The First Billion

Her features hardened as though she'd been slapped in the face. "If you saw the fax, then you know," she said. "It's about Kirov. He's a criminal- not just a man who cuts a few corners, but a gangster. He's as bad as Al Capone or John Gotti. He's been under investigation by the police for six months now. The Russian prosecutor general and the FBI are all over him. The focus of their inquiries is Novastar Airlines. Kirov took over the company for half of what it was worth and is milking it of every cent, sending its foreign revenues to his private offshore accounts."

"What about Mercury? Is the FBI looking at that too?"

"No one's looking too closely yet, but with Kirov everything's rotten. You've seen the proof. It's hardly a model of propriety."

"You mean the pictures of Mercury's Moscow Operations Center? The Cisco receipts? If the cops aren't concerned about Mercury, why are you trying to pull it down?"

"To get Kirov."

"To get Kirov?" Gavallan smirked, drunk with disbelief. "What the hell does a reporter covering the mating habits of yetis in San Francisco have to do with a Russian billionaire ten thousand miles away? Sick of being a social gadfly? Is that it, Cate? Is this your bid for the big time? Looking for a promotion to hard news? Maybe a Pulitzer? Or is sinking Black Jet what you're after. Dumping me wasn't good enough."

Cate's eyes flared. "You bastard!" She took a step toward Gavallan, raising an opened palm, then stopped, her fury reined in. "You have no idea what you're saying, how your words hurt."

But Gavallan could match neither her emotional nor her physical control. Rushing forward, he pinned her to the car, squaring his face an inch from hers. "Kirov, eh? Bullshit! You don't even know the man. What in the hell could he have done to get you on the warpath?"

"Stop it!"

Gavallan grabbed her by the arms and shook her. "Tell me."

Cate raised a defiant chin, freezing him with her eyes. "He killed a friend."

"Who?" Gavallan fired back with equal vitriol.

"Alexei," she answered, the heat draining from her voice. "He killed Alexei."

"Alexei who?"

"Alexei Kalugin. I loved him."

"Tell me about it." For the moment, he couldn't believe anything she said. Cate the deceiver.

"It was so long ago. Another life." She gathered herself for a moment, and when she saw that Gavallan was waiting for her to go on, she drew a deep breath. "His name was Alexei Kalugin. We met at business school. When we graduated, we both took jobs at the K Bank in Moscow. It was our big adventure; our chance to see the world. Alexei started on the trading floor. I worked in international credits, handling the American correspondent banks. After about a month it became clear to both of us that the K Bank wasn't on the up-and-up. Kirov was insisting we grant loans to companies that had no collateral, no creditworthiness whatsoever. It was crazy."

"I'll bet," said Gavallan.

Cate took off her sunglasses and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her motions were clumsy, and he could sense her reticence, her confidence gone AWOL. Vulnerability was a new color for Miss Catherine Elizabeth Magnus, and to his dismay, it rendered her in a flattering light.

"After a couple of weeks, Alexei grew tight with the locals," she went on. "The traders took him under their wing. They treated him as if he were one of their own. Then, it just happened."

"What happened?" asked Gavallan.

"Alexei learned that Kirov and his crew were manipulating the market for aluminum futures. Kirov was buying the stuff from the country's smelters at something like five cents a pound and selling it on the international market at forty-five cents. We're talking major piracy."

"I'd say a markup of nine hundred percent qualifies."

"Alexei showed me what he'd found and I told him he had to go to the police. He didn't want to. He knew it would be dangerous. It was '96, remember. The oligarchs were at war with each other. Anyone who said a bad word about them ended up dead. Every day there were bodies on the street. He just wanted to quit and go back to the States. But I insisted. I held his hand, and together we went to the district attorney, or whatever you call that post in Russian. The next day, Alexei disappeared. We took the Metro to work together. He went to the first floor. I went to the fifth. We had our usual lunch date, but he never showed. They found his body on the banks of the Moskva River a week after that. He had a bullet in his head. His tongue had been cut out. I left the country the same day."

Gavallan kicked at the grass, doing his best to take it all in. He felt aghast and betrayed. Mostly he just felt enraged. Ten people had died this morning, ten precious lives that might have been saved had Cate not withheld her secret history from him. He didn't think it necessary to offer his condolences for one more person he'd never met. Stepping closer, he pointed a finger at her heart. "You worked for Kirov? You knew he's a murderer? Why didn't you tell me?"