Borya aimed the club at Arkady and dropped his voice. “I’d call you. I would. Rudy was my best friend and I think Kim helped the Chechens, but do you think I’d endanger all this, everything I’ve achieved, to take some sort of primitive revenge? That’s the old mentality. We have to catch up with the rest of the world or we’re going to be left behind. We’ll all be in empty buildings and starving to death. We have to change. Do you have a card?” he asked suddenly.

“Party card?”

“We collect business cards and have a drawing once a month for a bottle of Chivas Regal.” Borya controlled a smile, barely.

Arkady felt like an idiot. Not an ordinary idiot, but an outdated, socially uninformed idiot.

Borya put down his driver and proudly led Arkady to the buffet. In chairs upholstered in red, white and black Marlboro colors were more Japanese in baseball caps and Americans in golfing shoes. Arkady suspected that Borya had hit upon the exact decor of an airport lounge, the natural setting of the international business traveler. They could have been in Frankfurt, Singapore, Saudi Arabia—anywhere—and for this very reason felt at home. Above the bar a television showed CNN. The crowded buffet offered an array of smoked sturgeon and trout, red and black caviar, eggplant caviar, German chocolates and Georgian pastries around bottles of sweet champagne, Pepsi, pepper vodka, lemon vodka and five-star Armenian cognac. Arkady was dizzy from the smell of food.

“We also have karaoke nights, putting tournaments and corporate parties,” Borya said. “No prostitutes, no hustlers. It couldn’t be more innocent.”

Like Borya? The man had not only gone from football to the mafia, but had made the second, steeper evolutionary leap to entrepreneur. The way his Western sweater draped his shoulders, the directness of his eyes, the freer gestures of clean hands, all said: businessman.

Borya gave a discreet, proprietary wave and a uniformed waitress immediately arrived from the buffet and set a plate of silver herring on the table in front of Arkady. The fish seemed to swim before his eyes.

Borya asked, “Remember unpolluted fish?”

“Not well enough, thanks.” Arkady dug a last cigarette from the pack. “Where do you get the fish?”

“Like anyone else. I trade this, barter that.”

“On the black market?”

Borya shook his head. “Direct. Rudy said there wasn’t a farm or fishing collective that wasn’t willing to do business if you could offer more than rubles.”

“Rudy told you what to offer?”

Borya held Arkady’s eyes with his. “Rudy started out as a football fan. He ended up as an older brother. He simply wanted to see me happy. He gave me advice. That doesn’t sound like a crime to me.”

“It depends on the advice.” Arkady wanted to provoke a reaction.