Jigsaw (20 page)

Gurenko exhaled blue smoke and patted his horse in an absent-minded way. Budenny was gazing through the trees. Having smoked his cigarette with the raw exuberance he brought to all his appetites, he flicked the butt away and it sizzled in the snow.

Gurenko looked up at the sunlit skies. The wind had died, and the stillness of the landscape was exquisite. It caused a pleasant flutter of melancholy to descend on him. ‘Magnificent,' he said, and he gestured at the white stretches. He'd always had an affinity with wild landscapes. He found romance in desolation.

Humbug
. Budenny didn't think the place was magnificent at all. He was cold and miserable. His horse whinnied, as if spooked by some invisible menace. He rapped the animal sharply with his whip. Unlike Gurenko, he had no love of the great outdoors. Horses and trees and up to your fucking ass in snow – none of that was his scene. He preferred bars, brothels, warm fires, the company of soft pliant perfumed girls.

He said, ‘I'd like to go over the security arrangements with you.'

Gurenko didn't want to think about business, although he knew this was the only reason Budenny had agreed to accompany him on this ride, which he clearly hated; but there was privacy in this place, which was an obsession with the man. No eavesdroppers.

‘I leave all that to you. I have every confidence,' Gurenko said.

Budenny said, ‘I'd like to see more security than normal. Consequently, I'd recommend an increase in manpower.'

Gurenko laughed. ‘Can we afford more airline tickets and hotel rooms? We're supposed to be in the poorhouse, after all.' Budenny's paranoia was sometimes excessive.

‘It's not a question of money,' Budenny said, who didn't like the way Gurenko sometimes treated important matters with such flippancy. ‘It's a question of safety.'

Gurenko's face was fleshy and pink. He rubbed his nose with the back of a glove and was quiet for a few seconds. ‘Do what you feel is necessary. You know I find all this talk of security very dull.' He breathed the sharp clear air deeply into his lungs. He didn't need to be encumbered with Budenny's worries. He watched a winter hawk soar from the uppermost branches of a tree, its awesome wing movements powdering the air with snowflakes.

Budenny said, ‘Of course it's dull. But when it comes to your security, I can't take anything for granted. The world has a surplus of crazies.'

Gurenko spurred his horse on. Budenny, uncomfortable in the saddle, his buttocks already sore from friction, his balls itching, trudged after the President. He detested this wretched place. Birdsong drove him frantic, and as for flowers and plants – these were the domain of grubby-fingered gardeners. He wished this bloody long ride was over, this whole day behind him.

He caught up with Gurenko, who had the blissful look of a man in his element. Gurenko tended to live in a dream world as far as Budenny was concerned. No grip on reality; or at best a tenuous one. He was a wonderful orator, and sometimes his inspirational words compensated for the inadequacies of Russian life, but the truth was that the country, depleted by Gurenko's own so-called reforms, crippled by lawlessness and a lack of patriotic spirit, was on a greased slipway to hell. Certainly, Gurenko had subdued many of his opponents and reined in the military, and most of the generals were as obedient as lap-dogs, but out there in the heart of Russia was a discontent, a black murmuring he appeared not to hear.

Budenny set the thought aside. He had a superb little number lined up for the evening: Latvian, but he wouldn't hold that against her. He projected himself into the immediate future. He contemplated a sauna, sparkling wine, the Latvian girl's tits. He supposed she'd pretend she knew no Russian and speak to him in that funny language of hers. What the hell. It wasn't her voice he was interested in anyway.

Gurenko stopped his horse again. He studied the landscape for a time. Budenny lit another cigarette rather clumsily with one hand. The horse under him, perhaps alarmed by the flare of the match, shuddered and snorted, nostrils flared. Christ, horses were such ugly fuckers.

Gurenko looked forlorn for a moment, as if a passing thought had saddened him. ‘I have moments when I wonder …' He left the sentence unfinished. Budenny, who sensed one of Gurenko's occasional confessionals looming up, was quietly embarrassed.

‘What do you wonder?' Budenny felt obliged to ask. He didn't want to hear a speech. He didn't want to sit through one of Gurenko's rambling discourses on the nature of self. It was almost a form of punishment. He liked Gurenko well enough on a personal level, but there were limits.

Gurenko shrugged. ‘I've given my entire life to one thing. And sometimes it crosses my mind that I might have taken another path, something more … placid, shall we say? Something less demanding. A professor, perhaps. A teacher …'

Christ, Budenny thought. Gurenko was beyond the age for mid-life crises. This was the man's weakness, though. He entertained frivolous yearnings to revisit crossroads where he'd made decisions long ago. He didn't understand a simple fact: you couldn't go back and change the maps of your past.

‘The basic trouble with politics is how it demands total ruthlessness,' Gurenko said.

‘It isn't a quality you lack,' said Budenny.

‘I may not lack it. But it didn't come naturally to me. I had to learn it early on. I had to develop an instinct for hearing the sound of knives being sharpened in the darkness. A man has to protect himself. Develop a hard shell. You don't have any friends in the game of politics, Budenny. Every smiling face conceals a hidden agenda, an ambition. The question I ask myself is what has it done to me? What has it done to the inner man?' Gurenko gazed at Budenny and smiled. ‘Perhaps there isn't an inner man, Budenny, eh? Perhaps that kind of conceit has been extinguished long ago.'

Budenny disliked self-examination in himself; when he encountered it in others, especially Gurenko, he always felt ill at ease. What was he? Some kind of fucking priest that he had to listen to Gurenko jabber on about his soul? Budenny's view of life was simple. You made a decision and you acted on it. You didn't get your knickers in a twist along the way. You didn't sit around contemplating doubts, entertaining anxieties. Christ, no, you did what you had to do. You got on with things.

Gurenko said, ‘You think I'm talking nonsense, don't you?'

Budenny shook his head. ‘Of course not.'

‘You're a bad liar. You think – here goes Gurenko again on one of his soul-searching moments. What a bore. What drivel.' Gurenko slackened his hold on the reins of his horse. The animal flicked its great powerful head. ‘At least you pretend to listen, Budenny. And for that I thank you.'

Melting snow, having fallen from a branch, trickled under Budenny's collar and slithered down his spine, an icy fingertip. He said, ‘You want to look into your heart, that's your affair. If it gets to the point where you think you're having a nervous breakdown, let me know so that I can make alternative arrangements for running the country.'

Gurenko laughed. ‘There's something about your attitude that amuses me, Budenny. Your self-assurance, I suspect.'

‘It comes from my peasant background,' Budenny said. ‘When a cow's about to calf, you don't sit around on your ass and ponder the miracle of birth. When the corn has to come in, you don't fart about contemplating the wonder of a seed.'

Gurenko said, ‘I'll remember that next time I have one of my futile moments of introspection.' He spurred his horse on through the drifts and Budenny, whose buttocks felt like thin-sliced raw meat, sluggishly followed.

Gurenko turned. ‘Time for a drink,' he said. ‘Time to get out of these damp clothes.'

‘You won't find me arguing with that,' Budenny said. He tapped his horse with the whip and thought of the Latvian number, trying to remember her name, a task that eluded him in the end. Besides, he had other things on his mind, things of a less diversionary nature than some carnal heave-ho, some fleshy gallop with a sixteen-year-old
bonbon
from Riga.

Svetlana rubbed Gurenko's shoulders dry with a hot towel as soon as he stepped from the bath. They had been married, it seemed to Gurenko, for ever; she knew his moods, his expressions, even his thoughts before he uttered them. Marriage was the core of Gurenko's life; Svetlana – grown plump over the years, her crow-black hair turned grey but worn long: to him she was still beautiful – was no ornamental wife. She avoided limelight, she was rarely photographed, she usually found some excuse to miss state functions, but she was Gurenko's full partner, counsel, confidante. He made no decisions without her; it would never have occurred to him to do so. He sometimes wondered how he'd cope with a solitary life, if Svetlana were to die before him. The notion withered him.

Now, as he stood dripping bathwater on the tiled floor, he enjoyed the penetrating rub of the towel under her fingers. She sang quietly to herself as she worked down, shoulders, back, thighs. Then she dropped the towel and draped a robe over him.

‘There,' she said. ‘Done.'

Once, too many years ago to remember, he'd written poetry for her. They were naïve and romantic and he'd asked her to burn them, but she'd tied them with ribbon and locked them in a small mahogany box, the key to which she wore on a chain round her neck. This was her secret: Gurenko wasn't supposed to know. But they had no secrets from each other. He reached for her hands, held them between his, smiled at her. She looked a little sad; her eyes were darker than usual.

‘You've never liked him, have you?' he asked.

‘He's crude. He treats young women badly. He has too much raw energy. He likes to overwhelm people.'

‘He's protected me for years,' Gurenko said. ‘Are you questioning his loyalty? His efficiency?'

She shook her head. ‘No. I wouldn't question those. It's just …' She sat, wrapped in a thick green robe, on the edge of the huge bathtub. ‘I'll tell you what it is. It isn't Budenny. It's this trip. It's the idea of you going away—'

‘For three short days—'

‘I know, I know—'

‘It isn't the first time I've been away,' he said. ‘What's different about this?'

She was silent now, and frowning. ‘You're trying to do too much,' she said after a time. ‘Five countries in three days. God knows how many meetings. How many awful dinners and speeches. You'll burn out.'

He laughed. He sat perched alongside her and raised one of her hands, noticing how age had glazed the skin. ‘It's a question of reassuring people about our country. It's a matter of settling certain doubts and anxieties about our stability. We've been through this. I have to do it. I look around, I see how delicate our situation is, I try to understand the viewpoints of the English, the Germans, the French – they feel very uneasy about us. I have to convince them otherwise.'

‘Like a salesman,' she said.

‘You might say that.'

‘You want to reassure them about your product.'

‘Yes,' he said.

‘Who's going to reassure
me
when you're gone?' she asked.

He patted her hand now. He didn't intend the gesture to be construed as patronizing, but he knew she'd see it that way. ‘Three short days,' he said.

‘Three
long
days.'

She stood up, walked to the mirror, looked at her face. Without make-up, she could see the lines, the erosions of age, the way the eyelids sagged, the downturned lips. She turned to her husband, thinking it best to introduce a touch of flippancy: he didn't need to be worried about her misgivings, did he? He had enough on his mind.

‘You know what I think?' she asked. ‘The whole trip's an excuse to see your beloved Tintorettos. Am I right? Am I?'

‘You see straight through me,' he complained.

‘As always.' She hugged him, a little harder than usual. And she held him a little longer than she normally did. ‘When you're away, don't forget to take your vitamins.'

‘I promise,' Gurenko said.

FIFTEEN

BURGUNDY

J
ACOB
S
TREIK WAS CONFUSED, DIDN'T KNOW HOW MANY HOURS HAD
passed since he'd shot the kid, understood only that a wicked weariness was clawing away at him. Once or twice he stopped the car and was sick by the side of the road. The second time he had to throw up, the fierce headlights of a passing truck had picked him out and he thought he must have looked ghostly and stupid retching into a grassy bank.

He hadn't a clue where he was, hadn't looked at the map in hours, he could only think of driving, just on and on, mile after bleary mile. At some points he was bugged by a weird loneliness. He wanted to park in a tiny French town and jaw with the locals, talk about soccer and whether Paris St-Germain was good enough to win the league or whatever it was, maybe drink some more of the red dreck, but he wasn't sure if the cops were after him now as well. The lane where he'd shot the kid was lonely enough, but who could tell? Somebody might have seen him drive away, noted the registration number of the Saab, called in the gendarmerie. Everybody and his brother could be hunting in this region of France for an overweight American. A good disguise would help – yeah, if he could magically lose about eighty pounds he wouldn't feel so goddam conspicuous, but they hadn't invented that kind of diet yet. So he kept going, eyelids heavy, stomach churning, a fat man running nowhere through the hours before daybreak.

He didn't realize he'd hit anything until he heard a thud against the front of his car and even then he swerved, although he knew it was too late. He braked, got out, stumbled back down the darkened road. The dog was a black mongrel. The Saab had knocked it about twenty feet from the point of collision and it lay awkwardly, hind legs broken, head twisted sorrowfully to one side. Its pink mouth hung open and bloody. Appalled, Streik bent down over the wretched creature, which turned its eyes toward him.