The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

to help you create heroes, is that it?”
    He looks at me almost gratefully—did I save him from further verbal exertion?
    “Precisely.”
    Another pause. A kind of very slow approach—millimeter by millimeter, so as not to startle his prey, except that his breathing gets louder. (I heard a man breathe like this once, the two of uswere in the same train compartment: I woke up in the middle of the night because he, breathing like a horse, was very carefully, so as not to wake me, pulling the covers off me before dashing back to his berth, the instant I, scared to death, stirred and mumbled something as if still half asleep.)
    “A political project. Image focused. We’ll put together a strong team, with first-class foreign experts; you’ll love it. Naturally, they will all work behind the scenes. What’s needed is a public face, sort of like a press secretary. But it can’t be just a pretty face; it has to be someone who knows what they’re doing. Someone from inside the kitchen, so to speak.”
    “And what will that kitchen be cooking?”
    He nods in approval: we’ve finally gotten to the heart of the matter.
    “This information cannot be made public yet. In the elections, besides the two main contenders—from the establishment and the opposition—there will be a number of technical candidates.”
    “Meaning what?”
    “What—the usual. Candidates who are there to divert votes from the front-runner.”
    “From Yushchenko?!”
    Now I really don’t understand anything. Isn’t Vadym a member of Yushchenko’s coalition?
    “Give me a break, Daryna!” he cringes, and I shudder: it’s Vlada’s phrase, part of her vocabulary, that’s where he got it! “Yushchenko, while we’re on the subject, is also, you could say, a technical candidate. In a way...”
    “What on earth are you talking about?”
    “I am talking about the fact that things are much more complicated than they appear to you. Than what they look like from the outside. And even if Yushchenko wins, although that’s more than doubtful, his victory won’t be the end of the game that’s going on, you can be sure of that. Yushchenko got propelled to the top by a whole series of favorable circumstances, he’s always had luck; you might say he’s charmed.” At this last word, Vadym’svoice twangs with a barely audible note of envy, like the ding of chipped glass. “But there’s no
corporation
behind him. The ones backing him as a viable candidate today are all the disgruntled ones, the ones Kuchma left standing with nothing when he divvied up the property. And a coalition like that, as you can surely see yourself, cannot last. If Yushchenko does manage, by some miracle, to win, all hell will break loose—the ones who ride his coattails to parliament will waste no time wresting the steering wheel away from him.”
    “And you decided not to wait until after the elections?”
    Lord, my head hurts!
    “And I,” Vadym doesn’t take offense, only swirls the cognac in his glass unnecessarily fast—with a short, slightly nervous circular motion. “I attempt to take a broader view. And to benefit from any outcome. And I would advise you to do the same. What does it ultimately matter if it’s Kuchma, or Yushchenko, or someone else, or the next guy? You can’t teach a pig to sing. Think about it, who are we, really? A former colony, with no statehood tradition of our own, knee-deep in shit. A transit zone. In the current global scheme of things, that’s our only asset: we are a country conveniently located for transit. And that’s where we can earn our commission—and trust me, it’s not pennies. The future outlook is not too shabby either, if one knows how to use one’s head.”
    “What kind of outlook do we have if no one cleans up the shit?”
    “You’re not paying attention,” he chides me. “I told you, the Yalta era is about to end. The balance of power in the world is changing; new players are coming to the stage...China, possibly India. And until the new trade balance shakes itself out, Russia and America will keep dragging us back and forth, like dogs in a tug-of-war. Neither will let go—the bone’s too big. We’ve always been a trading card in the big countries’ games anyway; it’s a function of our geography. Except that only a few of them in the past century realized that Ukraine is nothing less than critical for any serious political ambitions—Lenin knew this, and, by extension, Stalin. Today, the