'How did you get in?'
'By invitation,' Arkady said.
'Invited by whom?'
'I don't know. That's the question.'
Something was happening onstage. Anya stood on tiptoe.
'I can't see a thing. Come on.' She started up the stairs.
The mezzanine was done up as the diamond mine of the dwarfs in Disney's Snow White, which had been huge in Russia, except that here the gems were bottle glass and there was only one dwarf and he was drunk, still wearing a rubber mask and passed out on the floor. Dopey.
Anya motioned Arkady to sit and they joined a man on a cell phone at a front table. A steely bodyguard sat behind and scanned the crowd. Since when did Russians mousse their hair? Arkady felt increasingly inept and unkempt.
'Vaksberg,' the man at the table identified himself, and immediately turned his attention back to an argument on the phone. He seemed patient and soft-spoken. He had an expensive tan and a black goatee and was known to the public more fully as Alexander 'Sasha' Vaksberg, the Prince of Darkness.
He snapped his phone shut.
'A year ago we had over a hundred billionaires in Moscow. Today there are less than thirty. So it's the best of times, the worst of times and sometimes it's just the shits. It turns out we don't know how to run capitalism. That's to be expected. As it happens, nobody knows how to run capitalism. That was a bad surprise. Cigarette?'
Vaksberg pushed across the table a slim pack that said Dunhill Personal Blend for Alexander Vaksberg.
'Vanity cigarettes. I never saw that before.' Arkady lit one. 'Excellent.'
Anya said, 'Don't be rude. Sasha arranged this event for homeless children out of his own pocket. Have something to eat. I hear the charlotte russe is delicious.'
'After you.'
'She wishes,' Sasha Vaksberg said. 'Our Anyushka is allergic to dairy. Milk is the killer. Show him.'
Anya allowed Arkady a glimpse of an emergency wristband on her left arm. What struck Arkady was that Sasha Vaksberg, one of the country's wealthiest men and the evening's host, was being virtually ignored by his peers. Instead he was with a journalist and a policeman, which was a bit of a comedown.
She said, 'The scraps will go, of course, to homeless millionaires.'
Vaksberg said, 'Perhaps so. Someone has to point out to the blockheads in the Kremlin that we have an angry mob; only this mob is made up of the rich. Peasants are hard to rouse, but the rich have expectations.'
'Are you talking about violence in the streets?'
'No, no. Violence in the boardroom.'
'You two should get along. Investigator Renko always expects the worst,' Anya said. 'He sleeps with a gun.'
'Do you really?' asked Vaksberg.
'No, I'd probably shoot myself.'
'But you carry one when you're on duty?'
'On special occasions. There's almost always another way out.'
'So you're a negotiator, not a shooter. That's kind of Russian roulette, isn't it? Have you ever guessed wrong?'
'Once or twice.'
'You and Anya are a pair. She writes for a fashion journal of mine. Last week the editor asked for a diet piece and she did an article called 'How to Cook Supermodels.''
'How did the models like it?'
'They loved it. It was about them.'
The tennis player returned to the stage and hit a gong. The fair was over. The party was about to begin.
First the floor had to be cleared, which could have been awkward without a curtain to hide the pushing and pulling of display cases. Few guests noticed, however, because a spotlight directed their attention to a dancer in a loose harlequin costume and pointed cap sitting high on a ceiling catwalk, arms and legs dangling, like a puppet placed on a shelf. He moved jerkily, pantomimed a mad passion and, after sobbing from a broken heart, jumped to his fate. Instead of plunging, however, he soared on a single, nearly invisible wire. He seemed to be a creature of the air. It was part illusion. His every move was choreographed with an eye to angles, acceleration and centrifugal force. Shadowy figures on the floor were counterweights, operating in concert to keep the ropes taut so that the flier could freely swing like a pendulum or turn a somersault or fly straight up into a grand jete.
Mainly it was the flier's daring as he was drawn like a moth from light to light, ending in a series of prodigious leaps a la Nijinsky. The spotlight died on him, and when the houselights went up, the fair had been replaced by a dance floor and tier after tier of tables and booths in rococo white and gold.
A black DJ in a bulging Africa knit cap pulled on headphones, set records on two turntables and made mysterious adjustments on his control panel while he nodded to a beat only he heard. He grinned, just joking, and fed the speakers. Everyone had been so black tie and bloody noble for charity's sake but now the ties were loosened and champagne poured, and in a minute the floor was so crowded that all the dancers could do was writhe in place.
Anya explained that the highest tiers were the most expensive. They were the refuge of older men who, after a shuffle or two, left the floor with honor intact, assured that while the world might be shit, at least the Club Nijinsky was the top of the heap.
Vaksberg said, 'This is neutral ground. We have dogs to sniff out bombs and fifty security men to enforce a 'No Guns, No Cameras' policy. We don't want our guests from the Middle East to worry about photos of them with a drink in one hand and a dancer in the other.'
'What about Dopey?' Anya asked.
Still in costume, the dwarf had curled up underneath a table and was snoring.
Vaksberg said, 'He's breathing and he looks comfortable. Let him be.'
Arkady sat back as waiters in white gloves laid a tablecloth and served a chilled bowl of Beluga caviar, warm toast and spoons of mother-of-pearl.
'Young people call Ecstasy a huggy drug because it seems to reduce aggression. They're happy to dance their little heads off in two square centimeters all night long. I can't say enough for it. What do you do for pleasure, Renko?'
'In the winter I ski at Chamonix. In the summertime I sail in Monte Carlo.'
'Seriously.'
'I read.'
'Well, the people at the fair entertain themselves by giving money to charity. In this case to homeless children who are cheated of their childhood and drawn into prostitution, boys and girls. You disapprove?'
'A handout from a billionaire to a starving child? What can be wrong with that?'
Anya said, 'Please, the Nijinsky is not a charity. The Nijinsky is a social club for super-rich, middle-aged boys. They only come to table-hop. Their women are supposed to be beautiful, laugh at the men's crude remarks, drink to every toast, endure the clumsy attempts at seduction by their husband's best friends and at the end of the evening be sober enough to undress the old fart and put him to bed.'
'And they call me a cynic?' Vaksberg said. 'We will continue this conversation but an intermission is coming and I have to go onstage and remind our friends to be generous.' He poured champagne for Anya and Arkady. 'Five minutes.'
Arkady did not understand why Alexander Vaksberg spent even a minute with such an ill-mannered guest. He watched Vaksberg's progress on the dance floor. A billionaire. How much was that? A thousand million dollars. No wonder mere millionaires stepped aside as if an elephant were coming through.
Anya said, 'So, you're here to find the person who invited you?'
'Not me. Not exactly.'
'This is intriguing.'
'We'll see.'
He laid on the table a postcard-size photograph of Olga looking straight up from a filthy mattress.
Anya recoiled. 'Who is this?'
