On the last page, a Montblanc pen will trace out thirteen lines:
- Yegor Voronin
- Miroslav Likhachev
- Marina Belskaya
- Anatoly Vyrubov
- Chicha
- Gennady Lozhechnikov
- Vadim Troshkin
- Kirill Stamm
- Elena Zholtova
- Vera Panskaya
- Veronika Sergeyevna
- Anastasia Igorevna
- Roman Peskov
The pen will flutter, rock up and down, and in neat, even strokes begin crossing out one line, then a second, a third… With the thirteenth, the last one, a voice will sound from the driver’s seat:
— There he is.
The passenger in the back seat will set the daybook down on the seat beside him, without closing it, and give the order:
— Go!
While the driver starts up the bright red “BMW-325,” pulls out of hiding, and picks up speed, the passenger will manage to:
- put on his gloves;
- sigh: “myself, myself, all by myself…”;
- pull a Kalashnikov out of the sports bag at his feet;
- flip the safety to firing position;
- rack the bolt;
- level the barrel out the open window;
- breathe in;
- pull the trigger;
- breathe out: “the last one…”
The cabin will fill with the sour smell of gunpowder smoke. The BMW, tires screeching, will tear forward with a black streak on the gray asphalt and, fishtailing, vanish behind a giant slab the color of caramel cream. It will vanish, only to be found abandoned five minutes later in an empty courtyard on Ordynka. There, behind a bench by the playground, the grass will be pressed flat by a Kalashnikov. A little further off, in the sandbox, a daybook will rustle — filthy beyond all decency, its cover long gone.
The wind will run back and forth across its pages, trying to read the tattered, stained, ink-blotted, scrawled-over sheets.
In vain. All is vanity and a chasing after the wind.
The sky will shift from pale straw to lead. A pre-storm gloom will wrap around the city, over which, high above, unheard words will drift in echo:
— A dull way to live, gentlemen. Dull…
