‘Seventy-two percent on a turnout of slightly over seventy!’ said Vladimir suddenly. ‘First round! What do you think of that?’
‘That’s good, Vladimir Vladimirovich.’
‘Good? It’s perfect! At the start we were naïve – the higher the vote the better. Now, of course, we know, a vote can look too high. Seventy and seventy, that’s what we want. Seventy turnout, seventy in favour, the perfect recipe – actually, just over, so you can say however many turned out, more than fifty percent in absolute terms voted in favour. Once in a while you throw in a lower result to make it look like anything can happen.’ He chuckled. ‘Of course, no matter how we do it, in the west they still say it’s rigged. Last month, in Vienna, some reporter told me that he followed a bus from one polling station to the next and said he saw everyone voting twice. Some Italian reporter. How the hell did he get in anyway? He confronted me at the press conference after the nuclear talks. Thought he was going to catch me out. Takes more than some journalist with a smart arse question to do that, I can tell you! Do you know what I said? “Who did they vote for, these people you say you saw in the bus? Did you ask them?” He said they said they voted for me. Then I said: “So how can you believe such people? They admit to voting twice. You can’t believe a word that comes out of their mouth. They’re self-confessed criminals!”’ Vladimir laughed. ‘What do you think? That shut him up alright!’
Sheremetev handed Vladimir his shoes and went to the phone that stood on a table in the dressing room. He called the security post in the hall and asked the guard to arrange for Eleyekov, the driver, to bring a car around. ‘Put your shoes on please, Vladimir Vladimirovich,’ he said as he waited for the guard to call back. When the phone rang, the guard told him that Eleyekov had said that the Mercedes in which Vladimir was supposed to travel, a bulletproof S class, had broken down and wouldn’t be ready for use until late the following day. Sheremetev told him to tell Eleyekov that they were only going to the lake and they could take the other car that was kept at the dacha, an armoured, bespoke Range Rover. The guard, sounding doubtful, said he’d call again and ask.
Vladimir sat gazing vacantly at the floor, one shoe on and the other in his hand.
Sheremetev prompted him, but Vladimir looked up at him in confusion.
Sheremetev eased the other shoe onto his foot and watched as Vladimir tried to tie the laces. He completed the bows for him. Then he handed Vladimir the watch that he had selected. Vladimir stared at it, a slight frown coming over his face.
‘What is it, Vladimir Vladimirovich?’ said Sheremetev. ‘Would you prefer another watch?’
Vladimir looked up at him. ‘What?’
‘Would you like me to help you with the watch?’
Vladimir looked at him as if he was an imbecile. ‘I can do it!’
The phone rang. The guard told him that the Range Rover was unavailable too.
‘They’re both broken down?’ said Sheremetev incredulously.
‘And Vadim Sergeyevich just told me that the Mercedes – you remember I said it would be available tomorrow afternoon – he just got a call and now it won’t be ready until the following morning.’
Sheremetev put the phone down in disbelief. Both cars broken down? What if they really needed them? There should be some emergency plan, he thought. Well, luckily, going to the lake wasn’t a matter of life or death.
‘No lake today,’ he said to Vladimir Vladimirovich. ‘Let’s go for a walk instead.’
‘Where?’ said Vladimir.
‘Wherever you like.’
‘The seafront.’
‘Well, let’s see how we go,’ said Sheremetev, and he took the watch, which Vladimir was still holding, and fastened it on his wrist.
5
THE NOTION OF GOING to the seafront didn’t stick long in Vladimir’s mind, not long enough to make it down the stairs. Sheremetev took him outside. Immediately surrounding the dacha was an area of lawn, and beyond it, in one direction, some of the birch forest that had originally covered the land. When Sheremetev had first arrived at the dacha, the rest of the estate had been a stately, landscaped expanse of meadows, rockeries and arbours, with a stream and a pond and couple of ornamental bridges, but the land had since been dug up and flattened and then covered with ugly long sausages of plastic greenhouses in which grew fruit- and flower-bearing plants alien to any Russian field. The stream had been diverted into pipes to irrigate them. Every thirty metres or so along the tunnels stood a giant steel installation with a huge pipe that fed hot air inside the plastic. The heaters weren’t operating yet, but in the winter, if you walked between the tunnels, their low, vibrating thrum went straight to the stomach. Here and there amongst the tunnels stood a bench that survived from the time before the greenhouses had been erected, as if a reminder of what had been before.
Sheremetev usually left it up to Vladimir to decide which way they went. Today he marched straight up to one of the greenhouses. Inside, the air was warm and moist. Large-leafed plants were staked into the soil of raised beds on either side of the tunnel, thickly hung with dark, glossy aubergines ripening on the vine. A pair of labourers was working at each of the beds, weeding and picking off snails and slugs.
The workers stopped and stared as Vladimir approached.
Vladimir beamed at them, airily bidding them continue their work. The pickers smiled back at him uncertainly.
One of the dacha’s three gardeners was there as well. Arkady Maksimovich Goroviev, a man of about fifty with thick greying hair and somewhat pockmarked skin, walked with a slight limp. Sheremetev had heard talk that Goroviev had had some kind of problems with the authorities in the past, but in Sheremetev’s experience the gardener was a kind, gentle man, unfailingly restrained and polite. He was the only other person in the dacha who was uncowed by the ex-president and seemed able to see him as a fellow human being, rather than as some distant and awe-inspiring icon, and to speak to him normally. Whenever Goroviev encountered Vladimir, he always addressed him respectfully and inquired after his health in a fashion that suggested that he was genuinely interested in his condition from a human perspective, as one person ought to be interested in another. Today, after the demoralising visit from the doctors and the disappointment of his hopes of taking Vladimir on an outing from the dacha, Sheremetev was glad to have run into him.
Goroviev put down his tools. ‘Good morning, Vladimir Vladimirovich. How are you today?’
Vladimir didn’t answer.
‘We’re going for a walk,’ said Sheremetev.
Goroviev smiled. ‘I can see. And yourself, Nikolai Ilyich? All is well with you?’
‘All well, thank you. Yourself, Arkady Maksimovich?’
‘All well. We have some flowers in the next greenhouse. Roses. They’re in wonderful shape – tomorrow we’ll cut them. Would Vladimir Vladimirovich care to see?’
‘Vladimir Vladimirovich?’ said Sheremetev.
Vladimir was frowning, as if in concentration, but he didn’t reply.
‘Let’s go and see,’ said Sheremetev.
He gave Vladimir a nudge and they walked with Goroviev out of a door beside the incoming shaft of one of the heaters. For a moment there was a shock of fresh air – not at all cool for October, but momentarily bracing after the warmth and humidity of the greenhouse – and then Goroviev opened another door and they were inside again. Warmth and humidity hit them. Sheremetev wondered if Vladimir was too hot in the suit in which he had dressed him, but the ex-president ignored the question when Sheremetev asked him.
An enveloping scent of flowers filled the greenhouse, almost too heady. Roses bloomed. Down the length of the tunnel, sections of one type of flower followed another in banks of colour.