Mesmerized

by Gayle Lynds

  She was still studying her donor's photo, the short nose, the broad forehead, the shock of gray hair. There seemed to be a glint in his eyes, as if he had seen enough of the world to be amused. But his face was hard. Too hard.

  "It all fits," she decided. "Everything. The food, the strong personality, the quick temper, the driving. Even the Russian poetry makes sense, considering his intellectual background." She sang him the song that had come to her in the hospital: " 'Harvest, our harvest is so good. . . .'"

  "I haven't heard that in years."

  "You know it?"

  "From a 1950s Soviet movie, The Kuban Cossacks. I told you I was something of an expert on the culture."

  "Wow. I thought it might be movie music, but I swear I've never seen the movie." She sat back and smiled. Then her heart seemed to skip a painful beat: "Was he a killer?"

  "Could be," he said honestly. "He never admitted to any murders when we interrogated him, but I'm sure every defector had parts of his life he tried to hide. Most people do, no matter how straight-arrow they think they've been. A life's like an attic. The sun illuminates large patches. But it's got dark corners, too. Very dark. We all have them, some darker than others."

  She had a sense he was talking about himself as much as about Mikhail Ogust, but she did not press. "So we still don't know how much violence he was involved in."

  "Oh, I think we can safely say it was part of his work life. It'd have to have been, considering his profession, particularly when he was in the field. What we don't know is whether he was a killer." He glanced at her, his face kind. "We may never know. But you can live with that, can't you? After all, even if you did inherit cellular memories, one organ isn't going to change your basic personality and erase your own history. You're still you, but maybe with a few different wrinkles and edges."

  She liked that. Maybe she was still fundamentally herself.

  He sped the car off the Beltway and onto Interstate 270. Gettysburg was almost due north of Washington. The weekend traffic was growing dense, but that was to be expected on a Friday afternoon. Still, if it remained this slow, they faced several hours of travel.

  He said, "General Berianov shared some traits with Ogust—"

  "Did Berianov go back to Russia, too?" she interrupted. "His house seemed deserted. Almost as if whoever lived there had moved out. It had so little personality, you'd expect a FOR SALE sign in the front yard."

  "I've never been inside, so I can't say. But we just had word he's dead. Died in Moscow sometime within the last day." He had almost revealed that his FBI boss, Bobby Kelsey, had told him, but it was not a good idea she know about Bobby.

  "Murdered?" she asked.

  "Cardiac arrest. Why? Do you have some reason to think he was murdered?"

  "Well, Colonel Yurimengri was shot to death, and Mikhail Ogust died violently, too. What was Berianov doing in Russia?"

  "On business. A very successful biznesman. All three made a lot of money founding companies that traded between Russia and the United States. Perfect examples of the opportunities capitalism provides."

  "You don't sound as if you really believe that." She slid the clipping back into her bag. It was time to begin putting Ogust out of her life. She had probably learned as much as she would ever know, and back on the steps of the Watergate when she held a gun on the woman who wanted to kill her, she decided she was not going to turn into a murderer. She was going to tame this fierce new heart.

  He admitted, "The speed of their success has always made me goosey. Almost as if it were here already, waiting for them to put their names on it. Hard to explain, unless they had access to a lot of old KGB money. And I think they did. There were a lot of hidden KGB slush funds in the U.S. during the Cold War era, and a lot were never used—they just sat in some bank. We found many of the accounts, and quite a few were empty. That's how I started on the trail of the three. Following the money."

  She nodded. "It makes sense. I've seen so-called overnight successes that seem incredible, until you dig deeper and find all kinds of help. For the most part, overnight success all alone in a garage is a myth. Tell me about General Berianov. Was he from St. Petersburg, too?"

  "No, Moscow. A Muscovite through and through. He was the leader of the three, and not just because his rank was higher. He had the personality to dominate even Ogust. Both Yurimengri and Ogust looked up to him, and I'd sometimes catch him giving them warning looks that told me they were close to saying something he didn't want known."

  "What did you do?"

  "Kept at it. Backtracking, asking the same question in different ways. You're a lawyer. You know the drill."

  She gave a faint smile. "True."

  "Once Berianov told me, 'You Americans will never really know us. We have an old saying in our country: To understand a Russian, you must be a Russian.' He liked to slice cucumbers lengthwise, quarter a tomato, sprinkle salt everywhere, and wash it all down with vodka. But he seemed never to get drunk or have a hangover. His parents were working-class. What launched him was a scholarship to Moscow University, where he studied international relations and earned a law degree. He had a brilliant mind and a chameleon's core. Perhaps that's why people were attracted to him. Yurimengri was just the opposite. Yurimengri was a dour, stolid bureaucrat who came from Irkutsk, a bitterly cold place on the Asian plain. He had a good education, and he was utterly reliable. I think that's why Berianov latched on to him. As for why Ogust was part of the team, I've always wondered about that. Maybe it was because Ogust reminded Berianov of himself when he was younger. There was fifteen years' difference in their ages."

  She pursed her lips. "So that's the trio. Berianov, the wily fox. Ogust, the young Turk. And Yurimengri, the bureaucrat. Strange they became so closely connected."

  He watched her stretch her long body in the small sports car. She had a feline grace—long, slender curves and an unobtrusive athletic strength. Her blue eyes were hooded, heavy with weariness. He felt tired himself. He had dozed during the long drive from West Virginia to Washington, interrupted by the various stops for gas, food, the john, but it had been inadequate. Still, he could go a long time without sleep. But with her heart transplant, he doubted she should . . . or could.

  He said, "Tell me again about the nightmares you had. Maybe there's something in them we missed."

  She repeated the motorcycle incident, the voices shouting Russian names—names that included Mikhail Ogust's, Alexei Berianov's, and Anatoli Yurimengri's—the campfire where they were waiting for her, the mysterious door, the sense of oppression and danger, and finally the motorcycle incident in which she killed Ogust.

  "It makes no sense," she finished. "Why would I dream about killing my heart donor? At first I thought it meant he had to be a murderer, because I had his heart and I had no idea who the man I was hitting and killing was. But now I know Ogust was the one who was killed in real life."

  "Killed? He was killed? Why would you say it that way?"

  "He was killed in a motorcycle accident. What's so strange about the way I said it?"

  He was excited. His broad face was electric. "It was your word choice. You've made it make sense in a new way. Maybe he didn't die in an 'accident.' " He smacked the steering wheel. "I should've seen this before. It's rare for a motorcyclist to die in a traffic incident that involves no other vehicle, unless there are bad weather conditions like an icy road, or the motorcyclist was high on something. As soon as I heard the police report, I drove right over. There was bright moonlight. The streets were dry. It was a fine April night. Later, the toxicology reports found his system clean, so no drugs or alcohol were to blame. And there were no witnesses. But guess who was at the scene . . . said he'd just happened by on his way home to Chevy Chase and seen the capsized motorcycle?"

  "Berianov lives in Chevy Chase."

  "The same. The police said he was driving away in his Lexus to get help, but when he saw them, he stopped, jumped out, and ran back to tell them his old friend was lying beside the
road and would they please radio for help right away. Berianov could've been afraid the police had copied down his license plate number and that's why he went back."

  "It said in your news story that Ogust died instantly of brain injuries."

  Jeff nodded and pounded the steering wheel again. "What an idiot I've been. It explains so much. Berianov would've been able to tell quickly that Ogust was dead and beyond help. There was no reason for him to race off to get an ambulance. And your dream held the clue—in your nightmare it happened at Berianov's house. There must've been some kind of falling out between the two. I'll bet anything Berianov killed Ogust, probably at his house. He probably had Yuri killed, too, and sent that same killer after us. Damn. I'll bet Berianov's not dead! It's got to be a trick. I was getting too close. He's the one who framed me in Stone Point, and he's not only alive, he must be close to finishing whatever this is all about!"

  31

  In Pennsylvania, Caleb Bates sat at his desk in deep concentration, a glass with two fingers of sour mash whiskey by his hand. He studied the latest printout of names and arrival times of the Keepers at the depots outside Washington. No Keeper had been later than a half-hour, which had been figured into the timetable to account for unavoidable traffic delays. He smiled with satisfaction, picked up the glass, and went into his private bathroom where he dumped the whiskey into the toilet. Berianov hated the bourbon whiskey, but Bates, like his patriots, favored it. Fortunately, no one was around, so Berianov did not have to choke it down.

  As he returned to his desk, his cell phone vibrated. "Yes?"

  It was his financial front in Moscow, Georgi Malko, whose thin voice announced in educated Russian, "The sale has gone through for the publishing company, Alexei. You said you wanted to know when it was final." Included in the package was Russia's best and most influential daily, Tomorrow, a behemoth with a prized reputation for integrity. It was a must-read for the country's elite. Malko chuckled, a rarity for such a reserved man, and continued, "As it turns out, I was able to close for Boris Berezovski's shares in ORT today, too." ORT was the most popular national TV network, the only one that reached every village in Russia's vast territory. "Both purchases are just in time for your events in Washington, eh, Alexei?"

  "Congratulations. Fine work. Two big closings in one day."

  "Yes," Malko agreed. "Quite a victory. How goes everything on your end?"

  Berianov did not like the familiarity in the man's tones. Soon Georgi Malko and all the other thieves and larcenists would learn their places. "We're on schedule," he said noncommitally. "What about True or False? We must have that, too." It was an independent weekly tabloid, Russia's largest circulation national paper, devoured by ordinary readers, who found its blend of news, sex, and gossip gripping. Through front companies, and with Malko as his point man, Berianov now owned outright or had majority control in daily newspapers from Moscow to Vladivostock, as well as a dozen national magazines. True or False would be the capstone to the mass communications empire he was creating, and with it he would control most of the nation's media.

  "I'm working on it. Perhaps tonight I'll close that one, too."

  "Make sure you do. I want to have all the headlines in Russia by tomorrow."

  "We want to have headlines, Alexei. Don't forget we're partners."

  Professor Malko's voice was cheerful on the surface, but Berianov heard something else in it—a warning that Malko would not take a complete backseat. Until a few years ago, Professor Georgi Malko had been New Russia's über-oligarch. From an ordinary proletarian background as a college math teacher, he had been at the forefront of the financial hijacking of Russia, when state assets were privatized in the early 1990s. By 1995, he was a billionaire several times over and owned so many companies and had become so powerful that he and six other new titans of industry, who also seemed to have come out of nowhere, controlled half the nation's economy. Fellow Russians began to call the new elites oligarchs, from the Greek-derived oligarchy, meaning the rule of the few.

  Then in 1998, largely as a result of the oligarchs' looting, the bottom fell out of the ruble, Moscow defaulted on its huge international loans, and Boris Yeltsin's presidency teetered. In the end, the moguls had come close to liquidating Russia, which prompted, at last, the government's first serious challenge to their power.

  Berianov thought them despicable. When he heard others liken them to America's nineteenth-century robber barons, he laughed at the stupidity. For as bad as the robber barons had been, at least they had built actual wealth—railroads, steel mills, auto plants—and from their immense profits had given back by founding schools, libraries, museums, and hospitals. Not so in Russia. Not only had the nouveaux richeniks plundered natural resources, they had sent their capital abroad to numbered bank accounts, from where it would never replant a forest, never make safe a rotting nuclear submarine, and certainly never feed an old babushka.

  Then the magnates' fortunes began to change. When Boris Yeltsin vacated the presidency, they lost their easy entree to insider deals, largely because his successor, Vladimir Putin, had ordered the FSB to collect kompromat —information—on them when he took charge of the intelligence agency in the late 1990s. By the time Putin succeeded Yeltsin, his spies had assembled meters-high stacks of files that chronicled everything from illegal money laundering to extortion, from strong-arm tactics to teary confessions by subordinates. With that, Putin had gone to work on the oligarchs.

  Still, Berianov believed the world was wrong about Putin: He was no true reformer. He recalled the lieutenant colonel from the old KGB days as not just another talented apparatchik; he was smart, ambitious, and ruthless, far more so than Yeltsin had ever been. Which made it no surprise the youthful Putin appeared to be succeeding where the doddering Yeltsin had failed. Knowing Putin, Berianov was certain Russia's recovered assets were being skimmed, and significant wealth was disappearing into Putin's, his family's, and his courtiers' pockets, just as it had with Yeltsin. And as long as Putin remained in power, he remained in control and could continue to take as much as he liked. Lies, it was nothing but lies to hoodwink the people. All of which made Berianov furious. He could hoodwink, too, and for now, he needed Malko.

  Smiling coldly, he lied into the cell phone: "How could I forget your contribution, Georgi? It's enormous. We're a team, you and I. Each valuable in our own way. You'll always have my ear, and, as we agreed, Gazprom will be your first reward." Not only did Gazprom control a third of the planet's known reserves of natural gas, it also accounted for nine percent of Russia's gross domestic product. A state within a state, Gazprom owned farms, canneries, a slaughterhouse, seaside resorts, an airline, media properties, and massive holdings in real estate. The corporation was Georgi Malko's ticket back up to the economic stratosphere, but Berianov never intended for him to have it. There were other, more permanent ways to deal with vultures like Malko, which Berianov would see to once he had no more need of him.

  "Excellent, Alexei." Malko was back in good humor, which was just what Berianov wanted. "It's good we both recall not only our duties but our rewards. Let me know as soon as the mission tomorrow is complete. Good-bye, old friend."

  As he hung up, Berianov ignored the final insult—the familiarity of Malko's use of "old friend." His focus was more immediate: The "event" was on schedule. Because of Yeltsin, the oligarchs, and now President Putin, Berianov had been able to convince disgruntled former allies and contacts to join him. He had drawn upon vodka-enhanced memories and a seething patriotism that ached for the past. Even the military and special forces, as well as Minatom—with the help of his secret sources inside the U.S. government—were doing their part. Intrigue had long been the way in his country, and he had learned it well. Now he used it.

  When it was half-past noon in Gettysburg, it was 8:30 P.M. in Moscow. On this cold, clear night, old snow rimmed gutters and sidewalks in glittering brown mounds. A film of ice kept trying to form on the street's bare cobblestones, but a parade of Mercedese
s, Cadillacs, and Jaguars, many with escort cars and flashing blue lights, chewed up Mother Nature's frosty plans.

  Interrupted occasionally by modest Trabants and Nivas, the luxury cars formed a slowly moving line in the slush outside the opulent Russian Roulette nightclub, just blocks from the Kremlin. Under the nightclub's snow-peaked awning, armed security men watched carefully and murmured into walkie-talkies as the vehicles disgorged men in Italian overcoats and women in diamonds, long furs, and Versace gowns.

  As Georgi Malko's limousine driver hit his horn and forced his way into the front of the line, other drivers slammed their brakes and angrily leaned on their own horns. Malko's driver touched the intercom button. "Sorry for the disturbance, sir."

  "Of course." Malko's mind was on the vital meeting that awaited him in the nightclub as he returned his cell phone to his pocket. He had one last deal to finalize for Alexei Berianov, and he intended to do it tonight. Not only was the success of Saturday's operation in Washington paramount, so was the aftermath in Moscow.

  The commotion outside his limo was quieting as one of his bodyguards jumped out from the front passenger seat and opened the back door. Another bodyguard instantly followed from the front seat, while the lead security man climbed out of the back and moved swiftly around the limo to stand with the others to block open a pathway. Without a glance at the waiting cars or at the staring guests and other security men, Malko emerged into the chilly night, raised his face, and sniffed the air.

  "It's going to be even warmer tomorrow night, Valentin," he assured his security chief. "A good night for a revolution, eh? I can smell victory. It's in the air."