Vladimir

SHORT STORY

- CK Stead

It was 2007. I knew that it was, I although nobody said so. They came for me in my hotel room and took me down to the car. Putin was in the back. It was like a room. He half stood and reached out to shake hands.

"Vladimir Vladimirovich."

"Christian Karlson." "Sorry not much English," he said.

"Sorry no Russian at all," I replied.

For the five minutes it took to drive to the Marriott Aurora he continued to hold my hand. When it came in sight, he gave an order to the driver and we veered off into the streets behind the hotel. We stopped and it was as if we were in a city ruined by bombing. Outside the temperature must have been 20 below and the puddles were ice. I was shown a narrow and very steep stone stairway. "You can climb?" Putin asked, pointing ahead.

"I can," I said, as I could back then, effortlessly.

So we made our way up in a single line, Vladimir Vladimirovich, Christian Karlson, and two bodyguards. A sort of landing took us indoors and up a dark stairwell with green walls and marble steps. At the top huge double doors opened on what in a moment of carelessness I might have called "a glittering scene", all the men in formal attire, the women in ball-gowns with jewels. I checked myself - bow tie, cummerbund, gold cuff-links, shiny shoes - yes, it was all in order.

"So where are we?" I asked.

Putin didn't answer that. "You know one another," he said, pointing to Tom Stoppard in the crowd. Stoppard was tall and dashing, with that great head of curls I had always envied. He must have been well past 60 but looked much younger. He was smoking of course, a habit that was frowned on and going out of fashion in the West but not in Moscow, and never with Tom.