Authors: Brian Haig
One night after a long rambling conversation about the evaporating foreign currency reserves, Yeltsin paused to catch his
breath, then, seemingly out of the blue, asked Alex, “By the way, how’s your house?”
“Nice. Very nice.”
“Is it big?”
“Fairly large, yes. Why do you ask?”
“I heard it’s huge.”
“Okay, it is. Very, very big.”
“How many bedrooms?”
“Six, I think. Maybe seven. Why?”
“Which is it, six or seven?”
“I honestly don’t know. Could be ten for all I know. I’ve wandered through most of it, but there are rooms I’ve never seen.
It was a wreck when I bought it, an old brick mansion constructed before 1917. According to local lore, it was built for a
baron or maybe a wealthy factory owner to house his ten children. Poor guy. He was dragged out and executed by a Bolshevik
firing squad three days after the last stud went in.”
“Are you pulling my leg?”
“The bullet scars are still visible on the west side of the house. That adds a certain charm.”
“And after that?”
“Well, I don’t know about the early years. But the Ministry of Education owned it for decades. Occasionally it was used as
a school for children of the elite, sometimes as a training center for school principals. Of course they neglected it disgracefully.
The electrical wiring, even the plumbing had not been updated since it was built. The pipes were made of cast iron. Turn the
spigot and chunky brown slush poured out.”
“But you like it?”
Alex chuckled. “What’s not to like?”
“You tell me,” Boris replied.
“Not a thing. I used my own construction company to gut and rebuild with the best of everything. Voice-activated lighting,
saunas in every bathroom, two mahogany-paneled elevators, the works. I even had an indoor pool installed, and a well-equipped
gym. The attic is now a movie theater, twenty seats, with real popcorn machines and a ten-foot screen. A French chef and three
servants live in the basement and take care of everything.”
After a long moment, Yeltsin asked, in a suspiciously knowing tone, “And your wife, does she like it?”
“There are a few things she might like to change,” Alex admitted, a loud understatement. Elena detested the house. He had
bought and refurbished it before they met, a gift to himself after he made his first hundred million and regarded it as a
neat way to pat himself on the back. A gay Paris decorator had been flown in and instructed to spare no expense. He did his
best. He chartered a plane, flew around the world, slept in five-star hotels, loaded up on antiques from Asia, the Middle
East, and Europe. He had drapes hand-sewn in Egypt, and furniture hand-manufactured by the best craftsmen in Korea.
As the bills piled up, Alex convinced himself that he wasn’t being wasteful; it was a business expense, an unavoidable cost
he couldn’t do without. The big moneymen from Wall Street and Fleet Street and Frankfurt did not talk business with anybody
not like themselves, prosperous enough to show it off.
The house was cavernous and every nook and cranny was saturated with grandeur. But Elena liked things simple and small enough
that you didn’t have to shout across the room at each other. She didn’t care for servants, either; she was reared to do things
herself, and that’s how she preferred it. If she even thought about a cup of coffee, a silver urn appeared out of nowhere.
The flock of hired help violated their privacy. They made her feel guilty and spoiled.
The mansion sat on the corner of two furiously busy Moscow streets, for another thing. Traffic and pedestrians were always
pausing to gawk at the impressive old home, and occasionally littered the property with letters strewn with vile curses and
filthy threats. In a city populated largely with impoverished former communists—their families and few belongings suffocating
in six-hundred-square-foot apartments—the newly rich and their expansive indulgences were not viewed fondly.
Any day, Elena expected a flotilla of Molotov cocktails to sail through her window.
After enough hateful letters, Alex built a small guard shack out front and posted guards around the clock to chase away disgruntled
tourists. But it was, quite spectacularly, a mansion and thus a magnet for the growing breed of Moscow criminals. After two
attempted break-ins, another guard shack was erected, more guards were added to the rear of the house, one was posted on the
roof, and enough state-of-the-art surveillance systems were sprinkled around to give a porn studio fits of envy.
Elena began calling their home “The Fortress,” without affection. Still, there was no doubt the house continued to pose serious
security issues and little could be done about it.
They had had discussions, Alex and Elena. Not arguments, but mild disputes that were never settled. Elena was increasingly
distressed about Alex’s safety. He was famous now—more truthfully, infamous—a poster child of the gold-digging opportunists
who were raking it in while most Russians slapped extra locks on their doors to keep the bill collectors at bay.
And their house was right there, on the street! A bazooka fired from a passing car could blast them all to pieces.
But the place was perfect for Alex. His office was only five minutes away, on foot. He was working twenty-hour days, seven
days a week. Seconds were precious, minutes priceless. And everything he needed was right here, a floor or two above, or a
floor or two below: a gourmet feast at the snap of a finger, that superb gym for his morning conditioning, the heated pool
to unwind in after a long day of shoving millions around.
Elena had been raised in the country. She loathed the city and all its appendages—senseless crime, roaring traffic, the ever-present
noise, the reeking smell and pollution. Most of all, she hated that disgruntled people walked by and spat angry hawkers on
her property. She longed for clean air, lush forests, long, private walks around her property.
Long walks without a squadron of beefy guards shepherding her every step.
“Why do you ask?” Alex finally said.
“I want you closer,” Boris replied. “No, I
need
you closer.”
“I’m only forty minutes away. Call and I’ll drop everything.”
“Nope, that won’t work. One minute I worry about foreign currency reserves, the next I’m dreaming of ways to get my nuclear
missiles back from Kazakhstan. I’m a very spontaneous person, Alex. I have the attention span of a horny Cossack. I think
you know that.”
“Yes, I know that. So send a fast helicopter for me, Mr. President. The army’s not doing anything these days. I think they
have enough of them, and their pilots need a workout. I’ll even foot the gas bill. Twenty minutes flat from my doorstep to
yours.”
“Not fast enough.”
“Then describe fast enough.”
“I want to reach out and touch you. Besides, you’ve been very good to me. I owe you more than I can express. Do me a favor,
let me pay some of it back.”
“Just fix this damned country. Finish what you started. Believe me, I’ll be more than delighted.”
Yeltsin chuckled. “You’ll be old and senile before anything works in this land. I’ll be dead and buried, with throngs of people
lining up to pee on my grave for causing all this chaos. I’m giving you a house, Alex.”
“I have a house already. Didn’t we just go over that?”
Yeltsin ignored him. “Not quite as garish as yours. But big, and believe me, you’ll love this place. It’s out here, in the
country, inside the presidential compound. A mere two-minute walk from my quarters—one minute if you sprint, which I expect
you to do if I call. A gym and indoor pool. Six servants, a chef, and—hey, you’ll love this part—they have separate quarters
outside the house.”
The president paused to let his sales pitch sink in, then threw out a little more ammunition. “Here’s the kicker, Alex. My
presidential security detail guards the entire compound. Even with your money, you couldn’t touch the kind of security these
goons provide.”
Alex chuckled. “Is that a challenge?” He could not say it, but he abhorred the idea of living in walking, or even sprinting,
distance of Boris. The man drank and partied until four every morning, frothy bacchanalias that consumed enormous amounts
of liquor. He was notoriously social by nature and regarded it as sinful to get tanked alone. The idea of being dragged into
those late-night orgies was appalling.
Yeltsin chuckled as well, then a loud belly laugh. What was he saying? With all that wealth, Alex could probably buy half
the Russian army; maybe all of it. After a moment the laughing stopped. “I’m serious, Alex. My economic advisors are all boring
idiots. Even that bunch of Harvard professors who’ve camped out here to tell me how to build a capitalist paradise—just stuffier
idiots.”
“All right, replace them.”
“You’re not listening. I’m trying to.”
But Alex was listening, very closely. A week before he and Elena had attended a dull state dinner to honor the visiting potentate
of some country where, apparently, everybody was short and squat, with bad teeth, horrible breath, and nauseating table manners.
After the usual tedious speeches about eternal brotherhood and blah, blah, blah—along with a seriously overcooked meal—the
party shifted to the ballroom, where Yeltsin promptly invited Elena to dance.
Boris had an eye for the ladies and Elena in a baggy sweatsuit could snap necks. But attired as she was, in a gold-embossed
scarlet gown, she nearly sucked the male air out of the ballroom. And of course, three-quarters of a lifetime of ballet training
had made her a splendid dancer who knew how to make her partner look graceful and better than he was. Yeltsin and Elena laughed
and chatted and whirled gaily around the floor. All eyes were on them—Fred and Ginger, cutting the rug. One dance turned into
two, then three.
Alex was sure he was listening to the echo of that third dance. Clearly Elena had whispered into Yeltsin’s ear her growing
concerns about Alex’s safety. If her husband wouldn’t heed her warnings, she would take matters over his head. He admired
the effort and adored her for trying. He had absolutely no intention of humoring her.
He would just litter a few more guards around the property and hope it settled her nerves.
“Oh, one other thing,” Yeltsin added, an afterthought, an insignificant little note to round out the pitch. “It happens to
be Gorbachev’s old house. The official quarters of the general secretary himself. I had him booted out the day after I took
over. Didn’t even give him time to clear the clothes from the closets. Ha, ha, ha. Had those shipped to him, later, with a
nice personal note. ‘I got the country, you keep the rags.’”
Alex suddenly went speechless. Had he heard that right? Yes! Gorbachev’s home! Sure, his own mansion was grand, perhaps larger
and more loaded with extravagances than the general secretary’s residence—money, after all, was the great leveler. But some
things money can’t buy. Yeltsin was offering him the most storied home in Russia.
The thought of living in that home—How may bedrooms did Yeltsin mention? Who cared?—the thought of him and Elena basking in
the general secretary’s hot tub, making love in that bedroom, taking long, leisurely strolls around a property where legions
of presidents and world leaders had stepped and stumbled, was simply exhilarating. Flushing the toilets would be a thrill.
It wouldn’t hurt business, either. Alex could picture the amazed expressions of the Western investors he invited over for
a light business dinner. Please don’t chip the general secretary’s china, he would tell them and watch their faces.
And so what if it was forty-five minutes from the office? The big Mercedes 600 was equipped with an office in the rear, a
pull-down desk made of mahogany, a satellite carphone, enough gadgets that not one of the forty-five minutes would be idle
or wasted. It might even be better, he thought: forty-five minutes of solitude, each way. Organize his thoughts on the way
in; unwind from the daily turmoil on the way out.
And it was safe. Plus, it was in the country; Elena would love it.
Mistaking Alex’s prolonged silence for indecision, Yeltsin prattled on. Like the politician he was, he couldn’t stop selling.
“Let me tell you, my boy, hell, I’d dearly love to live in it myself. Sometimes, at night, Naina and I wander around that
house and dream of moving in. The chandeliers alone cost more than I make in a year. Of course, word would inevitably leak
out to all these poor folk scraping by on a hundred rubles a month. There’d be another revolution. You know what, though?
I don’t think I’d enjoy this one as much as the last.”
“My moving van will be there first thing in the morning,” Alex blurted. He was too stunned to say “thanks.”
Matching his speed, Yeltsin snapped, “Good, glad that’s settled.”
“It’s definitely settled. Don’t you dare make this offer to anyone else before nine o’clock tomorrow. By then, Elena and I
will be seated on the front porch with shotguns to drive off the interlopers.”
“Oh, one other thing. From now on, I want you along when I travel overseas. Russia needs as much money and foreign investors
as we can get. I’m miserable at making that happen. You don’t seem to have any problems in that department.”
“Sure, whatever,” Alex mumbled, dreaming of who to invite over first. Would they need furniture? Where would they get groceries?
In his mind he was already moved in.
The instant they signed off, he rushed upstairs, awoke Elena, and broke the news about their incredible new home.
“Oh, isn’t that wonderful,” she replied, even managing to make the pretense of making her surprise look sincere.
At one o’clock, Bernie Lutcher crunched hard on his third NoDoz tablet and quickly washed it down with the bottled water he
had carried onto the plane.
After twenty-five years as a successful cop in the NYPD intelligence bureau, retiring as a highly regarded lieutenant, he
was now five years into his second life, five years that were nearly everything he hoped they would be.