Seated to Kablukov’s left are his first two lieutenants, Mukhov and Serdyuk. Mukhov is a former tanker captain from the merchant marines. Now he heads L-Pet’s Department of Safety and Compliance. His idea of protective measures can be summarized in a single phrase: avos’ da nebos’, which translates roughly into “cross our fingers.” As in “It’ll get from here to there, cross our fingers,” or “It’ll stay afloat, let’s hope.” But I vastly prefer Mukhov’s company to Serdyuk’s—or “Captain” Serdyuk, as we must call him. He’s a former nuclear sub commander, hired by L-Pet ten years ago on the day of his retirement from the navy. Short, stocky, buzz-cut, with a flat mouth that, if it opens, says little. The few sentences I’ve heard him speak favor the royal “we”: “We want it like this,” “We have something to discuss with you.” His brows are permanently knit together, like he’s Sean Connery still charting his nuclear course beneath the Atlantic.
Besides Tom and me, there are two others at the banquet, young guys about Lenny’s age: Valery Gibkov and Steve McGinnis, a Russian and a Canadian who make up the “PolarNeft Working Group.” McGinnis and Gibkov work neither for Continental nor for L-Pet, but for the joint-stock company that’s been set up to run our mutual venture. They are, so to speak, the house management to L-Pet’s landlords, and their presence this evening is a gentle buffer zone. Gibkov in particular strikes me as neither unreasonable nor an imbecile. If there is any hope for Russia’s future, it’s in this younger breed, who interpret the word “business” according to its primary definition as “making an enterprise profitable,” rather than its secondary, local, definition as graft and larceny.
By now we have all praised the smoked Baltic salmon, the sturgeon stew, the remarkably tender veal, and come to the agreement that the vodka (C?roc? Jewel of Russia?) goes down “very cleanly.” Now that the initial six hundred grams have been dispensed with, Kablukov curls a finger at the waiter and orders “the rest.”
I’ve hardly touched my beef Stroganoff before two more decanters materialize on the table. I know it doesn’t bode well for my sustained sobriety that every time I glance upward into the restaurant’s blue glass ceiling I feel like I’m falling into an enormous swimming pool. But maybe it’s just an elemental confusion, a trick not of the eye but of the ear, evoked by the sound of the incontinent tinkle coming from the pissing cherub atop the marble fountain. It’s a tinkle suggestive of certain “enhanced interrogation methods” that are currently the topic of conversation between Mukhov and Tom. “Waterboarding—it sounds like summer sport,” says Mukhov, grinning ferociously. “You Americans make even torture sound like leisure-time activity.”
“Well, now, technically speaking, Oleg, it isn’t torture but a simulation,” Tom corrects. “The prisoner has the sensation of drowning without actually drowning.”
“Technically speaking, we have a saying in Russia: ‘A chicken is not a bird, and a woman is not a person.’ You also have a saying in America: ‘Waterboarding is not torture, and a blow job is not sex.’?”
“Ha-ha…,” Tom objects: “I see your point there, but you might say that the latter is also a kind of, umm, simulation.”
This is the point when Kablukov, leaning in close to me, confides in his loose gravel voice, “To hell with all this politics. What are they jabbering about like dopes at the G8? Let’s have another drink.” He refills my shot glass to the rim, not spilling a single drop. “Now, if we only had a little female company,” he says, and sinks his drink with a quick jerk of his head before I’ve even touched mine.
“Speaking of company,” I say, “how is your lovely lady friend—what’s her name?”
There’s an audible grumble beneath Kablukov’s chewing that makes me rethink this line of inquiry.
“Those telki are all raving mad. My wife’s got a rule. She doesn’t care who the telka is as long as I drop her after three months.”
“And every three months a new telka!” I say.
“No. I didn’t say that. You have to listen. Three months is the limit.” I can see it’s of paramount importance to Kablukov that I understand this rule properly. He’s a family man, after all. “Three months is long enough.”
“For your protection more than hers.”
He nods gravely. “Anyway,” he says, “there are more interesting things in life.”
Now he’s got me curious. What has the Boot discovered to be more interesting than towering blondes? I don’t have to wait long for an answer.
“Horses!”
“You race them?”
“What? No! I breed the fuckers!”
“They can’t do it alone?”
“I can tell you’re joking, Brink, but this is a serious business. The cardinal rule of horse breeding is: no artificial insemination. Otherwise, your horse can’t get a passport. That’s why they fly the mares to my boy on private jets, so he can give them a proper fuck. He’s too valuable to race. His grandpa was some kind of Great Dane. I won’t tell you how much I paid for him, but I’ll tell you how much I’ve made on him. Fourteen mil. The life of a retired champion, I’ll tell ya. Doesn’t do a thing all day but eat and screw, eat and screw. Every sheikh in the Saudi royals flies his mare to my champion so he can shag ’em. The Arabs are fucking nuts about their horses. It’s part of their heritage, Arabian nights and all that. All the horses that won the races last year—all his babies. Daddy’s got children all over the world he don’t even know about.” Kablukov drops his voice to a murmur. “I keep him in a special stable, see? Not here in Russia. I’m no idiot. Here he’d be assassinated or kidnapped or both. No, he’s safe in England. Only two people know where that stable is—me and the stable keeper.”
The infatuation that the Boot has developed for this equine Casanova has evidently supplanted any itch he might develop for a new mistress. In fact, he seems to identify so completely with his Thoroughbred—the thrill of his libertine lifestyle or the risk of his assassination—that for a moment I have to wonder if it isn’t himself Kablukov is describing.
But even as I’m giving my full attention to the Boot, it’s difficult to ignore the laughter coming from the other end of the table, where Mukhov, our serial joker, has switched back to Russian to regale the young PolarNeft associates with jokes about Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the youthful oil baron who five years ago was arrested on an airport runway and sent to await his sickly fate near the Chinese border. “Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky are sitting together in the banya. Berezovsky turns to him and says, ‘Misha, really, either lose the cross or put your underpants back on.’?” This is followed by laughter, even from Tom, who doesn’t understand a damn word but has his Yankee Doodle grin affixed diligently to his face. All in good fun. The only one who isn’t smiling is our Captain Serdyuk.
“Now let him sit in Chita Prison, the pilferer,” he puts in decisively, sawing into his veal. “Let him sit and think just like ordinary Russians sat.”
I eye the still-grinning Tom and decide to spare him a translation. Serdyuk’s meaning is clear enough to me: let the Jew sit and think, the way ordinary Russians sat. Velkom home—I can hear Lenny whispering in my ear. I have a feeling that this is going to be my private refrain for the week. How my son handles this casual anti-Semitism day in and day out, I have no idea.
But, for that matter, how did I?