The First Billion (39 page)

53

He hit me. Six years and not even a hello. Just a slap across the face.”

Cate walked into the bedroom, a hand to her mouth. She looked gray, pale, her eyes drifting here and there. Gavallan was at her side in an instant. Taking hold of her hand, he pulled it from her mouth and examined the wound. A nasty cut marred her lower lip. It had stopped bleeding, but without a stitch might open again. Closing the door behind her, he ventured a quick look into the hallway. A shadow sunk back into the doorway of the next room. One of Kirov’s security boys. So far he’d counted nine of them patrolling the corridors.

“Come in,” he said, leading her to the bathroom “Let’s get that cleaned up.”

“Kind of you, Mr. Gavallan. It’s not often a disloyal, disgraceful slut gets any TLC, especially at two o’clock in the morning.”

He moistened a washcloth and dabbed at her lip. He had no words for her, no way to assuage her tortured feelings. Abruptly, she pushed him away and stormed into the bedroom.

“I’m leaving,” she said. “Damned if he can keep me here.” She spotted her travel bag and scooped it up. “After all, I’m a traitor to his blood. An unrealistic dreamer who’s getting back at her father for simply protecting his own interests. He shouldn’t want anything to do with me.” She reached the door and turned the knob. Locked. She tried again and again, finally slamming her fist against the wood-grained panels. “Let me out,” she cried. “I’m going home.
My real home.
My name isn’t Kirov. It’s Magnus. Do you hear? I’m an American now.”

Gavallan laid his hands on her shoulders, turning her slowly, taking her in his arms. “Sit down. Have a glass of water. It’s going to be all right.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not going to be all right. He’s going to kill us. Like he killed Luca. Like he killed Alexei. Like he kills anyone who’s in his way.”

“No, Cate, he’s not going to kill us. He just wants to frighten us a little.”

She turned, staring at the walls, knowing as well as Gavallan that the room was wired for sound, and probably for pictures, too. “You win, Daddy,” she said. “I’m scared. I’m scared as hell.”

Gavallan got her to the bed and gave her some water. After a few minutes she recovered her calm. Her eyes cleared and her breathing eased. “Shit, that hurts,” she said, touching her lip. “The little prick.”

She caught Gavallan’s eye, and they laughed. After a minute he walked to the television and turned it on. He flicked through the channels looking for something loud or raucous enough to allow them to talk or at least whisper freely. He stopped at Channel 33, a smile flitting across his face. A basketball game was under way, Lakers versus the Knicks. Game three of the finals. Turning up the volume, he retook his place on the bed next to Cate. “Tell me what your father had to say.”

“He’s rebuilding the country and we’re stopping him. Mercury’s his greatest professional achievement and we’re letting a few minor details sour our view of the whole enterprise. We don’t see the big picture. I’m the criminal, not him. I’m the one guilty of treason. Of harming the Rodina. He’s gone insane, Jett. I swear it.
‘L’état, c’est moi.’
He practically uttered the words himself.”

“What about tomorrow? Do you know where he’s taking us?”

“No. He didn’t say. We didn’t end the conversation on an up note. He implied I should be glad not to be in Ray Luca’s shoes with all I’ve done. What about Graf? Oh, Jett, I’d forgotten him for a moment. How is he?”

“Alive, from what I gather. More than that your father didn’t say, except that we’ll be seeing Graf tomorrow.”

“Thank God,” said Cate. “What else did you say to him? I hope you didn’t threaten him.”

“Only with the truth.” Gavallan nodded subtly for her to go along. “I told him about Pillonel’s confession and that my attorney in the States will turn over the due diligence reports if he doesn’t hear from us. I told him I wanted the fifty million back from the bridge loan and that we had all better be on a plane to the States tomorrow. Graf included.”

Kobe Bryant swished a three-point bomb and the crowd at the Staples Center went crazy.

Cate cast her head to one side. “Did he agree?”

Gavallan heard the hope in her voice. “No. He’s convinced I’m lying. Says he’ll find out for himself tomorrow whether I’m telling the truth.”

“What does that mean?” Cate looked away, and when her eyes returned to him they carried the dreadful intent of her father’s words. “No, Jett, he can’t. You’ve got to—”

“Shh.” Gavallan nodded reassuringly. “I’ll be all right. He still needs me. I have the feeling he can’t walk away from this deal.”

“So did I,” said Cate. “There’s more to this than just Mercury’s continued success as a company. It’s much more than a mere business matter—Mercury’s grown larger than just an initial public offering.”

Gavallan rose and walked to the window, drawing back the curtain and peeking outside. The view gave onto an interior courtyard where two of Kirov’s Suburbans were parked. A trio of guards were busy giving the SUVs the chauffeur’s professional polish, leaning their butts against the chassis, talking furtively, and smoking cigarettes. Each cradled an Uzi beneath his arm. Gavallan tried to open the window but found it locked. The frame had been nailed to the sill.

Releasing the curtain, he took a second look at his carpeted prison cell. The room was large and luxuriously decorated in shades of brown and ochre, with a wooden four-poster bed, a sofa, a desk, a wet bar, a plasma-screen television hanging from one wall, and what looked like an authentic Matisse hanging from another. Welcome to the Stalag Four Seasons.

“Looks like we’re here for the duration.”

“The duration?”

“Of the night.” He refused to think about the next day, about Kirov’s keen desire to find out exactly what he did or did not know about the Russian’s operations.

“I know you wanted to get me alone,” said Cate, “but isn’t this a bit much?”

“Hey, you know what we Boy Scouts say: ‘Take it where you can get it.’ ”

“Very romantic.”

Gavallan slid his arm around her waist and drew her near him so that their shoulders were rubbing against each other. Turning toward her, he lifted her jaw with the tip of his finger. He looked at her eyes, serious, compassionate, and defiant, and the faint circles beneath them; at her cheeks wiped clean of blush; at her broken lip stern, uncompromising, slightly aquiver. “You don’t look so bad all rough-and-tumble, Miss Magnus.”

“It’s Kirov. Better get used to it.”

“Okay, Miss Kirov. But not for long.”

“Is that a promise?”

He answered with a kiss, gentle as a candle’s breath.

“Oww,” she moaned, smiling. She stood. “Stay here a second.” Opening her night bag, she went round the room and covered the Matisse with a skirt, the mirror with a pair of pants, and the triptych of Moscow by night with her blouse. “I don’t care if my father hears me,” she said, “but I’ll be damned if I let him see me.”

He always began with her shoulders. The skin there was a shade darker, more luminous, an intimation of her mysterious self. Gently, he pulled her shirt away and kissed her, breathing deeply to get the scent of her, enjoying the firm response of her flesh, feeling the muscles quiver at his touch. He kissed her neck, the cusp of her jaw, and then, unable to wait any longer, he lay her down on the bed. She threw her arms above her head and narrowed her eyes. It was a temporary capitulation, a tactical maneuver to lure him helter-skelter into her ambush. She moaned, and he could feel himself falling into her, a boundless, head-over-heels plunge into a warm, velvety abyss.

Somewhere within him he found the power to stop, if only for a second. He raised himself on an elbow to look at her. He saw not just her beauty but the sum of her self staring back at him: her strength, her courage, her will. Her humor, her obstinance, her frailty, her fear. She met his gaze, and her frank ardor roused in him a heady sensation, a cocktail equal parts respect, desire, honor, and lust that he had come to recognize as love.

“Jett.”

Her voice was husky, ripe, unfulfilled. Raising a hand to the back of his head, she ran her lithe fingers through his hair and pulled him to her.

He surrendered.

In another bedroom, in a less surveilled wing of the house, Konstantin Kirov lay awake, unable to sleep. Through a drizzly haze he was visited by a revolving medley of faces—Baranov, Volodya, Leonid, Dashamirov—each taking a turn to lambaste and curse and threaten him. Scariest of all was the father of modern Russia himself, Lenin, all too alive, rising from his dank tomb and waving an angry fist at him. “Mercury must go through!” he shouted as if addressing a band of discontented dockworkers in Petersburg. But instead of bread and peace, he was extolling the benefits of free market economics, of unfettered capitalism. “The offering is essential for the well-being of the nation. The president demands it. Your brother demands it. The future of the Rodina depends on it. On you, Konstantin Romanovich.
On you.
”

Sitting up, he pushed back his sheets and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t know why he was worrying so. He had Gavallan. He had Byrnes. The Private Eye-PO was no more. True, he had a few loose ends to tie up, but soon those would be eliminated as well. He’d tracked Jean-Jacques Pillonel and his wife to a hotel near the Zurich airport where they were spending the night awaiting a 9 A.M. departure to Mahé in the Seychelles. With a sly smile, Kirov silently advised all bettors not to wager on the Pillonels making the flight. Seats 2A and 2B would remain unoccupied, their occupants last-minute no-shows.

And then there was Baranov. Yuri Ivanovich Baranov, the prosecutor general who didn’t know when enough was enough. In the morning, Kirov would have a word with him, too, and that would be another problem taken care of once and for all. Mercury would go through exactly as everyone demanded, Lenin included!

Instead of lamenting his fate, Kirov urged himself to celebrate it.

One thing still bothered him: Katya. His beloved and unloving Katya. Sadly, he recalled the sting of his hand across her cheek. I’m sorry, my love, he apologized, seeing the blood curling from her lip, her eyes wide with shock and pain and fury.

Oh, Ekaterina Konstantinovna, why can you not understand your father? Why can you not see the sacrifices that must be made to insure our people’s welfare? And our family’s? Is it wrong to desire a nice station in this life? To earn enough to provide a few luxuries to brighten our short days? Can you not see that I am a visionary, a leader, and, as will be evident in a few short hours, a patriot, too?

Floundering for an answer, Kirov scowled, then rose from the bed. Crossing the room, he sat down in front of a bank of small video monitors, twelve in all, discreetly hidden behind a false wall of books. His daughter’s room was dark. She had covered several of the cameras, but not those embedded in the crown molding. Playing with the controls, he was able to zoom in on the bed. Faintly, he made out her sleeping form, and next to her, Gavallan. It really was a pity about their not marrying. He could have used an investment banker in the family. He had little hope of Katya—or
Cate,
as she called herself these days—falling for the next director of Black Jet Securities.

Turning up the volume, he heard only steady breathing.

“Sleep, Katya, sleep,” he whispered, kissing a finger and touching it to the monitor.

Kirov returned to bed and soon fell into an uneasy slumber. The dream came as he knew it would, the walls closing in on him, the ceiling falling toward the bed. He could smell the damp, taste the rot of centuries. Somewhere deep inside a voice promised him he would never go free.

Lefortovo.

Gavallan rose from the bed and padded to the bathroom. Darkness his cloak, he found the sink, lowered himself to a knee, and set to work. The first screw came off easily, the second cost his fingertips a layer of skin. Careful to make as little noise as possible, he jostled free the capton—a slim rectangular piece of metal that controlled the vertical motion of the drain—and laid it beside him. So much for the grip. Now he needed a blade. His hands ran from the U-shaped PVC drainage pipe to the smaller bore fishnet cables that supplied the water. A long slim rod, smooth and round as a screwdriver, ran between them, a bolt attaching it on either end. Only brute strength would free it. Sliding himself farther under the sink, Gavallan fastened his hand around the rod, counted to three, and yanked it furiously downward. The rod broke off cleanly, with hardly a snap.

Suddenly, he smiled. There was a time when his parents would have been glad if he’d said he wanted to be a plumber, or a carpenter, or just about anything else that would have stopped him from walking around town with his fists in front of him looking for a brawl to get into. With a bolt of clarity, he remembered how he felt in those days. The wild yearnings that would well up inside him, the unheroic desire to slug another man in the face—always someone bigger, someone imposing—to see the blood gush from his nose, maybe even hear the crunch of bone. For the life of him, he’d never understood why he was such a mean little bastard.

Now, these twenty-five years later, he had the answer. Divinity. God, nature, the force—whatever you wanted to call it—had provided him with some early on-the-job training for what was to come later in life.

For what was to come tomorrow.

Gathering the rod and capton, he slid from beneath the sink. A length of curtain wire would bind the two together; padding from beneath the carpet would serve as a grip.

He only needed something to sharpen the rod into a killing blade.

54

You want Kirov
,
I can help. Meet me at Pushkinskaya Metro, southwest exit, at seven o’clock. And make sure to bring a briefcase. You won’t believe the shit I have on him.”

A coarse laugh, and the call ended.

Yuri Baranov, prosecutor general of the Russian Republic, put down the phone. Eyes rimmed with sleep, he checked his watch. It was six o’clock. Through the curtains, a hazy sun filtered in. It took him a few moments to clear the cobwebs from his head and evaluate whether the call was legitimate or a crank. Since the investigation into Novastar had begun, his office had been inundated with complaints against Konstantin Kirov. Everything from an employee’s griping about her unfair dismissal to anonymous promises to obtain Novastar’s offshore banking records. Baranov thought the call a ten-to-one shot, but decided to go anyway.

Rising, he ducked beneath the clothesline that bisected his one-room apartment, picking off a shirt, some clean underwear, and a pair of socks, then shuffled to the window. There was a carton of milk on the sill, along with a jar of pickles, some plums, and a plate of smoked herring left over from last night’s dinner. He owned a refrigerator, but it was broken and he couldn’t afford to repair it, never mind the electricity to run it. Opening the window, he brought the food inside and performed a hurried ballet, dressing and eating at the same time. A strip of herring while he buttoned his shirt. A plum while he threaded his belt. A last sip of milk as he knotted his tie.

Four days after seizing some eight hundred fifty-three pages of documents from Kirov’s headquarters, his investigators had yet to find the evidence they needed to link Kirov to the millions of dollars stolen from Novastar Airlines. Oh, they’d dug up false receipts, double billings to clients, all manner of petty schemes to launder money and avoid paying income taxes. The practices were illegal. The state would file suit. But they’d come across no smoking gun that Baranov could set before a magistrate. The few documents he had found from the Banque Privé de Genève et Lausanne had led nowhere. The Swiss bank would not even confirm that Kirov was the holder of the numbered account.

Finished dressing, he considered taking some of the precautions that had become second nature to any government official working to put a crimp in an oligarch’s style. He thought about calling his deputy, Ivanov, and asking him to come along. No, he decided; Ivanov deserved to eat breakfast with his family. Better to request a police escort. Baranov dismissed that idea, too. The police would never show up on time, even if they had a car parked in Pushkin Square. Besides, he wasn’t so old that he couldn’t meet an informant on his own. He was hardly meeting a gang of thugs in a dark alley at midnight. This was Pushkin Square. Early on a Monday morning there would be throngs of passersby.

Dressed in yesterday’s trousers, his scuffed briefcase strangely light in his hand, he headed down the stairs and walked the fifty meters to the subway. The morning air was crisp and clean, not yet fouled by the legions of automobiles that had taken Moscow hostage these last years. Street signs advertised the latest American films. One showed four grotesquely obese Negroes seated on a couch, smiling like idiots. Baranov had no doubt but that the picture was an unquestionable masterwork, something Eisenstein himself might have directed. Giant billboards demanded he drink Coke and enjoy it. Part of him bristled at this relentless onslaught of Western imperialism, this secret invasion of the Rodina that was occurring can by can, frame by frame, ad by ad.

Relax, Yuri,
he told himself in a voice that belonged to the new millennium.
Let the people enjoy themselves. Life is hard enough as it is. Besides, Coke beats the hell out of Baikal any day.

He arrived at Mayakovskaya station at six forty-five. Descending the escalator to the Circle line, he ran his impromptu caller’s words over and over in his mind.
You want Kirov, I can help,
the man had said. Baranov tried to put a face to the voice. Was it an older man or a younger one? A Muscovite or someone from Petersburg? He decided the voice was familiar. Was it someone in his own office? Or someone they’d interrogated from Kirov’s? A Mercury insider, perhaps? Vexed at his inability to come up with an answer, he caught himself breathing harder and gnashing his teeth.

He had forgotten just how much he hated Konstantin Kirov.

Jean-Jacques Pillonel was having a terrible dream.

He saw himself from afar, a tired, bent man dressed in prisoner’s garb, gray dungarees, a matching work shirt, his feet carrying the heavy boots one saw on the rougher sort of motorcyclist. The man, who was at once him and not him, was marching in a circle around a dusty yard. There were no walls, but a voice told him he was in prison and that he was not free to go anywhere else. He continued his rounds, but with each circuit his steps grew heavier, his body denser, his mass harder to move. He began to sweat. He was not frightened by his plight as a prisoner so much as by the impending impossibility of mere locomotion. He realized that his burden was not one of extraneous weight but of conscience, and that he would never be rid of this load. A current of anxiety seized him, threatening to paralyze his every muscle.

The scene shifted and he was looking in the mirror at this man who was and was not himself. He was gaunt, poorly shaven. His eyes were lost, forlorn. This isn’t right, he was telling the familiar visage in the mirror. The reward for honesty must be greater, the relief more fulfilling, certainly longer lasting. The anxiety grew stronger, arcing up his spine, bowing his shoulders. Sensing he had no more time, he raised a fist and drove it into the mirror. The looking glass shattered. Everywhere shards of green and silver glass fell to the floor.

Struggling to the surface of consciousness, he felt a rustling in the bed next to him. A kick in the legs. He heard a shout, but it was muffled, distant.

“Claire?”

He opened his eyes.

His wife of thirty-two years stood across the room, held in the arms of a black-clad intruder. He had her by the neck, one hand over her mouth, the other pinning a knife to her throat.

“Claire!” he yelled, sitting up. A half second later a coarse, powerful hand cupped his mouth and forced him back down onto his bed.

“Silence!” The voice belonged to a stocky figure clad entirely in black. Black trousers. Black sweater. A black stocking snubbing the nose, rendering the lips flat, grotesque. The intruder wore plastic gloves and in one of his hands he held the knife. It was a monster, the blade twelve inches long, partly serrated, curling upward to a hungry tip.

“You’ve been a naughty boy,” he said in accented French. “You don’t know how to keep secrets.”

“Non,”
Pillonel argued. “I can. I can.”

The flattened lips drew back into a smile. “We shall see, Monsieur Pillonel.”

The subway pulled into Pushkin Square at six fifty-seven. The timing was perfect, thought Yuri Baranov while riding the wooden escalators up to the mezzanine level. And as he entered the tunnel that passed beneath Tverskaya Ulitsa to the Metro’s southwest exit, his gait assumed a triumphant rhythm. Something told him this was the real thing. That Kirov’s goose was finally cooked. His step faltered only once, when he wondered whether the informant might wish some quid pro quo. Immunity for his own crimes, perhaps, which Baranov could grant. Or money, which he couldn’t. Marching past the babushkas hawking their flowers and the Chechens their pirated videos, he decided he wanted Kirov so badly he’d be tempted to dish out a little of his own savings if it might help secure the villain’s conviction.

A humble table stood at the end of the tunnel, covered with an embroidered muslin cloth and decorated with twenty or so candles of varying colors and heights, all burning. The candles served as a memorial to the innocent victims killed at the spot a few years back by a Chechen guerrilla’s bomb. Some had whispered it was a ploy by the president to drum up support for the never-ending war against the insurgent republic. Baranov didn’t believe a word of it. Volodya was an honorable man. Who else would give him free rein to pull in thieves like Kirov?

It was with a subdued smile that Yuri Baranov mounted the stairs to the southwest exit of the Pushkinskaya Metro station. He did not notice the phalanx of young, crew-cut males who quickly erected a chain of sawhorses to block the tunnel behind him. Nor did he pay attention to the scaffolding at the head of the stairs, or the seesaw pounding of a jackhammer nearby. Construction was an omnipresent hazard in modern Moscow and the century-old subway stations were in constant need of repair.

The first shot took him high in the leg. He hadn’t heard a thing and had it not been for the spout of blood that erupted from his pant leg, he would have thought it a bee sting at worst. One hand grasped the railing for support, while the other fell to his thigh. “This is absurd,” he heard himself saying, and then somewhat irrationally, “It’s Monday morning, for Christ’s sake,” as if murder were not a state-approved way to begin the workweek. His eyes darted around, but he saw nothing. A sense of desperation seized him. Frantically, he tried to continue up the stairs. He took one step and fell to the pavement, writhing in pain.

“Get up, Baranov. It’s unseemly for government officials to grovel. Especially honest ones.”

It was the voice from the telephone.
The voice he couldn’t quite place. Only now, he knew exactly to whom it belonged. Grimacing, Baranov lifted his head and squinted to make out the figure at the top of the stairs. “You,” he said.

“Who else?”

Konstantin Kirov stood in a black suit with a black tie, hands on his hips, offering a gaze as morbid as his attire. “I have a message from the president. He asked me to deliver it personally.” Kirov snapped his fingers, and someone tossed him a large rifle. A Kalashnikov. With a halting, unsteady motion, Kirov cleared the chamber and brought the weapon to his shoulder. The gun looked ridiculously large in the small man’s hands.

“He said, ‘Be quiet,’ ” Kirov finished.

Baranov raised himself to his feet. He felt neither fear nor lament, but a pervasive contempt for this pitiable excuse for a human being.

“Liar!” he shouted.

A hail of bullets riddled his body in time to the jackhammer’s renewed assault.

Tell me the truth,” said Konstantin Kirov.

“Yes, I promise.”

“What did he want?”

Pillonel hesitated, and the knife dug in. “Mercury,” he said. “They knew I had faked the due diligence. They wanted proof.”

“And you gave it to them. Without so much as a call to a lawyer or the local police, you gave it to them.”

“They knew,” said Pillonel. “They already knew, goddamn it. Gavallan said he was going to the SEC with or without my help. He was going to report me to the Swiss authorities.” The intruder had tied his hands and feet to the bedposts with elastic cord and was kneeling beside the bed. In one hand, the man held the knife delicately, as if ready to fillet a fish, the point inserted meanly between Pillonel’s ribs. In the other, he had a cell phone, which he pressed to Pillonel’s ear. Pillonel had an urge to explain everything at once. “Gavallan had a gun. He put it to my head. I thought he would kill me. I had no choice. Of course I gave them the real books.”

“I can understand your anxiety at being confronted with your misdeeds. But why did you take them to your offices?”

“Gavallan demanded I show him Mercury’s exact financial condition—how much money the company had really been earning, its revenues, its expenses, its profits.”

“And you showed him. How kind of you to be so helpful.” The voice was more ominous because of its even tone, the complete absence of aggression, irony, or anger. “Did you ever once consider telling him he was mistaken, to leave you alone?”

“I couldn’t. I told you, he had a gun. He said you had killed the man on the Internet, that you would kill me next.”

“I never knew you for such a gullible sort.” Kirov laughed, then resumed his unhurried interrogation. “And after Mercury, what did you show them? Did Gavallan have any idea he was so close to the crown jewels?”

“Nothing. I gave them nothing.”

“Novastar?”

“It did not come up.”

“Not even a mention? What about Futura and Andara? Baranov knew well enough about them. Didn’t Miss Magnus have any questions about them? You didn’t show them the holding company’s banking records?”

Pillonel lay still, the lie poised above him like the blade of a guillotine. “I’m no fool. The records would take me down too.”

“If you gave them Mercury, you were already going down. If I were you, I might have taken the opportunity to win over the authorities, show them the error of my ways, maybe even try to offer up something to protect myself. I’m sorry I must be so thorough in this matter, but I’m sure you can understand that it is of the utmost importance I learn exactly what materials you gave Mr. Gavallan and Miss Magnus.”

Pillonel looked at his wife, his eyes begging her forgiveness. “I gave them nothing,” he whimpered. “Only Mercury. Novastar did not come up.”

“Ah, Jean-Jacques, you are a poor liar. Calm yourself now. You have nothing to worry about. I have them both with me—Cate and Mr. Gavallan. No more harm can be done. You don’t have to worry. I think you know what will happen if you decide to go to the authorities.”

“Yes, absolutely. Not a word.”

“Now tell me the truth and you’ll be on your way to Mahé before you know it. What evidence did you give Gavallan?”

Mahé. Sanctuary. A new life.

Pillonel grasped at the words, seeking solace and safety. His hands came away scratched and empty.
Kirov was also a poor liar.
“Nothing.”

“Good. I’m happy for it. As for the confession, you know that they don’t hold up in court when made under duress. Don’t be too hard on yourself. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gavallan’s lawyer throws the thing away.”

“What confession is that?” he blurted.

Pillonel heard Kirov murmur something like “I knew it” under his breath. Then he heard a harsher “Damn him,” and he realized he’d said something wrong. Something very, very wrong.