The First Billion

51

This was where all paths led.

To Russia.

To Moscow.

To her father.

Cate waited alone in the wood-paneled den off the entry hall. The lights were dim, and the room smelled of new carpet and worn leather. Through the heating vents, murmurs of a violent conversation drifted to her ears. Jett and her father were arguing, and it made her afraid. She’d spent her last teenage years here. Something about the Edwardian house seemed to goad its inhabitants into perfectly dreadful behavior. “She used to lie with her ear to the floor, listening to every word of her parents’ fights, wincing, crying, silently ordering them to stop and make up.

The past.

Everywhere she looked it was crowding in on her, suffocating her with nightmares and obligations.

Moving to the window, she drew a curtain and peeked outside. If she lifted her eyes, she could make out the top floors of Moscow State University, towering above a stand of trees. Well past midnight, the building’s lights were ablaze. Built in the late 1940s as one of seven “Stalin Skyscrapers” meant to showcase Soviet prowess in architecture and engineering, the university was ever the brilliant trophy. The stern spires and bold, conformist tower were masterpieces of their kind and stirred in her pangs of nostalgia so strong as to be painful. It was not the first time this evening she’d been overcome with sentiment.

Passing St. Basil’s, the Novodevichy Monastery, the Kremlin, even the most mundane of office buildings, she’d found her throat choked with emotion. These were the landmarks not only of the city but of a childhood she’d willed dead and buried, and each in turn provoked a cascade of memories. Cate and her mother pausing for a tea in one of the unsmiling cafes that dotted the upper levels of the GUM department store. Cate skating for the first time on an impromptu ice rink in the courtyard of their apartment building, the result of a broken main that had spewed water into the air for two weeks running. A reverent Cate, barely thirteen, passing through Lenin’s tomb for the first time, frightened for the life of her to stare down at the great man’s embalmed face, her teacher stopping her and forcing her to look, berating her in the sacrosanct hall to open her eyes and gaze upon the motherland’s savior. She’d obeyed and fainted straightaway.

But the stirring went deeper than nostalgia. It went to her heart. To her blood. It was her history awakening inside her. The past beckoning her to return. She was no longer Catherine Elizabeth Magnus, but Ekaterina Konstantinovna Elisabeth Kirova, a Russian woman born in Leningrad to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father almost thirty years ago. There was nothing her devotion to the West could do about it. Nothing her love for Ayn Rand or her addiction to Bruce Springsteen could do to rectify the error of her birth. All were accessories she’d acquired to paper over her true colors. Garments designed to deceive, to camouflage, to lie. The intended victim, of course, being none other than Katya Kirov herself.

Too wound up to sit, she dropped the curtain and made a tour of the room. The walls were covered with photographs, cartoons, framed articles, and here and there a diploma or honorary citation. Their common link was Konstantin Kirov. There was her father with Boris Yeltsin. Her father with Gorbachev. A photo with Bush the Elder. Oh, how he loved mingling with the big names, if only so he might position himself as champion of the free media. If, that is, one’s definition of “free media” meant using your television stations, your newspapers, your radio networks, to trumpet your own pet causes. If “free media” meant decrying taxes on aluminum production in order to favor your smelters in Krasnoyarsk. Or savaging the academic who had issued a report claiming that oligarchs exerted a drag on the economy equal to two percentage points of GNP. If so, then Kirov was your man.

Cate stared at her nails and stupidly wished she’d had a manicure before coming. She felt dirtied by her time in a jail cell. Catching a glimpse of her reflection, she flicked a strand of hair from her face, then rushed to her purse to apply some lipstick, only to throw the makeup back inside before she’d finished. Why did she give a damn about pleasing her father? She hated him and everything he stood for. He was a thief, a plunderer, a murderer. The epithets grew stale on her tongue, and pausing for breath, she was left with her original question: Why did she give a damn?

Unhappy sitting, she returned to the window and looked outside. A stream of headlights rolled up and down Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, hero of Borodino, who had defeated Napoleon not on the battlefield but off it, by withdrawing his troops from Moscow and burning the city in his wake. There was something about his methods, something about sacrificing one’s children for personal glory, be it a nation’s or a businessman’s, that rang a bell with her.

And taking a breath, she found the answer to her question. It had been lying in front of her for days, months, years even. She gave a damn simply because he was her father. Her blood. And she would never be free of her ties to him.

Worse still, he had defeated her once again. For all her actions to halt Mercury, her promises to avenge Alexei’s death, her desire to help Jett, she’d come up short. She still had no way to punish her father for his sins. She was ever the little girl powerless in her father’s presence. And she hated herself because of it.

Hello, Father. It’s been a long ti—”

Konstantin Kirov crossed the study in three quick steps, slapping her hard across the face before she could finish her words. “Shut up, whore.”

Cate fell back onto the couch. Her hand dabbed at her mouth and came away red with blood. She struggled for something to say, but the onrush of emotions, hot and angry and prideful, cluttered her throat, leaving her defenseless and speechless.

Kirov gazed down at her, shaking his head. He looked older, smaller, ascetic even, but he had the same energy, the same conviction.

“How dare you even look me in the eye?” he went on. “Look away. Look at the ground. Out the window. Just don’t set your eyes on me.” He stalked to the window, threw back the curtains, then turned on her again. “Here is my darling daughter returned from America with her new name and new boyfriend. Have you any idea the shame you bring to my house? The disgust I feel showing you to the men who work for me? I brought you into this world. I cared for you in difficult times. I gave you an education worthy of a princess. And how do you repay it? First by sending your weak-spined boyfriend to the police with some ludicrous accusations that I was fixing the market for aluminum. I’ll never forget that boy. That Kalugin. He lasted five minutes before spilling his guts, sobbing that you put him up to it. You should thank me for relieving you of his company. It was a favor, believe me.”

Aghast, Cate stared at her father. He was no longer just a corrupt businessman, no longer merely a killer even. He’d become a monster. Inhuman. A beast. “Stop it,” she said, her voice a whisper.

But Kirov went right on, trampling over her words as he had always trampled over her wishes, her desires, her opinions. “And now,” he said, “after I allow you to make a new start, you dare to use all your resources to destroy the greatest professional achievement of my life. You conspire with the prosecutor general’s office, you feed that sick-minded day trader rumors, you turn my partner against me—”

“Stop it!” she shouted. “Stop your lying! You can lie to Jett. You can lie to Baranov, to your adoring public. But you will not lie to me. I am your daughter, though the word scalds my tongue. With me you will speak the truth.” Cate stood and pushed her way past him.

“The truth?” Kirov spun, following her, his expression saying he found her suggestion murderously amusing. “Oh, it’s the truth you want, is it? You are a big girl now. A grown woman. I suppose I can tell you the truth. The truth is simple: We are building a new country. We are raising a phoenix from the ashes. What you may consider extreme is in fact mundane.”

“I’m all for building a new country,” she said through tears. “But legitimately.”

“Legitimately?” Kirov jumped on the term. “The word is not in the Russian vocabulary. How can there be legitimacy when no one knows how to define it? You think everything must be done the American way. It is easy for them. They draw upon a tradition of common law dating back a thousand years. A thousand years ago Moscow was a swamp. Huns, Goths, Tatars… we had them all at one time or another, riding pell-mell across our territories. Law was whoever had the faster horse, the sharper sword. ‘Kleptocracy’ is hardly a recent term. Only this time it’s the businessmen doing the heavy lifting, not the government. Have you any idea what it took to bring Mercury this far? What it costs to bribe the Czech communications minister? The going rate to secure cable construction permits in Kiev? Do you? So what if we’re not up to Western standards of transparency? We’re starting from so far back it’s a miracle we’ve gotten this far. If we’d kept to the letter of the law, Mercury would consist of two cans and a string. Be reasonable, my love. We are only asking for a chance.”

“But you cheat. You lie. You kill. Ten people, Father. Why? Just to disguise the murder of one?”

“What are the lives of ten people to insure the prosperity, the education, the livelihood, of thousands? I would have killed a hundred if necessary. A thousand, if the Rodina demanded it.”

“Another lie. You didn’t kill Ray Luca and the others for the Rodina. You killed them to help yourself. To take Mercury public. To steal your billion dollars and make yourself rich.”

Kirov approached her slowly, reaching out and taking her face in his hands. “But, Katya, don’t you see? I had no other choice. As Mercury goes, so goes the country. I am the Rodina.”

Cate grasped her father’s wrists and took his hands from her face. She felt sickened, her soul nauseated. “No,” she said. “You are not the Rodina. You are one man. You are greedy and desperate and you will fail. Oh, Father, you will fail. You cannot build a country on evil. If anyone should know it, it is we Russians. Hasn’t our history taught you anything?”

“Yes,” he said, suddenly thoughtful, sliding his hands into his pockets, pursing his lips. “It has taught me that perhaps we weren’t ruthless enough. I, for one, will not repeat the mistake.”

“You won’t succeed. We won’t allow you to. Not I, and not Jett.”

Kirov laughed softly. “The defiant ones. A pity, really.”

Cate looked at her father, wondering for the thousandth time how she could share his blood, carry his genes. “I’m the one who is ashamed. I am not your daughter. Not anymore.”

Kirov’s smile disappeared, and an ugly resolve settled about his face. “Be thankful you are, Katya. Be thankful you are.”

His eyes said the rest.

Or you would be dead, too.