by Steven Gore
Matson swallowed, his distressed expression saying that he’d seen a thousand deals fall apart because of what was presented as a final detail.
“We pay you for the other thing in this account so I won’t have to handle cash.”
Matson let the suggestion sit for a moment, biting his lower lip, then nodded. “But I’ll still have to figure out how to get the money back into the States.”
Gage smiled. “Piece of cake. There are dozens of ways. Carry cash back. Buy something in Europe and sell it over here.” Gage furrowed his brows, as if searching his mind for ideas. “Say you buy a dozen classic Rolexes in Switzerland; thirty, forty thousand each. They’re worth the same here as there. Who’s to know? Maybe you take a little loss, so what? Buy rice or steel or whatever anybody needs. Find out what people want and go get it.”
Matson nodded.
Gage pointed a forefinger at Matson’s chest.
“And one more thing. The main way they catch money laundering is that funds come into an account and then go out right away.” Gage wagged the finger back and forth. “It doesn’t make any difference how much you put in your Nauru account, just don’t take out more than about one percent at any one time during the first year. And send the bank a fake contract, like for steel, so it looks like you’re really buying something. But make it odd numbers. Round numbers get attention. Nobody buys exactly a million dollars’ worth of steel. Got it?”
“Yeah.” Matson sighed. “I wish I’d understood how all this worked before.”
Gage rose from the couch. Matson hesitated, then did the same.
“I’m real busy for the next couple of days,” Gage said, “then I need to travel out of the country. I’ll give you a phone number. When you’ve got the fifty grand, call it. My friend over there will meet you somewhere in LA. It’ll take two days to set things up after we get the money. You understand?”
“I understand. What’s his name?”
“Just call him Eddie.”
Gage wrote out a phone number on a blank scrap of paper and handed it to Matson.
“You go out first. He’ll follow. If he spots a tail on you, you’ll never see me again.” Gage looked hard into Matson’s eyes. “If he spots a tail on me, you’re in big fucking trouble.”
CHAPTER 60
Are you ready for a little work?” Gage began his call to Burch. Matson’s fifty thousand dollars was piled on Gage’s desk.
“How I’ve waited to hear those words, but the doctors won’t let me leave the bloody house. I’m not even sure I can make it down the stairs.”
“You can do it from home. Matson needs a company and an account to put money he’s got stashed, but he doesn’t have Granger and Fitzhugh to do it anymore.”
“It wasn’t just them.” The weight of the pending indictment crushed the enthusiasm out of Burch’s voice. “It was Granger, Fitzhugh, and me.”
“Hang in there, champ. They knew what was going on, you didn’t.”
Gage heard Burch take in a breath and exhale, as if recharging his resolve. “Where?”
“I sold him on Nauru.”
“What?” Burch laughed. “Let me guess. You convinced him that he’ll have actual cash piled up out in the Pacific?”
Gage felt his fear that Burch’s mind had lost its quickness and strategic sense dissolve.
“And we’ll need to use a correspondent account in Switzerland.”
The humor disappeared from Burch’s voice. “But what if something goes wrong? It’ll look exactly like what Peterson is accusing me of, helping Matson launder money.”
“Jack, you’re forgetting the Afghanistan rule. If they ever get us—”
“It’ll only be for something we didn’t do. But this time I’m doing it, and they’re probably going to find out.”
“Don’t worry. I know a prosecutor in Geneva. I’ll tell him in advance what we’re up to and give him the name of the bank and the account number.”
Gage thought for a moment. He had planned to handle the second part of the setup himself, but decided that rebuilding Burch’s confidence required bringing him along. “What do you know about Chuck Verona?”
“Just a paper shuffler. His job is just to make sure corporate fees get paid and do whatever I need to maintain companies in Nevada. And not just me, everybody in the business in San Francisco uses him. Russian immigrant. Grateful to be in the States.”
“Any Russian organized crime connections?”
“None that I ever heard of. There’s always a risk that he was unwittingly used—I know how that is.”
“Does he trust you?”
“Of course. I’m the one who passed his name around.”
“Matson sent three FedEx boxes to a company called Checker Trading in Las Vegas that Verona runs. They contain microchips he’s stealing to fund his lifestyle until he can tap his offshore money again. Find out from Verona what he did with them—”
“I see where you’re going. Then we backtrack the money from the Swiss correspondent account—”
“And dress the little punk in prison stripes and drop him on Peterson’s doorstep.”
Gage’s cell phone rang the moment he hung up from Burch. It was Milsberg.
“He’s traveling again. To London. First-class. And we’re running out of money for office supplies. I searched his office when he went out to lunch and found the ticket in his briefcase. Same flight as last time, and—this is the good part—a book about Kiev. Brand-new.”
“Is there a ticket for Ukraine?”
“No. But he must be traveling there. Matson isn’t a reader.”
Gage got up from his desk, looked over the charts and chronologies hanging on his wall, wondering both what Peterson expected to learn as a result of allowing Matson to travel out of the country again and why Matson hadn’t booked his flight all the way through to Kiev.
Does Peterson even know he’s traveling? Gage asked himself. And is Kiev part of Matson’s exit strategy? Slip out of London and break the chain connecting his neck to Peterson’s hand? Maybe even make the sale to Mr. Green in the comfortable surroundings of a Ukrainian dacha?
Gage snagged an international treaty book from the shelf, checked the index, and turned to the U.S./Ukraine section.
There wasn’t an extradition agreement.
The U.S. couldn’t touch him any more than it could touch Gravilov or the other gangsters involved in the scam. Matson and Alla would live happily ever after, just out of reach.
But treaties only bound governments.
Gage flipped the volume closed and reached for his cell phone to call a man who didn’t accept the legitimacy of either.
CHAPTER 61
Gage’s flight landed at Borispol Airport fifty kilometers west of Kiev four hours after Matson, who’d stayed in London only long enough to pick up Alla. Gage had waited in Zurich until he got word from Slava that Matson had arrived. He’d been fortunate to get a seat since journalists from around the world were rushing to Kiev to chronicle the Bread and Freedom Revolution, an uprising triggered by the revelation that the president had diverted a fifty-million-dollar IMF agricultural loan into his election war chest.
One of Slava’s impassive bodyguards met Gage in the unheated arrivals hall and led him to an armored Mercedes sedan in the parking lot. Gage got into the backseat with Slava while the bodyguard entered a trailing silver Land Cruiser. Slava appeared so relaxed that Gage wondered whether he’d taken his own advice in Geneva and spent a week soaking in the aromatic steam baths of Montreux.
“What’s happening in Kiev?” Gage asked him.
“Opposition took over Independence Square. Hundred thousand. Demand new election.”
“Will there be one?”
“Wrong question.”
“What’s the right one?”
“What difference it make.”
Gage glanced over. “I didn’t think you took such an interest in politics.”
“I take interest in business.” Slava flashed
a predator’s smile. “Politics is business in Ukraine.”
The driver sped out from the tree-lined airport road onto the highway toward the city.
“Where’s Matson staying?” Gage asked, as they passed a sprinkling of two-story stucco dachas owned by the Ukrainian nouveau riche.
“Where else? Lesya Palace Hotel.”
“Apparently he’s not afraid of being seen.”
“Or heard. Bugs everywhere. For Soviets, state secrets. For capitalists, business secrets.” Slava snapped his hand shut. “Like mousetrap.”
“Do you have any way to find out what goes on inside?”
“Only little. Waiters and doormen. Guys in president’s entourage took it over right after independence. Gravilov maybe own a piece.”
Gage smiled. “Am I in a mousetrap, too?”
“Your place clean. My people check it.”
Gage gave him an I-wasn’t-born-yesterday look.
“What? You think I plant something? I thought we trust each other again. Like partners.”
“I brought a little device of my own,” Gage said. “But there are a few things I need.”
Slava spread his hands. “You want. I get.”
“A fur ushanka and a black overcoat. I need to blend in. A hat and coat should be enough.”
“You get in hour.”
“Thanks. What’s Matson doing?”
“So far, nothing. Reservation for dinner at hotel restaurant.”
After passing concrete Soviet-era apartment blocks, concentrated together as if to squeeze out everything soft or green or human, Slava’s driver sped across Paton’s Bridge over the Dnepr River. He slipped between the botanical garden and the Monument to the Great Patriotic War, then aimed for the heart of Kiev. As a light rain fell, the driver skirted around Independence Square, its chanting crowd of a hundred thousand spilling into the side streets, their tone celebratory.
The driver pulled up to the arched driveway of a white six-story apartment building built in the anonymously ornate style dictated by Moscow in the 1950s. He honked once. Moments later the iron-framed wooden gate swung open and he drove through the courtyard into a two-car garage on the opposite side. Once the garage door was closed, Slava heaved himself out of the car. Gage stepped out behind him.
“You should think about losing a few pounds,” Gage said.
“Few not do it.”
Gage followed Slava into an elevator that took them to the top floor.
“Okay?” Slava said after his bodyguard opened the apartment door.
Gage walked into an Italianate living room, gilded to the barest limits of good taste.
“Sveta do,” Slava said.
“I didn’t realize your wife was an interior decorator.”
“She not. She like to spend money. When she get enough things we hire somebody to do something with them. Some of it match.”
Slava ran a finger along the back of one of two aqua and gold Louis IX armchairs. His eyes blurred for a moment.
“When I was boy, ten families live ten years on what this cost.”
As soon as Slava left, Gage removed a debugger from his briefcase and checked the apartment. He disabled four bugs, but left them in place. He then set up a local Internet connection and checked his e-mails.
Boss:
Mr. Burch called. Chuck Verona said he forwarded Matson’s FedExed boxes from Checker Trading to New York. He couldn’t remember the name of the company, but will find out.
Everything is in order as far as Matson’s new account is concerned. Mr. Burch is still wondering why you chose the name KTMG Limited. He thinks “TMG” is The Matson Group, but he can’t understand what the “K” means. I think I do. Cute.
Blanchard called. He reviewed the list of what was missing and said the most valuable were the monolithic microwave circuits. He suspects that a competitor is using gray market SatTek components to make their own devices. He’ll put together a list of possible companies and I’ll research them.
Alex Z
Gage looked at his watch. It was 5 A.M. in California. He didn’t want to wake up Faith by calling her on their home phone, so he decided to leave a message on her cell.
Faith answered on the first ring. “Did you make it there okay?”
“I just got in. Why are you awake so early?”
“I was watching the news last night and saw how tense things have become in Kiev. The chaos reminded me of when you and Jack were in Karachi.”
“That’s why I called. I thought you might be worried.”
Gage walked to an east-facing living room window with a view of Independence Square. Through the now freezing rain, he saw thousands of yellow flags bearing images of wheat stalks, the symbol of the Bread and Freedom Revolution, and the tent city in which the demonstrators spent the subzero nights.
“I can see it out of my window. Listen to this.”
Gage cracked open the window and faced his phone toward the crowd cheering the opposition leaders as they condemned the president and his corrupt administration.
When he put the phone back to his ear, he heard an echo of the demonstration.
“I just turned on CNN,” Faith said. “They’re panning the streets leading to the square. Can you see the troops?”
On a side street leading to the square, Gage spotted police clad in blue and soldiers in green waiting for orders, running their numbing hands over the barrels and trigger guards of their AK-47s to keep them from icing up.
“The cheers sounded heroic, almost triumphant as we were driving in,” Gage said. “Now they just sound naïve. These people think they’re marching toward the promised land, but they’re really just backing toward the edge of the abyss.”
Gage didn’t wait for Faith’s next question before answering it.
“I’ll try to get out of here before that happens.”
CHAPTER 62
When Gage walked into Kiev’s Pechersk Restaurant, he found that it possessed no dining room and no windows. It was nothing more than six private rooms spread along a narrow Siberian birch–paneled hallway. There was no cashier, not even a cash register. The china was gilded, the utensils were silver, and the glasses were crystal.
The dozen armored Mercedes in the parking lot, along with the gauntlet of bodyguards he passed, told Gage that a properly aimed and timed missile would reduce the Ukrainian crime rate by half—and Slava acted like he owned the place.
“Gage,” Slava said, as Gage walked into the last room, “this is Ninchenko.”
Ninchenko rose stiffly, shook Gage’s hand across the table, and introduced himself by his first name and patronymic: Mykola Ivanovich. Gage sat opposite Slava. Ninchenko to Slava’s left. Six feet, one-eighty, mid-forties, slightly receding black hair, high cheekbones supporting skin reddened by the icy December wind.
The spaces between the three place settings were filled with plates of smoked sturgeon and salmon, red and black caviar, and fresh and pickled vegetables. Two vodka bottles stood in the center of the table.
“Major Ninchenko retired from SBU last month,” Slava said, popping a pickle into his mouth. “Twenty years.”
“I served for two years,” Ninchenko said, “then left to attend law school and returned for another eighteen.”
Ninchenko spoke with only a faint accent, which Gage recognized was a rarity for someone who grew up when Ukraine was still a Russian satellite.
“Where’d you learn English?” Gage asked. “You speak it better than most Americans.”
Ninchenko smiled at the compliment. “Kiev State University, and my parents. They worked in the Foreign Ministry in Soviet times.”
“And since then?”
Ninchenko shrugged. “Business, like everyone else.”
“What about you?” Gage raised an eyebrow toward Slava, who laughed through his smoked sturgeon–filled mouth.
Ninchenko glanced at Slava. “My division formed a private company to provide security during our off hours. Zherebec. It means stal
lion. Stallion Security Services. Marx was wrong, except about one thing, the withering away of the state. The state in Ukraine is nothing, just a way for the rich to make money. Business needs protection and predictability. Stallion provides it. The state can’t.”
“What is government anyway,” Slava interjected, “except protection racket? Protect some rich people from other rich people and all rich people from poor people. State always krysha for rich and when state not roof, we roof.”
“What about the Bread and Freedom Revolution?” Gage asked.
“At this point it’s only a protest,” Ninchenko said. “We’ll see if it becomes a revolution. And remember, revolutions in this part of the world tend not to overturn as much as fully revolve.”
“So Ukraine will end up where it started.”
“That’s what happened in Russia. They started with Brezhnev, toyed with Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and then ended up with Putin, the velvet glove on the iron fist. There won’t be truly free elections there for another generation.”
Gage looked over at Slava and watched him shove a buttered slice of baguette piled high with black caviar into his mouth. In his nonchalance, Gage recognized that Slava believed that despite how violently Ukraine was wrenched about, he’d stay on his feet.
“Tell me about Gravilov,” Gage said. “I’m wondering whether Matson is counting on him to provide the nest for him to land in.”
“The timing would be right,” Ninchenko said, his tone changing from a theorizing political scientist to a reporting intelligence officer. “Gravilov flew into Kiev yesterday, the domestic airport. He was in Ukraine already. He’s the roof for the Dnepropetrovsk clan, the president’s people.”
“If he’s imbedded here,” Gage asked, “why would he get so personally involved in a United States stock fraud and risk putting himself in the FBI’s crosshairs?”
“Hard currency. Euros, dollars, francs.” Ninchenko pointed west, as if toward its sources. “Our money is worth nothing outside of Ukraine and barely anything here. And times have changed. It used to be you could pay off a plant director and get steel at half the international price, then sell it on the world market. But the World Bank threatened to cut us off if we didn’t clean up the steel trade. So Gravilov had to find other sources of hard currency.”