the Chief Prosecutor of the All the Russias – pardon me, of all the Soviet Union – have: he could not have been happy with less than twelve and one of them was probably made of solid gold… So the desks too had to grow in proportion, so as to become a parade ground large enough for all those telephones. In fact, desks in the offices of important bureaucrats were no longer just desks, but rather majestic galleons ready to sail for distant and exotic destinations! Really, you do feel a bit sheepish when you think about what savages we were just a few years ago: uncultured barbarians, God forgive us, ignorant of electronic subtleties… “Yes,” Stepankov finally consented as he lit a cigarette.

  “Let’s hope it turns out all right. How did it go with your deputy minister? A neighbour of yours, if I’m not mistaken?”

  “Yes,” Nazar admitted dryly. “Oh, there won’t be any problems with him. I interrogated him the day before yesterday. He came in as pale as death, and was actually shaking. He didn’t eat anything on the first day after his arrest. He protested that the cell was too cold and demanded that the guard turn up the heating; as the guard just laughed in his face, he then wanted pen and paper to write to God knows whom… On the second day, however, he had already lost heart and when his food arrived, he bolted it down furiously. Later, during the night, he felt ill and vomited it all up. In short, he came to my office like a complete wreck; he had no clean clothes and had had to put on an old tracksuit. He had this mouldy smell about him.

  He came in and wanted me to get him out of prison: You could die of cold in there, and the food won’t stay down! I tell him: Look, Polad Alyevich, we’re here to talk about very different matters; any complaints should be made to the prison governor. Well, he says, could I at least know the charges I have been arrested for? I’m sorry, I say, but your ministry has got involved in some pretty shady business, and we need to know exactly what was going on. For instance, why did you have a meeting the other day with a… businessman, shall we call him, and by the way, Polad Alyevich, did you or did you not know that your partner was wanted by the Prosecutor’s Office for trafficking in drugs and arms?”