‘Exactly.’ Vladimir sat forward. ‘Do you think – do you really think – I’ll ever take the risk that one day you’ll take one away from me? Use your brains, Leva. By the time he was finished, Boris Nikolayevich was nothing but an alcohol-soaked sponge. Do I look like an alcohol-soaked sponge? What you could do to him, you can’t do to me. That’s why you chose me, remember?’
The oligarch didn’t reply. Vladimir watched him, letting the silence stretch out, relishing the encounter more and more.
‘He seems to be talking to Trikovsky,’ murmured Goroviev to Sheremetev, finally letting go of his wrist. ‘Is that possible? That he thinks he’s talking to him?’
Sheremetev didn’t reply.
Vladimir was silent, as if aware that he was being overheard.
‘You know,’ mused Goroviev quietly, watching the ex-president, ‘I wonder about him. How did he become what he was? Sure, a Soviet KGB officer, he was never exactly going to be a natural democrat. But to turn out to be so brutal when he got power, and so corrupt… Did the KGB make him like that, or was it natural to him from the start?’
‘We should go,’ said Sheremetev nervously. ‘If he gets upset—’
The gardener leaned across him, putting his face closer to the ex-president’s. ‘You were corrupt, weren’t you, Vladimir Vladimirovich? Corrupt on a scale no one could have imagined.’
‘Me?’ said Vladimir.
‘Yes, you.’
Vladimir laughed.
Goroviev sat back. ‘See, Nikolai Ilyich? He’s not upset. He’s laughing.’
‘Still, we should—’
‘Your nephew is right, Nikolai Ilyich. He crucified us, and the Russia we live in is his. The question is, was it only because of him, or was it inevitable in some way that this would happen to us? Can one man alone do what he did to us? If he had tried to do the opposite, would the KGB boys have brought him down and put someone else in his place?’
‘I really don’t know, Arkady Maksimovich,’ replied Sheremetev, wanting only for this conversation to end. He made to stand, but Goroviev pulled him back.
‘I’ve asked myself, a thousand times,’ he said earnestly. ‘And the truth is, I don’t know. It would be easier if the answer was yes, that everything is his fault. It would be easier if he was the only one we had to hate. But one man can’t do everything, he can’t be responsible for every ill. And yet… he could have made a start. If he was different, more of a democrat – or not even that, but if he was honest, at least, and not so greedy for wealth, if he had the minimum of human decency – he could have nudged us away from authoritarianism and corruption. A nudge from him, then a nudge from someone else, then more of a nudge, and by now, we would be a free country with a true leader at its head instead of a vaudeville thief like Lebedev. But instead of holding us back, nudging us away a little, he opened the floodgates and we were swept away. So for that, he’s guilty. Yes. Guilty as charged.’
For a moment, Sheremetev’s curiosity overcame his discomfort. He gazed at Goroviev, thinking of what the gardener had told of him of his life. ‘Do you hate him, Arkady Maksimovich?’
Goroviev smiled slightly. ‘There was a time, Nikolai Ilyich, if had been sitting this close to him, I would have strangled him with my bare hands. And if I’d had to have strangled you to get to him, I would have done that too. But now…’ Goroviev shrugged. ‘Yes. I hate him. I hate him for what he was, what he wasn’t, what he did, what he didn’t do but should have done. I don’t forgive him. He’s beneath forgiveness. But the thing is, Nikolai Ilyich, for how long did he rule us? How many decades? The thing your nephew is really saying…’ The gardener stopped himself. ‘How old is he, by the way, your nephew?’
‘Twenty.’
Goroviev nodded. ‘Of course. You told me. That’s young. Very young. Well, what he’s really asking is the question every one of the young generation should be asking of us: how did we let this man do this to us? This small fearful personality who aspired to be a Chekist even when he was a boy. How did we put such a man, a man of so few attainments, such limited vision, at the top? Why did we tolerate him? How did we give him the time and opportunity to put Russia against a cross and put the nails through her hands, like your nephew said? It didn’t happen in one night – it took years. Where were we?’
A smile crept across Vladimir’s lips.
Goroviev leaned forward. ‘Isn’t that right, Vova? All those things you did, bit by bit, one after the other, and we were like blind men, sleepwalking, watching you do it but not seeing. How could we let you?’
Vladimir sneered at Trikovsky, who for some reason was wearing a pair of overalls now. ‘You didn’t let me do anything, Leva. I saw what had to be done and I did it in the only way it could be done.’
‘And that’s it, is it? For how long? Where does it end, Vova?’
Vladimir narrowed his eyes.
‘Control us, control the duma, control the press. And then?’
‘What then?’
‘Does it go on forever? Is this Russia? Is this all there is?’
‘All there is? First, I’ll put order and stability into the country. Then we’ll see. That’s the only way.’
‘The only way? To take twenty percent off every contract in the country? To have men who spent twenty years sitting behind a desk in the KGB supposedly running the nation’s biggest companies, when all they’re really doing is siphoning off the profits into bank accounts in Switzerland? To send the tax prosecutors after honest Russians while telling them to ignore the biggest crooks in the land? To whisper into the ear of a judge what the verdict and sentence on a young journalist will be before the trial has even begun? What kind of a Russia is that, Vladimir Vladimirovich?’
Vladimir didn’t reply. One of the benefits of power, he had discovered, was the prerogative of silence, and the implicit threat it carried.
‘I hope one day you’ll know, Vladimir Vladimirovich, one day before you die, what you’ve done—’
Vladimir laughed. ‘That’s what they all say when they know I’ve won. “Just you wait, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Your turn will come.” But it hasn’t, has it? Your turn has come.’
‘No, your turn has come. You know, inside, don’t you? You must know…’
Vladimir kept laughing. He couldn’t hear, wouldn’t hear. The sound of his laughter drowned out the other man’s words.
Then he was silent.
Vladimir could see a strange sadness in Trikovsky’s eyes, as if the oligarch could see his own future now, the life that he had envisaged for himself that he was about to lose and the life that would replace it: the arrest, the trial, the cage in the courtroom, the confiscation of his businesses, the years in a Siberian jail, the release, many years later, only through Vladimir’s clemency, a final act of humiliation tainting the sweetness of liberation with an indelible bitterness.
In his triumph, Vladimir felt an unexpected, unattributable unease, an unaccountable and troubling sense of doubt.
‘Get out,’ he murmured, suddenly sickened. ‘Get out!’
Goroviev stood. ‘I should go,’ he said to Sheremetev. ‘You were right. I’ve upset him. Forgive me, Nikolai Ilyich, it wasn’t my intention. I only wanted to say, as I said at the start, that I’m sorry for your nephew. I hope he gets out soon.’
Sheremetev stood as well. ‘I don’t understand. How did you get this job here if you have this record of being such an oppositionist?’
‘I had a job here long before Vladimir Vladimirovich arrived. That’s already eight years ago. To be honest, back then, I don’t think anyone bothered to check. I’m just a gardener, right? And how many mansions did Vladimir Vladimirovich own? This was just one of many. Back then, he never came here. It was only Mitya Zaminsky and me, looking after the estate. Then when they brought Vladimir Vladimirovich here to stay, we added a third gardener, and then, of course, everything else…’