On target

SIX

After an hour on the road, Court was taken to a massive home on the northern outskirts of Saint Petersburg. He had never been in this suburb and admitted to himself that he could not even find this place on a map. The streets were wide and tree-lined, the properties were large and landscaped, the homes were old and stately.

The limousine turned up a drive, and Gentry immediately focused on the home ahead. It was breath-taking from a distance. Architecturally speaking, it was magnificent.

But as they got closer it appeared to Court as if Sid's crew of dumb-ass henchmen also moonlighted as his landscapers and housekeepers, tasks for which they were even less suited than security. There were tents erected on the grounds, like a small military encampment, with smoking fires and young men standing around, apparently doing little or nothing. Several four-wheel-drive vehicles, mud-covered and poorly maintained, were parked on the shredded lawn on both sides of the driveway.

The facade of the mansion was covered in flaking paint, and the gravel roundabout parking space was covered with bottles, cigarette butts, and other trash. Gentry climbed out of the limo and was led through a kitchen that looked like something from a frat house whose house mother had run away after a nervous breakdown: dishes upon dishes in the sink, plastic carry-out trays covering every flat space, and vodka bottles rimming the floors like some sort of shabby chic glass trim work.

Court was no neatnik, but he could not help but wonder about the prospects for wildlife in this kitchen during the summer, and he felt thankful for the frigid air that made its way through the thin kitchen window to keep bug life from flourishing, and the three or four fat cats he'd noticed strolling around both the interior and the exterior of the mansion to keep furry vermin at bay.

Next it was two flights up on a wide, circular staircase. Men sat on the steps, played handheld video games, chatted on mobile phones, read newspapers, and smoked, each man with a submachine gun on his lap or a shoulder holster stowing an automatic pistol under his arm. Some wore typical Russian mobster suits, but most of them were in camouflage or army green, though not in any sort of coherent uniforms-more like the attire of survivalists or hunters.

And they were all skinheads. Most stared up at Gentry with malevolence. He presumed it was his long hair and scruffy beard that served as indicators that he was not from the same club as they were. He even wondered if they thought he was a member of whatever particular ethnic group they blamed for all the problems in their shitty lives.

Fuck 'em, thought Court. He knew he could kick any five of their assess without breaking a shine on his forehead.

The only problem with his macho self-assuredness, he recognized, was that he'd seen at least ten times that number of men so far on the property.

Sidorenko's security setup clearly placed a much higher premium on quantity than quality.

Finally Gentry passed through a massive gilded double doorway and into an outer office. A male secretary sat behind a desk. He was well-dressed and instantly appeared to Court to be incalculably more competent at his job than were the fifty or so other jokers lounging around this regal shit hole.

"May I take your coat, sir?" the man inquired in English as he stood behind his desk and stepped around to greet Court.

"I won't be staying."

The secretary seemed momentarily nonplussed, but he recovered nicely. "As you wish, sir. Please, right through those doors," he motioned with a gracious smile, but then he spoke to the four guards. "Stay close to him." It was in Russian, but Gentry understood.

It was another set of gilded doors, and on the other side it was dark, a large hall, the only light coming from a fireplace to the right of a massive desk at the far end of the wooden-floored room. There was no other furniture in the room, and it was as cold as a meat locker, even with a crackling fireplace. The room echoed like a cathedral as Gentry moved through the dark towards the man behind the desk.

"Wonderful to meet you finally, Mr. Gray." Gentry recognized the voice of Gregor Ivanovic Sidorenko. It was high-pitched and nasal, and it matched his face somehow. The man was small of frame, with tiny eyes and narrow features; his eyeglasses seemed as fragile as the rest of him.

But he was younger than Gentry had imagined him to be. Maybe mid-forties, though he did not seem to be healthy. His thin face made him appear underfed, and his sunken cheeks were sallow even in the dim of the room.

Sid reached out a hand to Court. Court ignored it. He knew everything since Gdansk-the men, the plane, the limos, the guns, the attitude-was all orchestrated to demonstrate Sid's authority and control over Gentry. Small men with big power sometimes exert this power disproportionately to compensate for what they consider to be their shortcomings. Nothing Gentry had not seen before, but he knew that he had to fight fire with fire, to exert his own dominance on the situation.

"We had an agreement. We were not to meet face-to-face. You violated this agreement. I am not like the others that you control. You can't impress me with a third-rate crew of gold chains and poorly lubricated firearms. I only came along willingly to tell you this, and to tell you that I quit."

The young minders around Court could not understand his English, but from the foreigner's angry and aggressive tone they moved closer to him and looked to their master for guidance. He stayed them with a raised hand, then wiggled his fingertips at them, as if brushing them back into the corners of the room. They complied. Court could hear their retreating footsteps behind him.

Sidorenko did not take his eyes off of Court. Instead he slowly backed up behind the desk and sat down. He sipped purple tea from a gold-leaf glass. Court thought the man to be intimidated, but the next words out of the Russian mob boss's mouth came forth calmly and with no discernible tremor.

"Have you ever seen a man boiled alive in a tub of acid?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?"

"A colleague of mine." Sid held out a hand as if to allay his guest's fears. "I did not do it. It was shortly after the auctioning off of state-owned enterprise; ninety-three, I think it was. I was with a team of accountants and lawyers working for a mobster in Moscow. He was no oligarch, no great genius either. But he loved money above all, and he strong-armed his way into several department store chains and then scared off or killed off the co-owners. Anyway, he decided one of his employees had been siphoning funds from his legitimate holdings, and he brought us all to a meeting at his dacha in Odessa. There, waiting for us, were some very hard men: Spetsnaz paramilitaries moonlighting as henchmen for this cretin. We-there were nine of us-were all taken to a barn, stripped naked, and shackled to railroad ties. We were beaten and sprayed with cold water for two days. It was October. The oldest man, an attorney, died that first night. During the second night our employer entered the barn and told us that if one of us confessed, he would, by doing so, save the lives of the others. No one spoke. The beatings continued for another twelve hours."

Court looked around the room while Sidorenko spoke.

"On day three another man was dead. I can't remember his face, a regulatory affairs expert, if I'm not mistaken. Our employer returned again and made the same offer as before. Again, no one confessed. I was certain he would kill everyone, but fortunately for the rest of us, the oligarch had a deep-seated mistrust of Jews. He noticed, lying there in the muck and blood, that one of us was circumcised. Natan Bulichova. He took him for a Jew, decided he was the deceitful one, and had a wooden water trough brought in from outside. It was filled with a solvent used for stripping lead-based paint, powerful stuff, and Natan was thrown on the ground next to the trough. For nearly an hour our Spetsnaz tormentors used shovels to splash the acid on poor Natan as he writhed on the straw. He turned red, and then the skin began to bubble and pop off him, leaving him covered in the most brutal sores. The rest of us were forced to watch. Finally, because the men with the shovels grew tired of the work, they grabbed hooks used to lift bales of hay, and they pierced them into Natan's arms and legs. They threw him right into the acid bath. The rest of us, Natan's friends and colleagues, willed him to hurry up and die, for both his benefit and ours. He screamed a scream I will never forget, until finally his melted face went under the liquid and did not emerge. It was a horrifying experience."

Court recognized that Sid enjoyed telling the story. He did not know what to say, so he said, "Sounds like stealing from this man was not a good idea."

Sid shrugged, reached for his tea as he replied matter-of-factly, "Oh, Natan was perfectly innocent. I am the one who embezzled the money. Used it ultimately to go into business for myself. Our employer let the rest of us leave. He himself was killed in ninety-four, shot in the back while getting fitted for a suit in Moscow."

Court sighed. "Is there a point to this story? Because if there is, I don't get it. Or am I just supposed to be frightened by it? Because I am not."