The Senility of Vladimir P (22 page)

Three hundred thousand. From one watch. And what if there were more such watches in the cabinet? He had selected four and had found one like that. Maybe that was lucky. But what if every fifth, or tenth, or even twentieth was worth such a sum? As he waited for the train at Arbatskaya station, the sheer scale of the wealth locked up in that cabinet suddenly hit him. He did some simple multiplication – and the result staggered him. Had he overestimated by a zero or two? He did the sum again. If there was so much wealth locked away in one cabinet of watches that everyone seemed to have forgotten about, how much else must Vladimir have had? And how had he got it? Was a president of Russia paid in watches? Was that how he got his salary?

Pasha had written that the biggest crook in Russia was Vladimir Vladimirovich. To a man like Sheremetev, who had lived all his life on a nurse's salary, the true scale of the sums involved in Vladimir's embezzlement as president of Russia, if he had known them, would have been inconceivable. Perhaps they would be inconceivable to any man, including the one who had stolen them. But the number Sheremetev produced in his head from the contents of that cabinet was not inconceivable. It was big enough to boggle his mind, but not too big for his mind to contain. For the first time, what Pasha had written about the scale of Vladimir's theft was real to him.

The train pulled into the station. Sheremetev stepped on, jacket buttoned and coat zipped, laden down with more wealth than any of the people in that carriage would see in a lifetime.

At that moment, in a room behind the shop in the alley off the Arbat, Anna Rostkhenkovskaya sat at her desk, while her mother reclined in an armchair nearby. The Patek Philippe she had seen was a tantalising prize. A watch like that didn't come along every day. Even if she paid three hundred thousand dollars for it, she would probably make a hundred thousand in profit, and possibly more, when she sold it on. But the story of the watches she hadn't seen tantalised her more. How many were there? Ten? Twenty? Could there be even more? And what other prizes would she find amongst them? The strange little man had mentioned Vacherons last time he came. What if there was a Tour l'Ile amongst the collection? Why not? After seeing that Patek Philippe emerge from its handkerchief, anything was possible. She imagined a kind of Aladdin's cave, and if only she could get into it, then in one fell swoop she might make more than her father had made in thirty years.

But what if the little man decided, after all, that he didn't want to sell her any more pieces? What if the prices she had offered weren't high enough? What if he came back with the Patek Philippe – and that was it?

What if he didn't even come back with the Patek Philippe? But she had offered to give him another seventy-five thousand for the other ones she had taken. She was glad that she had had the impulse to do it. That would bring him back even if he didn't want to sell her the Patek Philippe. She would have one more chance, at least.

Rostkhenkovskaya glanced at her mother. The older woman had never been very strong, often depressed, and her husband's death a month earlier at the age of fifty-nine had totally floored her. Anna didn't know how much she even registered now of what was happening around her. She had her mother mind the shop when there was a customer and she had to do something in the back, but that was more of a bluff than anything else. If the customer actually reached under the counter and grabbed something and ran off, she doubted her mother would even cry out.

Of her two parents, it was her father Anna took after. As the Soviet empire tottered and fell, the young Mikhail Rostkhenkovsky had been a junior manager, an apparatchik in the making, in charge of one of the forty sections of one of the four vast warehouses through which the centralised planners of the Soviet economy routed Moscow's food supply. Such was life in the communist para­dise that the job was greatly coveted for the opportunity to put a handful of pilfered sausages on the table at home or to earn a ruble or two by selling a bunch of stolen tomatoes and Rostkhenkovsky had been widely and enviously congratulated when he was awarded the position. But now, for a short moment in time, it offered riches beyond imagining. As starvation threatened the city, as officials abandoned the pretence of fulfilling their responsibilities and scrambled to seize what they could of the disintegrating infrastructure of the Soviet economy, Rostkhenkovsky, like so many of the younger generation who would soon style themselves Russia's new entrepreneurs, took his chance. He walked into the warehouse and filled lorries with food and drove them into Moscow, not worrying about such niceties as his legal right to purloin entire container loads of cheese, sausage or flour, and proceeded to sell the contents as if they were his own – not for rubles, that were devaluing by the day, but for dollars, and if people didn't have dollars, for anything small, moveable and ­valuable. And what is small, moveable and valuable? Jewellery! Rings, watches, necklaces, brooches, bracelets. A pair of earrings, Madamoiselle, for a kilo of bread. Your wedding band, Madam, for a stick of salami. Soon he had whole cupboards stashed with trinkets. By the time the crisis was over and some kind of order was restored, Mikhail Rostkhenkovsky was out of the warehouse and into the jewellery business.

Anna Rostkhenkovskaya had grown up on that story. ‘It was the chance of a lifetime,' Mikhail Rostkhenkovsky would tell her in later years, reminiscing about the wild days when he would load a lorry and hawk it around Moscow. ‘It was madness, the things that were happening. Those of us who jumped in were set up for life. Those who didn't are starving to death on their pensions. Such a chance, if it comes at all, will only come once in a lifetime, Anushka. If it does, seize it, my daughter. Seize it! Do whatever you have to – don't think twice!'

If the father was an opportunist, the daughter was something altogether more determined. Mikhail Rostkhenkovsky had been satisfied with the shop that became dustier and less fashionable by the year, but for Anna, that would never be enough. Her pixieish looks and the smile she could put on belied the depth of her resolve. She had greater ambitions – and no illusions. In Russia, you fought your way up to the top, or you stayed with everyone else at the bottom.

Her father had had his once in a lifetime chance, and had taken it. She had often wondered in what shape hers would present itself. And now she knew – in the shape of a little man who had stepped in off the street like a Rumpelstiltskin in a fairy tale. Whatever else this man who called himself Nikolai Ilyich had – and there was more, she knew it – she was going to get it. The Patek Philippe wasn't enough.

Anna picked up her phone. A conversation of about twenty minutes ensued, beginning on the subject of the Patek Philippe but moving quickly on to the question of the other watches hanging in the Aladdin's cave of Rostkhenkovskaya's imagination and how she could be sure of getting them.

Anna's mother stared across the room, her eyes empty. Nothing suggested that she had registered a thing her daughter was saying.

‘We'll need some muscle in case things turn nasty,' said the man on the phone. ‘There's someone I use whenever I need some help.'

‘I know,' said Rostkhenkovskaya. ‘I've used him too.'

‘Do you want me to ring him?'

‘I'll do it.'

Anna ended the call. She glanced at her mother, who was still gazing listlessly into space.

She rang a second number.

‘Vasya?' she said. ‘It's Anna Rostkhenkovskaya.'

When he got back
to the dacha, Sheremetev paused outside and called Oleg to tell him the good news.

‘You're going to get three hundred thousand dollars for one watch?' his brother said in disbelief.

‘For one watch!' replied Sheremetev.

‘You know, I looked online to see what some watches might be worth, but I didn't see anything like that!'

‘I'm going back tomorrow to get the money.'

‘I'm amazed!'

‘So am I,' said Sheremetev, laughing.

‘Kolya,' said Oleg, his voice suddenly changing. ‘I spoke to Pasha yesterday. He said, if he gets out, he's going to leave Russia.'

‘Leave? Why does he want to leave?'

‘He says he can't be silent, and if he can't be silent, he'll never be safe here.'

Sheremetev dropped his head and heaved a sigh. Then he looked around the moonlit grounds. The dacha stood in the middle, all but one of the windows in its upper storey darkened.

‘Where will he go?' asked Sheremetev eventually.

‘I don't know.'

‘What will he do?'

‘Who knows?'

‘What does Nina say?'

‘What can she say? He's not a child. If he wants to go, he'll go. And who's to say he's wrong? What if they pick him up again, Kolya? Could you get him out again next time? Do you have another watch you can sell?'

Sheremetev didn't reply.

‘Anyway, this is great news, Kolya! One watch! Who could believe it? I don't know how I can thank you.'

‘You don't need to thank me. If I had a hundred watches, I'd sell them all.'

‘I can't tell you what this means.'

‘Olik . . . please . . .'

‘You know, the things Ninochka said . . .'

‘Forget it. I understand. When all of this is done, none of that will matter.'

Sheremetev went inside. Upstairs, he dropped his jacket, still containing the money and the watch, on the bed in his room. Then he went to tell Vera that she could go home. Vladimir had eaten his dinner indifferently, she reported, alternating between talking to her as if she was his mother and asking her who she was. Sheremetev told her that he needed her again tomorrow.

Vera looked at him doubtfully. ‘He's not an easy man to look after, Kolya.'

‘I know.'

‘He misses you when you're away.'

‘He doesn't show it.'

‘He does. When he sees that you're back, he's different. When you're gone, he's never fully at ease. I can see it. He knows something's wrong.'

Sheremetev said nothing to that.

‘I can tell, Kolya.'

‘Listen, Verochka, please, can you come again tomorrow?'

She looked at him for a moment, then smiled. ‘Kolya, how can I resist when I see that look on your face? But tell me, where are you going? All these trysts . . . Who is she?'

‘No one,' said Sheremetev.

‘So there
is
a she!'

‘No, there isn't. Please. It's family business.'

‘Oh!
Family business!
'

‘Will you come tomorrow?'

‘Do you really need me?'

Sheremetev nodded.

‘Life and death?'

‘Just about.'

‘So you're saying you can't live without me, Kolya?'

They gazed at each other. Sheremetev shook his head. ‘Vera . . .'

She laughed, but with a hint of longing in her eyes. ‘Okay. I'll come.'

‘Thank you, Verochka. It's important. Thank you.'

When Vera had left, Sheremetev looked in on Vladimir. He was in front of the television in his sitting room, murmuring to himself.

‘Vladimir Vladimirovich?' Sheremetev waited. ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich!'

The old man's head turned.

‘Have you eaten enough? Are you hungry?'

‘Is it lunch time?'

‘No, you've just had dinner. Do you want something more?'

‘Do you?'

‘How about a sandwich? Or
pirozhki
, if the cook has any?'

Vladimir shook his head.

‘I'll get you a sandwich,' said Sheremetev, knowing that if Vladimir woke up hungry in the night he'd think it was time for breakfast, and there would be no getting him back to sleep.

Sheremetev called down to the kitchen and spoke to one of ­Stepanin's assistants, who said he would have something brought up. In the meantime, he went back to his room. He took the money out of the jacket and hid it under his mattress, alongside the wads he had brought back two days previously. He put the Patek Philippe in the drawer of the little table that stood beside his bed, not having any safer place to hide it. After a few minutes he thought better of that and went to Vladimir's dressing room, where he opened the cabinet and slipped the watch back into its niche. He was struck again by the astonishing, almost unimaginable wealth in that cabinet alone. How did Vladimir get the watches? he wondered. If he bought them, that showed how much money he must have stolen from the people. And if he had been given them, well, why would anyone give such things if not in return for illicit favours that he had granted?

He went back to the sitting room. Vladimir ignored him. Sheremetev gazed at the old man. In the last few days, Sheremetev had found his feelings for the ex-president veering from compassion to revulsion, often in seconds.

‘How did you get the watches, Vladimir Vladimirovich?' he demanded suddenly.

Vladimir's head turned towards him.

‘Who are you?'

‘Sheremetev. I've been looking after you for six years.'

Vladimir snorted. ‘That's ridiculous.'

‘How did you get the watches?'

Vladimir smiled. ‘My mother gave me a watch when I was only ten, but I kept it and I looked after it, just like I promised her.'

‘What about the others?'

‘What others?'

‘The other watches.'

‘You only need one watch in life, if it's a good one and if you look after it. That's what my grandfather said.'

There was a knock on the door. The house attendant stood outside carrying a tray with two sandwiches and a plate of fruit salad, together with a bottle of water. Sheremetev took the tray from him and closed the door.

He looked at the sandwiches. One was smoked salmon and dill, the other ham and mustard.

‘Are you hungry, Vladimir Vladimirovich?'

Vladimir shook his head.