Downfall

by Jeff Abbott

  She didn’t really want to see this side of Lazard. For five seconds she’d debated after picking up her car at the valet whether she could simply rev up close to Lazard’s car, fire a bullet into his brain, and roar away. Even with the difficulties of a moving target, firing through glass, she knew she could do it. But then he would have died in front of his child, and what if she’d missed, what if the ricochet hit innocent flesh inside the car? Or the driverless car then crashed?

  And this was supposed to be a suicide.

  You’re a really sorry excuse for a hit woman. Hit person. Whatever you are. She sat in the car, parked facing away from where Lazard and his daughter began to toss a Frisbee between them, and she picked up the blue prepaid phone. She dialed.

  When Belias answered, she said, “You didn’t tell me he has a child.”

  “His daughter is in boarding school in Montreal.”

  “She’s in Vegas and he’s spending the weekend with her. Poison becomes riskier with a child around, and I’m not going to kill him in front of his kid with a gun. So much for suicide.”

  “Perhaps,” Belias said, musing, “he would kill his child and then himself.”

  “I’m going to pretend you did not say that,” Janice said. “Forget that right now. It will never happen.”

  “If you can’t make Lazard look like a suicide or an accident, then just kill him,” he said.

  “Let me think.” Janice watched Lazard and the girl awkwardly toss the plastic disc. He was coaching his daughter quietly, gently. She laughed as she made a strong throw and her father missed the catch. How much money did Lazard have? How much had he built in the city of pleasures, and yet only here she could see his genuine smile, broader than the one he offered at the casino, the simple joy of time with a child. “Why does this man have to die?”

  “It’s not like you have a lot of time to worry about niceties, Janice.”

  “It’s hard to watch him with his daughter.”

  “You’re thinking about your own daughter.” And there was a steel in his voice she didn’t like.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t waste your time being sentimental. That’s time you’re losing with Diana.”

  The Lazard girl jumped up high, fingers just catching the flying disc. Her father clapped.

  “I love how you cut to the bone.”

  “It’s how I’ve made you all successful, Janice. Get it done.” He hung up then and she wondered why he sounded so cold. Colder than normal.

  She sat and watched and after a while, as the sun began to climb higher in the desert sky, Lazard and his daughter headed for their car.

  Janice followed them back toward the casino, inching the car closer, rehearsing the shot in her mind. But then she thought of another idea. A better one.

  She pulled into a parking lot so she could hunt on her cell phone’s browser for the closest hardware store.

  48

  Saturday, November 6, afternoon

  VASILI ANDREIVICH BORODIN.” Felix stood up from his laptop and took a big gulp of coffee.

  “Is that Belias’s real name?” I asked.

  “No, as Mr. Borodin is dead. But he was briefly famous. In Russia.” He hit a button on the laptop and pages began to furl out from the printer. “Go get me some more coffee, Sam, please, and I’ll explain.”

  I went downstairs. Mila was on the phone, speaking softly. Then singing. Wordlessly she held out the phone to me. I took it.

  Daniel, on the other end, gurgling, laughing. Like sunshine if it could have a sound. “Hey, baby, it’s Daddy.” And I like to think that Daniel laughed then, that he responded to my voice. I made baby talk to him, not really something I’m good at, but I was apart from him for so long that every thread of connection matters. Leonie came on the phone as I cranked up the coffeepot for Felix.

  “He’s okay. I’m okay.”

  “How’s Jimmy?”

  “You mean, how is it that you’ve entrusted our safety to a man you’ve never met?” Her voice was wry.

  “Mila says he’s the best.”

  “Oh, well, if Mila says it.”

  “Leonie, please.”

  “He’s taking excellent care of us. He read Daniel a bedtime story last night. But you should be doing that.”

  I should. I closed my eyes. “I am particularly positioned to bring this bad guy down. I have to for all of us to be safe.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, and I’m sure it’s true.”

  “Leonie…”

  “Every time you get the hunger for your old life, do I have to go into hiding?”

  I could tell her that Belias had acquired my CIA file, but that might only frighten her.

  “No.”

  “So this is a onetime thing.”

  “It will be over soon.”

  “That wasn’t an answer, Sam. I think you better decide what you want from your life.”

  “If you want out, Leonie, just go.” She had no claim on Daniel; it had been out of kindness that I’d let her stay in his life after we survived a harrowing experience, and she’d been like a mother to Daniel.

  “I’m the only mother he’s ever known,” she said. “I won’t leave him.”

  “I’ll call tonight.”

  She hung up.

  “I told you,” Mila said, “to not let that woman stay in your life. I was right, you were wrong. We should have made a bet.”

  “She said Jimmy is taking good care of them.”

  “Of course he is. He knows I will kill him if any harm comes to Daniel or pseudo nanny. Or if pseudo nanny disappears with Daniel.”

  “She won’t run.”

  “She is an expert forger who used to help hunted people hide. If anyone could run far, it would be her.”

  “She won’t.” I poured a fresh mug for Felix and went back upstairs. Mila followed.

  Felix had done very fast work delving into the name I’d found on Glenn’s laptop. On one wall he’d taped up photos and news articles, like we had in re-creating the DOWNFALL file. I handed him his coffee.

  “You’re a bullet,” I said. “This was fast.”

  “I’m desperate.” He smiled. “Okay, Vasili Borodin was a Russian businessman. One of those who successfully grabbed resources when Soviet industries went private. He made millions, bought a soccer team in France, lived in London.” He pointed to a picture of a heavyset man with a broad smile but a cagey, knowing stare. “Now, all stereotyping of the Russian mafia and its ties to Russian business aside, Borodin was legit. There were, of course, reports of muscle being used to intimidate rivals among Russian businessmen, but he was never accused of that. In fact, he started using the profits from the selling of his Russian-based companies to buy firms in western Europe. And here’s where it gets interesting, because there’s a pattern.” He pointed at a list of companies: German, French, Belgian, British. “Each of these companies suffered a severe setback right before Borodin acquired them. Thriving companies that suddenly suffered a loss…”

  “A downfall,” Mila said.

  Felix nodded. “I think Borodin was either waiting to swoop on any company that suffered a loss, or he engineered it himself and then took advantage.”

  “Did any of these companies claim to have been hacked?”

  “Yes. One of them had an entire credit card database compromised repeatedly, their stock sunk. After Borodin bought them there were no further incidents.”

  “Belias,” I said. “Borodin had his own hacker.”

  “Private hackers have often been thought to assist the Russian government in bringing down people they consider subversive, and we know during Russia’s short war with Georgia that the Russians used private hackers to tear down Georgia’s Internet capability,” Mila said. “Glenn Marchbanks must have figured out some connection between Belias and Borodin.”

  “But there’s no hard proof?” I asked.

  “Not yet. But Sam, look here.” He pointed at a photo. “The opening of a big nightclub in London
that Borodin owned. That’s him.” I peered at the picture, which looked like it had been printed in a lifestyle section of a newspaper. Next to Borodin, who wore a tuxedo, was an attractive young woman.

  “That’s not arm candy, that’s Borodin’s daughter, Svetlana. Borodin was a widower who never remarried, Svetlana was his only family. She was studying at the Royal Academy Opera in London. Very promising singer.”

  “She’s lovely,” Mila said.

  But my eyes had already gone on to the next photo. Another of Borodin, at the same party, hoisting a glass of champagne with another man.

  “He looks like Belias.” Felix spoke my own thought aloud.

  “He does resemble him, but he’s noticeably older. Who is he?”

  “His name is Martin Raymond. An American investments counselor, an adviser to Borodin.”

  “You said Borodin was,” Mila said. “Past tense.”

  “Borodin killed himself nine years ago. Murder-suicide. His companies had suffered serious setbacks, started to unravel, all to the benefit of his rivals.” He stared straight at me. “It almost seemed like his companies were suffering the same fate as those he’d acquired on the cheap. The karma of it was even discussed in the European financial press. But it was suggested the companies were flawed, and he simply hadn’t addressed their problems.”

  “He got hacked himself? By his own hacker?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You said murder-suicide,” Mila said.

  Felix nodded. “Borodin apparently killed Svetlana and Martin Raymond in his home outside London. Then he killed himself. E-mails found afterward showed that Svetlana and Raymond had been having an affair and that Martin Raymond had been lifting millions from Borodin’s investment accounts. The money was never recovered.” He cleared his throat. “Open-and-shut case, it seemed. He killed them for the betrayal, then killed himself.” He crossed his arms. “Svetlana had been in rehearsals for an academy performance of Gounod’s opera Faust.”

  I put my hand over my mouth. “That was where Belias got the idea. Do for several individuals what he’d done for Borodin’s company.”

  “The bodies were found by Borodin’s head of security. A former UK Special Forces soldier named, wait for it, Roger Metcalfe.” He pulled a photo from the printer. It was Belias’s partner.

  “Belias is maybe ten years older than me,” I said. “Did Raymond have a son?”

  “Yes, Kevin Raymond. I called Jimmy with this; he’s working to find out where he is, what’s he’s been doing.” Felix pointed at the papers on the wall. “This was what I could find in a couple of hours of dedicated Internet searching, focusing on the British press. Nothing at all yet on Kevin Raymond. He had no ties to his father’s business, so he wasn’t suspected of being part of the embezzlement. He worked as a software designer for a number of different firms, but he couldn’t hold on to a job. Then he dropped out of sight.”

  “I hack human lives, that’s what he said.” I stared at Svetlana Borodina’s lovely photo.

  “We are dealing with someone who may have killed his own father,” Mila said, and we let the awful words hang in the silence.

  I have friends in both high and low places. One such, on the low side, is Fagin. Yes, named for the king of the pickpockets from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. My Fagin used to be a high school computer teacher who went to work for CIA Special Projects using teenage hackers to create mischief against our enemies and sometimes our friends. All off the records, all highly deniable. Fagin was a genius when it came to computer hackery, and I was one of the few who had his home number in Manhattan.

  I dialed, he answered, and I said, “Hey, Fagin, it’s Sam Capra.”

  He hung up. I have a complicated relationship with my former coworkers.

  I called back. I could imagine his rather roomy apartment in Manhattan: one room set up full of computers, teenagers (in Special Projects we’d nicknamed them the Oliver Twists) with more brains than sense sitting at the keyboards, planting bugs and viruses in software that ran Russian gas pipelines or Chinese servers that choked information off from their citizens or maybe snooping without a warrant for financial records. The last time I’d been there he’d had two teenagers leaving logic bombs in another country’s power grid, and he’d stepped out to get them refills on their sodas.

  The phone rang twenty times before he answered. “What?”

  “Fagin. I have a trade to offer.”

  “I am not interested. You are no longer an agency employee.”

  “You are, though, and I could make you look very good.”

  Fagin paused. He is nothing if not self-serving. I mean that in a good way.

  “It’s very shiny and bright and will probably make you a national hero. Secretly, of course.”

  A pause, no doubt while he instructed the Oliver Twists on duty to figure out where I was calling from.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I have a lead on a very important bad guy, a hacker.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be serving cocktails for a living?”

  “Yes, and the martinis are on me next time I’m in New York.”

  “I can’t even be seen near you, you know that.”

  “I won’t be at the bar, and you’ll have an open tab to abuse. Kevin Raymond. Do you know that name?”

  Fagin kept a database of every known hacker. He used it to recruit those young enough to be Oliver Twists and to keep an eye on his competition.

  “He would be an American who was based in Britain,” I said. “Midthirties now. Might have done work for Vasili Borodin, a Russian businessman.”

  “Corporate espionage?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t recognize the name.”

  “Can you check your database? Please?”

  “Just a minute.” I could hear the click of keys. “He’s not in my files.”

  “What about names like CyberPeasant or Dragon44 or Venjanz?” Those were the nicknames listed in Glenn’s hacker file. “Or Belias?” I spelled it for him.

  He checked. “Nothing on Belias.” More clicking. “CyberPeasant is dead. Dragon44, not active for the past couple of years, so probably using a different code name or retired or in jail.”

  “And Venjanz?”

  The sound of the keyboard. “Huh. That’s a pointless crime.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Several years ago a hacker by that name broke into a database at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He downloaded, then erased a digital archive of student voice performances from ten years ago. The whole thing. Defaced the site and signed that name to it, erased the voices, the database, and the off-site backup. Any performances that survived would have been in private hands.”

  “Did he ever do anything else?”

  “Not under the name Venjanz. He’s only in the database because Scotland Yard investigated, given it was the Royal Academy, and we share information with them.”

  Svetlana Borodina. Ten years ago. Her life erased, then her music. How long had he had the network? Nine or eight?

  And then I thought of the eight slashes in the molding in Glenn’s old home office, like years ticked off in a prison cell.

  His voice lowered. “Sam, why would you care about a prank hacker? A guy who erases music archives at an academy is just a jerk, not a threat.”

  “Profile a hacker for me. Psychologically.”

  “We come in all shapes and sizes, movie stereotypes aside.”

  “Hypothetical, Fagin. A hacker who makes another man very rich and successful. Maybe who has a father who works for said rich man; maybe the hacker has made the rich man more money than the father.”

  “Entitled,” Fagin said immediately. “I mean that in a good sense of the word. He would want to be credited for his role in building up the rich man. And he should be. Especially if his methods were more effective than legitimate ones.”

  “And how do you reward such a hacker?”

  “Money. Respect.
New technical challenges. Women are always nice.”

  “Women. A relationship? Or just sex?”

  “Look at every hacker bio. Most of them are always wanting to be in a relationship. Hacking is lonely. They like a regular partner that they can show how smart they are. They need someone to consistently impress.”

  “And if the woman leaves them or maybe takes up with the father? Or if the rich man disrespects him?”

  “Oh. Well. That would be bad. Hackers hold grudges, often because they can actually wreak revenge. If he had made those people wealthy, and they rejected him or made him feel unimportant, he would burn down the house if he could.”

  Venjanz, I thought. He picked the right name. Maybe he’d been in love with her, his father had taken her, maybe not even knowing how his son felt, his boss maybe hadn’t rewarded him. A toxic mix.

  Fagin kept talking. “They don’t feel the impulse to let the situation go. I’m speaking very generally here and certainly not about myself. I do yoga now. Very calming for the temperament.”

  “You are a beacon of sanity, Fagin.” I paused. “This hacker told me he’d moved from hacking computers to hacking lives,” I said.

  “Arrogant, then.”

  “But he’s doing it. His system is working. He has muscle behind him, or he did. The muscle got killed.”

  “Then he’s very dangerous,” Fagin said. “He has a system in place, and he’s lost part of it. He’ll want to replace that muscle.”

  Me, I thought. Me. Mila had read Belias perfectly. We’d proceed with her plan.

  49

  Saturday, November 6, late afternoon

  DIANA KEENE WONDERED, Do you think this is going to work? You’re delaying the inevitable. You don’t even know if your mother is still alive.