"Victor Pelevin. Babylon (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

the thing to raise doubts in his mind.'
'Don't go complicating things,' said Morkovin with a dismissive wave of
his hand. 'Life's simpler and stupider than that. And then there's this ...'
He took a slim case out of his pocket, opened it and held it out to
Tatarsky. It contained a heavy watch that was almost beautiful in a
repulsive kind of way, made of gold and steel.
'It's a Rolex Oyster. Careful, you'll chip off the gold plate; it's a
fake. I only take it out on business. When you're talking with the client,
flash it around a bit, you know. It helps.'
Tatarsky felt inspired by all this support. At half past twelve he
emerged from the metro. The guys from Draft Podium were waiting for him not
far from the entrance. They'd arrived in a long black Mercedes. Tatarsky had
already learned enough about business to know the car had been hired for
about two hours. Sergei was unshaven as ever, but now there was something
sullenly stylish about his stubble - probably due to the dark jacket with
the incredibly narrow lapels and the bow tie. Sitting beside him was Lena,
who looked after contracts and kept the books. She was wearing a simple
black dress (no jewellery and no make-up) and in her hand she was holding an
attache case with a golden lock. When Tatarsky climbed into the car, the
three of them exchanged glances and Sergei spoke to the chauffeur.
'Drive on.'
Lena was nervous. All the way there she kept giggling as she told them
about some guy called Azadovsky - apparently her friend's lover. This
Azadovsky inspired her with an admiration that bordered on rapture: he'd
arrived in Moscow from Ukraine and moved in with her friend, got himself
registered in her flat, then invited his sister and her two children up from
Dnepropetrovsk. He'd registered them in the flat and immediately, without
the slightest pause, swapped the flat for a different one through the courts
and dispatched Lena's sister to a room in a shared apartment.
'He's a man who'll really go far!' Lena kept repeating.
She was especially impressed by the fact that, once the operation had
been completed, the sister and her children were immediately banished back
to Dniepropetrovsk; there was so much detail in the way the tale was told
that by the end of the journey Tatarsky began to feel as though he'd lived
half his life in the flat with Azadovsky and his nearest and dearest;
but then, Tatarsky was just as nervous as Lena.
The client (Tatarsky never did find out what his name was) looked
remarkably like the image that had taken shape in Tatarsky's mind following
the previous day's conversation. He was a short, thickset little man with a
cunning face, from which the grimace of a hangover was only just beginning
to fade - evidently he'd taken his first drink of the day not long before
the meeting.
Following a brief exchange of pleasantries (Lena did most of the
talking; Sergei sat in the corner with his legs crossed, smoking) Tatarsky
was introduced as the writer. He sat down facing the client, clanging the
Rolex against the edge of the desk as he did so, and opened up his notebook.
It immediately became clear that the client had nothing in particular to
say. Without the assistance of a powerful hallucinogen it was hard to feel
inspired by the details of his business - he droned on most of the time
about some kind of oven-trays with a special non-stick coating. Tatarsky