by Steven Gore
“And?”
“We’ll need to bring in clean sheets and more money for syringes, IVs, and the rest. He’ll give us a list of the food that will have to be brought in.”
Gage glared at the doctor’s office door. “At what point did he mention Ninchenko’s condition?”
“Only after he said that he’ll take care of paying off the nurses and that he’ll be in his office for the next half hour waiting for the cash.”
Gage shook his head in disgust. “At least he’s got his priorities in order.” He looked back at Alla. “How much extra for a private room?”
“It’s included.”
“Why? Is he having a sale today?”
Alla’s tone was even more sarcastic than Gage’s. “I think it must be what you Americans call an early-bird special.”
Maks arrived, and she passed on the doctor’s instructions.
“We can leave,” she told Gage, as he walked away. “Kolya’s waiting outside. Ninchenko’s men will stand guard.”
“What about Gravilov? Has he found out yet?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. Maks says that he’s still in his apartment.”
As Kolya drove them through the gray-dawn streets toward the Astoria Hotel, Alla wedged herself into the corner of the backseat and rested her head against the window. Gage watched her drift into a confused, chaotic state in which sleep is imperative, but not possible. She shifted her position and her eyes moved under her lids as if watching a replay of the night. He wondered whether she had slept at all during the last few days.
Gage escorted her to the dining room and turned on the radio. He poured her a cup of coffee and inspected her face as she sipped. Her eyes were dark and her cheeks seemed to sag. The adrenaline surge that had carried her through the morning had subsided like an outgoing tide, leaving her vulnerable and exposed.
“I need you to do something,” Gage finally said. “Call Matson. Tell him that you’ve escaped and how grateful you are that he was trying to rescue you.”
Alla blinked away the glaze that clouded her eyes. “And I’m supposed to do that without laughing?”
“It has to be done. I don’t want him wondering whether you sold him out and cut a deal with Gravilov.” Gage thought for a moment. “And tell him that you’ll be hiding out with relatives in the mountains for a few weeks.”
“Then what?”
“That’s up to you. You have money?”
“Stuart set up an account in my name at Barclays in London. There’s about a hundred thousand pounds in it. But now that I know where he got it…”
“You earned it, and more. And I’ll make sure no one ever gives you trouble about it.” He sipped his coffee. “But what will you do after that’s gone?”
“I’m eligible for the Skilled Migrant Program in the UK. I’ll stay if I can find a job.”
“What about Gravilov?”
She paused, then shrugged. “That’s a bridge I’m not sure how I’ll cross.”
“How about coming to the States for a while?”
She shook her head. “I can’t get a visa.”
“What if I could get you in?”
She forced a smile. “You have some magical powers you’ve been hiding from me?”
“I can get you what’s called an S visa. It’s for witnesses who may be willing to testify about a criminal organization.”
Her smile died. “I know you want to help your friend, but there’s no way I can do that. Gravilov and his people would never forget. Never. They’d hunt me down. Even your Witness Protection Program wouldn’t be safe. There’s no escape.”
Gage reached over and squeezed her hand. “I know. The key word is ‘may.’ You’ll just change your mind once you get to the States.”
“Would I get in trouble? I mean, here if you-”
“No. The head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department will feel pretty bad he didn’t help me out a few weeks ago, so he’ll let me handle this the way I want to.”
Alla looked away and shook her head slowly. Gage knew she was imagining the carnage at the dacha. She finally looked back. “How long would it take?”
Gage walked Alla to his room, where he let her shower and nap in his bed. He then sent an e-mail to Washington, D.C., constructed to extort a visa, but without disclosing too much of what he knew.
When he leaned back in his desk chair, he felt for the first time the bite of the slashes and stitches in his back. He realized that he had another e-mail to send. He and Faith trusted each other too much for him to conceal from her that he’d been injured. He wrote her what he always did when his middle-aged body got battered around: “I’ll need a little chicken soup.”
CHAPTER 74
G age and Alla returned to the hospital in early afternoon. Ninchenko was in a third floor, private, two-room suite, the best in the hospital, but looking to Gage like a skid-row hotel room. He was propped up in bed and being fed clear broth as they entered. The nurse wiped Ninchenko’s chin, then stepped back. Ninchenko’s guard escorted her from the room.
“How do you feel, amigo?” Gage asked, leaning close. Alla stood next to him. Both looking down at the pale, hollow-eyed face.
Ninchenko worked up a little smile. “Like an elephant is standing on my chest,” he answered in a hoarse whisper, his throat still raw from the anesthetic used during surgery.
“What happened?”
“He came running into the kitchen just as I kicked the door.” Ninchenko’s voice strengthened. “He got off three shots before I caught my balance. He knew he hit me so he stopped firing.”
“Big mistake.”
“He picked the wrong line of work. He didn’t finish me off.”
Gage thought back on the dead man curled up in the kitchen. The man’s heart had stopped before Ninchenko fired his last shot.
Ninchenko licked his lips. Alla poured water from a pitcher into a clear plastic glass and brought it to his lips. He took two sips, then shook his head.
“What about you?” Ninchenko asked.
“Let’s just say Razor lived by the sword.”
Ninchenko offered up another weak smile. “Aristotle was right.”
Alla’s mouth gaped open at Ninchenko. “What? Aristotle? You’re lying in a hospital with two fucking bullet holes and you’re talking Greek philosophy?”
“What he means is that things tend toward their natural end,” Gage said.
Alla shook her head. “It’s still weird.” She set down the glass and looked fondly at Ninchenko. “I thought you were just some ex-State Security thug out to make a buck. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m glad your natural end wasn’t to die last night saving me. I’ll never forget what you did.” She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.
“We were both wrong,” Ninchenko answered. “I hope you’ll come back one day.”
Alla shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know.”
Three hours into their drive back to Kiev, Gage heard the name Gravilov spoken on the car radio. He poked at Alla, waking her up.
“What are they saying?”
Alla rubbed her eyes. The announcer spoke the name again. She listened for a minute, then smiled.
“It sounds like Ninchenko’s people tricked the government into believing that nationalist terrorists attacked Gravilov’s mansion. There was a note stuck to the front door that the police think was left by the paramilitary arm of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, demanding that all Russians leave Ukraine, starting with him.”
Alla listened for another few moments, then laughed. “They’re demanding a ransom for my return. Apparently I’m Gravilov’s girlfriend.”
She looked hard at the radio, then gasped. “The police found Razor in the hyena pen, chewed into pieces.”
Gage now understood what Maks had been doing while Yasha helped Ninchenko to the car.
“What about the woman upstairs?” Gage asked.
“The
y claim she was raped.”
“That couldn’t be.”
“But it’s the kind of thing the government wants people to think OUN terrorists would do.” Alla pointed ahead toward Kiev. “That way they’ll believe that the president is all that stands between Ukraine and chaos if Bread and Freedom succeeds.”
“Will Gravilov really believe that’s what happened?”
“Maybe for a few days…nobody believes anything in Ukraine for longer than that.”
CHAPTER 75
M r. Green? This is Mr. Black.”
Gage swung his legs down from his bed at the Carlton Tower in London as he answered his cell phone, wincing from the pain from the twisting stitches in his back.
“Hey, Professor. What’s up?”
“Merry Christmas.”
Gage blinked. The words restarted the clock that seemed to have stopped on the day he flew into Kiev. “Likewise.”
“Your friend Mr. Matson called. Very upset. Whimpering like a puppy.”
“I can only imagine.”
“His banker told him the KTMG Limited account has been frozen and he can’t find out whether the Swiss did it or the…what do you call people in Nauru? Nauruites? Nauruans? Nauruians?”
“I don’t know. It’s never come up before.”
“Okay, Nauruians…or even why it was frozen.”
“A shame.”
“He wants to talk to you.”
“Tell him I’m out of the country but I’ll call him in a couple of days.”
“Anything else?”
Gage paused, imagining Matson flailing around as he drifted out to sea.
“I don’t want him doing something stupid. Tell him my client wants to close the deal on the technology right away, and in cash, just like we first agreed.”
“Okay. But one more thing, just for my edification. How’d his money get frozen?”
“It isn’t.”
“It isn’t?”
“It isn’t.” Gage looked at his watch, smiling to himself, enjoying the professor’s puzzlement. “Got to go. I’ll call you when I get back to the States.”
Gage knocked on the door to Alla’s adjoining room.
“Time to get up and get your hand stamped.”
Gage and Alla arrived just on time for their meeting with the U.S. consul general in London. Gage had learned from his friend in the Justice Department that John Clyde was a careerist near the end of his service who’d topped out just one step short of his goal of becoming an ambassador. The story was that he’d even have taken a posting in Sudan just to wear the title.
An aging Ivy Leaguer with indoor skin and puffy jowls, Clyde met them at the visa section, then escorted them to his office. He sat down behind a large desk framed by U.S. and State Department flags and directed them to sit across from him.
“You must have some kind of pull in Washington,” Clyde said, opening a folder and withdrawing Alla’s Panamanian passport. “I received a call from the head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department.” He thumbed through the passport until he found the pasted-in visa. “And the ambassador instructed me not to notify the legal attache or the FBI that I issued this.”
Clyde made a show of examining the page. “S visas are quite rare, you know,” he said, inviting an explanation from Gage.
“This is a special occasion,” Gage said, his voice flat.
“Does it concern London?”
“Does it make a difference?”
Clyde fixed on Gage’s impenetrable face for a moment, then shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t.”
Alla leaned forward in anticipation of receiving the passport, but Clyde remained immobile. She sat back, reddening, as if she had tried to shake his hand and he’d refused.
Clyde flipped to the identification and photo page and grinned. “Somehow the name Alla Petrovna Tarasova doesn’t sound Panamanian.”
“Look,” Gage said. “If you’ve got a problem, spill it. If not, let us have the passport.”
“I don’t have a problem, it’s just unusual.” Clyde closed the passport, tapped its edge against his blotter, then looked over at Alla. “I need to advise you of certain conditions: You must arrive at a U.S. port of entry within ten days. You may stay in the U.S. for no longer than forty-five days. If you fail to leave within that period, you’ll be subject to arrest.”
He waited until Alla nodded her understanding, then retrieved a sealed envelope from the folder. “You will present this letter to the immigration and customs agent at passport control at your point of entry.” Clyde handed Alla the envelope, then retrieved a second one, unsealed. “This is your copy of the same letter.”
Clyde slid the second envelope into the passport, then stood and passed it to her. He stepped around his desk and walked toward the office door, as if expecting Gage and Alla to follow like imprinted ducklings. Alla stuck her tongue out at his back, then smiled at Gage as she rose to her feet. She glanced toward Clyde, then snagged a State Department paperweight off his desk and slipped it into her coat pocket.
They followed Clyde back to the visa section, where he opened the door and waved them through to the lobby without another word. As the door swung closed, Alla stopped to place the letters and passport into her purse.
Gage overheard a well-dressed, elderly American woman complain to the clerk behind the bulletproof glass that she’d already waited fifteen minutes past her scheduled appointment time with Clyde. Gage reached into Alla’s pocket and pulled out the paperweight, then walked up to the woman.
“The consul general asked me to give this to you to apologize for the wait.” Gage handed it to her. “Be sure to mention it to him.”
Alla covered her mouth as they left the consulate, stifling her laugh until they reached the sidewalk.
“What was wrong with that man?” Alla said, giggling, her eyes sparkling as she looked up at him.
Gage then noticed the loveliness that other men saw in her, then felt a sadness born of the fear that she’d never grow old with the kind of man she deserved because she’d always be looking past him toward the Matsons of the world.
“Maybe Clyde was offended that we went around him to Washington,” Gage said, holding out his hand to hail a cab, “or maybe it’s that he knows something.”
Gage made flight reservations for the following afternoon as the taxi drove them toward Mickey’s house in the suburbs. They stopped in long enough for Gage to assure himself that Mickey was recovering and so that Mickey could gloat about having been right about Alla from the beginning-though for the wrong reasons-and could get a closer look at the woman who’d made his old heart flutter.
From there, it was on to Matson’s flat in Kensington.
“Let’s make this quick,” Gage said as they entered the lobby.
The diminutive doorman greeted Alla by name. “I hope you had a wonderful trip,” he said, “this is the longest you’ve been gone.”
“Actually, I cut the trip a little short.”
“A shame. Mr. Matson seemed quite worried when he left a few days ago. I hope everything has returned to normal.”
“Yes, it has. Thank you.” She glanced toward the street. “Has anyone come by for me in the last few days?”
“A Russian gentleman. He said he was a friend who happened to be in London. He didn’t leave his name.”
“Did he ask for Mr. Matson or just for me?”
“Just you.”
“What did he look like?” Gage asked.
The doorman looked at Gage, then back at Alla.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“A very large man. I do say, a most unfriendly-looking friend.”
“Has he come back?”
“No. We’ve looked in on your flat every day just to make sure he didn’t decide to check for himself.”
“If he inquires again, tell him I haven’t returned to London and you don’t know when I’m expected back.”
Gage withdrew a couple of ten-pound notes from his wall
et and handed them to the doorman, who slipped them into his pants pocket.
The elevator deposited Alla and Gage on the eighth floor, across the hall from the penthouse door. After Alla unlocked it, Gage stepped into the flat, where he found himself time-warped back to an early nineteenth-century London sitting room.
“Was this Matson’s idea?”
She nodded. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”
Alla set her purse on a Regency mahogany writing table, then turned back toward Gage, who was standing just inside the threshold. She followed Gage’s eyes, which were focused on a highball glass resting on a pedestal secretaire. He walked over and picked it up, revealing a white water ring on the forty-thousand-dollar piece of furniture.
“He’s not coming back,” Gage said.
Alla walked across the room and through an open door. She returned moments later. “His clothes are gone.”
They searched the apartment, collecting phone records, airline ticket stubs, and notes on scraps of paper. Gage stuffed them into a paper bag while Alla packed.
“Is there anything else you want to take?” Gage asked, as Alla carried a battered brown suitcase toward the door. “I imagine this place will be seized by the UK government. You may never get back in again.”
“Nothing here ever really belonged to me. I’m just taking what I came with.” She sighed as her eyes swept the apartment. “Sometimes life is completely absurd.”
They rode in silence back to the hotel.
“I think I need to be alone for a while,” Alla said, as they walked down the carpeted hallway toward their rooms.
“That’s fine. Maybe we’ll meet for dinner this evening.”
Alla slipped her key card into the lock and pushed open the door. She paused, then turned toward Gage and looked up at him with searching eyes.
“Is there something wrong with me?” she asked.
Gage knew the answer, but responded with a question. She needed to say it for herself to make it real. “What do you mean?”
“My husband. Stuart. They were the same greedy, conscienceless men and I didn’t see it.” She looked down, frowning. “That’s not true. I refused to see it. Stuart started to emerge from the clouds of my juvenile imagination and I looked away. I should’ve gotten out of this when he came back here after SatTek went public.”