healthy. His thin face made him appear underfed, and his sunken cheeks were sallow even in the dim of the room.
Sid reached out a hand to Court. Court ignored it. He knew everything since Gdansk—the men, the plane, the limos, the guns, the attitude—was all orchestrated to demonstrate Sid’s authority and control over Gentry. Small men with big power sometimes exert this power disproportionately to compensate for what they consider to be their shortcomings. Nothing Gentry had not seen before, but he knew that he had to fight fire with fire, to exert his own dominance on the situation.
“We had an agreement. We were not to meet face-to-face. You violated this agreement. I am not like the others that you control. You can’t impress me with a third-rate crew of gold chains and poorly lubricated firearms. I only came along willingly to tell you this, and to tell you that I quit.”
The young minders around Court could not understand his English, but from the foreigner’s angry and aggressive tone they moved closer to him and looked to their master for guidance. He stayed them with a raised hand, then wiggled his fingertips at them, as if brushing them back into the corners of the room. They complied. Court could hear their retreating footsteps behind him.
Sidorenko did not take his eyes off of Court. Instead he slowly backed up behind the desk and sat down. He sipped purple tea from a gold-leaf glass. Court thought the man to be intimidated, but the next words out of the Russian mob boss’s mouth came forth calmly and with no discernible tremor.
“Have you ever seen a man boiled alive in a tub of acid?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?”
“A colleague of mine.” Sid held out a hand as if to allay his guest’s fears. “I did not do it. It was shortly after the auctioning off of state-owned enterprise; ninety-three, I think it was. I was with a team of accountants and lawyers working for a mobster in Moscow. He was no oligarch, no great genius either. But he loved money above all, and he strong-armed his way into several department store chains and then scared off or killed off the co- owners. Anyway, he decided one of his employees had been siphoning funds from his legitimate holdings, and he brought us all to a meeting at his dacha in Odessa. There, waiting for us, were some very hard men: Spetsnaz paramilitaries moonlighting as henchmen for this cretin. We—there were nine of us—were all taken to a barn, stripped naked, and shackled to railroad ties. We were beaten and sprayed with cold water for two days. It was October. The oldest man, an attorney, died that first night. During the second night our employer entered the barn and told us that if one of us confessed, he would, by doing so, save the lives of the others. No one spoke. The beatings continued for another twelve hours.”
Court looked around the room while Sidorenko spoke.
“On day three another man was dead. I can’t remember his face, a regulatory affairs expert, if I’m not mistaken. Our employer returned again and made the same offer as before. Again, no one confessed. I was certain he would kill everyone, but fortunately for the rest of us, the oligarch had a deep-seated mistrust of Jews. He noticed, lying there in the muck and blood, that one of us was circumcised. Natan Bulichova. He took him for a Jew, decided he was the deceitful one, and had a wooden water trough brought in from outside. It was filled with a solvent used for stripping lead-based paint, powerful stuff, and Natan was thrown on the ground next to the trough. For nearly an hour our Spetsnaz tormentors used shovels to splash the acid on poor Natan as he writhed on the straw. He turned red, and then the skin began to bubble and pop off him, leaving him covered in the most brutal sores. The rest of us were forced to watch. Finally, because the men with the shovels grew tired of the work, they grabbed hooks used to lift bales of hay, and they pierced them into Natan’s arms and legs. They threw him right into the acid bath. The rest of us, Natan’s friends and colleagues, willed him to hurry up and die, for both his benefit and ours. He screamed a scream I will never forget, until finally his melted face went under the liquid and did not emerge. It was a horrifying experience.”
Court recognized that Sid enjoyed telling the story. He did not know what to say, so he said, “Sounds like stealing from this man was not a good idea.”
Sid shrugged, reached for his tea as he replied matter-of-factly, “Oh, Natan was perfectly innocent. I am the one who embezzled the money. Used it ultimately to go into business for myself. Our employer let the rest of us leave. He himself was killed in ninety-four, shot in the back while getting fitted for a suit in Moscow.”
Court sighed. “Is there a point to this story? Because if there is, I don’t get it. Or am I just supposed to be frightened by it? Because I am not.”
SEVEN
“The point is, I want you to understand who I am. I can be your friend. I
“I realized there was no one who had both the brains and the stomach. Someone with the brains for business and the stomach for violence could survive and thrive in the new Russia like no one else. I had the brains . . . this I knew. But the stomach? That took a while to develop.”
“So, do you throw your employees in acid?”
“No, my employees are treated well by me. They are National Socialists, if you had not yet guessed. They beat immigrants for fun. They think you are from the Caucasus from your complexion and hair . . . so they are no fans of yours. No, I do not threaten them; I let these young men live as they wish, give them free run of my home, and I pay them extremely well.”
“In gold chains?”
Sid laughed, genuinely amused. “Ha. No, not in gold chains. In euros. Used to be in dollars but, well, time marches on. You can come here, angry as you are, and you can tell me you do not want to work with me any longer. But, Mr. Gray, I promise you, I am the best that there is for what you need.”
On the wall to Gentry’s left and Sid’s right was a huge painting in a massive gilded frame. In the smoky light of the room, the square face and penetrating eyes of Joseph Stalin stared back at Court.
“Cute picture,” Court said as he sat down in an uncomfortable wooden high-backed chair in front of Sid’s desk.
Sidorenko regarded the portrait as if he had only just noticed it. “Yes. I respect the authority that it conveys.”
“You don’t strike me as one of the old guard.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“A commie. I thought all of you billionaire mobsters were capitalist pigs like the rest of the civilized world.”
Sidorenko laughed with his mouth open and a high gurgle in the back of his throat. “Oh yes, I am a pig, but not an ideological one.” He stared at the portrait as he said, “He was a terrible man, yes, but Uncle Joe said perhaps the most brilliant words ever spoken. He said, ‘Death solves all problems’—”
Court finished the quote. “‘No man, no problem.’”
Sidorenko smiled appreciatively. “Of course you would know this. It is your own personal mission statement, is it not?”
“It is not.”
Sid shrugged. “An operational credo, then?” He did not wait for Court to answer. “Stalin, the Romanovs, the Great Patriotic War, the current skinhead Russian nationalist phenomenon. I have, you see, an affinity for terrible, terrible things. I am a fan of the power of cruelty. A man who has the ability to inflict death and misery on his fellow man is more powerful than the rich, the famous, the good.”
“
