Through the half-closed door, Viktoriya heard the phone ringing in her bedroom. It was Misha.
‘I thought you were in Milan,’ she said, pleased to hear his voice.
‘I was. I’m at Pulkova. I landed fifteen minutes ago.’
She looked at her bedside clock; it read 8:10 a.m.
‘How about I pick you up in an hour? I need to talk to you about something.’
Fifty minutes later, the concierge called, a Mikhail Dimitrivich was waiting for her in the lobby. He looked a lot better than the last time she had seen him. The bandage was gone and he was bubbling with supressed energy. Outside, three cars lay parked up against the kerb. Ivan and four men with Kalashnikovs covered the space between the lobby entrance and the street.
‘Vika!’ Misha kissed her on both cheeks, holding her by the shoulders. He looked at her intently, as though he hadn’t seen her in years. Did he see something in her that she had been unable to find earlier?
‘You look great, Vika.’
He kissed her again and took a deep breath.
‘Givenchy,’ she said, amused, before he asked. ‘You gave it to me. You had a consignment of it delivered to the warehouse, I seem to remember.’
Misha raised his eyebrows. ‘Well, it was a good choice.’
As they drove across the city to Malaya Morskaya, chelnoki traders standing alone or in small groups plied their wares on street corners. Here and there, queues were forming; on the Moika embankment, Viktoriya saw women and men stoically wait their turn at a vegetable stall. She thought back to the last time she and her director had visited the central food distribution centre in Leningrad – an oxymoron in itself – how long ago could it have been? A month, six weeks? She remembered the smell of rotting food and rats the size of cats.
‘Any more on your break-in and that unfortunate girl?’
Misha shook his head, but she sensed he was not telling her everything; Ivan had been much the same, despite her prodding. And why had Misha flown to Italy so soon after the incident? She didn’t believe it was all about business.
They pulled up at the solid steel gate that separated the street from the rear of the building. An armed guard turned to a speakerphone and the heavy doors moved back electronically. Three cars lay on the far side of the oval courtyard, a truck parked at the warehouse entrance. Viktoriya had not been to his office for several weeks; each time she visited it had morphed into something different.
On the first floor a young model showed off a new collection to a group of buyers. In an adjacent room three men sat at desks busily engrossed in telephone conversation. The older of them waved at Misha and replaced his receiver.
‘Grigory Vasiliev,’ he said, introducing himself. Viktoriya took in the heavily set man, his jowly face and alert eyes.
‘Meet our new currency and – soon to be – commodity trading floor,’ said Misha. She looked at him quizzically.
‘Roubles for US dollars, yen, Deutschmarks… it’s just another trade when it comes to it.’
‘Perhaps a bit more complicated than that,’ countered Grigory, clearly not wanting to be downgraded.
Misha ushered her to a meeting room on the first floor overlooking the courtyard to the rear. A van that hadn’t been there when they arrived had pulled in close by the warehouse door. The movement of an armed man on the rooftop caught her attention. She counted at least ten men in the yard. What had happened to the man who never bothered with security? Two men were busy hauling boxes from the rear of the vehicle into the warehouse. The driver skirted round the side of the vehicle trying to get a look in. A security guard blocked his way and pushed him back with the barrel of his gun. She wondered what the van contained that was so valuable. When she turned around she found Misha quietly studying her, a look of faint amusement on his face.
‘So what is this new idea?’ she said, trying to sound enthusiastic. He was clearly inured of her cynicism.
‘It’s not so new. I’ve been thinking about it for a while… well, a couple of weeks at least. It was you who planted the seed.’
‘Well it can’t be all bad then,’ she said, sitting up straighter.
‘I’m going to register one of these new cooperatives tomorrow – you know, private companies by another name. The city gorkom have been pushing me to do something; those communists are not so dumb that they can’t smell an opportunity. It’s the how that baffles them. Nothing is for free; they’ll want their cut, of course.’
‘To do what precisely,’ she asked, intrigued.
‘Trade in diesel to start… you’ve told me Leningrad Freight runs half-empty trucks all over the country to meet some ridiculous quota that has nothing to do with efficiency. Am I right?’
‘Yes.’ She had been complaining about it since she joined.
‘Well no one cares about quotas anymore. Tell your director boss that you are going on a maximum economy drive. I want Leningrad Freight to transfer its surplus diesel to our new cooperative enterprise… at cost.’
Viktoriya could see where this was going.
‘At the state subsidised price, which is nowhere near the market price?’ she filled in.
‘Precisely, and we ship it over the border at Smolensk where we sell it for quadruple what we pay for it… in hard currency, US dollars. No loss to Leningrad Freight – they charge us what it cost them. We repay them in six months, a year with depreciating roubles. And the second phase… you start requisitioning fuel in much greater quantity than you use now and pass it through.’
‘And if the director won’t cooperate…?’
‘…the gorkom will lean on him. He’ll have nothing to complain about anyway. He’ll be looked after, as he always has been. And before you say anything, I’m going to make you a significant shareholder in the new cooperative… I couldn’t do this without you, Vika.’
Misha got up from the table and walked over to the window. From where she was sitting she could see another van had taken the place of the previous one, and the same unloading process was underway.
‘Come,’ he said firmly as if he had suddenly made up his mind about something.
Misha led her downstairs to the ground floor. For an instant she thought he was going to give her another guided tour of the warehouse and show her his latest favourite thing, but instead he pointed to another flight of stairs she hadn’t noticed before. She followed him down.