'I don't think it's for you.'
'Why not?'
'Well, there are two kinds of fliers. A two-wire flier is hauled around like a suitcase, safe and slow. The one-wire flier goes where he wants as fast as he wants. This is a one-wire rig.' He looked Arkady up and down, 'You are definitely a two-wire man.'
'You mean a man on the ground at the other end of the wire?'
'A man. Or a sandbag.'
'What is your name?' Arkady asked.
'Petrouchka.'
'You're still in character.'
'Always. The same as you. You are a policeman, aren't you?'
'How did you guess?'
'You've got that 'doormat of the world' look.'
'You think so?'
'Absolutely.'
'Did you know Vera Antonova?'
'I don't know. Who was she?'
'A dancer here at the club.'
'No, I'm new here myself.'
'You're not from Moscow?'
Petrouchka lit a cigarette. The match was wood, and rather than blow out the flame, he let it drop into the canopy of floodlights.
'Some clown,' said Arkady. 'Do you want this place to burn?'
'For every question, a match. That's the game.'
'Are you crazy?'
'See, that's two.' The clown struck another match and let it drift down toward coiffures, bare shoulders, decolletages. Arkady knew it was unlikely any live flame would get that far, but all it took for a disaster was one person screaming 'Fire!'
'Will you stop?'
'And another.' Petrouchka struck a third match and let the flame get good and set before letting it drop. 'More?'
Arkady said, 'Vera Antonova is dead. That's not a question.'
The clown didn't answer. At least he didn't strike a match, Arkady thought.
'She was a beautiful girl. That's not a question either. I have her picture.'
The clown got to his feet and said, 'I'll show you how this works.'
He took a meter's length of nylon rope, climbed the rail and reached up to two pulleys above his head. His sense of balance was phenomenal. Standing on a rail in the semidark, he ran the rope through the pulleys, made a loop in one end and handed the other to Arkady. 'Hang on,' he told Arkady.
'Why?'
'You're my counterweight.' The clown slipped a foot into the loop and stepped off the catwalk. He plunged until the rope snapped taut in Arkady's hands. The rope was slippery and all Arkady could do was play it out until Petrouchka was gracefully delivered onto the dance floor. As his descent was noted by guests they made way and applauded. He gave Arkady a farewell wave.
Arkady felt like a fool and, worse, that he had missed something important. He didn't know where but he was convinced he had met Petrouchka before, although not in greasepaint or a clown's costume. A man elbows you in the Metro and you catch only a glimpse of his face, but the memory stays with you like a bruise.
15
At 5 a.m., while diehards stayed for the last dance, the last toast, the last laugh of the night, Arkady emerged from the Club Nijinsky to find the city in the path of a thunderstorm. Gusts of wind stirred litter on the street and fat drops of rain pinged off car roofs and windshields
Arkady had parked blocks away rather than submit the Lada to the gibes of parking attendants. Victor had put pots and pans inside the car in case of rain.
A man and woman hustling to beat the storm brushed by. Another couple ran past, the woman in bare feet to spare the high-heeled shoes she held in her hand. One pair of footsteps synchronized with his and he found Dima the bodyguard at his side. The Glock hung openly on Dima's shoulder.
While Dima gave Arkady a pat-down, a Mercedes S550 limousine caught up. A side window slid down and Sasha Vaksberg begged a few more minutes of Arkady's time.
Arkady was flattered but now he wished he'd brought a gun.
Vaksberg and Anya shared the rear seat with a red-and-white Spartak athletic bag. Arkady and Dima took jump seats facing rear in a conference arrangement. As the car pulled away Arkady felt its extra weight and stiffness of armor, bulletproof glass and run-flat tires. The driver must have pushed a button because the doors had silently locked.
'Could we have some heat back here, Slava? Our friend is a little damp from the rain.' Vaksberg turned to Arkady. 'So, what did you think of our Club Nijinsky?'
'Unforgettable.'
'And the women?' he asked. 'Did you find them tall and beautiful enough?'
'Amazons,' Arkady said.
Anya said, 'It's not by chance. Girls flock to Moscow with romantic ambitions of being models or dancers and Moscow turns them into escorts and whores. We wax them and pluck them and inflate their breasts like balloons. In short, we turn them into freaks of beauty.'
'Where are we going?' Arkady asked.
'An excellent question,' Vaksberg said. 'We could go to my casino on the Arbat. No, that's been closed. Or the casino at Three Stations. No, that's been closed too. In fact, all my casinos have been closed. I was taking in a million dollars a day. Now, thanks to our judo master in the Kremlin, I'm just paying rent.'
Arkady appreciated how Vaksberg avoided saying Putin's name. 'Are you down to your last five hundred million?'
'You don't have much sympathy.'
'Not a great deal. So we're just going to drive?'
'And have a conversation. Am I correct, Anya?'
'I hope so.'
Rain drummed on the roof. Sitting backward, looking through heavy rain and tinted glass, Arkady lost track of where he was.
Vaksberg said, 'I may be many things but I am not a hypocrite. When the dear old Soviet Union broke up, I made a great deal of money. It was like creating a new jigsaw puzzle out of old pieces. Granted, we took advantage where we could. What great fortune did not at the start? The Medicis', the Rothschilds', the Rockefellers'? You don't think they all had bloody hands at the beginning?'
'So you're aspiring to the elite.'
'The very best. But fortune is a bubble unless the state accepts the rights of private property. In an emerging nation-and Russia, believe me, is an emerging nation-that bubble can be easily popped. Who would want to do business in a land where rich men are poisoned or put in cages and shipped to Siberia? We thought we were the darlings of the Kremlin. Now we're all on a little list.'
'Who is on the list?' Arkady was curious.
'Us, the so-called oligarchs. We were the idiots who put this lizard in power. Our lizard turned out to be Tyrannosaurus rex. I used to have more than twenty venues in Moscow. Now every single one is dark except the Club Nijinsky. I have chefs, floor managers, croupiers, better than a thousand people I pay every week simply to
