The First Billion

He arrived at Mayakovskaya station at six forty-five. Descending the escalator to the Circle line, he ran his impromptu caller's words over and over in his mind. You want Kirov, I can help, the man had said. Baranov tried to put a face to the voice. Was it an older man or a younger one? A Muscovite or someone from Petersburg? He decided the voice was familiar. Was it someone in his own office? Or someone they'd interrogated from Kirov's? A Mercury insider, perhaps? Vexed at his inability to come up with an answer, he caught himself breathing harder and gnashing his teeth.

He had forgotten just how much he hated Konstantin Kirov.

***

Jean-Jacques Pillonel was having a terrible dream.

He saw himself from afar, a tired, bent man dressed in prisoner's garb, gray dungarees, a matching work shirt, his feet carrying the heavy boots one saw on the rougher sort of motorcyclist. The man, who was at once him and not him, was marching in a circle around a dusty yard. There were no walls, but a voice told him he was in prison and that he was not free to go anywhere else. He continued his rounds, but with each circuit his steps grew heavier, his body denser, his mass harder to move. He began to sweat. He was not frightened by his plight as a prisoner so much as by the impending impossibility of mere locomotion. He realized that his burden was not one of extraneous weight but of conscience, and that he would never be rid of this load. A current of anxiety seized him, threatening to paralyze his every muscle.

The scene shifted and he was looking in the mirror at this man who was and was not himself. He was gaunt, poorly shaven. His eyes were lost, forlorn. This isn't right, he was telling the familiar visage in the mirror. The reward for honesty must be greater, the relief more fulfilling, certainly longer lasting. The anxiety grew stronger, arcing up his spine, bowing his shoulders. Sensing he had no more time, he raised a fist and drove it into the mirror. The looking glass shattered. Everywhere shards of green and silver glass fell to the floor.

Struggling to the surface of consciousness, he felt a rustling in the bed next to him. A kick in the legs. He heard a shout, but it was muffled, distant.

"Claire?"

He opened his eyes.

His wife of thirty-two years stood across the room, held in the arms of a black-clad intruder. He had her by the neck, one hand over her mouth, the other pinning a knife to her throat.

"Claire!" he yelled, sitting up. A half second later a coarse, powerful hand cupped his mouth and forced him back down onto his bed.

"Silence!" The voice belonged to a stocky figure clad entirely in black. Black trousers. Black sweater. A black stocking snubbing the nose, rendering the lips flat, grotesque. The intruder wore plastic gloves and in one of his hands he held the knife. It was a monster, the blade twelve inches long, partly serrated, curling upward to a hungry tip.

"You've been a naughty boy," he said in accented French. "You don't know how to keep secrets."

"Non," Pillonel argued. "I can. I can."

The flattened lips drew back into a smile. "We shall see, Monsieur Pillonel."

***

The subway pulled into Pushkin Square at six fifty-seven. The timing was perfect, thought Yuri Baranov while riding the wooden escalators up to the mezzanine level. And as he entered the tunnel that passed beneath Tverskaya Ulitsa to the Metro's southwest exit, his gait assumed a triumphant rhythm. Something told him this was the real thing. That Kirov's goose was finally cooked. His step faltered only once, when he wondered whether the informant might wish some quid pro quo. Immunity for his own crimes, perhaps, which Baranov could grant. Or money, which he couldn't. Marching past the babushkas hawking their flowers and the Chechens their pirated videos, he decided he wanted Kirov so badly he'd be tempted to dish out a little of his own savings if it might help secure the villain's conviction.

A humble table stood at the end of the tunnel, covered with an embroidered muslin cloth and decorated with twenty or so candles of varying colors and heights, all burning. The candles served as a memorial to the innocent victims killed at the spot a few years back by a Chechen guerrilla's bomb. Some had whispered it was a ploy by the president to drum up support for the never-ending war against the insurgent republic. Baranov didn't believe a word of it. Volodya was an honorable man. Who else would give him free rein to pull in thieves like Kirov?

It was with a subdued smile that Yuri Baranov mounted the stairs to the southwest exit of the Pushkinskaya Metro station. He did not notice the phalanx of young, crew-cut males who quickly erected a chain of sawhorses to block the tunnel behind him. Nor did he pay attention to the scaffolding at the head of the stairs, or the seesaw pounding of a jackhammer nearby. Construction was an omnipresent hazard in modern Moscow and the century-old subway stations were in constant need of repair.