Sometimes just a pinch of spice can change the whole dish.
In the morning I invited the Chairman to breakfast. He asked about the freezer and the sturgeons, then confessed he likes my recipe for taking Crimea. I remembered the Taiwanese missionaries of the nineties and the bread with lard that startled a skinny Chinese man. I couldn’t refuse and didn’t want to agree. I offered to mediate: kosher cooks on the coast.…
I told the Chairman: people love believing rumors about freezers, and they say things about your daughter, too. “We’ll send three young family members for an apprenticeship.” Then I phoned a hacker, and within a minute came “Done.” I was made up to look like a star from the screen. The guard took me for one of his own and asked if I was going to Dagestan. I don’t know Hebrew.
I have a prodigal island. Taiwan isn’t on the stove yet, but I have the ingredients: discipline, unity of will, readiness to learn. Three places for the apprenticeship is enough. I leave content. The northern neighbor will teach his tricks, and on my wall already hangs a map with the real names.
The emperor leaves the basement with a project for month-long courses of “republican intelligence”: two hundred fighters a month, the rector tracking progress. And the empress is already waiting with a real task: bind the army with blood, the elite with fear, and future ministers with their own ambition.
Read the complete story in “Putin in Freezer.” This page contains only a short excerpt; the book has the rest.
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