The Power(31)

‘Our forces are already moving to quash these rebels,’ says Viktor. ‘Within a few days the situation will normalize.’ Tunde raises a quizzical eyebrow. Half-laughs. Is Viktor being serious? The gangs have captured weapons, body armour and ammunition from the crime syndicates they’ve destroyed. They’re virtually unbeatable.

‘Sorry, what is it that you’re planning to do? Bomb your own country to pieces? They’re everywhere.’

Viktor smiles an enigmatic smile. ‘If it has to be, that is how it must be. This trouble will pass in just a week or two.’

Fucking hell. Maybe he really will bomb the whole country and end up sitting as President of a pile of rubble. Or maybe he just hasn’t accepted what’s really going on here. It’ll make an interesting footnote in the book. With his country crumbling around him, President Moskalev seemed almost blasé.

In the corridor outside, Tunde waits for an embassy car to take him back to his hotel. Safer to travel under the Nigerian flag here than under Moskalev’s protection these days. But it can take two or three hours for the cars to make it through the security.

That’s where Tatiana Moskalev finds him: waiting on an embroidered chair for someone to call his cell and say that the car’s ready.

She clicks down the hallway in her spike heels. Her dress is turquoise, skin-tight, ruched and cut to accentuate those strong gymnast’s legs and those elegant gymnast’s shoulders. She stands over him.

‘You don’t like my husband, do you?’ she says.

‘I wouldn’t say that.’ He smiles his easy smile.

‘I would. Are you going to print something bad about him?’

Tunde rests his elbows on the back of the chair, opening his chest. ‘Tatiana,’ he says, ‘if we’re going to have this conversation, is there anything to drink in this palace?’

There’s brandy in a cabinet in what looks like a 1980s movie idea of a Wall Street boardroom: high-shine gold plastic fittings and a dark wood table. She pours them each a generous measure and they look out over the city together. The presidential palace is a high-rise in the centre of town; from the outside it looks like nothing so much as a mid-price four-star business hotel.

Tatiana says, ‘He came to watch a performance at my school. I was a gymnast. Performing in front of the Minister for Finance!’ She drinks. ‘I was seventeen and he was forty-two. But he took me out of that little nothing town.’

Tunde says, ‘The world’s changing,’ and they exchange a little glance.

She smiles. ‘You are going to be very successful,’ she says. ‘You have the hunger. I’ve seen it before.’

‘And you? Do you have … the hunger?’

She looks him up and down and makes a little laugh through her nose. She can’t be more than forty now herself.

‘Look what I can do,’ she says. Although he thinks he already knows what she can do.

She puts her palm flat to the frame of the window and closes her eyes.

The lights in the ceiling fizz and blink out.

She looks up, sighs.

‘Why are they … connected to the window frames?’ says Tunde.

‘Crappy wiring,’ she says, ‘like everything in this place.’

‘Does Viktor know you can do it?’

She shakes her head. ‘Hairdresser gave it to me. A joke. A woman like you, she said, you’ll never need it. You’re taken care of.’

‘And are you?’ says Tunde. ‘Taken care of?’

She laughs now, properly, full-throatedly. ‘Be careful,’ she says. ‘Viktor would chop your balls off if he heard you talking that way.’

Tunde laughs, too. ‘Is it really Viktor I have to be afraid of? Any more?’

She takes a long slow swig of her drink. ‘Do you want to know a secret?’ she says.

‘Always,’ he says.

‘Awadi-Atif, the new King of Saudi Arabia, is in exile in the north of our country. He’s been feeding Viktor money and arms. That’s why Viktor thinks he can crush the rebels.’

‘Are you serious?’

She nods.

‘Can you get me confirmation of that? Emails, faxes, photographs, anything?’

She shakes her head.

‘Go and look for him. You’re a clever boy. You’ll work it out.’

He licks his lips. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘I want you to remember me,’ she says, ‘when you’re very successful. Remember that we talked like this now.’

‘Just talked?’ says Tunde.

‘Your car is here,’ she says, pointing to the long black limousine pulling through the cordon outside the building, thirty floors below them.

It’s five days after that when Viktor Moskalev dies, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, of a heart attack in his sleep. It is something of a surprise to the world community when, in the immediate aftermath of his death, the Supreme Court of the country unanimously votes in emergency session to appoint his wife, Tatiana, as interim leader. In the fullness of time there would be elections in which Tatiana would stand for office, but the most important thing is to maintain order at this difficult time.

But, says Tunde in his report, Tatiana Moskalev may have been easy to underestimate; she was a political operator of skill and intelligence and had evidently used her leverage well. In her first public appearance, she wore a small gold brooch in the shape of an eye; some said this was a nod to the growing popularity of ‘Goddess’ movements online. Some pointed out how very difficult it is to tell the difference between a skilful attack using the electrical power and an ordinary heart attack, but these rumours were without any evidential foundation.