October 8, 1993
Friday
14:30
Behind the Torus stood the six-hundred Mercedes. I was in a stupor. Zhorik sat me in the Mercedes’s passenger seat, took the wheel himself, and sent Vasilich to the Torus.
We sped back to Nauchny Proyezd. I was returning to a world I’d left forever half an hour ago. I stared out the window and saw nothing. Once at VychMekh, we sat a while in Zhorik’s office.
I knocked back forty grams of cognac to steady my nerves. Then again. And again…
Zhorik chuckled about the small fry, having done their stint in juvie and now playing at being criminal authorities. He filed the whole episode as an anecdote you could tell the girls at a bar. Anywhere else they’d laugh you out of the room.
I noted that I didn’t see what was funny. Riding around in a trunk for nothing was no pleasure. Standing tied to a tree in the woods for no reason, same. Zhorik burst out laughing, positively exploded:
– Would you look at that! Roma, wake up! You pulled in two hundred grand in two months!
I kept quiet. Couldn’t grasp the substance of what was happening. The more time passed since my happy release from the hooligans’ clutches, the more the logical fear settled over me. They could have killed me, could have tortured me, could have cut me into pieces, burned me with a blowtorch, stabbed me, beaten me… What then?
Zhorik shook me by the shoulder:
– Get up! We’ll toss Petrovich his cash. And we’ll air out who this Andreich character is. We don’t need security chiefs like that. Move those legs, we can’t do it without you! You’re the owner and director at Proma. Come on!
I rose from the chair.
At Metallsnab the director kept us over an hour. He paid me no attention, hit the brought-in cognac hard. Zhorik explained that Roman Viktorovich was out of sorts because a friend of his had died by the White House, defending democratic ideals and all that. Which side of the barricades the friend had died on, Zhorik didn’t specify. The director wasn’t curious.
I mulled over the question of questions: «Here’s Vadik, life bubbling and frothing for him, while I work myself to the bone like a fool. What for, if there’s no meeting with my beloved on the horizon? Do I get even a scrap of the world’s joys? Even some sorry leftover crumb of happiness?»
My musings broke off at the laughter of the two parties reaching agreement and the exchange of handshakes. I too pretended to smile, shook the director’s paw, and left the office after Zhorik.
My head was chaos. I watched Zhorik’s back and kept rewinding my memories of the ride in the trunk.
It seems I swore an oath, promised that if I stayed alive, then… then… I could not for the life of me remember what had to be done so as not to regret the life I had lived! Hammering through my brain was an imported «Dante Alighieri!», which had come from who knows where – either a vermouth or a port from the price list. Definitely time to take a break from work!»
I made it to the VychMekh lot, stood between the Torus and the six-hundred, rubbed the bridge of my nose, furrowed my brow, remembering the ride in the trunk… Found no thoughts about the future whatsoever. What I did find was the understanding that I was free and not poor. The kidnapping was to be classified as a mishap, avoidable if certain rules were observed. The rules remained to be formulated, but later. Now was the time to enjoy life and the possibilities that had opened up. And to heed Zhorik, proclaiming over the six-hundred:
– This charabanc shall be named «Durandal»!
Then Zhorik pulled out a hefty wad of American money and shoved it at me:
– Take a rest! Shake off the stress. The day’s yours! Don’t show your face till you’ve blown the cash!
He spun around, jumped into Durandal’s back seat, and was gone. Vanished from sight in ten seconds. I hadn’t suspected Vasilich could drive so deftly: he threaded the black hulk of the limo into the turn with millimeter-precision drift and disappeared.
