Soldiers had formed a checkpoint by the road leading up to the International Terrace. We found ourselves at the end of a long queue of stalled Zhigulis and Ladas. The cars ahead of us were being searched by short, skinny youths wearing dark mustaches in full bloom and fatigues stitched only with the Russian word soldat (“soldier”). Grenades hung from their belts. Some of them were flopping about in pink beach sandals.
“If they see that I’m a big democrat, they’ll shoot me,” Sakha said. “Georgi Kanuk’s son is worse than his father. He ran the special forces. His hands are covered with blood. He’ll want revenge for his father’s death.”
“You’re with me,” I said. “I’m a Vainberg. A Belgian. A Jew. A rich man. You’re taking me to the Hyatt. We’re important people, Sakha. Have faith in yourself.”
“I’m calling my family,” Sakha said, unholstering his phone. He started to cry as soon as the connection was made. He spoke in the local tongue and partly in Russian. “Did you take the girls to ExcessHollywood?” I heard him sob. “Did they have Toy Story 2? Tell them I’ll be home tomorrow and we can watch it together. Or maybe they can come to the Hyatt and we’ll watch it on Larry Zartarian’s big screen. Would they like that? Oh, my sweet little monkeys. Never let them go. Never let them out of your sight. I should have known this would happen. I should have applied for that fellowship at Harvard. I’ve been listening to Josh Weiner for too long.”
“That’s enough!” I commanded. “Wipe your eyes and turn off the phone. It’s almost our turn. Be strong!”
A barely pubescent soldier tapped on our window. He stared at my heavy tits and then at the shaking Sakha and my benighted Timofey, trying to comprehend our menagerie. “Who are you by nationality?” he barked at the democrat, filling our car with the stench of garlic and alcohol, along with the familiar scent of something pubic and male. Sakha started mooing to him hopelessly. The soldier ignored him and, with one dark long paw, reached into his shirt and took out a small golden cross hanging from a chain. He examined the Sevo footrest, then threw the cross back into Sakha’s face. “Get out of the car, blyad,” he said to Sakha.
“I’m Belgian,” I shouted, waving my passport. “I’m a Belgian citizen. We’re going to the Hyatt. We’re in a Hyatt car. This is my driver. I’m a very important man, a Jew.”
The soldier sighed. “The Jewish people have a long and peaceful history in our land,” he recited. “My mother will be your mother—”
“Forget my mother for a second,” I said. “Do you know who my father was? He was Boris Vainberg.”
“I’m supposed to know every Jew in the country?” the soldier asked. He raised his Kalashnikov and skillfully placed it directly inside the knot of Sakha’s Zegna tie. A familiar liquid was dribbling along the inseam of the poor man’s trousers and onto his shoe. His body glowed red from within his crisp cotton outfit. It was possible he was having a heart attack.
I, on the other hand, had never felt more in control.
“You don’t know who Boris Vainberg was?” I shouted at the soldier. “He sold the eight-hundred-kilogram screw to KBR.”
“You’re with KBR?” the soldier asked.
“Golly Burton, Golly Burton,” Timofey brayed from the backseat.
The soldier lowered his gun. “Why didn’t you say so from the start?” he said. He looked at us with sad, childish eyes, resigned to the prospect of one less beating. “Move along, sirs,” he said, throwing us a lazy salute.
Sakha managed to throw the car into gear, and we slowly proceeded up to the International Terrace, behind the rump of an armored personnel carrier. The democrat had stopped crying and now produced only short bursts of urine, his hands dug into the steering wheel, his eyes following the anti-aircraft gun bouncing directly in front of us.
“Wow,” I said in English. I turned around to look at my manservant. “Did you see that, Timofey? We did it. We saved a life. What does it say in the Talmud? ‘He who has saved a life has saved an entire world.’ I’m not religious, but my God! What an accomplishment. How do you feel, Sakha?”
But Sakha could not supply the words of gratitude I deserved. He merely breathed and drove. I decided to give him some time. I was already composing an electronic message to Rouenna about the day’s exploits. What had she told me in that dream about the eight-dollar apple? Be a man. Make me proud. Done and done.
The Boulevard of National Unity was choked with eight-wheel BTR-70 armored personnel carriers, whose sloping, boatlike hulls would be familiar to anyone who watches BBC World. Tanks guarded the strategically important Benetton store and the 718 Perfumery. Slender Absurdi men in black jeans and tucked-in dress shirts, armed only with their holstered mobilniki, darted along the boulevard, minding the drunken soldiers who would hurl abuse at them on occasion, promising to inflict anal sex upon them and whatnot.
Nearing the Hyatt and Radisson skyscrapers, we were caught in a mass of screaming and shoving pedestrians bent on the same destination. Soldiers had surrounded them and were tearing through their documents and pulling at their crosses. They slapped people across the head or fondled young girls with giggly pleasure. At the heart of the action, a young soldier was trying to tug a chain off a matronly neck while punching her in the mouth. “Robbery!” the woman was yelling. “Save me, citizens! Robbery!” For some reason, Timofey and I both laughed nervously at the large woman’s strife. We were reminded of something deeply Soviet—a person’s dignity being slowly dismembered in front of others.
Respectful of the Hyatt sign on our jeep, the soldiers waved us through, the locals banging on the sides of our vehicle, hoping we could enable their safe passage to the hotel. “Unfortunately we have to save our own hides first,” I said to Sakha.
The democrat nodded and said nothing. As we maneuvered into the Hyatt’s circular driveway, he shouted two words that made no sense, turned the wheel sharply to the left, and slowly drove us into the camouflaged side of a BTR-70. The air bags inflated before us. Smothered with white, my fat cheeks scratched by the billowing nylon, I stumbled out of the jeep. An officer was running up to us, followed by a line of soldiers. At last I understood what Sakha was screaming behind me. Two words. “Colonel Svyokla.”
In a novel written during the golden age of Russian literature, a man named Svyokla would look like a svyokla, that is to say, he would be red as a beet. But in the era of modern produce, Colonel Svyokla’s head resembled a giant genetically modified peach, fraudulently spherical and ripe, the skin dry and crisp. He wore neither the democratic goatee favored by Sakha nor the Middle Eastern mustache sprouting from his soldiers’ lips. He looked like one of the dignified older men from the Caucasus whom one often finds in the back of St. Petersburg casinos, sipping Armenian cognac with some beauty, ignoring the hurly-burly provincialism at the roulette wheel and the so-called dance floor.
“Misha Vainberg,” Colonel Svyokla said, shaking my hand. “What a pleasure. My mother will be your mother…”
While he addressed me, the soldiers were dragging Sakha out of the Hyatt jeep. Sakha was not resisting them; he was merely being carried along by their collective force, his dark head bobbing in a sea of camouflage. “I used to work for your father, Boris, as his local oil consultant,” Colonel Svyokla said, gamely ruffling my hair. “His death was a terrible tragedy. A major light was snuffed out for the Jewish people. My condolences.”