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  PRAISE FOR ANDREY KURKOV

  THE CASE OF THE GENERAL’S THUMB

  “An ebullient black comedy … reminiscent of the best of the Soviet dissident literature.”

  —DAILY TELEGRAPH

  “Kurkov is a fine satirist and a real, blackly comic find.”

  — OBSERVER

  “Full of touches of grim insight and tactful surrealism … a cross between John le Carré and Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita.”

  — JOHN BURNSIDE, SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

  “A rich romp riddled with black humour.… Kurkov flips from mock-tragedy to comedy and back again, planting the ominous and the absurd neatly among deadpan descriptions of a daily life in denial.”

  —THE TIMES (LONDON)

  DEATH AND THE PENGUIN

  “Death and the Penguin successfully balances the social awkwardness of Woody Allen, the absurd clashes of Jean-Luc Godard and the escalating paranoia of Franz Kafka.”

  — VIKAS TURAKIAS, THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER

  “A tragicomic masterpiece.”

  —THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

  “A striking portrait of post-Soviet isolation … In this bleak moral landscape Kurkov manages to find ample refuge for his dark humor.”

  —THE NEW YORK TIMES

  “Pathos and humor shine through to make this a black comedy of rare distinction, and the penguin is an invention of genius.”

  — THE SPECTATOR

  “The deadpan tone works perfectly and it will be a hardhearted reader who is not touched by Viktor’s relationship with his unusual pet.”

  —THE TIMES (LONDON)

  “Death and the Penguin lives and breathes the puzzled, dislodged dignity of its better-than-human hero. It may turn out to be a minor classic and get Russian literature going again after the post-Soviet hiatus.”

  — THE INDEPENDENT

  PENGUIN LOST

  “Anyone who gave themselves the pleasure of reading Death and the Penguin should certainly treat themselves to this sequel. And if you missed it, never mind, read this one anyway: it’s delicious.”

  —THE SPECTATOR

  “There is more magic in his realism than in a library of witches and wizards.”

  —SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY

  “Death and the Penguin was praised for its brutal humor, tender humanity, and all-out guts. Penguin Lost is a sequel equally superlative and twice as readable.”

  —INK

  “Rich, authentic, and entertaining.”

  —THE NEW STATESMAN

  “Kurkov writes the kind of believable action story that has led to comparisons with Le Carré…. This morally grotesque post-Soviet world is tinged with Dostoevskian absurdity.”

  — THE INDEPENDENT

  THE CASE OF THE GENERAL’S THUMB

  Originally published in Russian as Igra v otrezanny palets

  by FOLIO, Kharkov and Moscow

  First published in Great Britain in by the Harvill Press

  © 1999 Andrey Kurkov and Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich

  Translation © George Bird

  First Melville House printing: January 2012

  Melville House Publishing

  145 Plymouth Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  www.mhpbooks.com

  eISBN: 978-1-61219-061-7

  A catalog record for this book is available

  from the Library of Congress.

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  About the Author

  1

  Kiev, night of 20th–21st May, 1997

  Sergeant Voronko of the State Vehicle Inspectorate loved his snug little glass booth on Independence Square in the heart of Kiev, and never more than in the small hours, when Khreshchatik Street was free of traffic, and nipping out for a smoke was to experience a vibrant, blanketing silence very different from the fragile night stillness of his home village. Kiev lay open before him, not frightening as to most at that hour, but stirring feelings of affection and pride. He was its protector, security officer, bodyguard; solicitous proprietor of a vast and varied domain embracing the Central Post Office, the fountains, even the red Coca-Cola balloon tethered near where the Lenin monument once stood.

  At 1.30 a.m. he got out his laptop, a token of gratitude from a Tax Police friend for supplying documentation for a top-range Opel Kadett illegally imported from Germany. A small favour between friends, which is, after all, what friends are for.

  So, to the nocturnal enjoyment of Khreshchatik Street deserta, he now added that of playing cards with the computer, and since it was just a computer, no shame attached to losing. The hand it dealt him tonight was a peach, but no sooner had he played his first card than a bulb on the panel in front of him flashed and a tinny Seven! Proceed at once to Eleven! intruded on the peace and quiet of the booth.

  Voronko acknowledged the message, slipped the laptop into his briefcase, and set off in his SVI Zhiguli.

  Post 11 was Pechersk, reasonably close. He could be there and back, and still get a few hands of cards in before his relief arrived.

  He had not been gone five minutes when the Coca-Cola balloon heaved itself slowly up into the Khreshchatik Street sky, and dangling from it was a body.

  Seven! Attendance no longer required. Return to post, Tinny Voice instructed over the car radio as Pechersk Bridge came in sight.

  Shaking his head in disbelief, Voronko performed a u-turn and made his way back to Khreshchatik Street and the pr
ospect of three hours’ cards.

  2

  Kiev, 23rd May, 1997

  “A rest’s what you need, Nik,” Ivan Lvovich observed as they drew away from the station in a dark blue BMW.

  It was true, after seven days’ travel on top of a hectic month selling a flat, packing and seeing off a container of family effects.

  Tadzhikistan now seemed remote, alien. Tanya and Volodya were safe with relatives in Saratov, where it would be pleasant enough now, in summer, with the Volga to swim in or fish, and good Slav faces around instead of the furtive, unsmiling Tadzhik variety.

  “Kiev can wait,” said Ivan Lvovich. “First, a spell of recuperation at a nice little place with all mod cons. And while you’re there I can brief you.”

  The “nice little place” recalled Granny’s chalet with garden near Zhitomir, where Nik had spent whole summers with his mother until his parents’ deaths in ’65. From then on home was with his father’s people in distant Dushanbe. There he finished his schooling, and graduated from the Institute of Military Interpreters. After a spell at HQ Military District, two postings to Africa. On his return, marriage to Tanya. They had a son, Volodya, and all had gone well until Tanya’s sacking by a boss who took Independence to mean a Geological Scientific Research Institute cleansed of non-Tadzhiks. Later, he rang and apologised. Anyway, they’d be better off in Russia, he said. But would they? Dumped in Saratov, like Tanya and Volodya, on folk with scarcely a kopek to their name?

  His chancing to meet Ivan Lvovich had been most fortunate. He’d been coming from Border Guards Admin., seething at having his transfer to Russia refused, when a middle-aged colonel asked the way to the Hotel for Officers, and he’d offered to show him. As they walked, they talked.

  That evening, over a meal in a Turkish restaurant, Ivan Lvovich mentioned a new Service being created in Ukraine, and the possibility of getting in at an early stage, especially given the plus of a Zhitomir granny. There would, of course, be help with move and accommodation, though it would take time to organize.

  “Beer drinker?” Ivan Lvovich asked, as they shot out into a blaze of sunlight on the river embankment.

  “Yes.”

  “Stop at the crayfish,” Ivan Lvovich ordered the driver, spotting a cardboard notice, two buckets, and a young man on a collapsible stool in swimming trunks and sun glasses.

  “How much?”

  “Fifty kopeks each.”

  “I’ll have twenty.”

  Ten minutes later they were clear of the city, in a lofty pine forest.

  Nik thought suddenly of his friend Lyoshka’s “Life is Chance”, a dictum never far from his lips, until Zaire, where his, not Nik’s, was the vehicle that went over the land mine.

  “That’s it,” said Ivan Lvovich indicating a Finnish chalet approached by a gravel path. “Old Party-high-up retreat.”

  It had three rooms, a kitchen and a veranda.

  “Saucepan for the crayfish, beer from the fridge, and we’re in business,” said Ivan Lvovich.

  Going through to the bedroom, Nik rummaged through his cases for the leather-wrapped antique Turkish yataghan bought in a Samarkand market.

  “A small gift for getting us here,” he said, presenting it to Ivan Lvovich.

  “Bloody hell!” he exploded, brandishing the elegantly curved blade. “This in your kit all the way from Dushanbe! They only had to find that at any one of the frontiers and your feet wouldn’t have touched!”

  “Sorry,” Nik said wearily. “It couldn’t go in the container – containers get the full treatment – and I didn’t want to ditch it.”

  “Anyway, thank you, Nik. We’ve been lucky.”

  He poured beer.

  “Lovely thing. It’ll go well with my wall carpet. I’m sorry, too. Still a bit on edge. Worried we might be under observation. But happily, Security’s up to its eyes. Some clever sod’s used an advertising balloon to dump a corpse on their roof. Twenty surveillance cameras and not one looking skywards! Balloon hanging. Something of a novelty. And some corpse! Retired general, Presidential Defence Adviser.”

  “Why knock off an old chap like him?”

  “Old chap be damned! Forty-seven. Early retirement. State Security, then Min. of Def. – where one year’s desk counts as three of actual service. So it’s him we have to thank for smoothing our arrival!”

  They clinked glasses.

  “Now for the crayfish.”

  Half an hour later Ivan Lvovich left, saying Nik should have a good rest, and he’d be back in a day or two.

  Nik drank another beer, took a shower, and drawing the curtain of the tiny window, lay on the wide bed, and to the rhythmical swaying of a train, fell asleep.

  3

  25th May 1997

  It was a fine, starry night, and Viktor Slutsky made short work of the long, lonely walk from the metro station to his high-rise block of flats. In contrast to most tenants of the month-old block, he walked without fear, brand-new warrant card in his pocket, Tula Tokarev automatic holstered under his arm. He’d had, to date, no occasion to produce either, on duty, or walking this tortuous kilometre of building sites. The curious logic of starting to build at a point furthest from the metro eluded him. But at least he, Ira and their three-month-old daughter were no longer cooped up in a hostel.

  Now, up to the eighth floor, and supper. The lift had yet to be installed, a fact for which tenants, except perhaps the elderly couple on the twelfth floor, were physically the fitter. Pause to accustom his eyes to the dark.

  Hearing his key in the lock, petite, peroxided, teenager-like Ira looked out into the corridor, carrying their daughter.

  “Remembered the butter?”

  His cheerful smile vanished.

  “Plain potatoes for you then,” she said calmly. “And when fat’s what you need, being so thin.”

  “Is there any?”

  “There’s lard, in the freezer.”

  “Let’s have that.”

  Ira returned Yana to her pram, and they sat down at the kitchen table.

  Viktor ate in silence. Lard and potatoes, he reflected, might be the more palatable for frying, though this was not the right moment to say so.

  “Come on, out with it,” Ira prompted, seeing Viktor still wearing the ghost of a smile.

  “I’ve been given a case.”

  “When’s the ration hand-out?”

  “That’s all you care about,” sighed Viktor. “Actually, there’s butter tomorrow, a whole kilo.”

  “What else?”

  “The usual: buckwheat, condensed milk, tinned herring …”

  For a while they ate in silence, then with a dog-like look of devotion she asked guiltily, “What sort of case?”

  “Murder.”

  “God! Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “It’s terrific. Perks, promotion, pay increase …”

  “Who’s been murdered?”

  “Don’t know. Only heard this evening. I’m getting the file tomorrow …”

  Looking at him with a mixture of love and pity, she wondered how anyone so weak, insignificant yet adorable, could possibly be given a real murder to investigate. Film sleuths were always tough, boozy, beefy.

  “Put the kettle on while I feed her,” she said, as Yana’s wailing penetrated from the living room.

  “How many cases have you got?” Major Leonid Ivanovich Ratko, known affectionately as Ratty, asked Viktor next morning.

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Anything serious?”

  “Seven lift muggings, four flat burglaries, one trading-stall arson. The rest’s small stuff.”

  “Five Militia Academy cadets arrive tomorrow, so you pass that lot to them, having selected one to assist you.”

  A major still at fifty, a major Ratko would remain till the day he died, being of those who give not a damn for their futures, and vaunt as much in scruffiness and scant use of the razor. Whether promotion to lieutenant colonel would have reformed him was hard to say. The odds were against it.
At Ratko’s age old habits died hard.

  “Here’s the file, have a look, then come back,” he said wearily, indicating the door.

  Back in his tiny office with its cracked and draughty window, Viktor eyed the two vacant desks opposite. The occupant of one was under investigation and not likely to return; the other was away on detachment. Peace and quiet, then, in which to concentrate.

  First came photographs of a corpse whose neck bore the telltale marks of hanging, and as he proceeded to read he remembered his pal Dima Rakin, now of Special Branch F., who had looked in yesterday to see Ratko, saying something about a retired general taking a fatal balloon flight.

  “Get the picture?” asked Ratko, having knocked and entered.

  “Not yet, Chief.”

  Taking a chair from one of the other desks, Ratko sat opposite Viktor.

  “Any questions?”

  “I’ve not read to the end.”

  “None so far, then. Well, that’s odd, because I’ve got some.”

  “For me?”

  “For whoever kicked this one our way … Got a kettle? Make tea, and we’ll talk.”

  But it was the Major who talked, eyes fixed on Viktor.

  “One: it’s too fresh a case to write off as a dead ender. Two: seeing it’s a Government corpse, it’s logically a job for some big nob and a whole team of investigators. But no, we get it. Our patch was where he took off from, so OK, regardless of where he came down. Nothing in the papers. No obituary. So there’s a clampdown.”

  Viktor nodded agreement.

  “Why the order to give you the case?”

  “Me?”

  “You personally, the chap on the phone said … So we’ve got connections, have we? But they’re what you need to keep clear of this sort of thing.”

  “Maybe Dima’s something to do with it. He’s always popping in.”

  “He’s your pal – ask him. At least find out how best to tackle it. Right, I’ve sat here long enough. Read to the end, then come and see me.”

  Viktor was alone again, fanciful ideas as to the whys and wherefores of being assigned the ballooning general cruelly shattered. His mood was now one of gloom. Disinclined to read, he spread the photographs on the desk, leant back, and gazed out at a grey, diagonally cracked glass rectangle of city.