Red Square (8 page)

Borya Gubenko picked a ball from a pail, set it on his tee, cautioned Arkady about the backswing, concentrated, drew the dub back so that it seemed to encircle his body, uncoiled and lashed the ball on a line.

   
'Want to try it?' he asked

   
'No, thanks. I’ll
 
just watch,' Arkady said.

   
A dozen Japanese teed up on squares of plastic grass, drew back their clubs and drove golf balls that sailed as diminishing white dots the interior length of the factory. The irregular pop of balls sounded like small-arms fire -
appropriately since the factor used to turn out bullet casings. During the White Terror, Patriotic War and Warsaw Pact, workers had manufactured millions of brass and steel-core cartridges. To convert to a golf range, assembly lines had been scrapped and the floor painted a pastoral green. A couple of immovable metal presses were screened by cut-out trees, a touch appreciated by the Japanese, who wore golf caps even indoors. Besides Borya, the only Russian players Arkady could see were a mother and daughter in matching short skirts taking a lesson.

   
On the far wall, halls thudded against a green canvas marked in ascending distances: two hundred, two hundred and fifty, three hundred metres.

   
Borya said, 'I confess, I overestimated a little bit. A happy customer is the secret of business.' He posed for Arkady. 'What do you think?' The first Russian amateur champion?'

   
'At least.'

   
Borya's big frame was tamed by a plush pastel sweater, his unruly hair wetted into sleek golden wings around a watchful, angular face with eyes of crystal blue.

   
'Look at it this way.' Borya plucked another ball from the pail. 'I spent ten years playing football for Central Army. You know the life: terrific money, flat, car, as long as you can perform. You get injured, you start to slip and suddenly you're on the street. You go right from the top straight to the, bottom. Everyone wants to buy you a beer, but that's it. That's the payoff for ten years and your busted knees. Old boxers, wrestlers, hockey players, same story. No wonder they go into the mafia. Or worse, start playing American-style football. Anyway, I was lucky.'

   
More than lucky. Borya seemed to have crystallized into a new, successful persona. In the New Moscow, no one was as transcendentally popular and prosperous as Borya Gubenko.

   
Behind the driving range, slot machines sang beside a bar decorated with Marlboro posters, Marlboro ashtrays and Marlboro lamps. Borya lined up his shot. If possible, he looked more robust than in his playing days. Also sleek, like a well-groomed lion. He swung and froze, studying a drive that faded at it rose.

   
'Tell me about this club,' Arkady said.

   
'It's hard-currency, members only. The more exclusive you make it, the more foreigners want in. I'll tell you the secret,' Borya said.

   
'Another secret?'

   
'Location. The Swedes have poured millions into an eighteen-hole resort outside town. It's going to have conference facilities, communications centre, super security so that businessmen and tourists can come without ever really staying in Moscow. But that sounds stupid to me. If it was going to invest money somewhere, I'd want to see what it's really like. Anyway, the Swedes are way out of town. In comparison, we're central, right on the river, practically across from the Kremlin. Look what it took - a little paint, Astroturf, clubs and balls. We're in guidebooks and foreign magazines. And all of it was Rudy's idea.' He looked Arkady up and down. 'What sport did you play?'

   
'Football in school.'

   
'Position?'

   
'Mainly goal.' Arkady wasn't going to claim any athletic distinction in Borya's company.

   
'Like me. The best position. You study, see the attack, learn anticipation. The game comes down to a couple of kicks. And when you commit, you commit, right? If you try to save yourself, that's how you get hurt. For me, of course, playing was a way to see the world. I didn't understand what food was until we went to Italy. I still referee some international games just to eat well.'

   
'To see the world' had to be a mild description of Borya's ambition, Arkady thought. Gubenko had grown up in the concrete 'Khrushchev Barracks' of Long Pond. In Russian, 'Khrushchev' rhymed with 'slum', giving bite to the title. Borya would have been raised on cabbage soup and cabbage hopes, and here he was talking about Italian restaurants.

   
Arkady asked, 'What do you think happened to Rudy?'

   
'I think that what happened to Rudy was a national disaster. He was the only real economist in the country.'

   
'Who killed him?'

   
Without hesitating, Borya said, 'Chechens. Makhmud is a bandit with no concept of Western style or business. The fact is he holds everyone else back. The more fear the better - never mind that it closes a market down. The more unsettled everyone else is, the stronger the Chechens become.'

   
On the tees a tier overhead, the Japanese hit a unified salvo, followed by excited shouts of 'Banzai!'

   
Borya smiled and pointed his club up. 'They fly from Tokyo to Hawaii for a weekend of golf. I have to throw them out at night.'

   
'If Chechens killed Rudy,' Arkady said, 'they had to get past Kim. For all his reputation - muscle man, martial arts - he doesn't seem to have been much protection. When your best friend Rudy was looking for a bodyguard, didn't he come to you for advice?'

   
'Rudy carried a lot of money and he was concerned about his safety.'

   
'And Kim?'

   
'The factories in Lyubertsy are closing down. The problem with interacting with the free market, Rudy always said, is that we manufacture shit. When I suggested Kim to Rudy, I thought I was doing them both a favour.'

 
  
'If you find Kim before we do, what will you do?'

   
Borya aimed the club at Arkady and dropped his voice. 'I'd call you. I would. Rudy was my best friend and I think Kim helped the Chechens, but do you think I'd endanger all this, everything I've achieved, to take some sort of primitive revenge? That's the old mentality. We have to catch up with the rest of the world or we're going to be left behind. We'll all be in empty buildings and starving to death. We have to change. Do you have a card?' he asked suddenly.

   
'Party card?'

   
'We collect business cards and have a drawing once a month for a bottle of Chivas Regal.' Borya controlled a smile, barely.

   
Arkady felt like an idiot. Not an ordinary idiot, but an out-dated, socially uninformed idiot.

   
Borya put down his driver and proudly led Arkady to the buffet. In chairs upholstered in red and black Marlboro colours were more Japanese in baseball caps and Americans in golfing shoes. Arkady suspected that Borya had hit upon the exact decor of an airport lounge, the natural setting of the international business traveler. They could have been in Frankfurt, Singapore, Saudi Arabia - anywhere - and for this very reason felt at home. Above the bar a television showed CNN. The crowded buffet offered an array of smoked sturgeon and trout, red and black caviar, eggplant caviar, German chocolates and Georgian pastries around bottles of sweet champagne, Pepsi, pepper vodka, lemon vodka and five-star Armenian cognac. Arkady was dizzy from the smell of food.

 
  
'We also have karaoke nights, putting tournaments and corporate parties,' Borya said. 'No prostitutes, no hustlers. It couldn't be more innocent.'

   
Like Borya? The man had not only gone from football to the mafia but had made the second, steeper evolutionary leap to entrepreneur. The way his Western sweater draped his shoulders, the directness of his eyes, the freer gestures of clean hands all said: businessman.

   
Borya gave a discreet, proprietary wave and a uniformed waitress immediately arrived from the buffet and set a plate of silver herring on the table in front of Arkady. The fish seemed to swim before his eyes.

   
Borya asked, 'Remember unpolluted fish?'

   
'Not well enough, thanks.' Arkady dug a last cigarette from a pack. 'Where do you get the fish?'

   
'Like anyone else. I trade this, barter that.'

   
'On the black market?'

   
Borya shook his head. 'Direct. Rudy said there wasn't a farm or fishing collective that wasn't willing to do business if you could offer more than rubles.'

   
'Rudy told you what to offer?'

   
Borya held Arkady's eyes with his. 'Rudy started out as a football fan. He ended up as an older brother. He simply wanted to see me happy. He gave me advice. That doesn't sound like a crime to me.'

   
'It depends on the advice.' Arkady wanted to provoke a reaction.

   
Borya's eyes were clear as water, without a ripple. 'Rudy always said there was no need to break the law, just to rewrite it. He looked ahead.'

   
'Do you know an Apollonia Gubenko?' Arkady asked.

   
'My wife. I know her well.'

   
'Where was she the night Rudy died?'

   
'What does it matter?'

   
'There was a Mercedes registered in her name at the black market about thirty metres from where Rudy died.'

   
Borya took a little longer to answer. He glanced at the television, where an American tank was rolling through a desert. 'She was with me. We were here.'

   
'At two in the morning?'

   
'I often close after midnight. I remember we went home in my car because Polly's was in a garage being repaired.'

   
'You have two cars?'

   
'Between Polly and me, two Mercedes, two BMWs, two Volgas and a Lada. In the West people can invest in stocks and bonds. We have cars. The trouble is, as soon as a nice car goes to the garage, someone borrows it. I can try to find out who.'

   
'You're sure she was with you? Because a woman was seen in it.'

   
'I treat women with respect. Polly is her own person, she doesn't have to answer to me for every second of her time, but that night she was with me.'

   
'Did anyone else see you here?'

   
'No. The secret of business is you stay close to the cash register and lock up yourself.'

   
'There are a lot of secrets in business,' Arkady said.

   
Borya leaned forward and spread his hands. Although Arkady knew he was a big man, he was surprised at the wingspan. He remembered how Borya the player used to roar out of the Central Army goal to stop penalty kicks. Gubenko let his hands fall. His voice was soft. 'Renko?'

   
'Yes?'

   
'I'm not going to kill Kim. That's your job. If you want to do society a favour, kill Makhmud, too.'

   
Arkady looked at his watch. It was eight p.m. He had already missed the first broadcast and his mind was starting to wander. 'I have to go.'

   
Borya steered Arkady through the bar. Another discreet signal had been sent because the waitress caught up to them with two packs of cigarettes which Borya stuffed into Arkady's jacket.

   
The mother and daughter made their way around the tables. They shared the same fine features and grey eyes. When the woman spoke, she had a faint lisp; Arkady was relieved to hear an imperfection,

   
'Borya, the teacher's waiting for you.'

   
'The pro, Polly. The pro.'

'Armenian nationalists attacked Soviet Internal troops attain yesterday, inflicting ten deaths and as many wounded,' Irina said. 'The object of the Armenian attack was a Soviet Army depot, which they ransacked, removing small arms, assault rifles, mines, a tank, a personnel currier, mortars and anti-tank guns. The Moldavian Supreme Soviet yesterday declared its sovereignty, three days after the Georgian Supreme Soviet did the same.'

   
Arkady set the table with brown bread, cheese, tea and cigarettes and sat facing the radio as if it had come to dinner. He should have returned to Rudy's flat yet here is the man with no will, in time for her broadcast. With apocalyptic news she had, but it didn't matter.

   
'Rioting continued in Kirgizia between Kirgiz, and Uzbeks for the third straight day. Armoured personnel carriers patrolled the streets of Osh after Uzbeks took control of the downtown tourist hotels and directed automatic fire at the local offices of the KGB. Deaths in the unrest now total two hundred and the question of draining the Uzgen Canal to find more bodies has been raised.'