House Arrest

by Mike Lawson

  Emma asked Orlov how he came to work for Spear Industries in the first place. She knew from what Neil had told her that Orlov had fled Russia to keep from getting killed by a GRU general whose wife he’d been screwing.

  Nikki, clearly proud of his skills, explained how he’d applied for a job with Bill Brayden by hacking into Spear’s computers and gumming up the works on a job Spear was doing on Volga River hydroelectric plants. He laughed. “The first job Brayden gave me was giving a kickback to Vladimir Putin.”

  “What are you talking about?” Emma said.

  Nikki said that in addition to stealing information, he was also the guy who helped Spear move money when it had to be moved in an untraceable manner. This came as no surprise to DeMarco, since he knew Orlov was the one who’d moved the hundred thousand into his bank account.

  First Nikki had to explain how business worked in the new Russia. That is, in order for Spear to get the Russian contract, he had to kick back money to various folks, such as the oligarch who ran the electrical distribution system; local criminals who would screw things up if they weren’t paid; and of course, the Boss, Vladimir Putin, who got a little slice of everything.

  He said that for the Volga River job, the kickback was twenty million. The money originated from two Spear shell companies, one in Qatar and one in Panama, and then Orlov sent it on a meandering journey through half a dozen banks, and as it left each bank, its origin became murkier and murkier. Finally, the money was laundered through a Russian-owned factory in Thailand that made lawn furniture and another Russian company in Mexico that made soccer equipment. Five million eventually ended up in a Liechtenstein hedge fund called Hassler Frick and fifteen million went to the Vontobel bank in Zurich.

  Nikki smiled. “Hassler Frick is one of Vladmir’s little offshore piggy banks. The account in Vontobel belonged to Fedorov’s sister, meaning it really belonged to Fedorov.”

  Emma, who’d been getting a cup of coffee when Orlov said this, turned and asked, “Are you talking about Evgeni Fedorov?”

  “Yeah, Evgeni,” Nikki said.

  “Who’s Evgeni Fedorov?” DeMarco said.

  “A Russian oligarch,” Emma said. “He controls a number of power companies in Russia, as well as a few other things.” To Nikki, she said, “And you’re saying that Fedorov ended up with two-thirds of the kickback?”

  Nikki shrugged. “I guess, but I don’t know what he did with his share. Maybe he made payments to other people involved, like whoever in Russia is supposed to look out for money laundering. Maybe he sent more to Putin out of the Vontobel account. I don’t know.”

  “How does this help when it comes to Spear?” DeMarco asked.

  Emma said, “I don’t think it does. I was just curious. But we need to talk. Let’s go for a walk.”

  Emma and DeMarco left the kitchen. They found Harris, the NSA inquisitor, sitting at one of the computer workstations. He was wearing a headset, and Emma was about 99 percent certain that he’d heard every word that Orlov had said to her and DeMarco.

  “Are you finished?” he asked Emma.

  “No. We’re just going out for some fresh air.”

  “Ms. Prescott would prefer that you remain in the house. We don’t want the locals to see people over here and decide to drop by for a visit.”

  “I don’t really care what Ms. Prescott prefers,” Emma said.

  59

  Emma and DeMarco left the house and walked over to the barn. Near a side door were four folding lawn chairs and a small pile of beer cans. Harris had said the barn was being used as a bunkhouse. Emma figured that in addition to Harris and the two geeks they’d seen inside at the computer stations, there were four to six NSA agents providing security around the clock. It looked as if the chairs were used by Harris’s team to sit outside after the sun went down and enjoy an after-work beer or two.

  Emma took a seat in one of the chairs and gestured for DeMarco, who seemed too agitated to sit, to plant himself in another one.

  Emma said, “I think the only way to get Sebastian Spear is on a RICO charge. But that’s going to be problematic for a couple of reasons.”

  RICO—the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act—was originally intended to get Mafia bosses, and it allowed the leaders of a syndicate to be tried for crimes they might not have committed personally but had ordered others to do.

  Emma said, “DOJ will offer Orlov and Brayden deals to testify to all the crimes Orlov just told us about, arguing that there’s no way that Spear could not have been aware of or complicit in those crimes. If the prosecutor is any good, he’ll subtly encourage Brayden to commit perjury and claim that Spear directly ordered him to commit these criminal acts, whether Spear did or not.”

  “Why would Brayden agree to testify, much less commit perjury?” DeMarco said. “He’s already going to jail for life.”

  “Because the government will agree to knock some time off his sentence or put him in a better prison. Or put him in a worse prison. I don’t know, but they’ll come up with something to get him to testify. As for Orlov, because he’s valuable to the NSA, he’ll be offered immunity.”

  “So what’s the bad news?” DeMarco said.

  “The bad news is that Spear will hire the best law firm in the world to defend him, the case will drag on for years, and in the end Spear may not be tried much less convicted. His lawyers will argue, just as they did when it came to Canton’s murder, that Brayden did all these things without Spear’s knowledge and that there’s no proof that Spear ordered Brayden to do anything. But there may be a bigger problem.”

  “Which is?” DeMarco said.

  “Olivia Prescott is not going to want Nikki Orlov to testify against Spear. Right now, no one knows she has Orlov, and she wants to keep it that way. He’s not only telling her what he’s been doing for the Russians since he’s been in this country, he’s also providing her with a treasure trove on the Russian cyber-warfare program. The last thing she wants is for the Russians to know she has him.”

  “Well, I don’t give a damn what Prescott wants,” DeMarco said. “I want Spear in jail. Let’s go talk to the FBI. We’ll tell the bureau about Orlov being out here, they’ll arrest him, and things will proceed from there.”

  “Joe, there are significant national security implications here.”

  Before DeMarco could tell her that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the national security implications, Emma said, “We should get out of here and go talk about this somewhere else.”

  “Sounds good to me,” DeMarco said. “I’m starving.”

  As Emma opened the driver’s-side door of her Mercedes, DeMarco said, “Shouldn’t we tell Harris we’re leaving?”

  “No. Get in the car. And hurry.”

  They were too slow. Harris, the guy in the tan T-shirt who’d let them into the house, and the faux Russian woman came out of the farmhouse. Harris said, “I’m afraid I can’t let you leave yet. Ms. Prescott is on her way here to talk to you.”

  DeMarco heard a sound behind him, and saw two more men come out of the barn and walk in their direction. They were both armed.

  “Please come back into the house,” Harris said.

  “Hey, fuck you,” DeMarco said. “We’re leaving. We don’t work for Prescott.”

  The woman who’d pretended to be Russian smiled and drew her Beretta.

  “What are you going to do? Shoot me?” DeMarco said.

  “No, not you,” the woman said.

  She shot the right front tire of Emma’s Mercedes.

  DeMarco said, “Jesus! Are you people nuts?”

  “We have our orders,” Harris said. “We don’t want to hurt you, but we can’t let you leave.”

  Emma saw DeMarco’s hands fold into fists, and he took a step toward Harris. DeMarco, after everything he’d been through, wanted a fight—he wanted to hit something. But Emma knew that he was no match for the three security men, all ex-soldiers and probably Special Forces. For that matter, he might not
have been a match for the woman, who was most likely an ex-soldier herself. If DeMarco started something he was going to get his ass kicked.

  “Joe,” Emma said, stopping DeMarco before he could take another step. “Let’s wait to hear what Olivia has to say.” To Harris she said, “Have your goons change my tire.”

  Harris took them back to the kitchen. Nikki Orlov was no longer there.

  Harris said, “Would you like an iced tea? A Coke?”

  Before DeMarco could say something rude, Emma said, “Iced tea would be good.”

  Harris poured them glasses of tea and said, “Ms. Prescott will be here soon.”

  60

  Olivia Prescott walked into the kitchen. She was dressed in a dark blue pantsuit, most likely her office attire at the NSA’s headquarters at Fort Meade. DeMarco was amazed by how much she resembled Emma, and not only physically. She had the same aura of command that Emma did.

  Emma had suspected that Harris had eavesdropped on the conversation she and DeMarco had had with Nikki Orlov in the kitchen. He may have even eavesdropped on their conversation outside the barn, using a parabolic mic. Whatever the case, Emma was pretty sure that Harris had told Olivia what they’d discussed with Orlov; he may have even been transmitting the conversation directly to her at Fort Meade, and at some point, she’d told Harris to keep them at the farm.

  Olivia sat down at the table with Emma and DeMarco. The first words out of her mouth were, “Do you know how the next world war is going to start?

  “In Hollywood’s version of Armageddon,” Olivia said, “it usually shows the doors of the missile silos opening and the ICBMs being launched. Well, it won’t start that way. What will happen first is that every vital system controlled by a computer—which is every vital system—will shut down: communication systems, power grids, systems for controlling satellites. Everything will crash, and we’ll be totally blind and unable to communicate. That is, everything will crash unless we can protect those systems.”

  Speaking to Emma, Olivia said, “Nikki Orlov is the most significant Russian asset this country has gotten its hands on since the Cold War. Not only did he work for the Russian cyber-warfare program, he was the best they had, and we’ve already learned things about their capabilities that we were totally unaware of. And since he’s been in this country, he’s continued to work for the Russians, as you suspected. The main thing he’s been doing is inserting back doors into systems that will allow the Russians to cripple the East Coast power distribution network, and working for Spear Industries gave him a particular advantage in this regard. If he’d had time to complete his task, the Russians could have created a power blackout any time they wanted that would have included the Pentagon, the White House, NORAD installations, and the National Reconnaissance Office.”

  Prescott looked directly at DeMarco, stabbing him with her eyes. “I cannot allow you to do anything that will compromise the information we’re getting from Orlov. Right now the Russians think he’s dead, because we leaked a story to them via a Russian agent we’ve known about for years. So I cannot, under any circumstances, permit Orlov to testify against Sebastian Spear, as that will tell the Russians he’s alive, and they might be able to do things to counter the information we’re obtaining from him.”

  Turning back to Emma, she said, “I’m sure, with your background, you understand this.”

  “I do,” Emma said.

  “What about you?” she asked DeMarco.

  “Yeah,” DeMarco said.

  “What I will allow you to do—”

  “Hey! I don’t work for you, Olivia,” DeMarco said. “I’ll do anything I damn well please.”

  “Mr. DeMarco, I guess you really don’t understand the significance of what I’ve just told you. Before you leave here today you are going to sign a document that says you agree to never disclose what you know about Orlov and what you learned here today. If you violate the agreement, you will be prosecuted for treason and go to prison for a very long time.”

  DeMarco looked over at Emma. Emma said, “She’s serious, Joe. And what she’s not saying is that she might have us killed, because our deaths are unimportant compared with the national security value of Nikki Orlov.”

  As if Emma hadn’t said anything about having them killed, Olivia said, “What I will allow is Brayden to testify against Sebastian Spear to see if you can bring him down with a RICO charge. However, I believe Emma is correct and that the likelihood of convicting Spear is low.”

  There was now no doubt that Prescott’s elves had eavesdropped on their conversation near the barn.

  “There is, however, another way to get Spear,” Olivia said.

  “Oh, yeah. What’s that?” DeMarco asked.

  61

  “What do you know about Russian oligarchs?” Olivia said to DeMarco.

  “About as much as I know about flux capacitors,” DeMarco said.

  “Well, let me tell you about ‘em.”

  According to Olivia, most Russian oligarchs were businessmen in the same way that Vito Corleone had been a businessman, and they ran Russia’s major industries and financial institutions.

  She rattled off a few names DeMarco couldn’t pronounce of people he had never heard of: Alexander Grigoryevich Abramov, who controlled Russia’s largest steel manufacturer. Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich, majority owner of the private investment company Millhouse LLC; he also owned the Chelsea Football Club. Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska, founder of an industrial group with stakes in energy, aluminum, machinery, and financial services. Mikhail Dmitrievitch Prokhorov, chairman of a company that was the world’s largest producer of nickel and palladium.

  The lavish lifestyles of the oligarchs were well documented and photographed: the yachts, the Lear jets, the private islands, the dachas on the Black Sea. They were protected by private security firms and shielded from the law by battalions of cagey lawyers. The biggest thing they had going for them was that they all had personal and financial relationships with the most influential Russian since Joe Stalin: Vladimir Putin.

  Olivia smiled. “These guys make Sebastian Spear look like somebody who bakes cupcakes for a living, and a few of them aren’t above killing people to solve their problems.”

  “Okay,” DeMarco said, “but I don’t see how this helps when it comes to Spear.”

  “I’m getting there,” Olivia said. “You see, there have been a number of instances where oligarchs have gotten on Putin’s bad side, and the consequences are never good for the oligarch.”

  She gave a couple of examples. One was a man named Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He made his fortune by gaining control of Siberian oil fields and at one time was reportedly worth about fifteen billion dollars. In 2003, however, Khodorkovsky got cross-wired with Putin, and the next thing you know, he was convicted for tax evasion, money laundering, and embezzlement. He spent ten years in prison and lost most of his fortune.

  Another was Vladimir Petrovich Yevtushenkov, a man involved in telecommunications, who managed to accumulate eight billion dollars. Like Khodorkovsky, he was also arrested for money laundering, and his company was nationalized and taken over by the state—the state being, of course, Vladimir Putin.

  Olivia said, “Putin gets concerned when these guys get too much power and too much money and start to act too independently. In the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, he veered into Putin’s lane politically, talking about the need for reforms, reforms that might result in Russia having a real democracy. As for Yevtushenkov, Putin accused him of plotting some sort of palace coup.”

  DeMarco was way past impatient. “But how the hell does this help me get Spear?”

  “It helps because Evgeni Fedorov, the guy that Spear kicked back fifteen million dollars to, is currently in Putin’s crosshairs.”

  Olivia said that Fedorov had a mansion the size of a medieval castle and a yacht about as long as a naval destroyer. His current mistress was a Victoria’s Secret model, and he’d recently bought a pair of Lipizzaner stallions for his fiv
e-year-old daughter because one night she said she liked “horsies.” However, according to sources inside Russia—of which the CIA had several—Fedorov had recently fallen out of favor with Putin for reasons that were not totally clear. It may have been as simple as Fedorov not showing sufficient respect or reacting too slowly to one of Putin’s royal commands. Whatever the case, Fedorov learned that Putin was considering having him arrested, and he was currently in self-imposed exile on a Greek island he owned, hoping to negotiate his way back into Putin’s favor.

  Olivia said “The last thing that Fedorov would want is for it to become public knowledge that Spear made a kickback to him, because Putin could use that as an excuse for having Fedorov arrested on corruption charges.”

  DeMarco said, “I still don’t see how that would affect Spear.”

  “Fedorov is a killer, DeMarco,” Olivia said. “Like Putin, he’s ex-KGB, and he has a reputation for assassinating people who get in his way. There’s a story about a journalist who was writing an exposé about him. The journalist’s body was dropped off on his editor’s porch, minus the head, which was never found.”

  “But what the hell does this have to do with—”

  Olivia looked at DeMarco as if he were the slowest student in the class. She said, “DeMarco, if it got back to Fedorov that Sebastian Spear was about to talk about the kickback he made to Fedorov, Fedorov might very well kill Spear.”

  “But what would make Spear talk about the kickback?” DeMarco said, completely exasperated.

  “He wouldn’t, but Fedorov wouldn’t know that.” Seeing the confusion on DeMarco’s face, she said, “Don’t you understand? We’d make up a story that Spear was going to testify to a grand jury or a congressional committee about the job he did in Russia, then we’d leak the story in a way that would get back to Fedorov.”