The First Billion (26 page)

They were there now, training, practicing, awaiting the green light. Team 7 from Department R of the First Directorate. Former Spetsnaz men trained to fight in all weathers. He imagined them clad in white, moving over the rough terrain—white anoraks, white snowsuits, white balaclavas.

Kirov thought of the audacious plan. Soon everything would be different. Seventy-two hours until Mercury went public in New York. Seventy-two hours until the FIS—
oh, fuck it,
he would call it what it was—until the KGB received a billion dollars into its private account. Seventy-two hours until the planes took off from Severnaya, heading east over the top of the world.

Imagining what was to come, Leonid Kirov shuddered. His brother was right: They would reserve a place for his bust in Red Square, next to Andropov and Iron Feliks. Nothing less would do for the next director of the KGB.

He reentered the dark room a few minutes later. The timer sounded, and he anxiously moved to the ropes of dangling film to check the negatives. Every frame was a blank, a pearly white slate, overexposed due to heat, low doses of radioactivity . . . there might be a hundred reasons why. Kirov chucked the worthless film into the trash bin and scowled. He’d had enough of rinsing mercury off his hands.

32

Gavallan woke in the backseat of a large car. His head was splitting, his mouth bone-dry. With a grunt, he tried to sit up. His back screamed as if gouged by a hundred razor blades. “Shit,” he grunted, and fell back.

“Jett, are you all right? Does your head hurt dreadfully? Let me look at you.”

Squinting at the bold sun, he made out Cate’s form seated behind the wheel. He’d do it, if only to show her. One hand found an armrest, the other the ridge of the rear seat. Teeth gritted, he hauled himself to an upright position.

They were driving north toward Palm Beach along A1A, a two-lane blacktop shaded by gnarled banyans, Norfolk pines, and giant clumps of frangipani. To the right, peeking between the ornate mansions that made up the communities of Gulfstream, Oceanridge, and Manalapan, lay the Atlantic Ocean. To the left were golf courses, more homes, and the intracoastal waterway.

“Jett, who did this to you?” Cate asked, reaching a hand back, laying it to his cheek. “Did you see them?”

Gavallan brushed away her fingers. “You mean you didn’t?” Despite her role as savior, she was the enemy. Someone to be distrusted, kept at arm’s length.

“I found you alone in the house, lying on the floor. The bedroom window was open. I suppose they left that way.”

“
They?
How did you know there was more than one person?”

“I didn’t. They . . . he . . . I was just . . .” She pulled up short, her features crunched into an offended grimace. “I don’t suppose thanks are in order.”

Gavallan eyed her suspiciously. As usual, she was dressed as if she’d been born to the place: khaki shorts, navy polo shirt, a pair of Ray-Bans hiding her eyes. Two nights ago she’d been the princess of Nob Hill. Today she was a soccer mom. He’d been quick to pick up on her chameleon’s gift of adaptability, her ability to look at home in places she’d never set foot in before, to make new acquaintances feel as though they were old friends. She could talk XML with the code pounders from Sun, deliver an address on the future of the Net to an auditorium of grade-schoolers, or bandy about internal rates of return with Meg and Tony, all with equal aplomb. It was her journalist’s secret weapon, and when they were dating, he’d often found himself amazed at her social dexterity. Today it made him nervous. He wasn’t certain who it was driving the car.

“Thanks.” He uttered the words without an ounce of gratitude.

The windows were open, and a stiff, cooling breeze swept through his hair and across his face. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply and was reinvigorated by the fresh, salty drafts. The throbbing of his head subsided. The rhythmic stabbing deep inside his belly eased. The pain became bearable. But the deception remained, and he decided it was far worse a companion.

“Stop the car,” he said.

“What?”

“I said, ‘Stop the car.’ ”

Cate signaled and guided the car onto the grassy shoulder. Gavallan pushed open the door and lowered himself gingerly to the ground. He had to move, to be free of their faux walnut and Naugahyde confinement. Cate came round and offered a hand, but again, he waved it away.

“Talk, damn it,” he said. “Don’t just stand there playing nursemaid. Talk to me. What are you doing here? You’re in this every bit as deeply as I am—even more, from the looks of things. Your fax number is all over Ray Luca’s correspondence. You’ve been feeding the Private Eye-PO his information. Why, Cate? I want to know what in the world is going on. And then I want to know why you didn’t tell me before.”

“I wanted to . . . I was worried . . . I don’t . . .” She started and stopped a dozen times, groping for a place to begin. Gavallan had never seen her so flustered. All part of the act, he decided.

“Just the truth, Cate. That’s all. It’s not so hard.”

Her features hardened as though she’d been slapped in the face. “If you saw the fax, then you know,” she said. “It’s about Kirov. He’s a criminal—not just a man who cuts a few corners, but a gangster. He’s as bad as Al Capone or John Gotti. He’s been under investigation by the police for six months now. The Russian prosecutor general and the FBI are all over him. The focus of their inquiries is Novastar Airlines. Kirov took over the company for half of what it was worth and is milking it of every cent, sending its foreign revenues to his private offshore accounts.”

“What about Mercury? Is the FBI looking at that too?”

“No one’s looking too closely yet, but with Kirov everything’s rotten. You’ve seen the proof. It’s hardly a model of propriety.”

“You mean the pictures of Mercury’s Moscow Operations Center? The Cisco receipts? If the cops aren’t concerned about Mercury, why are you trying to pull it down?”

“To get Kirov.”

“To get Kirov?” Gavallan smirked, drunk with disbelief. “What the hell does a reporter covering the mating habits of yetis in San Francisco have to do with a Russian billionaire ten thousand miles away? Sick of being a social gadfly? Is that it, Cate? Is this your bid for the big time? Looking for a promotion to hard news? Maybe a Pulitzer? Or is sinking Black Jet what you’re after. Dumping me wasn’t good enough.”

Cate’s eyes flared. “You bastard!” She took a step toward Gavallan, raising an opened palm, then stopped, her fury reined in. “You have no idea what you’re saying, how your words hurt.”

But Gavallan could match neither her emotional nor her physical control. Rushing forward, he pinned her to the car, squaring his face an inch from hers. “Kirov, eh? Bullshit! You don’t even know the man. What in the hell could he have done to get you on the warpath?”

“Stop it!”

Gavallan grabbed her by the arms and shook her. “Tell me.”

Cate raised a defiant chin, freezing him with her eyes. “He killed a friend.”

“Who?” Gavallan fired back with equal vitriol.

“Alexei,” she answered, the heat draining from her voice. “He killed Alexei.”

“Alexei who?”

“Alexei Kalugin. I loved him.”

“Tell me about it.” For the moment, he couldn’t believe anything she said.
Cate the deceiver.

“It was so long ago. Another life.” She gathered herself for a moment, and when she saw that Gavallan was waiting for her to go on, she drew a deep breath. “His name was Alexei Kalugin. We met at business school. When we graduated, we both took jobs at the K Bank in Moscow. It was our big adventure; our chance to see the world. Alexei started on the trading floor. I worked in international credits, handling the American correspondent banks. After about a month it became clear to both of us that the K Bank wasn’t on the up-and-up. Kirov was insisting we grant loans to companies that had no collateral, no creditworthiness whatsoever. It was crazy.”

“I’ll bet,” said Gavallan.

Cate took off her sunglasses and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her motions were clumsy, and he could sense her reticence, her confidence gone AWOL. Vulnerability was a new color for Miss Catherine Elizabeth Magnus, and to his dismay, it rendered her in a flattering light.

“After a couple of weeks, Alexei grew tight with the locals,” she went on. “The traders took him under their wing. They treated him as if he were one of their own. Then, it just happened.”

“What happened?” asked Gavallan.

“Alexei learned that Kirov and his crew were manipulating the market for aluminum futures. Kirov was buying the stuff from the country’s smelters at something like five cents a pound and selling it on the international market at forty-five cents. We’re talking major piracy.”

“I’d say a markup of nine hundred percent qualifies.”

“Alexei showed me what he’d found and I told him he had to go to the police. He didn’t want to. He knew it would be dangerous. It was ‘96, remember. The oligarchs were at war with each other. Anyone who said a bad word about them ended up dead. Every day there were bodies on the street. He just wanted to quit and go back to the States. But I insisted. I held his hand, and together we went to the district attorney, or whatever you call that post in Russian. The next day, Alexei disappeared. We took the Metro to work together. He went to the first floor. I went to the fifth. We had our usual lunch date, but he never showed. They found his body on the banks of the Moskva River a week after that. He had a bullet in his head. His tongue had been cut out. I left the country the same day.”

Gavallan kicked at the grass, doing his best to take it all in. He felt aghast and betrayed. Mostly he just felt enraged. Ten people had died this morning, ten precious lives that might have been saved had Cate not withheld her secret history from him. He didn’t think it necessary to offer his condolences for one more person he’d never met. Stepping closer, he pointed a finger at her heart. “You worked for Kirov? You knew he’s a murderer? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Cate shook her head disconsolately. “What’s there to say? Yes, I worked for Konstantin Kirov. Yes, I got my boyfriend killed. It’s not something I care to remember. Don’t be mad, Jett. I told you: It was another life.”

“No!” cried Gavallan, slamming his hand against the roof. “It was
our
life! I told you everything. The best and the worst of it. I gave you
my other life
. What makes you so special you couldn’t give me yours?”

“I tried a thousand times. You weren’t listening.”

“The hell you say. You think if I knew that Kirov killed your boyfriend I’d have gone ahead with the deal? That if the FBI and the Russian government were checking him out, I’d have kept Mercury on the calendar? I’m sorry, ma’am, if you hold so low an opinion of me.”

“Don’t you be self-righteous with me. The deal’s had warning signs on it since day one. You and the rest of the market were so hungry for a winner you never stopped long enough to check them out.”

“Bullshit.”

“It’s true and you know it.”

The barb pierced Gavallan, its sting all the sharper because she was right. “You want true?” he railed. “Ray Luca is dead. Nine innocent men and women are dead. None of them will be going home to their families tonight or tomorrow or ever again. All because I’ve continued pushing Mercury, when you knew I shouldn’t have. Oh, and there’s something else you ought to know: Graf Byrnes is alive. He called me after you ran out of the ball the other night. He told me the deal was good, that we could go ahead, but he made it clear Kirov had put him up to it. That’s where he is right now, I imagine—locked up somewhere in Russia with a gun to his head. For all I know, he could be dead by now. Since you know Kirov so well, honey, why don’t you tell me what Graf’s chances are.”

“Damn you,” she shouted, her lips trembling, a solitary tear streaking her cheek. “You’ve got no right.”

“Lady, I have every right. Mercury was my deal. Like it or not, I’m just as responsible as Kirov for those ten people who died today.”

“I’m so sorry.” The sobs came in huge waves, tremulous currents that racked her shoulders and sent shudders down her spine. Part of Gavallan demanded he comfort her, and almost instinctively, he stepped forward. But, reaching an arm toward her, he caught himself and pulled back. No, he told himself. She deserves this.

“Okay, I should have told you,” she said finally. “I see it now. I didn’t and I should have and I’m sorry.”

“Damn right you should have,” he boomed, his anger bursting like a thunderclap around them.

“I said I’m sorry. What more do you want?”

Gavallan said nothing. He felt estranged from her. He decided he’d been right—he didn’t know her. Maybe he never had. And that was what hurt most.

“I didn’t want to put you at risk,” she said, wiping at her tears, fighting to control her breath. “I just wanted to pull down the IPO. I thought if I could stop the Mercury offering, that would be enough to get at Kirov. A man like him only cares about money.”

“And Ray Luca was your helper?”

Cate nodded. “A friend at the
Journal
went to school with him, knew about his playing the Private Eye-PO.”

Gavallan turned his back and walked away a few steps. He was working the angles, trying to sift what was left of Mercury from the cinders of Cate’s emotional firestorm. He kept revisiting his tour of Mercury’s offices in Geneva and Kiev and Prague, seeing room after room of routing equipment, offices humming with motivated employees. Mercury had the vibe of a successful, efficiently run company, and that was something you just couldn’t fake. “I saw the fax in Luca’s bedroom—the one from the prosecutor general’s office. It’d been sent from your home. Where did you get all your information, anyway?”

“One of the detectives who investigated Alexei’s murder was part of the task force looking into Kirov’s affairs. Detective Skulpin is his name. Vassily Skulpin. We both knew Kirov was behind Alexei’s death, but Detective Skulpin could never gather any proof. Over the years we kept in contact, and when Skulpin’s task force began to move against Kirov he let me know. Detective Skulpin was the one who told me Kirov had faked the due diligence.”

Gavallan winced as if he’d been slapped. “He told you that?”

“He has an informant inside Mercury. The informant said that someone who works for Kirov was covering up its faults, painting a prettier picture than reality allowed. The only proof was the photos. And then the receipts.”

Of course Kirov had faked the due diligence. If Luca’s claims were true, there was no other way to have slipped it by.
Kirov faked the due diligence.

“Look,” he said. “Let’s get to the hotel. I’ve got to pick up my things. If we hurry we can still make the three o’clock flight back home.”

Cate slid behind the wheel and started the engine. They drove in silence for a minute or two, then Gavallan shot her a sidelong glance. “The hotel’s just up the road, north side of Manalapan.” He brought a hand to his forehead. “Oh, shit, my rental car. I left it a block away from Luca’s.”

“We’ll pick it up later,” said Cate. “Right now, let’s go get your bags. The Ritz-Carlton, right?”

Gavallan rolled his eyes without humor. “Remind me to have a word with Hortensia about keeping my travel plans quiet,” he said, referring to his housekeeper.

“Don’t be mad at her, Jett. I called your office to apologize for my behavior at the ball. When they said you were home ill, I spoke to Hortensia. It’s not fair to ask her to keep secrets from your friends.”