“Thanks.” He uttered the words without an ounce of gratitude.
The windows were open, and a stiff, cooling breeze swept through his hair and across his face. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply and was reinvigorated by the fresh, salty drafts. The throbbing of his head subsided. The rhythmic stabbing deep inside his belly eased. The pain became bearable. But the deception remained, and he decided it was far worse a companion.
“Stop the car,” he said.
“What?”
“I said, ‘Stop the car.’ ”
Cate signaled and guided the car onto the grassy shoulder. Gavallan pushed open the door and lowered himself gingerly to the ground. He had to move, to be free of their faux walnut and Naugahyde confinement. Cate came round and offered a hand, but again, he waved it away.
“Talk, damn it,” he said. “Don’t just stand there playing nursemaid. Talk to me. What are you doing here? You’re in this every bit as deeply as I am—even more, from the looks of things. Your fax number is all over Ray Luca’s correspondence. You’ve been feeding the Private Eye-PO his information. Why, Cate? I want to know what in the world is going on. And then I want to know why you didn’t tell me before.”
“I wanted to . . . I was worried . . . I don’t . . .” She started and stopped a dozen times, groping for a place to begin. Gavallan had never seen her so flustered. All part of the act, he decided.
“Just the truth, Cate. That’s all. It’s not so hard.”
Her features hardened as though she’d been slapped in the face. “If you saw the fax, then you know,” she said. “It’s about Kirov. He’s a criminal—not just a man who cuts a few corners, but a gangster. He’s as bad as Al Capone or John Gotti. He’s been under investigation by the police for six months now. The Russian prosecutor general and the FBI are all over him. The focus of their inquiries is Novastar Airlines. Kirov took over the company for half of what it was worth and is milking it of every cent, sending its foreign revenues to his private offshore accounts.”
“What about Mercury? Is the FBI looking at that too?”
“No one’s looking too closely yet, but with Kirov everything’s rotten. You’ve seen the proof. It’s hardly a model of propriety.”
“You mean the pictures of Mercury’s Moscow Operations Center? The Cisco receipts? If the cops aren’t concerned about Mercury, why are you trying to pull it down?”
“To get Kirov.”
“To get Kirov?” Gavallan smirked, drunk with disbelief. “What the hell does a reporter covering the mating habits of yetis in San Francisco have to do with a Russian billionaire ten thousand miles away? Sick of being a social gadfly? Is that it, Cate? Is this your bid for the big time? Looking for a promotion to hard news? Maybe a Pulitzer? Or is sinking Black Jet what you’re after. Dumping me wasn’t good enough.”
Cate’s eyes flared. “You bastard!” She took a step toward Gavallan, raising an opened palm, then stopped, her fury reined in. “You have no idea what you’re saying, how your words hurt.”
But Gavallan could match neither her emotional nor her physical control. Rushing forward, he pinned her to the car, squaring his face an inch from hers. “Kirov, eh? Bullshit! You don’t even know the man. What in the hell could he have done to get you on the warpath?”
“Stop it!”
Gavallan grabbed her by the arms and shook her. “Tell me.”
Cate raised a defiant chin, freezing him with her eyes. “He killed a friend.”
“Who?” Gavallan fired back with equal vitriol.
“Alexei,” she answered, the heat draining from her voice. “He killed Alexei.”
“Alexei who?”
“Alexei Kalugin. I loved him.”
“Tell me about it.” For the moment, he couldn’t believe anything she said. Cate the deceiver.
“It was so long ago. Another life.” She gathered herself for a moment, and when she saw that Gavallan was waiting for her to go on, she drew a deep breath. “His name was Alexei Kalugin. We met at business school. When we graduated, we both took jobs at the K Bank in Moscow. It was our big adventure; our chance to see the world. Alexei started on the trading floor. I worked in international credits, handling the American correspondent banks. After about a month it became clear to both of us that the K Bank wasn’t on the up-and-up. Kirov was insisting we grant loans to companies that had no collateral, no creditworthiness whatsoever. It was crazy.”
“I’ll bet,” said Gavallan.
Cate took off her sunglasses and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her motions were clumsy, and he could sense her reticence, her confidence gone AWOL. Vulnerability was a new color for Miss Catherine Elizabeth Magnus, and to his dismay, it rendered her in a flattering light.
“After a couple of weeks, Alexei grew tight with the locals,” she went on. “The traders took him under their wing. They treated him as if he were one of their own. Then, it just happened.”
“What happened?” asked Gavallan.
“Alexei learned that Kirov and his crew were manipulating the market for aluminum futures. Kirov was buying the stuff from the country’s smelters at something like five cents a pound and selling it on the international market at forty-five cents. We’re talking major piracy.”
“I’d say a markup of nine hundred percent qualifies.”
“Alexei showed me what he’d found and I told him he had to go to the police. He didn’t want to. He knew it would be dangerous. It was ‘96, remember. The oligarchs were at war with each other. Anyone who said a bad word about them ended up dead. Every day there were bodies on the street. He just wanted to quit and go back to the States. But I insisted. I held his hand, and together we went to the district attorney, or whatever you call that post in Russian. The next day, Alexei disappeared. We took the Metro to work together. He went to the first floor. I went to the fifth. We had our usual lunch date, but he never showed. They found his body on the banks of the Moskva River a week after that. He had a bullet in his head. His tongue had been cut out. I left the country the same day.”
Gavallan kicked at the grass, doing his best to take it all in. He felt aghast and betrayed. Mostly he just felt enraged. Ten people had died this morning, ten precious lives that might have been saved had Cate not withheld her secret history from him. He didn’t think it necessary to offer his condolences for one more person he’d never met. Stepping closer, he pointed a finger at her heart. “You worked for Kirov? You knew he’s a murderer? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Cate shook her head disconsolately. “What’s there to say? Yes, I worked for Konstantin Kirov. Yes, I got my boyfriend killed. It’s not something I care to remember. Don’t be mad, Jett. I told you: It was another life.”
“No!” cried Gavallan, slamming his hand against the roof. “It was our life! I told you everything. The best and the worst of it. I gave you my other life. What makes you so special you couldn’t give me yours?”
“I tried a thousand times. You weren’t listening.”
“The hell you say. You think if I knew that Kirov killed your boyfriend I’d have gone ahead with the deal? That if the FBI and the Russian government were checking him out, I’d have kept Mercury on the calendar? I’m sorry, ma’am, if you hold so low an opinion of me.”
“Don’t you be self-righteous with me. The deal’s had warning signs on it since day one. You and the rest of the market were so hungry for a winner you never stopped long enough to check them out.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true and you know it.”
The barb pierced Gavallan, its sting all the sharper because she was right. “You want true?” he railed. “Ray Luca is dead. Nine innocent men and women are dead. None of them will be going home to their families tonight or tomorrow or ever again. All because I’ve continued pushing Mercury, when you knew I shouldn’t have. Oh, and there’s something else you ought to know: Graf Byrnes is alive. He called me after you ran out of the ball the other night. He told me the deal was good, that we
could go ahead, but he made it clear Kirov had put him up to it. That’s where he is right now, I imagine—locked up somewhere in Russia with a gun to his head. For all I know, he could be dead by now. Since you know Kirov so well, honey, why don’t you tell me what Graf’s chances are.”
“Damn you,” she shouted, her lips trembling, a solitary tear streaking her cheek. “You’ve got no right.”
“Lady, I have every right. Mercury was my deal. Like it or not, I’m just as responsible as Kirov for those ten people who died today.”
“I’m so sorry.” The sobs came in huge waves, tremulous currents that racked her shoulders and sent shudders down her spine. Part of Gavallan demanded he comfort her, and almost instinctively, he stepped forward. But, reaching an arm toward her, he caught himself and pulled back. No, he told himself. She deserves this.
“Okay, I should have told you,” she said finally. “I see it now. I didn’t and I should have and I’m sorry.”
“Damn right you should have,” he boomed, his anger bursting like a thunderclap around them.
“I said I’m sorry. What more do you want?”
Gavallan said nothing. He felt estranged from her. He decided he’d been right—he didn’t know her. Maybe he never had. And that was what hurt most.
“I didn’t want to put you at risk,” she said, wiping at her tears, fighting to control her breath. “I just wanted to pull down the IPO. I thought if I could stop the Mercury offering, that would be enough to get at Kirov. A man like him only cares about money.”
“And Ray Luca was your helper?”
Cate nodded. “A friend at the Journal went to school with him, knew about his playing the Private Eye-PO.”
Gavallan turned his back and walked away a few steps. He was working the angles, trying to sift what was left of Mercury from the cinders of Cate’s emotional firestorm. He kept revisiting his tour of Mercury’s offices in Geneva and Kiev and Prague, seeing room after room of routing equipment, offices humming with motivated employees. Mercury had the vibe of a successful, efficiently run company, and that was something you just couldn’t fake. “I saw the fax in Luca’s bedroom—the one from the prosecutor general’s office. It’d been sent from your home. Where did you get all your information, anyway?”
“One of the detectives who investigated Alexei’s murder was part of the task force looking into Kirov’s affairs. Detective Skulpin is his name. Vassily Skulpin. We both knew Kirov was behind Alexei’s death, but Detective Skulpin could never gather any proof. Over the years we kept in contact, and when Skulpin’s task force began to move against Kirov he let me know. Detective Skulpin was the one who told me Kirov had faked the due diligence.”
Gavallan winced as if he’d been slapped. “He told you that?”
“He has an informant inside Mercury. The informant said that someone who works for Kirov was covering up its faults, painting a prettier picture than reality allowed. The only proof was the photos. And then the receipts.”
Of course Kirov had faked the due diligence. If Luca’s claims were true, there was no other way to have slipped it by. Kirov faked the due diligence.
“Look,” he said. “Let’s get to the hotel. I’ve got to pick up my things. If we hurry we can still make the three o’clock flight back home.”
Cate slid behind the wheel and started the engine. They drove in silence for a minute or two, then Gavallan shot her a sidelong glance. “The hotel’s just up the road, north side of Manalapan.” He brought a hand to his forehead. “Oh, shit, my rental car. I left it a block away from Luca’s.”
“We’ll pick it up later,” said Cate. “Right now, let’s go get your bags. The Ritz-Carlton, right?”
Gavallan rolled his eyes without humor. “Remind me to have a word with Hortensia about keeping my travel plans quiet,” he said, referring to his housekeeper.
“Don’t be mad at her, Jett. I called your office to apologize for my behavior at the ball. When they said you were home ill, I spoke to Hortensia. It’s not fair to ask her to keep secrets from your friends.”
“Yeah. Not like some people I know.”
Gavallan’s cell phone rang. “Hello.” He listened to the man on the other end of the line rant for fifteen seconds, then covered the mouthpiece and shot Cate a sinking glance. “It’s Tony. We’ve got problems.”
33
Jett, are you possibly in Florida?” Tony Llewellyn-Davies was saying. “Bruce, Meg, and I have some unannounced guests who very much would like to speak with you. The gentlemen appear to be from the FBI, and they’re asking some very nasty questions about you.”
Gavallan’s eyes darted to Cate, then back at the road. An hour ago, the news that federal agents had invaded his office would have shocked him. Now, he took it in stride. “Tell your friends they’re bang on. Say I came down here to have a word with Ray Luca and find out why he was bad-mouthing our offering. Just be sure to let them know that someone beat me to him.”
“I’ll relay the message, Jett.” A moment passed and Llewellyn-Davies asked if he might put him on the speakerphone. Gavallan said fine. There was another pause and he pictured his friends standing around his desk, the Transamerica Tower and Golden Gate Bridge looming in the background.
“Mr. Gavallan, Special Agent Vernon McNamee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation speaking. Good day, sir.”
Against his every reflex, Gavallan found himself saying “Good day” back.
McNamee said, “Sir, we’d like to speak with you about the murder of Mr. Raymond Luca and nine other individuals this morning in Delray Beach, Florida.”
“Here I am. Speak.”
“We’d prefer to conduct the interview in our offices. We’ll be happy to explain everything to you when we meet. The field office nearest to you is in Miami. The federal building on Northwest Second Avenue.”
“You want to arrest me for Ray Luca’s murder? Is that it?”
“No sir,” said McNamee. “I said no such thing. We’d simply like to ask you a few questions. I’m sure it will just be a formality.”
“A formality?” Gavallan wondered if the team of FBI agents shaking down his office in San Francisco was also just a formality. “Agent McNamee, let me make something clear. I did not kill Ray Luca. I’ll be happy to point you in the right direction, however. The man you are looking for is—” Gavallan stopped himself short. He wanted to say that Konstantin Kirov was the man responsible for Luca’s and the others’ deaths, and to offer a detailed description of the individuals he believed committed the crime. The first was a six-foot-four-inch male the size of a Sub-Zero refrigerator, approximately thirty-five years of age, blond hair, blue eyes, with a nose that had seen more than a few fistfights. Went by the name of Boris. The other was a woman, platinum hair, blue eyes, maybe nineteen, skinny, and feisty as a cornered bobcat. Tatiana was her name. Russians, both of them, in case McNamee hadn’t caught it.
“Do you have a name you’d like to give us?” the FBI agent inquired.
“No, I’m afraid not.” For the time being, Gavallan would have to keep his knowledge of Kirov’s role in Luca’s death, as well as his intention to cancel the Mercury deal, to himself.
“Well, then, sir, it’s my duty to inform you that unless you turn yourself into local law enforcement authorities within two hours’ time, we will have no option but to issue an arrest warrant on your behalf.”
Gavallan drew a breath. Not good. The last place he wanted to be was locked inside a six-by-eight jail cell. “You guys still there? Listen, I want you to get on the horn to Kirov and tell him everything’s copacetic with the offering. We’re going ahead as planned. Understood?”
“You’re sure, Jett?” It was Meg Kratzer. “Maybe it would be wiser to postpone the deal. We can reschedule it six months from now. Put Mercury on the calendar as the first big IPO of the new year.”
Gavallan answered for his audience, his script penned by Konstantin Kirov’s hand. “No way, Meg. Mercury’s a gem. I told you what Graf said. Th
is whole thing with the Private Eye-PO is just a terrible, terrible coincidence. Nothing more. Now, keep your chin up. Come Monday, we’ll all be sitting in the Peninsula in New York drinking some bubbly and laughing about the whole thing. Except for Bruce, that is.”
“What do you mean, except for me?” Tustin crowed.
“Sorry, Brucie, no children allowed in the bar. We’ll be sure to send up some chocolate milk to your room.”
Gavallan heard some chuckles and knew he’d won back his team’s confidence.
A firm tap on the leg directed his attention to Cate. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “What did Bruce say? Are the police looking for you? You didn’t mean what you said about Mercury. Go on, now. Tell them what you told me. About Boris and the girl. Tell them who killed Ray.”
“Shh,” he said to Cate. “Give me a second.” Then to McNamee: “Tell you what. You want to talk, get me one of your bosses on the phone. A Mr. Howell Dodson. He runs your task force on Russian organized crime. Name ring a bell? Find him and we can talk till we’re blue in the face.”
McNamee hesitated, and Gavallan could hear some discussion in the background. After ten seconds, the agent returned. “If you’ll give me a minute, I’ll patch him in.”
“Tell him to call this number.” Gavallan rattled off Cate’s mobile, hoping he was making it more difficult for anyone to track him down, then hung up. In less time than it took for Cate to fire up her journalist’s interrogation, her phone chirped. Gavallan slid it from her bag. “Mr. Dodson, I presume.”
“Hello, Mr. Gavallan,” replied a smoky Southern voice. “I’m sorry to disturb your vacation. Or is it a working holiday like our other famous Texan is so fond of taking?”
“Neither, actually,” replied Gavallan flatly. “I came here to speak with Ray Luca. When I learned he was the Private Eye-PO, I wanted to talk to him face-to-face and ask him why he was so intent on discrediting one of our upcoming IPOs.”
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