Avenue of Thieves

by Sean Black

  They headed for the quietest part of the park, which was the Conservatory Garden. Lock used to come here when he lived in New York with his fiancée Carrie Delaney and they needed a break from everything but didn’t have time for a weekend escape. He selected a spot that gave him the best view of people coming and going. He would have preferred to be back in the townhouse, with the two cops posted outside the front door, but Dimitri obviously didn’t trust that he wouldn’t be overheard there.

  “I’ll organize a fresh anti-surveillance sweep of the house for tomorrow,” said Lock, “in case you need to talk. Being out here is risky.”

  “I’m not sure that’ll help,” said Dimitri. “They have someone on the inside.”

  “Who?” asked Lock. He was still wondering what could have been thrown up by what had seemed a fairly innocuous background check.

  “Madeline.”

  Lock was taken aback. Not completely shocked. Very little shocked him when it came to people who could be compromised or bought. And if he’d chosen someone to target he couldn’t think of a better person than the one closest to Dimitri, outside his immediate family. “How do you know? They didn’t catch any unusual payments.” Casting his mind back to Madeline’s file he couldn’t think of anything that had struck him as out of the ordinary.

  “There was a photograph, at her yoga class. She was with someone, a woman called Ninel Tarasov.”

  “Obviously you know her.”

  “Oh, I know her, and she knows me, probably better than anyone.”

  “Old flame?” asked Lock.

  A rueful smile crossed Dimitri’s face. “Business partner, of a kind anyway. It’s hard for Americans to understand what life was like when I was born. Everything you did, everything you said could get you or your parents or the people you loved the most killed. Then one day things changed. Suddenly there was all this freedom.”

  He paused, seemingly gathering his thoughts.

  “Have you ever seen an animal that’s lived its entire life in a cage when someone leaves the door open? They don’t rush out. Not straight anyway. They’re scared. The cage is all they know. It’s safety. It takes time for them to gather their courage. That’s what it was like back then. I was one of the first to step out of the cage, me and the others they called oligarchs.”

  “So what’s this got to do with Ninel Tarasov?”

  “Well,” Dimitri smiled, “what I discovered when I stepped out of the cage was that there were people who’d been living outside all those years we were inside. Those were the vory, the thieves in law. They didn’t take too kindly to people like me, and then Ninel came along. It was the first time I’d met someone who understood my world, and their world, and her world, and could navigate all of them.”

  “Her world being?”

  “Her world being the KGB, then the FSB. She was the person who smoothed the way for me. More than smoothed, made the impossible possible. At first she kept me and my businesses safe from the vultures. The criminals, the others like her, the politicians. Believe me, the politicians were the most dangerous of them all. Then she began to introduce me to people in Moscow.”

  “I take it this wasn’t something she did out of the goodness of her heart,” said Lock.

  “No, it wasn’t, but she was worth every ruble I paid her.”

  “Until?” asked Lock.

  “When Putin came in, things changed. It wasn’t even the money the oligarchs had. I don’t think he cared about that as much as everyone believed. It was the power it brought. He wanted to put us in our place. Ninel warned me. She risked her life doing it. We were supposed to leave Russia together. But she never made it. I got out and she was left behind to face the consequences.”

  He stared at Lock. “I’d always assumed she was dead. The last I’d heard of her she had been charged and convicted, sent to prison. But now she’s here. In New York.”

  “You think she’s freelance? Or working for the government?” Lock had his own hunch, but he wanted Dimitri’s take. He didn’t see how a private individual could possibly engineer the mayhem that had consumed Dimitri’s life without the help of a state.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Look, I know you’re shaken up, but at least now you know who you’re up against.”

  “What do we do about Madeline?” Dimitri asked him.

  It was a good question with no obvious answer. Not that Lock could see anyway.

  “For now, I’d say nothing. Have you mentioned any of this to anyone else?” Lock asked.

  “No, just you.”

  “Let’s keep it that way for now. I want to bring Ty up to speed, if that’s okay with you?”

  Dimitri nodded.

  Lock exhaled loudly. “Is there any way you can figure out what Ninel’s deal is without tipping her off that you know?”

  “Perhaps, but it’s risky. I can make some general inquiries without mentioning her name.”

  “You do that, and let’s keep being careful here.”

  They began to walk back in the direction of where the car would pick them up.

  “When you got out and left her behind, how bad was it?” asked Lock.

  “As bad as it could get.”

  “But she survived?” said Lock.

  “More than survived by the look of it.”

  51

  Lock angled his phone so that Ty could see the picture of the woman they now knew to be Ninel Tarasov sitting at the table with Madeline Marshowsky.

  “And you’re telling me they weren’t, you know, doing the dirty?”

  “Nope. Purely business. Although I suspect Madeline was a different story.”

  “That would explain why she’s helping without any money changing hands,” said Ty.

  “Exactly,” said Lock. “The question now is what we do about it. I mean, she may have breached her employment contract or an NDA, but I’m not sure Madeline sharing information on Dimitri is a criminal matter.”

  “Depends on the information,” said Ty.

  “True.”

  “So what does he want to do with Madeline?”

  “I told him to take his time deciding. The way I see it she’s the best asset we have right now.”

  “All this cloak-and-dagger shit makes me nervous,” said Ty. “Why doesn’t he just go to the cops or the FBI?”

  “And say what exactly? There’s no evidence to tie Ninel to anything that’s happened. If she’s FSB, I’d imagine she’s been pretty careful about covering her tracks.”

  “What about putting those guys you used to get this on her tail?” said Ty, tapping at her face on the picture.

  “Good idea,” said Lock. “But risky. Right now our biggest edge, maybe our only edge, is that we know about her and she has no idea.”

  “See, that’s why I hate all this cloak-and-dagger BS, Ryan. Can’t we just track her down? Tell her to back off.”

  “The direct approach?” said Lock.

  “Yeah, the direct approach.”

  “And what happens when she tells us to get lost? Here’s the thing that Dimitri’s scared of. This woman was basically screwed when he left her back on that runway. She was in it up to her neck, and yet, somehow, she not only survived, she’s in a position where she’s looking for revenge. That’s not someone you want to mess with. Not lightly anyway.”

  “Well, we can’t just sit here and wait for her to throw the next load of crazy shit at us. We have a crew that’s bare bones as it is,” said Ty.

  “Maybe that’s it.”

  “What is?”

  “We give her an opportunity that she can’t pass up.”

  “Yeah, but that’s the problem, isn’t it?” said Ty. “She doesn’t want to straight up kill him. If she did, she’d have done it back on that bridge. There was nothing stopping her. They could have done to Dimitri’s car what they did to the others. Hell, when those guys broke into the house, they could have smoked him in his bed.”

  Ty had a point. It wasn’t going to be as si
mple as offering her a gilt-edged opportunity to take her revenge. They would have to prime the pumps first. If Dimitri was right, and she wanted him ruined, they had to find a way to remove that option first, make it so that killing him was the only avenue left open to her.

  It was a problem that came in two parts. The second, offering Ninel an opportunity to murder Dimitri Semenov could be engineered. Lock was confident of it. The first, giving her the motivation to do it was trickier. But there had to be a way.

  Ty snapped his questions. “I just remembered something.”

  “What?” asked Lock.

  “Do we have any tech guys we can trust? You know, electronic surveillance, bugs, keystroke recorders, phones, that sort of shit.”

  “Yeah,” said Lock. “We have the guys McLennan was using for the house and Dimitri’s office. They’re solid. What’s the problem?”

  “Did you notice Madeline’s rocking a brand new iPhone? Like a few days ago. It’s the very latest model. I only know because I was thinking about getting one. When I asked her about it she got kinda cagey. It seemed weird to me at the time, but I didn’t think too much about it.”

  “Can’t say I noticed,” said Lock. “But if she’s an asset, then a dime to a dollar, they have something installed on it.”

  52

  Lock knocked on the office door, Ty behind him. Madeline opened it. Dimitri was at his desk.

  “Car’s outside, Mr. Semenov.”

  “The car?” said Dimitri, puzzled.

  “Your run? You said you wanted to go running in the park this morning.”

  “Oh, yeah, of course,” said Dimitri, catching on.

  “I have your gear. You can change in the car,” said Lock.

  “Great,” said Dimitri, hustling past Madeline as Ty appeared, escorting a slim, neatly dressed Asian man who was carrying a gray metal flight case. Lock followed Dimitri out, all business.

  “Lance here just needs to do a quick sweep of the office,” Ty said to Madeline, who was busy sorting through some papers.

  “Oh, of course,” said Madeline. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  Ty put out his hand. “We’re checking everyone’s phones too. Just a standard check. We won’t be looking at anything personal. We just want to make sure that no one’s downloaded any trojans, stuff like that.”

  “Of course,” said Madeline. “No problem. Feel free to look at whatever you need to.”

  She crossed to where her bag was sitting, opened it and faked surprise.

  “This is so embarrassing.”

  “What?” said Ty.

  “I must have left it in my apartment this morning. No wonder I haven’t been getting any calls. Should I go get it?” she asked, thumbing toward the door.

  Ty looked at the tech guy.

  “It’s no biggie. Whenever.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Ty.

  “Okay,” said Madeline. “I was going to get some tea. Either of you want anything from the kitchen?”

  “I’m good. You?”

  The tech guy shook his head, laying the flight case down and clicking open the fasteners.

  Madeline walked out. They gave it a few seconds before trading a look.

  “There’s your answer,” the tech guy said to Ty, removing a small black RF scanner from the gray foam inside the case.

  Light rain spattered off a park bench as Dimitri Semenov bent down to tie the laces of his sneakers. Lock stood with his back to him, scoping out the immediate area for any sign of a threat.

  “Are you crazy?” said Dimitri.

  “Why is it crazy?”

  “Because I’d be giving those assholes exactly what they want,” said Dimitri.

  “Yes, but you could structure it how you like. Keep the houses, the cars, some of the toys. Place the rest in trust for the family, and establish a charitable foundation for the rest. Make sure a good proportion of it is targeted at projects and charities in Russia. See how they try to spin that in the press back home when they’re painting you as an enemy of the state.”

  Dimitri looked up, exasperated, and still apparently out of breath from a two-hundred-yard jog. “Why can’t you just find her and kill her?”

  Lock’s focus jumped to a nearby stand of trees. A couple of kids appeared, a boy chasing after a girl who wasn’t trying that hard to get away. Lock switched his attention back to his principal. “Maybe because the idea of spending the rest of my life in prison isn’t all that appealing. And, you know, the rule of law, which was the reason you moved to this great nation.”

  “So what?” said Dimitri. “I have to just sit here like a fool while she destroys my life?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Okay, so if I give all my money away, that will save me.”

  “I didn’t say all your money, and I’m assuming there would be a gap between you announcing that kind of move and it happening.”

  Dimitri eyed him with a little more interest.

  “I’m assuming that with a hedge fund it’s not a matter of rolling down to the local savings and loan, taking it all out in bags and closing the account,” said Lock.

  “So I could announce it, and then not do it?”

  “Not my area, but that might not exactly endear you to people, especially these days. All I’m saying is, structure it how you like, but this might be a way of outflanking them. If they’re genuine and they’re making it about the money they believe you took out of the country unlawfully, well, this removes some of that pressure, doesn’t it?”

  “You honestly think that will stop her?”

  “Let me ask you something, Dimitri.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you honestly think any government is going sit back and allow this kind of mayhem to unfold on foreign shores unless there’s something directly in it for them? No matter how smart this woman is, she’ll have had to sell this to someone near the top. Repatriating billions, that’s a good reason to let someone have their head. Personal revenge, maybe not so much.”

  He could see Dimitri chewing it over. He didn’t respond. Seconds rolled by, extending into an uncomfortable silence.

  “Let me think about it.”

  53

  One week later

  Lock had to hand it to Dimitri Semenov. When he committed to a course of action, the Russian didn’t half-ass it. He went all in, balls to the wall.

  The Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue was a cavernous space. It hosted many of bluestocking Manhattan’s most decadent charity balls. But according to the glossy hundred-page press packs sitting on the five hundred red velvet seats this was to be the most charitable event of all: a one-off, one-time giveaway.

  Dimitri’s hedge-fund billions had drawn the financial press corps, from a Bloomberg TV crew to the Wall Street Journal and London’s Financial Times. The more scandalous aspects of his private life, especially the murder of Ruta, had drawn media from the other end of the spectrum including the New York Post all the way to supermarket tabloids.

  There was also a healthy turnout from the international media, mostly European, but also Russian. Lock had ensured that anyone sporting Russian or Eastern European media credentials had undergone additional security screening, although he assumed any damage they’d do would be by way of editorial spin.

  For the past week, Madeline Marshowsky had been on vacation. Playing the role of concerned employer, Dimitri had insisted she have some time to herself. He didn’t want her burning out.

  Lock had no idea if she’d bought the reasoning. He doubted it. But it would have served to keep her handlers, Ninel included, on their toes. They’d know something was up.

  All attempts to track, or gather intelligence on, Ninel Tarasov had run into a series of dead ends. As far as they could tell there was no record of her working at the Russian Embassy or any of its consular offices. Apart from the snatched photographs of her with Madeline, she didn’t appear to exist. She hadn’t shown up to that week�
�s hot yoga class. Madeline had attended alone.

  Maybe Ninel knew they were on to her. Maybe she didn’t.

  They had, however, managed to gather, via Dimitri’s contacts back in Russia, who included any number of political dissidents, some intelligence on Ninel’s fate.

  Following her detention at the airport, she had been prosecuted and imprisoned. For five long years she had felt the full force of the state, shuttled from one bleak jail to another. From October through March she was in Siberia. Then from April through September she was moved back to Moscow where she would receive regular visits from her former colleagues.

  Somehow, though, she had used these visits, slowly but surely, to improve her position. Whatever she had said must have worked because early in the sixth year of her sentence she was suddenly and inexplicably released by way of a pardon granted at the highest level of government. Not only was she released, she resumed her duties in the FSB, assisting, in a covert role, an anti-corruption task force. The poacher was now the gamekeeper.

  Then, two years before she had popped up in New York to direct the operation against Dimitri, she had, the rumors went, disappeared off the radar completely. No one knew where she was, or what she’d been doing.

  Lock did a final check of the dais where Dimitri was due to speak. He and McLennan were down front, earpieced up and scanning the reporters. Lock walked back into the wings to find Dimitri pacing back and forth with a team of PR advisers.

  “You ready?” Lock asked him.

  Dimitri steered him off to one side. “Tell me something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Am I really crazy?”

  “Crazy like a fox, maybe,” said Lock.

  That drew a smile. “I like that. That’s good.”

  “Maybe don’t use it in your speech, though,” said Lock.

  The question of Dimitri’s sanity came into sharp relief as he strode manically back and forth across the stage. About two minutes into his opening remarks he had abandoned the dais, as well as the carefully crafted announcement put together by his highly paid team of PR and media consultants, for an off-the-cuff, higher-energy and apparently improvised version.