It was too much for the other man. Despite being intimidated he rejoined sharply, ‘What do you expect? Do you think these things aren’t done by real people? Pyotr Andreevitch, you understand!’
‘Let’s go for a walk.’
They stepped out of the car onto the frozen ground. The chill was taken from the air by the fires lit by the bomzhi. Seeing the two men the tramps backed away except for those who were sleeping at the edge of the flames. Kirov held his hands out for warmth. Bakradze fiddled with his fly and then urinated into the hot ashes.
Kirov stared into the flames, conjuring up pictures, breathing in the woodsmoke from the crates and debris that the tramps were burning. ‘I haven’t been to a bonfire in years.’
‘No? No, me neither,’ Bakradze answered regretfully. ‘My grandparents used to have a place … bonfires on the ice in winter. Shit, how do we get into these things?’ he asked. Why am I not somewhere a thousand kilometres away and as many years? But you could never tell how you got where you were. Change slipped a knife between your ribs and you felt only the pain. He glanced over his shoulder at the car, where Bogdanov sat hunched like a ghost behind the misted windows.
‘I thought we could talk better out here,’ Kirov said with a show of understanding.
‘Thanks.’
‘Uncle Bog gets too — excitable!’
‘He should retire. He’s out of the Ark.’
Kirov turned and studied the fugitive image behind the glass. He caught Bakradze’s suggestion that they were now allies against the old man.
‘I have to work with him.’
‘I know what you mean. These old fellows get dumped on you.’
‘That’s how it is. Have another drink and we’ll finish the business. A few more questions and we can wrap up. It’s no big deal.’ Kirov held out the bottle. An old woman who lay near their feet dozing in the debris stirred and turned over. Her seamed face looked up vacantly and she began to hitch up the hem of her raged skirts to expose herself.
‘A drink,’ she murmured hoarsely. Kirov passed her the bottle.
‘Go to sleep, grandma,’ he said softly and returned to Bakradze. The smoke was beginning to sting his eyes and he proposed they move.
They walked a way into the shadows, blind from the effects of the fire. Some of the tramps moved with them, pausing with them to stand in a haunted circle.
‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this,’ Bakradze said, still puzzled. ‘Viktor was like a friend. Antipov and I were just doing a few favours. How did it all turn into this Jewish thing?’
‘It isn’t Jewish,’ Kirov corrected him mildly.
‘No? Don’t you believe it. Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t involved.’
‘Perhaps,’ Kirov assented. ‘Who was the second man, the other Georgian who used to meet with Viktor?’
‘I don’t know his name — that’s the truth.’
‘What did you call him?’
‘Sergei — Mikhail — Georgi — Dmitri — take your pick. He was Viktor’s contact, not mine, and Viktor had a thing about names: he used to change them all the time, a joke, I don’t know.’
‘How did you meet him, this Sergei?’
‘At a party. Viktor knew a lot of artistic types — writers, actors, painters. They did something for him. Ordinarily he was a joker, a real story-teller, you should have heard him joking with all his women. But put him in front of a writer and he’d shut up and listen.’
‘It was at a writer’s party?’
‘An actress — Yelena Akhmerova, have you heard of her? She has an apartment at the Visotny Dom. Viktor used to go to her parties with his special girlfriend, Nadia Mazurova. I think he had a sideline in dope and kept that crowd supplied, but I can’t be sure. He introduced me to Sergei — I don’t know what name he was going under at that time.’
‘Sergei was Viktor’s supplier?’
‘How did you know that?’
Kirov threw in a winning smile, part of his mask of total knowledge. ‘The antibiotics came from Tbilisi, and Sergei is a Georgian. It fits.’
‘Tbilisi? Now you know more than me. I thought the stuff came from Bulgaria — the labels on the packages say Bulgaria.’
‘That’s just a cover for the operation. Have you heard of Pharmprodsoyuz Number One?’
‘No.’
Kirov looked at the lawyer pityingly, increasing Bakradze’s sense of discomfort.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he continued charitably. ‘The Bulgarian plant was built to an American technology. We built a duplicate in Tbilisi.’
‘I’m sorry. I can’t help you.’
‘It’s OK. But you can see that I know the whole story. I just want to confirm points of detail.’
They strolled a way further. The vast span of the garbage dump offered a barren and broken landscape, spectrally lit by the fires and sweet with decay.
‘So you used to meet with Viktor and Sergei. Lunch at the Kosmos.’
‘And sometimes at the Mezhdunarodnaya,’ Bakradze amplified with a lawyer’s exactitude.
‘And the Mezhdunarodnaya — a bite and a drink in the German Bierkeller, very nice. Why? What was the purpose of the meetings?’
‘Viktor and Sergei talked over the state of the market. Not just the antibiotics.’
‘No?’
‘Viktor had a dozen rackets. I don’t think that the Jewish thing was even the biggest. Sometimes I got the feeling he ran the operation as a favour to someone.’
‘So why were you invited?’
Bakradze shrugged his shoulders and kicked at a piece of rubbish. ‘I was there to keep everybody honest when the money and the diamonds changed hands. And maybe Viktor wanted to impress Sergei.’
‘Impress him?’
‘With his contacts — his “family”, that’s what Viktor called us. Does that surprise you?’
Kirov remembered Nadia Mazurova trying to explain the ways of Viktor’s circle — the gifts, the parties, the girls. There was something desperate in Viktor’s generosity.
‘That was the way Viktor was,’ said Bakradze, becoming sentimental for a moment. ‘He spent money like water for the sake of his friends. If you were a writer he’d give you the shirt off his back. “Real Communism”, he called it. I don’t think he kept a fraction of what he was making from his deals.’
‘I don’t suppose he did,’ Kirov agreed. He paused at the edge of darkness where the glow from the fires ran out. Beyond their vision they could hear the dim, scurrying life of the dump: groans, laughter, abuse, the barking of a dog. He suggested they walk back, and when Bakradze slipped on some tricky patch of ground he held the lawyer up and asked carefully if he was all right.
‘But there was a price for Viktor’s friendship, wasn’t there?’ he continued as if he were merely thinking aloud. ‘For example, you had to take care of Zagranichny. That must have been difficult.’
‘How the hell did you ever learn about that bastard?’ Bakradze said vehemently.
‘Bastard — yes, I suppose that’s what he is. Staying in the best hotels and beating up the girls, leaving you and Antipov to provide him with new papers and clear up the mess he left behind. Paying off the girls he injured and squaring the hotel security to forget all about these incidents. He’s pretty special, this Zagranichny.’
‘I wouldn’t know. I don’t know who he is or what he has to do with Viktor’s business.’
‘But you met him.’
‘A couple of times. Other times we’d get a call from Viktor in a panic, telling us that Zagranichny had been up to his tricks again. Antipov was in a cold sweat every time he heard that Zagranichny was in town.’
‘He was different — he wasn’t “family”.’
‘Viktor hated him.’