The Domino Game

by Greg Wilson

  Insulated by their love for one another and Nikolai’s generous US-dollar pay check, he and Natalia had managed to navigate the tumultuous post-Perestroika swells in relative comfort until, early in 1993 they had sailed into a frightening and unsettling encounter with reality.

  Larisa, their daughter, had just turned two when they first noticed the bruising. Natalia had thought that the little girl had seemed listless over the previous few weeks but then, as a first time mother, also wondered if perhaps she was overreacting. More than likely it was just some harmless virus. Now, staring at the bruises, Natalia’s instincts told her otherwise and, for the first time in her life, as she reached for the phone to call Nikolai, she felt the cold slither of uncontrollable fear.

  The diagnosis left them both stunned.

  Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. A disease which, without immediate treatment, the doctors told them, could be life-threatening. But with the correct management of Larisa’s condition the chances of a full recovery were good. 75 per cent or even higher, although the treatment and the drugs would be expensive, and even assuming they did prove effective, it would be more than five years before they could be certain.

  Nikolai and Natalia were fortunate. They had the money. And Nikolai’s American employers stood behind them all the way, insisting that Nikolai take whatever time from work he needed without any reduction in pay. In fact, on one occasion they had even flown in an emergency supply of L-asparaginase from France, at company expense, when the Republican Children’s Hospital had run out and would have no funds to order more of the drug for at least another month.

  The treatment went well and after ten weeks Larisa was already showing remarkable signs of recovery. Tests indicated that the disease was in remission and the doctors – who, following Chernobyl, were now experts in this field – advanced her regime to what they called consolidation therapy.

  Larisa, thank God, seemed to be out of danger and Natalia, too, had recovered well from the initial devastating shock, but something about the experience had changed Nikolai forever.

  They had the money; that was what had made the difference for Larisa.

  But now Nikolai found it impossible to clear from his mind the images of the dozens of other children they had encountered in the wards of the hospitals and the waiting rooms of the clinics. Children whose parents were not so fortunate and many of whom – for that cruel reason – would languish and die in those terrifyingly strange and sterile surroundings.

  That was what had deflected Nikolai’s career from its previous stable course. He had suddenly realized just how fortunate he really was.

  When measured by comparative standards his assets were enormous. An excellent education; a prestigious and highly paid job; a pleasant apartment in a nice part of the city with good furniture bought and paid for; a wonderful, loving wife and a beautiful baby daughter. As for liabilities, the only one he could think of was intangible yet immense: up until this point he had never even considered investing for the future.

  Not money: he wasn’t worried about that. What this was about was investing in the real future: the future of Russia. The country where his daughter, God willing, would now grow up and live, while all those other children would never have the chance.

  This was the one moment, he had told Natalia with earnest enthusiasm… while Yeltsin was fighting to cement and build on Gorbachev’s reforms… the one moment when he might be able to contribute something and make a difference.

  If it didn’t work out he could always find another job, he was confident of that. And they had close to sixty thousand dollars in savings – a fortune by Russian standards – sitting safely in an Estonian bank account, to provide them with a financial buffer for at least a few years.

  Natalia had been bewildered at first but as he explained she had listened, and when she understood that this was something he needed to do she had begun to accept the whole idea – until he began detailing the specifics of the new career he had in mind.

  When he told her about the interview he had already had with Vladimir Tsekhanov, the man Yeltsin had selected as his new chief of economic counter-intelligence at the FSB, her face had drained of color and her head had turned from side to side in dismay.

  “Niko, not them.” she had pleaded.

  But Nikolai had taken her hands in his and persuaded her as he always did because now his own mind was made up and he had become resolute; perhaps even a little idealistic again.

  During their meeting Tsekhanov had explained how Yeltsin’s people were determined to clean out the last remnants of the KGB and build a new, modern intelligence service in its place, one that this time really would serve the people. There was a position for Nikolai if he wanted it; they needed people with his qualifications. He would start as a senior officer in Tsekhanov’s department in a role where his skills could be applied to help stem the systemic corruption that was threatening to cripple the new society. It would be his responsibility to build cases against individuals suspected of involvement in economic corruption, individuals who were becoming rich by stealing from the state. An oversimplification, perhaps, but a truth as Nikolai saw it: stealing money that could be used to save children’s lives.

  So, with Natalia’s reluctant blessing, a little over a year ago Nikolai Aven had joined the FSB and his enthusiasm and skill had already begun to pay dividends.

  After a crash program in basic tradecraft supervised by Vari, and two months of intensive training in an anonymous office building on Moscow’s southern outskirts, Nikolai had been handed his first case, an investigation into a price rigging scam on Moscow Council tenders. Three months later he had a middle ranking city bureaucrat and two of the construction company’s managers sitting in adjacent jail cells in the Butyrka detention center contemplating their futures. His superiors were impressed.

  This first assignment had been followed by a string of further successes in a raft of cases involving everything from minor official corruption to currency fraud and black marketeering, each of which Nikolai had been able to dispatch with relative ease. What he hadn’t found quite so easy to deal with however, was coming to terms with the discovery of the seething mass of deformed species and sub-cultures that actually inhabited the undergrowth of Russia’s distorted new society. He had always recognized that this other world existed, just hadn’t begun to comprehend its dimension. Hadn’t for a moment realized just how endemically corrupt his country had become, or – if he were truly honest with himself – perhaps had always been.

  Increasingly, these days, Nikolai found himself wondering whether he had made a mistake. Whether he had embarked on a futile journey that, in the end, would lead nowhere and achieve nothing. Less frequently, but increasingly more often, a more abstract concern had begun to intrude on his thoughts. It was a strange feeling. A hollow undefined fear, as if each day now took him one step further across the fragile surface of some dark, frozen lake.

  These were the doubts and anxieties that crept into his mind in those rare moments when it lay vacant: when he stood alone in the shower, or studied his reflection in the bathroom mirror as he lifted the razor to his jaw. But then he would hear Natalia’s voice calling him from the hall, telling him that Vari was waiting downstairs, and he would thrust the razor under the tap – at the same time rinsing the thought from his mind – dry his face, button his shirt and set out again on the course he had chosen, hoping that what he did that day would somehow make a difference.

  As it happened, his most recent case had been his most successful yet.

  The apprehension of a German banker suspected of laundering cash for the mafiya, intercepted at Sheremetyevo II while trying to board an Aeroflot flight to Geneva with close to two million US in his luggage. After two days in Lefortovo the banker had been understandably keen to cut a deal and that was how the Ivankov connection had first come up.

  One thing led to another, Nikolai had learned. Just like playing a game of dominoes.

  There was no
hard evidence, only the banker’s word. But with the somewhat skeptical approval of his superiors Nikolai had been cleared to start his own limited investigation of Marat Ivankov and now the growing dossier was beginning to tell its own tale.

  A lone entrepreneur who had risen from nowhere to become one of Moscow’s business elite, with ZAVOSET, his private empire, expanding at an astonishing rate. Long-established links with the military. Strong connections with politicians and bureaucrats alike. And – on the strength of the German banker’s anxious offering and the surveillance undertaken since – steadily emerging evidence of some other even less socially desirable associations.

  The BMW was leaving again. The man in the charcoal suit giving its driver a relaxed wave as the vehicle slid through the gates and rolled across the dip at the curb. Vari watched through the driver’s window.

  “So, Nikolai, we’ve been sniffing around Ivankov’s ass for weeks now. He has coffee with his bankers, lunch with the apparatchiks and rubs shoulders with the crime bosses, the pakhans, in the clubs at night. It’s plain as the white nights in summer that he’s crooked, but apart from a dozen rolls of film, what the fuck do we have to show for it, eh? These new rules you talk about, when do we start to see them in play?”

  Nikolai snapped the folder closed and threw his partner a confident smile. “Soon now, my friend. Very soon.”

  Vari pursed his lips and rocked his bulk in the seat. “You sound very sure about that, Niko. So why would that be?”

  Nikolai shifted his gaze past Vari to the house beyond the closed gates. “Because now I have someone on the inside.”

  Vari arched his thick eyebrows and slid Nikolai a sideways glance. “Do you now?” For a moment he seemed to consider his own question. “So… you have someone on the inside. I’m impressed.” He nodded sagely and paused again. When next he spoke his voice had an altogether different tone.

  “Nikolai, let me tell you something. This one is different. This one has real money and real connections. Hasn’t it occurred to you that if you have someone on the inside, he could have, too?”

  2

  Marat Ivankov stood with his back to the room, peering through the angled slats of the blinds, studying the street. His feet were set apart. At ease. Shoulders squared, hands behind his back, rolling a gold cigarette lighter between his fingers. He took a breath and spoke without turning.

  “You know, Vitaly, I have to admit, they are actually starting to irritate me.”

  Vitaly Kolbasov had finished counting; now he was stacking the bundles of notes back into the open briefcase. He looked up without comment. After seven years as Marat Ivankov’s lieutenant he knew when he was not expected to respond.

  Ivankov took a step back from the window and turned to face him.

  “It’s all there?”

  “All there,” Kolbasov replied. He glanced down at the carefully arranged stacks of American bills. “Five hundred thousand.”

  Ivankov nodded without bothering to look at the money. “Good. Get Gilmanov to put it in the safe overnight. Tell him I want it back up here at noon tomorrow, before the general arrives.”

  Kolbasov snapped the lid shut, spun the combination and hefted the briefcase from the desk. More than twenty years’ salary for a general. Surprising how little it weighed.

  Marat Ivankov steepled his fingers to his lips. “And when you’ve finished, call our friend Stephasin on the secure fine and tell him I’d like him to join me for a drink tonight. Not one of our clubs. Make it Metelitsa, around eleven. Book a private room.”

  “And if he is not available?” Vitaly enquired.

  Ivankov answered with a hard stare. “Being unavailable is not an option.”

  Gregori Gilmanov sat alone in his first floor office chewing his lip and contemplating the briefcase Vitaly Kolbasov had deposited there a few minutes earlier.

  It was a generous office. Large, well-appointed, tastefully decorated with expensive furniture and a delightful garden view. It even had its own private, marble-tiled bathroom. A recollection flashed through his mind: Vitaly Kolbasov showing him through the doorway just six months ago, addressing him with that disarming smile: “I do hope you will be comfortable here, Gregori.”

  “I’m sure I will be,” he remembered replying, barely able to contain his delight. But as things had turned out, nothing could have been further from the truth.

  For the first month in his impressive new role as ZAVOSET’s deputy financial controller, things had been so hectic that Gregori hadn’t even had the chance to appreciate his new surroundings. Then by the time he had accumulated sufficient understanding of Marat Ivankov’s business affairs to be able to carry out his duties, he had realized the terrible mistake he had made in taking the job, and along with that realization had come the dreadful comprehension that he was now trapped and it was already too late to escape. And however difficult it may have been at the time to imagine that things could get worse, just a month later they had.

  One bleak January morning the financial controller, his immediate superior – an overweight, balding, former bureaucrat who drank too much, slept too little and kept sullenly to himself – had simply failed to turn up for work. A week later, when there was still no sign of the man, Vitaly Kolbasov had visited Gregori in his office, closed the door, helped himself to a chair, brushed down the lapels of his perfectly tailored gray suit jacket and solicitously spun him some marginally plausible tale about the fellow running off with a young woman half his age whom he’d met at one of Ivankov’s clubs. It was a complete fiction of course, but Gregori had listened earnestly as he knew was expected of him. The positive side of things, Kolbasov had pointed out, was that Gregori was now familiar enough with ZAVOSET’s financial affairs to be able to take over, and so he was to be promoted.

  Coincidence, or perhaps not, depending upon the level of paranoia with which one reflected on the timing.

  Along with this involuntary elevation had come another thousand dollars a week, the keys to a junior Mercedes and a brief but pointed lecture from Kolbasov on Mr Ivankov’s expectations of his senior executives combined with a short critique on the current inadequacies of his grooming. Thus he had dutifully invested the first six weeks of his increased salary in a new wardrobe but had so far managed to avoid responding to the suggestion that he should consider moving into the even more spacious and elaborate office that still sat ominously vacant next to his own.

  By that stage Gregori Gilmanov’s accumulated, now inescapable knowledge of ZAVOSET’s operations and Marat Ivankov’s dealings had become not just dangerous, but explosive. So explosive that each time he dressed in one of his expensive new jackets to drive to work, the appreciation of what he had become involved in hung so heavily on his shoulders he couldn’t help feeling that its cloth might just as well have been cut from Semtex.

  Strangely enough, before long, Kolbasov’s explanation regarding the disappearance of his former boss had begun to seem almost credible.

  The complexity of ZAVOSET’s dealings was astonishing and now Gregori was working fourteen hours a day just trying to keep up with the money flow. Quite apart from the issue of legality, the pressure was incessant and made even worse by the fact that there was no one – least of all Lena, his wife – with whom he could safely share the burden of his knowledge.

  They understood that, of course. Understood that he needed release, and that was where his other executive benefit came in. The unlimited expense account at Ivankov’s clubs. His alcohol consumption was rising alarmingly and on more than one recent occasion he had stumbled awake in some unfamiliar bed in a strange apartment beside some woman other than his wife. As a not unsurprising consequence his four year old marriage was now in just about as fragile a state as Yeltsin’s new Federation.

  He had been sitting alone in the lobby bar of the Metropol one evening a few weeks before, nursing a large vodka and reflecting bleakly on all of this, when Nikolai Aven had happened past his table, done a double take, recognized h
im and returned to say hello. Nikolai Aven whom he had worked with at the American bank and hadn’t seen for almost two years. What a coincidence that had been. Or seemed to be. For justifiable reasons Gregori Gilmanov had become increasingly suspicious of his own judgment.

  Anyway, at Nikolai’s suggestion they had gone on to dinner at some out of the way place Nikolai had chosen, where the vodka had been followed by two bottles of excellent French wine which in turn had been followed by still more vodka. Nikolai had seemed to sense the strain he was under and had encouraged him to share his problems and by midnight he had spilled his guts on everything. And by the time he’d realized what he’d done, it was again too late. It was only then that Nikolai had told him about his own new career and how it was just possible that he might be able to help.

  Despite the cool flow of the air-conditioning the office felt overwhelmingly stuffy. Gregori stared at the briefcase and raised a hand to the nape of his neck, wiping away the thick film of perspiration that had settled over his skin.

  Hard evidence, that was what Nikolai said he needed. The sort of evidence that would guarantee an indictment. Then the FSB would look after Gregori and Lena, give them new identities and move them someplace safe. “Someplace safe.” He remembered Nikolai’s words and couldn’t help a short cynical laugh. And where might that be?

  So, hard evidence was what he wanted.

  Gregori knew where he could get it. He’d seen the videotapes and the transcripts of Ivankov’s meetings with the politicians and bureaucrats neatly labelled and lined up on a shelf of the vault in the basement. But how the hell would he ever get them out? More to the point, would he even have the guts to try?