The First Billion

For a time they drove dead straight along a quiet four-lane highway. Billboards advertising a variety of products kept them company. Samsung. Volvo. Fisherman's Friend. Cate asked the driver a question and he answered politely, as if she were a guest, not a prisoner. She'd picked up two languages in a day: French, now Russian. Waiting for her translation, he thought, This is the real Cate, and I don't know her at all.

"We're going to my father's clubhouse in Sparrow Hills," she said, turning and meeting his eye. "Across the river where all the nomenklatura used to live. Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov."

"Just like Pacific Heights, huh?" Gavallan said icily.

They were in the city now, and it looked like the other parts of Russia he'd visited, only larger, more impressive, more desolate. The highway had been swallowed by a boulevard eight lanes across and they continued without regard for traffic signals. Green meant "go"; red meant "go faster." The grand avenues craved a dignified audience- skyscrapers of steel and glass, noble town houses, even a decent minimall. Instead, they were awarded stooped stone apartments and crumbling office buildings weeping soot and grime, all wedged together, all the same height, all devoid of personality. And then Gavallan remembered why: Personalities were allowed only inside the Kremlin. Or, maybe these days in Sparrow Hills.

Suddenly everyone was sitting straighter, stiffly even. The driver turned off the music. Cate's shoulders left the seat. Even Tanya lifted her head from the glass to look. The motorcade descended a long slope, and ahead he could make out a bridge and, running beneath it, the choppy, evanescent surface of a broad, fast-moving river. To his left, the night sky softened, lit with a warm chiffon glow.

And then he saw it too. Bathed in the arc of a hundred discreet spotlights, a tall, curving fortress wall ran the length of the riverbank. The wall was painted an imperial yellow, with stone battlements rising every fifty feet, and behind it, silhouetted against the blue black sky, soared the swirling onion domes and proud towers that housed the seat of the Russian government.

The Kremlin.

He was in the heart of Mother Russia, and to his eye, it still looked every bit the evil empire.

***

Jett, my friend. How nice to see you again."

"Cut the bullshit, Konstantin," said Gavallan, walking past the man, ignoring the outstretched hand, the offer to play it as if the events of the past five days were nothing more than a difference of opinion. "We're not friends now. We never were."

"I suppose we weren't," replied Kirov. He looked fatigued. His pallor was funereal, his eyes pouchy and rimmed with wine black circles. "Come and sit. I'll be brief, then we can go to bed."

"I'd rather stand."

The two men faced each other in a stark, glacial space the size of an emperor's ballroom. The floor was a sea of pale travertine, the walls painted a glossy white. A sleek Italian couch and matching chair, both an incongruous orange, sat in the center of the room, a low-slung coffee table showing too much chrome between them. The only other furniture was an antique cocktail cabinet miles away at the far end of the room. If they seemed alone, it was an illusion. A brace of security guards stood outside the door, ready to enter at a moment's notice.

Cate had been shown to a study across the foyer. "I haven't seen my father in six years," she'd said. "I'll happily wait a few more minutes."

"A drink?" asked Kirov. "I heard you had a rough flight in. Something to calm your stomach? Cognac? Brandy? A Fernet, perhaps?" He strode to the liquor cabinet and poured two snifters of brandy from a cut-glass decanter. Even at one in the morning, he was his usual elegant self, dressed in a tailored navy suit and solid maroon tie.

"No," said Gavallan. "I want to talk to Graf Byrnes."

"I'm afraid that isn't possible. He's spending a few days at my dacha in the country. It's quite remote. No electricity. No phones. But don't worry: I'll make sure you two see each other tomorrow."

"That won't do. I want to speak to him now. You and I have nothing to discuss until I know he's alive and well."

"Oh, he's alive. You have my word. As for 'well,' that's a different matter altogether. I'd like to say his condition rests squarely upon you. What you do. What you don't do."

"News flash, Kirov: Mercury isn't going near the market until either Graf or I say so. Without our go-ahead, the deal will be pulled. Enough controversy has surrounded it already. My disappearance will be the last straw."

"Will it?" Kirov sneered, lifting the snifter to his lips and taking a generous draft. "There seems to be some concern that you've gone a little crazy. Hitting Mr. Tustin on the trading floor. Flying to Florida without alerting your staff. Fleeing the FBI. I have it on good authority that the offering will go forward as planned without your go-ahead."

"Whose authority is that?"