Vladimir? Whatever happened to I am not that close with my workers? “You brought Smorodinsky here from the Soviet Union? You collect Russians, too.”
A hundred yards off the stern, two dolphins jumped in unison, their question-mark silhouettes etched into the horizon. Yagamata’s look was impenetrable. He seemed to be deciding how much to tell me. “Vladimir began as a low-level operative for one of my business contacts in St. Petersburg, when it was still called Leningrad. He spoke English reasonably well and knew how to grease the wheels in the old bureaucracy to get things done. He was a resourceful man who helped me obtain certain, shall we say, hard-to-get items.”
“He was a thief, a smuggler?”
Yagamata very nearly smiled. If he found me amusing, maybe next time he’d send a limo for me, instead of two goons. “The Russians have a far kinder term. Fartsovshchiki, black marketeer. Religious icons, vestments, antique weaponry, a divan from Mikhailovsky Castle, silver bridle chains that may or may not have belonged to a czar, these were his specialties.”
“Still, he was a criminal. If Smorodinsky had a known propensity for violence, it could help Crespo’s defense.”
Yagamata gave me a quizzical look, as if the furthest thing from his mind was Francisco Crespo. “Criminal,” he said, rolling the word around his tongue, “is a relative term. In my country, and yours for that matter, a successful businessman who generously shares his wealth with underpaid public servants is considered a criminal. Yet, in certain Latin American countries, that is the accepted method-indeed the only method-of doing business. When there was still a Soviet Union, everyone looked for ways to circumvent a system no one but the party apparatchiki wanted. It was great sport to battle the government, to get the extra sausage or to steal state property from a factory. The Russians tell a wonderful political joke that is just as meaningful now as when the verkhushka, the Party elite, called the shots. What’s the difference between communism and capitalism?”
I played along and held up my hands.
“Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man, and communism is the opposite.” He laughed at his own joke. “Mr. Lassiter, do you know much about art?”
“No, I don’t even know what I like.”
Yagamata nodded with approval. Maybe he preferred working with a clean slate.
“Japanese art is very simple, very clear. By Western standards, the depiction is unreal, highly idealized, and there is little perspective. If a painter always has his cherry blossoms in bloom, always facing the viewer, always in full color with no shading, the art is mere decoration.”
“And you find Russian art more complex and interesting.”
“ European art. Once Peter the Great came to the throne in the early 1700s, Russia left its Byzantine past behind. Its artists were greatly influenced by those in France, Italy, and Holland. The Russians know fine art and appreciate it. Have you ever been to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg?”
He didn’t wait for me to say no before continuing. “The Winter Palace of the czar. Three million artifacts! Let your mind try to comprehend it. It is impossible.”
I thought about it. “How do they even keep track of it all?”
“Precisely, and if you know anything about the laziness and incompetence of the Russians under the old order, you would know that they do not. Less than ten percent of these works are on display. What is in storage is priceless. What is available for viewing will take your breath away. More than a hundred forty rooms of just Western masterpieces. Monet, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, da Vinci, Rubens, Goya, El Greco, Raphael…”
Yagamata kept going, a roster of first-team All-Pro painters. I didn’t relate to it. Oh sure, I could name the 1976 Dolphins roster, top to bottom, but somehow, it didn’t have the same cachet.
“You know the place pretty well,” I said.
He let out a little snort. “You could live in the Hermitage and not know it well. It is too vast. Too much of the great work is simply not to be found. Even with special privileges, even knowing Russians with blat — connections- they can’t find half of what I wish to have.”
“Have?”
He drained his sparkling champagne. “Have a look at. Unfortunately, you cannot buy them.” He scowled, apparently thinking of the injustice of it. “It wasn’t always so. After the Revolution, the Bolsheviks were so strapped for hard currency they sold off a number of priceless pieces. You’ll find more than twenty in your own National Gallery in Washington, thanks to Andrew Mellon.”
There was no doubt Matsuo Yagamata preferred it the old-fashioned way. Pay as you go; buy what you want.
“So you are left smuggling silver bridle chains…”
“I have business associates who take care of the necessities of exporting certain items of value,” he explained in language a clever shyster could admire.
“Like the Faberge egg with the choo-choo train.”
Yagamata looked as if he suddenly regretted kidnapping me for lunch. Off the stern, an osprey with lethal talons swooped low, eyeing our wake, on the lookout for an a la carte lunch. I thought about offering some swordfish belly.
“A gift,” he said.
The party at Yagamata’s house. The way he had stage-managed our privileged view of his precious egg. I could have sworn he said he bought it. But I couldn’t quite remember. And it would be awkward to ask who gave it to him. Still, if it had anything to do with Smorodinsky, I needed to know more.
“A generous friend,” I probed.
“The Russian people are indeed generous.”
He left it hanging there and I didn’t know how to grab it. After a moment, I said, “The liberalizing of the economy under Gorbachev must have helped your exporting business.”
“ Perestroika was irrelevant to what I do, Mr. Lassiter. Politics is irrelevant. What was it your Will Rogers said? ‘All politics is applesauce.’ There was always a profit motive in the Soviet Union, at least among those who knew how to manipulate the system. Before the liberalization, the masses would say of the Party leaders: ‘They preach water, but they drink wine.’ It was only a matter of time before the leaders were toppled. For me, there were methods of doing business before Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and there will always be methods. You cannot stop what the Russians call spekulatsiya, speculation and profiteering, under any system. There was always a free market in the Soviet Union for those who knew how to push the right buttons. The failed coup, the dismantling of the Union, the destruction of the Party, it’s all applesauce.”
The yacht was slowing, and the water had calmed. Hard shafts of sunlight danced off the bay. “You like them for it, don’t you? Sort of what you do, spekulat…”
Yagamata’s brow furrowed with just a hint of surprise, like maybe I wasn’t as dumb as he thought. I should shut up. It’s better if they think I could be used for a blocking sled.
“I have great affection for the Russians,” he said. “They have a finely tuned sense of the human dilemma. Far superior to the Japanese, I must say.”
“And Smorodinsky. What can you tell me that will help my client?”
“Nothing, Mr. Lassiter. Vladimir Smorodinsky was not a violent man. And in many ways that even he did not understand, he was true to his principles and a patriot. Perhaps too much so.”
“I don’t understand.”
We were in the quiet waters of the channel with the old Mediterranean homes of Star Island visible off the bow. The skyline of downtown Miami-built with loot from failed savings and loans-dominated the horizon. Yagamata took off his sunglasses and turned to me. The nosepiece had left little red dents alongside his nose. His eyes were black and bottomless.
“It is not necessary that you do,” Matsuo Yagamata said.
6
