back caused Manton to clench his fist until his knuckle’s turned white.
The sound of the gavel coming down and the ripple of applause from the room struck him more sweetly than his first girlfriend’s kiss. With a flourish, he held up his 117- registration card. He didn’t hear the auctioneer announce the next lot. The lot was his! He knew they had to be authentic, and once verified, would represent a substantial income. Guaranteed to rid him of his debts forever.
~ * ~
The sun began dropping across the sky like a discarded blood orange as Novikov eased the black BMW over the eight lanes of Moscow’s Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge, navigating northwards towards St. Petersburg. He looked at his watch. It was six fifteen and darkness had draped itself over the city. It was a journey he never enjoyed. A long drive of ten hours in the bad mid-March weather had made him decide to stop overnight. He was in no hurry. Josef Berezin had again requested his presence, but this time at his Moscow dacha situated in the exclusive Serebryaniy Bor area. He was due there at three o’clock the following afternoon.
He owed Berezin a certain gratitude. Berezin had bequeathed him back his powers. These were powers he enjoyed. They could alter, like a game of roulette, the lives of those who were unfortunate to be at his table. Cruising with ease, the new car gave him a sense of importance, as policemen waved him through traffic queues and passers-by looked twice at the tinted windows, some attempting to see inside.
As he sped onward, he thought about Berezin, the sort of man he was, and how he became what he’d become. He exemplified the New Russia. He was a major criminal hiding behind a facade of respectable conservatism. Novikov’s researches had revealed little, but Berezin’s desire for beauty and aspiration in art were indisputable. That didn’t fit alongside the paradox of his varied and often perverse sexual appetites. Novikov regarded those he considered attractive as similar to a cirrhotic liver. He realised that one could not exist without its opposite. That didn’t mean he had to like the man… he didn’t. Each balanced the other, a manifestation of the complex nature of the universe. He could never enjoy or understand Berezin’s attraction to women. He himself much preferred his own sex. Yet, he thought, his theory of opposites worked as both he and his paymaster operated well together, employing minimum communication, with no questions asked and total amorality.
Once, for a Russian to make anything of himself, he had to get a posting overseas. Those times had changed. Novikov realised that Berezin, like a Russian football club owner, had become enviably rich in the transformation. He slotted into a dark dimension where few questions got asked and he understood the shifting nature of Russian society. Berezin, he surmised, had his own very private and secret agenda. That he had thought about, and assumed it had been bred from some deep and long-festering grudge about something. Whatever that was, it wasn’t his concern.
The prospect of another assignment gave him a feeling of relaxed pleasure. In his own private way, he was proud to play a small part in the Russian social revolution. Since his discharge from the SVR, the Foreign Intelligence Service, Berezin had revitalised his trade and rescued himself from being left out to graze like some old, battered warhorse.
The car continued on its rapid progress northward, its lights cutting through the woody panorama along the M10, linking Moscow to Tver. The twinkling city lights, traffic signals and road signs faded behind him. Woods frequently surrendered to vast frozen fields that shivered and froze in a late winter’s grip, patiently waiting for spring’s embrace to melt away winter’s cruel clutch. The speedometer flicked between 100 and 130 kmph. The silver bark on trees flashed like strobes cutting through the darkness. He activated the wipers as large globules of
The sound of the gavel coming down and the ripple of applause from the room struck him more sweetly than his first girlfriend’s kiss. With a flourish, he held up his 117- registration card. He didn’t hear the auctioneer announce the next lot. The lot was his! He knew they had to be authentic, and once verified, would represent a substantial income. Guaranteed to rid him of his debts forever.
~ * ~
The sun began dropping across the sky like a discarded blood orange as Novikov eased the black BMW over the eight lanes of Moscow’s Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge, navigating northwards towards St. Petersburg. He looked at his watch. It was six fifteen and darkness had draped itself over the city. It was a journey he never enjoyed. A long drive of ten hours in the bad mid-March weather had made him decide to stop overnight. He was in no hurry. Josef Berezin had again requested his presence, but this time at his Moscow dacha situated in the exclusive Serebryaniy Bor area. He was due there at three o’clock the following afternoon.
He owed Berezin a certain gratitude. Berezin had bequeathed him back his powers. These were powers he enjoyed. They could alter, like a game of roulette, the lives of those who were unfortunate to be at his table. Cruising with ease, the new car gave him a sense of importance, as policemen waved him through traffic queues and passers-by looked twice at the tinted windows, some attempting to see inside.
As he sped onward, he thought about Berezin, the sort of man he was, and how he became what he’d become. He exemplified the New Russia. He was a major criminal hiding behind a facade of respectable conservatism. Novikov’s researches had revealed little, but Berezin’s desire for beauty and aspiration in art were indisputable. That didn’t fit alongside the paradox of his varied and often perverse sexual appetites. Novikov regarded those he considered attractive as similar to a cirrhotic liver. He realised that one could not exist without its opposite. That didn’t mean he had to like the man… he didn’t. Each balanced the other, a manifestation of the complex nature of the universe. He could never enjoy or understand Berezin’s attraction to women. He himself much preferred his own sex. Yet, he thought, his theory of opposites worked as both he and his paymaster operated well together, employing minimum communication, with no questions asked and total amorality.
Once, for a Russian to make anything of himself, he had to get a posting overseas. Those times had changed. Novikov realised that Berezin, like a Russian football club owner, had become enviably rich in the transformation. He slotted into a dark dimension where few questions got asked and he understood the shifting nature of Russian society. Berezin, he surmised, had his own very private and secret agenda. That he had thought about, and assumed it had been bred from some deep and long-festering grudge about something. Whatever that was, it wasn’t his concern.
The prospect of another assignment gave him a feeling of relaxed pleasure. In his own private way, he was proud to play a small part in the Russian social revolution. Since his discharge from the SVR, the Foreign Intelligence Service, Berezin had revitalised his trade and rescued himself from being left out to graze like some old, battered warhorse.
The car continued on its rapid progress northward, its lights cutting through the woody panorama along the M10, linking Moscow to Tver. The twinkling city lights, traffic signals and road signs faded behind him. Woods frequently surrendered to vast frozen fields that shivered and froze in a late winter’s grip, patiently waiting for spring’s embrace to melt away winter’s cruel clutch. The speedometer flicked between 100 and 130 kmph. The silver bark on trees flashed like strobes cutting through the darkness. He activated the wipers as large globules of
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