Sila's Fortune (21 page)

He suddenly saw the man in all his miserable condition, a mediocre student who had never really grown up, living in a dream world, utterly destroyed by his unconditional, pitiful need to exist even if it meant lying, a pathetic version of the demons of greed that had taken hold of his contemporaries, twisting and sobbing in their need to exist, like a loud wail launched at the icy blue of the heavens.

‘It sounds very interesting,' Simon interrupted him suddenly. ‘Actually, you should ask for fifteen million.'

The fabulist's face lit up.

Finally, someone understood him.

Lev was worried. The crisis was more serious than expected and his little oil empire was faltering. In fact, it was a surprise that Russia had held out as long as it had after the transition, what with a government incapable of governing, a clappedout economy and a people that had lost its way. The country had survived for a time owing to the shock tactics of Gaidar's government, in spite of shortages even more devastating than those of the Soviet period, and slowly basic commodities had found their way back to the shops. But the government had problems paying civil servants and some of them now earned nothing at all. Elena had not been paid in over a year. The logical result of a bankrupt tax system, given that businesses and individuals alike paid taxes only under extreme duress. Uncollected tax revenues were estimated at 50 per cent. Across large areas of the country, barter had replaced money and a number of businesses paid their employees in kind, the onus being on them to then sell the products.

ELK was caught in a pincer movement between plummeting oil prices and the credit crisis affecting the banks. A number of banks had been wound up and some oligarchs had been completely ruined. Lev was not in this position, since, although his reserves of roubles were worthless, his dollar investments,
some with a London hedge fund called Saniak, the rest dispersed in various tax havens, were flourishing. That said, there was no possible comparison between his personal fortune, large though it was, and the value of ELK, and if the business went bankrupt, he would be nothing. An oil empire was not built in a day, nor without major investment. Lev's debts were colossal. But now the drying-up of credit following the banking collapses meant he was boxed into a corner. He could afford to pay salaries for the next two months, but after that …

Yeltsin could have helped him. With his influence, he could have found money. But what was the President now? A sick old man given to fits of authoritarianism, preoccupied with his own interests and blinded by the oligarchs in his entourage, seven of them, known as ‘the boyars', like the Seven Boyars of the Time of Troubles in the seventeenth century. They had bankrolled his re-election campaign in 1996, when all was lost, when all the polls predicted the Communists would win, something which obviously no oligarch was prepared to accept. At this point the seven oligarchs – Berezovsky declared they were ‘half the Russian economy' – did a deal with ‘The Family', as Yeltsin's inner circle was known. They controlled the raw materials, the banks, the media. All the powers in the country, in fact. They poured money back into the economy, spewed propaganda through the media, they were lavish with ‘gifts' and rumours of electoral fraud were rife. All the incredible, unscrupulous energy upon which they had built their empires, they placed in the service of a lost man.

And their man won. They used him like a puppet, dangling his heavy-set frame, at once unpopular and charismatic, in
front of the crowds, and the hero of 1991, standing on his tank, had been re-elected, ensuring the power of the seven puppeteers laughing behind the screen. Litvinov was one of the Seven. And Lev was not among them.

In a sense, his absence was unsurprising. He had neither the money nor the power of the Seven. And he had no influence with the media. But in the race between the oligarchs which began with the transition, his absence signalled his defeat. Wealth feeds on wealth. Retreat and delay were costly. Now that he was in trouble, where could Lev find an ally? The Seven were in a position of strength and if banks were rescued, it was their banks. And their businesses were afforded every advantage.

It was a dangerous moment. Fate was hesitating, something of which Lev was well aware. A game had begun on which his whole future was to depend. And he did not hold all the cards, since his fate was tied to that of the country. As usual, since the period of transition, he was an attendant to History, an economic and social cog in the great machine, exploiting the flaws and the pitfalls of the half-blind mechanism to try his luck, to elevate his status as a man, vulnerable to the slightest reversal of fortune. For the moment, he wasn't broke. Though he had no illusions about the role he had played, Lev still felt that he had been at the right place at the right time, had known how to make the most of it, with a little intelligence and a lot of effort. Though he sometimes doubted how much scope he had in his decision-making, he was still Lev Kravchenko, Russian billionaire, a paradigm of power and wealth, even if Lev knew better than anyone the flaws in the paradigm, in its fleeting and illusory nature.

That evening, he got home late. The lofty gates parted for his car, operated by the austerely deferential caretaker, heralding the tedious ritual of his evenings. Lev walked up the steps, briefcase in hand, with, he noticed, a heavier tread than usual.

But this evening, the ritual was different. Elena did not appear. The hall was empty. Vast, cold (these things were normal), but empty too.

‘Is my wife not here?' he asked.

‘She went out, sir. With the children.'

Where could she possibly have gone at this hour?

It was true their relationship had deteriorated since the Riabine affair. And yet, when he swore to her that he had rejected violence, she had believed him. Her whole body had seemed to crumple as though exhausted at having had to bear such a terrible weight.

‘You're a brave man, Lev. You rejected fear. You're the man you used to be.'

He had closed his eyes and kissed her. He felt no guilt about lying to her, because he wanted to save their marriage, but also because for a long time now words had not meant the same thing to him as they did to her. Elena's words described the realities she believed in, however misguidedly, whereas for Lev, words were weapons designed to persuade, to seduce, to attain. His aim was to appease her; he had succeeded. They had made love with somewhat exaggerated passion. It was a game he found not unpleasant, although deep down he no longer had the innocence for these displays of affection, the caresses, the devoted looks. It was not that he no longer loved his wife, not at all, it was simply – tragically – that he was too shut away inside
himself to express his feelings or to show them. It is impossible to become a statue without harmful consequences; Lev's tragedy was that he had lost all contact with the world and if he had won a reputation, what he had lost as a man was irreparable.

The following morning, when he woke up, the conversation had continued, blithe and cheerful. Then came the question: ‘But what's going to happen to this Riabine? Are Liekom going to take him over?'

Lev could lie, but Elena would easily be able to check later. And he was almost sure that she would do so.

‘Absolutely not. We'll make him a better offer.'

‘You said yourself, he's very attached to his land.'

‘And he is,' Lev said in a soothing tone. ‘But he's not stupid. I'll make him a very advantageous offer. It'll bankrupt me,' he added, laughing, ‘but I'll get his land.'

Perhaps Elena thought his laugh sounded false. In any case, she slipped out of bed, put on her slippers and left the room without a word. And later, each time he tried to recapture the harmony of the previous evening, he failed, because his wife, her eyes like those of an inquisitor, could see right through him. A translucent glass partition came between them, distorting what was seen, muffling every sound. Doubt. Their conversations became stilted and monotonous, all vitality sapped. Nothing but words that underscored the tension. Elena wondered what Lev had done to Riabine, and in doing so, what he had done to himself, because she thought his soul hung in the balance. His soul! What a thought! Yes, of course Riabine had given up, and from what the wrestler said, they didn't even have to shake him up too hard. He'd signed and moved out.
Within the hour. Taking his cheque with him. He was probably in the Bahamas by now, gratefully lying on the sand by the sea, his pale, silent family sunning themselves and eating in the sunshine, far from icy Siberia. Why cling to that muddy patch of ground when he could be rich? And if they'd shaken him up, it was for his own good. And ELK had acquired a promising deposit of something which, in these difficult times, was not to be sneezed at.

Why was the palace so deserted?

Lev opened the wardrobe. Missing coats and dresses left a gaping void. He checked the children's wardrobes: half the clothes were gone.

He searched for a note, a message. Nothing. She had left nothing. Explained nothing. But what need was there to explain? She had discovered the truth about Riabine. How? Because she knew everyone in the city and because through the leaky cracks of a lie, the truth finally comes out.

Lev sat in the living room. The vastness of it was comical. Over the years he had grown accustomed to these surroundings, but now that he was alone the cavernous rooms with their anachronistic proportions resumed the ridiculous appearance they had had at first, that farcical air that had prompted Lev to buy this palace of fallen princes.

Lev could understand his wife's reaction. He felt no anger, nor did he feel sorrow. This was how things were, that was all. He had gambled, he had lost. He had tried to resolve the situation as he thought best, to come up with a credible lie, and eventually he had been found out. But he had had no choice. Riabine's oilfield was crucial. The crisis only confirmed that.
He could not show any sign of weakness.

Lev was alone now, and though he could use every reason on earth to try to justify his position, he could not change the fact that the only woman he had ever loved had just left him, because he was a coward, because he was corrupt. And in a world of predators, Lev could survive only by fighting and winning. The departure of his wife and children left him weaker. At a moment as dangerous as this, this first desertion was inconvenient. He would fight, as he always did. He would try to win back his wife, but his chances were slim. He would try to save his business. Always the struggle.

But in this moment beyond time and battle, on a white sofa in a deserted palace, Lev was not thinking about fighting. Everything in him that had not been hardened, all that is weak and frail in man, yielded. And the eternal question posed itself: ‘What was it all for?'

He stayed there for hours until late into the night. He could think of no answer. Suddenly he got to his feet, took a couple of paces, went and fetched his briefcase from the next room and took out his address book. He picked up the phone and dialled a number. Someone answered. He said a few words.

He heard a warm, sleepy voice: ‘Councillor Kravchenko? It's very late for you to be calling …'

He apologised.

‘It's the weariness, isn't it? I told you long ago at that wonderful party. It comes to every fighter in time.'

‘I'd like to be rid of it,' said Lev.

The woman laughed. He remembered how sensual her face was when she laughed.

‘I've been waiting, Councillor. I've often thought of you, I was sorry you never came.'

‘I'm here now,' said Lev.

‘Not entirely. Come over, Councillor, I'm waiting for you. The night is still young.'

One evening, after an interview, Matt came home particularly disheartened.

‘It didn't go well?' Simon asked.

Matt shook his head and slumped onto the sofa and lay there for an hour.

In the kitchen, Simon was making pasta – which, with salads, formed their basic diet – when he heard something in the living room.

‘It's not the job that's the problem,' Matt said in a monotone, staring into space, addressing some unspecified audience. ‘I don't give a fuck about the job. I've no desire to work for someone else, I hate being an employee, I loathe hierarchies and I couldn't give a toss about banks. All they're good for is inflating cash, they're parasites. No, what I want is money. And I swear, it's not that I love money in itself, I feel no admiration for people who earn it and I despise people who worship it. That's not the way I am. But I want money, I need it. Because I can't go on sponging off you.'

Simon went over to his friend, making a vague gesture of protest which Matt did not even notice.

‘I can't spend the next fifteen years claiming to work for a hedge fund I've never set foot in,' Matt went on. ‘And I'm
convinced that in a few years, in ten or maybe twenty years, it'll be every man for himself. I'm sure this whole thing is going to explode. These societies, these social systems. Only money can protect us. Life in the West is based on myths. Social security, retirement, unemployment benefits … That stuff is never going to last. The coffers are empty. Governments are kidding us when they say we're in a period of economic growth. Look at the financial crisis in Asia, look at Russia, everything's falling apart. And we'll end up going the same way. What we've got is a slight upturn, all funded by deficits. It's nothing but debt, the whole thing. Everyone's living on credit, Americans are constantly borrowing while Europeans are digging themselves into a hole to fund social security and programmes for the feckless. The whole thing's going to implode, take my word for it. Governments around the world are going to fall apart because there'll be no more money, because the businesses and the mafia will be more powerful than them, because the movements of money they can't control are increasing by the day. Thousands of billions are sloshing around the stock markets and who knows where it comes from? Who can differentiate between speculation, money-laundering and industry profits? When money is invested in the Emirates, how can anyone prove it's come from trafficking in prostitutes, drugs, arms sales, not just delivering Ferraris? The whole world is a gigantic laundromat. Money flows freely for the benefit of the few and everything's organised to make sure it stays that way. I'm telling you, the scale of the disaster is growing. All the conditions are in place, it's bound to happen. There'll be minor crises, major crises, then suddenly the whole thing will explode
and the tower will crumble. Just like Babel, but this will be the Last Judgement. Ghosts will wander the streets prophesying the end of the world. All the walls will crumble, the apocalypse will rain down with a fist of steel. I know you think I'm a madman but that's because I'm telling the truth. It'll all collapse. Bankrupt states will provide a skeleton service, they'll be a smokescreen of big words and grand gestures with nothing to back them up. Until the time comes when they can no longer front it out. They'll stop paying civil servants, everything will fall apart, first the utilities, then the schools, then the courts, the army, finally the police. And at that point the streets will be ruled by gangs. I can see it. It's not a theory, I can see it happening. Borders will collapse and immigrants will flood in by the millions to enjoy wealth that no longer exists. And at that point, cash will reign supreme. All we've experienced so far is a little overheating. What's coming will be in a completely different league. Why do the Russians seem so obsessed with buying gold? Because they have no choice. Because without gold, they'll die. Money is what will save us when it happens, Simon. We'll have private militias, we'll live in ghettos for the rich with armies manning the gates. The way the world works is that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the middle classes explode. And it's the middle classes that make for peaceful, liberal democracies. The rich and the poor make for war.'