back and forth from catering trucks to the tents bearing champagne, salmon, grilled langoustines, for what was to all effects a club of millionaires with grease on their chins.
Senators, ministers and chief executives who would have avoided Sasha a week before were willing to accept Sasha's largesse now that he was back in the good graces of the Kremlin. He had his passport and a return ticket to the financial stratosphere. The table chatter was intense, only interrupted every twenty minutes or so by a horse race. Pacers and trotters.
Although the day was clear, the track was slop. Mud exploded under the horses, drivers cracked their whips and drove blindly, goggles caked with mud, urging their horses, 'Come on, you fucking cow,' while over the PA system, the recorded sound of cheering crowds poured over the nearly empty stands.
Arkady nursed his hangover in the umbra of red velvet curtains. Petals of plaster fell on his shoulders from a ceiling mural that incorporated horses, hammers and sickles. Folding chairs huddled under a plastic sheet. A mini- refrigerator was unplugged and empty.
His eye fell on a thrown-away bet. It took a moment for his brain to kick in. He took an envelope from his jacket, and tapped out the half ticket he found in the trunk of the Mercedes. The two tickets were printed on the same cheap paper, but the ticket from the floor had a complete name: Central Moscow Hippodrome, and was stamped from the Sunday before.
He called Victor.
'The ticket is from the Hippodrome. Not the circus, not a film. I don't know whether Dopey played the horses, but the crowds out here have been getting sparse and a dwarf would stand out.'
'You're there now?' Victor asked.
'In the royal box.'
'You've moved up in the world.'
Sasha Vaksberg spotted Arkady. He looked puzzled but put on a big smile and waved.
Looking down at the tents, Arkady was impressed by how quickly Sasha had mustered his troops of caterers, waiters and bodyguards. He should feel good, Arkady thought, like Napoleon returning from Elba.
The luncheon seemed to take forever. Finally, there was a last bear hug and a last guest to push out the door. The caterers began clearing tables and breaking down the tents and buffets. After a flurry of mobile phone calls, Sasha held up a bottle of champagne and waved Arkady to come down to the rail. Vaksberg was exuberant.
'You should have joined the party and let them see us together. I get blessed by the pope, you get blessed by the cardinal. That's the way it works.' Sasha caught his breath. 'The place is a miracle. You know the rationale for its existence? Horses for the cavalry. In a nuclear war, we'll all be issued sabers and a horse.'
'I take it you're launching a new venture?'
'Looking for investors, yes. This is the way it's done. Money attracts money. And they all love being with a hero.'
'That's you?'
'That's me now. Have some champagne, for Lord's sake.'
'Is it good?'
'These people expect the best. They have built their dacha, own a town house in London, an island in the Caribbean and a private jet to take them there and they still can't spend it fast enough. They ski, sail, buy a football or basketball team and still can't spend it fast enough. The answer is obvious. Own a racehorse. Better yet, own a stable of racehorses.'
'Horse racing is for the working class.'
'That's harness racing. We have to drive home the idea that there's nothing more prestigious than losing money on your own string of Thoroughbred horses.'
A blast of patriotic music on the PA system announced the last race of the day. The crowd was male, largely pensioners who gathered every Sunday during the racing season to study the form. The most serious were known as the Faculty. They could not lose a fortune, because the largest bet allowed was ten rubles. Play money. Arkady wondered why they didn't just watch ants at an anthill.
'Is this your next project?'
'It might be,' Vaksberg said. 'I'm back in the game, that's the main thing. By the way, where is Anya? It's been days since she called. She said she'd be staying with a friend. She doesn't answer her cell phone and she didn't leave a number.'
'I suppose when she wants to get hold of you, she will.'
Sasha said, 'My relationship with Anya is complicated. Has she told you that she has a contract to do a book on me? It's her great chance and she is an ambitious girl. And she may have some confidential internal company papers and I may have to sue her to keep her from publishing, but that's down the line. The main thing is I own her. Did she tell you that?'
They were interrupted by a call on Arkady's phone. It was Victor.
'Your Dopey is, or was, Pavel Petrovich Maksimov, thirty-two, resident of Moscow, never missed a day at the track unless he was in jail. Everyone at the Hippodrome will know him.'
'Present employment?'
'Legitimate? He ran the 'Whack-a-Mole' concession in Gorky Park. Let's assume that he was dealing drugs. Before that, he was a croupier at the Peter the Great Casino at Three Stations. He must have had a hell of a long rake.'
Arkady hung up. There was silence in the royal box until Sasha said, 'Ask around all you want. Criminals in Moscow casinos? What a shocker.'
The last race got off to a rolling start behind a gate truck that folded its ungainly wings on the run. Six trotters followed, running stiffly on in their traces, unnatural and beautiful. On the PA system the world cheered.
'I gave you too much credit, Renko. I took you for a man of the world. What you call skimming was a normal transfer of funds within different parts of a corporation. I can see why someone who is not from the business world might misinterpret some transactions. It will all be repaid with interest, no harm done.'
'You skimmed ninety percent off a fund for children.'
'Totally legal. A luxury fair is an expensive, complicated operation. I did create a reserve fund for unexpected costs. It's normal business practice. In other words, we can tie you up in the courts forever and sue you for libel to boot. Look, I'll be honest with you. It was going to be a simple robbery. Maksimov and I agreed there wouldn't be any shooting. I admit I underestimated the little bastard's greed, but we have to move on. It's your word against mine. Renko's word against mine. I never pulled a trigger.'
'That's not what you told the police,' Arkady reminded him. 'You can't change your story now. You're a hero.'
33
Since Emma was the youngest member of the family, she was given the job of finding the baby a new home. She could leave it in a park, a box, a bench, a public toilet, anywhere as long as she didn't involve the police.
'What about Itsy?' Emma pulled on her jacket inch by inch.
Klim was taking over. He said, 'She's dead. And Tito and Leo and Peter. You're lucky you're not dead too. Just dump the baby and do it fast before it wakes up.'
'She has one more bottle of formula.'
'So?'
'What if nobody finds her?'
'Then she's out of luck.'
The way people talked about luck, it sounded to Emma like a spoonful of water in the desert. There just wasn't enough to go around.
But as she made her way through the cars parked in front of Kazansky Station, she came upon a huge sedan with a rear door open to a leather seat as soft as a mother's lap. Emma slid the baby in and it looked so peaceful
