“Spaseeba,” said the Russian, removing the compress, seeing the blood and swearing. “You want to talk, you go now,” he said, jutting a thumb over his shoulder toward Cate. “Maybe you don’t have so much chance later. I take Tatiana to the bathroom. Clean her up. Go. I owe you favor.”
Gavallan waited until Boris passed him, an arm around Tatiana’s shoulder en route to the lavatory, then walked fore and took a seat facing Cate. He wanted to make light of the bumpy ride, to offer her his pilot’s confident smile and say, “That was nothing,” but the words caught in his throat. He’d left his store of niceties back on the tarmac, along with his willful naÏveté. One question needed to be asked.
“Did he know about us?”
Cate looked at him for a moment, not saying anything, her flashing eyes boring into him with unsettling frankness. “Who? Father?” She gave a tired laugh. “Yes, Jett, he knew.”
Gavallan glanced out the window. They had climbed above the clouds and were soaring across an azure sea. Sporadic lightning flashed below in a downy gray quilt, smothered eruptions that reminded him of distant gunfire.
“Well, that explains a lot,” he said. “You both had me going, I’ll say that. Jett, the consummate dealmaker. Mr. Big Shot wangling Mercury away from Goldman and Merrill and every other big swinging dick on the street. Hell, those suckers didn’t have a chance. At least I know how Pillonel learned that Black Jet was getting the deal a month before I did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you hear him this morning? Your father recruited him in November to do his dirty work. You know, to fake the due diligence and say that Mercury was more than the sum of its parts. The funny thing is, Black Jet didn’t win the deal until January. Remember? You refused to toast the occasion. I drank the entire bottle of DP myself.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“I paid your father fifty million dollars of my firm’s money to win a deal he had every intention of giving me anyway. This is enormous, Cate. I handed a man fifty million bucks to give me the royal screwing of the century. I sank my company for no reason whatsoever.”
“Jett, don’t do this to yourself.”
“And you knew the whole time that it was rotten. The story just gets better and better.”
“My father was involved. It couldn’t be legitimate. It’s that simple.” Her tone was apologetic, conciliatory. “I tried saying everything I could to put you off the deal: ‘Kirov’s a crook.’ ‘You can’t trust an oligarch.’ I reminded you he’d gone bankrupt twice before.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Gavallan. “We’ve already had this conversation.”
“What else did you want me to say?”
“How about the truth?”
“I already told you. If you’d done your job, you would never have touched the deal to begin with.”
“If you’d told me he was your father, if you’d told me about what happened to Alexei, I would have pulled the plug in a New York minute.” He looked at the floor for a moment, then back at Cate. “Why?” he asked again.
She hesitated, her emotions close to the surface. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”
“Of course you could! Ten people, Cate. Ten people are dead. Graf . . . the company . . .” He shook his head, and then the anger, the frustration, the deception, grew too much for him to bear. Balling his hand into a fist, he pounded on the armrest once, twice, three times, with all his might. “He’s my friend. My best friend. He’s got kids. He doesn’t deserve this.”
“I didn’t know what would happen,” Cate shot back. “None of us did. You can’t blame me. You have no right, no right at all. You don’t know what I’ve been through, why I’m even here.”
“Then tell me. But this time, I’d appreciate the truth, Miss Kirov.”
Cate sat straighter, and when she spoke the apology that had cracked her voice had fled. Anger, disdain, conviction, seeped in, bonding the fissures. “Five years ago, I swore that Konstantin Kirov would never be a part of my life again. I vowed to myself that my father would never touch me again in any way. I moved back to the States. I changed my name. I found a job as a journalist. I built myself a new life from scratch. I became Cate Magnus and I stopped being Konstantin Kirov’s daughter. I tried to pretend my father no longer existed, but it was impossible. For me, he will always exist, his birthright like a disease.” She took a breath. “Did you know I skated, Jett? That I was an alternate to the Russian Olympic team in 1988 when I was only fifteen? The day I left Moscow, I quit. Did you know that my favorite writer is Chekhov? Or that I adore Tchaikovsky? That I cry every time I hear the Violin Concerto in D Minor? Since coming back to the States, I haven’t read a page of Chekhov or listened to a single piece of Tchaikovsky. I can’t, because he gave me those things. He gave me his love of literature, of art, of music, and I will have nothing to do with him. Nothing! It’s like having dirt all over your body that you can’t get off. No matter how much I wash, how hard I scrub, I can’t clean his blood out of my veins or his name from my soul. Inside, I will always be Katya Kirov. And I will always hate being her. At least on the outside I can be someone I like. Someone other people might like, too.”
“You could have told me. I would have understood.”
“I don’t want you to understand! That’s the whole point.” Cate squirmed in her seat, and he could sense the frustration that was consuming her. “For me, he does not exist. Or do you think I should have given up everything I’d built, all I had become, to help you avoid a bad business deal?” She stopped, staring hard into his eyes. “Besides, Jett, I did tell you. You just weren’t listening.”
“I didn’t listen? To what?” And then it hit him. He exhaled grimly, stunned. “You said no because he was your father.”
Cate nodded. “When I saw that no matter what I said you wouldn’t back away from the deal, I had no choice. If we stayed together, I knew it was inevitable you’d find out the truth, my secret history. I couldn’t allow that. No matter how happy we might have been together”—she grabbed Jett’s hands and squeezed them lovingly—“I would have been terrified of that day. I can see now that you would have understood . . . that it’s me who’s the problem . . . but I don’t care. Even now, I despise you seeing me as his daughter. I hate you knowing. I’m not like him, Jett. Not at all.”
“Of course you’re not,” said Gavallan after a moment.
But he was unable to bring himself to sit next to her.
So, is Cate your real name?” he asked. The door to the lavatory was open and he could see Boris wiping a washcloth across Tatiana’s face. “I mean, if your last name’s Kirov, maybe the rest is different, too.”
“Actually, it’s Ekaterina Konstantinovna Elisabeth. My mother was a quarter English. Her grandmother married an English soldier who’d come to fight alongside the Whites in 1920.”
“Where’d you come up with Magnus?” But even as he asked, the answer came to him. “Oh, I get it. ‘Magnus’ as in great . . . as in ‘Catherine the Great.’ Clever.”
A modest shrug. “I had to come up with something.”
All you had to do was look and you’d have known, Gavallan scolded himself. The high cheekbones, the Slavic eyes. It was all in front of you the whole time. He remembered how their conversations had always turned awkward when he’d made even the slightest mention of her father, the moderately successful international trader. Never a picture. Never a word.
“And what you said about Kirov—er . . . your father—it’s true?”
“You mean about killing Alexei? Yes. It’s true. Pretty awful, huh?”
“It’s beyond that.”
“All in a day’s work for Mr. Kirov,” she said, her jaw riding high, eyes to the fore, the soldier bearing up under her ungodly burden. He could tell she was fighting to keep it together, doing whatever jig or two-step she danced to prevent all those jagged edges rustling around inside her from ripping her to bits.
“What hurt most was the betrayal,” she we
nt on, the hurt ripe in her voice eight years later. “Learning that your father wasn’t the man he’d built himself up to be. He meant everything to me. Mommy was dead. I had no brothers or sisters. He was the world.”
“I can imagine.”
“Did you know that originally he was a curator at the Hermitage? Icons were his specialty. He was one of the world’s leading authorities on religious subjects. When the winters grew cold and the heating in our apartment building gave out, we’d spend whole weekends inside the museum just to keep warm. He would take me through the workshops below the palace and show me how the paintings were renovated—so much paint, so much albumen, so much shellac. You should have heard him preach. ‘Art was honest. Art was untainted. Art was the truth. Everything we could be, if only we tried.’ This was in ‘85 or ‘86. ‘Perestroika’ was the word of the day. Glasnost was in full bloom. Suddenly, it was okay to admit how worm-eaten the regime was. Art was his way of proving that even in a lousy world, light still shines. Or at least that’s what he had me believe. All the while he was smuggling icons from the museum’s stock out of the country, building up a fortune on the side.”
“What about Choate? What about growing up in Connecticut?”
“Don’t worry, Jett, I’m not a total phony. I’m still a Choatie. My father had me thinking that one of his rich American friends was paying my tuition. When he was arrested and the checks suddenly stopped coming, I was able to convince the headmaster to let me finish up my classes and graduate. One semester without tuition, he could let slide. He couldn’t kick out the valedictorian, could he?”
“I guess not,” said Gavallan.
“Anyway, soon Kirov was back in business. No more skulking through dark alleys. Now he could conduct his affairs in the open. The K Bank, he called it. Finally, he was the businessman he’d always aspired to be. Everything aboveboard. On the straight and narrow. I forgave him. Worse, I believed in him again. ‘Katya, we are making Russia great again!’ he would say. ‘Come join me. Work at my side.’ You know how persuasive he can be.”
Gavallan nodded. Yes, he knew. He had believed Kirov too. Every word.
“I took a plane to Moscow the same day I finished my exams at Wharton,” she continued. “I couldn’t wait to get to work. To help make Russia great again. To rebuild my country. The Rodina, we call it. The motherland. And then . . .”
Behind them the lavatory opened, and Cate clipped her words. The sound of running water mixed with weary sobs drifted into the cabin. Checking over his shoulder, he saw Boris’s muscled shoulders easing into the gangway. Cate tapped his knee, and he said, “What?”
When he turned back, he saw that she’d opened her purse and was handing him her pink compact. “What should I do with these?” she asked, a thumb flicking her makeup kit open. Tucked inside were the minidiscs Pillonel had given them from Silber, Goldi, and Grimm.
“Jesus, you still have those?”
Cate nodded eagerly, her eyes darting over his shoulder. “Take them. Quickly.”
Gavallan recalled the painstakingly correct and intimate strip search to which he’d been subjected in Geneva. He’d assumed Cate, as a fellow prisoner, had suffered like treatment. “No. They’re better with you,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “If anything happens, get them to Dodson.”
“But—”
“Cate. Keep them. Use them if you get a chance.” He held her eyes, signaling he had no illusions about what awaited him when they landed.
Rising, he headed aft, loitering in the cramped gangway long enough to allow her to conceal the financial records that were their only proof against Konstantin Kirov and the key to the salvation of Black Jet Securities.
49
What do you mean he’s not in your booking facility?” Howell Dodson demanded, the phone to his ear. He was very angry. His cheeks had points of red in them, and he jabbed at his distant interlocutor with the arm of his bifocals. “You only got him yesterday. Would you be so kind as to tell me what goes on in the Swiss penal system between Saturday night and Sunday afternoon?”
“He was released on order from the government,” responded the unnamed party who had fielded Dodson’s call. “I am sorry.”
“Released? To whom? When? I’m the government who wants him. Do you mean to tell me some other country has issued a warrant for Gavallan’s arrest?”
“Non, non. You misunderstand,” the polite French-accented voice chirped. “Our government ordered his release. The Swiss government, Monsieur Dodson.”
Dodson chewed on his eyeglasses, fighting a rearguard action against fury, guilt, and incredulity. Gavallan was gone? It couldn’t be. Lord help him, it just couldn’t be. He looked toward the matching strollers parked in a corner of his office. The boys were having their morning nap, bless their souls, while their mother attended a Baptist service in Georgetown. Outside, a cloudy sky promised rain. At nine-thirty on a Sunday morning, the streets of the nation’s capital were asleep.
“Who signed for his release?” Dodson asked, in a calmer voice to avoid disturbing his two dozing generals.
“Un instant, je vous en prie. One moment.”
Waiting, Dodson walked across the room and gazed down at Jefferson and Davis bundled up in their powder blue blankets. It was hard not to lean over and give each a kiss on the cheek. Gone barely two days and he had missed them like the dickens.
Learning that Gavallan had been detained and incarcerated by the Swiss gendarmes, Dodson had returned to Washington the night before. It had turned out Gavallan was their man after all. He owned a gun similar to that used in the Cornerstone shooting. The gun was missing—ergo, he had taken it with him. He’d received training as an elite commando. And of course, he had every reason to want Luca dead. Though as yet circumstantial, the evidence was overwhelming.
In Geneva, the slippery voice returned to the phone. “A lawyer named Merlotti signed for Mr. Gavallan.”
“And he’s with the government?” Dodson asked.
“Non, non. You misunderstand. He’s a private citizen, of course. A prominent attorney, actually.”
“But you said Mr. Gavallan was released to the government.”
“Non, non. You misunderstand,” the man said again in his singsong voice. “I say that the government permitted Mr. Gavallan to be released to Mr. Merlotti.”
“And for whom does Mr. Merlotti work?”
“That I do not know.”
Of course not, Dodson grumbled inwardly. No doubt it would constitute a violation of your canons of secrecy, confidentiality, and inbred chicanery. “I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t get your name yet?”
“LeClerc. Georges LeClerc.”
“Well, Mr. LeClerc,” Dodson said, “if I cannot speak with Mr. Gavallan, would you be so kind as to connect me with your own Detective Sergeant Panetti?”
“That is not possible. Sergeant Panetti is on holiday.”
“Will he be back tomorrow?”
“Non, non. You misunderstand. He is on summer holiday. He will return in three weeks.”
If Howell Dodson “misunderstood” one more time, he vowed to himself, he was going to catch the next plane to Geneva and beat LeClerc over the head with the phone until he understood that the FBI meant business. Then the words sunk in.
“Three weeks!” Dodson shouted, losing his cool, then checking his voice and darting a glance at the twins. Jefferson stirred and began to cry. “You’ve got to be—”
The light went on in his head, and he stopped arguing. It was a put-up job. LeClerc was running interference for some very powerful, very nasty shit who’d pulled some strings high up in the Swiss government to have Jett Gavallan released. Some VVIP who did not want anyone knowing his identity.
“And that’s it?” Dodson picked up the wailing infant and held him to his shoulder. Patting his boy on the back, bouncing lightly as he walked the room, he wondered if this officious Swiss prick actually expected the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, the goddamned finest l
aw enforcement outfit on Earth, to give up searching for a fugitive wanted for capital murder as easy as that. The mere suggestion infuriated him.
“I’m afraid we cannot help. Mr. Gavallan is no longer in the country.”
“Isn’t he?” asked Dodson. For once they were getting somewhere. “Has he returned to America?”
“I’m afraid I cannot say where he has gone.”
Of course not. “Just one last thing,” said Dodson, as Davis began to stir in his carriage. “The girl who was with him? Miss Magnus? Where is she?”
“They leave together,” LeClerc replied promptly, eager to be free of his responsibilities to international justice.
“That’s what I thought,” said Dodson. “Au revoir.”
Asshole, he added silently, in a most ungentlemanly tone.
They cannot do that,” declared Roy DiGenovese unequivocally. “If a suspect is detained on the basis of an international warrant, he may be released only to the custody of the government that issued the warrant, and then only if he’s waived his right to fight extradition. It’s a mistake. Has to be. He must have been transferred to a different jail, maybe to a federal prison. There’s one near Bern. It makes sense. He’d be nearer our embassy.”
DiGenovese had rushed back from San Francisco, arriving at six that morning. Still glowing from his triumph, he was dressed in a sports shirt and blazer, his black hair neatly combed. Dutifully, he held young Jefferson in his arms, cradling him back and forth.
“That’s what I aim to find out,” Dodson stated. “I’m as appalled as you are.”
The phone rang and he picked it up. It was the international operator with the private number of a Mr. Silvio Panetti. Jotting down the phone number on his blotter, he thanked the operator, then called Panetti.
The detective answered on the third ring. Dodson introduced himself and asked what in the world was going on with Gavallan.
The First Billion Page 37