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.A plum while he threaded his belt.A last sip of milk as he knotted his tie.Four days after seizing some eight hundred fifty-three pages of documents from Kirov’s headquarters, his investigators had yet to find the evidence they needed to link Kirov to the millions of dollars stolen from Novastar Airlines.Oh, they’d dug up false receipts, double billings to clients, all manner of petty schemes to launder money and avoid paying income taxes.The practices were illegal.The state would file suit.But they’d come across no smoking gun that Baranov could set before a magistrate.The few documents he had found from the Banque Privé de Genève et Lausanne had led nowhere.The Swiss bank would not even confirm that Kirov was the holder of the numbered account.Finished dressing, he considered taking some of the precautions that had become second nature to any government official working to put a crimp in an oligarch’s style.He thought about calling his deputy, Ivanov, and asking him to come along.No, he decided; Ivanov deserved to eat breakfast with his family.Better to request a police escort.Baranov dismissed that idea, too.The police would never show up on time, even if they had a car parked in Pushkin Square.Besides, he wasn’t so old that he couldn’t meet an informant on his own.He was hardly meeting a gang of thugs in a dark alley at midnight.This was Pushkin Square.Early on a Monday morning there would be throngs of passersby.Dressed in yesterday’s trousers, his scuffed briefcase strangely light in his hand, he headed down the stairs and walked the fifty meters to the subway.The morning air was crisp and clean, not yet fouled by the legions of automobiles that had taken Moscow hostage these last years.Street signs advertised the latest American films.One showed four grotesquely obese Negroes seated on a couch, smiling like idiots.Baranov had no doubt but that the picture was an unquestionable masterwork, something Eisenstein himself might have directed.Giant billboards demanded he drink Coke and enjoy it.Part of him bristled at this relentless onslaught of Western imperialism, this secret invasion of the Rodina that was occurring can by can, frame by frame, ad by ad.Relax, Yuri, he told himself in a voice that belonged to the new millennium.Let the people enjoy themselves.Life is hard enough as it is.Besides, Coke beats the hell out of Baikal any day.He arrived at Mayakovskaya station at six forty-five.Descending the escalator to the Circle line, he ran his impromptu caller’s words over and over in his mind.You want Kirov, I can help, the man had said.Baranov tried to put a face to the voice.Was it an older man or a younger one? A Muscovite or someone from Petersburg? He decided the voice was familiar.Was it someone in his own office? Or someone they’d interrogated from Kirov’s? A Mercury insider, perhaps? Vexed at his inability to come up with an answer, he caught himself breathing harder and gnashing his teeth.He had forgotten just how much he hated Konstantin Kirov.Jean-Jacques Pillonel was having a terrible dream.He saw himself from afar, a tired, bent man dressed in prisoner’s garb, gray dungarees, a matching work shirt, his feet carrying the heavy boots one saw on the rougher sort of motorcyclist.The man, who was at once him and not him, was marching in a circle around a dusty yard.There were no walls, but a voice told him he was in prison and that he was not free to go anywhere else.He continued his rounds, but with each circuit his steps grew heavier, his body denser, his mass harder to move.He began to sweat.He was not frightened by his plight as a prisoner so much as by the impending impossibility of mere locomotion.He realized that his burden was not one of extraneous weight but of conscience, and that he would never be rid of this load.A current of anxiety seized him, threatening to paralyze his every muscle.The scene shifted and he was looking in the mirror at this man who was and was not himself.He was gaunt, poorly shaven.His eyes were lost, forlorn.This isn’t right, he was telling the familiar visage in the mirror.The reward for honesty must be greater, the relief more fulfilling, certainly longer lasting.The anxiety grew stronger, arcing up his spine, bowing his shoulders.Sensing he had no more time, he raised a fist and drove it into the mirror.The looking glass shattered.Everywhere shards of green and silver glass fell to the floor [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]