What Karinka would have said had she seen how Vasily had turned out, Sheremetev didn’t know. She had died of an inflammatory disease that eventually destroyed her kidneys. At that time Sheremetev was working as a senior nurse on a public ward for dementia patients. A few months after Karinka died, Professor Kalin, the director of the unit, summoned him to his office. This was a surprise to everyone, not only Sheremetev. Professor Kalin normally found time to visit the ward which he supposedly directed roughly twice a year, and unless everyone had magically fallen asleep for five months, it was only four weeks since his previous appearance. Yet there he was, walking down the ward without the slightest sense of impropriety and asking for Sheremetev.
In the office that day, Kalin said he had been told that Sheremetev was a nurse not only of the highest competence but of exceptional integrity, if such a description didn’t make him an oxymoron in Russia. Sheremetev shrugged, not knowing what an oxymoron was, much less if he was one. Kalin said that he had recently diagnosed someone with dementia who had been an extremely important public official. Even today, the diagnosis was a matter of the strictest secrecy. He asked if Sheremetev would be prepared to leave his hospital job and care for this person. Sheremetev hesitated, thinking of the patients on the ward whose families were too poor to produce the rubles required to lubricate the wheels of care. Kalin wondered what could possibly be going through his head. He leaned forward across his desk. ‘Nikolai Ilyich,’ he said. ‘Your nation calls you. You can’t say no.’ Sheremetev felt obliged to respond to this patriotic exhortation – and thus discovered that the patient was none other than Vladimir Vladimirovich.
Naturally, Sheremetev knew that Vladimir had recently stepped down from the presidency, but like the rest of Russia he had no idea yet of the real reason. He hadn’t even heard the rumours. Despite his long experience as a nurse, at first he was somewhat awestruck. It was no small thing to discover that the man who had been president of the federation only a few months earlier was suffering from dementia, and that he was now your patient. Still, he tried to overcome this reaction and treat the ex-president as he would treat any other patient, pragmatically, sensitively and gently. But Vladimir didn’t make it easy.
When Sheremetev first came to him, the ex-president retained considerable insight into what was happening to him. He was aware of his ever more frequent memory lapses and what they portended, and would frequently get into rages, which could sometimes go on for hours. Sheremetev did his best to be a calming influence, but still he often suffered volleys of verbal abuse. After all, his very presence was a reminder to the ex-president of his condition. Sheremetev absorbed it all. Agitation and anger, he knew, are common in the early stages of dementia, when people can still understand the future that confronts them, and he had often encountered them in other patients. Why should Vladimir Vladimirovich, just because he had been five times president and twice prime minister of the Russian Federation, not have the right to rail against the cruelty of fate as others did? A man who had been president, thought Sheremetev, must have a superior intellect, and the loss of it must be proportionately painful. Why shouldn’t he mourn it?
Yet the rages threatened to become more than verbal, and there was a danger that Vladimir would injure not only others but himself. So Professor Kalin prescribed tranquillisers – tablets at night, and injections, if required, when the tablets weren’t enough.
The tranquillisers didn’t stop the rages, but they muffled them, turning the outbursts from roof-raising hurricanes into gusts of wind that rattled the shutters and passed on. Only occasionally would some whirling eddy of frustration erupt into a full blown storm. Eventually, over time, the rages petered out. As Vladimir’s condition progressed, his awareness of it diminished, and with it the anger that it had engendered. Instead, different preoccupations became manifest, ones that rose up out of the past.
By this point, Vladimir’s memory for the people and events of recent years had dissipated. His mind wandered in a world constructed of events that had happened ten, twenty, thirty or more years ago. He spent his time in animated conversations with invisible people who weren’t there, most of whom were long dead. Sometimes Vladimir became disturbed by what he was seeing, especially if he awoke at night, when he would be disorientated and bellicose. So Professor Kalin continued the tranquillisers for Vladimir’s agitation at his delusions that he had originally prescribed for the ex-president’s agitation at reality, checking on the effects each month when he came to the dacha to assess the progression of Vladimir’s dementia.
On the morning that Vladimir met the new president, it was clear that he had mentally been far in the past. Even so, Sheremetev disliked the way Lebedev had presumed to tell Vladimir what to say, walking in and expecting to put words in his mouth. He might have been the president, but it was barely a week since he had taken office, and he was talking to someone who had occupied the position five times, even if Vladimir wasn’t quite the man he had once been. Sheremetev had been shocked at the language that ensued between them, but he felt a flicker of satisfaction – if not pride – that his patient had given back as good as he got.
Afterwards, they went up the stairs together and back to Vladimir’s suite on the second floor. ‘I’ll get you some other clothes, Vladimir Vladimirovich,’ said Sheremetev as he settled him in his chair, and he left him there as he went to the dressing room.
Dima Kolyakov was sitting in an armchair opposite him. Initially Vladimir was surprised to see him, but soon the businessman was explaining a scheme he had hatched to build a new ring road around Moscow. Vladimir listened patiently, not allowing so much as a flicker of an expression to betray what he was thinking. The billionaire was nothing to look at – heavy jowls, bags under his eyes and a pair of moist lips that wriggled lubriciously as he spoke – but there was plenty of lipstick on the pig. He wore a beautifully cut suit, probably from London, where his wife, children and two of his mistresses lived. The neck tie was Hermès. The diamond embedded in his pinkie ring was five carats at least, and brilliant white. The wrist watch, which the billionaire flashed more than someone who wasn’t conscious of it would have done, was a Vacheron Tour de l’Ile, worth probably two million dollars. At the sight of it, Vladimir’s fingers twitched. He had two of his own that had been given to him over the years, amongst Pateks, Breguets, Piquets, Richard Milles and anything else that the most elite Swiss horologists could devise in their mountain workshops. In the early days, he had taken Rolexes, but after a while anyone who turned up with one would get a quiet word in their ear from Evgeny Monarov, his closest consigliere, even before they were brought in to meet him, and a courier would turn up the next day with something more select.
Vladimir heard the businessman out. At the end he said simply: ‘So you think Moscow really needs this new ring road?’
Kolyakov shrugged. ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, would I be suggesting it if I didn’t? The traffic problems are immense.’