by Rick Acker
“I do not know!” Ivanovsky shot back. “You are speaking as if you do not trust me.”
That, of course, was entirely true. Ben had started the conversation with some suspicions, and now he had more. In fact, he was beginning to have doubts about whether he could continue representing this man. He didn’t want to become an unwitting accomplice in some crime. “Mr. Ivanovsky, I can’t think of a single good reason not to cooperate with the FBI, but I can think of plenty of bad ones. Before I can continue representing you, I need you to convince me that you have a good reason. I cannot allow you to use my services to commit a crime or a fraud, and if I suspect you’re doing that, I have to withdraw from this case. I—”
“No! No! No!” exclaimed Ivanovsky, cutting Ben off. “I am committing no crimes or frauds! I promise this! I swear on twenty Bibles and all holy things!”
“Then why don’t you want me to talk to the FBI?”
Ivanovsky didn’t respond for several seconds. “You will stop being my lawyer if I do not tell you?”
“Yes, I’m afraid I’ll have no choice.”
“Okay, I will tell you this thing,” he said. “But it is shameful for me and you must promise never to tell it to anyone else.”
“Of course not. Anything you say to me stays secret.”
“Okay. I will tell you the whole story so you understand.” Ivanovsky sighed and his voice calmed. “I began at the university in 1946, one year after the Great Patriotic War against the Germans ended. It was a glorious time for a young fool who did not doubt what he was told. Many countries were becoming socialist around the world. Soviet teachers and engineers and doctors were going to them to help our new comrades rebuild their countries and advance their societies. I thought that we were finally done with war and that we could now stop spending our energy on fighting and begin making a world with peace and enough to eat spreading out from the Soviet Union.
“I decided to study microbiology so that I could someday find cures for diseases afflicting many peoples, particularly poor victims of imperialism. I progressed quickly in my studies and made good marks on all exams.
“Then one day, the professor who taught the class on infectious organisms asked me to see him in his office after the daily lecture. He was a great and famous scientist named Pavel Vukov. So I went to see him. He said, ‘Mikhail, you are a very intelligent young man and you can do great service to the motherland.’ I asked him what this service was, and he said, ‘A great struggle is beginning between world socialism and capitalist imperialism. The war against the fascists was just the beginning to this struggle. It will not stop while both sides still exist. They will use all possible weapons to destroy us, and we must be ready to respond the same way. In the history of the world, germs have killed more millions than all weapons ever created by men. We must harness this power of the germ to protect ourselves, Mikhail. Will you help us to do this?’
“I said yes to Professor Vukov and began working with him right away. Every day after classes, I would spend hours helping him with his experiments and researches.”
“Wait,” Ben interrupted. “You were part of the Soviet germ-warfare program?”
“Yes,” Ivanovsky said, “but I did not make these weapons. I did decontaminations and inspections.”
“Okay, uh, please go on,” Ben said. He could see why his client would interest the FBI.
“Professor Vukov and I, we became very close and he was like a second father to me. He helped me to get my PhD, and I did many researches for him during five years. We would eat our meals together and I often sleeped at his house when we had worked late. I would stay in the room of his son who died in the war.” His voice suddenly wavered, and he stopped for a few seconds.
Ben said nothing, waiting for his client to continue.
Ivanovsky took a deep breath and mastered himself again. “Then I did this stupid and shameful thing. We were trying to find ways to make our germs resist the decontaminating chemicals used by the Americans. I wanted to do experiments on a new method I had thought, but he said, ‘No, it will not work, Mikhail.’ I said that the theories of Lysenko predicted that it would work, so we should try, but he said, ‘Lysenko is a fraud. Do not waste time on this foolish idea.’ Ben, do you know who Lysenko was?”
Ben searched back through dim memories of his single college biology course. “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“Do not be afraid; it is good that you do not know about such a man. Trofim Lysenko was a biologist who had certain scientific theories. These theories were very wrong in many ways and Lysenko was a bad scientist, but Stalin thought his ideas were socialist and progressive. So Lysenko was made in charge of all scientists and his theories were taught in Soviet universities as absolute truth.
“So when Professor Vukov said, ‘Lysenko is a fraud,’ this troubled me. Had my other professors and my textbooks taught me lies? Or was this great man who was my mentor lying? And I did not like that he had said my idea was foolish.
“The political officer working with our team was a young man only a little older than I. He and I would sometimes drink vodka and play chess together, and I thought he was my friend. I said to him, ‘Alexander, may I ask you something?’ He said yes. I said, ‘Do not repeat this to anyone, but Professor Vukov says that Lysenko is a fraud. Is this true? I must know so that I can do my researches correctly.’ He said, ‘Professor Lysenko is a great man. It is good that you have told me this, Mikhail.’
“The next morning, Professor Vukov was gone. The head of our laboratory said that Professor Vukov had become an enemy of the revolution and that I should take over his work. The first experiment I did was to test the Lysenkoist idea I’d had. It failed completely.”
Dr. Ivanovsky simply stopped talking, and it took Ben a few seconds to realize that he was done with his story. “That’s terrible that they did that to Professor Vukov, but I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying. You don’t want to talk to the FBI because the KGB arrested your mentor?”
“Yes. Secret police are secret police—in America or Russia. They are all secret police.”
“But the FBI is nothing like Stalin’s KGB,” protested Ben.
“They are different and they are the same,” replied Dr. Ivanovsky. “Maybe the FBI does not make people disappear for having wrong opinions. Maybe the FBI works for a democracy and not a dictatorship. But they are the same in one very, very important way: it is their job to learn things and do things for the state. It is not their job to help me or you or to be our friends. Maybe they are helping and friendly now, but their help and friendliness go away as soon as being your friend stops helping the state. To give them information is like going into the den of a tiger to feed him. He may be very nice to you for a long time, but one day maybe you run out of food and he will be hungry and looking at you, and then you will wish you had never fed him at all.”
Ben decided to try one more time. “All she’s asking is that we send her publicly available documents. That seems pretty innocent.”
“Nothing the secret police does is all innocent,” Dr. Ivanovsky persisted. “I do not know everything they could do with these documents. Do you? Also, if we give them these papers now, it will be harder to say no to them the next time they are asking for information, and who is to say they will be innocent then? No, Ben, it is better not to walk into the den of a tiger in the first place.”
The tiger’s-den analogy obviously was well established in Dr. Ivanovsky’s mind—and probably had been for decades. Ben realized it gave the old scientist a comfortable and clear-cut reason to avoid potential entanglements with law enforcement where he might find himself in over his head. There was little chance he would rethink it based solely on the suggestion of a young lawyer whom he had known for only a few days. “Okay, I’ll tell her we can’t help her.”
Ivanovsky released a breath. “Thank you, Ben.”
As
Ben hung up the phone, he suddenly felt very tired. He had worked until ten o’clock last night and had headed out the door again at six forty-five that morning. He was beginning to feel it. “Maybe the big-firm life wasn’t so bad after all,” he muttered as he rubbed his eyes and yawned.
He got up and walked over to the coffeemaker in the file room. The pot held about two inches of poisonous-looking black sludge. “Oops!” said a voice from behind him. “Would you like me to make a fresh pot?”
Ben turned and saw Susan Molfino, his office manager/receptionist/secretary/file clerk, bustling in, nearly hidden by a large stack of folders. Susan was a tiny and tirelessly perky woman with the energy of a toddler on espresso. She never drank coffee and therefore didn’t always keep as close an eye on the coffeemaker as she should. She was an otherwise-outstanding employee, however, so Ben and Noelle forgave this flaw—though Ben in particular occasionally suffered for it. Fortunately, there was a good coffee shop less than a block away, and it was open late.
“That’s okay,” said Ben as he flipped off the machine and poured the syrupy mess into the sink. “I’ll just go down to the Mud Hole. I could use a little fresh air anyway.”
On his way out of the office, Ben stuck his head into Noelle’s doorway and saw that she was back at her desk. “Hey, I’m about to make a Mud run. Want to come with?”
She looked up from a pile of financial printouts and smiled. “Sure. I haven’t seen you all day.”
The Mud Hole had only three small tables, but it did a brisk takeout business among Chicagoans who knew their coffee. The two brothers from Seattle who ran the place were as passionate and expert in the art of making caffeine-based drinks as any sculptor or painter was at his art. They had even built a hot-sand pit in the back of their kitchen to make true Turkish and Greek coffee. “Hello, Ben. Hello, Noelle,” said Brett, the younger brother, as the Corbins walked in. “What would you like this afternoon?”
“I’ll have a decaf mocha,” said Noelle.
“And I’ll have a double Turkish Hammer,” said Ben.
“That’ll keep you up until midnight,” Noelle warned. “Or is that the point?”
Ben sighed. “I’ve got a mediation statement due tomorrow in the Bock case, and I haven’t even started it. It’s going to be another long night for me.”
“That’s two in a row, Ben. Is it going to let up anytime soon?”
He shook his head. “I’m overcommitted this month. It seems like I’ll be spending half my time on Circuit Dynamics, half on Ivanovsky, and half on all my other cases.”
“Do you need to head back to the office?”
“Not quite yet. Something just happened that I’d like your thoughts on. Are you up for a quick walk in Grant Park?”
“Sure,” said Noelle, looking at him with curiosity. “I’ve been stuck inside all day.”
Grant Park is a long strip of green between downtown Chicago and the lakefront. It’s bordered on the north by a cluster of upscale apartment buildings, on the south by Soldier Field, and on the west by the business district. To the east are the wide waters of Lake Michigan. The park is a favorite spot for joggers, bikers, open-air-concert organizers, and anyone who wants to escape from the constant rush of business in the Loop. As Ben and Noelle turned from the crowded sidewalk onto a quiet, maple-lined path, Noelle turned to Ben and said, “Okay, so what’s up?”
Ben described his conversations with Elena and Dr. Ivanovsky. “And now I know why he’s ‘a person of interest’ to the FBI. He’s hiding something, but I’m not sure what,” he concluded.
They walked along in silence for several seconds, the fallen leaves crunching under their feet. “Well, do you think he’s hiding something problematic?” Noelle asked.
Ben shrugged. “He doesn’t have a lot of guile, so I think I can generally tell when he’s lying to me. I’m pretty sure he was telling the truth about why he doesn’t want to talk to the FBI, but not about what’s in the box. Do I think that overall he’s hiding something ‘problematic’?” He paused for a moment and looked out over Lake Michigan. Its slate-gray surface was broken into choppy waves capped by dirty white foam, harbingers of an approaching storm. “I doubt it. He doesn’t seem like the type who would murder the man who used to own the box or something like that. I’d say Dr. Ivanovsky is a pretty good guy, but he’s also pretty eccentric. And for some reason he doesn’t want to tell me everything about this case.”
“You’re a good judge of character,” commented Noelle. “If you think he’s clean, he probably is.”
“He’s probably clean, at least as far as this case goes. My guess is that he somehow got wind that there’s something valuable in that box. Maybe he knows what it is, maybe not. I’ll bet Nicki Zinoviev didn’t know, but he needed cash right away and he isn’t all that bright. So he sold the box to Dr. Ivanovsky without looking inside. Later, he realized that wasn’t a good idea and went to the bank to look in the box. Did he see a couple of cheap watches and some junk? No. He saw something a lot more valuable. Something he doesn’t want to tell the judge about. Maybe something that has the FBI interested in this case.”
“Do you think it has anything to do with Dr. Ivanovsky being a germ-warfare expert?”
Ben kicked a stone down the path. “Good question. That’s another thing I’m going to look into. I doubt that’s what it is, though. I mean, why would anyone put Soviet germ-warfare stuff in a bank box in Chicago? Also, Ivanovsky didn’t put anything in the box, and he’s the only one we know of here who has anything to do with germ warfare.
“From what Ivanovsky told me, Zinoviev’s brother was a smuggler, not a bioweapons scientist. He probably stashed something in the box—maybe extremely valuable jewelry—and died without telling his brother about it. But he told someone, and ultimately Dr. Ivanovsky heard about it. I’ll bet his Russian pension isn’t that generous, and he plans to supplement it by selling whatever’s in the box.”
“And that makes you uncomfortable,” commented Noelle. “I can see why.”
“Yeah, the whole thing makes me uncomfortable.” They came upon the stone again, and Ben kicked it hard this time, taking out his frustration on the chunk of limestone. “I’m not sure I can keep representing him under these circumstances. I’m not concerned about breaking any legal ethical rules here, but I don’t just want to do what’s ethical. I want to do what’s right. As a Christian lawyer, is it okay for me to help my client get a treasure that may well be the product of some crime?”
“Well, aren’t you just speculating that it would be illegal or immoral for him to own whatever’s in the box? You won’t know one way or the other until you open it.”
“True,” said Ben. “Besides, the only real alternative I’ve got is to withdraw from the case and let this Zinoviev guy win. Even if the box is full of stolen diamonds or something, it’s not like I have a choice between giving them to Dr. Ivanovsky and giving them to the true owner. As a practical matter, I have to choose between giving them to the thief’s brother and possibly giving them to an old treasure hunter.”
“And if you find anything suspicious when you open the box, you can call the police then.”
“I suppose,” said Ben, though he didn’t relish the idea of calling the cops on his own client. “It’s not like I haven’t had clients with secrets before. It just bugs me when I’ve got a case where all the pieces don’t add up as a result. It’s hard to be an effective lawyer when that happens.”
“But you can keep working on the case, right?” Noelle asked a little anxiously. “I mean, we did accept Dr. Ivanovsky’s retainer, and . . . um, we’re not really able to give any of it back.”
Ben rolled his eyes. “When do I get to start working on the real cases, the ones we opened this practice to handle? We were going to serve Almighty God, not the almighty dollar, remember? And here I am grubbing for greenbacks just to keep the doors open.”
He sighed. “I suppose so.”
CHAPTER FOUR
DISCOVERY
Ben sat back and looked at the to-do list he had just typed up for the Ivanovsky case. It was depressingly long. Today he had to prepare formal document requests, interrogatories, deposition notices, and the rest of the opening salvo of discovery he would fire at the other side. Anthony Simeon—or, more likely, one of his junior associates—was currently readying the defense’s initial broadside, so tomorrow Ben would need to go through his client’s documents to get a head start on preparing the responses. He also had to subpoena all of American Union’s records about either the box or the Zinovievs.
Hiring a good private investigator was also high on the list. Formal discovery done through lawyers was necessary but not sufficient. It wasn’t unheard of for lawyers—or, more often, their clients—to lie or fail to produce damaging documents. An experienced detective could often catch them in their lies, and that could force quick and favorable settlements.
The PI would have to be cheap as well as good, given the size of this case. Strong connections to the Chicago Russian community were also a must. Finding someone who fit that bill could take a lot of looking.
And all of that was just the first week. Next week there would be depositions to take and defend, documents from the other side to dig through, responses to the defense’s discovery requests to prepare, and more.
Ben went through his list and put a time estimate next to each task. He had at least twenty hours’ worth of work to do this week and thirty-five hours’ next week. It was Wednesday evening, so that meant he would have to spend long days on Thursday and Friday just working on Ivanovsky.
He pulled out his to-do lists for Circuit Dynamics and his other active cases and did time estimates for them as well. Circuit Dynamics was going to take about ten hours of his time this week and twenty next week. His other cases needed around five hours of work before Monday and ten hours or more next week. He put down his pen and ran his fingers through his hair. It took at least thirteen hours in the office to get ten hours of billable work done, so that meant that he would have to work from eight in the morning until after nine at night every day until next Friday. He could handle that, assuming everything went smoothly and there were no surprises, but neither of those were safe assumptions in the practice of law. If something went wrong, he would be in deep trouble.