The First Billion

Gavallan glanced out the window. They had climbed above the clouds and were soaring across an azure sea. Sporadic lightning flashed below in a downy gray quilt, smothered eruptions that reminded him of distant gunfire.

"Well, that explains a lot," he said. "You both had me going, I'll say that. Jett, the consummate dealmaker. Mr. Big Shot wangling Mercury away from Goldman and Merrill and every other big swinging dick on the street. Hell, those suckers didn't have a chance. At least I know how Pillonel learned that Black Jet was getting the deal a month before I did."

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you hear him this morning? Your father recruited him in November to do his dirty work. You know, to fake the due diligence and say that Mercury was more than the sum of its parts. The funny thing is, Black Jet didn't win the deal until January. Remember? You refused to toast the occasion. I drank the entire bottle of DP myself."

"Yes, I remember."

"I paid your father fifty million dollars of my firm's money to win a deal he had every intention of giving me anyway. This is enormous, Cate. I handed a man fifty million bucks to give me the royal screwing of the century. I sank my company for no reason whatsoever."

"Jett, don't do this to yourself."

"And you knew the whole time that it was rotten. The story just gets better and better."

"My father was involved. It couldn't be legitimate. It's that simple." Her tone was apologetic, conciliatory. "I tried saying everything I could to put you off the deal: 'Kirov's a crook.' 'You can't trust an oligarch.' I reminded you he'd gone bankrupt twice before."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Gavallan. "We've already had this conversation."

"What else did you want me to say?"

"How about the truth?"

"I already told you. If you'd done your job, you would never have touched the deal to begin with."

"If you'd told me he was your father, if you'd told me about what happened to Alexei, I would have pulled the plug in a New York minute." He looked at the floor for a moment, then back at Cate. "Why?" he asked again.

She hesitated, her emotions close to the surface. "I couldn't. I just couldn't."

"Of course you could! Ten people, Cate. Ten people are dead. Graf… the company…" He shook his head, and then the anger, the frustration, the deception, grew too much for him to bear. Balling his hand into a fist, he pounded on the armrest once, twice, three times, with all his might. "He's my friend. My best friend. He's got kids. He doesn't deserve this."

"I didn't know what would happen," Cate shot back. "None of us did. You can't blame me. You have no right, no right at all. You don't know what I've been through, why I'm even here."

"Then tell me. But this time, I'd appreciate the truth, Miss Kirov."

Cate sat straighter, and when she spoke the apology that had cracked her voice had fled. Anger, disdain, conviction, seeped in, bonding the fissures. "Five years ago, I swore that Konstantin Kirov would never be a part of my life again. I vowed to myself that my father would never touch me again in any way. I moved back to the States. I changed my name. I found a job as a journalist. I built myself a new life from scratch. I became Cate Magnus and I stopped being Konstantin Kirov's daughter. I tried to pretend my father no longer existed, but it was impossible. For me, he will always exist, his birthright like a disease." She took a breath. "Did you know I skated, Jett? That I was an alternate to the Russian Olympic team in 1988 when I was only fifteen? The day I left Moscow, I quit. Did you know that my favorite writer is Chekhov? Or that I adore Tchaikovsky? That I cry every time I hear the Violin Concerto in D Minor? Since coming back to the States, I haven't read a page of Chekhov or listened to a single piece of Tchaikovsky. I can't, because he gave me those things. He gave me his love of literature, of art, of music, and I will have nothing to do with him. Nothing! It's like having dirt all over your body that you can't get off. No matter how much I wash, how hard I scrub, I can't clean his blood out of my veins or his name from my soul. Inside, I will always be Katya Kirov. And I will always hate being her. At least on the outside I can be someone I like. Someone other people might like, too."

"You could have told me. I would have understood."

"I don't want you to understand! That's the whole point." Cate squirmed in her seat, and he could sense the frustration that was consuming her. "For me, he does not exist. Or do you think I should have given up everything I'd built, all I had become, to help you avoid a bad business deal?" She stopped, staring hard into his eyes. "Besides, Jett, I did tell you. You just weren't listening."

"I didn't listen? To what?" And then it hit him. He exhaled grimly, stunned. "You said no because he was your father."