‘Vasya…’ he said hesitantly.
‘What, Papa? I have to go, really. What is it?’
Sheremetev took a deep breath, then blurted it out. ‘What is it that you actually do?’
Vasya laughed.
‘Really, Vasya, tell me.’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘I do.’
‘Okay. Let’s put it like this: I help people.’
‘What kind of people?’
‘Anyone.’
‘What kind of help?’
‘Whatever they want.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Vasya laughed again. ‘Papa, I’ve got to go.’
‘Why does that mean you have to pay commissions?’
‘Forget I said that. I don’t.’
‘You said you did.’
‘Sometimes there’s no other way.’
‘To help people?’
‘Listen, Papa, I’ve got to go, really. Tell Uncle Oleg… Tell him whatever you want, but from me, there’s not going to be anything.’
Sheremetev hesitated. Now that he had asked, he knew that he should ask more.
‘Papa, I’m going. Goodbye.’
Still Sheremetev hesitated. Then he let it go. ‘Goodbye,’ he murmured.
SHEREMETEV RANG OLEG AFTER he gave Vladimir his dinner and told him that Vasya didn’t have the money. Oleg said he had spoken to the lawyer and he didn’t think it would help for Sheremetev to meet the prosecutor and tell him that he wasn’t a wealthy man. It was a delicate thing, apparently, to get an official to back down from asking for a certain bribe once he had given a number. Negotiation within range of the price was one thing, but confronting him with someone who would tell him that he had made such a drastic mistake was something else. It might just make him more determined to get it. If Oleg didn’t have the money, the lawyer said, and if he couldn’t get it from anyone else, he would have to be patient and hope the prosecutor didn’t feel he would lose too much face by moderating his demands.
And in the meantime, Pavel was locked in a cell with who knew what kind of criminals.
Sheremetev put the phone down, silently thinking of his nephew, hoping that he was alright.
He went to put Vladimir to bed. He helped him change into his pyjamas and gave him his pills, which Vladimir took with a glass of water.
‘My daughter was here, you know,’ said Vladimir, sitting on the edge of the bed and handing the glass back to Sheremetev.
‘Today?’ asked Sheremetev.
‘She left a few minutes ago.’
‘Really? That’s nice.’
‘She told me she’s getting married,’ said Vladimir.
‘Your daughter? Congratulations. Who to?’
‘I don’t know him. He’s an engineer. An aeronautical engineer. Works on planes.’ Vladimir paused. ‘That’s a good profession. Clean and precise.’
‘Does she have children, your daughter?’
Vladimir looked scandalised. ‘Not yet! She’s not married.’
‘Of course. I forgot. Forgive me.’
‘That’s what she came to tell me! Don’t you listen? They’re going to be married in three months. I said, with my blessing.’
‘But you don’t know the groom,’ said Sheremetev.
‘I know him,’ said Vladimir, smiling slyly. ‘Of course I know him. Do you think my daughter would get to a position to marry someone and I wouldn’t know about the groom?’
‘No,’ said Sheremetev. ‘But knowing about someone isn’t the same as knowing him.’
Vladimir grinned. ‘That’s true.’
‘What does her mother think?’
‘Her mother’s happy. She had her doubts, but I told her, if that’s what the child wants, that’s what she wants.’
‘So you think it’s a good match?’
‘Yes, it’s a good match. He’s an engineer. An aeronautical engineer.’
‘I suppose that’s a nice, clean job,’ said Sheremetev.
Vladimir nodded. They spoke for a few more minutes, exchanging thoughts on aeronautical engineering and then the state of the defences on the border of the Baltic republics, to which the subject of aeronautical engineering somehow led in Vladimir’s mind. Then Vladimir lapsed into silence.
‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, are you ready to go to bed?’
Vladimir looked at him. ‘Is that what I’m doing?’
‘Yes.’
He looked down at his pyjamas and fingered the material of one of his trouser legs.
Gently, Sheremetev lifted Vladimir’s legs and swivelled them onto the bed, then covered him over.
‘Goodnight, Vladimir Vladimirovich,’ said Sheremetev, turning on the night light.
‘Goodnight,’ said Vladimir.
Sheremetev went to the door and switched off the main light. A night light stood beside Vladimir’s bed. In its dim, yellow glow, Vladimir lay alone, head on the pillows, eyes looking straight up, unaware, it seemed, that Sheremetev was still there.
Sheremetev thought of the things Pasha had written. But the man lying over there was his patient, and he was his nurse. Sheremetev shook his head and tried to put Pasha’s words out of his mind.
8
IT WAS JUST AFTER five o’clock when Sheremetev heard Vladimir through the baby monitor. This time the ex-president wasn’t agitated, just disorientated, thinking that it was time to get up. Sheremetev went in and told him that he should go back to sleep. It was worth a try, but it rarely worked. Quarter of an hour later, he had to go back in and settle Vladimir in the sitting room, where his favourite television channel was showing one of its most endlessly repeated documentaries, the one about Vladimir’s border war with Belarus that led to the absorption of its northern half into the Russian Federation. Every time he saw it, Vladimir almost wept with emotion. Sheremetev went back and tried to sleep a little more, but he had one ear on the monitor, which crackled constantly with the noise of the tanks and artillery Vladimir had unleashed twenty years earlier and deployed with Russian troops supposedly in their private capacity as vacationers who had chosen to spend their holidays fighting with local patriots.
After breakfast, at the usual time, he took Vladimir for a walk. As soon as they got outside, there was a whiff of rotting chicken. Someone had thrown a cover over the pit to prevent the foxes getting in and leaving chicken heads and gnawed carcases strewn over the lawn behind the dacha, but the hole still gave off the stench of a charnel house. As they got closer, Vladimir started wrinkling his nose. Sheremetev could see a familiar look in his eye. Any unpleasant smell, he knew, was always likely to put Vladimir in mind of the Chechen, and it might only be another moment before he jumped into one of his martial arts poses. ‘This way, Vladimir Vladimirovich,’ he said hurriedly, steering him away. Vladimir went with him, glancing suspiciously from side to side.
They went around the house towards the part of the estate that was still covered in birch wood and followed a path that led into the trees. Soon the air was fresh and the chirping of birdsong was all around them. The path crossed the paved track that ran from the main drive of the dacha to the garage, situated a hundred metres or so away in a clearing in the wood. Two black cars, the Mercedes and the Range Rover, stood in front of the building, and Eleyekov and his son were polishing them. Both men were red-haired, the younger Eleyekov a taller, slimmer version of the older.
‘Shall we go and say hello?’ he said to Vladimir.
Vladimir stopped.
‘No?’
‘I’m tired.’
‘That’s because you got up at five o’clock, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Come on, a little further.’
‘Where’s my bed?’
‘It’s not time for your nap yet. You haven’t had lunch.’