by Steven Gore
“But is Matson predictable? Will he follow your plan?”
“Amateurs are never predictable if left to their own devices. But they can be guided.” Gage reached for his cell phone. “Let me find out how well I’m doing.”
“How are you feeling?” Gage asked Burch when he answered his home phone in San Francisco.
“Stronger every day. Where are you?”
“In a little Ukrainian icebox.” Gage looked up at Ninchenko and smiled. “But I’m in good company.”
“Did the KTMG Limited account I set up for Matson work out okay?” Burch asked.
“That’s why I’m calling. Can you find out if any money arrived?”
“Sure. I set it up through a friend. He receives all of the wire transfer documentation by e-mail from the bank.”
“Call him on your cell.”
Gage heard Burch set down his home phone.
“Maurice, this is Jack Burch…Fine, getting along better every day…I’m calling to verify that KTMG received some funds…I think I’d rather stand by. The client is anxious about this.”
Gage heard Burch pick up the home phone again.
“He’s retrieving the e-mails…By the way, my firm called about a partners’ meeting next week. They’re pretty nervous. Franklin Braunegg’s class action suit is getting a lot of press coverage-hold on.”
Gage heard Burch speak into his other phone, then come back on the line.
“There were four incoming wire transfers,” he told Gage. “About fifteen million dollars altogether.”
Gage smiled to himself. “Perfect.”
“Ten from Guernsey,” Burch continued. “Five from the Cayman Islands.”
“The ten is probably stock profit and the five is Gravilov’s down payment.”
“And Matson has moved two hundred thousand in three transfers to Barclays in London.”
“Probably feathering his nest.”
“Will you have the rest of the money seized?”
“Not yet. I told him to move only a little at a time. At worst we’ll lose a few hundred thousand more, but we can track that later.”
Burch laughed. “Clients are always trying to trick me into laundering their money, now I seem to be doing it all on my own. If this ever gets into the papers-”
“That’s what you said when we were in Afghanistan. We got away with it and you got a nice little plaque. I saw them give it to you.”
“I don’t think I’ll get a plaque for this one.”
CHAPTER 70
A t 7:15 P. M. Gravilov’s car reappeared at the hotel. Gravilov, his driver, and Razor marched together toward the restaurant, like soldiers into battle.
Gage pointed at the monitor. “Looks like Gravilov has decided he’s done talking.”
“I don’t understand the delay,” Ninchenko said. “Why didn’t Matson just…what’s that word they use in your cowboy movies? Skeedle?”
“Skedaddle.”
“That’s it, skedaddle. Why didn’t he skedaddle?”
“One, he’s not sure he can get away. Two, it dawned on him too late that he’d have to settle for less than half of what he was expecting for the software. And three, he had a hard time accepting that he’d lose his investment in the plant.”
“And your idea of selling just the video amplifier software is his ticket out.”
“I hope that’s all it takes.”
Gage and Ninchenko watched the monitor for the next hour as a thick mist settled in, dampening the air and haloing the hotel lights.
There was no movement. They’d succumbed to surveillance daze, until startled by Gage’s ringing phone.
“They made a deal,” Alla said. “Five million more. Gravilov is supposed to transfer the money first thing tomorrow morning. Matson expects the bank will fax the confirmation to the hotel by 11 A. M.”
“Can you reconnect the computer?”
“I tried, but the line’s dead.”
“Where are they now?”
“They’re downstairs drinking like they’re best friends.”
“Maybe it’s just afterglow.”
“What’s afterglow?”
“You know, the birds and the bees.”
“Oh, I get it.” She laughed. “Except it’s Stuart that got buggered. He just doesn’t know it. And I haven’t figured out how Gravilov did it.”
“Does Gravilov know the video amplifier software is here?”
“Stuart told him his lawyer in London will e-mail it to him tomorrow after he gets the wire transfer confirmation. He claimed that the other software is in the States and only he has access.”
“Did Gravilov believe him?”
“I couldn’t tell. Right now all he cares about is getting what he needs for the missile firing on the Black Sea.”
“Then what?”
“Stuart wants to get out of Ukraine as fast as possible. I made reservations for us on a flight from here to London. At 3 P. M.-and Gravilov is okay with it. He promised Stuart that the flight would get off the ground.”
“Why’d Gravilov agree so easily?”
“I have no idea. Maybe he thinks the video software can be checked quickly enough. And get this, Gravilov has already turned the deal for the low-noise software to his advantage. He wants it delivered to Moscow behind Hadeon Alexandervich’s back, just in case the opposition wins-they’re coming back. I’ll call later.”
Gage watched Gravilov’s driver move the car from the parking area to a position in front of the hotel entrance. The driver got out, but left the motor running, the car backlit by the hotel entrance lights. He walked to the rear passenger door and stood by to open it. Steam rose from the tailpipe and swirled past him. Gravilov walked down the steps, opened the front passenger door, and got in.
“Why’s Gravilov getting into the front seat?” Gage asked, looking from the monitor to Ninchenko, who shrugged his shoulders. Gage looked back-and got his answer. A struggling Alla, gripped between Hammer and Razor, appeared at the entrance.
“Gravilov has taken her hostage,” Ninchenko said.
Gage watched as they half carried Alla down the stairs. From the jerky movement of her head Gage guessed she was searching the street for the protection he promised.
“Get your people over here,” Gage said, glancing at Ninchenko. “There’s no way we can follow them in this van without being spotted.”
Ninchenko yelled in Ukrainian into his cell phone.
Razor slid into the car first. Hammer pushed Alla inside and followed her in. The driver then sped off into the half-lit streets of Dnepropetrovsk.
“One car will be here in thirty seconds,” Ninchenko told Gage. “What do you want them to do?”
Gage let the pieces reorganize themselves in his mind. “Not start a war, not in Gravilov’s town. We’ll lose. Just stay with them.”
Ninchenko gave the order, then said, “Do you think she told them about us?”
“If she had,” Gage said, shaking his head, “they would’ve snuck out a back door.”
Ninchenko turned off the video camera.
Gage thought back on his conversation with Alla. Matson and Gravilov as drinking buddies. He looked back at Ninchenko.
“Gravilov didn’t take her hostage,” Gage said. “The little runt gave her to Gravilov as security for the low-noise software.”
“Will he deliver?”
“I’m sure he’s telling himself that he will, but I don’t know.”
Gage paused, trying to anticipate Matson’s next move, thinking that under this kind of pressure, Matson’s actions would depend more on character and instinct than tactical ability.
“He didn’t give a second thought to the people who got killed until his own life was in danger,” Gage said. “He’s the kind of guy with the rare capacity not to think.” He pointed at Ninchenko. “I want to hear from your people every time they make a turn until they arrive at their destination.”
Ninchenko issued the order, then hung up.
“What do you me
an, the rare capacity not to think?”
“He’s not like a sociopath who enjoys hurting people or like a murderer gets off on reliving the crime. Matson’s a guy who just doesn’t think about what he’s really doing.”
Ninchenko’s phone rang, he listened for a moment, then reported to Gage. “They’re heading south, paralleling the river toward farm country. Gravilov has a dacha out there. Near Taromskoe.”
Gage handed Ninchenko a water bottle and opened one for himself.
“You think she’ll tell Gravilov who her father is?” Ninchenko asked.
“Only as a last resort. She knows that her father would turn the thing to his advantage, try to get a cut of the deal. He’s a respected guy. Nobody’ll take Gravilov’s side once they find out he took Petrov Tarasov’s daughter hostage, and Gravilov would have to make up for disrespecting him by giving him a piece.”
“I may quote Yiddish,” Ninchenko said, “but you think like maffiya.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Gage stared at the dark monitor and took a sip of water. “Is there somebody who can keep an eye on Matson? He’ll stay put until Gravilov comes back for him.”
“Sure, I’ll take care of it.”
Moments after a blue Lada containing two of Ninchenko’s men pulled to the curb twenty-five yards away, Kolya turned the ignition and headed back to the Astoria Hotel.
“I wonder if Gravilov will let her go,” Ninchenko said as they neared the yellow-lit columns and blue-lit towers of the train station.
“It depends on whether they think they have leverage to make her keep her mouth shut after the deal is done. They figure they can use the U.S. government to control Matson-if he talks he’ll go to jail. On her, they’ve got nothing.”
“Which means?”
“That they’ll treat her well until they get the software, then just get rid of her.”
CHAPTER 71
T he sun broke through the previous day’s cloudy remnants as Ninchenko drove them just after dawn through the southwestern outskirts of Dnepropetrovsk on their way to Taromskoe, where Alla had been delivered. The green and gold cupolas of the Byzantine Holy Trinity Cathedral struggled against the remaining haze as the industrial stacks, newly liberated from the low clouds, thrust their smoke toward the blue sky. The sun revealed that the buildings and factories that merely appeared a dismal gray on the preceding day, were, in fact, a dismal gray, brooding and unrepentant.
Gage could see on Ninchenko’s face that his night had been as restless as Gage’s, even with the reassurance from their surveillance people that Alla had arrived safely at Gravilov’s dacha.
Within minutes of leaving the city limits, Gage found himself looking out over vast expanses of collective farms. Ninchenko was soon winding through miles of unfenced land and rolling hills. Gage lowered the passenger window of the four-door white Lada. He smelled the acrid odor of industrial-sized cattle breeding operations mixed into the diesel exhaust exploding from ancient commercial trucks lumbering along on the ill-maintained two-lane highway.
“Is that winter wheat?” Gage asked, pointing out toward thousands of acres of green shafts just emerged from the soil.
“So they hope. Last year the February freeze killed ninety percent of the crop.”
“Tough way to make a living.”
“That’s all they know.”
Ninchenko tuned to the excited chatter of the Kiev Vedomosti news station as they rode west. They listened for a moment to the announcer’s excited voice.
“What are they saying?” Gage asked.
“The Supreme Court ordered a new election for next week, but without their own army they can’t force the president to let it happen.”
They drove without speaking until Ninchenko cocked his head at the radio, then burst into bitter laughter. “The Foreign Ministry has admitted that it issued three hundred diplomatic passports in the last week, all to members of the presidential administration. They’re probably getting ready to escape to Switzerland to join their stolen money.”
Thirty minutes after leaving the city, Ninchenko turned north, back toward the Dnepr River, and passed through two villages that served as the urban centers of a thirty-square-mile collective farm. Just before they crested a hill, he pulled over and parked next to a thick stand of fir trees.
“His dacha is down the other side, along the river.”
Gage climbed out of the car, then followed Ninchenko thirty yards through the evergreens, stopping in the shadows on the far side.
Ninchenko handed binoculars to Gage, then pointed toward a museumlike dacha formed by three-story, white stucco wings extending at forty-degree angles from a domed atrium. The driveway encircled a Romanesque fountain populated with Cossacks at play. No other dachas were in sight.
“What’s in there?” Gage asked, pointing at a dozen thirty-foot-square cages nestled at the bottom of a hill to the west of the house.
“That’s his menagerie. Wolves, bears, even a Bengal tiger. Most were smuggled in. Many are ones that evolution planned for climates other than Ukraine’s. But there are a few locals, too.”
“Does he take care of them?”
Ninchenko tilted his jaw toward trails of smoke rising in the distance. “They live better than any of the villagers we passed on the way.”
Gage surveyed the countryside, looking for observation points. “Where are your people?”
Ninchenko reached for his cell phone.
“ Dobre utra…Dobre…Kak dyela? ”
Ninchenko glanced at Gage. “Apparently it was a little chilly last night.” Then spoke into his phone again, “ Donde esta? ”
Gage’s head snapped toward Ninchenko. “That ain’t Russian, Pancho.”
“ Eso es correcto, mi amigo,” Ninchenko said, grinning. “My helper was stationed in Spain during the late 1980s. He taught me a few words.” He listened again, then told Gage, “They’re on the hill above the menagerie. They can see Alla’s room. It’s on the top floor at the end of the wing closest to where they are. She turned on the lights and opened the curtains last night hoping someone would spot her. It looks like she believed you when you said you’d station people close by…and Gravilov’s car is still in the garage, so he hasn’t left yet.”
After bidding his man adios, Ninchenko walked back to the van to retrieve a thermos of coffee while Gage sat down, leaning back against a tree with a clear view toward the dacha and the Dnepr River just beyond. Through the binoculars, he watched a rusting six-hundred-ton cargo ship pass by, guided downstream by a small tugboat. Crewmen stood on the deck in surplus Russian Navy overcoats and gray lambskin ushanka s with flaps pulled hard against their ears. The horn sounded as it approached a bend in the river, the moan seeming less to fade than simply be absorbed by the heavy brush along the shore, the forest beyond, and the low clouds that hovered above the valley.
His cell phone rang as Ninchenko walked up from behind and handed him a cup of coffee.
“This is my second kidnapping this week,” Alla said.
Gage smiled at Ninchenko and gestured with his cup at the dacha.
“Technically speaking, you ran into me, so you sort of kidnapped yourself the first time.”
“Have I called you a fucking American yet?”
“At least once.”
“I hope you’re damn close by.”
“Did you look out of your window this morning?”
“Yes.”
“You see the cages?”
“Yes.”
“What’s inside?”
“All I can see are wild pigs, antelopes, bears, and disgusting-looking hyenas.”
“When a bear growls or a pig snorts or a hyena does whatever a hyena does, we’ll both hear it.”
“I’m glad you gave me that little phone. They snatched mine.”
“Where’d you hide it?”
“Guess. Stuart always tried to get me to wear a thong. It’s a good thing I refused.”
“What
happened last night?”
“Stuart pretended he didn’t know what Gravilov was going to do, but he can’t act. They cooked it up together. My guess is that they’ll keep me here until Stuart brings the other software from the States, except…”
“Except what?”
“I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“Doesn’t make a difference.”
“It makes a hell of a lot of difference to me. I didn’t come back to Ukraine for Gravilov to turn me into hyena food.”
“We’ll come get you as soon as Matson arrives in the U.S.”
“Unless they ground the planes. I’m not sure he’ll even make it as far as London.”
“The planes will fly. A lot of newly appointed diplomats are looking to get out.”
“What if…I mean…” The nervous edge was back in her voice. She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
“There’ll be two men on the hill above the menagerie all the time you’re here-and if Gravilov moves you they’ll be on your tail. Ninchenko will give you their cell number in a minute. But first, what’s security like?”
“I don’t know. They covered my eyes when they brought me in, but I don’t think there’s much. I didn’t hear many people talking. A woman brings me food. She looks like one of those unisex Bulgarian weightlifters. I can’t tell whether she wants to break me in two or have sex with me-or both.”
“Is there a way down from your room on the outside?”
“I’d need wings. They took the sheets off the bed so I couldn’t make them into a rope.”
“We’ll get you out in a way that doesn’t require flight.”
“You better. You got me into this.”
“No, you got yourself into it. I just gave you a rather complicated way out.”
An hour later Ninchenko and Gage were following a quarter mile behind Gravilov’s Mercedes as he and Hammer rode toward Dnepropetrovsk.
“It makes me a little nervous that he left Razor behind,” Gage said. “Guys like him derive sexual pleasure from their work. He may do something preemptive.” He glanced at Ninchenko. “What do you know about him?”
“Hammer recruited him for Gravilov in Chechnya at the end of the first war in ’96. He worked for warlords and maffiya. The rumor was that if he didn’t need to eat, he would’ve worked for free.”
