Once Upon a Time in Russia Read Online Free PDF Page A

face.
    â€œEventually, yes,” Berezovsky conceded. “There will be money. But that’s beside the point.”
    Korzhakov laughed. “So you are going to run a TV station?”
    It did sound crazy set out in the open, so succinctly; he had built his fortune in cars. But now it wasn’t simply a fortune he was after. The changes he intended to make in his life meant he needed to branch into businesses that would give him power as well as cash. And for days now, he had been pummeling Korzhakov with his most recent inspiration.
    â€œMe? I’m a car salesman. But I’m certain that together, we can find someone who knows how to work a television camera.”
    Korzhakov grunted, but Berezovsky could see the calculations beginning behind the man’s eyes. Berezovsky did not consider Korzhakov his intellectual equal, not by a long shot; but the man had a certain animal intelligence that Berezovsky had to admire. His currentstatus was evidence enough. If the rumors were true, Korzhakov was more than just an access point into the Yeltsin government. The president’s health had been fading for quite some time, and the vacuum of power was at least partially being filled by the slab of a man pulling on his pants in front of Berezovsky.
    The simplest description of Alexander Korzhakov was that he was Boris Yeltsin’s bodyguard. Since 1987, when he’d left his post in the KGB—forcibly retired, if some reports were to be believed, for his “liberal” leanings—he had been protecting Yeltsin, running a well-armed security team that now numbered in the hundreds. He had been by Yeltsin’s side for no fewer than two coup attempts—and he knew exactly how close Yeltsin’s government had come to falling. In 1991, when hard-line Communists with tanks had attempted to retake Moscow, it was Yeltsin who had climbed atop one of the tanks, like a white-haired beacon of freedom, rallying the people behind him; but it was Korzhakov who had helped the already ailing president onto the iron vehicle, climbing right up beside him for all the photographers to see. And in 1993, when Yeltsin had ordered the storming of the Russian White House to protect the fledgling government from the right-wing politicians who had been trying to forcibly turn back the clock to Communism, Korzhakov had again been by the president’s side. This time it was Yeltsin who had controlled the tanks: parking them in the center of the city, firing at the government building until it was reduced to rubble.
    Certainly, over the past ten years, Korzhakov had earned Yeltsin’s trust—and, more important, his ear.
    â€œAlexander Vasilyevich,” Berezovksy said, lowering his voice so the larger man had to lean in to hear him. “Moving forward, it isn’t tanks that will keep our democracy alive.”
    â€œAgain, we are back to money.”
    Berezovsky shrugged.
    â€œMoney, but more important than money—media.”
    Korzhakov ran the towel over what was left of his hair.
    â€œAh, yes. You and your hippie newspaperman are going to save Mother Russia.”
    Berezovsky smiled, though he knew there was at least a tinge of venom behind the bodyguard’s words. Your hippie newspaperman. The description might have been used in a derogatory manner, but that didn’t make it any less accurate.
    Berezovsky’s entrance into Yeltsin’s inner circle and, indeed, the Presidential Club—had been the result of much strategy and choreography, the core of which had revolved around Korzhakov’s “hippie newspaperman,” a journalist named Valentin Yumashev. The young man—shy, handsome, and usually poorly attired—had been working at a liberal, youth-skewed political magazine—which Berezovsky’s LogoVAZ had funded as a location to place car ads. Berezovksy had always thought that the man’s talents were being wasted writing articles about democracy