An hour later, they were again in a taxi speeding along the streets of Moscow. It was dark now, and streetlights cast a dull yellow glow that illuminated and, at the same time, obscured the face of the city. A closer look revealed nothing positive about the part of Moscow they passed through. At the end of the large concrete apartment blocks, people queued outside phone booths, and every so often, a drunken man staggered home after a long workday.
‘Alcohol is clearly still a huge problem in Russia,’ Holger murmured.
‘Well, as you know, Gorbachev tried to limit the sales in the early 1980s, but that only resulted in the country’s production of illicitly distilled vodka skyrocketing. The WHO estimates that 700 Russians die of alcohol-related diseases daily,’ Tatjana said despondently.
The surroundings didn’t inspire further conversation, and as the taxi approached the city centre, the bleak atmosphere gave way to worse. Holger saw youth gangs roaming the streets like wolf packs on the hunt, and as they crossed Pokrovski Boulevard, they saw a group of skinheads surround a man and beat him till he was on the floor. The driver simply accelerated. The atmosphere in the cab was intense, and Holger gripped Tatjana’s hand hard.
‘It’s worse than Southside Chicago out there.’299
‘One of my connections has gotten the name of a girl who’s in the clutches of one of Andrej Nitchenko’s porn film directors. We’re going to meet her at the nightclub where she works, and then let’s see what she is courageous enough to tell us,’ said Tatjana in a low voice as the cab slowed to a halt in front of a building with a loud neon sign.
There was a long queue in front of Discotheque Night Flite, and the security staff enthusiastically patrolled the line and intermittently pulled someone from the line with explicit instructions not to return. Tatjana dragged Holger to the entrance and exchanged a few words with a bouncer who opened the door and welcomed them. Inside, the explosion of multicoloured lights and the ear-splitting sound levels hit Holger like a kick in the chest. The deep throbbing bass made him dizzy for a second, and he had to lean against the wall. When Holger had adjusted to the sensory overload, he could see the stunningly beautiful Russian girls on the dancefloor and the foreign businessmen sitting on the couches along the walls watching them. Holger instinctively froze in fascination, but Tatjana took his hand and pulled him determinedly through the room as if she were one of the girls who had, at last, got a client reeled in. As Tatjana pushed through the crowd, she scanned the room and finally saw the girl she was looking for. Tatjana put her mouth to his ear to make sure Holger understood whom she was pointing at. The girl was sitting with an overweight middle-aged man in a grey suit. He looks like a Kraut, Holger thought and nodded to Tatjana in acknowledgement. Tatjana caught the girl’s eye as she approached her and pointed toward the washrooms. The girl nodded, tongued the straw in her drink, stood and beelined for the washrooms. Holger was mesmerised by 300the stiletto heels of her thigh-high boots and her futile attempts to get her tiny skirt to cover just a little of her thighs. The dimmed light of the washroom area made her look beautiful, albeit very young. Holger could not get his eyes off her low-cut, tight-fitting blouse, which did not leave many details of her ample silicone bosom to the imagination. Tatjana was overtly annoyed by Holger’s naked fascination and casually jabbed her elbow into his side as she introduced him to the girl.
‘You know why we’re here, don’t you?’ Tatjana asked her.
The girl nodded and slowly chewed her gum with an open mouth as she spoke:
‘We can’t talk much here. I’m being watched. Surveillance cameras. We’ll have to go inside,’ she said in a girly voice, glancing at the door to the women’s restroom.
Tatjana and Holger exchanged looks but followed her through the door. The room was filled with provocatively dressed girls; however, their beauty faded considerably under the harsh halogen lights. It was a surreal hotchpotch of girls refreshing the blood-red hue of their lips, rearranging stockings and ensuring that their cleavages were presented as enticingly as possible, and a few sniffed a line of what looked like cocaine. The common denominator was that they ignored Holger’s presence.
‘They’re up for anything to earn a living,’ the young girl said to Tatjana and led them to the back of the room, lighting a cigarette as she continued:
‘I got neither the money nor the big movie jobs I was promised. I just got beaten and threatened. Once, I got drugged during the shooting of a film and was then gang raped. If you nail these sons 301of bitches, I’ll pray for you every night,’ she spat the words as if they were razor blades.
Tatjana put her arm around her, but the girl wrestled free.
‘They can’t hurt me anymore. Please forget that you ever saw me. It’s bad for business to talk to people like you. But I do have an address for you, as promised,’ the girl continued and reached deep into her cleavage, pulled a note from her bra, and handed it to Tatjana.
Tatjana studied the note intensely and slipped the girl a folded hundred-dollar bill while promptly scanning the room. Everybody was absorbed in their own activities, and the girl hiked up her skirt and tucked the note under the elastic edge of her stocking, leaving the room to find that night’s generous businessman. Tatjana waited until the girl had gone and then motioned for Holger to follow.
‘Now we have something to go on,’ Tatjana said as she pulled Holger towards the club’s exit. The sound wave of the music was again a punch in the face, and Holger was relieved when they were back out into the street, flagging down a cab.