‘Okay, I’ll never be president. Fine. It’s just a game. Let’s pretend. Say: I wish you all the best—’
‘Can you smell something?’
Lebedev stopped. ‘What?’
‘Smell!’
Lebedev sniffed. ‘I can’t smell anything.’
‘Sure?’
‘Is this a joke?’
‘You can’t smell it?’
‘What?’ said Lebedev.
Vladimir gazed at him, then smiled to himself knowingly.
Lebedev took a deep breath. ‘Okay,’ he growled. ‘Look. Say this for me: I wish you all the best, Constantin Mikhailovich. In your hands—’
Vladimir beat his fist on the arm of his chair. ‘I am not satisfied, Constantin Mikhailovich! The Ministry of Finance is a disgrace. You promised me a year ago that you would clean it up. Now it’s worse than ever!’
Lebedev looked around at the producer. ‘Have we got enough pictures? I’ve had it with this old fool.’
‘Just a moment, Constantin Mikhailovich.’ The producer huddled with a couple of technicians behind a computer monitor. They looked through the footage at double speed, trying to see if there were enough shots they could extract to make it seem as if the two men in front of the cameras had had an amiable meeting. There were images of Vladimir smiling to himself, laughing at Lebedev. Maybe with the right cutting and splicing…
The security men stood around scoffing the snacks that the cook had laboured to produce.
Vladimir beckoned to Sheremetev. ‘What’s my next appointment?’ he whispered.
‘You have time for a break now, Vladimir Vladimirovich.’
‘And then?’
‘Lunch.’
‘Who with?’
‘I’m not sure, Vladimir Vladimirovich.’
‘Find out.’
‘If we have to, we can stitch something together,’ the producer informed Lebedev. ‘But it’s not great. Maybe try again, Constantin Mikhailovich.’
‘Mother of God!’ hissed Lebedev. ‘Whose idea was this anyway?’ He glanced at Vladimir, then shook his head in disgust. Unable, or unwilling, to restrain himself, the new president told Vladimir again what he thought of him. Vladimir responded with gusto. Soon the two men were swearing at each other without restraint, the reeking guts of a decades-old animosity spilling out in front of everyone in the crowded room.
Abruptly, Lebedev stood up.
‘Constantin Mikhailovich,’ said one of his aides, ‘please, perhaps try once more.’
Lebedev gritted his teeth. Then he reached for Vladimir’s hand with about as much pleasure in his expression as if he was reaching for an orang-utan. ‘I wish you all the best, Constantin Mikhailovich,’ he hissed. ‘In your hands, Mother Russia is safe.’
‘I’m not Constantin Mikhailovich, you idiot. I’m Vladimir Vladimirovich.’
Lebedev forced a smile for the cameras. ‘No, you say that to me. In your hands, Mother Russia is safe. Say it.’
‘You want me say it, Kostya?’
‘Yes, Vova, I want you to say it.’
Vladimir gazed at him, a smile forming on his lips. Somewhere in the depths of what was left of his mind, he still knew that power is power, and there is no greater manifestation of it than the ability to thwart the will of another person, no matter how slight the occasion or how trivial the apparent consequence – even if it is only refusing to utter a sentence that would cost nothing to yourself.
Lebedev waited for a moment – then turned and stormed out.
The room drained of people. Security men and aides ran after him, stuffing the last of the snacks into their mouths. In a minute, only the television technicians were left.
‘You can take him,’ said the producer to Sheremetev over his shoulder, as the television people began packing up. ‘We’re finished.’
Vladimir looked around in confusion.
‘The meeting’s over, Vladimir Vladimirovich,’ said Sheremetev.
‘But I leave first! I’m always the one to leave first.’
‘I know. This was unusual. It doesn’t mean anything. Let’s go upstairs now.’
Sheremetev got Vladimir to his feet. By the time they reached the door, Lebedev’s convoy was already gone, sweeping down the drive to the gate.
2
AS FAR AS SHEREMETEV could tell, he had been given the job of caring for Vladimir because of a reputation for probity. This was quite surprising – not because he didn’t deserve the reputation, but because previously it had earned him only laughter and contempt.
The Soviet Union was in its final days when Nikolai Ilyich Sheremetev, born to a foreman who worked in a pharmaceuticals factory and a mother who was a bookkeeper with the Moscow metro, was finishing primary school. By the time he completed high school, it was dead and buried with a stake through its heart. Sheremetev dutifully did his army service, spending most of his time digging foundations on construction sites in Omsk. Naively, he imagined that he was working on military buildings – although even he was not so naïve that he didn’t wonder why the army had decided that it needed several large apartment-style blocks in a residential district of a city on the edge of Siberia. Eventually a fellow conscript enlightened him, revealing what everyone else apparently already knew, that the platoon was being hired out by the captain as labour to private builders. Sheremetev’s expectation that this abuse would soon end with the exposure of the captain’s criminality, followed by swift and exemplary punishment by the regimental colonel, was dashed when another conscript revealed that the colonel himself was not only aware of the exploitation, but was being paid a commission by the captain. The conscripts were not exactly choirboys either. Equipment went missing from the construction sites, only to be glimpsed briefly in a corner of the barracks before disappearing again the next day. Others would go off for days with one of the sergeants on missions from which they would return with wallets bulging. For some reason, no one involved Sheremetev in anything, and he became aware of the goings-on only after they were finished. Even if he had known, he would have been too scared to take part, which presumably was obvious to his comrades. Next time they do something they’ll get caught, he thought to himself – and then he thought it again each time after they weren’t.
The captain, incidentally, was promoted to major shortly before Sheremetev’s conscription ended, for heroic action in the service of construction, as the joke in the barracks ran.
Following his army service, Sheremetev trained as a nurse, encouraged by his mother, who said the profession suited his caring nature. Laughably, he then tried to raise a family in Moscow on a nurse’s salary. Not that he didn’t see what was happening around him. Doctors took money from families to put patients in hospital. Nurses took money to look after them once they were there. Cooks took money to feed them. Launderers took money to wash their sheets and cleaners took money to clean their wards. Nothing happened without a few rubles greasing the way. Somehow, he couldn’t do it. Maybe it was simply the fear of being caught again. Maybe it was something else as well. When he looked at two patients on the ward, something always drew him to the poorer one. Saint Nikolai, his coworkers called him, but not admiringly, in the tone one might use for a revered and incorruptible colleague, but tauntingly, at best, pityingly, in the tone one would use for an idiot.
His wife’s tone oscillated between one and the other. At times Karinka told him what a good, humble man he was and how much she loved him for his honesty – at other times she told him he was a fool. They had one son, Vasily, who was now twenty-five and had had to make his own way in the world, Sheremetev having nothing to offer but advice – which Vasily had never listened to, anyway. He was involved in some kind of business that Sheremetev knew little about, and from the little Vasily did tell him, he didn’t want to know more. He said his job was to help people, but when Sheremetev asked what kind of help, there was never a straight answer. Without even knowing the details, Sheremetev had the same thought he had had in the army and the hospital. Someone would find out. Something would happen. Vasily laughed. ‘It’s okay as long as you keep the right people happy,’ he would say, as if he were the father and Sheremetev the artless son. ‘In Russia, there’s no other way. Everyone does it but you, Papa.’