The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

Russians understand this much better than theAmericans. Europe’s not even worth mentioning—they’re off the field, and it’s not a given that they’ll ever get back on it, aside from falling into the Kremlin’s sphere of influence.”
    “You’re kidding?”
    “Not the least bit. Gazprom already owns a good half of Europe. They have Nord Stream lobbyists in every European government. Everyone, Daryna, loves money. Especially the big kind. Especially when the one paying it is someone you used to fear. That’s power. Money, you know, is not just banks—it’s also cell-phone service operators, and Internet providers. You see what I’m saying? As soon as those losers in the EU implement electronic ballots, you can write Europe off. Politically it’ll mean no more than some Kemerov region; they’ll have all their leaders chosen in Moscow. So the stakes are quite high, Daryna—it’s a big game. And in the scheme of this game, we are the testing ground for new management technologies. The ones that will determine the fate of the world in the new century. Try to see it that way.”
    “So what, we are a kind of a shooting range? Like in World War II, and with Chernobyl? Your big players come play here, see what happens, and then bury us again—till the next time?”
    “A range—that’s well put. Here’s to your health!” He holds up his snifter to let the cognac flash in the light. “You have a way with words. History’s secret range. Not bad at all, it’s got that something...I bought this book the other day, by a British guy, about Poland, a thick one.” He stretches his fingers, a pair of sausages, to show me. “It’s called
God’s Playground
. I liked that, too—I think that’s even more fitting for Ukraine than for Poland.”
    “Then it shouldn’t be God’s. Should be the Devil’s. The Devil’s Playground.”
    (Devil’s Playground, yes—where the best are the ones who perish. The ones who expose themselves, who stand up from the trenches. One can’t expose oneself on the Devil’s Playground—can’t step into the floodlight’s beam, unless one plays for the side that’s sitting in the bushes with the sniper’s rifle; on the Devil’s Playground, one can only make good if one lives the way Vadymsays: get low and watch where the strongest current will run—and swim in it. You are a wise, wise man, Vadym, aren’t you; you’ve got it all figured out...)
    “Why do you have to be so dramatic,” he mutters, and an absurd hope that he is simply drunk flares up in me—that he is just drunk, that’s it. Look at how much less cognac there is in the bottle; I didn’t even notice how he’d siphoned all that out. This may well be merely the ramblings of an intoxicated man. Damn it, why is my head crackling and hissing so much—like a cell phone with a weak signal! No, drunk he is not.
    “Now, a range—that’s well put!” He sticks to his tune. “That’s exactly what it will be. Just you wait and see—there’ll be a whole bunch of interesting new tricks launched for the first time in these elections! Someday, they’ll write textbooks about it. Post-information era government technologies—that’s something! It’s like when they first split the atom. In the beginning, no one could see what possibilities that opened up either. This’ll be an interesting year for you and me, Daryna.” All of a sudden, he rubs his hands together with such a youthful, hungry lust for life, like a teenage boy after a swim that I, taken by surprise, miss my chance to react to his “you and me.”
    “Let’s have a drink!
Let’s drink, honey, let’s drink here, they won’t pour on the other side
.... What’s that, why didn’t you finish your ice cream? Watching your girlish figure?”
    “Drink to what, Vadym? To whose victory?”
    “Ours, Daryna, ours! Let those Yankees and Ivans tussle all they want; our business is to make profits! The first round in this game went to Russia: after the Gongadze case, the Kremlin’s got Kuchma right where they want him, totally under their control. Now they’re betting on the Donets’k contingent, they do business together; they’re one crew and all that, I’m sure you know this. Going back to the Soviet days. And the Americans bet on Yushchenko—with the goal of keeping Ukraine in the buffer zone. And we shall wait and see how well it works for them.”
    “And all the people who actually live in this country—the way you see it, they