Up the uncarpeted stairs, clothed in gloomy brown paint, was the first half-landing, with a grilled window where a surly guard asked the caller’s business. Only if this was satisfactory could he then ascend to the tacky rooms above where Zhirinovsky held court when he was in town. Hard rock boomed throughout the building. This was the way the eccentric fascist had preferred to keep the headquarters, on the grounds that the image spoke of a man of the people rather than one of the fat cats. But Zhirinovsky was long gone now, and the Liberal Democratic Party had been amalgamated with the other ultra-right and neo-fascist parties into the Union of Patriotic Forces.
Its undisputed leader was Igor Komarov, and he was a completely different kind of man. Nevertheless, seeing the basic logic of showing the poor and dispossessed whose votes he sought that the Union of Patriotic Forces permitted itself no expensive indulgences, he kept the Fish Alley building, but maintained his own private offices elsewhere.
Trained as an engineer, Komarov had worked under Communism but not for it, until halfway through the Yeltsin period he had decided to enter politics. He had chosen the Liberal Democratic Party, and though he privately despised Zhirinovsky for his drunken excesses and constant sexual innuendo, his quiet work in the background had brought him to the Politburo, the inner council of the party. From here, in a series of covert meetings with leaders of other ultra-right parties, he had stitched together the alliance of all the right-wing elements in Russia into the UPF. Presented with an accomplished fact, Zhirinovsky grudgingly accepted its existence and fell into the trap of chairing its first plenum.
The plenum passed a resolution requiring his resignation and ditched him. Komarov declined to take the leadership but ensured that it went to a nonentity, a man with no charisma and little organizational talent. A year later it was easy to play upon the sense of disappointment in the Union’s governing council, ease out the stopgap, and take the leadership himself. The career of Vladimir Zhirinovsky had ended.
Within two years after the 1996 elections the crypto-Communists began to fade. Their supporters had always been predominantly middle-aged and elderly and they had trouble raising funds. Without big-banker support the membership fees were no longer enough. The Socialist Union’s money and its appeal dwindled.
By 1998 Komarov was undisputed leader of the ultra-right and in prime position to play upon the growing despair of the Russian people, of which there was plenty.
Yet along with all this poverty and destitution there was also ostentatious wealth to make the eyes blink. Those who had money had mountains of it, much of it in foreign currency. They swept through the streets in long stretch limousines, American or German, for the Zil factory had gone out of production, often accompanied by motorcycle outriders to clear a path and usually with a second car of bodyguards racing along behind.
In the lobby of the Bolshoi, in the bars and banquet halls of the Metropol and the National, they could be seen each evening, accompanied by their hookers trailing sable, mink, the aroma of Parisian scent, and glittering with diamonds. These were the fat cats, fatter than ever.
In the Duma the delegates shouted and waved order papers and passed resolutions. “It reminds me,” said an English foreign correspondent, “of all I ever heard of the last days of the Weimar Republic.”
The one man who seemed to offer a possible ray of hope was Igor Komarov.
In the two years since he had taken power in the party of the right, Komarov had surprised most observers, both inside and outside Russia. If he had been content to remain simply a superb political organizer, he would have been just another apparatchik. But he changed. Or so observers thought. More probably he had a talent he had been content to keep hidden.
Komarov made his mark as a passionate and charismatic popular orator. When he was on the podium those who recalled the quiet, soft-spoken, fastidious private man were amazed. He seemed transformed. His voice increased and deepened to a rolling baritone, using all the many expressions and inflections of the Russian language to great effect. He could drop his tone almost to a whisper so that even with microphones the audience had to strain to catch the words, then rise to a ringing peroration that brought the crowds to their feet and had even the skeptics cheering.
He quickly mastered the area of his own specialty, the living crowd. He avoided the televised fireside chat or television interview, aware that though these might work in the West, they were not for Russia. Russians rarely invited people into their homes, let alone the entire nation.
Nor was he interested in being trapped by hostile questions. Every speech he made was stage-managed, but the technique worked. He addressed only rallies of the party faithful, with the cameras under the control of his own filmmaking team commanded by the brilliant young director Litvinov. Cut and edited, these films were released for nationwide television viewing on his own terms, to be aired complete and unabridged. This he could achieve by buying TV time instead of relying upon the vagaries of newscasters.
His theme was always the same and always popular—Russia, Russia, and again Russia. He inveighed against the foreigners whose international conspiracies had brought Russia to her knees. He clamored for the expulsion of all the “blacks,” the popular Russian way of referring to Armenians, Georgians, Azeris, and others from the south, many of whom were known to be among the richest of the criminal profiteers. He cried out for justice for the poor downtrodden Russian people who would one day rise with him to restore the glories of the past and sweep away the filth that clogged the streets of the motherland.
He promised all things to all men. For the out-of-work there would be employment a fair day’s wage for a good day’s work, with food on the table and dignity again. For those with obliterated life savings there would be honest currency again and something to put by for a comfortable old age For those who wore the uniform of the Rodina, the ancient motherland, there would be pride again to wipe out the humiliations visited upon them by cravens elevated to high office by foreign capital.
And they heard him. By radio and television they heard him across the wide steppes. The soldiers of the once-great Russian army heard him, huddled under canvas, expelled from Afghanistan, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia in an endless series of retreats from empire.
The peasants heard him in their cottages and izbas, scattered across the vast landscape. The ruined middle classes, heard him among the bits of furniture they had not pawned for food on the table and a few coals in the hearth. Even the industrial bosses heard him and dreamed that their furnaces might one day roar again. And when he promised them that the angel of death would walk among the crooks and gangsters who had raped their beloved Mother Russia, they loved him.
In the spring of 1999, at the suggestion of his PR adviser, a very clever young man who had graduated from an American Ivy League college, Igor Komarov granted a series of private interviews. Young Boris Kuznetsov picked the candidates well, mainly legislators and journalists of the conservative wing across America and Western Europe. The purpose of the reception was to calm their fears.
As a campaign, it worked brilliantly. Most arrived expecting to find what they had been told they would find: a wild-eyed ultra-right demagogue, variously dubbed racist or neo-Fascist or both.
They found themselves talking to a thoughtful, well-mannered man in a sober suit. As Komarov spoke no English, it was his PR aide who sat by his side, both guiding the interview and interpreting. Whenever his adored leader said something he knew might be ill-interpreted in the West, Kuznetsov simply translated it into something much more acceptable in English. No one noticed, for he had ensured that none of the visitors understood Russian.
Thus Komarov could explain that, as practicing politicians, we all have constituencies and we cannot needlessly offend them if we wish to be elected. Thus we may on occasion have to say what we know they want to hear, even though to achieve it may be much harder than we pretend. And the senators nodded understandingly.
He explained that in the older western democracies people broadly understood that social discipline began with oneself, so that externally imposed discipline, by the state, might be the lighter. But where all forms of self-discipline had broken down, the state might have to be firmer than would be acceptable in the West. And the MPs nodded understandingly.
To the conservative journalists he explained that the restoration of a sound currency could simply not be achieved without some draconian measures against crime and corruption in the short term. The journalists wrote that Igor Komarov was a man who would listen to reason on matters economic and political, such as cooperation with the West. He might be too far right for acceptance in a European or American democracy, and his powerful demagoguery too frightening for western palates, but he might well be the man for Russia in her present straits. In any case he would almost certainly win the presidential election in June 2000 The polls showed that The farsighted would be wise to support him
In chancelleries embassies ministries and boardrooms across the West the cigar smoke rose to the ceilings and heads nodded.
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IN the northern sector of the central area of Moscow just inside the Boulevard Ring road and halfway down Kiselny Boulevard, is a side street. Midway along the west side of the street there is a small park, about half an acre in size, surrounded on three sides by windowless buildings and protected at the front by ten-foot-high green steel sheets, over the top of which the tips of a line of conifers can just be seen. Set in the steel wall is a double gate, also steel.
The small park is in fact the garden of a superb pre-revolutionary town house or mansion, exquisitely restored in the mid-1980s. Although the interior is modern and functional, the classic facade is painted in pastel shades, the plasterwork over doors and windows picked out in white. This was the real headquarters of Igor Komarov.
A visitor at the front gate would be in full view of a camera atop the wall and would announce himself via an intercom. He would be talking to a guard in a hut just within the gate, who would check with the security office inside the dacha.
If the gates opened, a car could roll forward for ten yards before stopping at a row of spikes. The steel gates, sliding sideways on rollers, would close automatically behind it. The guard would then emerge to check identification papers. If these were in order, he would retire to his hut and press an electric control. The spikes would recede and the car could go forward to the gravel forecourt where more guards would be waiting.
From either side of the dacha chain-link fencing ran to the edges of the compound, bolted firmly to the surrounding walls. Behind the chain-link were the dogs. There were two teams, and each responded only to one dog handler. The handlers worked alternate nights. After dark, gates in the fencing were opened and the dogs had the run of the whole compound, front and back. Thereafter the gate guard stayed inside his hut, and in the event of a late visitor he would have to contact the handler to call off the dogs.
In order to avoid losing too many of the staff to the dogs, there was an underground passage at the rear of the building, leading to a narrow alley which itself led to Kiselny Boulevard. This passage had three keypad doors: one inside the dacha, one at the street, and one midway. This was the access and egress for deliveries and staff.
At night, when the political staff had left and the dogs prowled the grounds, two security men remained on duty inside the dacha. They had a room of their own, with a TV and facilities for snacks, but no beds because they were not supposed to sleep. Alternately, they prowled the three floors of the dacha until relieved by the day shift arriving at the breakfast hour. Mr. Komarov came later.
But dust and cobwebs are no respecters of high office, and every night except Sunday, when the buzzer from the rear alley sounded, one of the guards would let in the cleaner.
In Moscow most cleaners are women but Komarov preferred an all-male environment around him, including the cleaner, a harmless old soldier called Leonid Zaitsev. The surname means rabbit in Russian and because of his helpless manner, threadbare ex-army greatcoat worn winter and summer, and the three stainless steel teeth that gleamed at the front of his mouth—Red Army dentistry used to be pretty basic—the guards at the dacha just called him Rabbit. The night the president died they let him in as usual at 10:00 P.M.
It was one in the morning when, with bucket and duster in hand dragging the vacuum cleaner behind him he reached the office of N. I. Akopov the personal private secretary of Mr. Komarov. He had only met the man once, a year ago, when he had arrived to find some of the senior staff working very late. The man had been extremely rude to him, ordering him out with a stream of invective. Sometimes, since then, he had got his own back by sitting in Mr. Akopov’s comfortable leather swivel chair.
Because he knew the guards were downstairs, the Rabbit sat in the swivel chair and reveled in the lush comfort of the leather. He had never had a chair like that and never would. There was a document on the desk blotter, about forty pages of typescript bound at the edge with a spiral binding and covered front and back with heavy black paper.
The Rabbit wondered why it had been left out. Normally Mr. Akopov put everything away in his wall safe. He must have, for the Rabbit had never seen a document before and all the desk drawers were always locked. He flicked open the black cover and looked at the title. Then he opened the file at random.
He was not a good reader, but he could do it. His foster mother had taught him long ago, and then the teachers at the state school and finally a kindly officer in the army.
What he saw troubled him. He read one passage several times; some of the words were too long and complex, but he understood the meanings. His arthritic hands trembled as he turned the pages. Why should Mr. Komarov say such things? And about people like his foster mother whom he had loved? He did not fully understand, but it worried him. Perhaps he should consult the guards downstairs? But they would just hit him about the head and tell him to get on with his work.
An hour went by. The guards should have patrolled but they were glued to their television where the extended news program had informed the nation that the prime minister, in accordance with Article Fifty-nine of the Russian constitution, had taken over the duties of president, per interim, for the prescribed three months.
The Rabbit read the same few passages over and over until he understood their meaning. But he could not grasp the meaning behind the meaning. Mr. Komarov was a great man. He was going to become the next president of Russia, was he not? So why should he be saying such things about the Rabbit’s foster mother and people like her, for she was long dead?
At two in the morning the Rabbit stuffed the file inside his shirt, finished his work, and asked to be let out. The guards reluctantly left their TV screen to open the doors and the Rabbit wandered off into the night. He was a bit earlier than usual, but the guards did not mind.
Zaitsev thought of going home, but decided he had better not. It was too early. The buses, trams, and subways were all shut down as usual. He always had to walk home, sometimes in the rain, but he needed the job. The walk took an hour. If he went now he would wake his daughter and her two children. She would not like that. So he wandered through the streets wondering what to do.
By half past three he found himself on the Kremlevskaya Quay beneath the southern walls of the Kremlin There were tramps and derelicts sleeping along the quay, but he found a bench with some space, sat down, and stared out across the river.
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THE sea had calmed down as they approached the island as it always did in the afternoon as if telling the fisherman and the mariners that the contest for the day was over and the ocean would call a truce till tomorrow. To right and left the skipper could see several other boats heading for the Wheeland Cut the northwestern gap in the reef that gave access from the open sea to the flat lagoon.
To starboard Arthur Dean in his open Silver Deep raced past making eight knots better than the Foxy Lady. The islander waved a greeting
and the American skipper waved back. He saw two divers in the back of the Silver Deep and reckoned they had been exploring the coral off Northwest Point There would be lobster in the Dean household tonight.
He slowed the Foxy Lady to navigate the cut, for on either side the razor-tipped coral was barely inches below the surface, and once through they settled down for the easy ten minutes down the coast to Turtle Cove.
The skipper loved his boat, his livelihood and mistress all in one. She was a ten-year-old thirty-one-foot Bertram Moppie—originally so named after designer Dick Bertram’s wife—and though not the biggest nor the most luxurious charter fishing vessel in Turtle Cove, her owner and skipper would match her against any sea and any fish. He had bought her five years earlier when he moved to the islands, secondhand from a yard in South Florida via a small ad in the Boat Trader, then worked on her himself night and day until she was the sassiest girl in all the islands. He had not regretted a dollar of her, even though he was still paying off the finance company.
Inside the harbor he eased the Bertram into her slot two down from fellow American Bob Collins on the Sakitumi, switched off, and came down to ask his clients if they had had a good day. They had indeed, they assured him, and paid his fee with a generous gratuity for himself and Julius. When they had gone he winked at Julius, let him keep the entire tip and the fish, took off his cap, and ran his fingers through his tousled blond hair.
Then he left the grinning islander to finish cleaning off the boat, fresh-water rinsing all the rods and reels and leaving Foxy Lady shipshape for the night. He would come back to close her up before going home. In the meantime he felt a straight lime daiquiri coming on, so he strolled down the boardwalk to the Banana Boat, greeting all he met as they greeted him.
CHAPTER 2
TWO HOURS AFTER SITTING ON HIS RIVERSIDE BENCH, Leonid Zaitsev still had not worked out his problem. He wished now he had not taken the document. He did not really know why he had. If they found out, he would be punished. But then, life always seemed to have punished him and he could not really understand why.