‘And if I could?’
‘I grant your new cooperative a distribution agreement with the refinery, all you can manage.’
‘At the domestic price, in roubles?’
‘Naturally… and 15 per cent of the market price, US dollars, into a Swiss bank account, which your friend will set up for me.’
What he was proposing was on an entirely different scale. The current offtake would seem like petty cash to this. The revenues would be enormous.
‘Comrade Minister, let me speak with my principals. I’ll come back to you shortly.’
‘Well don’t wait too long… carpe diem.’
Chapter 29
The aircraft taxied to the edge of the runway. Out of her window, Viktoriya glimpsed the aeroplane in front lift from view, its wheels already retracting, as it rose into an unblemished morning sky. On cue, the giant Ilyushin made a slow turn to face down the runway, square onto the flight strip. It rolled forward a few metres and stopped.
‘Prepare for take-off,’ said the address system.
Viktoriya looked at the second hand of her watch as the engine noise swelled to deafening pitch and she resisted the temptation to cover her ears. Like a dog anxious to be unleashed, the aircraft struggled against its master, shaking and shuddering. Surely now, she thought. There was an almost imperceptible change in gravity, the infinitely small gap between stillness and kinesis, a stasis, where opposing forces cancel each other out. The sudden, precipitous, forward movement of the aircraft forced her, almost threw her, back in her seat. She looked again at her watch as the behemoth gathered momentum and lift with every inch. Thirty, thirty-five, she had guessed fifty seconds, forty, forty-five; the Ilyushin slipped the lead and clawed its way skyward before turning north to Leningrad.
She reached for the briefcase stowed under her seat and pulled out the latest shipping figures. Blankly, she stared at the numbers, unable to concentrate on the neat schedule of rows and columns. Her mind drifted to the meeting she had just finished with Yuri, who had delivered her to the airport that morning. They had sat in the busy concourse watching the early morning bustle while she recounted her conversation with Federov.
Yuri had sat quietly thinking it through. It was entirely within his power whether they went ahead or walked away.
‘I know what you are thinking, but there is no honour in penury, not unless you’re a religious obsessive, and we’ve surely had enough of them,’ she had thrown in. ‘And if it is not us, it will be someone else.’
‘Not always the best way to justify one’s actions.’
‘Maybe not, but you can see the state things are in… One day soon the ordinary Russian is going to wake up and discover that the money in his bank account is worth nothing, zero, the government have spent it all. I don’t want to be that ordinary Russian. You don’t either.’
He had stared at her for a moment. His expression changed. It was as though he were seeing her for the first time.
‘Carpe diem,’ he had said with the hint of a smile on his face.
‘Carpe diem.’
‘Look, I can’t commit the military, not to secure the refinery, but there is a way. It’s no secret that we are decommissioning whole regiments with the Afghan pull-out. There are a lot of soldiers looking for work – officers and men. I know a few from my old regiment. We build our own security force.’
‘A private army.’
‘Four hundred men… to start, one battalion. The way things are going we’ll need more, a lot more. Tell your minister we’ll take care of Roslavi.’
She closed her eyes.
‘Coffee, madam,’ asked the hostess. She looked up and placed her cup on the small tray held out to her.
Yuri – he was his own enigma, she thought. What did he ultimately want? She didn’t believe it was all about money… but didn’t wealth and power go together, and was he not quietly accumulating both.
AUGUST 1989
Chapter 30
MOSCOW, THE ARBAT
‘So we are agreed on the preliminary timetable?’ Yuri heard himself say. He looked around the long table at the district generals and their delegates. Here and there was the nodding of heads, none spoke. It had been another exhausting and frustrating meeting trying to tie down a phased time for the evacuation of the Western Forces Group from East Germany… should negotiations get that far. He thought, at last, after months of meetings, they were finally there. On an easel at the far end of the meeting room stood a flip chart listing a dozen or more military groups with dates scribbled out and reinserted. ‘We evacuate through Rostock and Reugen.’
‘You are good at retreats, General,’ said General Vdovin, breaking the silence.
Yuri counted to ten; losing his temper was just what Vdovin and his supporters wanted.
‘We have been over this, General. This is a political decision. At the moment it’s still a what if. Last time I looked, the Berlin Wall was still standing.’
‘We were never interested in Eastern European government support before,’ scoffed Volkov. He was shorter than Yuri, eagle-eyed and driven. As commander of the Western Group he was the most immediately affected. ‘It is the general secretary who is out of step. He needs to be better advised.’ Volkov meant that he should better advise him, or better still somebody else entirely.
‘I would remind you, General, that the economy is on the brink of collapse. Your soldiers have not even been paid for months.’
‘And whose fault is that?’ added Vdovin.
‘We start with the 2nd Guards Tank Army, followed by the 2nd and 8th Shock Armies,’ continued Yuri, ignoring Vdovin’s remark. He went round the table, eying each general in turn, not breaking contact until they said yes or grunted their assent. Volkov was last. He looked across the table at Vdovin, who had already signalled his agreement.
‘Agreed,’ he said finally. Volkov stood up abruptly and everyone clambered to their feet. The meeting broke up. Two minutes later, only Volkov and Yuri remained in the room.
‘Does it make you proud presiding over the collapse of an empire?’ Volkov said bitterly.
‘General, I don’t see it like that.’
‘Clearly not.’
Volkov opened the door and was gone.
Yuri sat down at his desk and rubbed his temples. The colonel general had told him it would be hard going; he wasn’t wrong. He was taking the lion’s share of the flak for both the general secretary and the general staff. He sensed Volkov and Vdovin were not about to give up that easily, despite their verbal assurances.
He stood up and walked over to the window. Drizzle lightly wetted rooftops and street lanterns. Five floors below, on Arbatskaya Square, next to a canvas-covered stall, a group of hippies tendered Afghan coats and roughly made leather bags to passers-by. Yuri laughed to himself – weren’t they twenty years too late? A seventies song he knew but couldn’t identify drifted upward, piecemeal and incomplete. He felt the sudden need for fresh air, to get out of the defence building he had been cooped up in for most of the day.
He lifted the papers off his desk, placed them in the drawer, locked it, and buzzed through to the outer office.
‘Olga, can you please call my car.’
He stood up, walked over to the coat stand and unhooked his raincoat. His hands went instinctively into his pockets to check for the apartment keys. They were where they should be. But there was something else too, something he had not expected. He pulled out a small folded piece of paper and studied it in the palm of his hand. He had no recollection of putting anything in his pocket. Maybe it was Natasha? She had put a love note in his pocket when he was in the shower. It brought back memories of the previous night. He must give her a call. Yuri walked over to the window and idly unfolded what he assumed must be a note.