Last to Fold

CHAPTER 1

The news broke first on Ibansk.com, as it often does these days, the hyperbolic blog having filled the void left by the Kremlin-controlled media for informative, if overheated, news of the New Russia. They say even Putin reads it—secretly, of course. Citizen Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, the anonymous impresario behind Ibansk, was digging in the Cheka’s graveyard again, a favorite spot of his and a dangerous place to be found with a shovel. No one’s caught on to Ivanov yet, but plenty of people would happily see him buried. I know because I know a lot of them. As I read his latest post, I had the feeling the list just got longer.

I remembered Kosokov. A short, coarse, ambitious man, too sure of himself by half. He made a point of telling you how well he knew everyone from Yeltsin on down. Exactly the kind of guy to make a killing in Russia’s train-wreck transition to capitalism. He wasn’t one of us—us being the Cheka, Lenin’s original and still my preferred name for the ChK/GPU/OGPU/KVD/NKVD/MVD/MGB/KGB/SVR/FKB/FSB. Most know it as the KGB, or today’s acronym, FSB. The secret police by any label you choose.

Kosokov was always around, acting as if he belonged. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but it seemed odd, looking back. The Cheka has always taken care of itself first, and we were under attack from all sides back then, following the failed Gorbachev coup and the collapse of the Party. Kosokov was one who argued loud and long for putting us out of business. Our paths might have become intertwined later on, but I was long gone by then, and he, of course, had disappeared. Or had he?

I went back to Ibansk.com.

Even as an ex-Chekist, I don’t try to defend the Soviet system. I lived it on all sides, experienced everything it could inflict, for forty years. I still have the scars. I moved to New York to get away from my past and to keep some distance from the cauldron of Wild West capitalism, pseudo-democracy, and Cheka control we now refer to as the New Russia. Ivanov’s more direct. He calls it Ibansk, which translates roughly as Fucktown. Making a clean break is never easy, though, especially in this global age, even forty-seven hundred miles and an ocean away.

We have a saying in Russia. If a pig comes to your table, he will put his feet on it. Trouble is, no one tells you how to spot the pig.

CHAPTER 2

I found a parking place, legit, on East Eighty-third, just off Fifth. Good till eleven thirty, when the street cleaners come, but I expected to be on my way by then.

I’d driven uptown, Ivanov’s florid prose filling my head. He takes great pleasure in it, but it’s a far cry from the hard, flat, biting satire of the original Soviet-era creator of Ivanov and Ibansk, Alexander Zinoviev. He was a master wordsmith. Fucktown was his moniker then, when it was even more apt.

My destination was two blocks south, and that’s all it took to work up a sweat. We were entering the second week of a mid-June heat wave. The thermometer hadn’t seen the seventies in six days. Not the dry heat of Chandler’s Santa Anas, the kind that made meek wives thumb carving knives while eying their husbands’ necks. This was heavy, soaking New York heat. The air clung to your body like a wet black garbage bag, and everybody on the street looked like he carried a meat-ax. Yesterday topped out at ninety-nine, and Con Ed blew a transformer. Most of Midtown lost power. Office buildings emptied, and bars swelled—the former had lost air-conditioning, but the latter still had ice. The city seemed evenly divided between those fuming at the disruption and those determined to turn calamity into a good time. I had one foot in each camp.

The aftereffects were still being felt this morning, including on the subway, which was one reason I drove uptown. I enjoy heat, most of the time. Where I grew up, there was precious little of it. Even so, like everyone else, I was hoping this would end soon.

The weather wasn’t the only thing aggravating New York. A credit crunch, not too different from the one that wiped out Kosokov, was jerking the financial markets around like a sadist with a dog on a leash. The previous week, on Wednesday, the stock market dived three hundred points. On Thursday it lost another two twenty. It tried to rally Friday morning, before the bottom fell out and the Dow lost five percent. Yesterday was a shaky day, but flat, a relief to everyone. Nobody was predicting what would happen next. I keep a little money in the market, but I’m enough of a Marxist not to bet too much on the cornerstone of capitalism. Like Chekhov said, when you live on cash, you understand the limits of the world around you. That’s a minority point of view in this town.

I was early, so I crossed the street to get a better look at 998 Fifth Avenue from the plaza in front of the Metropolitan Museum. Twelve stories of Italian Renaissance–style limestone evoked wealth and solidity—a lot of wealth and solidity. The building’s exterior was newly cleaned, and the stone shone bright white. Panels of green and gold marble, set into the walls at the eighth and twelfth floors, sparkled. One of the first apartment buildings that was designed to coax New York’s wealthy out of their town houses into a uniquely American residential experiment—communal living for millionaires. The facade reminded me, as the stolid prewar co-ops on Fifth and Park often do, of the massive Stalinist apartment blocks that line several of Moscow’s main boulevards. They have the same solidity, the same anonymity, the same imposing mass, the same we’ll-be-here-long-after-you’re-gone attitude. Not that astonishing, given that many were built around the same time. The Moscow buildings, however, were constructed for a completely different kind of communal living, every room jammed with multiple families. No workingmen (other than servants) ever lived at 998 Fifth, and the men who did were unlikely to appreciate the comparison.

I knew from the real estate columns that apartments in buildings like this rarely came on the market, and when they did, the prices ran into tens of millions. A broker I’d dated once told me, with more than a little breathless reverence, you needed three times the purchase price in liquid assets—stocks, bonds, cash—before the co-op boards that ruled these residential fiefs would even think of letting you in the door. The ratio was even higher in “the best” buildings. That relationship didn’t last, probably because she figured out I wasn’t Avenue material. The man I was going to see, Rory P. Mulholland, had no problem making the cut—or hadn’t when he bought the apartment. Today, if the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post were to be believed, he was feeling the pinch.

I pictured Mulholland as an American Kosokov—plump, arrogant, imperious. The little research I’d done supported that impression. A second-generation Irish immigrant, he’d also made his fortune as a banker, turning a sleepy New England credit union into America’s sixth-largest lender, mainly by catering to people with credit ratings others wouldn’t touch. FirstTrustBank was the country’s most aggressive marketer of credit cards and a major player in the subprime mortgage market. Mulholland preyed on the poor, charging a healthy premium for providing them access to credit the rest of us take for granted. He was the kind of man Marx blamed for the world’s problems. Lenin would have had him arrested, Stalin—shot. Now maybe the markets were going to mete out their own brand of punishment. It was becoming more and more clear that Mulholland had borrowed long and lent short, which even an ex-socialist knows is a form of Russian roulette. Wall Street sharks, sensing one of their own wounded in the water, were circling. FTB’s stock had almost halved since Wednesday.

I didn’t expect to like Mulholland much, I’d already told Bernie that, and I was ninety percent sure I didn’t want to work for him. I also had business in Moscow I was eager to attend to, a big breakthrough in a decade-long project. Bernie asked me to meet with him at least, and Bernie and I go way back, to the days when he was on one side and I was on the other. He’s also my best source of business. One reason being he has much higher tolerance for self-important men like Mulholland than I do.

I took a deep breath and started to cross the street. I stopped, choking on wet air caught in my throat. Three identical SUVs, windows tinted black, paraded down Fifth Avenue and halted, double-parked at the corner. Police vehicles of some kind. I waited, but no one got out. Probably part of a motorcade, getting ready to form. Plenty of diplomats and dignitaries in this part of town. I continued across and approached the entrance of the building under a heavy iron awning. The door opened before I got there. The limestone lobby was cool and dark, a welcome change from the sidewalk. A uniformed doorman looked me up and down without giving any indication of the impression formed. I said I was there to see Mr. Mulholland. The doorman looked over to another uniformed man behind a desk, who lifted a receiver.

“Who shall I say is here?”

I told him. He punched a button, waited, said, “Mr. Turbo,” into the receiver, hung up, and nodded toward the elevator in the back. Yet another man in uniform drove silently to the ninth floor. Expensive place to live at Christmas.

The elevator man pulled back the gate. I stepped out of the walnut cab into a small vestibule. A pair of mahogany double doors opened before I could knock. A man in a dark suit, white shirt, and silver tie gestured that I should enter.

“Wait here, please.”

He left me in an entrance hall that would not have been out of place in an English manor house. No windows, a half-dozen doors, and a large curved staircase in one corner ascending to the heavens. Plenty of pictures, all Old Masters, some better than others, biblical themes. I was trying to divine the message an arrow-riddled St. Sebastian conveyed to arriving guests when the man in the silver tie returned.

“This way, please.”

He led me to a door at the far end of the hall, knocked once, and stood aside. I went in.

The room was dark and cool, like the lobby. No light from the windows, only lamps. Geography said we were on the side of the building overlooking Central Park, where most people would want to show off the view, but the curtains were drawn. Too bad—sunlight was a short-lived visitor where I come from and never to be shut out entirely, even in a heat wave. Another manor house room, double height, paneled, bookshelves all around, with what looked to be a family crest plastered onto the vaulted ceiling. An outsized marble fireplace took up one end, counterbalanced by an enormous partners’ desk at the other. The desktop was clean except for two computer flat-screens. Over the fireplace was a large Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child. Early Italian Renaissance, unless I missed my guess. Mary was lovely, but I’ve never gotten used to the adult features Renaissance painters give the baby Jesus. A carved balustrade circumnavigated the bookshelves at the second level. The books were leather bound, and some looked as though they’d actually been read, but not, I was willing to wager, by their current owner.

Two men rose from chairs by the fireplace. Bernie Kordlite came across an acre of Oriental carpet, hand outstretched, smiling. He was medium height, five-ten, two inches shorter than I am. In his sixties, he was losing the baldness battle and showing some paunch. He had a round face, wide mouth, and small nose, on which was perched a pair of circular horn-rimmed glasses. He was dressed in a three-button sack suit and striped tie. Bernie is perpetually dressed in a three-button sack suit and striped tie. I’ve always wanted to ask Barbara, his wife, if that’s what he sleeps in.

“Hello, Turbo,” Bernie said, grabbing my hand. “Thanks for coming uptown. Let me introduce Rory Mulholland. Rory, this is Turbo Vlost.”

Mulholland stood by his chair, waiting for me to come to him. I thought about standing my ground, too, forcing him to take the first step, but I’d come here because Bernie asked me to, and it was pointless to pick a fight, especially a petty one, as soon as I walked through the door. I was tempted though.

“How do you do, Mr. Vlost,” Mulholland said.

I took his hand. Fleshy, his grip neither firm nor limp.

“Call me Turbo.”

He didn’t say, Call me Rory. He sat and gave me the once-over, not intently, but as if he were vaguely curious how someone like me came to be in his library. His face was as expressionless as the doorman’s downstairs.

Mulholland wore a suit as well, but his was tailored. Double-breasted, dark gray with a heavy white stripe that stated without question Savile Row. His white shirt had a blue RPM monogram on the French cuff. Woven blue and gold silk tie that probably cost more than my car. Tied in a Windsor knot. I’ve never trusted men who use Windsor knots. The entire Brezhnev Politburo wore them, and they were all hard-asses. I shouldn’t talk—I haven’t worn a tie in years.

Mulholland was shorter than I expected—about five foot eight—and rounder, too. He looked younger than his sixty-eight years. His dark curly hair was still full—no gray. His face was without wrinkles, his complexion Irish-pale with round red cheeks—an aging Pillsbury Doughboy, except for one thing. He had hard, dark eyes behind round tortoiseshell glasses that tried to soften them but didn’t stand a chance. A predator’s eyes. I knew them from the Gulag and the Cheka, and I’ve always made a point of keeping my distance.

I turned to Bernie with a look in my eyes that said, I want out, but he either didn’t get the message or ignored me. “Sit down, Turbo. Coffee?”

“No, thanks. Had my fill.”

“Excuse me a moment,” Mulholland said, walking to the desk at the far end. Just after nine thirty, I had a pretty good idea what he was doing. He pushed a couple of keys on his computer. “Market opened down fifty, we’re down two. Not an auspicious start to the day.” “We” would be FirstTrustBankCorp, of which he owned twelve percent.

I took off my jacket, probably a breach of etiquette, and sat next to Bernie. I was wearing the same thing I always wear, gray linen jacket, black T-shirt, beige linen trousers. In winter, I substitute leather and flannel for the linen and a turtleneck for the T-shirt. Saves a lot of time in the morning, not thinking about what to wear.

Mulholland came back down the long room and reclaimed his seat. He straightened his cuffs, then his tie, looked at Bernie, and turned toward me. He was trying to decide between more small talk and getting down to business. Once he started telling his story, he was vulnerable. By the time he finished, I’d own some piece of him. Men like Mulholland didn’t get where they got by exposing themselves. He was instinctively uneasy, trying to delay the inevitable. I waited patiently. Given the mindset I’d brought with me, I was somewhat enjoying the moment.

Bernie, however, was in a hurry, or just uncomfortable with the silence. “Right,” he said, “Rory, perhaps you’d like to tell Turbo—”

Mulholland held up a pudgy finger. It showed his age more accurately than his face. “I have a few questions for Mr. Vlost first.”

He wanted to run the meeting, maintain control for as long as he could. I turned and tried to look attentive—for Bernie’s sake.

“You were in the KGB,” he said. A statement, not a question.

I nodded.

“How did you come to choose that career?”

“Beat being a prisoner.”

That got a reaction. Usually does.

“I don’t understand.”

“Limited career choices. Could’ve been a criminal. Had most of the necessary training, but prison and I didn’t agree. KGB looked pretty good by comparison.”

“I still don’t follow.”

I wondered how much Bernie had told him and, not for the first time, how much he knew.

“Law, crime, and punishment were ill-defined concepts in the Soviet Union. The line moved around. A lot of people started out on one side and ended up on the other. I was lucky, I have some skills that were useful.”

This was the truth, as far as it went, which wasn’t very far. The rest of the story was something I, along with millions of other Russians, don’t discuss. Shame is the most insidious of human emotions—worse than death, as another of our proverbs puts it.

“It didn’t bother you to enforce the same law that victimized you?”

“Who said I was victimized?”

Bernie said, “Rory, I—”

Mulholland said, “You were a member of the Party.” Another statement.

“Had to be.”

“You believe all that Marxist-Leninist claptrap?”

“Marx was a pretty good historian but a poor student of human nature. Even in its pure form, before the Bolsheviks got hold of it, Communism is a flawed ideology. People don’t want to share. They want to keep everything they can get.”

I looked around the paneled room. Mulholland frowned, and Bernie winced.

“Why did the KGB want you?”

“Languages. I speak seven.”

“You were well trained. I don’t hear any accent.”

“Mes amis français me disent la même chose. I don’t hear any Boston brogue either.”

“That would be the nuns. Another kind of police.” He smiled at his joke. “What did you do in the KGB?”

“Started out in the Second Chief Directorate, counterintelligence. Spent most of my career in the First Department of the First Chief Directorate. That’s the part that spies on you.” I gave him a friendly grin to let him know it was nothing personal, which he did not return. “Retired with the rank of colonel. That’s about all I can say.”

“Can or want to?”

I shook my head. The look on his face said people didn’t do that to him very often. The look went away.

“How long have you been here?”

“Since ’93.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“Everything about Russia was changing. Except the KGB. When Primakov took over, he offered an early retirement program. I took him up on it.”

He looked as if I’d finally said something sensible.

“Married?”

“Used to be.”

“Divorced?”

I nodded.

“That’s unfortunate.”

“Not according to my ex-wife.”

“That’s not what I mean. Marriage is a sacrament. Divorce is something that shouldn’t… Children?”

“One son. Grown now.”

“No thoughts of marrying again?”

“I don’t see—”

“Not queer, are you?”

I considered whether that was any of his damned business, which was a waste of time because of course it wasn’t. Bernie stopped me before I could say so.

“Rory—”

Mulholland held up the fleshy hand again. “These questions may seem impertinent, Mr. Vlost, but I need to assure myself that I can trust you. The matter that brings you here involves my family, which is the most important thing in my life, after God. Bernie tells me you are smart, honest, and competent. That’s all to the good. But you are not an American. In fact, you were a sworn enemy of our country for your entire career. Your divorce indicates a certain lack of faith in one of the institutions that holds our society together. I’m wondering if there are other moral lapses.”

Moral lapses. From a guy who practiced legal loan-sharking. I turned to Bernie again, but he’d acquired a powerful interest in the carpet. I swung back to Mulholland, who was watching me intently. Might as well put an end to this now.

“I drink vodka. Beer, too. I play cards, for money. Tried dope, did inhale, didn’t like it, went back to vodka. My childhood friends were all what you’d call juvenile delinquents. Some went on to become full-fledged criminals. I chase tail from time to time, female, if that makes a difference to you. I’ve covered most of the seven deadly sins at one point or another—except maybe greed, but only because guys like you cornered the market. I don’t expect to change my ways. Perhaps I’m not your man, Mr. Mulholland. I’d certainly understand if you felt that way.” I stood and picked up my jacket.

“Sit down,” he barked. The hard, dark eyes got darker. “We’re not finished yet.”

That surprised me—I would have bet the dacha on being thrown out. I did as he asked, perhaps because my curiosity—an eighth mortal sin, if there ever was one—was kicking in. We sat silently for a good several minutes, which didn’t seem to bother Mulholland or me. Bernie bent forward and rubbed his hands between his knees. Eventually Mulholland got up, walked to the desk, announced the market was now down ninety and FTB two and a half, returned to his chair, and said, “Tell me about your company.”

“No company, just me. I get paid to find things. Sometimes people. Sometimes valuables. Sometimes information. I work for all kinds of clients—individuals, corporations, insurance companies. Even, when I have to, for lawyers like Bernie.”

Nobody laughed at my attempt at levity. I reached into my jacket and found a business card, which I handed across. He looked it over and scowled.

“‘Vlost and Found?’ What’s that—a joke?”

“A lot of Russian humor is based on wordplay.”

His expression indicated Russian humor was a waste of time. Dislike was winning the war with curiosity. I’d just about had enough of him.

“Tell me about some of your clients,” he said.

“I don’t talk about them.”

“Surely you have references.”

“Bernie here will vouch for me. At least, I think he will.”

I looked at Bernie, who clearly was not happy with the way things were going.

“I cannot proceed on this basis,” Mulholland said.

“Fine by me.” I picked up my jacket again.

“Wait,” Bernie said. “Rory, be reasonable. You wouldn’t want Turbo to talk about you. He’s done work for a number of clients of the firm. They all speak highly. No one has ever complained.”

I suspected few people got away with telling Rory Mulholland to “be reasonable,” but there were plenty of reasons Bernie had a successful second career as one of the top lawyers in New York, not least among them was he knew how to play his clients.

Mulholland made a show of thinking it over. The whole morning so far had been for show—I wouldn’t have been there if he hadn’t already decided to talk about his problem—but the playacting had gone on long enough.

“Please sit, Mr. Vlost,” Mulholland said. “Tell me this. Turbo doesn’t sound Russian—is it really your given name?”

“Some of it,” I said. Mulholland waited for me to continue, but I’d said all I planned to. I saw irritation in his eyes and exasperation in Bernie’s—with me this time. I got ready again to leave.

“All right, Mr. Vlost, have it your way,” Mulholland said. “I take it that what we discuss here will remain between us.”

“That’s right.” I still didn’t like him. I was now ninety-eight percent sure I didn’t want to work for him, but he’d still get the same deal I gave everybody.

He made one more show of thinking it over, rose and walked to the desk again. “Dow’s down two fifty. We’re off four. Screen’s solid red.” He reached in a drawer and returned holding a photograph and a piece of paper. He handed both to me.

“Our daughter. Eva.”

The photo showed a blue-eyed, auburn-haired young woman. A crude snapshot, printed on a home printer, but her beauty was hard to obscure. She was seated on a chair, against a dark brown wall, chest forward, hands behind her back, as if tied there. A New York Times covered her lap. The front page was from a few days before. She stared straight at the camera. A man’s hand held a gun to the girl’s left temple. Glock 9 mm. She didn’t look scared or worried or in pain, but there’s always a surreal quality to hostage photos that makes them hard to judge. The picture did capture a funny look in her eyes that took me a minute to place. The look kids in the orphanage got, the orphanage I spent my childhood in, on the rare day when another child’s parents miraculously appeared. A look of longing mixed with hopelessness. A look that said, Why can’t that be me? and knew it never would. Not a look you’d expect on a beautiful young woman, daughter of Rory Mulholland, even if she did have a gun to her head.

The note read,

The “asshole” didn’t ring right somehow, but I often have thoughts like that. I ignored this one.

“When did you get this?” I asked.

“Yesterday.”

“You haven’t heard from them since?”

“No.”

“You will soon. They won’t give you much time to think about options. When was the last time you saw your daughter?”

“I… I’m not sure. A few weeks ago. She has her own apartment.”

“How old?”

“Nineteen.”

“Student?”

“Marymount Manhattan. She’s in their theater program.”

The way he said “theater program” indicated he thought it a waste of time and money. He was fidgeting now.

“Any idea why they’d pick on her—or you?”

“None. Eva… she’s my wife’s daughter, from her first marriage. Her husband died.” He had to add that, I suppose, to protect his moral purity. “I adopted her, and… I feel about her as if she were my own.”

That sounded sincere, as much as I didn’t like to admit it. I didn’t doubt his concern—Even so, nothing about this felt right. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

“I thought that was obvious. Find the kidnappers. Bring Eva home. How do you work? Hourly like Bernie? Lower rate, I hope.” He laughed at his second attempt at a joke.

I shook my head. “I charge a percentage—thirty-three percent of what I recover. Plus expenses.” Bernie winced. He knew “plus expenses” meant I didn’t want the job.

The financier came to the fore. “Thirty-three percent—that’s aggressive.”

“Same as a headhunter.”

“But how… In a case like this… How do you put a value on… Eva?”

“I don’t. You do.”

He looked at me squarely for the first time since we’d started talking. I had a mental image of an old-fashioned adding machine in his brain, the kind with rows of buttons and a big arm on the side, toting up sums, calculating how much he could get away with.

“They want a hundred thousand,” he said after a while.

“They’re testing the waters.”

He nodded, as though he hadn’t expected that gambit to work. “I like round numbers. Let’s say a million.”

“If she was my daughter, I’d say two.”

He was halfway out of his chair, sputtering. “That’s six hundred sixty—”

“Plus expenses.”

“That’s…” He searched for the word he wanted as he eased back into his chair. “Usurious.”

I shrugged. Bernie looked pained. “The eighteen percent your bank charges on credit card debt is usurious—especially when the money costs you three—but people pay it.”

“That’s completely different. That’s…”

“The market economy?”

He was scowling again. Bernie was pretending to look out the window—through the drawn curtains.

“I may have been raised on Marxist-Leninist claptrap, as you call it, but I understand the market economy as well as the next guy, including the law of supply and demand. There’s only one of me. I don’t have partners or associates or employees. What you see is what you get, but that by definition limits the supply. I also have one-of-a-kind technology that’s not cheap. On the other hand, people lose things all the time. You’re the first one today. Could be a half-dozen more by sundown. I choose the cases I take on. Usually because they interest me or they pay well.”

“I gather I’m in the second category,” he said.

“You’re not in either category yet.”

A new look came over Mulholland’s face, one that said I’d finally hit home. “All right, Mr. Vlost, have it your way. Good day.”

He stood and walked to his desk. He had the same look on his face when I left, but I didn’t know if it was for me or the sea of red on his computer screen.

CHAPTER 3

Bernie caught up as I was waiting for the elevator, his round face several shades of red and purple.

“God damn it, Turbo, what the hell’s got into you?”

“I told you I didn’t want to work for him.”

“You did a hell of a job telling him, too.”

“He doesn’t want to pay the freight.”

“Can you blame him? Six hundred sixty-six thousand dollars?”

“Plus expenses.”

“Yes, I know. Plus the goddamned expenses.”

“I don’t work cheap.”

“Unless you choose to.”

I’d done a job once for a friend of Bernie’s wife, an artist with a small trust fund whose husband had taken her money and decamped to Las Vegas. I found him before he lost it all, but there wasn’t much left, and it was pretty clear that was what she’d have to live on. I refused payment. She gave me a painting that I like a lot. It hangs in my office. Barbara Kordlite never misses an opportunity to remind her husband what a great guy I am. One reason he puts up with me.

“I’m not working cheap for a man like Mulholland.”

The elevator door slid open. Bernie put out a hand. “Sorry, we’re not leaving just yet.” The door closed again.

“Look, Turbo, Rory’s a proud man, like you. You ought to recognize that. Stubborn, too, just like you. Yes, he’s got people around him all day telling him how brilliant he is, a problem you don’t have, but that goes along with being the kind of guy he is. Cut him some slack. His bank’s on the ropes. His daughter’s been kidnapped. He’s worried. Since he’s the largest client of Hayes & Franklin, when he has worries, I get ulcers. And you, my friend, are supposed to be the solution to his problem and the tonic for my gut, but you have to decide you’re not going to like the guy and then you have to prove to yourself that he really is an asshole so you can tell yourself how you were right all along. You’re the one who’s acting like a stubborn ass.”

I laughed. That’s the thing I love about Bernie. He gets right to the heart of the matter, and he isn’t afraid to tell you exactly what he thinks.

“Stubborn Russian asses turned the course of the Great Patriotic War.”

“So you’ve told me—a dozen times. It’s still World War II to me, and D-day the turning point. Come on, Turbo. If I can fix it with Rory, will you at least finish hearing him out?”

I made a small show of thinking it over. Moscow was tugging hard, but those ghosts could wait another few days. I wasn’t going to turn Bernie down. “Okay.”

“Good. Be right back.”

I waited in the small vestibule, half hoping Mulholland proved as stubborn as Bernie said he was and half wondering what about the man made me dislike him. The sanctimonious questioning made it easy to find him objectionable. Half a lifetime under Soviet rule led me to distrust anyone who takes overt pride in his or her beliefs, be they religious, political, or whatever. Then there were those eyes. I was thinking about them and getting ready to call the elevator again when Bernie returned, smiling.

“All set,” he said, leading the way back inside. “Watch your step, though. I think he kind of likes you.”

Mulholland came across the carpet this time, hand extended. I took it, and we all went back to the same chairs we were sitting in before.

“This may sound like impertinence,” he said. “I don’t mean it that way. Your son—how do you get on with him?”

That wasn’t any of his damned business, but I sensed he was either sincerely curious or looking for some common ground between us. Anyway, I was on my good behavior now.

“I haven’t seen him since he was two.”

I expected a look of exasperation, even hostility, but I swear the black eyes softened, then dampened, in sympathy, perhaps even sorrow. Maybe Bernie was right and I was being stubborn.

“My fault entirely,” I said quickly. “I made mistakes. I won’t bore you with the details. A lot of them don’t make much sense anymore. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about the things that happened and what I could’ve—should’ve—done differently.”

I definitely saw black kindness now. I looked for sincerity behind it. That’s the toughest thing to fake. To my surprise, that was there, too. Another point for Bernie.

Mulholland sensed my investigation and misread it. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to pry. We all make mistakes, I… Being a good parent is…”

I waited for him to finish one sentence or the other, but he stared off into the dark room, lost in his own thoughts. I kept thinking about that look and why I’d told him as much as I had. Maybe underneath it all, I liked him, too?

After a moment, Bernie cleared his throat, and Mulholland seemed to return to the present. The black eyes regained their hardness.

“I apologize for my earlier outburst, Mr. Vlost. This has been a difficult day—one of many. Of course your fee is not an issue. I must ask, however, that you keep this matter entirely between us. I believe what the kidnappers say—about the police. No one must know, including my wife. She’s been under tremendous strain, for which I feel responsible. My business problems. She and Eva had a huge fight the last time Eva was here, which is why we haven’t seen her. I’m very afraid Felix will think she’s to blame for what’s happened.”

“Felix?”

“Her given name’s Felicity. She won’t use it.”

“What did they fight over?”

“It’s not important. Felix and Eva… they have a complicated relationship, like many mothers and daughters, I suppose. Theirs has a tendency to erupt from time to time.”

“You’re sure it has no bearing? It’s possible Eva could—”

He cut me off. “I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t believe it. She may have her issues, but she’s not that kind of girl.”

I tried to remember when the word “issue” replaced “problem” in the American branch of the English language. As if nomenclature could make either go away. Not enough Americans read Orwell. I let it go—I could find out plenty about whatever problems Eva had in due course and make my own assessment as to what kind of girl she was.

“You need anything else from me?” Mulholland said.

“I’ll need to borrow the picture.”

“I don’t see—”

“I’m only interested in where and when it was taken. I’ll make no copies, and I’ll return it as soon as I’m finished.”

“I’m going to assume you’re a man of your word.”

Mulholland had a way of ending every sentence with a grimace as if he expected you to take issue with what he’d just said. He didn’t make it easy to get along.

A knock on the door made us all turn. The man in the silver tie entered and crossed the big carpet, looking left and right and wringing his hands. He whispered a few words in his employer’s ear and hurried back the way he’d come. Black turned to midnight as Mulholland swung toward Bernie.

“You said we had a deal with her.”

“Victoria? We did. We do.”

“Not anymore. The FBI is on its way up.”

“That can’t be. I—”

Mulholland started issuing orders, the anger in his voice replaced by cool efficiency. Bernie nodded, making a mental list, as he searched his pockets until he found his cell phone. A plan was being put into motion.

“Get hold of Coughlin and O’Neal at the office,” Mulholland said. “They’ll know what to do.”

Bernie was punching a number into the phone. “We’ll have to put out an announcement. No question this is a disclosable event.”

“I know. We have a crisis plan. Supposed to be for the plane going down or something like that, but it’ll serve the purpose.”

“I’ll get Alan and his team downtown ASAP,” Bernie said. “You won’t be there any longer than necessary.”

Another knock. We all stood as the door opened and six men in suits came in, all looking this way and that before their eyes settled on the three of us.

“Rory Mulholland?” the largest of the men in suits said.

“That’s right.”

“You’re under arrest. Come with us, please. Taylor, read him his rights.”

I’d heard Mulholland say “FBI,” but it hadn’t registered he meant that FBI. The idea of him being hauled away in handcuffs was too incongruous. These men clearly belonged to the SUVs downstairs, though, and they were here on official business. I looked at my watch. Almost ten thirty. What had they been waiting for? The Cheka would have hauled Mulholland out of bed in the middle of the night, locked him in Lubyanka or Lefortovo, and not let him sleep again until he confessed to whatever crime they were convinced he had committed. But this was America. Perhaps the Justice Department had its rules of etiquette. Bankers should not be busted prior to ten o’clock in the morning.

Taylor took a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. Mulholland crossed the big carpet at his own pace, head high. I had to give him credit. He probably never in his life expected to be arrested, certainly not in his own home, and he was doing his damnedest to carry it off dignity intact. I had an unkind thought about how long he’d maintain the decorum once he got fingerprinted, mug-shotted, and stripped, then reminded myself that his impending humiliation was something millions of innocents had been put through—and worse. It was nothing to gloat over.

Mulholland stopped at the desk to check the computer screen. He might have slumped a little then but recovered quickly. Bernie’s phone buzzed as the FBI men led Mulholland outside. He looked at the screen and grunted. The gears of his brain upshifted a speed as he opened the phone. Bernie doesn’t get angry often. This morning, he was seriously pissed off.

“Goddammit, Victoria, what the hell is going on?… You can skip the goddamned pleasantries… I can see that, I’m right here with him. I thought we had a deal… What do you mean, changed? What the hell changed?”

He listened for a few minutes, almost breaking in a few times, but thinking better of it. Finally he said, “Victoria, if you weren’t my former partner, I’d tell you exactly what I think of you. As it is, I’ll just say you’re full of shit, and we’ll prove it—to your embarrassment.”

He listened again. Then, “Okay, do me a favor, huh? Take him in the back, skip the perp walk. He doesn’t deserve… Oh, come on, Victoria, you can make… What happened to innocent before proven… Goddammit!”

He jammed the cell phone into his pocket, muttered, “Bitch,” and followed his client out the door.

I hesitated. I’m no stranger to sudden arrests—no Russian of my generation is. Still, I was now an unwanted observer—no one had invited me to watch this. The last time I’d been witness to the authorities arriving unannounced, I’d been on the other side. I was the instigator then, but fate plays nasty tricks, and what I ended up instigating was the unraveling of my career, my marriage, and my family. I thought I’d locked that memory away, in the cell of unwanted reminiscences, but Mulholland and the FBI had set it loose. I had the unpleasant feeling fate was about to intervene again. If I’d had the slightest premonition of how, I’d have stayed right there and barred the door.

Out in the entrance hall, Mulholland stood surrounded by the men in suits. Bernie pushed his way through.

“Victoria says something changed, won’t say what. I tried to get her to forgo the perp walk, but—”

“I understand,” Mulholland said. “We’ll beat this thing. They’ve got nothing because there’s nothing to have. This is just a feeble attempt at intimidation.”

“I’ll call Tom and Walter,” Bernie said.

“Let’s go,” one of the suits said.

Having waited as long as they’d waited, the Feds now seemed in quite a hurry to drag Mulholland downtown. They were working to some kind of schedule. Had someone tipped off a local TV news crew or two to be ready outside Police Plaza at eleven o’clock or thereabouts? Bernie thought so, and he’d said as much on the phone. No question Mulholland in his Savile Row suit, tie, and handcuffs, being led inside for booking, would make a good clip for the evening news.

Survivors learn early in the camps never to let anything occupy their full attention. Trouble was all around, and it could come from any direction, take any form—a malevolent guard, another prisoner with a grudge, a new arrival who coveted the patch of straw on the floor you slept on, a lifelong jailbird who coveted you. Staying alert was one way to stay alive. You developed a sixth sense. Mine was sending signals before I heard her voice—but the FBI suits and Mulholland blocked the door. Nowhere to run.

The voice came from above, halfway up the curved staircase. Its steely sharp edge sliced down my spine. I never expected to hear it again. I certainly never expected to hear it here. I’d spent a decade and a half building a new life. It had its faults, but it was mine by design, and I was largely content with it. It took only an instant for her to cut it to shreds.

“Rory? What’s going on? Who are these men? Rory! Are those handcuffs?”

CHAPTER 4

They teach you in spy school how to keep control, never show emotion, especially surprise, regardless of circumstance. I’d actually learned that lesson years before, playing cards with the urki scum in the Gulag, where losing the game could mean losing a pound of flesh—literally, of the winner’s choosing. I don’t think anyone saw the double, triple, or quadruple take I did as she came down the curved stairs. My head didn’t move. At least I don’t believe it did. Just my eyes—and my brain, which started vibrating as if plugged into an electric socket.

Mulholland took a step in her direction, but two suited arms held him back. Bernie hurried across the hall instead.

“Don’t worry, Felix. Everything’ll be fine. There’s been… There’s been a misunderstanding. It’s all going to be worked out.”

“Misunderstanding? I’m not a fool, Bernie, don’t treat me like one. These men are police, aren’t they?”

Bernie nodded as she brushed past until she was a few feet from the group of suits. She moved with purpose. She hadn’t seen me yet. I was out of her field of vision, standing by the library door.

“I’d like to see some identification, please,” she said.

The big man took a wallet with an ID card from his breast pocket and held it in front of her face.

“What’s the charge against my husband?”

“Mail fraud, wire fraud, securities fraud, obstruction, lying to federal officers in pursuit of an investigation. And money laundering. So far.”

I could have been imagining things, but her face changed at the words “money laundering.” Something—surprise? fear?—passed through, and she all but stepped back as if shoved. Whatever it was vanished as quickly as it appeared.

“Where are you taking him?” she said.

“Downtown. Foley Square.”

“What about bail?”

“Not my department, ma’am. You’ll have to talk to the judge.”

“Rory…”

He took her hands in his. She wore two rings—a gold wedding band and a rock the size of an onion dome. “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay, like Bernie says. I’ll be home for dinner.”

“But…”

“Bernie’s already got lawyers on the way. They’ll take care of everything.”

“Let’s go, Mulholland,” the FBI man said. “People are waiting to talk to you.”

Mulholland nodded and let go of his wife’s hands. She stood aside.

The FBI man took a long look around the manor hall room. “Nice shack,” he said as he pushed Mulholland toward the elevator.

I stayed in my spot, waiting for the inevitable, thinking I’d gladly change places with Mulholland if it got me out of here. She turned toward the library and froze when her eyes got around to me. Twenty-plus years hadn’t changed her at all.

It’s a little-known fact, because it’s such a little-known country, but Lithuania produces way more than its share of the world’s most beautiful women. Polina was Exhibit A, maybe even more beautiful because she was a Russian-Lithuanian mix. Tall, blond, and slender in a pale violet sleeveless dress, tucked at the waist, that set off her eyes, which were deep indigo. Red lips that didn’t need the gloss she’d applied. Hair, cut to look like it hadn’t been touched, fell well below her shoulders. They were square, her back straight, and her legs ended up near her neck. White skin, the hue and texture of a marble sculpture, with the features to match, like the sculptures of goddesses in the museum across Fifth Avenue. In another time or place she might have been named Hera, Aphrodite, or Athena and tormented the souls of ancient man. I’d experienced the torment firsthand. I knew for a fact she was twenty years younger than her husband.

Her stare intensified as she made sure she was seeing what her eyes told her she was seeing. I had to hand it to her as well—two life-changing shocks in as many minutes, and she barely blinked.

“Hello, Polya,” I said.

“What the fuck do you want here, you loathsome shit?” she said in Russian. One question answered—the years hadn’t softened her temper or tempered her language. The wounds of the Great Disintegration, as I’ve come to think of it, still festered.

“I’ll let Bernie explain,” I said in English. “You might believe him.” I switched to Russian. “I’ll tell you this much—had I known you were here, I wouldn’t have come. You can bet whatever happiness we had on that.”

She stayed with Russian. “There was no happiness, you prick, just a long string of lies. You’re lying now. Get out! Get away from me!”

The strain was beginning to show. I went back to English. “You both have a lot to do. I’ll be on my way.”

I crossed the hall and called the elevator. I could feel her eyes burning into my back. Bernie swung back and forth between the two of us, one of the few times I’d seen him unsure of how to proceed. I felt bad about leaving him to explain, but he got paid a lot of money to deal with difficult situations. I turned around in the elevator as the door closed. She was still glowering. If she’d had anything in her hands, she would have thrown it.

The uniformed driver didn’t say a word as he took me to the lobby.

Outside, it was easily over ninety. Waves of heat rose from the asphalt, shimmering in the sunlight. A mime worked the thin crowd on the museum’s steps, but he was hot, too, and his heart wasn’t in it. I had time before I needed to move my car, so I took off my jacket and walked into Central Park. The flowering trees were over for the season, but everything was in full leaf, which made it feel a little cooler. Mulholland paid a fortune to live across the street from one of New York’s great treasures, yet he closed himself off from its beauty. He’d never spent a winter in northern Siberia, where cold and dark stretch on so long you wonder if the sun will ever rise again.

I sat on the wall behind the museum and stretched my arms and legs while I watched a few masochistic joggers on Park Drive and contemplated fate and irony. Russians have a great appreciation for the latter, one reason we haven’t given up entirely on the former, with everything our history has served up. I would’ve paid a good part of Mulholland’s fee to know what the woman calling herself Felix Mulholland was telling Bernie, perhaps this very minute, and what Bernie was telling her—especially if he was respecting his client’s restriction. I’d have given more to know what she was doing here in New York, other than apparently being married to Mulholland, but I didn’t have to pay for that. I could get a pretty good idea by the time I returned to the office.

The more immediate question was whether I’d go forward with the assignment, if I was allowed to. Try as I might, I felt only a little sympathy for Mulholland. He was a loan shark and a bully. But how much of that assessment was now tinged by… by what—jealousy? That wasn’t right. Not after everything that happened, not after all these years. What then? Envy? No—I’d done my time. Polina wasn’t wholly responsible for the Disintegration—I played my part, too—but I wouldn’t want to go through that again. Maybe just good old suspicion. Was I being set up? If so, why? By whom? And to what end, after all these years? Polina and I had twisted pasts—jointly and each on his or her own. We weren’t the only people tied up in them. She could be an instrument of someone else as easily as she could be acting on her own. There were plenty of scenarios. I couldn’t see one that made sense, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

First step—more information. I took out my cell phone and punched in a number. A machine answered with no message, just the electronic beep. “You won’t like this, but I can explain. Wake up the Basilisk. Mulholland, yes, that Mulholland, Rory P., and his wife, Felicity, known as Felix, although that’s not her real name, and their daughter, Eva. Also a woman named Polina Barsukova. You’ll be pleased to hear the man himself is on his way to the Tombs as I speak. Back in an hour.”

A pretty girl smiled at me as she ran by. Her tanned torso was shiny-wet and her athletic bra soaked with sweat, but she breathed easily and kept up a quick pace. Women fall into two camps, pretty evenly divided, on the subject of men with shaved heads like mine. Yea or nay—no one is ambivalent. My hair, which was once bushy and black, started to fall out when I was in my late twenties, probably the result of malnourishment when I was young. That’s what I blame any malady on—a time when I was powerless to control my life, which I go to extremes to do now. Rather than watch the thatch thin and recede, I shaved my scalp. I have no idea what would grow back if I stopped. The rest of me is in good shape, although I work hard to keep it that way. I tell myself I can make up for a half-starved youth with an overexercised middle age. I’m not thin—“stocky” would be the newspaper description—but I don’t carry any extra weight on my six-foot, two-hundred-pound frame. Staying in shape is one of my vanities, and one payoff is having your work appreciated by a good-looking babe on a hot summer day. There was a time when one of them was the woman now calling herself Felix Mulholland.

When I got back to my car, four teenaged boys were eying it appreciatively from the sidewalk. I grinned at them as I unlocked the door, and they grinned back, elbowing each other and pointing, before heading off to wherever they were going. I got in, undid the roof latches, and pushed the button to retract the top. The thirty-year-old engine started on the turn of the key. I closed the door. The Potemkin was ready to cast off.

The car gets a lot of attention. A bright red Cadillac Eldorado, built in 1975, the last year before emission controls, it has a white ragtop, red leather interior, and the largest V8 Detroit ever squeezed into a production-line chassis. It puts out 365 horses at 4,400 RPM. Gas mileage approaches single digits, but I don’t drive that much, so I tell myself that my carbon footprint is still smaller than most SUV owners’.

I love the Eldo because of its size and swagger. America’s persona at the height of the Cold War, when Nixon and Brezhnev tried to one-up each other in the eyes of the rest of the world and demonstrate that their system was the Chosen One. The Eldo was one way America stated, with emphasis, We are winning. I was on the other side at the time, a sworn enemy of the Main Adversary and everything it stood for, but I had been captivated by the pure ostentation of the car ever since I first saw its picture in a magazine. Then, as now, I’m easily intrigued by things American.

Buying one the first time I lived here, in 1977 as a junior officer in the KGB’s New York rezindentura, was both impractical and a quick way to end my career. When I returned in 1993 as a private citizen, I had no such constraints. I found one in Florida, with low mileage and no rust, flew to Tampa that afternoon, and drove it home. On the way, I christened it Potemkin, after the mutinous battleship made famous by Eisenstein’s classic film. More Russian humor.

I took the FDR downtown, got off at Water Street, and was immediately mired in traffic. Driving any car in New York is silly, but driving a boat the size of the Potemkin is a juvenile indulgence, one that almost makes up for a childhood without toys. I crawled the three blocks to my garage, raised the top, and reluctantly turned the Eldo over to José, the day manager, who takes care of it as if it were his own. Then I went up to the office to learn what my ex-wife had been up to for the last twenty years.

CHAPTER 5

Everything was quiet except for the hum of air-conditioning and computer fans, and Pig Pen. We rent the twenty-eighth floor of a nondescript steel-and-glass tower at Pine and Water. It’s about twenty times more space than I need, but Foos and the Basilisk require room, mainly the Basilisk.

The space is actually cheap. We got a great deal on a long-term lease in the wake of 9/11 when no one wanted to work downtown. I already lived on South Street, so I looked at the location as a plus. Foos lives in Brooklyn and never goes above Fourteenth Street, unless it’s an emergency. We’ve got million-dollar views of Wall Street, New York Harbor, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Statue of Liberty as a bonus.

I made my way through the banks of computer servers that separate the reception area from the rest of the space. Twelve floor-to-ceiling rows, each forty feet long with four-foot aisles in between. They sit on a raised floor under which run miles of cable and supplemental cooling ducts. Sometimes, when I want to lose myself in a problem, I pace the aisles in the dim light and the white noise of the fans. It’s a kind of alternative reality, a desert canyon of electronic intelligence. When I sense the machines trying to speak to me, I turn on the lights or leave.

Behind the server farm is a large open area with two seating arrangements—one organized like a living room, the other a big conference table and a dozen chairs. Around the perimeter are a dozen glassed-in offices and conference rooms, one each for me, Foos, and Pig Pen, and the rest for visitors we rarely have. Foos has converted a second office into sleeping quarters. He says he likes to work nights, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he moved in permanently. I prefer to leave work behind at the end of the day.

“Hello, Russky,” a large African gray parrot squawked from the office he calls home. “Pizza?”

His favorite food, which Foos indulges him, and he thinks everyone else should follow suit. He primarily likes the crust, but lately he’s developed a taste for anchovies. Lombardi’s in SoHo is his favorite.

“No dice. You’re already overweight, Pig Pen,” I said. “Not good for a parrot. Makes you look like a vulture with a dye job.”

He considered that for a moment, realization dawning that I wasn’t carrying the flat cardboard box that contains culinary nirvana. He muttered something I couldn’t catch, maybe a new word he was working on, and kept one eye on me while he gnawed, if that’s what parrots do, on the metal mesh of the cage that encloses his office.

“Pizza!” he tried again. He’s nothing if not persistent. Parrots don’t have lips, of course, which makes p a difficult letter to pronounce, something Foos didn’t consider when he named Pig Pen after the late drummer of his favorite rock band. “Pizza” comes out more like “rizza,” but we have no trouble understanding what he wants.

“Pig Pen Parrot picks a peck of pickled parrot pizza?” I said.

That got me an angry one-eyed glare. He can’t wrap his beak around the tongue twister, and it annoys him no end. I feel guilty teasing him, but it does serve to get him off the subject.

“Where’s the boss?” I asked.

“Boss Man. Pizza.” Pig Pen has a vocabulary approaching a hundred fifty words, to which he adds about a word every other week. He’s efficient. “Pizza” does double-duty for lunch and dinner. “Pancakes”—“rancakes”—serves for breakfast.

“Anything going on?”

“Twenty minutes, Lincoln, forty minutes, Holland.”

“GWB?”

“Flat tire, upper deck.”

“Mass transit?”

He gave me his “who cares?” look and went back to chewing the cage.

Foos furnished Pig Pen’s office with two large Ficus trees, some potted plants, three perches, a swing, and an electric fountain that burbles water over a copper plate and some rocks. He has a view of the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. He also has a radio. It took him a day to learn how to work it and a week to determine his favorite station—1010 WINS. He pays special attention to “Traffic and Transit on the Ones,” although for reasons he’s yet to confide, he’s much more concerned with the state of bridges and tunnels than subways and buses. The day he learns to pronounce Kosciuszko, I’m putting him up for auction on eBay.

“Thanks for the update,” I said, heading for my office. “Do svidaniya.”

“Ciao…”

Language skills are my contribution to his education.

“…cheapskate.”

“What?” I turned back.

“No pizza—cheapskate,” he said, the feathers on the back of his neck ruffling as his head nodded up and down. I swear he grins when he knows he’s come out with a zinger. I left him to his self-congratulation.

My office is in the northeast corner, with a view up the East River and out to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (Pig Pen knows that one). I can also see the roof of the building I live in two blocks away, where sometimes my well-endowed upstairs neighbor, Tina, sunbathes topless on her roof deck, oblivious to the walls of windows that surround her. Unfortunately, she’s happily married to a former backup linebacker for the New York Giants, so the best I can do is look on from afar, with the help of a pair of Steiner 20 × 80 military binoculars.

Tina wasn’t out, so I checked my e-mail. A message from Foos with the subject “SLUMMING?” It contained a link to a series of pages containing the information the Basilisk had generated on the Mulhollands. I went to the kitchen and made a grilled cheese sandwich from the cheddar and multigrain bread I found there. I grabbed a beer and returned to my office, ignoring the parrot’s imploring calls for sustenance. One of the things I miss about Russia is the beer, which may not be the best in the world, but it has a distinctive flavor I got used to. Most American beer is tasteless. I buy the occasional microbrew, but mostly I drink Czech pilsners—Pilsner Urquell or Budweiser Budvar, sold as Chechvar in the United States because of a trademark dispute with the Busch behemoth in St. Louis. They’re dry, they have a lot of flavor without being too hop-heavy, and they taste something like home.

I looked at the Basilisk’s work while I ate. Plenty of information on Mulholland himself, but mostly what you’d expect—houses (New York, Oyster Bay, Palm Beach), investments, although most of his wealth was in FTB stock, memberships, charitable boards, and so on. He and his wife had a housekeeper, Marisa Cabarillas, living with them. The butler must live elsewhere. He garaged a Maybach limousine and a Range Rover down the block, to the tune of more than two grand a month. He traveled to Europe three times in the last year on a Gulfstream V leased by FirstTrust, stopping in London, Frankfurt, and Zurich each trip. In January, he’d used his black American Express card to purchase two suits at Huntsman, six shirts at Turnbull & Asser, a bracelet for the missus at Asprey, and a Mantegna drawing at Conalghi. The Basilisk told me where he stayed and where he ate. I could’ve had a record of his phone calls, but it didn’t seem necessary. One interesting fact—in the last two months, he’d moved several million dollars into a brokerage account at Morgan Stanley. He’d been a big—make that very big—buyer of FTB stock. Those purchases were all badly under water now, and if he’d been buying on margin, he was almost certainly suffering a credit squeeze of his own.

Eva Mulholland lived at 211 East Seventieth Street, in an apartment that set someone back $5,250 a month—Dad, no doubt. Her occupation was student. She had $1,489 in her checking account. Her credit card charges indicated an affinity for the restaurants of Tribeca and the boutiques of SoHo and the Meatpacking District. She’d spent Christmas in the Caribbean and spring break in London and Moscow. Being a Mulholland wasn’t all bad.

Not all good, either. Eva had a record—a guilty plea to a marijuana possession charge two years earlier and another to shoplifting three months ago. Two suspended sentences—and two stints in rehab. Before the first bust, she had three thousand dollars deposited into her checking account every month. Electronic transfer from her father’s account. Since she got out of the detox center on Riverside Drive that had set her folks back sixty-five thousand dollars (for the first visit), her allowance had been cut by two-thirds. Dad’s idea of a tight leash.

The thing most of us don’t think about—or don’t want to think about—is how much information we generate on ourselves every day. Our appetites, our preferences, our habits and routines, our families, jobs, and finances. Most everything we do leaves a trail. Every phone call, e-mail, Web search, cash withdrawal, purchase, bill payment, trip, car rental, insurance claim, you name it. The trick is connecting up all those data points, among the billions and billions of others permanently stored in data-miners’ databases, to put together a profile of a person or tell you what someone is up to. That’s what the Basilisk does better than anything out there. I know. I use everything out there.

Having dispensed with the warm-up acts, I turned to the main event. The file on Felicity Mulholland was illuminating—up to a point. She’d married Rory in 2004. If I were being spiteful, I might have expected her to have led the Upper East Side trophy-wife life since then. I was wrong. No charges at Madison Avenue boutiques. No lunches at overpriced French restaurants where nobody pays attention to the food. A few evenings out—concerts at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center—but not many. She paid regular, not overly frequent, attention to her hair, face, and nails. She’d taken a Christmas trip to London, flying coach, but stayed only one night at an innocuous hotel in Hammersmith, and flown home the next day. Paid cash for the airline ticket. No shopping, no theater, no restaurants. She made a similar trip in February. Polina and I had lived in London. My first foreign posting with the KGB. She’d never shown any interest in Hammersmith.

Before she married Mulholland, Felicity used the last name Kendall and lived in a rental on West Fifty-eighth Street for two years. Before that, she didn’t appear to live anywhere for three. Before that, she lived in a studio apartment in Queens, near LaGuardia Airport—a single woman, no Eva, no kids of any kind. All of which was accounted for by the fact that the real Felicity Kendall died when she was struck by a drunk driver on Queens Boulevard in 1997. Polina picked up her identity in 2000. The Basilisk came up empty on Polina Barsukova, which suggested she was already using another name when she arrived here. Hard to avoid concluding that Polina had something to hide. Question was, from whom? My leading candidate would be husband number two. Jealousy was part of his makeup, he believed firmly in getting even, and he had a reputation for cruelty and ruthlessness that I knew to be one hundred percent well deserved.

I’d heard they’d split, but that was ten years ago. I’d also heard she’d been carrying on an affair with Kosokov. They both dropped from sight after 1999. Guess I’d assumed they’d gone off together, to the extent I’d thought about it. I’d been exiled, after all, partly by her, partly by the Cheka, partly self-imposed. I might not even be thinking about any of this today without Ivanov’s item on Kosokov this morning. That was another factor to be considered.

A loud arrrr-oooo-gahhhh reverberated through the space. Our doorbell—Foos’s contribution to office ambience. He likes to hit it on the way in. Pig Pen called out “Pizza!” in response. A few moments later, the hulk of a six-foot-five mountain man dressed in black filled my door, holding a half-chewed slice.

“Man, you are definitely hangin’ in the wrong ’hood,” the boom-box voice boomed.

The first time you meet him—maybe a few times after that—Foos is an intimidating sight. For openers, he’s two hundred sixty pounds big. The weight is evenly distributed. He’s not fat, but no one would call him muscled either. His preferred form of exercise is walking to his next meal. He’s in his midforties, with a sharp face and black eyes—but unlike Mulholland’s, his sparkle with curiosity and humor. A large, pointed nose runs left to right as you look at him. His mouth opens mostly on the right side, adding to his lopsided appearance. He wears heavy black rectangular glasses with chunky lenses and carries a thick mane of black curly hair that cascades around his shoulders, arms, and chest. If he ever cut it, the barber would need a pickup to haul away the clippings. Everything about him shouts eccentric, if not downright strange, and in his case, you can judge a book by its cover. Some people march to their own drummer—Foos has his own rock group. The thing I can never figure is, whenever he shows up with a new girlfriend—roughly every other month—she looks like she stepped out of a Ralph Lauren ad. He, of course, treats this like it’s perfectly natural. As Artie Shaw once observed, women aren’t attracted to Mick Jagger by his looks. Artie should know—he married Ava Gardner and Lana Turner.

“Didn’t see many of your friends up there, that’s true,” I said. “Bernie asked me to help. Mulholland’s his biggest client.”

“Ah, the Cardinal Consigliere. That explains it. He knows all the best people.”

“He helps pay the rent.”

“True enough, much as I don’t like to admit it. But you and Bernie have all you’re getting from me. If there’s any justice, that scumbag will do at least five years.”

I hadn’t been completely honest with Mulholland about my business. I do have a partner. We have a handshake deal that I’ll never disclose his involvement. In fact, our entire partnership is based on a handshake, which can be nerve-racking since Foos is unpredictable, to put it mildly. “Scumbag” is the moniker he applies to most of our clients, especially the successful ones, his views unmitigated by his own fortune. But he has special reason to dislike Mulholland.

Foos, or Foster Klaus Helix as his birth certificate says, is a certified genius and certainly paranoid. Maybe all geniuses are a little wacko, I don’t know, he’s the only one I’ve ever met. He grew up in Palo Alto and dropped out of high school, but by the time he was twenty, he had a Ph.D. in mathematics and computer science from Stanford. He came east to take a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the place Einstein hung his hat for thirty years. He got interested in relational data, as he calls it—what one thing can tell you about another, what two things can tell you about a third, what three things can tell you about a thousand. That led him to the work being done by companies like ChoicePoint and Seisint and LexisNexis, which maintain some fifty billion data files on virtually every American—people in other countries, too—which they make available to marketers looking for new ways to sell people things they don’t need and government agencies looking for new ways to keep an eye on the body politic under the pretext of fighting crime, terrorism, or whatever evil comes along to supplant terrorism. State security by another name.

Fifty billion is a lot of files to organize, search, correlate, and compare, and Foos found each company’s software lacking in some respect. He set out to write a program that would do better than any one of them—or all three combined. He succeeded. He started his own company and soon had a client list that included half the Fortune 500 and several hundred federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies—and FirstTrustBank.

Foos was more naive in those days. He was horrified to discover FTB was using his technology to determine whom to bombard with junk mail and telephone marketing offers for new “free credit cards with special introductory interest rates” that jumped to eighteen percent after the first six months. He cut them off. FTB, which had a contract, took him to court—and won. At which point, Foos—I thought the nickname referred to the foosball game every dot-com company had to have, but he swears he’s never played—had an epiphany, not unlike the men who worked on the Manhattan Project. He’d invented his software because it could solve problems better than what came before. In the right hands, it could be used for a lot of beneficial purposes—catching a serial killer, for example, or shutting down a financial scam before it sucked in too many victims. In the wrong hands, it was downright, deeply, totally invasive. Of course, it was impossible to keep it out of the wrong hands—those belonging to men like Mulholland. Foos sold his business, pocketing $100 million on the deal. Then he went to work on a new and improved version—on the grounds that he needed to keep track of what the bastards were up to—which he dubbed Basilisk after the mythological beast, the most poisonous creature on the planet. There’s a painting of one in our reception area—rooster’s head and legs, body of a hawk, a dragon’s scaly wings, and a serpent’s pointed tail. It’s damned ugly. He also started a foundation, endowed with half the proceeds from the sale. STOP, or Stop Terrorizing Our Privacy, has the self-appointed mission of monitoring, exposing, and thwarting the data-mining activities of marketers, advertisers, data collectors, cops, spies, lawyers, bureaucrats, and anyone else Foos sets his sights on.

“I’m not sticking up for Mulholland,” I said. “Especially since he’s married to my ex-wife.”

He was raising the pizza to his mouth. It stopped in midair. He stood for a minute, mouth open. “You shitting me?!” Sometimes I can surprise even him.

“Wish I was. She’s the one calling herself Felicity, or Felix, these days. Her daughter’s been kidnapped. He wants our help, but he hasn’t told her. And I’m betting he doesn’t know anything about her past.”

I held out the photo. He finished off the slice and took it. Behind the thick lenses, the eyes worked over the picture like a scanner as the brain put the power of multiple workstations through the paces of considering and rejecting a series of scenarios—all the ones I’d thought of and only he knew how many myriad more.

Eventually he said, “Could be real. Could be she’s into some kinky scene and needs dough.”

“She may have a drug problem.”

“That could explain it, too.” He dropped his bulk into a chair. “How do you and the ex get on?”

“Haven’t seen her in twenty years. We got married young—for all the wrong reasons. She was what you’d call high maintenance. I thought I could conquer that, and I needed a wife to get a foreign posting. The KGB didn’t send single men abroad for fear they’d fall into the clutches of some capitalist vixen.”

“Good thinking.”

“We made it eight years. One son—Aleksei, I’ve mentioned him once or twice.”

He nodded. “The kid you haven’t seen since he was two.”

“That’s right. When the breakup came, it was characterized by betrayal, violence, and retribution—all on her part. On the other hand, she felt I’d deceived her for as long as I’d known her, and she wasn’t wrong about that, although there were extenuating circumstances. You want details?”

He shook his head. “Not unless they’re relevant.”

“Only to us. So imagine my surprise when Bernie asks me to meet with his client Mulholland who’s got a kidnap problem and she waltzes down the stairs.”

He nodded with understanding. “Kinda broke your flow.”

“One way of putting it. Mulholland’s her third husband, so far as I know.”

He considered that for a moment. I’d given him the name of the second in my phone message. Even geniuses get tripped up by the conventions of Russian naming, the feminization of Barsukov, for example, to Barsukova.

“Dame got a commitment problem or just lousy taste?” he asked.

“Maybe both—man in the middle’s Lachko Barsukov.”

“The mobster?”

“One and the same.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“That’s why I let you hang out—entertainment value. You can’t make this stuff up.”

“Me and Pig Pen.”

“I doubt that’s the way Pig Pen sees it. Mulholland really get busted?”

“Uh-huh. I was there. I got the impression from Bernie the Feds have had him in their sights for a while.”

“Goddamned government moves with the speed of cold molasses. They should’ve nailed that bastard years ago. Still, I may volunteer my services—they can use the Basilisk for free. Make sure they get him this time.”

“Don’t be rash. We get six hundred sixty-six K, if we find the girl—and he’s around to write the check.”

“Huh. What price getting even? There’s an ethical dilemma that bears consideration. You definitely going ahead with this thing?”

I shrugged in ambivalence I didn’t necessarily feel. I knew where I was leaning. “I wouldn’t mind clipping Mulholland for that six sixty-six.”

“Uh-huh. You and I both know the probability gods didn’t put Mulholland, your ex-wife, and Lachko Barsukov in your path for their own amusement.”

“That’s the problem with you mathematicians. No room for luck—good or bad.”

“You gonna operate on luck, let’s get a deck of cards. You’ll need Mulholland’s fee to cover your losses.”

I laughed. He grinned a lopsided grin. “Look,” he said, “any competent bookmaker would give two-to-one odds that photo’s faked and the kidnapping thing’s bull. He wouldn’t even want to calculate the chances of your ex-wife showing up married to your new client after… how many years has it been?”

“A lot bigger number than the odds. But you’re not figuring in the intangibles.”

“Pain and death are pretty damned tangible.”

“I’m talking about curiosity—mine.”

“Do I remember something about a dead cat?”

“We both know there’s another shoe that’s going to drop. Maybe I want to see what it is.”

“You ask me, it’s gonna be a steel-toed boot swinging toward your face.”

“I’ll remember to duck.”

He shrugged. “They’re your teeth.”

He pushed himself to his feet and headed off to his office. A minute later, I could hear him banging away on his keyboard. He types with the same subtle touch that characterizes the rest of his approach to life.

I was about to call Bernie to see if I still had a client when the phone rang and a young male voice announced itself as Malcolm Watkins from Hayes & Franklin. The kidnappers wanted their money—tonight.

Decision time now for real.

Mulholland apparently considered me still in his employ. Polina would have tried to get me fired, but her husband’s prison problems doubtless complicated her efforts, and maybe she hadn’t tried too hard. With all the trouble she’d gone to to cover her tracks—not just one but two new identities (maybe more, for all I knew)—the last thing she wanted was exposure. She’d have to give Bernie a convincing reason to overrule his client. While she probably trusted him as much as anyone, she didn’t trust anyone very far. She definitely wouldn’t have told him the truth.

Her surprise this morning had seemed genuine. She still despised me, she’d made that clear, but her anger also covered fear, fear that she’d been recognized, fear that someone now knew who she’d become. I was a threat, but the far bigger threat was Lachko, who was almost certainly unaware that his ex-wife and daughter were living in the same city he was. That explained her marriage to Mulholland (I’d already eliminated love as a reason, however unfairly) and her low profile since. Polina had always sought protection. As a child, she’d witnessed her father, a general in the GRU, cashiered out of the army, tried for treason, and sent to the Gulag. Her family and her life had disintegrated around her, and she carried a constant terror that it would happen again. It did, with me, one root of her hatred. She sought refuge in Lachko. Kosokov, too. But Kosokov ended up dead in 1999, according to Ivanov. For whatever reason, she hadn’t gone back to Lachko, she’d run, come here. She’d brought Eva with her and become Felicity Kendall. But what about Aleksei? Had she left him behind in Russia? Or…

I didn’t want to think about or.

Polina was resourceful. She’d had enough money and know-how to acquire a new identity. She knew her way around New York. She’d lived here twice before, with me. Even so, alone, in a foreign city, with Eva to worry about, she wouldn’t have felt safe. Especially if she thought Lachko was looking for her. So she’d married Mulholland and his money and settled down. Then—bang! bang! bang!—her cover’s blown, her husband’s jailed, and his fortune’s shrinking faster than an ice cube on the sidewalk outside. Unless I badly missed my guess, she’d be petrified. If this was a setup, it seemed doubtful she was part of it, unless someone was setting both of us up, together. That someone could be Lachko, but I still had the same questions—why and why now and what for?

Lachko hated me, of course. He’d played his part in the Disintegration. He’d destroyed my marriage and my career, and he’d walked off with the prize he coveted in Polina. If he’d wanted me dead, it wouldn’t have been difficult to arrange. At the time, back in Moscow, I’d waited for the late-night knock at the door presaging the trip to the cells of Lubyanka, but it never came. I’d often wondered if Lachko had tried but his father had vetoed the plan. As time passed, I more or less ceased worrying, although the alarm bells jangled in my head when I learned Lachko had moved to New York. He hadn’t looked me up, and I stayed away from Brighton Beach, where he lived. He might not even know I lived in the same city—he had bigger fish to fry these days.

Lachko ran Russian organized crime in New York. In the post-Soviet chaos, he and his twin brother, Vasily, used their positions to build a highly successful criminal organization in Moscow whose core businesses were protection and extortion, but which had expanded into all manner of related rackets—drugs, smuggling, money laundering, prostitution, contract killing, and more recently cyber-crime. A few years before, they’d gone international, and Lachko moved here to oversee the U.S. interests of the Badger brothers—Barsukov translates to Badger. I followed their progress from a safe distance via Ibansk.com. After the Cheka, the Badgers are Ivanov’s favorite subject, probably because it’s impossible to separate the two. As I’d told Mulholland, the line between criminals and those charged with catching them was never clear in Soviet times. In the New Russia, it disappeared entirely.

Try as I might, I couldn’t see why Lachko would bother with me, or even with Polina, for that matter, after all this time. The flaw in that logic was, I was assuming he had matured into a rational human being since I saw him last, when there was no reason to believe he wasn’t the same brutal, vindictive, destructive bastard I knew him to be—from painful firsthand experience.

The card player in me said I couldn’t yet see enough of the cards on the rest of the table to fold my hand. The Chekist in me said, if this was Lachko at work, I could walk away but he’d follow. Better to play on, eyes open. Besides, having put socialism solidly in my past, there was still that six sixty-six, plus expenses.

I should have been mindful of another Russian proverb. The only free cheese is in the mousetrap.

CHAPTER 6

Hayes & Franklin rents twelve floors of One New York Plaza, a big, ugly, waffle-walled tower at the southeast tip of Manhattan, five minutes’ walk from my office. Almost six o’clock, but the thermometer was still into the nineties, the air as solid as concrete. I could feel the heat of the sidewalk through my shoes.

The building’s modern, but Hayes & Franklin’s offices are decorated right out of the Thomas Chippendale catalog, if Thomas Chippendale had a catalog, which maybe he did. Lots of reproduction mahogany furniture, nautical pictures, and prints of birds and botanicals. Bernie occupied a corner office overlooking the South Ferry Terminal. Documents were stacked on every available surface, including the floor. I took two piles off the chair across from his desk and sat down. He didn’t look up, just muttered, “Fuck it,” to something he was reading, pencil in hand. He put a blunt black line across the page.

Despite his harried appearance, Bernie’s a cool customer. Almost never raises his voice. I’d been surprised by his swearing this morning, and it didn’t appear his temperament had improved. Mulholland and FTB had him under a lot of strain. Maybe other clients, too. Or he’d spent too much of the day with Polina. I didn’t want to make a bad day worse, but there was no way around it.

“How’s Mulholland?” I asked.

He raised one eye. “They’re keeping him overnight. Arraignment and bail in the morning. Totally fucking unnecessary. He could’ve been out this afternoon. Except that the goddamned U.S. attorney feels she has to make a show of how tough she can be on white-collar defendants because she spent most of her career defending them. It’s all bullshit, starting with the charges. Bullshit politics, bullshit playing to the media, more bullshit. Meanwhile Rory’s still in the Tombs—for no good goddamned reason. She’s busting my balls over bail, too. To think I got that woman made partner. No good deed goes unpunished.”

His voice had risen through most of his rant, almost to a yell, then softened again at the end until he sounded remorseful. He was having a worse day than I thought. I hesitated to ask a question, for fear of setting him off again, but I wasn’t clear I was following.

“What woman?” I said.

He looked at me like I’d just stepped off the boat from some country permanently mired in the Middle Ages. “This is a federal case, you Cossack. That means it’s run by the Justice Department and the Justice Department’s designated representative in this judicial district, so we’re talking about the U.S. fucking attorney for the Southern District of New York!”

“And she was your partner?”

“Before she ascended to her current lofty heights of public service, yes, she toiled here in the fields of Hayes & Franklin, where, thanks in part to me, she became a very well paid partner. Bitch.”

“Sorry I asked. Let’s drop it.”

He pushed his chair back from the desk, put down the pencil, and rubbed his eyes behind his glasses.

“Sorry, Turbo. Been a long day, so far. I need to vent, I guess—but I do feel like I’ve got a knife in my back. Victoria was a partner here before she got her current appointment. She came to us in a merger, a firm in Atlanta. She put in to move to New York. I took her under my wing since I came in as an outsider, too. She’s a white-collar crime specialist, like I said. She worked her ass off, developed quite a reputation. When she came up for partner, I shoved it through. No question she deserved it, but it was still a fight with the old stiffs who think they run this place. Woman, Dixie accent, criminal law—not the Hayes & Franklin mold. She got the U.S. attorney post six months ago. Big-time appointment. Now the bitch wants two mil bail. No good deed…”

“That was her on the phone this morning, at Mulholland’s apartment?”

“Courtesy call. Some frigging courtesy. We had an understanding. She’s been looking into FTB for months. Predatory lending makes good press. Sorry, that’s unfair. Not at all clear she could’ve made a case, but between you, me, and the microphone in the wall, some of FTB’s practices were close to the line. Anyway, when the credit crunch hit, we talked, and I thought we agreed, absent compelling evidence, she’d leave Rory alone so he could focus on saving the bank. There are jobs at stake, among other things.”

“Maybe she found the compelling evidence.”

“Rory says there’s nothing to find. Our own investigation—Hayes & Franklin, I mean—backs him up.”

“Not the first time a client’s lied to his lawyer.”

“Thanks, Turbo. I can always count on you to cheer me up.”

“What about the money laundering?”

“This morning’s the first time I heard anything about that. We’re looking into it.”

“Surprised Felix Mulholland, too.”

He pulled his chair back to the desk and leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

“I was watching. Something about that spooked her.”

“You sure?”

“The first job of a good spy…”

“Don’t give me the assess-human-nature speech. I’ve heard it as many times as the Russians winning World War II. So what’s the deal between the two of you?”

“What’d she tell you?”

“She’s a client, Turbo. What she tells me is between us.”

“Be careful how much stock you put in your clients, Bernie. Felix Mulholland was no more born Felicity Kendall in Jackson Heights, Queens, than I was born Richard Nixon in Yorba Linda, California. She’s a client with a past. Colorful is one adjective. I’m sure the Post will find others.”

That got him out of the chair, half standing, leaning forward. “The Post? What the hell are you talking about?”

Since I arrived, Bernie had been talking at me, sometimes to me. He was preoccupied with other problems, I understood that, but I wanted his full attention for the next few minutes—partly for his own good and partly because I needed him to appreciate I was coming clean. However this thing played later tonight, Bernie had to believe my judgment was unclouded by emotional connections rooted in ancient history. The threat of more unwanted media coverage—from an always unwanted source—did the trick. I chose my words carefully.

“I take it Mulholland didn’t have you guys check her out before he popped the question?”

“No! Of course not. Why…”

Bernie sat down and pushed back from the desk again, putting distance between himself and whatever he feared I was about to say. The look on his face was the one of a well-dressed pedestrian as he jumps back from the curb, knowing he’s too late to avoid the muddy splash from the taxi accelerating through a great big puddle.

“Prenup?” I asked.

“None of your damned business,” he growled.

Careful. Bernie took confidentiality seriously. Appearing to pry wasn’t going to help. “True enough. You know she was married before?”

“No. Why is that relevant in this day and age?”

“Mulholland’s her third, at least.”

“So?”

“Second’s named Barsukov.”

The chair slid forward in a flash and Bernie leaned into my face. “Lachko Barsukov?”

“Yep.”

“Jesus Christ. How do you know this?” He was fully in my face now.

“I’m the first.”

CHAPTER 7

I watched all five Kübler-Ross stages pass through his eyes—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance—in the time it took him to slump back into his chair. Then anger returned.

“Goddammit!” He banged the desk with both fists. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“Didn’t know until I saw her this morning. First time since 1989.”

Bernie and I have done business together for nearly a decade. I have always been straight with him, not least because he’s the one who gets me hired, but also because when he was with the CIA, he had the rep as the most astute analyst the Americans had. I’m not sure I could put one over on him if I tried. Since we were on opposite sides for two decades, I assume there’s some little lingering doubt in his mind about where I’m coming from at moments like these. He also doesn’t like surprises. He was taking his time before deciding how to proceed.

“Straight up?” he said.

“Straight up. Our split was anything but amicable, on both sides. That’s what I told her, when I spoke Russian, this morning. If I’d known she was married to Mulholland, I never would have set foot in that apartment.”

He thought about that a few minutes more, and anger was replaced by acceptance. It looked as though I’d come through clean, at least for the time being.

“I need this like another ulcer,” he said.

“What did she tell you, if it’s okay to ask?”

His look said it wasn’t okay.

“Let me guess, then. Something like, she knew me years ago, back before the beginning of recorded time, when she was just an innocent child, ignorant of the ways of the world, and I pulled dark, evil wool over those innocent eyes until the day she found out, to her total shock and horror, that I’m a lying, deceitful, no-good son of a bitch. She probably worked in dead babies’ blood dripping from my teeth for good measure.”

He chuckled, a little. “That’s close. Her description was more robust.”

“So how come I’m still here?”

He sighed. “Too many problems. This was one I could hand off, or so I thought. I figured Rory had hired you, it was his call to fire you. But now…” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes again. I could see the red from across the desk. “I don’t know, Turbo, to tell you the truth. This complicates everything, and I don’t have time to deal with more complications. I guess I could send one of our associates with the money…”

I hadn’t come through so clean after all. He was really reaching. I said, “And explain to his/her wife/husband, girlfriend/boyfriend, mother/father what happened when things go bad. You don’t need that. This whole thing smells bad. You know that as well as I do. Even money Eva’s in on the scam, but I’m not sure that explains it. That’s why I told you what I told you. I’ll handle it, but I may have to improvise if things go wrong.”

He replaced his glasses. “You think Barsukov’s tied up in this?”

“That’s the question I’ve been asking myself all day. Truth is, I don’t know. He hates me, and it’s clear Polina—I mean Felix—is hiding from something or someone, and I’d have to guess that’s him. I haven’t spoken to him in years, and I have no idea if he knows who she’s become.”

“Jesus. It gets better and better. You got any good news?”

I decided not to tell him about Foos’s offer to help the government with its case against Mulholland.

“It could be this isn’t about Felix,” I said, “at least not in the way you think.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This wouldn’t be the first time she and Lachko Barsukov teamed up against me.”

The eyebrow stayed up. “There were a lot of rumors running around Langley back in the eighties about how you and Barsukov got cross-wired. Details were hard to come by. KGB put the lid on. She was part of that?”

“Tangentially. Collateral damage morphed into collateral assault.”

The glasses came off again. “Tell me straight—your willingness to help, this has nothing to do on your part with getting even or anything like that?”

“It was all over long ago.”

“For real?”

“Cheka honor.”

“Cheka honor.” He shook his head. “That’s supposed to make me believe you?”

I shrugged. “We didn’t have Boy Scouts.”

He put his glasses on, stood, and went to the window and looked out, most likely without seeing anything. He was trying to make up his mind about something. I let him take his time.

“I don’t think this has anything to do with you,” he said when he turned back to face me.

“Because?”

“What do you know about whaling?”

“Phishing for big fish. Send bogus e-mail, try to get the recipient to open an attachment that installs a keyboarding bug, phisher can see everything on your computer. It’s one of Lachko’s businesses, but he’s got plenty of competition. Did Mulholland…”

He nodded. “About three months ago. We’ve had other clients get scammed, too. Bait in his instance was a fake letter from the U.S. attorney, Southern District. Most people know better than to open unsolicited attachments, but since this looked exactly like the real deal, he didn’t think twice.”

“He get keyboarded?”

He nodded. “Didn’t tell us until ten days ago. Whoever it was copied a lot of computer activity. Of course, we informed Victoria right away, since it was her fake paper. Could be one reason she felt she had to move on Rory before anything else happened.”

“You think there’s a connection?”

“Don’t know. That’s why I bring it up. Could’ve been Barsukov.”

“Could’ve been, but we don’t know enough.” I looked at my watch. “Still want me to make the drop?”

He nodded. “I don’t have a lot of options, as you point out. But I want to be clear on priorities—girl, money, kidnappers, in that order.”

“What about explanation?”

“Girl, money, kidnappers, in that order.”

“You don’t want to know what’s going on?”

“I want to know your efforts are focused where they should be—especially, as you say, if you have to improvise.”

He wasn’t in a mood to argue, and his priorities were the ones I’d focus on first in any event—then I’d find out what was going on.

“Okay,” I said, “but here’s one more piece of information you may want to factor in. Mulholland’s been buying FTB stock with every dime he can raise for the last two months.”

He’d started for the door, but his head whipped around. “Buying? You sure?”

“Uh-huh. Basilisk told me.”

“That monster ought to be illegal. I didn’t know. Thanks. I don’t know what it means, other than Rory’s a man of his convictions. He believes in himself and his bank.”

“Knowing that changes everything I thought about him,” I said with a grin.

“Keep your opinions to yourself. He’s your client.”

“I know. I’m looking forward to collecting that six sixty-six. Plus—”

“I know. Plus the goddamned expenses. Sometimes I wonder how we won the Cold War. I spent the better part of three decades analyzing Russians, and I still have no idea what makes you tick.”

“You didn’t win.” He’d heard this speech before, too. Maybe it was national pride, but I never tired of making the point, especially to Americans. “We lost.”

CHAPTER 8

Girl, money, kidnappers.

Bernie’s priorities were fine as far as they went, but they didn’t go far enough. I had a plan for the money. The same plan would lead me to the kidnappers, if there were any kidnappers, and I’d figure out what to do with them once I saw them in the flesh. Neither worried me much. The girl was a different issue. Priority one, of course, as she should be. Only problem was, she wouldn’t be anywhere near the drop site tonight, no matter what the supposed kidnappers said. That much I was reasonably certain of, and that moved explanation up on the priority list. No point in pushing the point now. Bernie’s hands were tied, as were mine, by the same client—or the same client’s wife.

Bernie led me down the hall to a small conference room. A red backpack sat on a table surrounded by leather chairs. A clean-cut young man in a suit stood as we came in.

Bernie said, “This is Malcolm Watkins. You spoke on the phone.”

I shook hands with the kid and pointed to the backpack. “That the money?”

“Yes, sir. They specified a red backpack.”

“What did they sound like?”

“What do you mean?”

“The voice on the phone—man, woman, American, foreign, young, old?”

“Oh, sorry. I have no idea—Mrs. Mulholland talked to them.”

I looked at Bernie. “Mulholland said—”

“I know. No way around telling her. I’ll deal with Rory.”

I didn’t point out she almost certainly already knew. I’d caused enough trouble. Instead, I asked, “What’s the drill?”

Franklin looked down at a yellow legal pad. “Bring the money to the Sheraton at Newark Airport tonight at ten. Alone. She said they repeated that. Go to the front door with the backpack, wait. You’ll be searched. No guns. Then you go to the room they tell you. The door will be ajar. Put the backpack on the bed and leave. The girl will be in the lobby. They said if anything goes wrong, they’ll kill her first, then you.”

He said the last part awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable. This wasn’t what he’d been trained for. I nodded and smiled.

“Don’t worry. These guys probably learned that watching TV. Let’s see what we have.” I picked up the backpack. It was full of bills, tens and twenties, banded into packs of a thousand dollars each. I looked up at Watkins. “All here, right?”

“Yes, sir. Counted it twice.”

I took the box of small electronic devices from my messenger bag and selected one about the size and shape of a Wheat Thins cracker. Then I reached around in the backpack until I felt an inside pocket, and used some Super Glue to stick the RFID tag to the nylon. Bernie and Watkins watched while I rezipped the pocket, the latter with some suspicion.

“Radio frequency identification transponder,” I said. “RFID. Everybody’s using them. Casinos, Walmart, car rental companies—it’s the big new thing. Sends a signal to my laptop. GPS software communicates with the satellite, tells me where the backpack is.”

Watkins looked at Bernie, then back at me. “She said they said no tricks. They said—”

I cut him off. Whatever they said wasn’t important. “These guys have any brains at all, they’ll expect us to try something. Hundred grand’s too much money to just piss away—that’s how they’ll look at it. This is an older radio tag. I want them to find it. So they won’t look for this one.” I held up a piece of plastic about the size of a grain of rice. “New generation, just out. Japanese, of course.”

I removed a pack of bills from the bag and slid a twenty from the middle. A tiny drop of glue stuck the transponder to the currency, which I reinserted into the pack. “If they take the money and leave the bag, we’ll still know where they are.”

Bernie said, “What will you do when you find them?”

“Don’t know. Depends in part on who they are. I’ll think of something.” I picked up the red backpack along with my bag. “Better get going. Might be traffic in the tunnel. Where do you want me to call?”

“We’ll be here,” Bernie said. “Good luck.”

I walked north through the all but empty, muggy streets. I keep the Potemkin in a garage on Pearl Street. I keep the Vlost and Found company car—a black 2003 Ford Crown Victoria, Police Interceptor model—in an open lot on Water Street. I call it the Valdez, after the ill-fated tanker, not the Madison Avenue coffee character. It has seventy-five thousand miles on the odometer, dents in the front fender and back door, and cost $9,800. It’s essentially a Crown Vic with a bunch of extra features and equipment and drives like its namesake, but it’ll move when you ask it to, and I couldn’t care less if it gets nicked, dinged, or totaled. A perfect New York City car.

I tossed the bags in back and headed for the Holland Tunnel, where it was still rush hour. I wanted to arrive early, get the lay of the land. The dashboard clock read 8:33 when I left. At 9:02, I pulled into the Sheraton’s parking lot. I found a space near the entrance and sat in the dusk. It felt a little like the old days, when I’d been stationed here before—meeting an agent when exposure for either of us had dire consequences. This time, though, I hadn’t chosen the venue, and the dire consequences would all fall on me.

I watched the parking lot in the failing light. If I were doing this, I’d have a man in the lot, two in the lobby, and two upstairs, in the room next door or, better, across the hall, all connected with earphone radios. Their first concern would be the money, their second, me. No reason for them to do anything so long as I followed instructions. Which I fully intended to do. Up to a point.

At 9:42, a car drove in, its headlights sweeping across the Valdez and the front of the hotel. It parked on the other side of the entrance. A man in a rumpled sports coat got out and unloaded a wheeler suitcase from the trunk. It was red. Shit. Nothing I could do. I held my breath as he pulled it to the front door. He stopped in the lighted entranceway to search his pockets. It took forever before he found what he was looking for—his cell phone. I almost got out and yelled at him to keep moving, but nobody attacked him. Nobody came out to greet him. From what I could see, there was nobody to pay him any attention whatsoever. He finally continued inside. The parking lot returned to emptiness. I waited several more minutes before exhaling slowly. They knew who they were waiting for.

At 9:55, I slid a SIG Pro 9 mm handgun, a compact, double-action autoloader with a polymer frame and a ten-round magazine, into the backpack with the bills, working it down almost to the bottom. I don’t like guns. The result of having them pointed at me in my youth. I don’t carry one as a rule, but I wasn’t sure what I was in for tonight, so better safe than sorry. I figured the guy at the door, if there was a guy at the door, would search me and make sure the backpack contained the money, but he was unlikely to dump it out in the parking lot. Or so I hoped.

I locked the car, hoisted the backpack, and walked toward the entrance. The bright lights of the covered doorway cast everything around it in shadow. No doorman, no bellhop, no other guests, just a big, empty, well-lighted space. To walk into that, like the guy with the suitcase, was to present a target a blind man couldn’t miss from a quarter mile away. I stopped fifteen feet short, still in the shadows. Growing up in a Marxist bureaucracy teaches many things, and one of them is patience. I could stand there all night if need be. I was disobeying instructions, but if they meant me harm, I might get a half second of warning. I waited, stock-still, one eye on the door, peripheral vision searching the parking lot for any sign of movement among the cars.

Newark is known as a tough town, but it’s not Moscow. Nobody shot me from the shadows. After two long minutes, a man in a dark-colored shirt pushed his way out the door and straight in my direction.

“Back to car,” he said without breaking stride.

He followed me to the Valdez. When we got there, he had a gun in his hand.

“Bag on car. Hands on car.” Ukrainian accent.

I put the backpack on the hood and my hands on the roof. He ran his free hand over my arms, legs, and torso. He opened the backpack, looked inside, shook it once, pulled out a pack of bills, fanned it, and replaced it. The one flaw in my plan was that he’d try to accompany me upstairs, but he put the backpack on the car, walked around to the other side, and said, “Go. Three twelve.”

I took the money and walked to the hotel without looking back.

The lobby was empty, but the cocktail lounge, on an open, raised floor to one side, was a third full. Could be another one there. I didn’t look but walked straight to the elevators, the backpack over my shoulder for all to see, and punched 3. I transferred the SIG to my waistband during the ride.

The door opened in a small waiting area. Empty corridors ran in both directions. Room 312 was to the right. Door ajar, as promised. I pushed it open and stopped. No movement. No sound, other than the hum of hotel machinery and a TV somewhere down the hall.

Inside the door, a narrow hall extended past a closet and bathroom on the left into the room itself, which was filled with a king-sized bed, a desk, and a chair. Standard hotel design.

I had just put the backpack on the bed when I heard a noise. I started to turn, but a blow landed on the back of my head. Something hard, knocking me forward, onto the bed. I held myself up, which was a mistake because it got me another crack on the skull. I fell to the floor, woozy but conscious and alert enough to pretend I was out cold. A foot poked my side a couple of times. I refused to move and tried to keep my breathing slow and steady.

A male voice, speaking Ukrainian, said, “Watch him while I get the money.”

I heard the sounds of the backpack being emptied. The same voice spoke again.

“Jerk-fuck thinks he smart. Look at this.”

The other man said, “Shit. You think that’s—”

“Not now, fool! Search him. Get his keys—and anything else.”

The other man bent over me. Vodka on his breath. I felt his hands in my jacket pocket. When he tried to push me over, I pulled the SIG from my back and stuck it in his face.

“Back off.”

The man pulled away fast, afraid. The other man said, “Shit!” and bolted for the door, carrying a blue backpack.

“Looks like it’s you and me, pal.” I made a show of raising the gun.

“No… I… Please…”

He backed slowly away, as if any sudden movement would cause me to fire.

“Get out,” I hissed.

He was gone in an instant, leaving a Raven MP-25, a true junk gun, on the bed.

I hefted the pistol and ejected the clip. Full, but the safety was on. He’d probably hit me with the butt. I felt the back of my head. Some swelling near the base of the skull, a little blood, not too much. These guys were amateurs, and incompetent ones at that, but the fact that they were Ukrainians was one more coincidence I didn’t like.

The red backpack was on the floor, empty. The transponder was next to it. I sat on the bed long enough for my head to clear, then took the plastic liner from the ice bucket and filled it at the ice machine on my way downstairs. The lobby bar was still busy. No Eva. No one under the age of thirty. I wasn’t surprised, but I wanted to be able to tell Bernie I was thorough.

I returned to the elevator. The Sheraton had ten floors, eight with guest rooms. The top two were labeled CLUB LEVEL and required a special key. I assumed the Ukrainians wouldn’t have sprung for those. Thirty-eight rooms to a floor, two hundred thirty to check. I started on eight and worked my way down, knocking on every door. Business was slow, and fewer than a hundred rooms were occupied. I asked for Eva wherever someone answered. Most responded, “Wrong room” or “Not here.” I interrupted two couples in the throes of passion. The first woman screamed, “My husband!” The second man told me to “Fuck off!” Three other women threatened to call security. One guy invited me to join the poker game he was running in his suite. The whole process took just over half an hour.

Eva wasn’t there, just as I’d expected. Never had been. Time for Plan B. The Ukrainians might know where she was. More likely, I’d have to find a way to get them to spill who they were working for. Along the way, of course, I’d retrieve the money and discourage whoever needed discouraging from trying to put another bite on the Mulhollands. Priorities.

No one near my car. The Ukrainians were long gone—or so they thought. I wedged the melting ice bag against the headrest and leaned against it. The cold felt good. I turned on my laptop, took out my cell phone, and dialed Bernie’s number. He answered on the first ring.

“Turbo! Where are you?”

“Hotel parking lot. We had a little scuffle, but everything’s okay now.”

“What? Are you all right? Have you got Eva? What about the money?”

At least he asked about me first. “I’m okay. Bump on the head, that’s all. No Eva. Not here. Never was. I searched the whole hotel. I should know about the money in a minute.”

“What should I tell Rory? And Felix?”

“I wouldn’t tell them anything yet. Bear with me.” I put down the phone and picked up the laptop. A few clicks of the cursor and a map filled the screen. An arrow pointed to a block in Jersey City, not far from the Holland Tunnel. I picked up the phone.

“Looks like they didn’t go far. Jersey City. I’m on my way. I’ll call later, but it could be a while.”

I closed the phone before he could argue, pulled out of the lot, and found my way onto I-78 East. When I was through the tolls and climbing the ramp onto the Pulaski Skyway, I made two more calls. The first was to Foos, with the Jersey City address. I woke him up, but he’s used to that. The second was to Gayeff, a former Soviet Olympic discus thrower. He and his twin brother, Maks, who competed in the shot put, did contract work for the Cheka after they retired from athletics. They now run a numbers operation in Brighton Beach and moonlight as muscle for hire, mainly, I think, because they enjoy it. Gayeff was awake, but I probably interrupted something—he didn’t sound happy to hear from me. He agreed to round up Maks and meet me in an hour.

When I got to Jersey City, I found a parking place, adjusted what was left of the ice in the bag, and settled in to wait. It was going to be a long night. Not least for the men holed up at 145 Montgomery Street.

CHAPTER 9

Montgomery Street was in the process of gentrification. About half the three-story brick row houses in the block containing 145 looked like they’d had significant money put into them. The other half did not. Number 145 was in the latter group.

I’d been there ten minutes when Foos called. “Three apartments. Two tenants have lived there several years—Sanchez and Rodriguez. Third place is empty, or rented off the books, Apartment 1A. Need anything else?”

“Don’t know yet. I’m waiting for reinforcements.”

“Track and Field?” His nickname for Gayeff and Maks. He thinks it’s hilarious. “Don’t let those boys get out of hand. I’m going for pizza. Back in twenty.” Foos likes to smoke a little dope from time to time, which invariably gives him the munchies.

I rested my head against the melting ice, which was having a generally therapeutic effect. At twelve fifty-five, a green Econoline van rolled down the street and pulled into a parking space across from mine. Reinforcements had arrived.

Gayeff came around to my passenger side and got in. He was a large muscular man who looked every inch a large muscular man. The years away from professional competition hadn’t added any fat. He had a square face, round nose, small eyes, and a buzz cut. When he grinned, as he did now in greeting, pencil-thin lips extended a half inch at either end in a flat line.

“What’s the deal?” he said.

“Take a pass by 145. We want apartment 1A, ground floor.”

“Huh.” He shut the door quietly and walked down the block. A minute later he returned on the other side of the street and climbed back in the car.

“Can’t tell much. Bars on the windows and air conditioners. Double door, double locked on the front. Apartment’s in the back, on the right. We can do it, but they’ll know we’re coming.”

“Let’s wait. Anyone comes out who doesn’t look Hispanic, grab him.”

“Huh.” He went back to the van.

We didn’t have to wait long. The door opened fifteen minutes later, and a man stood on the stoop long enough to light a cigarette before coming down the stairs and turning away from where I was parked. The same guy who hit me. Gayeff followed on foot. The van pulled out and followed him. I followed the van. We all turned right at the corner and stopped briefly midblock while the van’s sliding door opened and Gayeff hustled the man inside. I followed a few more blocks until we reached a commercial neighborhood and the van pulled over. The door slid open, and Maks looked out, wearing the same thin grin as his twin. He moved aside, and I climbed in.

Gayeff held the Ukrainian with two clamplike hands. He was dark-haired, unshaven. A knife, a wallet, and some keys sat on the floor of the van. I took the Raven from my pocket and put it against his forehead.

“You forgot this.”

He whimpered and tried to slide away. Gayeff held firm. I put away the gun and picked up the wallet. A driver’s license bore the name Ilarion Nedelenko and an address in Brooklyn, Manhattan Beach. Pictures of an overweight, unattractive woman and an equally overweight, unattractive young girl. I nodded to Maks, stepped outside, and called Foos. He confirmed the address, adding a phone number, immigration information, the make, model, and registration number of an old Ford Taurus, and the names of the wife and child. First thing was to find out if these guys were operating with protection. They were on Lachko’s turf, but they weren’t the kind of men he’d have confidence in. If they were freelancing, it shouldn’t be difficult to terrify them into cooperating—they were already living on borrowed time.

I told Maks what I had in mind, and we climbed back in the van. I made a show of pocketing my cell phone before I said to Maks in Russian, “Lachko says he’s a useless pizda staraya—old cunt. Kill him. Use his gun.”

Maks grinned and rummaged through a toolbox. He held up a screwdriver. The man’s eyes bounced in their sockets. The Badger’s calling card was a screwdriver in the right eye.

Maks said, “What about the wife and kid?”

“He doesn’t care. That’s up to you.”

Maks grinned again. “Gayeff likes fat broads.”

The man began babbling in Ukrainian. He hadn’t done anything, please let him explain, we had the wrong guy, please don’t hurt his wife and daughter, and so on. I let him beg for a while, then ordered him in Russian to shut up. I was right about freelancing. I knelt in front of him and held out my old KGB identity card.

“The Cheka never goes away, you know. We’re everywhere. We see everything. We know everything. Even here. Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you now and let my friends spend the rest of the night enjoying themselves with Katerina and Pavla.”

I don’t know whether it was the card or the Christian names, but the terror overwhelmed him. Howls of fear intermingled with meaningless ramblings.

“Shut up and listen to me! You have one chance. One chance to save your family and your own worthless skin. You give me the wrong answer, I will know, and I will turn you over to these two.”

Maks waggled the screwdriver. The man sobbed, “Noooo.”

“How many men in the house?”

He hesitated. He wasn’t as terrified as I thought. Turn up the heat. I rationalized that psychological terror was preferable to its physical cousin, but the truth was I’d also been trained by some nasty motherfuckers.

“Kill him.”

I handed Maks the Raven, which he put to Nedelenko’s temple.

“No! No! Wait!” Nedelenko was screaming. “Two, there are two.”

“Names,” I said, putting as much cold as I could into my voice.

“Dolnak, Kalynych.”

“First names?”

“Marko, Diodor.”

“Armed?”

“Revolvers.”

“Layout?”

He described a two-room apartment with a small kitchen and bath.

“Money there?”

He nodded.

“Maybe I’m going to give you another chance. Maybe.”

I went outside and called Foos again, with Nedelenko’s names. It took him less than ten minutes to come up with addresses and phone numbers, also in Manhattan Beach. One of the men, Marko, had a family. I got back in the van.

“We’re going back to the house. You’re going to take us in. Anything goes wrong, you die first. Understand?”

He nodded.

We left my car and drove the van back to Montgomery Street. Nedelenko had keys for the front door. He led us down a hallway with a dirty linoleum floor and yellowed, peeling paint to a single door in the back. The three of us stood to one side. He knocked twice and said his name before he put his key in the lock. As soon as he turned it, I pulled him back, Gayeff kicked open the door, and the brothers burst in. There were shouts of surprise and the pop of a silencer. After a minute, Maks said, “Okay.”

I brought in Nedelenko, which probably didn’t add any years to his life expectancy, but he should have chosen his business associates more wisely. Like he said, there were two men in the room, one on an old couch, the man from the parking lot, and one at a table with money on it. Next to the money was a revolver and a BlackBerry. The room was hardly any cooler than outside. An old air conditioner chugged away in the window, but to little effect. The man at the table, the other man in the hotel room, wore a tank top and held his bleeding shoulder. His skin was covered in tattoos. His eyes were darker and tougher than Nedelenko’s. They showed pain but not fear. The ringleader. The other man was scared. His eyes darted around the room. Sweat stained his shirt halfway down his rib cage.

Momentum was an ally. Don’t give them time to think. I went straight to the man at the table, picked up the gun, and poked the wound. He tried not to show the pain, but it was too much.

“Which one are you? Marko? Diodor?”

His eyes widened, but he said nothing. I nodded at Maks, who put his gun against the man’s cheek.

“Which?”

“Mar… Marko.”

“Good. Let me explain the situation. You are clumsy and you are stupid. You are operating on the Badger’s turf, which means you also have a death wish.” I took out my cell phone. “One call and—”

“No! Ratko said—” Marko caught himself. That name rang a vague bell, but I wanted to keep the pressure on.

“Ratko said what?”

Marko shook his head. I poked his wound again and he grimaced. I pushed harder and he cried out.

“Okay, okay, please. We know rules. We no break. Ratko said everything okay with the Badger. I swear.”

“You can swear to Barsukov. See if he believes you. Personally, I think you’re full of shit.”

“No! It’s truth!”

“Shut up. Listen. You have two problems. One is the Badger. The other is me. He already has men on their way to your home on Amherst Street. I can call them off—if you give me reason to.”

Marko started out of the chair. He was scared now. “No! You wouldn’t—”

I shoved him back, hitting his wounded shoulder. His face was filled with pain.

“You don’t think so? You are wrong. Listen to me. Where’s the girl?”

“Girl? What girl?”

I only had to feint in the direction of his shoulder before he screamed.

“No! Stop! Please! I… I don’t know girl. Ratko say pick up money. That’s all.”

“And he’d take care of Barsukov?”

“Yes! I told you…”

“I still think you’re full of shit. Let’s see what Lachko thinks.”

I took out my cell phone and walked into the bedroom. Marko wailed as I shut the door. I was all but certain they knew nothing of Eva. As expected, they were working for someone else—Ratko—and he might. I waited a few minutes, returned to the living room, and spoke quietly to Gayeff and Maks. I surveyed the three men, all of whom looked terrified.

“You,” I said, pointing to the man I hadn’t spoken with yet. “In there.”

I followed him to the bedroom, Raven in hand.

“Take off your clothes. Kneel on the bed, face forward.”

“Wait,” he cried. “Please…”

“Now!”

He did as he was told. I put the muzzle to the back of his head. “One chance. Where’s the girl?”

“No know! No girl! Please!”

“All right, where’s Ratko?”

“No know! No know! Marko—”

I moved the gun to the right and fired past his ear into the mattress. The crack was loud in the small space. The man fell forward sobbing. The room smelled of shit. I believed him.

The door opened, and Gayeff came in quickly. He leaned over the man on the bed and said in Russian, “My friend is kind. I am not. You make one noise, I will kill you.” He raked the man’s cheek with his pistol to make sure he understood. The man sobbed quietly.

I returned to the living room.

“You two! Clothes off! On your knees. Now! I gave your friend a chance to live. He didn’t take it.” I shrugged. “Maybe you are smarter.”

They looked at each other wide-eyed and then at me. I raised my gun hand as if to strike Marko, and he started to undress quickly. Nedelenko followed.

“Down, now!”

They dropped to their knees facing the wall.

I put the barrel of the gun to the back of Marko’s neck. “You’ve probably gathered by now the Badger doesn’t give a fuck what happens to you. Where do I find Ratko?”

Marko turned slightly to look at Nedelenko.

“You’re next, Nedelenko. Tell him to answer.”

“All right,” Marko said. “Don’t shoot. We only pick up money.”

“Where is he?”

“He has apartment. New York. Sixth Avenue, Twenty-first Street, new building.”

“What name?”

“What?”

“What name does he rent the apartment under?”

“His name. Rislyakov.”

“What do you think?” I said to Maks.

He spat on the floor.

“No! It’s truth! I swear. We no lie!”

I knocked on the bedroom door, and Gayeff came out.

“Get in there,” I said to the Ukrainians. “Don’t even think about coming out that door for an hour. My friend will shoot the first one who tries.”

Marko and Nedelenko shuffled into the bedroom. Cries of surprise turned to anger as Gayeff closed the door behind them. I put the money in the bag as Maks gathered up the clothes. I pocketed Marko’s BlackBerry and signaled the twins outside.

“Wait until they make a run for it. Forget Kalynych. Follow the other two and let me know where they go.”

I drove back to Manhattan, keeping the car at the speed limit while my mind raced. This was still America—New York, New Jersey—but the last few hours felt like I was back in Russia, more specifically the old Soviet Union. Terror, intimidation, fear know no boundaries. I’d used that to my advantage, thanks to the power of the Basilisk and the stupidity of the Ukrainians, but I wasn’t happy about it. I’d meant to leave that life behind. I slid back to it all too easily, and in a way, this was worse. In the old days, the law, however oppressive and corrupt, gave me the right. Tonight, I’d acted on my own—no law, no right, just a fake ID, a little information, and the ability to terrify.

I could tell myself it was the only way to find the girl, she could be in danger. Priorities.

That was a lie. I’d done what I’d done because I could. A bad habit to fall back into.

I pushed guilt aside and tried to focus on facts. The probability that Eva Mulholland had actually been kidnapped, never high, had fallen to near zero. The note was real, the photo faked, both most likely concocted by Ratko Rislyakov—I was still trying to place where I’d heard that name—and Eva Mulholland. The delivery instructions were accurate, except for the part about Eva. The Ukrainians were working for Ratko. Eva probably needed money for drugs, Ratko could have his own high-cost vices. It all made sense, except that the Ukrainians expected Ratko to clear things with Barsukov. That meant he had pull with the Badger. That opened up a host of other questions. Was Ratko aware of Eva’s real identity? Did Eva know Ratko was connected to her biological father? Did Eva know her biological father was in New York City? Was Polina aware of any of this? I could guess at the answers, but they’d be only that—guesses.

One good thing—nobody was after me, or they hadn’t been before tonight. Somebody—Ratko Rislyakov?—was now out a hundred K. So I still had a terrified Polina and a pissed-off kidnapper/extortionist to worry about. Maybe the head of the Russian mob, too. Who already hated me more than anyone else on earth. Not a game I would have chosen to sit in on, had I had the chance to preview the other players. Like it or not, I was in it now, and I still couldn’t see enough cards to get a feel for the game. First order of business tomorrow was to introduce myself to one guy at the table I hadn’t met.

I called Bernie as I came out of the tunnel on the Manhattan side. No answer—he’d gone home after all. I left a message that I’d drop off the money later that day. I put the Valdez in its lot and stopped by the office to put the gun, bag, and BlackBerry in the safe.

The smell of marijuana hung in the air. Foos was asleep in his office-bedroom. It would take a small explosion to wake him. Pig Pen was another matter.

“Nighttime, Russky,” he said as I passed his door.

“I know, Pig Pen. Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

“Wacky weed.”

“That’s the boss, right, Pig Pen? Not you?”

Through the dark I could just make out a half-open eye with a look that said, Don’t be too sure. Great. A stoned parrot.

“Good night, Pig Pen.”

“Good night, cheapskate.”

I took some comfort in the fact that he latches on to his latest word only until someone teaches him a new one.

I drank a small glass of vodka in the kitchen while I tried to remember why Ratko’s name sounded familiar. I didn’t get very far, and the vodka didn’t help. Maybe sleep would. My watch read 3:37 as I walked home through the empty streets. It was still hot.

CHAPTER 10

The Chekist coughed, put his lighter to another cigarette, and clicked PLAY. The decade-old tape, digitally transferred to a laptop, crackled to life. Poor sound quality, plenty of background hiss, but the voices were clear. Not that it mattered—he’d listened enough times over the years to memorize the contents. Still, he took some pride in the job his technicians had done wiring the dacha. Neither of them had ever known. Not that that mattered either.

A nurse stopped at his door, wrinkling her nose. He hadn’t seen her before. She frowned at him, the cigarette, and the NO SMOKING sign above his head. She started to speak, but his hard stare drew her eyes to the name on the end of the hospital bed. She gave a small shriek and scurried away. He went back to the tape.

A TV played. The disembodied voice of the news reader described the carnage in central Moscow as firefighters fought to bring the blaze at Rosnobank under control. It would take them another fifteen hours, by which time the office tower would be only a charred shell. The death toll would just miss double digits. Could’ve been much worse, the Chekist thought, not for the first time. He’d taken all the precautions he could.

Over the TV came the sounds of drawers being opened and closed, papers ruffled, the occasional curse, vodka poured into a glass. Kosokov was getting drunk while he got ready to run. He didn’t know he was already dead.

Gorbenko’s voice. “You’ll never make it, you know. They’ll have men at every border crossing. They will have anticipated this.”

“I’ll worry about making it,” Kosokov said. “If the Cheka’s as smart as everyone says it is, we’d all still be working for the Party.”

“Don’t be a fool, Anatoly Andreivich. Look what they did to your bank. They’re shutting everything down, erasing all the tracks, eliminating all the links. You’re a very big link. You and I, we’re the only two who could expose everything.”

“I’m counting on that fact to keep me alive. You made your deal, Boris. You’re on your own with it. I’ll take my chances by myself.”

“You’re crazy! The CPS can provide protection. We can bring the Cheka down. Yeltsin will have no choice but to purge the entire organization when people see what they’ve done. It’s their one big weakness. No one will have difficulty believing they murdered innocent Russians to pursue their own ends. Especially once you and I lay out the evidence. Like the Katyn massacre. There will be national outrage.”

“National outrage? Russia today? Hah! Don’t make me laugh. Neither of us will live to see it, in any event. Like I said, you made your deal. Good luck to you. I’m taking my evidence with me. My life insurance policy.”

The crash of a door thrown open. Her voice. “Tolik, I came as soon as I could. What the hell is going on? What are you doing here? Oh… Who the hell are you?”

Gorbenko said, “No names. Better that way. Call me Leo. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

“Tolik, what the hell is happening?”

“Look at the TV. Your fucking husband is destroying everything. You, too. You didn’t tell him, did you?”

“Lachko? What are you talking about?”

“Look.”

More TV noise for a minute, then Polina. “Jesus! That’s…”

“That’s right. The bank. Maybe you’d prefer I was there.”

“Don’t be an ass. What…”

“The Cheka, you fool, that’s what. Covering their evil tracks.” A grunt as Kosokov pushed himself to his feet.

“The fire, how did it start?” she said.

“Start? It was set. The whole building, all at once, early this morning. WHOOSH!”

“And you think the FSB…”

“Think? Think? Polya, I know.”

“But why?”

“Polya, did it ever enter that beautiful, egocentric, self-centered, narcissistic head of yours that all your success, all those big property deals you engineered, all the money we made, in reality have nothing, as in not one fucking thing, to do with you?”

“You’re drunk. This is nonsense.”

“Nonsense? Nonsense, she says. Let me explain something, something that should be obvious, if you ever stopped to think about it. We’re the Cheka’s bank, Polya. We have been since 1992. We’ve financed more operations than I can count. I kept a record. It’s all on these CDs. I knew one day they wouldn’t need us anymore, that this is what would happen. These CDs might just keep us alive. Take a look if you don’t believe me.”

Another stretch of silence, punctuated by periodic sounds from Kosokov.

Some ten years earlier, in October 1999, the Chekist was already in his car, cursing snow and Moscow traffic and berating his driver to go faster toward Kosokov’s dacha. Now, listening for the hundredth—two hundredth?—time, he had no difficulty remembering each of the participants and every piece of bad luck he stumbled over that day. He fished out another cigarette as he waited for the moment Polina learned the truth.

The tape rolled. Kosokov was pouring more vodka. Goddamned fool, the Chekist thought. You should have run. Right now. But you thought you could outsmart the Cheka. If you’d just run, maybe none of this would’ve happened.

There it was, the quick intake of breath, followed by the curse. Then, “Jesus Christ, Tolik, what the hell have you done?”

“Keep going, Polya. The best part’s at the end.”

The Chekist stopped the tape and reached for the phone. Time to move. He wasn’t in the best shape for it—he was tired, and his chest ached. The doctors said he needed another couple of days, but he had no choice. To wait was to risk everything. Fucking Kosokov. Fucking Gorbenko. Fucking Rislyakov. Fucking Polina.

He’d been sloppy ten years ago. Uncharacteristically so. Now he was paying for his negligence. He wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.