The Edge of Madness by Michael Dobbs Read Free Book Online

changed.
    They slowed almost to a standstill. Somewhere up ahead a truck loaded with steel pipes was backing out from a construction site and had succeeded in stuffing up the entire Prospect. And Shunin’s asthma was getting to him; he reached for his nebulizer and breathed in the comforting medicinal mist, but despite the relief he knew it was getting worse. The doctors had warned him, one day his lungs would get the better of him and he’d have to slow down, give up, or go just like his father. Shunin’s response had been to get himself new doctors. Now he took a deep breath and turned on his son-in-law in irritation. ‘Lavrik,’ he said, using the diminutive, ‘I am a reasonable man. I don’t mind you screwing my daughter, I don’t even object when you skim a few per cent from the contractors on your architectural projects, but I swear on the Holy Mother I’m not spending the next couple of days listening to you mash your brains to shit with that rubbish!’
    The younger man looked up, bemused at the sudden onslaught. ‘It’s just a toy. Something a friend gave me, Papasha.’
    ‘A contractor.’
    ‘A friend,’ the son-in-law insisted.
    ‘It’s gold-plated.’
    ‘So, a good friend.’
    ‘Throw it out.’
    Lavrenti laughed awkwardly.
    ‘Throw it out,’ his father-in-law repeated. He was not a man used to repeating himself.
    ‘Dammit, it’s worth five thousand US.’
    ‘A trinket.’
    ‘And mine.’
    Shunin stared. He was a man of short stature with immensely broad shoulders, suggesting the sort of strength that in his younger days could have broken a horse with his bare hands. But the years, and the lungs, had got to him. In middle age his crinkled hair had grown thin and was now stretched desperately across his skull, giving the impression of a ploughed field, and he rarely smiled, for inside the Kremlin there was so little to smile about. A thick belt held his trousers round his wide waist, his shape was almost square, and when he walked he rolled from side to side, a man whose better days had been left behind at the roadside. Yet he was never a man to be underestimated, and anyone who did quickly found reason to regret their naivety. He had lost none of his legendary ability to switch from philosopher to huntsman in a single, wheezing breath, and although his neck might disappear into his collar the eyes were always sharp, cat-like, and gave the impression that they could see through people and leave them feeling unmasked. Now they were fixed on Lavrenti.
    ‘Do as I say, Lavrik.’ The instruction was delivered in a whisper like a wind rustling through a graveyard. Itwas turning into yet another of his lessons in subservience.
    ‘Come on, Papasha, just because we’re stuck in this funeral procession, don’t take it out on me.’ But Lavrenti found no trace of humour in the other man’s expression. ‘Please, I need my phone,’ he murmured, but the plea froze to death in the space between them.
    Shunin was like that. Took positions, stubborn, intransigent, but never pointless, always for a purpose. And so long as he was working over foreigners or Chechens the people loved him for it, they even sent each other postcards with his image on the front, showing him as a bulldog, a favourite pet guarding the home, but those who slept closer to him had reason to fear his moods.
    And few slept closer than Lavrenti Konev. He was in his early thirties, one of the rising stars of this new Russia–how could he not be, so close to Shunin? But Russia had always been a place of suspicion and envy, and the new Russia had mixed into that potent gruel of mistrust the curdling power of money, mountains of it. The ancients of the Soviet era had rarely indulged in ostentatious wealth–oh, they had their dachas and their Zils, but none of it was personal property and most of it was poorly produced tat. Yet the days when the arrival of a refrigerator was cause for a street party were long since gone. Life had