Final Target gg-1

by Steven Gore

  “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 naive. 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

  W hen 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 stallion. 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.”

  Gage stabbed a piece of smoked salmon, cut it in two on his
plate, and took a bite. He nodded at Slava in approval, then looked back at Ninchenko. “For what?”

  Ninchenko raised a forefinger. “One example. Suppose the government is preparing to privatize a state-owned factory. How does Gravilov make sure that his bid is accepted? Say the plant is worth a hundred million Ukrainian hryvnia. He pays the government ten million in hryvnia for the plant domestically and a two-million-dollar bribe offshore.”

  “How can he get away with paying a tenth of what it’s worth?”

  “What’s ‘worth’?” Ninchenko spread his hands and shrugged. “Even in Soviet times the government calculated depreciation. Five percent a year for twenty years. So, on paper, a plant can be worth exactly zero, even if it is the largest in the world.”

  Gage did the calculation. “If Gravilov cleared ten million dollars from SatTek,” Gage said, “he can convert that into a hundred million dollars in Ukrainian assets.”

  Ninchenko nodded.

  “So who’s he paying off?”

  “Makarov, Hadeon Alexandervich. The president’s son.”

  “Hadeon. Is that Russian or Ukrainian?”

  “Ukrainian. It means ‘destroyer.’”

  “Destroyer? What kind of man names a baby Destroyer?”

  “Man who plan to make dynasty by crushing everybody,” Slava answered. “But son has bad genes. Hadeon Alexandervich is reckless. No limits.”

  “Do you think he got a cut of SatTek?”

  “At least indirectly,” Ninchenko answered. “It’s a complicated relationship. Basically, Gravilov provides physical protection and intelligence. Hadeon Alexandervich has lots of enemies, and Gravilov keeps track of what they’re doing, especially the political opposition. He also leans on people if Hadeon Alexandervich takes an interest in a factory or a business. Like his father, Hadeon Alexandervich is insatiable. He has to be fed all the time.”

  “The Thais have an expression for corruption,” Gage said. “They call it eating the state.”

  “If not for me,” Slava said, “he eat everything. I elbow him once in a while to keep my seat at table-but there is difference.” Slava thumped the table with his forefinger. “I never take from poor. No one freeze in winter because of me.”

  Slava opened a vodka bottle, poured three shots, then pushed himself to his feet, rattling the glasses and dishes on the table. Gage and Ninchenko also stood.

  “To Hadeon Alexandervich, may he go to hell. Head-first.” Slava paused to let the image complete itself in his mind. “On heels of fucking father.”

  Slava clinked his glass against Gage’s and Ninchenko’s, then tossed the vodka to the back of his throat and swallowed. He then noticed that Gage hadn’t emptied his glass.

  “I not say I send, just he go.”

  Gage downed the vodka, and then the three of them sat down.

  A waiter in a tuxedo shirt and black pants knocked, then entered and removed the appetizers and their plates. He returned a minute later with bowls of red beet borscht, a dollop of sour cream centered in each one.

  As Gage stirred his soup, his mind looped back through the conversation.

  “Matson needs a place to hide his assets where the U.S. can’t reach them,” Gage said. “And Gravilov needs hard currency. It’s a perfect marriage.”

  “But first they need to find something for him to invest in,” Ninchenko said. “In a way that allows Gravilov to take a cut.”

  “That must be on tomorrow’s agenda.”

  “Why not just go to the prosecutor now?” Ninchenko asked. “And tell him what you think Matson is doing over here.”

  “I can’t take the chance. For all I know the U.S. Attorney sent him to meet up with Gravilov. He let him travel to London once before.”

  “They allow informants to do that?”

  “They’ve let them travel to Afghanistan to put heroin deals together and to Colombia to fly cocaine back to the U.S., so sending a financial crook like Matson to Europe isn’t considered much of a risk.”

  “Except to him,” Slava said. “Matson may think he buy, but he not keep. Alla poppa and Gravilov take everything.”

  Slava went silent as Gage tasted the soup.

  “What you think?” Slava asked.

  “I think Matson may end up dead.”

  “Of course.” Slava pointed at Gage’s bowl. “But I mean about soup.”

  “Perfect.”

  “It proves the rule about borscht,” Ninchenko said. “There’s no in-between. It’s either good or bad.”

  Slava smiled. “Not like Ukraine. Everything here is in-between.”

  Gage smiled back. “Maybe you should’ve been a philosopher or a food critic, instead of a…”

  “Gangster?” Slava finished the sentence.

  “I was trying to think of a euphemism.”

  Slava looked uncertainly at Ninchenko.

  “It’s a word that means the same thing,” Ninchenko explained, “but doesn’t sound quite so derogatory.”

  Slava’s puzzlement didn’t fade.

  “Bad. Derogatory sort of means bad.”

  Slava grinned. “Just like gangster.”

  The waiter returned, removed their soup bowls and replaced them with plates bearing wild partridge in juniper sauce, potatoes, and sauerkraut salad with carrots and apples.

  Ninchenko’s cell phone rang. He answered it, but didn’t speak until the waiter left the room.

  “Matson and his lady have retired for the evening,” Ninchenko said, after hanging up. “They ordered room service breakfast for eight o’clock.”

  Gage looked at Slava, then back at Ninchenko. “I wonder if he’ll live long enough to digest it.”

  CHAPTER 63

  At 9 A. M. Gage and Ninchenko entered a battered Volkswagen van in the courtyard of his apartment building. Two boxy Russian-made Lada chase cars, one white and one light blue, were already stationed along Shevchenko Boulevard outside the Lesya Palace Hotel, ready to follow Matson whichever direction he traveled.

  Ninchenko’s cell phone rang like a starter pistol.

  “Matson just got in the car,” Ninchenko reported five seconds later. “Alla isn’t with him. Black Mercedes 430. Four-digit plate, 0087. Government. The police aren’t allowed to stop it. Whoever is inside has immunity.”

  “A get-out-of-jail-free card,” Gage said.

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing.” Ninchenko glanced over at Gage. “Do you have those in the States?”

  “No, it’s a card in a game called Monopoly.”

  “A monopoly I’ve heard of.” Ninchenko grinned. “That’s what we were told the great Soviet struggle was against.”

  “Now you have your own,” Gage said.

  Ninchenko made a call to check the plate while his driver sped from the courtyard onto Pushkinskaya, and then right onto Shevchenko, following 0087 from a block behind. The low clouds that had released a steady flow of mist overnight turned Kiev’s streets into black ice. The van’s defroster struggled against the condensation on the windshield while the wipers swept away light raindrops. The other windows were scummed with dirty water that the driver had splashed on to provide cover for Ninchenko and Gage in the rear seat.

  “We’ll find out who it is in an hour,” Ninchenko said, after disconnecting. “My guess is that it is a representative of the State Property Fund. They handle privatizations of government-owned assets.”

  “You’d think somebody like him would be more discreet. Wouldn’t anyone who saw him with a foreigner like Matson assume that he’ll be getting an offshore kickback for setting up a deal?”

  “Discretion isn’t much of an issue because there are no secrets in Ukraine. Everything gets found out in the end. The president knows everyone’s schemes.”

  “And he doesn’t stop them?”

  Ninchenko signaled their driver to drop back and allow the blue Lada to take over close surveillance. They then followed it onto Oleny Telihy, heading toward the northern part of Kiev.

  “You need to ask
yourself how the president keeps power,” Ninchenko said. “But don’t think like a Westerner. He’s violent. He’s corrupt. He’s universally hated. He was elected through fraud.”

  “He stays in power the way other corrupt leaders do,” Gage said. “Through fear.”

  Ninchenko looked over. “Fear of what?”

  “Illegal arrest, imprisonment, execution. The same things people in dictatorial regimes all over the world are afraid of.”

  “This isn’t everywhere else. This is Ukraine. It is a new kind of political order. Ukrainians are afraid of everything all of the time, so they don’t suffer particular fears. There’s almost nothing they do that isn’t in violation of some law. You want to license a car, pay a bribe. You want to get your child into school, bribe the principal. You want a passing grade, bribe the teacher. You need over sixty separate permits to open a business in Kiev. You think there’s a single business in Kiev that has them all? No. They couldn’t afford all the bribes. Sure, officials occasionally get arrested for corruption. And while those arrests might seem random from the outside looking in, they’re strategic from the inside looking out.”

  Gage shook his head. “That’s no different than any other corrupt government in the world.”

  “It’s fundamentally different-and it’s invisible unless you’ve been here awhile. The president of Ukraine rules not by fear, but by blackmail.”

  Ninchenko let his words sink in as they gazed out at the storefront pharmacies and markets and cafes along the four-lane street. Rising above them were apartments privatized after independence and, in the distance, an office tower under construction. Each an opportunity for graft.

  Gage’s mind marched along behind Ninchenko’s logic, until he reached what seemed to be an impossible conclusion. He looked at Ninchenko. “You mean that the president actually encourages corruption?”

  “Exactly. Because it creates leverage. That’s the real function of State Security and the Intelligence Directorate. Leverage. It’s information gathering for the sake of blackmail.”