Now get lost!
I’m going to report you.”
“You’re not going to report me to anybody,” said Ostap knowingly. “Of course I can leave, but the moment I step out onto this Lesser Tangential Street of yours, you’ll run after me, crying, licking my janissary’s heels, and begging me to come back.”
“And what makes you think that I’ll beg?”
“You will.
And that’s how it should be, as a friend of mine, Basilius Lokhankin, often said. That’s exactly what the Great Homespun Truth is all about.
Here it is!”
The grand strategist put the folder on the table, started to undo its shoelaces slowly, and continued:
“But first let’s make a deal.
No dramatic moves!
You are not to strangle me, not to throw yourself out the window, and, most importantly, not to die of a stroke.
If you decide to experience an untimely death, you’ll make me look foolish.
The fruits of my lengthy and honest labors would be lost.
So let’s have a little chat.
It is now clear that you don’t love me.
I’ll never get from you what Nick Osten-Backen got from Inga Zajonc, my childhood friend.
So I’m not going to sigh in vain or grab you by the waist.
Consider the serenade over.
The sounds of balalaikas, psalteries, and gilded harps have all died out.
I come to you as one legal entity to another.
Here’s a file weighing six to eight pounds.
It’s for sale, and it costs a million rubles, that same million you refuse to give me as a gift because you’re so stingy.
So buy it!”
Koreiko leaned over the table and read:
“’The Case of Alexander Ivanovich Koreiko.
Opened June 25, 1930.
Closed August 10, 1930.”
“Hogwash!” he said, shrugging.
“I’m sick of this.
First you bring me this money, now you come up with some kind of case.
It’s ridiculous.”
“So are you buying or not?” the grand strategist persisted. “The price is very reasonable.
For a pound of riveting information on the subject of underground commerce, I only charge 150,000.”
“What information?” asked Koreiko rudely, reaching for the folder.
“The most fascinating kind,” replied Ostap, politely pushing Koreiko’s hand away. “The information about your second, real life, which is strikingly different from your first life, the one at the Hercules, the forty-six ruble one.
Everybody knows about your first life.
From ten to four, you support the Soviet regime.
As for your second life, from four to ten—I alone know about it.
Do you get the picture?”
Koreiko didn’t answer.
Shadows lay in his drill-sergeant jowls.
“No,” said the grand strategist emphatically, “unlike everyone else, you came from a cow, not an ape.
You think very slowly, like a hoofed mammal.
I’m telling you this as an expert on horns and hoofs.
So once again: I think you have roughly seven or eight million.
The file costs a million.
If you don’t buy it, I’ll take it elsewhere immediately.
They won’t give me anything for it, nothing.
But you will be finished.
I’m telling you this as one legal entity to another.