Vodka Read Online Free PDF Page A

Kremlin flagpole and the Russian tricolor hoisted in its place, to scattered applause and a few whistles from the handful of tourists in Red Square. A light snow was falling.
    The twentieth century had ended, eight years before time.

4
Thursday, December 26, 1991
    “W hy do we have to wait around here? Why can’t things just work properly?”
“I don’t know what your problem is, Lewis, but I bet it’s hard to pronounce.” Alice Liddell put her hand over her husband’s and stroked at the fine hairs on his wrist. “Getting hoopie ain’t going to help. Cool your liver.
Enjoy.
”
    “Enjoy? This is the VIP lounge, right?” The languor of Lewis’s New Orleans cadence accentuated his incredulity; his wife spoke twice as quickly as he did. “Come on, Alice. Port Authority’s classier than this place.”
    He had a point, Alice conceded silently. Seat cushions were struggling free of their upholstery; unshaven men wrapped in ankle-length coats puffed cigars and eyed girls in skirts short enough to pass for belts. Sheremetyevo Airport clearly had a more elastic definition of VIP than she was used to, but wasn’t that part of the fun?
    Lewis looked around the room twice in mute defiance before turning back to Alice, by which time she’d started on the nearest copy of
Pravda
, testing the Russian she’d spent the last four months learning. Gorbachev’s resignation speech had coincided to the minute with
Pravda’s
deadline, but the paper made no mention of it; the Soviet Union’s most notorious mouthpiece hadn’t held the front page for its own funeral.
    The Liddells had been assigned a triumvirate of officials—a man from the finance ministry, another from the airport and a third from the American embassy—and now all three came back at once, dodging a splash of technicolor that Lewis recognized through the murk as a huddle of African state dignitaries in robes. The apparatchiks were almost running in their childlike eagerness to be first back to the new and exciting visitors, each brandishing sheaves of papers like wise men bearing gifts: passports, currency declaration forms, hotel reservations, tourist brochures—
as if
, thought Alice, there’ll be time for
that.
Each seemed caught in confusion about who they should hand the papers to, because Lewis was a decade older than his wife, more conservatively dressed and, most importantly, male, all of which put him in charge until proven otherwise, but even by Russian standards Alice was so striking in her bootcut jeans and leather jacket that eventually, beholden to the masculine reflex of lustful gawping, they went to her instead.
    When the embassy man escorted Alice and Lewis into the taxi and climbed into the front seat, he gave the other two a small involuntary smirk of triumph, and it was all they could do not to lean in through the window and ask the rich Westerners for a little baksheesh, a goodwill gesture in these times of glorious international cooperation.
    Alice was surprised that the embassy man—Quarrie, he said his name was; Raymond Quarrie, from Trenton, New Jersey—had come personally. As an International Monetary Fund adviser she was technically employed by the UN rather than the US. But America was the only superpower left now, which meantthat Washington called the shots when it came to international aid. US, UN—what was a consonant between friends? Even friends who’d spent the best part of half a century eyeballing each other across Checkpoint Charlie and the Straits of Florida.
    Quarrie swiveled in his seat to face them. His face was pale and blotchy; he’d not be shy of a vodka or two, Alice reckoned. “Don’t worry about your luggage,” he said. “It’ll be sent directly to your hotel. You’re staying at the Metropol, yes?” The Metropol had reopened earlier in the month, refurbished by Scandinavian companies. For the average Muscovite, a room there cost five years’ wages. The ruble was trading at ninety-six to the dollar;