We took a table at the restaurant in the Hotel Rossiya, chewed the fat, reminiscing about times past. With our mouths full we laughed about the two years we’d spent together, right up until Valerka got expelled for failing math.
— I’ll remember those differential equations for the rest of my life, — Valera slapped his palm on the table. — That professor, the bastard, ruined my whole life.
I nodded along and pondered Valerka’s ruined fate. The poor guy had been stripped of his vinyl-covered certificate reading “Full-time student of the Faculty of Electronics and Automation, Moscow Engineering Physics Institute.” Now this MEPhI reject dragged out a miserable existence: “Mossieur, zhe ne manzh pa sis zhur. Geben zie mir bitte etvas kopek auf dem shtuk brod!”
He couldn’t ride the bus on a student pass anymore. Getting into Dorm Building One legally to spend a night dealing preferans — also out of the question. Valerka didn’t even have the chance to sit under the fir tree in the institute courtyard. Unenviable and unglamorous, the life of an expelled MEPhI man.
— Forget it, Valera. It’ll all work out, — I slapped my friend on the shoulder. — Better tell me what you’re up to these days.
— Finance. Details on Monday.
— And what will I be doing?
— Nothing special. Working with payments. Well, actually, people will work for you. Your job is to track the numbers. Pure math. You’re good at that, right?
— I’m good at math, — I agreed.
— Turns out I’m not. Let’s drink to numbers.
— Let’s.
We drank. With the clink of emptied shot glasses, the maître d’ crept up to Valera, bent double, and whispered something. Valera shook his head and said he wasn’t ready to talk to the Sultan. The maître d’ straightened up, stood there for a moment in frightened thought, and clarified:
— What should I tell the Sultan?
— Tell him I’ll stop by myself once I’m free. I’m in the middle of negotiations.
The moment the maître d’ left, I buried Valera in questions:
— To the Sultan? In Turkey? Will you take me? What’s the deal with him? You got connections? And I…
— You idiot, relax. The Sultan is just a local Chechen guy, that’s his name, Shahsultan, — Valera smirked, and explained: — He lives up on the fifth floor here. Pour us another.
Splashing vodka into our glasses, bursting with curiosity, I asked:
— What kind of business do you have with the Chechen?
— Murky, — Valera answered curtly, and knocked back a shot in one go. Wincing slightly, he continued:
— All kinds of schemes. A “lemon” here, a “watermelon” there… The Sultan’s got his guys planted in all the right places. He just sits here and pulls the strings.
— Why pull strings? — I didn’t get it. The booze was getting in the way of my thinking.
— To wash money. He makes a “lemon” a day.
— He works as a broker? — I gasped in amazement.
— Brokers are small-dick change, — Valera snorted. — The real money doesn’t turn on the stock exchanges, it turns between Moscow and the regions. By the way, you’re not from Sverdlovsk Oblast by any chance?
— Close by, I’m from the Urals too. But no.
— Shame. In Ekat we need a guy with access to the regional health ministry.
— My mom’s got a cousin, I think, who works as a doctor in Alapaevsk. Maybe she knows someone.
— That’d be nice, but unlikely. Listen up. The Sultan’s cooking something up with the Health Ministry right now. Let me break it down for the ignorant.
Valera, like Chapaev in the movie, arranged shot glasses, wine glasses, and tumblers across the table and started waving his hands around:
— Look! There’s a guy sitting in the White House who calls the Sultan: the resolution’s ready to send budget funds to the Health Ministry. For that call, the guy gets paid. Just for the tip-off. The Sultan calls another guy at the Health Ministry, who allocates the regional budgets and leaks the info for a kickback. Money reaches the Health Ministry from the Finance Ministry in pieces, never in full, never on time. There’s a guy sitting in the Finance Ministry too, reporting when, where, and how much gets sent. So basically, out in the regions they’re waiting on funds that are coming, but they don’t know when, how much, or who the Treasury’s going to send it to. The Sultan, on the other hand, knows. Yesterday word came in that in two weeks they’re sending three hundred “lemons” to Ekat. We gotta carve off a piece.
— How?
— Tuesday we fly out to Koltsovo, from there straight to the regional health ministry for a meeting.
— Straight there?
— What’s the big deal? We’ll rustle up a bottle of Amaretto and a box of Mozart candies for the secretary. We go see the boss, promise him federal-level glamour for the region and a nice fat wad of cash in his pocket. The main thing is to name our numbers for his cut. Standard rate’s ten percent, but you can push it up to twenty. That’s the deal. Sverdlovsk regional health doesn’t know three hundred “lemons” are about to land. Our job, yours and mine, is to explain to the locals that this is thanks to us, and sign a supply contract for the entire allocated amount. We sign the deal, get the allocated sum from regional health, buy some equipment, mark it up tenfold, and ship it to Ekat. We’ll also hand over a tenth in cash as commission, so as not to offend anyone. You’re good with numbers. We’ll be left with eighty percent of what got allocated to the region. Simple as that. Two hundred forty “lemons” for the price of some plane tickets, a bottle of liqueur from a kiosk, and some candy.
— And if they don’t agree?
— Then they’ll suck it up. The Sultan’ll call a couple other guys, and Sverdlovsk regional health’s funds will go to the Bryansk police instead. There’s not enough money in the country to go around. So the transaction can get cancelled at any moment. We do business honestly. Whoever cooperates with us gets a cut. Whoever refuses — sucks it up…
— What about the sick people?
— What sick people?
— Well, out there, in Sverdlovsk Oblast, there are sick people. The state’s sending them money for treatment. And you want to take it.
— So what? If not me, someone else will take it. That money’s not reaching the sick people either way. Why are you getting tense? That’s just how the scheme works. You’re not getting treated in Sverdlovsk Oblast. Neither am I. No problem.
— Taking money away from sick people?...
— Eh. Man, you’re really behind the times. Nobody’s taking anything away from anyone. This is business. There’s a scheme. Want to live well — live by the scheme. And whoever doesn’t want to live by the scheme, sucks it up. Relax. The country’s slid off communist ideas onto schemes. So slide along with it.
I relaxed. Caught my breath. Focused. Drained a couple of shot glasses in four gulps, and slid off into a fog.
The only flicker of consciousness that survived was Mayakovsky Square, where Zhorzh had driven us.
The white Mercedes, the spitting image of an armored train standing on a side track, was parked behind the monument to the proletarian poet. At the pedestal, Valerka was leaping around bare-chested, waving a yellow shirt over his head, and bellowing at the top of his lungs: “Life is shit! There’s no sun for me! Life is shit! There’s no sun for me!” I wandered alongside, nodding along. Valerka was, without a doubt, right.
