August 17, 1998
Monday
5:20 p.m.

Marina and Konstantin were five hours late, and had every right to be – they’d been fending off Proma’s creditors. They kept their phones off, switching them on every half hour just long enough to send an SMS to my number – «We’ll be there in an hour» – then switching them off again.

Overall, the situation still seemed under control and even held out some promise. The dollar had started crawling up from the 6.29 mark, with no sign of stopping.

Once an hour, I’d call Alina at Vatrobank:

– Any news? What’s happening with the rate?

– Oh, Lyova! It’s unclear! Sounds like they’ll let it drop to eight... 

Marina and Kostya arrived at half past five looking anxious. The GKOs had turned to dust – we needed to find eight million dollars’ worth of liquid assets to re-collateralize. 

For the past two years we had been buying equipment from Grzegorz on an addict’s scheme: for modernizing the first plant we got money from the Turks. For modernizing the second plant we took a foreign-currency loan against the equipment of the first plant. The third plant was modernized against the equipment of the second. And so on.

A year ago, the Neftevolzhsky plant turned out to belong to someone else, and we’d swapped out the collateral behind the second plant for GKO bonds – which, at the time, we had nowhere else to put. 

The gravy train had stopped.

The GKOs that had served as collateral had turned to dust. Covering them required eight million dollars, which wasn’t sitting in Proma’s accounts. 

I said I’d think about it. If the ruble fell to ten, the problem would solve itself – the plants would turn profitable. We’d take a look first thing tomorrow morning. Let’s break for now.

I checked the time on the «Casio F-91» on my wrist and walked to the apartment on Mayakovka. I used it rarely, only after landing at Sharik, when I had no strength left to get out to Khryakino, which lay in the other hemisphere of the Moscow globe. Or before a flight, so as not to risk the traffic jams. Today I had to stay in town, so that in the morning I could race either to the office or to some urgent meeting with who knows whom, who knows where.

Once home, I nodded to Seryozha:

– Tomorrow, eight o’clock.

Sergei vanished, I pulled some whiskey from the bar, and collapsed onto the couch.

I brought the media center to life with the remote. It began to flow:

People have a roof, beneath it a house
Commerce, and from it a profit
But you fear neither rain nor thunder
All your houses have no roofs

A couple of months back, I’d run into Misha, a college classmate – back in our student days, we’d studied improvisation together at the jazz studio at the MEPhI House of Culture. He’d invited me to a jam session, said he was playing bass in a hippie band now. Timing didn’t work out, missed it... called a month later to reschedule... but Misha had a session in San Francisco. Just didn’t line up. Bought the disc on a whim; now the time had come to listen to it.

I listened, thought, felt myself boiling over. My chest demanded air. My body craved coolness. But where to find it, with summer and Moscow humidity right outside the window?

Didn’t matter!

I threw open the window and tipped my body out. Ecstasy and despair exploded through my mind, stopped my body a couple of meters above the ground, and hurled it up into the sky. There I soared like a condor, my arms spread out like wings.

El Condor Pasa!

The body wasn’t mine – it belonged to someone else. Someone else soared above Moscow.

Space flared with light, and a column of lightning shot down to the ground. A crash rang out, jets of water drenched and doused me.

A storm! Let the storm break harder still! Like a black bolt of lightning, I flickered here, everywhere, watching the storm lash the city that had sucked my soul dry and spat it back out – a city in league with the cold master of that other side of existence.

Ah, if there were a power capable of destroying the city, I’d have used it without hesitation! I’d have hurled a flood of all-consuming fire straight into its heart! But what’s this?

My right hand burst into flame – a ball of light hovering three or four centimeters above my palm. Had my wish come true? Ball lightning?

No time to think it over!

I found myself above the building where I slaved away from morning to night, and hurled the fireball down at it. A crash and an explosion rang out. Elated, I soared up to the sky. I had broken free! I am free!!!

I soared over the city until my soul and body were utterly spent, and when I’d run dry, exhausted and worn out, some unaccountable force found the one open window and threw me back through it.