June 23rd 2024
Lenin
It was a week since the first visit of the mysterious bureaucrat. The whole party was now prepared to meet the latest Russian autocrat, whose reign had been so long to be second to Stalin’s only. The dark car took a road directed outside Moscow, but the trip was not longer than an hour, as promised by the Kremlin’s emissary. “You see, there is nothing you must fear, it is all propaganda”, continuously repeated the man who wore a grey suit and nothing more original than a socialist realism painting. The art dealer would have liked to reply that Goebbels insisted on the fact that a lie, after multiple times, could become the truth. He did not however want to appear sarcastic in a stronghold of the Soviets. Moreover many others attributed the same quote to Lenin and he was reluctant to offend a person that has so far behaved so decently with him. The former business consultant felt a similar impulse, but she was sometimes still under the effect of the measures taken by her previous company towards anybody who expressed a not politically correct opinion. After all nor the Americans nor the Red Army loved Hitler’s propaganda chief officer. Lenin did not react to the words of the bureaucrats. He did not appreciate his way to communicate far too mellifluously for the envoy of his successor. Political commissars had always been quite rude in his time and the few ones who did not expressly relied on violence, were subtly brutal, but never pleasant. The Soviet Leader realised that his old ego was coming back and was now careful not to give him anymore space. Rage, he had recently learnt, nourishes herself and becomes uncontrollable after a while uncontrollable. Such an acrimonious attitude had allowed him not to get distracted by the loss of his brother nor to be discouraged by years of exile. He eventually obtained a power he would have never expected, but that strong hatred devoured his body. By a miracle or the wizardry of a rabbi, he was still alive, or more precisely able to move and to think. He did not want to waste his chance. He was also aware that if he had to obtain the better while facing the President of the Russian Federation, he should not indulge in any kind of disturbance.
The art dealer was far less nervous, he had always wished to have to deal with Russian billionaires, those kind of persons who would have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to consolidate their prestige. They did not care whether the Leonardo they were going to acquire had been reputed a fake by well regarded connoisseurs and classified as an oeuvre from the school by many authoritative experts. If he only had such a contact in the post, he should have never found himself out of the business. However he was perfectly conscious that his goal was to eliminate such a precious contact and not to establish a valuable agreement. After all it was a waste of a unique opportunity against solid ethical values. His father, once in the Red Hand, chose for the latter ones, even when it was evident that the Labour governments would have endorsed a truce with the IRA and a reconsideration on how to interpret the troubles. Remembering his old man provided him with strength and determination, everything that he desired was to make his dad proud. That was the actual chance not to be missed, nothing else. When the party was getting close to the room prepared for the dinner, the bureaucrat mostly addressed his instruction to the young Briton. The latter was expected to lead the team. Under other circumstances, that would have made the father of the Red Revolution, but Lenin was too absorbed to visualise his own next moves, than to take care of a petty imbalance of power.
The former business consultant felt totally lost. She had brought with her Heidi's book, quite unconsciously, and she grabbed her treasure with the right hand. She justified to the mysterious envoy her need to read a novel when busy with very important clients. It relaxed her. The man accepted the excuse and, after having verified the internal pages of the volume, allowed the young lady to keep it with her. He had missed Lenin's writing and the woman was relieved by most of her fears all together. Still she did not really know how to behave and tried to apply all what she had learnt in her previous consultancies. This time, if the partner would have not appreciated the deck, there could have been no way out.
