July 5, 1993
Monday
6:20 PM
We made it to Plyushchikha late: on Gogolevsky Boulevard a trolleybus had collided with an Intourist bus, no way around it. Rerouted, swung onto Znamenka, and sat stuck for half an hour, some important official was leaving the Kremlin. After some wandering, we pulled into the courtyard of a three-story mansion in Khamovniki: sunlight glinting off a copper roof, blue sky reflected in the frosted windows set into yellow walls. Hm. The courtyard was packed tight with foreign cars, not a single Zhiguli, Moskvich, or Volga in sight.
Zhorik took the absence of parking as an outstanding sign, muttered «Learn from this, student!» and squeezed into a gap by the fence.
We walked up to the main entrance. While I languished waiting for the door to open and posed for the video camera’s peephole, Zhorik studied a foreign car:
— What kind of crocodile is this?
In three strides he hopped over to the trunk, stared at the badge, bewildered: «Well, well, a Chevrolet Caprice. Antokha’s lost his mind. What’s he need a caprice like that for? They drove him a Cadillac DeVille just a month ago…»
A minute later the door opened. We found ourselves in a hall with aquariums under potted palm trees and a guard who nodded toward the end of the corridor: «That way.»
There was a staircase.
We went up to the second floor and, passing through an empty reception room, found ourselves in an enormous office. In the corner, under a tricolor flag, behind a desk without a single sheet of paper on it, sat Anton, the internationalist warrior from the red sands.
Anton, in a suit and tie, sat there in genuine style, puffing a cigar, watching a genuine wonder of wonders — a Grundig television with a meter-wide screen, tuned to satellite news in some foreign language.
Zhorik shook hands with Anton, I limited myself to nods. Anton gestured at a dozen chairs in front of the desk and drilled me with his stare. I went cold, looked away, spotted a stand in the cabinet holding a government citation awarding the Foundation for the Support of Special Forces Veterans… some convoluted wording… special units. Edged sideways toward the farthest chair, sat down, glanced out the window. Everything out there was perfectly respectable: Khamovniki, Moscow, our own time.
— What’d the Caprice run you? — Zhorik launched into his questions.
— Fifteen grand, — Anton answered briefly.
— Christ! What for?
— For a laugh.
— Screw laughs like that. A rust bucket like that’s an insult on wheels. It took us an hour and a half to squeeze over to you in our ride, and on a barge like that you’d be dragging along for three hours. Can’t speed up, can’t slip through anywhere.
— You’re the barge yourself. Exactly what you need for Moscow. Doesn’t drive, it glides. And traffic jams, who cares. You just gotta know the roads, not go charging straight ahead like some idiot with a compass. You come by the Garden Ring or the Boulevard Ring?
— The Boulevard Ring.
— Sucker! You gotta come by the embankment to get to me. Turn off Savvinskaya onto Truzhenikov and you’re here in five minutes.
Anton fiddled with the safe and, bang! three glasses and a bottle of cognac appeared on the desk.
— What’s this dive-bar swill? — Zhorik glanced at the label, drawled disappointedly. — «Otard.» Never even heard of it. Knockoff?
— Peasant! What have you ever heard of besides Royal spirit? Real French cognac, not some «Napoleon» brewed in a Polish shed. Direct shipments from Cognac province itself! — Anton poured half a liter across the glasses, took a sip, drew on his cigar, exhaled. — Now that’s the stuff!
I remembered how he’d drawn on a cigarette out in the sands, repeating: «Now that’s the stuff! Can’t wait for the good days to come, the kind you’d want to live forever.»
No question, Anton had achieved his dream. The good days had arrived. I sighed, took a glass, sipped. Didn’t care for the drink, its harsh taste unpleasant enough to make me cringe, dragging up gloomy memories of past benders. Zhorik swirled the liquid around the glass, sniffed it, took a small sip, savored it, swallowed: «Solid!» Walked over to the window, asked:
— And where’d you put the Interceptor? Don’t see it around.
— Ah, forget it. Not a car, a jalopy. Traded it in for ten grand. Ordered myself a GMC Suburban. Promised to have it here by fall. Now that’s the real deal. Plow through the muck like nothing’s there! What’re you driving?
— A Mercedes.
— Sucker. What the Germans make aren’t cars, they’re wheelchairs. And they cost a fortune. Nothing beats an American car. Want a Crown Victoria, cheap? Half a meter longer than the S-class and costs a quarter as much. I didn’t know any better, bought one on impulse, and now I’ve got a Grand Marquis sitting there too, same thing.
— Don’t want it. Mercedes, that’s a name that means something. A Ford’s a rattletrap for black-market hustlers.
— The Merc’s the rattletrap. You know the Crown’s the official police car in the States?
— You know Mercedes is Yeltsin’s official car?
— Bullshit! He rides in a ZiL.
— You’re the one riding a ZiL, the 130 model…
The car talk between Zhorik and Anton went on for another ten minutes. They found no common ground whatsoever, each stuck to his guns. Topped off the glasses with another hundred fifty each and moved on to discussing the matter that had actually brought us all here today.
Sipping their cognac in the sly, unhurried manner of old pensioners — slow going, with stops to discuss the weather, their health, and other trivial nothings — Zhorik and Anton crossed the office on the diagonal, wedged themselves into the couch by the window and, keeping up this pensioner routine that had come from nowhere, reminisced fondly about eight glorious years, cursed out Gorby and Yeltsin up and down… and got down to discussing possible cooperation.
