The First Billion

Kirov could not say with any precision how large the KGB's budget had been in its glory days. Twenty billion dollars? Thirty billion? Fifty? At its height, the KGB and its operatives had numbered in the millions. He knew, however, the size of the komitet's current fiscal operating budget to the penny: $33 million. Less than the combined annual salaries of a Formula 1 race car driver and a top-flight American baseball player.

Kirov bit back a covetous smile. In a matter of hours, the figure would multiply thirtyfold.

***

It had been his idea.

A way to get the monkey off your back, he'd told Konstantin three months earlier. A way to be free of the state's meddling. The writing was on the wall. The oligarchs were no longer to be tolerated. Look at Gusinsky and Berezovsky and all the others. Forced to trade their assets for their freedom. The favor of the state was capricious, he'd argued. It could be withdrawn as easily as it could be given.

Now it was Konstantin's turn in the hot seat. Everyone knew he'd been stealing from Novastar. Thievery was the oligarchs' acknowledged modus operandi. How long did he think he could keep Baranov at bay?

"What can I do?" Konstantin had asked over lunch at his lavish offices on the Novy Arbat on a squalid March day.

"Same as you've done before. Buy your way out."

"Impossible. Baranov's beyond reproach. Besides, I don't have the money."

"But you will."

"You're talking about Mercury?" Konstantin asked warily. "Impossible. The money's spoken for. We've got to upgrade our systems, build out the infrastructure to handle our future customer load. Routers, switches, servers, firewalls. We're almost there. I'm not the jackal you all think I am. Mercury's for real."

"Of course it is," Leonid soothed. "No one doubts your ambitions or your skills. Selling a piece of your television network to Murdoch was a coup. They still speak of it at the office. Still, younger brother, the offering is for two billion dollars."

"Two billion. Hardly buys you a laptop and a modem these days."

"You're exaggerating. Spend it the right way and two billion could buy you much, much more. You'll have plenty of time to 'upgrade Mercury's infrastructure' later. Right now, I'd be more worried about my freedom. Difficult to upgrade anything from Lefortovo. No DSL there."

Konstantin's hand began to shake. "Is there something you know? Something you're not telling me?"

Leonid hesitated for precisely the right amount of time. "Of course not. I'm only talking common sense. You are not invulnerable. A contribution to our well-being- to our rebirth, if you will- could not be ignored."

"And you can guarantee this?" Konstantin pushed away his plate and thrust his monk's head across the table. "How?"

"The Service is not without friends. Some in very high places, I needn't remind you."

"How much?"

"Half."

"Half?" Kirov uttered the word with utter contempt. "Half? You're crazy. And you call me the greedy one."

"The first billion is ours," said Leonid, firmly, as if the decision had already been made. "The second is yours to use as you see fit. Who couldn't call you a patriot?"

"And you could guarantee that my operations remain untouched?"

When Leonid nodded, Konstantin withdrew into himself, eyes glowering at everything and nothing, one hand folded on top of the other in a pose of practiced contemplation. Finally, his head rose and he fixed Leonid with his intense, steadfast gaze.

"It's a deal," he said. "The first billion is yours."

***

Two keys existed to the briefing room. Kirov kept one. The other resided in a certain office in the Kremlin. Unlocking the door, he moved inside and turned on the lights. A halogen spot illuminated an angular white mountain atop a table in the center of the room. Kirov approached reverently, a pilgrim to his shrine. Slowly, with due respect, he removed the sheet, folded it, and laid it on a chair.

As always, the first sight took his breath away. The attention to detail was spectacular. The green and yellow decals with the BP logo; the small diamond-shaped warning signs reading "Danger: Flammable." Every valve turned. The miniature doors really opened. The engineers had taken an industrial complex half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide and shrunk it down so it fit inside a conference room. It was all there: the oil reservoirs- paint chipped, metal rusting; the power plant; the pump station; the dormitories and administration buildings.

Even the terrain was accurately reproduced, noted Kirov as he circled the table. The target rested on a wide, flat expanse of concrete in the midst of a verdant meadow. Drifts of snow ranged from five to fifty feet in height, depending on the time of year. They'd built a life-size mock-up of it in Severnaya, on the southern rim of the Arctic Circle.