April 30, 1996
Tuesday
10:00 a.m.
I woke up to a command: «Get up, you drunk! What kind of wreck do you have to make of yourself to get turned away from a box you’d already paid for? Attaboy! Showed the baguettes some Chelyabinsk grit! Let’s go eat!»
We had lunch the way we would in Moscow, but with a small difference. In place of the entrecote sat a bone with meat on it. The meat melted in the mouth like ice cream. Zhorik was impressed: «Hm, we ought to poach this cook for London. A porterhouse like this over there would cost as much as a cast-iron bridge! Then again, Soho wouldn’t appreciate it, and in Belgravia or Mayfair we couldn’t afford the rent. Fine, we’ll cruise on the tub for a week. We’ll eat our fill right here!»
– A week? What for? – On the way to the dining room I noted a complete absence of any shoreline. – Are we going fishing?
– No, my dear friend! – Zhorik dismissed the idea. – Some philanthropists lent us the yacht for a spin, and we’ll charm a few clients along the way. Ah, these Russian millionaires flooding into Europe! They’ve got so much money and they’re so guileless, you just want to charm them and fleece them! To success!
Zhora popped a cork off a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. I felt gloomy. Nothing had changed, except that Zhorik had followed the easy money down to the south of France and was now running his schemes from there.
After lunch we went down to the lower deck and settled into deck chairs at the stern. The yacht slowed to a dead stop, inviting us to swim in a sea as clear as a teardrop. Four towering girls came out – women, really – three of them dead ringers for Brigitte Nielsen and one for Grace Jones. All of them in microscopic bikinis.
– I’m taking the chocolate one for myself, sort the rest out yourself. They don’t understand a word of Russian, but they know their business cold! – Zhorik issued his instructions and leapt overboard with the Black woman.
Nicely set up for himself! And what was I supposed to do? I raised my glass and mumbled, «Nais tu si yu.» The women, paying me no attention whatsoever, took the empty deck chairs and unhooked their bras in unison. Whoa! I’d only ever seen tits that spectacular in magazines. Each one had a Mount Elbrus mounted on her chest!
I rolled onto my stomach to hide my erection. A minute later I leapt overboard. Five minutes later, tired of treading circles in the water, I climbed back aboard without a hard-on anymore, and slipped off to my cabin.
I found the bathroom with a shower. Freshened up. Lay down on the bed.
Dozed off…
Zhora burst into the cabin:
– Company, reveille! Uniform number eight, whatever you’ve got on, that’s what you’re wearing! Here’s the briefing. You’ve laundered a pile of cash, you’re expanding, pushing into the West. You’ve bought a design bureau in London, an engineering firm in Paris, and a construction company right here. The papers are genuine, Jeff swears on his teeth and his ass on it! Your job is to keep a convincing silence. You’re being cast as the investor – a man of few words and great importance. Got it?
– More or less.
What was there not to understand? Zhora was running another scheme. Why? We’d agreed I wasn’t getting mixed up in illegal activity. Zhorik didn’t notice my sighs. Humming «Go West,» he glanced into the closet and scratched the top of his head:
– Get dressed in whatever you can find and get to the salon. Keep quiet, act like you’re busy with your champagne, above all the nonsense. The second I say you’re wasting your time, come back here and keep your head down. You’re playing the shadow of the father, got it?
– Didn’t get that. The salon – where’s that?
– Forgot the dining room already?
I hadn’t forgotten. It was just too big a cabin to be a dining room. Turned out it was the salon!
