The First Billion

53

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The duration?”

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

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

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

“Very romantic.”

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

“It’s Kirov. Better get used to it.”

“Okay, Miss Kirov. But not for long.”

“Is that a promise?”

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

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

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

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

“Jett.”

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

He surrendered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turning up the volume, he heard only steady breathing.

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

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

Lefortovo.

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

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

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

For what was to come tomorrow.

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

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