The Syrian Sunset, page 19
Up a flight of marble steps and outside, three place settings surrounded one end of the substantial table. In the breeze heartier here, two bottles of champagne in a silver bucket anchored the white tablecloth. Junipers with long skinny trunks and leafy heads like sprouting adolescents were silhouetted against the sea and mountains.
Alisher Karimov burst out of the villa to the patio. Tall with short wire brush black hair, flat features and quick blue eyes, his ancestors hailed from somewhere along the trek between Turkey and Mongolia, the exact location unclear given the trade routes and various pillaging of his native Uzbekistan.
“Vas makhstu yid?” he said to Shai in Yiddish.
“Can’t complain too much,” Shai answered in Yiddish. “Unless I have the time.” He nodded to McE and transitioned to English, which Karimov handled like someone slicing steak with a machete. By way of introduction, nodded to McE. “Paul McEnnerney, a fine American who can speak for them. If he’s not quoted.”
Karimov let out a roll of laughter. “So good. Alisher tell no persons. Well maybe tell Putin some things. Maybe tell Yana too. You meet Yana, no?” Karmiov playfully slapped his head. “Sure, you Yana meet. You here. No climb wall. Not Shai guy, too fat. No climb nothing.”
During World War II, Stalin packed up whole Soviet industries from vulnerable western regions and lifted machinery and their operators onto trains bound for the Central Asian republics. As a boy, Karimov, found himself in his Old Samarkand playing with the kids of Jewish tailors forced into the long trek from Kiev with their Singer Sewing Machines. For many years Karimov’s second language, Yiddish, outstripped his third, Russian. Thirty-three million people in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and other corners of Central Asia chatted in Uzbek.
Karimov turned to McE and fought with English, “Uzbek Turkish language. Me, Alisher. Ali mean strong. Sher it mean lion. So strong like lion. Except when drink too much. Then I pussy cat. Sit. Sleep. So to no give you what want, must drink much.”
Karimov hoisted one of the bottles and showed the label to McE. “Henry Giraud MV. Good. Not best. Best for when I want from you.” As they settled around the table, Kiramov poured each crystal goblet to the brim, splashing here and there. He sat, lifted his glass and toasted in Russian. “Za ada ro vye. Have much health.” He clinked his glass with McEnnerney. “You know how I meet this Shai guy?”
McE decided to let him retell it. “He think, I speak Yiddish, I Yid friend. He fat fool. I like Yiddish, not so much Hebrew.” Karimov laughed. “I joke. I love Zhids. Just no, if they ask so much.” Karimov drained the narrow crystal in one very long pull. “So story of meeting. I am in Switzerland. Ski with wife. On big vacation, no mistress in different hotel. Treat wife respect. So this Shai guy. He ski right me on slope. Except not ski. He sliding down hill, arms.” Karimov set his glass down and swung his arms wildly. “No act. He can’t ski shit. I must carry him up hill. You think maybe he smaller then? No! Since then, I love him. Mostly. He terrible lover. Always want more. And talk. Oy, not stop.” He turned to Shai and shifted to Yiddish with the ease of a race driver moving up a gear. “How long did you wait for me to show up on that slope?”
“Two hours,” Shai said.
“Great. I hope your toes froze off is the reason you walk so poorly.”
“It was worth every moment of the pain to arrive at this moment.”
Karimov bellowed and returned to English. “This better than Yana. Almost. She beautiful, no? Men stupid. What difference beauty not beauty? Sometimes not beauty more smart. But not always. Ok, drink with almost friends now. Good rest for the lion. I more drink.” He poured, challenged the unyielding rim and champagne spilled down the glass in rivers. “Need drunk to hear this Shai shit.”
Putin’s boy Friday, Karimov bulldozed cavernous Soviet movie theaters, and a good deal circling them, into giant entertainment complexes. Given the surfeit of old movie houses in Moscow and other Russian cities, he was busy. His centers housed artificial ice rinks, beauty salons and shops for proper presentation while skating, bookstores and bowling alleys. Inside children’s centers, youngsters could be abandoned for a good deal of the day in the Russian tradition but without the old Komsomol youth group instruction on informing on one’s parents. Impresario of the nearing 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, where Karimov had another albeit more modest residence, he was such a deft and fast skier. Shai had great difficulty ramming him. However, he was known not for his downhill prowess but rather for swooping low as a helicopter pilot.
McE lifted his glass and downed half. “Tastes like the good stuff.”
“This okay. Worse shit I give for Yana’s dog.” He raised his thin goblet in a new toast. “За любовь. This means, ‘To love!’” He looked at McE. “You know why I love this Shai guy? Right away, he tell. Okay, not right away. After vodka, he say, ‘I Yid spy.’ I like this so much. This tell me he will lie. In Moscow everybody tell me best friend, then try fuck me. And not like Yana. From behind.”
Shai sipped the champagne, could not discern the spirit’s excellence but thought he might recognize the difference from Yana’s dog’s vintage, given the opportunity. Shai returned to Yiddish, “My friend McE has brought you a gift.”
Karimov stayed the course in English. “Gift. I see no suitcase dollars. Diamonds, maybe? Yana love diamonds but say enough. Maybe special some such thing, diamond guys with the payas in Tel-Aviv?” He took a steady finger well accustomed to inebriation and circled the Orthodox head curls beside his ear. “Maybe antique glass you dig up? But that too I buy on internet. Yana like Ebay so much. Wife too. Moscow, we get everything. Much more freedom than West. You want see doctor, you see free in a week. Real bad, so that day. Ambulance, free. Health care, of course free too. In new Russia, bad form inform on neighbor. High scores, university sometimes free. You see movie with Tom Hanks work FedEx in Moscow. I love movies. I tell Vlad. We not destroy all old beautiful theaters.” He lifted his goblet and the yellow liquid vanished again. “Shai, you intelligent man. I ask you. Who believe the great Tom Hanks work FedEx? You see this movie?”
“I liked it.”
“Never mind. It’s the movies. I cry like baby that he and wife cannot love more. But so go love sometimes. It end. Not like my good friend, Shai the spy, who will at my doorstep forever. For sure.”
Shai nodded to McE who removed a single sheet of paper, unfolded it and set in on the table in front of him, not Karimov.
“As you know, Alisher,” Shai continued. “There is no full suitcase I can bring that is larger than the one already under your bed.”
“It in wall, if we precise. Behind Monet. You emergency, need cash, no problem. Take. No interest even for the Shai guy. Favors, of course, you will owe. Alarms no problem for your tech kids, for sure.”
Shai smiled. “The Americans worked this list up for you and Putin.”
“And you people?”
“We added a few names we’d run across. While looking at other matters.” Shai swept the sheet over to himself. “McE tells me some journalists have noses to the ground about the world’s oligarchs. Abdullah in Jordan. The odd Czech, Pakistani and Kenyan. Private jets that nobody owns but still manage to fly. Van Goghs known and the other kind. Skipping taxes here and there. Bank accounts for some reason always on islands. And mansions well, they’re the flavor of the month.”
Karimov slipped into an easier Yiddish. “Quite a few Russians on the list, then?”
“Top of the class. Swept all the honors and then some.” Shai consulted the dossier. “A woman here, close acquaintance of Putin. Not implying she’s his Yana. Russians like other people have actual friends.”
“Who else besides me is there?”
Russia’s income inequality rivaled Ancient Rome, Shai thought. “Stepdaughter of the chairman of the state defense corporation Rostec has a place to put up her feet on the Spanish coast. 22 billion rubles outside the motherland and what a yacht, says valued at 10 billion rubles. That could be a mistake.”
“No,” Karimov said, and slapped his glass down without delicacy.
“The head of the state-owned oil pipeline company Transneft, is it? His whole family, let’s call it, are busy abroad.”
Shai pushed the sheet over to Karimov who chose instead to refill his goblet carefully, without dousing the tablecloth or yet these fires.
“Journalists are onto this,” Shai said softly. “Coordinating in a lot of countries far better than the allies did in Iraq. McE and his friends are throwing up roadblocks wherever they can, in the interests of our mutual friendship. But eventually, they’ll publish. Could be a long time off, even years if everybody made their work a bit harder.”
A smile lit Karimov’s face again. “So this is head’s up. Do what we want. Cover the trail. Bury the bodies. Type up the dezinformatsiya. Trash the messengers.”
“We have bigger fish to fry.”
Karimov was all Yiddish now, for clarity and maybe to freeze out McEnnerney. The list disappeared in his pocket. “You want food now? It’s no problem. I have cold shrimp in the fridge. Big ones, of course.”
“Let’s do a little more work first before I earn my supper. Syria, if I may,” Shai said. “Specifically their sarin.”
Karimov steepled his hands together and sat as quiet as an empty cathedral.
McE hearing sarin, which Shai had spoken in English, stepped to the altar to sermonize and like most southern preachers he began by playing loose with the facts and then found no reason to halt there. “Obama’s going in. We don’t know yet where or how big. Assad sticking his finger in Obama’s eye about the red line, not what we Americans like to see. More important, Obama’s a moralist. He’s not going to allow Ghouta to blow in the wind unanswered. He does nothing, it gives Bashar the go ahead to gas everyone he can’t easily shoot.”
Shai transformed the words into Yiddish though he saw Karimov understood.
“This is big matter, Shai guy. It is no secret that Vlad intends to enlarge our warm water port at Latakia and much more in Syria. Shoot at these ISIS terrorists who hate Assad, and maybe when miss hit many Free Syrian Army. Putin will not sit on hands if America invades.” He returned to English. “About this I make so big promise!”
“Yes, all that’s on our radar in bright blips, no question. Alisher, this is embarrassing for Putin. Mass murder by his vassal with poison gas. Just like the Fascists you hate as much as we do, with their Zyclon B. We have an idea. Putin can come out the hero while forcing Obama to be the one to sit on his hands.”
“Alisher he listen. But maybe only listen, no promise more.” Karimov pounded the table with one hand; plates leaped. “For this, need food.”
He pushed back from the table and once inside the house yelled, “Yana! Yanala!” Then Karimov turned back, as if he remembered something he actually had not. “How much missiles Hezbollah looking at you from Lebanon?”
“If I’m rounding, hundred thousand. Our cave count is imprecise.”
“Not good for you, Assad’s cowboy sarin on those.”
“It is something we’d like to avoid.”
Karimov abruptly launched a wide grin. “Saving Private Ryan. This Tom Hanks Alisher believe with all his heart.”
Soon the two Russians emerged bearing silver platters of fat shrimp, quartered lemons and dumplings, contents unfamiliar and unidentifiable to Shai. Barefoot with new glistening blue nails there and gripping two platters, Yana had abandoned revealing one leg for a blue bikini. Muscles rippled at her calves and Shai suspected she ran barefoot on the beach. A small gold cross on a thin chain dropped halfway into her top.
“This manty,” Karimov said, delivering that platter directly onto Shai’s plate with the clink of silver on china. “My mother made me. Meat, fat, onions. I teach Yana how steam. My wife say steam bother her nose. I no argue. Eat with Yana.”
“Please give Yana our apologies for invading her balcony like Cossacks,” Shai said. “Tell her that we will soon be gone and the pool and everything else hers again.”
Karimov parroted Shai in Russian and her face tightened as she responded. Karimov turned to Shai. “Yana informs me tell you first, house too big for two peoples. You invite stay. She personally change bedding in two bedrooms make nice for you. Second, as girl she experience with Cossacks along Dneiper River. She prefer not tell. She certain you no Cossacks but request not such matters again in joking way.”
“Tell her thank you for everything,” Shai said quickly. “We would be honored to stay another time but today we are in a bit of a hurry. And about the other, my deepest apologies.”
Karimov translated.
“Spaceba,” she said with a smile that lit the copper flecks in her green eyes. She turned. Her hair spun in a perfect arc and she was gone.
“She happy,” Karimov said. “No want me leave wife, asks nothing, appreciate all things. More jewelry she say nyet, only more laughing please. She crazy loves for me to take her in helicopter. Fly high and fast and low and fast.”
“You need her,” Shai observed.
“Yes, so. Sometimes I don’t wish make more money when she not near. She says if I leave wife, she disappear. She believe in Saints, will not kill marriage.” He laughed. “I lucky she not believe in them more deep.”
Shai peered towards thick palms at the edge of the property shielding a cluster of satellite dishes. Food was swept onto plates. The cork from the second bottle sounded like the pop from a Beretta.
McE spoke, “In the years after the Berlin Wall went down we successfully worked with Russians to secure the former Soviet nuclear facilities. And chemical containers, which in some cases had uncooperatively been leaking.”
As Shai translated, Karimov held a shrimp in midair as he listened.
McE continued, “We are suggesting that Putin come up with the idea and propose it to Obama privately at the G20 next week. Maybe during a walk around the sumptuous grounds. Obama won’t know it’s coming. I assure you. Mostly because the only two people who do, are eating manty just now. Fabulous, by the way. Please deliver my compliments to Yana.”
“Idea,” Karimov said in English. “Please stop shit and tell me. Precise.”
“We are currently developing the technology to render sarin harmless aboard a ship we are modifying. Not specifically for Syria but it will be perfect for this. It’s at Norfolk. We’re very close to getting the technology to work,” McE greatly exaggerated but believed they would get there. “We want Putin to whisper to Obama that he will support him in having Bashar transfer all of his sarin by land to these American ships. In exchange for the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons, Obama will stand down. No troops, no cruise missiles. Only applause all around.”
Karimov whistled, set the shrimp down untouched and lifted his goblet. “This really big shit.” He turned to Shai. “Up glass, both you.”
To distract himself from his misery, Shai thought about how General Colin Powell learned Yiddish toiling as a teenager in a New York baby equipment store. He wondered if he and Karimov had ever whispered in the mamaloshen as cover at a summit.
“L’chaim” Karimov said. “Putin love fuck Obama, not cause he Black. He love fuck all American pussy presidents.”
Clinked glasses quickly were all drained. The champagne pounded inside Shai’s head at his right temple.
“We Russians emotional. Throw glasses on stone floor. No now. Yana make me on knees and clean.”
“What do you think Putin will say?” McE asked.
“Putin I think love. America troops come to Syria big...” Karimov couldn’t find the word, pointed his free hand to his head.
McE tried, “Headache.”
“Yes. Big. Cruise attack, big headache for Vlad. He already decide send superior tanks, T90A. So send what more?” Karimov picked up the sheet gift and adjusted to Yiddish. “This is helpful. Putin will appreciate your thinking of him, even when strictly not necessary to persuade him to agree. He can tell Obama, ‘For you, Barack, all the sarin can disappear into the sea. We will walk hand and hand like at Potsdam, again together we save the planet.’” Karimov clapped his hands. “Everybody will love the heroes Barack and Vladimir. Same time, we save the Syrian people, almost.”
“How about Bashar?” Shai inquired. “Your guess from anything Vlad might have breathed. Will he put up a fight? Pitch a tantrum?”
“Bashar biggest pussy president of all. He kill nobody without MiGs and Kalasnikovs. Maybe make few barrel bombs with local talent. Putin snap fingers, Bashar bows. In private naturally. Horosho, now we eat everything. Alisher bring best champagne.”
“On one condition,” Shai said.
“You’re not done. Oy. More?”
“Only this. Please tell Yana that she must join us or begin to swim, as she wishes. I don’t want to inconvenience her further.”
Karimov bolted to his feet and turned to McE. “Love this guy. He think people. Good man. Maybe bad spy. He worry too much.”
Karimov slid the glass door open again and given the distance his voice needed to trek, he bellowed, “Yanala.”
Shai smiled, but beneath it his despair was boundless. If Shai had to choose between taking out the barrel bomb capability and the sarin, he wanted all the runways and gunships decimated. Fuad believed a new Syria would relinquish the sarin Bashar had turned on his own people. But Shai did not think Obama would swim over the European wave pushing him back to shore.
On a grander scale, Shai worried about showing Putin, already eyeing Crimea and Ukraine, that red lines could be crossed without much consequence.
CHAPTER 12
G20 SAINT PETERSBURG
SEPTEMBER 5-6, 2013
In St. Petersburg, Shai trudged heavily through the 18th Century Smolensky Cemetery. The host Russian Federation had issued the lofty and tedious G20 agenda of “developing a set of measures aimed at boosting sustainable, balanced inclusive growth and global job creation.” Actually, on everyone’s minds, and in some hearts, pulsed the Syrian conundrum and the interminable rows of bodies broadcast almost everywhere fifteen days ago from Ghouta—attribution still unreasonably debated. In the run-up to the summit, the gladiators Russia and China had stretched a thumbs down to Obama’s motion for the UN Security Council to send in the Imperial Roman Army or, in its stead, a hail of lances. Six days ago, the House of Commons had said no can do to Prime Minister Cameron, their vision clouded by the sand in their eyes from driving behind the Americans into the last desert storm. Yesterday Obama arrived at Strelna Palace and buttonholed leaders as disparate as Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina, Shinzo Abe of Japan and Saudi King Abdullah for justice meted out the old-fashioned way. The window was closing on Obama and shutting the cold in.
