Monumental Propaganda (34 page)

83

A certain citizen of the state of Nebraska (USA), rummaging around in the nooks and crannies of the Internet, noticed a World Wide Web user who was evidently interested in the latest advances in the area of explosives technology—substances, components, reagents, catalysts, reaction accelerators and retardants. This unknown individual was also studying the latest means of remote signal transmission and the details of various sensor devices. He had in addition evinced obvious curiosity concerning the life of disabled war veterans in America, how many of them there were, their pensions, daily lives, social-aid programs and technology for improving their lives.

The inhabitant of Nebraska decided to contact this searcher, worked out his ICQ and sent him the following message: “Hi, I'm Jim Barding-ton. Who are you?”

Vanka (whose English was quite good) was surprised. He thought for a moment and gave his name. The next question was “Are you disabled?”

Vanka asked: “How did you guess?”

“You are very intelligent.”

“Thank you. And what about you?”

“Me too.”

“Intelligent or disabled?”

“Both. Vietnam War veteran. Are you Russian?”

“Yes.”

“I hate the USA too!”

Before Vanka had time to think how to express his surprise, there was a coded knock at the door. Vanka apologized to the American and exited from the Internet.

Gravalya let in a short man with a leather cap pulled forward over his eyes. Once inside the room, the caller bent up the peak of his cap and took a good look at the surroundings. There was no general lighting in the room, but there was an orange silk lampshade with a 150-watt lightbulb hanging low over the worktable. By the light of this bulb the visitor surveyed his host in his wheelchair—a stump of a man with a mutilated face and only one eye and one arm. His right leg—a plastic prosthesis clad in a canvas trouser leg with a shoe on the foot—was standing on the low foot-board. The trouser leg of the pink-colored left prosthesis was turned up, and the prosthesis itself was lying across the knee of the right leg, without any shoe but wearing a sock. Even though he had a computer, Vanka often used this limb as a notepad. He wrote on it in pencil, recording orders, working out chemical formulae or simply adding up figures, and he rubbed out his old notes with an eraser. At this stage the room was a genuine chemical laboratory, reasonably well equipped. On the table there was a computer, a chemical balance, two soldering irons, microcircuits and chips, a reel of copper wire and a copy of the journal
Chemistry
and Life.
The shelves around the table held flasks of various liquids, jars with labels reading AMMONIUM NITRATE, MERCURY, POWDERED CARBON, GELATIN, SULPHUR, BLUE VITRIOL, GLYCERINE and NITROGLYCERINE. Standing and lying on and under crudely assembled racks, were canisters, buckets, cans, two antipersonnel mines, four antitank grenades and all sorts of other deadly bits and pieces.

“And you keep all this out in the open?” the visitor asked in amazement.

“Sit down,” said Vanka, indicating an old brown armchair with sagging springs to the left of the table. “Will you tell me your name?”

“Yes. Ivan Ivanich. Will that do?”

“Yes,” agreed Vanka. “So what do you want?”

For some reason Ivan Ivanich suddenly became embarrassed.

“There's a certain person here,” he began uncertainly.

“Where here?” Vanka asked sternly.

“In Moscow.” Ivan Ivanich was obviously feeling a bit bashful. “Well, basically he's from around here, but his bank's in Moscow. And he has to be . . .”

“I can guess what he has to be, but who is he?” asked Vanka.

“Do you need the name?”

“I need details. What he does, where he goes, who he associates with, how he spends his free time, his weaknesses and habits.”

“I have all that,” said the visitor. He took a wallet bulging with numerous credit cards stuffed into special slots out of his side pocket. From it he extracted a sheet of paper on which the necessary items of information were listed in computer type. President of a bank, age twenty-nine, divorced, one child, takes his work seriously, arrives earlier than anyone else and leaves later, has two bodyguards, lives in a well-guarded building, is having an affair with the wife of the owner of the Golden Goose restaurant, meets her in a specially rented apartment; this building is not guarded, nor is its entrance, the apartment has an alarm system, but it can be switched off by someone in the police.

“Our suggestion,” said Ivan Ivanich, “is to plant a bomb under the bed and rely on the pressure. While only the mistress is in the bed, the bomb just lies there. When there's two of them, it explodes. Very simple.”

Vanka held the paper in his hand, read through it again and thrust out his torn lower lip in a gesture of disdain.

“Simple and stupid,” was his assessment.

“Why,” the visitor asked, surprised and a bit offended.

“Because, if he's lying on top of her, she'll shield him. She'll be torn apart, but he'll survive.”

“How about a bit more explosive? We'll pay for everything.”

“You'll pay all right. But there must be other apartments there. Downstairs, upstairs. Families, children . . .”

“What of it? Are you some kind of humanist then?” the visitor asked.

“I'll ask you to be a bit more civil,” Vanka growled, his mind on something else. “I'm not a humanist, I'm a specialist. I don't like primitive solutions. What other habits does he have?”

It turned out that the future victim had a bar in his office and drank whiskey and tonic several times a day.

“Whiskey and tonic?” Vanka repeated in amazement. He took a pencil from the table and began writing something on the plastic leg. “Does anybody really drink whiskey and tonic?”

“Why not?” asked the client with a shrug. “I drink whiskey and tonic too.”

“Well, well,” Vanka shrugged his shoulders. From his time at Varvara Ilinichna's place in Moscow, he remembered the Western journalists regaling the dissidents with the foreign drinks they drank themselves, but they drank gin with tonic, not whiskey. “Okay,” he muttered. “I suppose it's a matter of taste.”

In the course of the question-and-answer session that followed, Vanka established how the banker spent the beginning of his working day. He went into his office and straight across to the bar, poured himself a whiskey and tonic, and mulled over this drink for at least half an hour. After that he opened the safe, took out his business papers and got down to work. As it happened, the client knew the combination.

“Okay,” said Vanka, and he made another note on his leg. “Come back in a week.”

“It's a deal.” As he was leaving, the client nodded at Vanka's leg. “That's a handy notepad you have.”

“Very handy,” Vanka agreed. “Always to hand, in fact.”

When their visitor had gone, Gravalya locked the door and Vanka went back to the computer and asked his new acquaintance why he hated America.

84

Nowadays, nobody but an extreme skeptic has any chance of being a sage or a prophet. The further things go, the worse people treat each other, and as for morality . . . People talk about it endlessly in Russia, rolling their eyes sensitively all the while. Oh, morality, morality . . . But morality here is in such a poor state it's best not to talk about it at all. The bigger villain a man is, the more he talks about morality, patriotism and love for mankind. In actual fact the continuing historical process merely renders man increasingly callous.

How can we even imagine that a mere hundred years or so ago there was only one executioner for the whole of Russia? They couldn't find a second person who was willing to execute people. Sometimes people ripped each other open with knives or beat each other to death with stakes, but that was the result of drinking or foolishness, acts committed in a state of excitation, as they used to say back then, and sometimes, of course, for money, but not as part of the routine responsibilities of a job. Not out of ideological considerations. Not out of sexual motivation. Not as a matter of scientific research. And not in such great numbers.

How many murderers of various calibers have paraded in front of our eyes: Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Himmler, Dr. Mengele, Pol Pot, Chikatilo . . .

And note that not a single writer has managed to re-create the character of any of them in an authentic, convincing portrait. Because in describing this or that character you have to put yourself in his place and imagine that you are him. This imagining you are somebody else is what a writer does every day. He can imagine he is Flaubert's Emma Bovary, Tolstoy's Pierre Bezukhov, Gogol's Chichikov and Korobochka, even a horse called Yardstick or a dog called Chestnut. Even a horse and a dog have feelings and impulses that are accessible to our understanding, but I don't know a single writer who has managed to feel his way into the character of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler or even Chikatilo. Lenin, Stalin and Hitler killed millions of people through the hands of their agents. Chikatilo cut out little girls' wombs with his own hands and ate them raw. He killed, raped and partially ate about fifty people, but his record didn't stand for long. In Russia a certain Kolya did away with a hundred women, but the only part he consumed fresh was their blood. The flesh he boiled, roasted, dried, smoked and made into sausage, eating it himself and feeding it to his guests. Kolya was followed by other murderers who surpassed him, and the competition is still continuing. And the longer it goes on, the more sadists, ghouls, butchers and processors of human flesh are spawned. Little children are abducted so that their internal organs can be taken. And as for the professional craftsmen of the killing business, their work inflames the imaginations of schoolboys, and hot-blooded youths with fire in their eyes dream not of being poets or explorers or cosmonauts, but hit men. It's an alluring and romantic prospect—to pick out your victim and shadow him, to wait in the dark entrance, lurking under the stairs, to fire at point-blank range, then step over the corpse and stroll away after delivering the coup de grâce to the head.

Validol had never been either a romantic or a sadist. He only killed people if he could see some profit in killing them. And he didn't touch anybody else. He derived no pleasure from killing, but he didn't experience any discomfort either. Business is business—that was the way he thought about it. Killing a man was like splitting a log. With the sole difference that killing meant risking your own life. You might get killed. And the trouble with killing people was that afterward you had to cover your tracks, dismember corpses, destroy clues, figure out alibis. And so if Validol had been able to earn good bread, as he put it, without killing anyone, then he wouldn't have killed anyone. In fact, he was already toying with the idea that when he'd accumulated his start-up capital he could drop all the dirty work and go into legitimate business. But before he could do that, he had to finish what had already been started and that meant . . . As he thought about it, Valentin Yurievich mentally shrugged—unfortunately, he still needed to take someone's life, but afterward . . . afterward . . .

Anyway, after sleeping he didn't feel much like thinking. He really felt like sleeping a bit longer, but the early spring sunlight that seemed to be sparkling with dew was shining straight into his eyes, forcing him to squint. He turned away from the sun and toward the woman he loved, the one he called Galchonka when he was in a good mood. She was sleeping with her back to him and her shoulder, tanned in February on the isle of Bali, was exposed. The shoulder was dark with a white stripe from her bikini strap. Validol put his hand on her shoulder and stroked it tentatively. He was in an excellent mood. So far, all his business affairs had gone well and he'd achieved many things he could never even have dreamed of before, although he'd known the feeling of big money rustling in his pocket for a long time now. But just recently, what had he been able to spend it on? Sure, he'd done the rounds of the restaurants, he'd pampered himself in Sochi, steamed himself in the sauna, bathed a few girls in Abrau Dursot champagne and drunk himself into a swinish stupor with that same champagne and vodka. But he'd paid dearly for all of that. He'd been inside twice, and he would have gone down a third time if not for perestroika, the reforms and all the rest of it.

But now he had the casino, the restaurants, the movie theater, his company Housewarmer and his travel agency, The World in Your Hand. Recently, he'd bought a gas station as well, and a few days ago he'd finally given in to temptation and bought a Mercedes 600, although he used to laugh at other people who owned that model, those New Russians from all the jokes. The handsome beast was standing in his garage. Armor-plated, with tinted windows, gilded door handles and fully loaded, it had alarms and automatic controls, heated seats, a computer, a thermometer and a navigation system (which was actually quite useless in this part of the world). The owner hadn't been stingy; he'd insured his new wheels for their full value. Against theft, accident, natural disasters and all the rest. To be on the safe side, he had also augmented his insurance with Divine Power through the agency of a priest who had sprinkled water on his purchase in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost and intoned a prayer for the safekeeping of this carriage and the servants of God who would ride in it.

So far then, things had been going well. And they could be expected to go even better. Just a few more jobs to push through, one of them being to polish off that drunk old dame. A perfectly simple killing with almost no risk. He'd thought everything through. He'd already helped four similar ancient dipsomaniacs to shuffle off this mortal coil. It was simple. First you had to have a drink with the old dame, and then have a lot more, and then say to her, “Drink up now, Granny,” and if she started getting awkward, open her mouth and pour it in until she choked on it. It was disagreeable work, but he could live with that. And it would definitely be one of the last jobs like that he ever did. Soon he'd build his hydropathic clinic and his factory for bottling mineral water and give his water the name invented by his best friend Mosol—Valya's Valley. And he'd run an honest, legitimate business, or almost honest—honest enough to be able to buy off public prosecutors and the tax police. He was already living half-legally, conducting business openly and sharing his earnings. He'd fixed all the local bosses, and he'd supported the Church of SS. Kozma and Damian, and set up the Age with Dignity foundation. He had the respect of the town's mayor, the chief of police, the chief of the security services. There would be new elections soon and he would be running. With his money and contacts success ought to be assured. And that meant guaranteed immunity and a career for the future, and eventually he could see himself sitting in the mayor's chair, with everyone answering to him: the bank, the police, the public prosecutor's office and the court. In short, he woke up feeling good and turned toward the woman he loved, who was sleeping with her face buried in her pillow. He stroked her shoulder. She woke up: Eh? How? What? Then she realized what and how and reached out for him . . .

Afterward, they drank freshly brewed coffee with cream on the balcony, with hot rolls and cheese. The sun was shining, it was warm, the air was scented by the jasmine blossoming profusely at the same height as the balcony.

“Wonderful!” Validol exclaimed suddenly.

“What?” Gala asked in fright.

“What do you mean, what?”

“Nothing,” she said, embarrassed. “I just didn't think you could actually feel anything.”

“You fool!” he said. “You're the one who doesn't understand and never will understand how beautiful life is!”

“Why?” she asked, offended. “Do you think you're more sensitive than I am?”

“No. But in order to really feel how lucky you are to be living like this, you need to have been through the mill. Spend some time in the camps, for instance.”

“You told me you used to live pretty well in there too.”

“Pretty well. I lived better than the others in there. I was leader of the pack in there. I had the best places on the bunks, I didn't do any work, I drank chifir and the lags carried out my every wish.”

“Just like I said.”

“Like you said!” he retorted, almost angry. “Can't you understand, that was still slavery! Chifir instead of coffee, smelly foot-rags instead of the jasmine that's blossoming now, and being surrounded all the time by those brute-ugly louts. No, I don't want to go back there again.”

“Why should you go back? What for? You're legit, aren't you?”

“Me?” He gave her a mocking look. “You're asking me? What about you?”

“Me-ee?” she said in astonishment. “Are you trying to say that I . . . ?” Tears sprang to her eyes. “You think I'm not legit?” She was all set to have hysterics on the spot.

“No,” he told her hastily. “I'm not saying anything like that. But don't you go getting too laid back and forgetting we've got to take care of the old woman today.”

“Why are you telling me that?” she shouted. “I've never refused to do a job, I've always helped you with everything.”

“Okay, cool it!” He moved closer and took her head under his arm. “Don't you worry, everything's going to be fine. We'll bump off the old woman, just one, the last one, and then we'll go absolutely straight all the way. We'll do business, earn money, take trips to the islands . . .”

Shortly afterward, they went outside. Validol opened the garage with the remote control. The flexible door creaked as it crept upward. The sunlight gleamed on the bumper and the radiator of the four-wheeled beauty. Two kids passing by stopped to gape at the limousine of the twenty-first century.

Valentin Yurievich drove out of the garage. The door came down. Gala settled down on the leather seat to the right of the man she loved. He shifted the lever to the DRIVE position and stepped smoothly on the gas, pulled out onto Monastery Street and accelerated from a standing start to a crazy speed for these narrow, bumpy, neglected streets.

“Valya! What's the rush?” said Gala, clutching at her safety belt and squinting at the speedometer. The hand raced around the dial and hit the 120 mark . . .

At that moment Aglaya Stepanovna Revkina was walking home from the shop at a speed of about two and a half kilometers an hour. In a plastic bag she was carrying two hundred grams of Odessa sausage, a chicken, a kilogram of potatoes, a tin of marrow paste and a head of cabbage. She remembered that Gala was coming today, and she'd be bringing vodka and some groceries. And perhaps (Gala had said) Valentin Yurievich might drop in too. Aglaya had decided to make some appetizers herself. She was just about to turn off Monastery Street into her own Komsomol Cul-de-Sac when a Mercedes emerged from around the corner, picked up speed, hurtled past her and was suddenly transformed by some strange metamorphosis into a flying ball of flame. Almost simultaneously, there was a thunderous bang, she felt a sharp pressure against her eyes and her eardrums, and chunks of metal and glass went flying in every direction. A torn-off wheel first shot up into the sky like a rocket, then fell onto the roof of a passing bus, bounced off and went hurtling along the precise center of the street, then swung to one side, knocking over a dog that was running past, and crashed into a cobbler's kiosk and knocked that over, complete with the cobbler sitting inside it.

Since our narrative does not belong to the genre of crime fiction, being no more than a truthful reflection of our criminal social reality, we shall avoid keeping the reader in a state of pointless suspense and say immediately that the reason Aglaya Stepanovna Revkina had been spared the fate intended for her by the Age with Dignity foundation was that Validol had a powerful rival—the financier Andrei Ignatievich Mosolov, nicknamed Mosol, who could have been a very faithful friend to Validol if only he didn't have ideas of his own for the mineral-water spring and the forthcoming elections.

The reader will no doubt recall that Validol had had his Mercedes insured and blessed. It might therefore seem strange that Valentin Yurievich's buggy exploded despite enjoying divine protection. It would seem strange, if we didn't happen to know that the infernal device located under the Mercedes had also been blessed. Mosol had taken it to the church specially, and he'd been more generous than Validol. And in addition, the device really had been put together very well.

Vanka Zhukov had calculated everything precisely. He just hadn't thought that Validol could drive through the streets of the town at that kind of speed.