The Domino Game

by Greg Wilson

  The woman paused. Pressed her lips together. Shook her head. “I’m sorry.” She raised her eyes to meet Natalia’s, her voice perfectly modulated now, purged of emotion as if she were reading from a script. ‘These are matters of state security. You will be advised of what is appropriate in due course.”

  Vari let out a deep sigh and turned back from the window.

  ‘So that was how it began, Niko. They took you, built a wall around you and closed us out.” His lips twisted in a grim smile. “People like Ivankov and Stephasin are good at that kind of thing. It comes naturally. It’s in their genes. Remember the Iron Curtain and what it was really all about?” He glanced up from under the heavy ledge of his brow. “It wasn’t about protecting us from the West, it was about hiding secrets. And you think because some kids knocked down a fence in Germany any of that changed? You think the West won? That capitalism was something they forced on our leaders?” Vari let out a bitter laugh and shook his head. Leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “No one forced anything on them Niko, they embraced it. Communism was just the old motor car they’d been driving for too long; they needed a newer model, anyway. But don’t be fooled, Niko. They’ve always been the same drivers. They may look like everyone else on the road now, but they’re not. Underneath the charm and the gloss the men at the top are still as tough and brutal and greedy and cunning as ever. And you know why, Niko?” His lips twisted again in the same grim smile “Because here in Russia there’s never been enough for everyone. So you take whatever you can and once you’ve got it you do anything, anything you have to do to hold on to it, because if you don’t someone else will take it away from you. You know the mistake we made, Niko? The reason you’ve just spent almost ten years of your life God knows where? The reason Natalia’s dead, and you’ve lost your daughter?” He paused, his eyes flaring, riveted on Nikolai’s. “We made the mistake of getting in their fucking way.”

  Nikolai held the other man’s gaze and let the words fade. Waited until the silence settled around them then spoke quietly, in a voice edged with ice.

  “I want to know, Vari. I want to know everything.”

  The older man tossed his head and turned away.

  “You don’t, Niko.” His voice was flat. Empty. “You don’t really want to know.” He drew a breath. “But I’ll tell you. I owe you that.”

  21

  NEW YORK

  Jack Hartman liked the railway station.

  He liked the way it looked and the way it smelt and the view you caught from the platform, back down the Hudson on one side and up to the village on the other side of the tracks, and the fact that there were hardly ever any more than four taxis in the rank out front which made Tarrytown almost still feel like the village it used to be rather than the suburb of Manhattan it had now virtually become.

  He steered his dark blue Cherokee into the station lot, climbed out and checked his watch. Five fifty. Ten minutes and the town express would arrive and a couple of hundred commuters would tumble out, juggling briefcases and shopping and searching for keys, then by ten after six the platform and the parking lot and the cab rank would be empty again and the ten-minute rush hour would be over. That was another thing he liked about living here.

  He locked the car and headed off towards the overpass, enjoying the summer air. As he passed the cab rank a lazy hand draped from the window of the lead car.

  “Hey, Jack. How you doin’?” Hartman caught the driver’s reflection in the ellipse of mirror clipped to the Chev’s front fender. Raised a hand of his own in acknowledgment. “Hey, Clyde! Never better. You?”

  He saw the shoulders in the mirror give a heave. “No complaints yet.”

  He came level with the window and the driver wrapped back his newspaper and stubbed a finger at the page. ‘See you’re in the news again, Jack. You sure got a hard on for them Russians.”

  Hartman grinned. “Just some Russians, Clyde. Not all Russians.” He watched the cab driver’s mind working. Some… all… whatever… What the hell. Clyde Butcher had been driving town cabs around the village for as long as anyone in Tarrytown could remember. He had a reputation for being reliable but slow. In more ways than one.

  Hartman stepped in closer and peered down at the crumpled page. It was an afternoon edition. One he hadn’t seen. “Mind if I take a look?”

  Clyde Butcher shrugged. Folded the paper down to fit it through the window and watched as Hartman scanned the headline and the print below.

  Russian Crime Fears Exaggerated

  Claims by former CIA officer Jack Hartman that Russian crime figures are moving to take control of top US corporations are “just a sensationalist claim to sell books” according to respected New York criminologist Professor Henry Backhouse.

  Hartman – the author of three bestsellers on the subject of Russian crime and an acknowledged expert on the subject – is due to appear before a Senate Investigative Committee hearing in Washington early next month. In a report leaked to the press three weeks ago, Hartman allegedly claims to have evidence that major stockholdings in three significant Dow Jones corporations – holdings in total estimated as being worth more than US$5 billion – are now ultimately controlled by just one Russian businessman, Marat Ivankov, through a string of foreign companies and trusts.

  Backhouse, himself an acclaimed author and a criminology specialist at Columbia, says that Hartman’s claims may be true, but that the way they have been presented is nothing more than a scare-mongering publicity gimmick, and that Ivankov – by Russian standards, at least – appears to be an entirely legitimate businessman.

  There is no denying that Mr Ivankov, 51, is one of the smartest, richest, and, by his own admission, toughest of the “New Russians”. After completing a degree in Economics at Lvov he worked for the Soviet Defense Ministry before spending thirteen years in the military – the last three in Afghanistan – before quitting with perfect timing in 1988 to catch the new rolling wave of Russian capitalism. Over the last sixteen years Ivankov has built a private industrial and banking empire calculated by some experts to now represent as much as 2 per cent of the total Russian economy. Through his private holding company, ZAVOSET, he has assembled a range of interests in key Russian enterprises that would make any self-respecting Western entrepreneur green with envy. His holdings include major positions in industries as diverse as oil, metals and aluminum, automobile manufacture, avionics, various retailing enterprises and real estate.

  Backhouse admits to being aware of rumors that Ivankov, in his early days, had links with Russian criminal elements, but “who didn’t, back then,” he says. “Ivankov was one of the first of the new breed to dive into the water, taking huge risks and raising capital from offshore investors to take over former lossmaking state-owned businesses with the objective of turning them around. “Back then,” says Backhouse,” you couldn’t move without having to pay-off someone. “And US government figures back up his claim, with estimates that between 1990 and 1995 up to 80 per cent of all private enterprises and commercial banks in Russia were paying a ‘tribute” to the organized crime bosses of between 10 per cent to 20 per cent of their profits. “I don’t think anyone could have survived that era,” the Columbia professor says, “without having rubbed shoulders with crime gangs, but to his credit Ivankov performed and Russia moved on and now he’s one of the country’s most respected business figures. From what I’ve seen there’s absolutely no evidence to link him with anything untoward. And if he’s managed to buy some American businesses as well, then good for him!”

  The public relations machine had kicked in. It had taken a little longer than Hartman had expected but it was in full gear now. The original story had blown three weeks back, less than forty-eight hours after he’d passed the document summarizing his proposed testimony onto the Committee Chairman, Senator Harold Chisholm, at Chisholm’s request, and on Chisholm’s undertaking that there would be no – absolutely no – leaks whatever.

  So much for confidentiality. But the
n, after a lifetime of dealing with bureaucrats and politicians, what did Jack Hartman expect.

  Well, to be honest, what he expected was exactly what he got which was why the document he’d sent down to Chisholm had been a deliberate diversion: factual as far as it went, but just part of the evidence he intended to present.

  Within hours of the first leak the essence of the report had been scooped up by all the major networks and the story was running live on CNN as breaking news. Within a day it was front page across the country and the whole thing had exploded into a national furor, particularly Hartman’s citing of the names of three multi-billion dollar public corporations which – allegedly – according to his research, were now controlled by the same clutch of offshore companies and trusts based in the same locations. Within a few days the media were crawling all over everything. All over the US companies and their boards and advisers and all over the offshores as well, with hit-and-run camera teams making commando-style raids on offices in Cyprus and Monaco and Grand Cayman, where receptionists dived for cover and broad-shouldered men in suits thrust big hands in front of cameras forcing them away.

  Hartman folded the paper, reflecting with amusement on some of the images that had tumbled from the screen. Harassed company chairmen running gauntlets for their limousines; short-tempered spokeswomen for big law firms pushing back fuzz-covered microphones and reading denials; reporters in helicopters broadcasting live, hovering above the Long Island refuges of some of Wall Street’s financier elite.

  It was all great entertainment but just a warm-up act for the main event: the bombshell he had planned. There was more to tell. A lot more. And he had been just making sure the audience was primed. Eager and waiting.

  ‘Thanks, Clyde.” He passed the paper back through the window.

  ‘Sure thing, Jack” Clyde Butcher nodded and managed the newspaper back inside. “You know…” his brow creased and Hartman regarded him expectantly. “Well, like, don’t it ever worry you, Jack? I mean, that someone might, you know, take offence?”

  Jack Hartman let out a laugh and clapped a hand on the tanned forearm where it trailed the sill.

  “I think they took offence a long time ago, Clyde. A long time ago.”

  He moved on, crossing the lot, taking the over-bridge to the platform. Offence. Now that was a nice way to put it. Civilized. In a way it almost seemed to justify the three attempts they’d already made to get rid of him since he’d decided to make Russian crime his business.

  The opening shot had been on an icy road in Connecticut the winter after his first book was released. An overtaking lorry had cut back too fast, forcing his car off the highway and down an embankment, rolling it three times before it slammed into a tree. Astonishingly he’d walked away from the wreck with nothing much worse than a few bruises and while the lorry was never traced everyone seemed to believe it must have just been one of those unlucky accidents. Everyone except Jack Hartman, since he was the only one who’d seen the grin on the face of the man in the passenger seat a second before the big truck threw back into his path, but that was something he’d chosen to keep to himself.

  The next attempt was six months later. A mugging in the East Fifties one night when he’d been walking back to his hotel after having dinner with his agent and publisher. That one had cost him a broken nose and three cracked ribs and while the hoods who’d attacked him had taken his wallet, he knew that had been just for show. That it would have ended up a whole lot worse if a stray police cruiser hadn’t turned the corner just at the critical moment.

  After that they’d let it go for close to a year before trying again. This time it was supposed to look like a break and enter at his house. An unidentified intruder who had somehow managed to get past both the perimeter security and the house system without tripping the alarm and who just happened to be carrying a Colt Combat knife and a wire garrote as well as an untraceable Kahr P40 automatic, which was just a touch out of the ordinary for the typical Westchester burglar. Fortunately for Hartman he was a light sleeper so he’d picked up the sound of movement from the floor below. Surprised the guy on the second-floor landing, shooting him twice at close range with his Beretta before he’d had a chance to pull the Kahr’s trigger, one bullet beneath the left eye, the second in the forehead as he fell. Then, after going through the guy’s pockets and clothes and finding nothing – not even a label – he’d taken the knife and the garrote and stripped off the balaclava he’d been wearing and hidden them in the garage before the police arrived, then made a point of telling them how dumb he was for forgetting to arm the security system before going up to bed.

  By then his first book had become a bestseller and he was already on the talk show circuit, so the flurry of media speculation – Organized Crime Expert Shoots Dead Intruder – had been pretty much inevitable. He’d lain low for a while and let it run its course until something else bumped the story, then before long everyone had forgotten about the incident and he had too, until one weekend a few months later when Kelly had been up visiting and was rummaging around in the garage looking for some old high school yearbooks and stumbled on the wire loop and the Colt Combat knife and the black woolen mask in a carton under a pile of old magazines. He’d looked up from his newspaper to find her standing at the kitchen door, holding the knife in one hand and the wire loop in the other, regarding them suspiciously and him more so.

  For a moment he’d been stumped for words, then he’d remembered it was October so he went with the first thing that came to mind.

  “Halloween.”

  “And let me guess,” she’d responded, fixing a smile. “You would be who? Freddy Kruger?”

  She slapped the knife and the wire down on the kitchen bench and produced the balaclava from behind her back where she’d hooked it into the waist of her jeans, held it up and stuck two fingers through the two bullet holes where the wool had crusted with dried blood, fixed him with a look of chagrin and shook her head. “You know, Dad, sometimes I wonder about you!”

  Three tries in three years then for some reason they’d pulled back and left him alone and in a way that had worried him more, since he interpreted that as a measure of their evolution. And how they had evolved, he reflected, thinking about the maze of flow diagrams and photographs that traced the walls of his sprawling basement office. The bunker as Kelly called it. Embryos that had grown and mated and produced their own offspring who had grown and mated again, refining appearance and style and even accent until the most sophisticated were now virtually undetectable within the model community. The Russian gangster. A species in transformation.

  From his place on the platform he gazed back along the valley.

  Kelly’s train was sliding into view now, maybe a mile down the track. The irony of the perspective didn’t escape him. It was this very stretch of the Hudson that had been the favored turf of so many of America’s legendary robber barons. Men like Gould and Frick and Fisk and Vanderbilt and Morgan whose massive fortunes had themselves been built from often highly suspect schemes. They were folk heroes now, their stories part of the national identity. Part of the American dream. And now an increasingly sympathetic media had taken to describing the New Russian entrepreneurs as their modern-day equivalent. It was simply a phase an emerging economy had to go through, commentators reasoned. There were no sinister links between the New Russians and any so-called Russian mafiya. Jack Hartman was just trying to make a big deal out of nothing to sell books. In fact there was probably no such thing as Russian organized crime, they chuckled in their interviews, since anyone knew the Russians were quite possibly the most disorganized people on earth.

  And when you listened to them and looked at the statistics and information they wheeled out, at face value it all seemed to make sense. Until you did more research and lined up more dominoes and discovered, as Jack Hartman had, that more often than not the experts, whose rebuttals to his claims were most often reported, also happened to be locked up on lucrative retainers to PR firms represen
ting some extremely powerful clients.

  That was the way it went, he thought to himself, as the train hauled to a stop. The evolution of the species.

  Kelly swung down and saw him immediately. Wove her way through the shallow crowd towards him and they fell into a hug. He grabbed her bag and wrapped an arm around her waist.

  “Good trip?”

  She made a face. “The air-conditioning was down and the guy next to me smelt like he’d been living with camels. Oh yeah, and some other guy tried to touch me up in the ticket line at Grand Central.” She fell into stride alongside him, heading for the stairs. Reflected and compared. “Pretty good, I guess.” She felt her father’s elbow dig into her ribs and dodged sideways, grinning. “So, how are you? And how go the conspiracy theories?” She caught his expression and raised a hand in surrender. ‘Sorry. Bad joke.”

  He slid her another glance. “Okay, but watch your step, little girl. One more wrong move and you’re on the next train out of here.”

  They took the staircase down the other side to the parking lot. Clyde had gone, Hartman noticed, and so had the other three cabs. A short line had formed at the taxi rank sign, waiting for their return. Jackets coming off; ties being unwound.

  Kelly took a deep breath. “Fresh air. I thought they’d stopped making it.”

  She watched from the passenger seat as they drove up the rise from the station and along South Broadway, passing picture-book shopfronts and Victorian cottages and kids trailing along the sidewalk behind strolling parents.

  “You know, I must be getting old. I used to think this place was too cutesy but it does kind of grow on you.”

  He flicked a glance to his daughter and saw Nance thirty-six years before. Wondered what part of the scene in particular Kelly was starting to find appealing.