Vodka

by Boris Starling

  “He will. Either that, or he’ll extend the deadline again. Like I said, she’s all he’s got.”

  “What about military options?” Knight said.

  “A Spetsnaz team is on standby. They’ll move into position the moment it’s appropriate.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Precisely what it sounds like.”

  “Why aren’t they in position now?”

  “Was it not you who, only yesterday, cautioned against military intervention on the grounds that people get hurt in shootouts? Besides, it’s not appropriate.”

  Denial and doublespeak, Knight thought. Once you knew your way through the thickets of disinformation, though, it was as easy to read as the truth. “You still don’t know where they are, do you?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “They’re not making it easy, I have to say. Someone calls the switchboard and tells us where to find the tapes. Yesterday it was Gorky Park, today Novy Arbat. Karkadann calls one of my private lines when he wants to talk, but he’s never on long enough to get a trace. There’s no way we can get in touch with them ourselves.”

  “Experts have examined the tapes and recordings of the calls for clues as to where they might be,” said Irk. “But so far their findings have been inconclusive.”

  “A detachment of OMON troops raided the Belgrade Hotel this afternoon,” said Arkin.

  “They’re not going to be there,” Lev said.

  “The OMON were looking for pointers as to where they might have gone.”

  “Did they find any?”

  “It wasn’t an entirely wasted trip.”

  “The answer’s no, then.”

  “They did find something. Sackfuls of privatization vouchers, to be precise. Vouchers stolen from the Ostozhenka branch of Sberbank on Monday.”

  Alone again and reduced to dependence on others for the very basics of food, water and shelter. They chose what they gave her. Whatever she asked for, she didn’t get. That was why she had no tissues, even though her body was still counting the days. Her tears flowed with the blood; she wanted to continue leaking until there was nothing left of her.

  68

  Friday, February 28, 1992

  The next tape must have been made overnight. The call to the Kremlin came before breakfast, giving a location near the Yermolov Theatre. Cars were sent for Arkin, Lev and Knight; they were all in the presidential office inside twenty minutes.

  The footage began with a shot of Karkadann holding a rubber tube. Alice was tied to a chair. She squirmed against the ropes, seemingly more intent on easing the pressure on her ruined backside than trying to free herself. Karkadann walked over to Alice, flexed his free hand, clenched it into a fist and drove it into her stomach.

  No one in Borzov’s office dared glance at Lev.

  As Alice gasped for air, Karkadann fed one end of the pipe into her mouth. Alice tried to bite down on it, but she needed the air too much to keep her mouth closed. The tube went farther in, finding first the back of Alice’s mouth and then her throat. Karkadann fed it slowly down, careful to get it into Alice’s stomach and not her lungs. Alice’s coughing gradually subsided to a low whistle. Like a conjuror producing rabbits, Kark-adann pulled a plastic funnel out of his pocket and fitted it to the end of the tube.

  Alice’s eyes were as wide as her mouth. Knight rubbed at his face.

  Karkadann reached down to the floor, disappearing momentarily from view, and reappeared with a bottle of vodka. He opened it, held it above the funnel and started to pour. Zhorzh’s camera was not so tight on Alice’s face that he couldn’t get the bottle in as well, and he held firm, as though the steady glugging of an emptying vodka bottle had hypnotized him.

  Alice was trying to say something, and she looked as though she was grimacing. Only Lev realized that she was in fact trying to smile, and heard the word she couldn’t quite enunciate.

  “More,” she was saying, “more,” with the abandon of someone with nothing left to lose.

  It was the rubber snake as much as the vodka that made her stomach rebel, though there were few places for the vomit to go. Some made it out of her mouth, shooting from the sides and onto her cheeks and chin, but she swallowed just as much straight back again, and still the vodka kept coming, remorseless and relentless.

  When the bottle was finished, Karkadann held it up to the camera and dropped it on the floor. Behind him, out of focus, Alice was thrashing around like a landed fish.

  “This is your last chance,” Karkadann said. “I’ve put back the deadline twice. You now have until eight o’clock tomorrow morning. After that, there’ll be no more extensions. If my demands are not met by then, I will personally ensure that Mrs. Liddell gets a traditional Tsentralnaya send-off.”

  The picture flickered and dissolved to static.

  “What does he mean, a traditional Tsentralnaya send-off?” Knight said.

  Lev looked at them with the pitilessness of a worldly man forced to shock cloistered people. “It’s very simple. They strip you naked, wrap you in razor wire and put you in the trunk of a car, which they then set on fire. You either burn to death or shred yourself to bits trying to escape.”

  Arkin had said there was no way they could get in touch with Karkadann on their own initiative.

  The man had murdered his own wife and son. He’d kill his enemy’s lover in a heartbeat.

  Lev went back to Red October and sat at his desk for an hour before dialing the Belgrade.

  For a man accustomed to getting something at the snap of his fingers, the waiting seemed endless. Lev forced himself to think back to the gulag. He’d spent years there, every day like the last and also like the next. A few hours now was nothing in comparison.

  Karkadann called late in the afternoon. Lev didn’t know whether the message had taken that long to reach him, or whether he’d received it earlier and decided to make Lev sweat for a while before replying. He didn’t much care either way. It was enough that Karkadann had rung.

  “What do you want?” Karkadann said.

  Lev thought of the way Karkadann had hit Alice. He thought of how traditional Chechen culture proscribed vendettas against women. He thought of what else the Chechens might have done to her when the camera wasn’t on. He thought of the attempt to kill him at the Vek, and of the goat’s-wool sweater. And then he banished all such thoughts to his innermost soul.

  “I want to discuss settlement terms with you,” he said, and his voice was perfectly neutral.

  “No discussion. You have my terms—agree to them, or I hang up.”

  “They won’t call off the auction, and they wouldn’t allow me to transfer Red October to you even if I wanted; you must know that. I’ll offer you the most you can reasonably expect to get.”

  “I can get what I asked for,” said Karkadann, but his voice was already softening. Lev knew he was the first person in two days to have at least listened to the Chechen.

  “Once the auction’s gone ahead, it’s too late for you, there’ll be too much public dilution of the company. So, on Monday morning, I’ll shift the auction’s location at the last minute. My excuse will be the million vouchers you stole from Sberbank; I’ll say the change of venue is a regrettable but necessary measure to protect Red October against Chechen corruption. The public won’t know where to find the auction, so they won’t get any shares. After that, on the quiet, I’ll hand over Red October to you.”

  “That’s insane. Borzov and Arkin will never forgive you.”

  “Borzov and Arkin are prepared to let Alice die. It’s me who’ll never forgive them.”

  “They’ll declare war on us both.”

  “The auction in ruins, privatization off, prices spiraling, parliament scenting blood—they won’t even be in power.”

  The line hissed at Lev as Karkadann thought through his options. The rival ganglords against the Kremlin: it was an unlikely partnership, but then most alliances in Russi
a were.

  “What do you want from me in return?” Karkadann asked.

  “That you let Alice go. And that the child killings stop.”

  “How can I let her go if this deal’s secret?”

  “You let her escape. Make it look as though she got out under her own steam.”

  Another pause. “OK.”

  “And the killings. You must call them off.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Like I said: because they won’t. I sit with them, and they know full well it’s my lover we’re talking about. They see her naked, and they couldn’t care less. She’s nothing to them.”

  “I thought the vory didn’t care for women.”

  Lev looked at the tattooed inscription on the inside of his left arm: Fuck Soviet laws; the only rules I follow are my own, it said.

  “So did I,” he said.

  69

  Saturday, February 29, 1992

  Alice feigned sleep when she heard her door open sometime in the wee hours. She could tell by the faint smell of rotting carrion that it was the one with the white streak in his hair. Beyond the flimsy barrier of her eyelids, she imagined him standing over her and licking his lips. He said nothing; he always said nothing.

  She knew the deadline must be running close now, but she didn’t consciously think of it. She could no more imagine the remainder of her life being counted in hours or minutes than she could conceive of life on another galaxy. To die here, alone and far from the one she loved—no, it was incomprehensible, her mind slammed doors on her, and the more she twisted to find the notion the more elusive it became, until she gave up altogether and thought of vile Chechens raping her because that was more direct, that was easier. Easier!

  She heard Zhorzh’s footsteps going back across the room. He opened the door, two steps in, and closed it behind him. She knew the sounds so well now: the squeaking as the hinges strained, the metallic rattle of door in frame, the rusty clunk as the lock engaged—except now there was no clunk.

  Alice opened her eyes. No clunk, that was certain, and no sound outside the door either.

  There were always sounds, the guards talking, moving back and forth.

  It was a trick, surely. She’d open the door, and they’d be on her.

  Why bother to trick her? They had her just where they wanted, didn’t they?

  She waited long minutes, her mind swinging like a pendulum from one extreme to the other. It was a trick, it was a mistake. These were her last minutes, this was her chance for freedom.

  In Alice’s breast, a strange sense of exhilaration. This was survival, this was escape, and all her education and achievements and beauty and success meant nothing.

  What did she have to lose? That was where the pendulum ended: what did she have to lose?

  She clasped the door handle, hard and then harder as the sweat on her palms slid against the metal. The handle turned beneath her grip and the door began to swing open through creaking that sounded like rifle fire. Alice held her breath, waiting for outraged shouts or worse. She dared exhale only when the door was open and she’d peeked into the empty corridor.

  Time was telescoping; every step took an age. She’d barely moved in three days and eaten even less, not to mention the silver chair and the tube in the stomach. She wouldn’t be able to fight an infant or even flee from one, let alone a posse of Chechens. Vodka would give her energy, vodka would give her courage.

  Alice remembered something Lev had told her about the Siberian dilemma. At forty degrees below zero, a man who falls through ice into bitterly cold water has two choices: to stay in the water and freeze to death inside a minute, or to get out and freeze to death instantly. A true Siberian is supposed to pull himself out, even though this will kill him quicker. It’s better to go and meet death head-on rather than simply wait around for it.

  Alice went to meet whatever lay in store.

  Along the corridor and up a flight of stairs, past a window that offered a glimpse of darkened streets and pulsing streetlights. Noise to her left, voices arguing in the room up ahead, one of them a woman, and Alice was momentarily stunned—if there was a woman here, why hadn’t she seen her?—before she recognized the tinny cadences of a television set. She went low past the open door and didn’t dare look in. At the edges of her vision she saw the backs of four heads, all focused on the program.

  A loud belch behind her and she froze, but it was just one of the TV watchers.

  Alice was at the front door now. She opened it as softly as she could. A gust of cool moist air from the apartments’ communal corridor outside and she was gone, forcing herself not to run, knowing that she couldn’t have moved faster than a shuffle if she’d tried. Around a corner and up to the tenement’s main door, open and into the street past colored monkey-bars, the cold rasping like sandpaper at her bare skin and scraping ice crystals in her throat.

  Freedom was a taste at the roof of her mouth, freedom was alien. How easy it was to get used to not making decisions. For a moment, Alice couldn’t even settle on which way to go. It was the cold that jolted her into action. Naked in a Russian winter, her captors likely to discover her absence at any moment—it didn’t matter which way she went, as long as she did. There was no point having come this far only to die of exposure.

  She walked to keep warm and to get distance; she didn’t care where she was. Street signs flashed changes at her—Dubininskaya, Zatsepskaya, Stremyanny—and still she walked, a madwoman naked on the streets as though in a dream, waving away the cars which were slowing for her until belatedly, through the fog in her mind, came the realization that a car was exactly what she needed. When the next two glided toward the curb, she chose the one driven by a woman.

  “Kotelniki,” she said, feeling a delicious blast of gasoline-scented heat as she climbed into the back. “I’ve got no money.”

  The woman peered at her. “Aren’t you …?”

  Alice nodded. “And I need my lover.”

  An American would surely have insisted on taking Alice to the police, doing things by the book. This Russian understood Alice all too well: what else would a woman want at a time like this other than her lover? The driver laughed and pulled back into the road.

  Lev took Alice in his massive arms and held her as though he’d never let her go again. She was smeared in grime and stank of filth and fear, and he clasped her as though willing her to transfer them all onto him. He bathed her with tenderness and love, as one bathes a child, washing her clean of the ordeal she’d been through, gentle as he soaped the dirt from her wounds. He didn’t ask what had happened, and she didn’t tell; it was enough for her to know that his reticence came from respect for her privacy rather than lack of interest.

  By the time he’d brought her breakfast, she was asleep in his bed, dead to the world. He worked the phones.

  “Thank heavens for that,” Borzov said through eddies of vodka relief.

  “Good for her.” Arkin’s voice was edgier. “I knew that justice would win.”

  “I’m so glad she’s safe,” Knight said. “I’ll pass the news on to her husband, if you like.”

  Arkin rang back. “We’ll need to debrief her,” he said. “Bring her to the Kremlin at once.”

  “She’s been through hell,” Lev said. “You can come here, when she wakes up.”

  Alice slept hard until lunch. When she woke, she wanted to bathe again; she still felt unclean.

  “You should call your husband,” Lev said as she lay in steaming water, putting a finger to her lips to forestall any argument. “No, you must. You know that.”

  Lewis held the phone away from his ear so that Alice’s voice would seep into the apartment that was so devastatingly empty without her. He was glad she was safe, he said; that was the most important thing. He didn’t ask her what it had been like, or if she was coming home. Nor did he tell her that he hadn’t cried once, not during her captivity, not since she’d left him. Maybe he should have. Each to his own. They’d speak
soon, he said.

  Dressed and with coffee, Alice faced Arkin.

  “You’re OK for the auction on Monday?” he asked.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Lev said. “Is that all you think about?”

  The deadline had been less than three hours away. If Arkin suspected what Lev had done, he didn’t mention it—and he would have mentioned it if he had suspected. But Arkin wouldn’t have capitulated to Karkadann, and Lev would never forget that.

  “I’m fine for the auction,” Alice said.

  “Darling, you’ve just suffered a …” Lev interjected.

  “I said, I’m fine.”

  Alice told Irk what she could remember about the apartment where she’d been held. The street names she’d seen gave Irk a location, and she agreed to ride in an unmarked squad car to show him which building she’d escaped from.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Lev said. “You can’t take her back there.”

  “It’s fine.” Alice was adamant.

  The area looked very different in daylight: safer, alien. Irk watched Alice for the shakes, but she’d had a couple of vodkas and her nerves were steady.

  “That one, there—” She pointed.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.” She remembered the monkey bars outside.

  Irk wasn’t going to take any chances with Petrovka’s men, not after Smolensky Square. Nor was he going to use any men from the 21st Century, even though Lev was practically forcing them on him. An OMON squad raided the building an hour later. The apartment was empty.

  70

  Sunday, March 1, 1992

  Alice had scheduled a full auction dress rehearsal at the Krasnaya Presnya exhibition complex and she was determined, against all advice that it could be left to Harry and Bob to run the show, that she would attend as if nothing had happened.

  It started badly. She was barely out of her car when one of the volunteers came hurrying up.

  “Mrs. Liddell, I’d like to request a three-month leave of absence.”