The First Billion

You kidnapped Graf Byrnes.

You're going to kill him too, if you haven't already.

Then he was out of the closet, closing the gap between himself and soldier Boris. An eye darted to the door. He could hear Tatiana rummaging through another part of the house. Cocking his wrists, he drew the golf club back, his strength coiling in his arms, his shoulders.

"Hey, Boris."

"Da?"

He swung as the man swiveled toward him, involuntarily holding back a fraction as the iron connected. The club struck a glancing blow, toppling Boris from the chair. Gavallan ran to the doorway, ready to deliver a like blow to the girl. Behind him, Boris was already rising, a feral groan escaping his bloodied mouth. No way, muttered Gavallan, retreating a step. Hands slick on the leather Fairway grip, he brought the club back for a second shot. Tatiana appeared in the doorway. Her gun was rising, her laser blue eyes focused on Gavallan's.

"Nyet, Tanya," called Boris, waving her off. He rushed a few words in Russian that Gavallan took as a caution.

Tatiana inched toward the closet. Boris, a hand assaying his bruised jaw, held his ground next to the desk. Gavallan shifted his eyes from one side of the room to the other, from the lithe blond to the hulking thug. He felt tingly and alert and unafraid.

"You, be calm, okay?" said Boris.

"I'm fine. Why don't you two just turn around and leave. This is not your home. You shouldn't be here." His hands tightened on the club. "Just go… I wouldn't want to hurt you."

"You, hurt us?" Boris wiped at the blood and drool leaking from his mouth. The bastard was smiling.

And then, the telephone rang, an old-fashioned jangle that in the tense silence practically blew the roof right off the house. Boris's eyes shot to the phone. Tanya shifted her head. And in that instant, Gavallan moved. Jumping forward, he drove the iron hard into the soldier's ribs.

"Boris!" screamed the girl as the flat top collapsed to a knee.

Gavallan kept the iron in motion. It rose into the air, then dove in a silver arc, the shaft striking Tanya's hands, sending the pistol pinwheeling across the carpet. The girl registered no disappointment. Planting her feet, she came out swinging. One fist darted at his head, another at his gut. Gavallan sidestepped the blows, and as the girl's momentum carried her by him, he dropped the club and drove an elbow into her back. When she rose from the floor, Gavallan had the automatic in his grasp- a Glock 9mm, he now recognized.

"Freeze," he said, one eye scanning the room for Boris. "Don't move a mus-"

The blow hit him low in the back, a kidney punch delivered with ferocious verve. He wanted to cry, but no sound escaped him. His body was paralyzed. The cords of his neck flexed, his shoulders bowed, his lips bared over screaming teeth. The whole of his being grimaced with a pain it had never known. He collapsed, first to his knees, then to his chest, his arms and hands ignoring his every reflex to cushion his fall.

***

He wasn't sure how long he was unconscious. A minute. Maybe two. Boris stood by the desk, dumping the last of Ray Luca's papers into his duffel. The computer had been turned off. Tatiana kneeled close by, smelling pleasantly of lilacs and rosewater, the gun once again in her possession. Her head was tilted, and seeing his eyes open, she smiled. "Allo, Mr. Jett."

Hearing Tatiana speak, Boris abandoned his duties. "I'm sorry, sir, but we will kill you now," he said, turning toward Gavallan. "Mr. Kirov, he insists. He says to tell you, it is business only."

"You mean, 'It's only business,' " said Gavallan.

Boris shrugged. "My English is not so good as should be."

Gavallan lifted his head. Watching the blond cock the hammer and level the barrel at his forehead, he felt like a spectator to his own death. He wasn't frightened; he was too groggy for that, too fatigued by pain. He felt only disappointment, a terrible sense of letting Graf Byrnes down, of sentencing his company to an unknown fate, of allowing life to get the better of him.

"Ray? Ray, you home? What's going on back there?"

The voice came from inside the house. Boris whispered something to Tanya and she moved toward Gavallan.

"Ray? That you?"

Gavallan opened his mouth to cry out, but at the same instant, Tatiana brought the butt of the gun crashing onto his head. The last thought to pass through his mind, even as he drifted into darkness, was that he knew the voice.

Cate.

What the hell are you doing here?

31

General Kirov, some mail."

Major General Leonid Kirov glanced up from his work to see Levchenko, the department's newest probationer, advancing across his office, a small parcel wrapped in brown wax paper in one hand.

"From Belgium," Levchenko announced. He was whey-faced and chubby, more boy than man, and he was wearing the kind of sharp blue Italian suit that passed for a uniform these days among rising members of the service.