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through the log walls and pine smoke clouding the air, their conversation had turned to hard truths and blunt language.In vino, Veritas. By midnight, the uniformed bodyguards outside were stamping their heavy boots to keep warm, and Andrei Petrovich and Mikhail Sergeevich were both drinking vodka directly from the bottle, had flung its tin¬foil cap onto the rough-hewn boards of the cabin's floor. By then, too, the revered Andrei Petrovich Androv was boldly speaking his mind.
"Mikhail Sergeevich, time has run out for Russia. There is nothing to buy, almost nothing to eat, and prices are soaring. There is so much corruption you will not leave a Russian hospital alive unless you've bribed everyone, right down to the drunken orderlies. And those bribes can't be money. Who wants rubles? They are worthless. These days you have to bribe with vodka." He'd laughed sadly, then picked up an old copy of Pravda there by the fireplace, waved it in the air, and tossed it into the crackling flames. "When we start cooperatives, they are immediately taken over by our new mafia, Russia's ruble millionaires. Every¬thing—"
"Perestroika will succeed in time, Andrei Petrovich," the president had insisted perfunctorily, still not having explained why they were meeting. "We are moving as rapidly as circumstances will permit. The bureaucracy—"
"Perestroika!" Androv had roared back. "Have you heard the latest joke from Moscow? Perestroika is like a country where everyone is switching from driving on the left side to the right side—gradually. Our half-measure concessions to a market economy have produced the worst of both systems. We now have a land with socialist initia¬tive and capitalist conscience." He paused to laugh again, then sobered. "And soon, very soon, we're going to find ourselves in the technological Third World. We need a vision. Even more, we need hard currency, and Western technology now. And we need massive amounts. Nothing less can save us."
That was when the president had nodded silently, then lifted