I told my aide to enquire with the Minister for Forestry whether we, too, were supplying ‘Russian birch’ to Russia. If so, for how much, and if not, why not?

The ceremonial attire amounted to swimming trunks in Ukrainian colours, a towelling bathrobe in Ukrainian colours with blue breast-pocket trident, and a big shaggy towel.

8

Kiev, March 2015

THE WOMAN LAST but one on my list came in accompanied by Nikolai Lvovich. She looked about forty.

‘What can I do for you?’ I enquired wearily.

‘May I,’ said Nikolai Lvovich deferentially, ‘introduce Mayya Vladimirovna Voytsekhovskaya.’

‘Pleased to meet you. How can I help?’

‘I won’t trouble you this soon …’ she said.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I’ll explain tomorrow or the day after, if you’ll allow me. Goodbye.’

With that and a pleasant smile she made for the door, pausing to turn and nod in farewell. Nikolai Lvovich followed her out.

‘Find out who she is and what she wants,’ I instructed my aide.

9

Moscow, January 2013

ON SPARROW HILLS, a vast open-air swimming pool, replica of the one now beneath the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. And Moscow, since dawn, a fairy-tale kingdom in dazzling white.

By order of Mayor Luzhkov Jr, private road traffic had been stopped before 10 a.m., while fifty giant helicopters made aerial tours of the enormous city. From a thousand metres up, the great city looked unusually fine, the pristine covering of snow giving streets and avenues the appearance of canals frozen for the winter. From that height you could not help falling in love with Moscow.

Beside the pool were temporary wooden changing rooms in the shape of mini peasant huts, each displaying a national flag on the door for the convenience of delegates.

Changing into ceremonial trunks, donning bathrobe and pulling on plimsolls, I felt suddenly small, feeble, insignificant and at something of a loss – clearly the result of the flight over Moscow. The Federation’s political psychologists had judged everything perfectly, including the effect of that aerial view. And there was I about to step out onto a strip of red carpet across the snow to a frozen swimming pool made into an inviting, smooth-edged, firand-pine-branch-adorned ice hole. So much for the bird’s-eye view! Down here, at the ice hole, Russia was a very different place: primeval, bleak, cold, triumphantly obtrusive. A knock preceded my trusty aide, whose name I neither knew nor wanted to know. Difficulties with his predecessor had convinced me that it was best to keep aides at a distance, and ignorance as to name, home, etc. facilitated this. The nameless neither petition nor pester.

Walking the red carpet, crunching the snow beneath, I relished the cold penetrating my bathrobe. On an identical strip of carpet to my right, robed in the Union Jack, the youthful Conservative Prime Minister of Great Britain. Mincing his way forward on my left, a much aged Kim Jong-Il.

Looking around for Putin and seeing only a blur of faces and camera lenses, I spotted at last a veritable peasant-hut pavilion under the Federation flag.

The searing chill of water was exhilarating. This massive ice hole was reserved for heads of state, the rest being catered for some way off, though near enough for their floating trays of champagne and nibbles to be clearly seen.

But for us, no floating trays, and for me, without a large shot of good Ukrainian vodka to protect against the cold proved something of a setback. Still, experience of office had taught me to subjugate my own desires – I would have loved to raise pensions or wages, or pay miners what they were owed, make all of us happy and prosperous … But then, dear old Nikolai Lvovich or someone like him would appear and put an oar in: ‘Wealthy country, less wealthy government. Less wealthy government, less wealthy President, fewer fine cars, less well-appointed presidential flight – loss, in short, of world respect.’

No sooner were Heads of State in the water than the doors of the pavilion changing room swung open, and to the strains of the national anthem, onto his strip of red carpet stepped the President of the Russian Federation, short, gaunt and little changed. He had been voted back into power the year before after four years in the wilderness. Ukraine had honoured him by presenting him with a kilometre of Crimean coast to build a summer villa. That was the only way to free the area of a gangster-run Centre for Crimean Conservation, which the local Simferopol authorities had been unable to deal with. Indeed, no sooner did Federation specialists arrive to take possession, than all the members of the said ‘Centre’ disappeared without trace.

Putin swam first to the new President of the United States, from there he would move to the President of Kazakhstan before striking out in my direction.

10

Kiev, March 2015, Tuesday, 2.45 a.m.

‘WAKE UP!’ CRIED Nikolai Lvovich, shaking me out of sleep like a piglet from a sack. ‘Urgent news.’

‘What?’ He had had time to shave, so it couldn’t be war.

‘The Governor of Odessa must be sacked immediately. He’s been discussing the Moldova–Ukraine border with the Moldovans. Yesterday, in Kishinyov, he promised them three kilometres of motorway.’

‘In exchange for what?’

‘Not clear as yet.’

‘How do you know all this? Have we people in Moldova?’

‘Our friends have.’

‘We have got friends somewhere then?’

‘This is serious, Mr President. I’ve prepared a decree. It’s just a question of signing it.’

‘Who are we replacing him with?’

‘Brudin.’

‘Weren’t you at school together?’

‘Yes, and that’s why I recommend him. I need to know someone twenty years at least before I do that. I don’t pick men off the street.’

‘No, that’s risky. Right. Leave me the decree. I’ll look at it in the morning.’

My aide was asleep on his chair, as he had been throughout our conversation. I felt like shouting at him, and would have done if I’d known his name.

Unable to get back to sleep, I kept wondering who this Mayya Vladimirovna might be, if not some dangerous piece of intrigue on the part of Nikolai Lvovich. Mayya … May … Seeing it was now March, she was on the early side …

11

Kiev, July 1983, Friday

WE WERE NOT alone in Syrets at the Dubki restaurant; four wedding breakfasts were in progress – three shotgun and one quiet and sedate: groom fiftyish, bride thirtyish, and eight guests only talking quietly around a square table. It looks just like an old friends’ reunion, but for a red-faced man in striped three-piece suit and loosely knotted silvery tie who from time to time proposes, in the traditional manner, that the happy couple kiss. Ours being of the shotgun variety had only relatives present. So what? In a day or two I’ll celebrate properly with my friends and without my wife.

The midsummer heat is melting the asphalt and the stink of it invades the restaurant. Vodka, held to the nose, neutralises the smell in a way that champagne did not.

Sawing my beef cutlet and pork fried in bread cubes with a blunt knife, I wonder if the stink of asphalt might not be a premonition – a metaphor of family life.

I look at my watch, a gift from my father-in-law a day or so before. It’s stopped but I don’t feel like winding it up to tick away the minutes of my new, trammelled existence!

One day I’ll get a divorce, pay alimony, and give the watch back to my sometime in-laws. Meanwhile, our wedding breakfast is all forced jollity one minute and sage Jewish melancholy the next.

12

Kiev, March 2015

‘WHO IS THAT woman?’ I ask Nikolai Lvovich, downing spoonful after spoonful of semolina and crushed strawberry.

‘The surgeon said I should wait a couple more days before I tell you.’

‘Up to some intrigue, are we?’

‘Really, Mr President!’ he protests, shaking his head so violently he upsets his parting.

‘Anyone ever tell you how like the young Beria you look?’

‘Funny mood you’re in today. As to Beria, you never actually saw him. As to the “young”, it’s me who’s the elder.’

‘I don’t have to have seen him to know who’s like him. The resemblance is symbolic, not exact.’

Moon face all smiles, I can see he’s seething inwardly, eyes cold with fury.

‘If you only knew the amount of dross I shovel on your behalf, you wouldn’t have let a little decree defining the threshold of liability for financial damage done to the state go three months unsigned!’

‘I sign nothing while under the influence of anaesthetic. And this “little” decree of yours will free a good dozen crooks!’

‘One former president, two prime ministers and a few small fry. All right, don’t sign – it will be you who gets banged up later on.’

‘For what?’

I glance over at the phone table, by the door, where my poor, pale aide is sitting pretending to read a book. I wish I could see the cover.

‘Incurring a loss to the state of three billion euros plus.’

‘That much?’ I demand, jerking the tabletop out of its grooves and sending my semolina dish to shatter on the floor.

‘If you haven’t, you will, or others will for you, leaving you to carry the can. So up the threshold of liability to ten billion. Costs nothing to do that. The law’s upheld, and no one goes to prison.’

‘Get stuffed!’ I roar, causing my aide to jump up and drop his book which is, I see, the commendable Dead Souls.

As Nikolai Lvovich flies from the room like a loosened cork, my surgeon arrives, accompanied by a cleaner with besom and dust pan.

‘Too early to be dealing with matters of state,’ he says gently, switching his gaze to the book, which is quickly retrieved and tucked away by the aide.

13

Svyatoshino, Kiev, 31 December 1977

IT’S 11 P.M. We’ve a bottle of bubbly muscat at street temperature in a plastic bag, and me, Igor Melnik and Yura Kaplun are out of luck. We planned to see the New Year in at Svetka’s, because her parents were going to friends, but disaster struck when Svetka’s mum found a stash of money which hubby had not put into the family kitty, along with a packet of condoms. She let fly and hubby punched her in the eye. When peace was restored, her black eye meant celebrating New Year at home and they packed Svetka off to her cousins.

We had not prepared a plan B. Now, in -10° C, we wander the deserted streets from one public soda machine to another, but the cups have already been stolen by others. Behind every window the warm light of celebration. The Soviet grown-ups are drinking, the Soviet children are laughing and we have nowhere to go. No one to snuggle up to and no stove to gather round.

From the open window of a ground-floor window I catch the sound of the midnight chimes. The wretched owner turns the volume up and tears of bitterness gather in my eyes.

So into the nearest entrance hall we go to lean against the warm radiators. Yura opens the champagne, and we pass the bottle around like a Red Indian pipe of peace. It isn’t easy drinking it from the bottle. The bubbles get up our noses and make us sneeze.

‘Not to worry, there’ll soon be other drunken folk about to keep us company,’ Igor Melnik observes reassuringly.

14

Moscow, January 2013

UNABLE TO HOLD out for the entire ceremony, the US President and British PM leave the ice hole to be received by aides bearing warm towelling bathrobes and young ladies in uniform Federation swimsuits and national headdress serving vodka, of which they each take a glass, before proceeding to the inflated hangar provided for the warmth-loving, and a table spread with traditional Russian fare.

The rest of us stay in the water, awaiting a word with President Putin. And wait we have to, which I, loving cold as I do, find easy, except for a need constantly to plunge deep to counter the surging warmth in my veins.

Our talk, when it finally starts, begins as usual with an expression of our mutual grudges, stock problems, easily deferred to the distant future, but regularly raised in default of anything else: our debt for gas, Sevastopol, relations with Turkey, and Ukrainian battalions in Federation service.

‘Having made parliamentary elections proportionally representational, why forbid them in Sevastopol?’ he enquires with customary indifference.

‘Because, as you well know, parliamentary elections are contested by parties representing different financial interests, whereas those in the Crimea represent different ethnic groups. Proportional representation would give victory to the Russian Party of the Crimea, with 20 per cent to the Tatar Party of the Crimea, and the Ukrainian Party of the Crimea disenfranchised altogether. What would the twits of my Supreme Council be telling me then?’

‘Maybe it’s time you mentioned the little matter of their illegal foreign bank accounts. You do know, don’t you, where your budget goes? If not, I’ve forty dossiers on your Supreme Council that will tell you. Should I send you copies?’

‘No.’

‘Ease your grip on the centre, and the periphery goes to pot. Seal frontiers, shut off valves, that’s my advice.’

‘That Operation Other Hands proposal of yours,’ I say, switching to a subject congenial to him.

‘Up for it are you?’

‘As good as. Once we’ve picked who to sort out yours for you.’

‘No need. I can tell you today who on your side our Security trusts. The thing for you to decide is just how far we go.’

I nod.

He looks at his watch, then passes me at the channel leading to the other pools of the complex.

‘Now Turkmen Pasha,’ he says, thinking aloud, eyes on the haze, out of which floats a table bearing tall glasses, champagne and caviar pancakes. Mid-pool, it hoves to, and above, in laser hologram, the Russian Royal Family appear, so realistically as to send a cold shiver up my spine. And as, for one brief moment, I dwell under the eye of the Tsar, enjoyment of a winter swim turns to cringing servility.

Suddenly the Tsarevich gestures, embracing all in the pool, his smiling eyes bright with joy and curiosity. ‘See Moscow from the air this morning?’ asks the President, still, surprisingly, at my side.

‘All wonderful white avenues! Second St P., eh?’ with which the President of the Russian Federation bobs slowly away in the direction of the Moldovan President.

While I, as if at the touch of some loyalty switch in my genetic memory, stare on at the Royals.

‘To R-u-s-s-i-a!’ thunders a much amplified male voice. ‘To Russia, the Mother of Russian cities and Russian lands!’ I swim for the nearest tall glass.

15

Kiev, March 2015

‘FOUND OUT WHO she is?’

The aide shakes his head, looking guilty.

‘Why not?’

‘Those who will talk to me know nothing and the folk in your office sent me packing.’ He sounds hurt.

‘Not to worry: play your cards right and one day you’ll be able to send them packing.’

His expression changes to one of gratitude and hope.

‘Do you like Gogol?’

‘No, but it’s one of my daughter’s set books and she doesn’t have time to read it.’

‘Why not?’

‘She runs the young lawyers’ group. At the moment she’s in court every day, listening to cases.’

‘How old?’

‘Thirteen.’

‘Bad number,’ I murmur to myself, realising immediately that I am about to lose track of the conversation. ‘But it’s a good age, a golden one!’

16

Kiev, September 1983, Saturday

BEYOND A FILTHY window the patter of rain on foliage. In the corridor not a sound. Under a cold radiator a saucer of milk and a lean ginger kitten asleep. A portly nurse in grubby white smock pauses to stroke it in passing.

‘Poor little thing,’ she says with feeling, ignoring me.

Screams, muffled by intervening doors and partitions, of someone in labour. Svetka perhaps. I listen, but can’t tell. A scream is not a voice.

Silence.

The kitten wakes and laps the milk.

A woman doctor, hurrying down the corridor, passes through a white door. With nothing to indicate what lies beyond it. Nothing. Just a woman giving birth.

Another scream. This time different.

‘Excuse me, how long does labour last?’ I ask the portly nurse as she passes with mop and a bucket bearing a number roughly daubed in red paint.

‘Till baby comes,’ she says, without stopping.

‘Then I’ll just have to wait,’ I sigh, realising that I have not remembered to bring even so much as a quarter-litre of Crimean port to celebrate. 1.30 a.m. says my father-in-law’s gift in white metal with chrome bracelet.

I notice the doctor approaching down the corridor; her gaze rests on me.

‘Your baby was stillborn,’ she announces, in a tone implying that I was somehow to blame.

‘Boy or girl?’ I ask, at a loss.

‘Boy. We’re keeping your wife in for three days until her stitches heal. You can go.’

17

Kiev, May 2015

GENERAL SVETLOV COULD have been Defence Minister, if I had ignored Nikolai Lvovich, who thought him not tall enough. For Defence Minister you need an impressive figure – figure being the operative word, rather than personality. General Svetlov is an impressive personality and devoted to me.

He enters my office and stands waiting for me to indicate that he can sit down.

‘Have a seat, Valeri. Tea, coffee?’

He shakes his head, opens a leather folder and looks up at me.

‘I’ve brought their list for Operation Other Hands. Mainly from Moscow, but a few from Krasnoyarsk, Kronstadt and St P. – seventy-two altogether. For them I can vouch. There’ll be no qualms of conscience there.

‘And their list of ours?’

‘Dated. Only forty of the fifty-three are available. Of those I’d answer with my life for twenty-eight. They’re proven. As for the rest …’ he shrugs. ‘Best not to say.’

‘Good. Leave the twenty-eight, add thirty or so of your own, and assemble them all at the Pushcha-Voditsa sanatorium. For 11 a.m., and our ears only. I’ll be there. This is between ourselves.’

He nods.

Half an hour later, feeling like a bit of exercise, I go over to the mirror and do a bit of arm swinging in front of the mirror. But put off by my freckle-covered face I leave my office and walk the corridor. At the end of the corridor, just short of the security barrier at the head of the stairs, a chippy in overalls is busy unscrewing a plate inscribed

APPEALS REGISTRY

GREIS NADEZHDA PAVLOVNA

‘What’s happening here?’ I ask.

Not having heard my approach, the chippy takes fright.

‘Don’t know. The boss told me to take this sign down.’

‘The boss being?’

‘Nikolai Lvovich.’

‘Who’s now where?’

‘Busy in his office.’

‘I’ll tell him you’re here,’ squeaks his secretary, getting to her feet as I stomp into his office on the second floor.

‘Don’t bother!’

His two visitors I recognise as Deputies, though I can’t say of which faction.

‘Out!’ I order, which, despite their corpulence, they do with silent ease.

‘Everything’s as it should be,’ Nikolai Lvovich says quietly. ‘No incidents to report. You’ll have my sitrep within the hour.’

‘Who are you putting in the Appeals Registry?’

‘Been complaining, has she, the bitch?’ A snarl replaces the nervous smile. ‘And I promised her an equally good room plus TV and microwave …!’

‘Leave Nadezhda Pavlovna out of it. She hasn’t complained. Just explain what’s happening to that office.’

He drew breath. ‘Quiet conversation with you is impossible, Mr President! It’ll take a couple of hours to explain everything clearly.’

‘Right. So put off your meeting with the Israeli Ambassador till tomorrow. I’ll expect you in half an hour. With the sitrep.’

As I turn away, I note with satisfaction how very pale and agitated he has become. I wish he was like that more often.

18

Kiev, September 1983, Sunday, early hours

RAIN ON LEAVES, rain everywhere, underfoot and as far as the eye can see. Autumn – outside and in. The father with no child plods home, weary, uncaring, and as if in sympathy with the downpour, tearful.

Tupoleva Street is in darkness but for the watery yellow of street lamps and car headlamps and the luminescent glow of the vegetable factory hothouses. Outside the factory gate someone is sitting on a fallen lamp post. It’s a young girl, and she is sobbing.

‘Feeling bad?’ I enquire, leaning over the drooping sunflower of a face.

‘Awful. I’ve been sacked.’

‘Why?’

‘Not letting the boss get his leg over.’

‘Good for you!’ I say trying to cheer her up.

Peroxide blonde, make-up running, eighteenish, she is a picture of genuine misery.

‘I feel awful too. My son’s been born dead. My wife’s in maternity for the next three days.’

‘How heavy was he?’

I shrug. ‘I don’t think they weigh dead babies, but we’ll need to think of a name to remember him by.’

‘Did you see him?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll come home with you, if you like.’

‘We live with my mother.’

‘Come to my hostel then. It’s no distance, but you’ll have to climb in. Our bitch of a warden has only to see a man, and she rings the militia.’

‘All right.’

I have a number of reasons for not wanting to go home.

19

Kiev, Pushcha-Voditsa, May 2015

GENERAL SVETLOV HAS a liking for civvies, possessing a suit by Voronin Jr, non-crease grey that in poor light glitters. A general who dresses like that can be trusted completely. He’s obviously not dreaming of supreme command, nor driven by megalomania.

Standing with Svetlov at the sanatorium gates are Muntyan, the Director, and various of his staff, and behind them, shining in the sun, is the bald head of Colonel Potapenko, my man from Security, another enthusiast for civvies.

Our three Mercedes sweep noiselessly in and the gates swing shut. I am in the middle car. The first is empty, the third carries my aide.

‘All assembled,’ reports Svetlov, greeting me outside the main block, ‘and waiting in the concert hall.’

‘Switch them to the hunting lodge thirty minutes from now.’

‘Let’s say fifteen. Just in case.’

I nod.

‘Any problems here?’ I ask Muntyan.

‘As always, but I don’t complain.’

‘Which is why you’ve been here ten years. Any coffee?’

Two minutes later we are in the sanatorium bar, being served espresso by a teenage waiter with visibly shaking hands.

‘Whose boy’s that?’

‘His mother is the linen mistress. The dynastic’s more trustworthy in our line of work.’

‘In ours too. At least so the majority think. Expecting anyone from Bank Street?

‘Nikolai Lvovich is still here. No one else expected. It’s a working day after all.’

‘Nikolai Lvovich here?’ I see red.

‘He arrived last night. He has someone with him. They’re breakfasting in their room at the moment. His driver’s come. So he’ll be off shortly.’

‘Who’s with him?’ I ask, thinking Mayya Voytsekhovkaya, of whom I still know very little.

‘Young, gypsyish …’ Muntyan is wriggling. He obviously knows everything. ‘It’s Inna Zhanina, the singer, if you must know …’

I can’t hide my disgust and Muntyan is genuinely surprised.

‘But she’s very nice … You should get yourself a wife –’

‘How dare you!’ I shout, leaping out of the leather chair, fists clenched.

‘Forgive me, forgive me, Mr President.’ Muntyan is shaking. ‘I’m afraid I’m overtired and anyway that is what Nikolai Lvovich said.’

‘He’s an idiot!’

‘Yes, you’re right. He is.’

The clean, open faces of the young men assembled to hear me are encouraging. Our source of strength is here, not in the employment agencies.

‘Good day!’ I begin, gesturing that there should be no response. ‘You have been selected by General Svetlov for a vital state assignment. We and the Russian Federation have agreed a joint operation, code name “Other Hands”. That, I think, says it all. You will do in Russia what Kiev and Chernigov Operation “Cobra” do regularly in the Crimea and Dnepropetrovsk respectively, while Russia returns the favour here. Only this operation is on the highest possible level. You go first to Moscow and from there out to the regions. Moscow will brief you concerning the regional officials involved in criminal activities. You, without informing local Internal Affairs or Special Forces, are to arrest them in the small hours and fly them straight back to Kiev for detention in Ukraine. A Russian group will be doing the same with our scum. Is that clear?’

The men nod. I sense they approve. They are keen to do battle with criminality in the top echelons of power. They would like to be doing it here and on a permanent basis, but that isn’t on. Here, as in Russia, only other hands could undertake such radical operations. But God willing, we’ll keep going.

‘General Svetlov will be in charge of our side of the operation, and he will brief you further. Good luck.’

Returning to the main building by way of the lake (complete with a swan), I find myself wondering uneasily if the Russians were not planning to use our chaps simply to overthrow local leaders disloyal to Moscow. I will only be using the Russians for the type of assignment we have agreed on, high time though it is to sort out Nikolai Lvovich …

As I get into my Mercedes, I ask Muntyan if he is still here.

‘He shot off the moment he saw you …’

20

Kiev, 8 May 2015, Friday

NIKOLAI LVOVICH LOOKS in, but being occupied with the Chairman of the State Holidays Commission, People’s Deputy Karmazov, I tell him to come back in half an hour. Karmazov, seated on the legendary Melnichenko ottoman, has a crew cut that suits him, and the physique of a boxer, although by qualification he’s a veterinary surgeon, and a good man, having, by the age of thirty-five, built up a network of clinics.

‘This country’s suffering terrible losses. It’s time to cut down the number of national holidays,’ he says. ‘Just count them,’ he adds, gesturing at the wall calendar, a present from the Judaica Institute. ‘From 25th April on, the economy is in a state of collapse. So far there have been three requests from the Bundestag for the abolition of Victory Day. An archaic celebration if ever there was one – the victorious Soviet Union doesn’t even exist any more. VE Day, which was a working day everywhere else, was scrapped in Europe a year ago. Come new victories, we’ll pick a new day to celebrate. But we’re a peaceful country. We don’t war with anyone.’

I nod. ‘I agree as you know. Stick it on the agenda, and my representative will add my voice in Parliament. OK?’

Veterinary surgeon Karmazov is happy. He’s been applying to see me for three months. Had I known his attitude, I would have seen him earlier, but I was afraid he would request new holidays.

‘Get Nikolai Lvovich,’ I tell my aide.

‘He’s not here.’

‘Well, go and find him. Say I’m waiting.’

Nikolai Lvovich comes in, frowning and sullen.

‘What were you and Karmazov discussing?’

‘No business of yours. Victory Day.’

‘And?’ he asks, clearly suspicious.

‘We’re going to do away with it in order to bring the May output up to the level of April and June. Now, sit down.’

He sits down on the spot vacated by Karmazov.

‘What do you want to hear?’

‘First: why the Appeals Registry is standing empty; and second: who the woman you brought to me in hospital is.’

‘Which is all one question.’ He is not keen to talk, but now there is no going back. ‘The woman is Mayya Vladimirovna Voytsekhovskaya.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

‘Three months ago she lost her husband. His private helicopter crashed. She was very much in love with him.’

‘Do I have to listen to a Bollywood film plot?’

‘If you haven’t the time …’ He makes to stand up.

‘Sit down and get on with it.’

‘In February, when you were in your coma and the stability of the country was at stake, an urgent decision had to be taken … Every effort had been made to save her husband’s life, but the brain damage was too great. The possibility of using his heart for transplant was something she totally opposed. She swore never to be separated from it, and even arranged with some institute to keep it alive at a cost of $100,000 a year. For the sake of that heart, serious concessions were called for.’

I put a hand to my chest. I feel hot.

‘In the end it meant signing a contract. You shall hear all the terms when you’re completely recovered, but one of them confers the right to be in the proximity of her late husband’s heart – at all times. Which is why the office you mentioned has been vacated. There’ll be no nameplate for the time being. She doesn’t know if she wants to be there or not.’

Locking my fingers together, I sit back and think.

‘D’you think my freckles are getting worse?’ I ask.

‘No,’ he says, examining my face.

‘Was no other heart available?’

‘This one was right next door in the operating theatre; any other would have involved a wait. Not one of society’s better members, the donor, but Mayya Vladimirovna is bound to silence.’

‘Where does she sleep?’

For just a moment he is taken aback.

‘Desatinaya Street. In what was the old servants’ rest room in the next apartment. Other side of your bedroom wall. Outside access. No need to worry. No one sees or knows anything about her. Well, practically.’

‘Nikolai Lvovich, what have you done?’

‘Saved your life and saved the state. The latter being what’s important. You know precisely who would instantly cash in on your illness or death, declaring another war on corruption in high places, supplanting us in the process.’

‘Us?’

‘Our stratum and what it stands for.’

‘Our stratum?’ This usage of the term is new to me.

‘Yes. Our society is as stratified as gâteau napoléon has layers. One layer of poor and any number of rich layers, interlaid with semi-rich, all believing wealth to be made not by economics but by politics.’

‘Cut the lecture! What else is this woman promised?’

‘For your heart’s sake, Mr President, let’s, as they say in The Thousand and One Nights, leave that for another time.’

21

Café Bûcheron, Paris, October 2006

‘I WANT TO marry,’ she said, contemplating her glass of Beaujolais Nouveau.

‘As sooner or later all women do,’ I conceded, lighting a Gauloise from the waiter’s match. ‘More for stability than happiness.’

‘In Brussels you said you’d give up smoking, said we’d meet every ten days at least. True, you didn’t say you’d marry me, but it’s been three years since your wife died. Surely your daughter needs a mother. Bring her back from America. Let me be her mother.’

Our every meeting began with an exchange of shots and grievances, and today was no exception. Veronika was beautiful, but losing her youth and demanding more of life and those around her in consequence. Vladimir Street was where she lived but not where we ever met. Kiev being out, a ticket to Paris was the answer. One for me, and one on the next flight for her. At Charles de Gaulle I met her with flowers, conducting her to the Sheraton to luxuriate for an hour or two in the bath, after which aroma massage and champagne, letting her, twice a month, play grande dame and social lioness, at least in private.

‘Why don’t you say something?’ she asked, sipping her wine and replacing the glass on the bar.

‘This,’ I said with a laugh, ‘is a wine the poor make an occasion of. A young wine, which, remember, cannot, by definition, be fine.’

‘Remembering your every gem would make me a mine of banalities.’

‘Well, bear in mind, or rather, don’t forget that you are a beautiful young woman wanting to marry.’

For just a moment she melted, but quickly recovering and narrowing her green eyes, she let me have it.

‘And you are a technocrat, devoid of feelings and technically deficient! Even in love. Bashing on, never mind where!’

‘No, I come here – dreaming of seeing you, doing my utmost to see you, neglecting my country to see you!’

‘Don’t give me that! You’re not in front of your electorate now. Come to think of it, you’re not anywhere. Not even here with me!’

‘Wrong. I am,’ I said, consulting my expensive watch. ‘And you’ve another twenty minutes’ bellyaching till we dine.’

Consulting her equally expensive watch, a thirty-fifth birthday present from me, Veronika nodded.

‘I’ve not been unfaithful, but I do want to marry,’ she said, no longer aggressive, ‘And a month from now I shall, if you don’t object.’

‘The lucky man being?’

‘Akhimov …’

‘Father or son?’

‘The son. Do you have to make a joke of it?’

‘Dad’s the richer, but the boy’s got money too. And what’s Dad’s will come to him, barring hostilities on the petrol-pump front … So go ahead. I’ve no right to stop you.’

Her eyes brimmed with tears.

‘But this isn’t goodbye, is it? How about dinner?’

‘No, it’s not, we’ve two more days together. I’ve no right to walk out on you. Marriage is one thing, love another. Now and then they go together.’